One summer several years ago, when my husband and I were under-employed graduate students with too much time on our hands, we bought a painting. Since we both love art and were bored, we got cracked on the idea that we should have more art in our house. Given our under-employed status, we weren’t in … Continue reading Craigslist, the Internet’s Garage Sale
Okay. I wasn’t going to step into this “Renoir Sucks at Painting” debate, but it doesn’t seem to be going away as quickly as I thought it would, and I’ve got some opinions on the matter. In case you haven’t been following the story, a guy named Max Geller has started a movement decrying the … Continue reading In (Moderate) Defense of Renoir
(Note that some of the images and links below are slightly NSFW, insofar as watercolor images of breasts are NSFW.) “Sexting:” Defined by Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary as: “The sending of sexually explicit messages or images by cell phone.” It’s such a distinctly early twenty-first century phenomenon. After all, it’s only within the last decade or … Continue reading Nineteenth-Century Sexting
It is very trendy for art historians to talk about “cultural interaction” and the hybrid works created during a given period of interaction. My research focuses on the interaction between Muscovy (Russia) and northern Italy during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, so I’m definitely a part of this trend. Most scholars of early modern art … Continue reading The Beauty and Brutality of Interaction: Art Far from Home
I'm too busy to be writing this blog post. (Read: I just moved and am still working out daycare and unpacking and have lots of unexpected work to do!) But I've really fallen off the radar, and wanted to prove that I'm still here and working and thinking and wanting to share with you, my loyal … Continue reading Beauteous Botanical Lithographs, Just Because
I learned of a major gap in my knowledge of the art world last week while at the post office of all places. I was sending birthday presents to my niece and nephew who live on the other side of the country, and while contemplating my shipping options I saw one of those sheets of … Continue reading Martín Ramírez; or, My Artistic Education at the Post Office
Last week I was really sick. I had one of those illnesses (some sort of evil virus?) that made me weep when I tried to swallow and spiked my temperature. In the morning, I went upstairs to get dressed and inadvertently took a two-hour nap. One of those. Lucky for me, my husband was home … Continue reading The Joy of Seeing, The Joy of Creating
This past fall, my schedule worked out so that I was home with my son on Mondays. To give us both something to do, I decided to start taking him to a toddler story hour at our branch of the local library. We would walk there since it’s such a pleasant walk, winding past the … Continue reading Hooray for Public Art!
Somehow, I only recently attended my first baby shower. From what I can tell, it was your standard baby shower, though better than most since it didn’t involve silly games. The mother-to-be was glowing, the other mothers talked shop with her, and she was showered with gift after gift. Materially speaking, the modern mother has … Continue reading The Renaissance Baby Shower
This week, I read an article about a legal dispute between a French art teacher and Facebook. The man posted an image of L’Origine du Monde (NSFW) on his page to promote an art-historical video. Facebook cried indecency and removed the image. If you’re not a student of art history, you might not be aware … Continue reading A Newcomer’s Guide to the Art-Historical Vagina
Ellen A. Hurst 