Shower

PERFECT IS THE ENEMY OF GOOD!!!

“The Militarization of the Police Department – Deadly Farce,” an original painting by Richard Williams from “The 20 Dumbest People, Events, and Things of 2014″ in Mad magazine #531, published by DC Comics, February 2015.

Here’s the original, for comparison. And here’s a bit more about the artist and why he created the piece above for MAD Magazine.

Richard Williams on Norman Rockwell:

“For most people, he was the painter of ‘America,’” he added. “But even he said his vision was what he wanted ‘America’ to be. It was a mythical ‘America,’ a place where all people were decent, honest and full of good will. His work was full of gentle humor that made you feel a little better; even if you knew it wasn’t really true… you just wished it was. My parody of Rockwell’s painting simply says, ‘That myth is dead.’”

I think it’s relevant to add that even Norman Rockwell chose to leave his cushy job at the Saturday Evening Post because he wanted to make artwork that was more radical. The Post had rules that wouldn’t allow him to do artwork depicting black people as anything other than servants. The job paid really well and that was a huge reason he continued on. But he wanted change that and so he moved to Look magazine.

A lot of people know about the very first piece he did when he left the post which was the The Problem We All Live With which depicts Ruby Bridges walking to school under federal protection.

But I don’t think enough people know about Murder in Mississippi which depicts three real civil rights activists who were murdered by the Ku Klux Klan and sherriffs. The magazine ran the sketch instead of the finished piece because they felt it had a more striking statement to accompany the article. Norman Rockwell would finish that version after publication which is here

Rockwell’s legacy is sanitized because he decided to maintain his job at the Post for so long despite his frustrations with not being able to express himself. The civil rights movement was just his final straw to change what he could with the little time he had left. Look magazine received a lot of hate for Rockwell painting these as well.

Another favorite piece of mine is The Right to Know which depicts an integrated populace questioning their government. In 1968, the year of Vietnam and the year the Fair Housing Act only just got signed in months prior:

But I think it’s important to include the caption Rockwell originally wrote for the piece as well. I think it represents how a 74 year old Rockwell felt about the America he believed in and the people in it:

Regarding Norman Rockwell, I also want to shout out “New Kids in the Neighborhood (Moving Day)” in 1967:

Also for LOOK magazine, but leaning on his themes of youth and suburban life. Expressing both hope for the curiosity and open-mindedness of children, and the bitter recognition of the suspicion of adults towards racial integration (see the face peeking out of the window in background). It’s notable that this is what he wanted America to be, too. He hoped for a better future.

I think that MAD Magazine artwork is really good and really poignant, and it’s also interesting to put it in conversation with Norman Rockwell’s own political evolution in his art as well.

having adhd and being a creator is like being on a timer. oh sorry you have this art idea? well you have approximately 12 hours to start it and 6 hours to finish the task or else you will lose interest and inevitably move on. oh you have an idea for a one-shot? well you’d better finish it in a day unless you want to banish it to your wips forever. ding dong bitch

I didn't ask if it made sense to keep going. I said I'm going to kick your twisted evil ass.

Erosion by Tamsin van Essen. Who knew parasitic invasion could be so beautiful?

van Essen on her project:

@charseraph

Missing Piece

Anjel (she/her) conspiracy theorist rat girl with amnesia. She sticks copious amounts of post-its wherever she can to read for later. She's also funny

Lioness Devouring a Man, Phoenician Ivory Panel, c. 9th-8th century BCE. From the palace of Ashurnasirpal II, Nimrud, northern Mesopotamia, Iraq.

The way you create the work, the social and economic relations of the work, and the way you present the work to the world are as much a part of the complete art as the work itself.

And you do have agency in how you navigate those things - but the process of making any kind of art and getting it out there in the world is your imagination in negotiation with reality. You have to be able to fully participate in that negotiation, you can't be so scared of the reality of the way art functions in the world that you can't face it directly. You can't cling blindly to an imagined ideal or you will always lose.

I know it's hard, being an artist in this present moment is simply among the most emotionally complex and demanding pursuits you can undertake, but we need more people who can do this and do it well. It's okay if you struggle with it. Be patient and kind with yourself.

Art carbon-dated from the Edo Period (spanning from 1603 - 1868) Hammerhead Sharks.

trans girls are always so good at everything hey what do those red dots on that plane mean

went to the only fringe show that matters yesterday: A Young Man Dressed as a Gorilla Dressed as an Old Man Sits Rocking an a Rocking Chair for Fifty-Six Minutes and Then Leaves

the energy from the audience in the room was like nothing i've ever experienced before. there were easily over a hundred people crammed into this basement venue. we arrived nearly an hour early and the queue to get in was already stretching out onto the street

the title wasn't a lie; a young man dressed as a gorilla dressed as an old man really just sat rocking in a rocking chair for fifty-six minutes. occasionally he'd yawn or scratch his head. a couple times he tapped his pipe. the audience responded to the most minimal movement with raptorous applause, often standing ovations. a moment later, everyone would hush each other into silence with seemingly no prompting. throughout it all, the gorilla rocked in his rocking chair.

not one, not two, not three, but FOUR people independently brought a banana to the show and presented it on stage to the gorilla, which garnered room-shaking applause each time. one person in the crowd intermittently blowed bubbles, which was well received. at one point a man went and took the gorilla's glasses off, which was violently booed. he tried replacing them with sunglasses, which was still booed. he then put the regular glasses back on top of the sunglasses, which finally gained the audience's cheers. he remained like that for the rest of the show

this is from a review of last year's show (they do it for one night per year) but this was exactly how it was this year too. if you ever come to edinburgh for the fringe festival there is not a single show i'd recommend more

Quote of the day

I’m seeing a lot of people saying this post changed their brain chemistry, and as a neuroscientist I wanted to say yes!!! Yes it does!

Wanting something requires dopamine signaling, but liking something doesn’t.

If you have a mental illness/disorder that affects dopamine, you might feel that you don’t want to do the things that you like. You do still like them. You will appreciate having done them.

Let your likes guide you.

(If you want to read more, here’s one experimental paper about it. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5171207/ This theory called the incentive-sensitization theory was originally created to explain behaviors in addiction but can be applied elsewhere as well)

in general, the fastest way to make sure you're able to enter smoothly into working with a genre you're not already part of is by keeping in mind that genre tradition is a conversation which you are always arriving late to

new conversations evolve off of existing ones, which is the utility of backreading at least enough to where in the conversation you will be entering, and of course to keep you from making the archmistake of saying you're starting a new genre

this is very very very broadly true of most artforms as a whole. writing, games, painting, music, any which way about it

art is a conversation with all of history, and you don't have to know all of it to drop in, but it's good for you to know enough to not be entirely incongruent with everyone else who would otherwise be your peer

the most established and well-known artists in any genre are, realistically speaking, also people you are going to be in conversation with. and that holds true whether or not you care about them or their work, because (even if everyone involved tries to say otherwise) art is not produced in isolation, and it is not consumed in isolation

One thing I Knew before but have been experiencing a lot lately (because I’ve been drawing a dress-up game with two sexes and three body types, and therefore each clothing item must be drawn six times) is the ways that male and female bodies—despite being really very similar actually—are generally stylized in opposite directions in art, even in art that’s not being especially sexist.

And I’m not just talking about like, eyelashes and boobs and lips, either. It comes up in overall body proportions.

Like for example male bodies often have the hips:waist ratio lessened, and female bodies have it increased. Necks are often lengthened for both, but with men it’s just enough to make the neck distinct, and for women it’s more than that.

And this becomes especially noticeable when you’re consciously trying to remove all that and find the minimal possible difference between a female body of a specific body type and a male body of the same type, because you’re, for example, drawing a dress-up game with two sexes and three body types, and you can shortcut having to draw each piece of clothing six times if you manage to get hips waist and shoulders to match.

And anyway I don’t typically think of myself as an artist who hugely exaggerates human sexual dimorphism, but this game has ended up looking not quite like how I typically draw men or women when I’m drawing from scratch, because I had to choose that for each feature I was only going to stylize in one direction, and it’s really brought to the fore how much that isn’t usually the case in either the art that I draw or the art that I see

“Rainfall” by Neil Relkie of Relkie Art Glass