🎠
I went to the Met to look at a Kerry James Marshall painting but this piece by Max Beckmann just struck me on my way to the other gallery. an old man and I looked at it together for a while
Oct 1, 2024
Related Recs
Milton Avery, Bathers, Coney Island, 1934, oil on canvas
the first time i saw this painting in the Portland art museum, walking through the American art section with my free student ticket, i think i hated it a little. it was weird and the colors were queasy and i probably could have painted it myself.
well, i guess it grew on me over the next dozen of visits, because now i have to pay $20 to enter the museum and this is one of my favorite paintings ever. there’s something so unconsciously skillful about it to me, and extremely funny, as if the painter put me in on a joke. i even bought a museum postcard of it from eBay and framed it on my wall. on a particularly bad day in San Francisco i found myself in the de Young museum in Golden Gate Park, and the sight of another Milton Avery painting brought me to tears like i had encountered a close friend. Avery lived a fairly quiet life; he didn’t find success as a painter until later in life. when he did, he wasn’t particularly financially successful. but he created art every day and taught his daughter to do the same, he used color and shape in strange and oddly transformative ways, and he had a friendship with Mark Rothko, a fellow Portland native who i admire very much, that consisted of long nights of tea and talking.
how does any of this relate to how much i love this painting? maybe i just saw it enough times during a transformative period of my life. but i love it for its vague impressions of hot dog vendors, and tough but tender hearted italian dudes, and a working class new-york dream, and imperfect people enjoying themselves at the beach regardless of the queasiness and horrors of everyday life, regardless of strange shadows and monkey people. i love it for being so weird and progressive for 1930 and kind of goth and surreal. i hope you love strange paintings too, but if you don’t, that’s alright.
Jan 30, 2025
I was taken by this piece at Franck Elbaz at the opening of "Host" last night. I began a piece a couple nights ago, on a large swath of unprimed canvas that I taped to my wall. After sketching on it, out of classic Zahra impatience, I began on it in passionate oil pastel sticks and then reprimanded myself for not waiting to gesso it. But then I would miss the skin-feel of the fabric... After seeing this painting below, I decided to let the laws go to shit and just make a grand fucking mess, and let it do the one thing it should do: sing to me.
Feb 4, 2024
was walking through the Musée d’Orsay alone after a breakup, contemplating renunciation and renting a turn of the century efficiency apartment with an iron bed when i got back home, and this painting stopped me in my tracks.
Jul 27, 2024
Top Recs from @gabbylinder
🎾
this summer, we’re starting yoga, we’re learning a new language (being bilingual is now the standard, you need to know at least three to be truly chic), we’re going to concerts just because the tickets were cheap, we’re going to museums (especially the weird ones), hitting up the local library to ask for new recommendations, whether it’s a surprise or based on past tastes, we’re painting, collecting and collaging, sewing and embroidering our clothes, re-learning the harmonica, playing chess with strangers online and at the café, we’re taking up tennis and pretending it’s not just because of challengers. the only way to find what brings you joy is to try.
May 19, 2024
🍷
full of bread and wine and guilt
Jun 11, 2024
⭐
the guy at the store should know you, the man running the halal truck should know your order, your barista should know your name and you should know theirs, you should have a borderline flirtatious banter going with a bartender at your favorite dive bar
Jun 14, 2024