GUEST POST: Mrs Marvel on ‘Things I’m Glad Are Out of Style’
Categories: Guest Post, history • Tags: fashion, guest post, humor, photography, style, victorian era
Monthly Archives: May 2012
Leeches! Leeches!! Leeches!!!
Leeches have been used for bloodletting for centuries. In fact, they became so popular in the 18th and 19th centuries that they were almost farmed to extinction in Europe. Although falling out of fashion in the later half of the 20th century, their medical use is making a comeback in microsurgery and reconstructive surgery due to the anti-coagulant properties of their secretions, which is useful for reducing blood clots and venous pressure from pooling blood, and for healing skin grafts. […]
Categories: Curiosities, history • Tags: advertisements, ephemera, illustration, images, leeches, medicine, nostalgia, science, unsettling, victorian era
A Map of a Woman’s Heart, 1833-1842
Published by D.W. Kellog between 1833-1842, this amusing Map of the Open Country of Woman’s Heart paints the “fairer sex” in a rather unflattering light. From the mole traps in the Province of Deception, to the city of Moi-meme in the Land of Selfishness, to the Plains of Susceptibility in the Region of Sentimentality, this ever-so-charming illustration certainly demonstrates this Victorian gentleman’s equal taste for maps and disdain for women. I suspect this fellow must have had a recent broken […]
Categories: Curiosities, history • Tags: anatomy, art, humor, love, map, victorian era
A lot of pictures of Pablo Picasso without his shirt on
Read on for (many) more pictures of a shirtless Picasso. Warning: it is an image heavy post, because Picasso apparently really, really liked to whip his shirt off. Perhaps he felt that extra material encumbered his artistic genius. Or maybe the legendary playboy just liked to show off the goods. Sources of shirtless Picasso images: Harry Ransom Centre; Flavour Wire; LIFE magazine; Ashley Black Photography; All Top; ZIIO; i write good; Secret Forts; Crystal Kiss; Why We Flourish; Sydney Morning […]
Categories: history • Tags: art, photography, Picasso, shirtless
Three ridiculously interesting photos for art history nerds
These three intriguing photographs have no real relationship with one another, except that each image reveals a little bit of the hidden history of art. Read on for more about these remarkable images. Picasso wearing a ‘cow head mask’, 1949 The first image is a light-hearted 1949 photograph of Pablo Picasso on a French beach, wearing what is described as a cow’s head mask. However, I believe that the image is mislabeled and that he is actually modelling a bull’s […]
Categories: history • Tags: American Gothic, art, artist, face, history, images, models, photography, Picasso, Robert Cornelius
The Museum of Ridiculously Interesting Things 