Chelsea Nichols

A lot of pictures of Pablo Picasso without his shirt on

1 May 2012 by Chelsea Nichols

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

1 May 2012 by Chelsea Nichols

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

Group of Victorian women facing backward.

Those backward Victorians

23 January 2012 by Chelsea Nichols

This image puzzled me for days when I first saw it on Pinterest. Why would a Victorian photographer take a picture of this group facing the wrong way? Was it an accident? A modern photoshopped joke? A symbol of mourning? Some sort of feminist statement? Documentation of a photography studio? In classic academic fashion, I was over thinking it. I’ve done some research on the image and the answer turned out to be deceptively simple. It is not a modern […]

Categories: Curiosities, history • Tags: backwards, images, mystery, photography, victorian era

Victorian photograph of three children with mother hidden under draped fabric.

Hidden mothers in Victorian portraits

5 January 2012 by Chelsea Nichols

The first photographic images in the late 1820s had to be exposed for hours in order to capture them on film. Improvements in the technology led to this exposure time being drastically cut down to minutes, then seconds, throughout the 19th century. But in the meantime, the long exposures gave us a few unmistakable Victorian photography conventions, such as the stiff postures and unsmiling faces of people trying to remain perfectly still while their photograph was being taken. Seems children […]

Categories: history • Tags: art, children, hidden mothers, history, humor, images, photography, victorian era

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Illustration of Baba Yaga, by Ivan Bilibin. Russuan fairytales.

GUEST POST: Claire Atwater on The Bone Mother illustrations

3 January 2012 by Chelsea Nichols

Categories: history • Tags: art, fairy tale, folklore, guest post, history, illustration, images, trees

Eternity clocks by Alicia Eggert and Mike Fleming

22 December 2011 by Chelsea Nichols

In this wonderful sculpture by Alicia Eggert and Mike Fleming, the pair installed 36 clocks behind a piece of white acrylic, and manipulated the hands to read “Eternity”. Once the clocks are started, they read “Eternity” only once every 12 hours. The result is a hypnotic meditation on time and an elegant kinetic sculpture. The video above shows the piece go through the whole twelve hour cycle in just 31 seconds, which is over 1,000 times its actual speed. How […]

Categories: Contemporary Art • Tags: art, clock, installation, sculpture, time

The Museum of Broken Relationships

19 December 2011 by Chelsea Nichols

A monument to broken hearts and lost loves, the clever Museum of Broken Relationships features objects related to former romantic relationships, anonymously donated by broken-hearted people all over the world. The museum was originally conceived by Olinka Vištica and Dražen Grubišić as a travelling exhibition, and now has a permanent home in Zagreb, Croatia. Featuring diverse love tokens such as teddy bears, wedding dresses, underwear, and even an axe, the collection becomes a physical manifestation of the heartache, nostalgia and […]

Categories: Ideas, Museums • Tags: humor, institution, love, museum, nostalgia