- okokokok so i was gonna write a thing ab lizzie siddall bit ik itd just devolve into dante rossetti hateposting so imma just go on about the pre raphaelite brotherhood in a more general sense i think. actually nah. john everett millais ill do a lil bit of lore on one of his paintings
- ok so for background information that i dont feel like elaborating 2 much on. the pre raphaelite brotherhood was a thing that existed i think it was founded in ??? 1848 by johnnyboy, william holman hunt (also very pog), dante rossetti (BITCH), and i think rossetti's brother
- and so like their main deal was a combination of a few other movement..... things...; they rlly dug the bright colors of quattrocentro art (in comparison a lot of contemporary english work was just kinda. Nasty and muddy looking. offense), the subject matter of romantic art (religious/mythological & medieval shit), & the attention to detail of realism
- ok so anyway in 1850 millais had this really killer painting called 'christ in the house of his parents':
- .. and it was fucking GORGEOUS i love it sm, in terms of the ideals of pre-raphaelite art there's a lot of good pieces out there, and certainly more by millais himself that embody the same ideals but this one. oobh. the Discourse just adds a lil somethin i think. But anyways
- so in terms of the romantic part - you've got the religious subject matter ofc, you can kinda see it comin thru on some of the rich jewel tones being used (which also kinda goes with their affinity for the quattrocentro color palette...); the realism is kinda self-explanatory, i mean look at it, there's a lot of fine attention of detail going into what one might denote the 'less important' parts of the matter - the dirt on the table, the wood shavings on the floor n whatnot; this indiscriminate attention to detail is part of what kinda pissed The Public off but i'll get more into that in a minute
- i think in comparison to a lot of other religious artwork especially that of The Olden Days it has a *lot* more dimension and character to it; like if u think of any other Generic Jesus Painting it's typically very flat, full offense @god but the facial proportions really leave something to be desired, looks like a holy pancake. anyways ya take a look at millais' painting here and personally what i find rlly fuckin cool about it is that it is of a very small minority of religious works aside from like, some of the text of the bible itself that portrays jesus as. human. like without knowing The Context and the title and actual subject matter of the painting one could conceivably read it as Just Some Assholes in a random carpenter's shop. and people could argue (and boy, did they fuckin' argue) that that kinda defeats the purpose of it being a religious painting, like 'what's the point if not to elevate/honor the subject matter'.
- but i do think it honors it. i think the more 'down to earth' take kinda makes it a lot more relatable and resonant with an average, maybe a lil secular (maybe a lot secular), non-aristocratic viewer. but like. historically the kinda people seeing this painting on exhibit were more along the lines of the upper middle class (and this painting kinda challenged the socioeconomic values they based their very life nd wealth on) obvs now art is a lot more accessible to the general public i.e. your average pleb on mcdonald's wifi
- anyways critics were basically being like, 'to humanise Christ, to equate the Son of God to that of Man is akin to blasphemy'
- fuckin. charles dickens was rlly livid ab this painting he was one of the main public critics of it; one of the main quotes from him i have on the matter is actually critiquing the model millais had sit for mary's portrait -- and it was his sister-in-law :|
- so charlie takes to the papers to just rail on not only millais but also this random woman who was just minding her ugly business (/j): "...so hideous in her ugliness that ... she would stand out from the rest of the company as a Monster, in the vilest cabaret in France, or the lowest gin-shop in England."
- absolute fuckin madness.
- on the same note we have ralph wornum who wrote for the publication *Art Journal*, and who also had a few choice words on the matter (most of which sucked tremendously): "The physical ideal alone can harmonize with he spiritual ideal: in Art, whatever it may be in Nature in its present condition, *the most beautiful soul must have the most beautiful body.*"
- if someone came online n said that shit half a dozen people would tell 'm to go back to 4chan. god.
- shit reeked of class nd gender biases nd kinda gives us a look into how fundamental beauty standards were in maintaining part of the societal hierarchy at the time. i mean yeah, it's not awfully different today, but there's way more open critique of "beauty culture" now than in fuckall 1800s
- ok idk what else there rlly is to say on the matter that 's not gonna be redundant or otherwise Even Longer and More Nonsensical so i'll wrap this up
- 1850, millais gets ran into the ground over this thing (god only knows how his sister-in-law felt about the matter...... assigned ugly by Everyone Ever. she's not even ugly she's just some asshole. anyways i digress)
- within like three years the pre-raphaelite brotherhood had basically disbanded (by that i mean no-one was really signing their art with the 'P.R.B. that denoted their affiliation anymore, but some associated artists still kept true to the style of the movement)
- and yeah :grimacing:
apr 6 2021 ∞
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