jonathan, i need your help! (Everyone's Captions), Not Visiting Belgium Showing 251-300 of 1,615

[janine]

michael jackson's umbrella carrier didn't come with him to the afterlife. hell.

[Jonathan]

You mean he has to carry his own umbrella? That is disturbing.

[Jonathan]

Be careful asking for help with your head, Bun. There's no telling what might happen.



Hieronymus Bosch

[janine]

yes, that's how we turn wine into blood, the monk said, but don't tell anyone!

[janine]

*waits for someone to make wizard of oz reference*

[Phil]

#302 - His straightforward request denied by the wizard, the tin man turned to trepanning for a heart, despite the Kansas preacher's objections.

[Jonathan]

Beholding that scene, they all backed away on the bench there...



Frederick Cayley Robinson

[Phil]

Colonel Sanders couldn't believe the betrayal when the rest of the family shunned his offer of chicken for dinner, opting for the Olive Garden instead.

[janine]

even the dog!

[Jonathan]

As a compromise, they decided to go to the tavern...and brought the dog too.



Jan Steen

[Lobstergirl, el principe]

Whiskers, not wanting to face another night of Balthazar groping Agnes's frontal and backal regions, had tried to hang himself from a crossbeam, but as usual the stool had proved too rickety.

[Jonathan]

Whiskers resolved to ditch Balthazar and find a better class of owner.



Sir Edwin Henry Landseer

[Jonathan]

Those horizontal creases must have been in fashion for a while. The two pictures are about 20 years apart, but the first depicts a period slightly earlier than the one in which it was painted.

[Jonathan]

The first was painted later, around 1860 I think, but it's actually meant to be set in an earlier period (about 50 years prior), so I would guess that it's probably a mix of contemporary fashions and enough elements of older styles to make it credible to viewers of that time--but I'm no expert on 19th-century dresses, so I really can't pick out the details. The Landseer is indeed a conversation piece (or genre portrait) of Victoria and Albert at Windsor Castle.

[Lobstergirl, el principe]

I find the creases in the dress so odd. It's hard to imagine that they could be in fashion. I can't find anything about them in Seeing Through Clothes. Paul Barlow in Time Present and Time Past: The Art of John Everett Millais writes, "Domestic details are stressed, notably the rising damp which has caused the wallpaper to bubble beneath the print, and the heavy creases on the woman's dress, indicating how it has been folded. This is consciously 'Pre-Raphaelite', but it is also quite different from Millais's earlier use of observed detail. Both devises specify the vulnerability of domestic comfort. They do so while identifying the circumstances and conditions of day to day life: the protection of the dress and the forces bubbling up to violate the orderly home."

[Lobstergirl, el principe]

Wiki says Charles Dickens' daughter was the model for the woman in the creased dress.

[Phil]

#311 -- As their youngest daughter broke the neck of the final duck, Lord and Lady Cordry eyed each other longingly, thinking of the tawdry uses to which those feathers would be put to use that night.

[Jonathan]

That the creases might have resulted from folding seems quite reasonable. I guess there must have been some accepted way of storing elaborate dresses like that. And perhaps showing them in Victoria's portrait was just a way of emphasizing that she was a simple person--didn't necessarily have her everyday clothes treated differently from other people's. A homespun image was generally her preference in her portraits, although there are some very formal ones from early in her reign as well. Anyway, I have a friend who studies 18th and 19th-century costume, and I'll ask her about this next time I see her. She'll probably know the answer.

[Lobstergirl, el principe]

Anne Hollander has another entire book about fabric and drapery, Fabric of Vision. Maybe she talks about it in there.

[Lobstergirl, el principe]

I'm not seeing significant creases in Victoria's dress. Some of those could be accidental, or because she was just sitting down. It's more the Millais dress I'm wondering about.

[Jonathan]

I'm glad that Phil hasn't gotten sidetracked from captioning like the rest of us.

Finding new and tawdry uses for duck feathers...



Salvador Dalí

[Jonathan]

Lobstergirl wrote: "I'm not seeing significant creases in Victoria's dress. Some of those could be accidental, or because she was just sitting down. It's more the Millais dress I'm wondering about."

The Millais dress does seem odd, and the more I think about the creases, the less sense they make. Just looking at Clementina Hawarden's photographs from the 1860s, it doesn't seem like horizontal creases or pleats were normal--although, as you say, you do sometimes see a wrinkle here or there, as if from sitting.

http://www.google.com/search?q=clemen...

And the woman with the baguette on her head still needs a caption.

[Lobstergirl, el principe]

The only time I've seen creases that severe are:

1) man buys packaged dress shirt at store, doesn't know how to iron, wears with creases
2) my curtains from West Elm which arrived packaged in plastic, I didn't bother to iron them and I could see the creases for 2 years until gravity took care of them. I didn't want to iron them and possibly damage the fabric.

[Lobstergirl, el principe]

Having sold her clothes to buy the baguette and two ears of corn, Gwen was attempting to creep unseen among the hayricks when her arms were caught in the thresher. But tomorrow was another day, and she still had a head for all those raccoon caps.

[Jonathan]

Maybe the woman in the Millais painting is actually a man and doesn't know how to iron? (This would complicate the narrative somewhat but would be interesting.) Or maybe all of the servants suddenly gave notice, and she is waiting for gravity to take care of the wrinkles on her newly unpacked dress from 19th-century West Elm?

[Jonathan]

Poor Gwen. Tomorrow is another day, and perhaps best to spend it indoors.



Gerard ter Borch

[Lobstergirl, el principe]

It does raise all sorts of interesting questions. Was that the dress Millais was presented with, and thus chose to paint exactly as is? The creases would give him an opportunity to show painterly virtuosity. Or was that some fictional detail he came up with to supply us with extra information about the narrative. Did they have hangers back then? From the standpoint of pure domesticity, it seems beyond odd to store a ball gown folded up. Surely those people were bourgeois enough to have a closet.

Hopefully your friend knows the answer.

[Janice]

Pocahontas thought the only way to fit into British society was to improve her posture by balancing a baguette and carved wooden ornament on her head. Unfortunately, it wasn't her posture that was her undoing. It was having four ears.

[Lobstergirl, el principe]

Wenceslaus tried to convince Ludmila that they really, really needed the 70 yards of aluminum in her dress for the clambake, as Mother sewed blue peacock feathers onto his celebratory codpiece.

[Jonathan]

Four ears. I like that--it's funny.

[Jonathan]

That dog can't live outside, Bun. He runs an indoor business.



Cassius Marcellus Coolidge

By the way, I also liked the 70 yards of aluminum foil and the celebratory peacock codpiece, LG. But I couldn't think of a segue that wouldn't involve more Surrealism.

[Janice]

Let the chips fall where they may, but we have been dealt a lousy hand. We must go on strike for better kennel rations!

[Stacia (the 2010 club)]

I don't have a caption, but all of those dogs seem to be pissed off at the dog on the left.

[janine]

that bernard ain't no saint.

[Kevin]

#338 - Usually when someone passed gas the humans blamed it on Rex. This time is really was him.

[Jonathan]

It was so intense, Kevin, some people thought it was a hydrogen bomb (...meaning also that Rex had first-strike capabilities, as Janice noted, and was no saint, just like Janine said).



George Hughes

[Phil]

::runs off to google volary::

[Kevin]

#343 - Both George and Barney were sure they saw the little shifu statue move and kept a sharp eye on it while what's-here-name just wouldn't shut up about whatever.

[Kevin]

(jonathan - how about something from one of my favs Wayne Thiebaud)

[Lobstergirl, el principe]

Dogs playing poker: yet another argument for American exceptionalism. (not a caption, just a statement)

[Stina]

Kevin "El Liso Grande" wrote: "(jonathan - how about something from one of my favs Wayne Thiebaud)"

He's one of my faves, too!!

[Jonathan]

Well, it might have looked like a volary of ptarmigans or a moving shifu statuette, but apparently this was what caught George and Barney's eyes:



Wayne Theibaud

(I considered using a more characteristic Thiebaud image, Kevin, but worried it might be too difficult to narrate/caption a painting of ice cream and cake!)

[Jonathan]

Lobstergirl wrote: "Dogs playing poker: yet another argument for American exceptionalism. (not a caption, just a statement)"

Poker is an American game, but anthropomorphic animals occur elsewhere in art. The 18th and 19th-century French did lots of pictures of monkeys playing card games, acting as art critics, politicians, etc.--very light-hearted stuff, much like the dogs playing poker, billiards, and baseball.

[Lobstergirl, el principe]

As Doris and Wanda learned to their chagrin, peeing in the pool was not cool at the Thirtyone Palms Country Club. After crawling around the pool on your knees, you had to clean the filters with cotton swabs and rake all the sand traps.

[Félix]

I actually had #302 as my profile picture for a short while.

[Félix]

Lobstergirl wrote: "Dogs playing poker: yet another argument for American exceptionalism. (not a caption, just a statement)"

How true.

[Kevin]

#351 - As a girl Sarah and her friend Debbie were punished in swim class for lying about stuff like how many laps they swam, if they showered and if they could see Russia from their house?

[Kevin]

jonathan - on a more serious note i am really enjoying you sharing your vast knowledge with us about these paintings. though i am a wise guy generally i do appreciate it. and yes, thiebaud does have some very simplistic subject matter but i like how bold and freeing the colors and strokes are.

[Félix]

Jonathan is amazing for sure.

[Jonathan]

You're both too kind. I like Thiebaud's art a lot, Kevin. When he paints a slice of cake, it's mouthwatering. His figure paintings are good too, but until you just mentioned it, I never noticed how much both of those women kind of look like Sarah Palin--but they do.