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firstamendmentgirl.bsky.social
First Amendment Girl
@firstamendmentgirl.bsky.social
1.8K followers 1.5K following 3.1K posts
Retired librarian, lifelong Democrat, 2nd Wave Feminist, living in Land of Enchantment. Art soothes my political anxiety.
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firstamendmentgirl.bsky.social
On the Beach by Édouard Manet, 1873, Musée d'Orsay, Paris (France)

#ArtHistory #ModernArt #Impressionism
Manet painted this canvas in the summer of 1873, during three weeks spent with his family in the little coastal town of Berck-sur-Mer. He had his wife and his brother pose for him on the beach, as is shown by the grains of sand mixed with the paint. Suzanne, well protected against the sun and the wind by a muslin veil and a voluminous summer dress, is absorbed her book. Eugène, the painter's brother and soon to be husband of Berthe Morisot, is gazing out to sea, lying in the same position as ten years earlier in The Luncheon on the Grass. The two triangles formed by the figures stabilise the composition. They are turning their backs on a spectator and seem to be absorbed in their own worlds. This isolation gives the painting an indefinable melancholic feel. The narrow range of tones used by Manet includes the blacks and greys usually banned from the Impressionist palette. He has borrowed from the young school a fluid, light brushstroke which suggests more than it describes. This impression is particularly strong in the landscape which seems almost slapdash: thus the horizon with a few bobbing sailboats is placed near the edge of the canvas, as if the painter had transgressed the rules of perspective. The variations in the color of the sea from dark ultramarine blue to emerald green are rendered by a gradation of strips of horizontal color building up to a powerful crescendo. The result is a lack of depth and a flattened effect.
January 6, 2026 at 4:31 PM
Reposted by First Amendment Girl
davejorgenson.bsky.social
A quick recap of Iraq, I mean Venezuela.
January 6, 2026 at 12:46 AM
firstamendmentgirl.bsky.social
Spring by Alphonse Mucha, 1896, Private Collection

#ArtHistory #ModernArt #ArtNouveau
January 6, 2026 at 12:49 AM
firstamendmentgirl.bsky.social
Wine and Cheese Glasses by Janet Fish, 1975, Eskenazi Museum of Art, University of Indiana (Bloomington, IN)

#ArtHistory #ContemporaryArt #ContemporaryRealism
In the artwork, a variety of glass vessels are meticulously depicted, each filled with liquid, likely water. The tubes and facets of each glass reflect light in a precise, almost photographic manner, which is characteristic of the Contemporary Realism movement. Fish captured the intricate interplay of light and transparency, showcasing her skill in rendering the distortions and reflections created by the glass surfaces. The composition includes multiple glasses of different shapes and sizes, arranged closely together on a reflective surface that further amplifies the complexity of reflections. The background consists of a patterned surface, possibly a diamond-checkered design, adding another layer of visual interest to the scene. This piece demonstrates Janet Fish’s adeptness at capturing the essence of light interaction with transparent materials.
January 5, 2026 at 3:39 PM
firstamendmentgirl.bsky.social
Der Blaue Reiter by Wassily Kandinsky, 1912, Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (Berlin, Germany)

#ArtHistory #ModernArt #GermanExpressionism
January 5, 2026 at 12:49 AM
firstamendmentgirl.bsky.social
Janus by Gerhard Richter, 1983, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art - SFMOMA (California)

#ArtHistory #ContemporaryArt #Abstraction #Realism
Janus," showcases Richter's distinctive style of blending realism and abstraction. The use of contrasting colors and layers creates a dynamic composition that challenges the viewer's perception.
January 4, 2026 at 5:01 PM
firstamendmentgirl.bsky.social
The Flower Carrier by Diego Rivera, 1935, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art - SFMOMA (California)

#ArtHistory #ModernArt #Modernism #MexicanModernism
"The Flower Carrier" displays a Mexican peasant man, painfully struggling on his knees, while he is carrying a basket of flowers on his back. A woman stands behind, trying to help him with the weight. At first glance, one could wonder how these pink, delicate flowers could weigh so much. But the emphasis given by the artist to the oversized bucket, the boldness of its colors, the asymmetrical balance, leave no room for doubt: the man is carrying an unbearable burden, not a bouquet of flowers. The work represents one of Rivera's favorite subjects and his affection for underclass people, campesinos, and vendors of Mexico. The artist openly supported the cause of Mexican Revolution with his large, public murals, and he always expressed his solidarity to common people, þroudly identifying himself with them and their unfair struggles. In this painting, painted into masonite, Rivera celebrates an archetype, not a real person with his own individual features. The cargador wears white, traditional clothes and a recognizable sombrero, but we cannot see his face because the hat covers it. He is the symbol the bigger cause of humble persons, and the aim of the Mexican painter is to elevate their status, bringing justice to their dignity and pride.
January 4, 2026 at 1:04 AM
firstamendmentgirl.bsky.social
Just got an alert from NYT that begins, "Elite Army commandos ambushed ...," and I hollered, "That's doesn't make it better!"
January 4, 2026 at 12:40 AM
firstamendmentgirl.bsky.social
The Card Players by Paul Cézanne, 1892/1895, The Courtauld Institute of Art (London, UK)

#ArtHistory #ModernArt #PostImpressionism
Cézanne became interested in depicting laborers playing cards in the autumn of 1890. During the 1890s, he completed five paintings of this subject. Here, the composition is refined down to two men seated across a table in undefined surroundings. The players face each other but are immersed in the ritual of the game. Farm workers from the estate of Cézanne’s father posed for the two figures. They are the human equivalents of the painter’s views of Mount Saint Victoire: timeless, monumental, and resolutely Provençal.
January 3, 2026 at 3:34 PM
firstamendmentgirl.bsky.social
I guess I don't understand how one wins the Nobel Peace Prize
a man in a military uniform has medals on his chest
ALT: a man in a military uniform has medals on his chest
media.tenor.com
January 3, 2026 at 7:30 AM
firstamendmentgirl.bsky.social
Gloucester at Twilight by Guy Carleton Wiggins, 1916, Reading Public Museum (Reading, PA)

#ArtHistory #ModernArt #Impressionism #AmericanImpressionism
Wiggins came from a family of painters. His father, Carleton Wiggins, had studied with George Inness and painted in a Barbizon-influenced style. The family had been early and regular visitors to the colony at Old Lyme, and by 1915, Guy had settled permanently in Old Lyme. The artist became active in the Old Lyme Art Association, exhibiting there regularly. This view of Gloucester harbor Massachusetts was painted one year after the family settled in Connecticut. Painted in a monochromatic palette, the work captures the energy of the bustling harbor with its thick impasto and visible brushstrokes enlivening the composition.
January 3, 2026 at 12:56 AM
firstamendmentgirl.bsky.social
I love her work
Janet Fish, Painter of Luminous Still Lifes, Dies at 87
www.nytimes.com
January 2, 2026 at 3:40 PM
firstamendmentgirl.bsky.social
The Kitchen Garden (Le Potager) by Alfred Sisley, 1872, Kimbell Art Museum (Fort Worth, TX)

#ArtHistory #ModernArt #Impressionism
One of the major figures in the landscape revolution of this time, Sisley was the son of an Englishman who manufactured artificial flowers. He befriended Claude Monet, Pierre- Auguste Renoir, and Frédéric Bazille in the early 1860s and spent most f his working life not in Paris but in smaller towns along the rivers Seine and Loing. In the early 1870s, he often painted with Monet and with Camille Pissarro at such towns as Louveciennes and Argenteuil. This painting shows an ordinary yard behind a suburban residence, with its gardener's shed, cold frame, and greenhouse. Earthen paths surround beds planted with both vegetables and cutting flowers. Dating from the time just before the first Impressionist exhibition, the work demonstrates its author's fondness for delicate touches of the brush and for luminous color. Sisley juxtaposes the old with the new: beyond the old-fashioned garden two buildings in the distance - at the geometric center of the composition - suggest the presence of new construction in an otherwise rural area.
January 2, 2026 at 3:25 PM
firstamendmentgirl.bsky.social
Worst President Ever

(No, it is NOT all online)
NASA’s Largest Library Is Closing Amid Staff and Lab Cuts
www.nytimes.com
January 2, 2026 at 2:50 AM
firstamendmentgirl.bsky.social
Landscape at Newfields, New Hampshire by Childe Hassam, 1909, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (Texas)

#ArtHistory #ModernArt #Impressionism #AmericanImpressionism
The name of Newfields was given to this area in 1895. From the time it was settled in 1638 along either side of an ancient Squamscott Indian trail, Newfields was important to Seacoast New Hampshire commerce due to its location at the mouth of the Squamscott River where it empties into the large tidal estuary known as Great Bay. Newfields with its country charm and attractive natural landscape became a popular "bedroom community" at the beginning of the 21st century.
January 2, 2026 at 12:53 AM
firstamendmentgirl.bsky.social
Artists, man. How can you not love them?

www.tiktok.com/t/ZTh17WvRG/
Tomorrow, the MetroCard officially becomes a relic of the past. Introduced in 1993, it replaced subway tokens and became a daily ritual for millions of New Yorkers. It lived in our wallets for over 30...
TikTok video by Nicolas Heller
www.tiktok.com
January 1, 2026 at 3:34 PM
firstamendmentgirl.bsky.social
Whitestone Bridge by Ralston Crawford, c. 1939, Memorial Art Gallery (University of Rochester) (Rochester, NY)

#ArtHistory #ModernArt #Precisionism
Crawford’s strong linear style and simplified form and palette in Whitestone Bridge are representative of the modern Precisionist style. Precisionist artists celebrated industrialization and technology with a visual language that evoked the purity and perfection of the machine. The Whitestone Bridge, linking The Bronx and Queens, was opened in 1939 just in time for the New York World's Fair. The suspension bridge routed travelers coming to the Fair from Upstate and New England away from the congestion of New York City. At the same time, Crawford was moving away from painting traditional landscapes and searching for a vocabulary that was closer in spirit to the streamlined, industrial aesthetic that he was observing in the world around him. The Whitestone Bridge was an excellent match for his artistic aspirations.
January 1, 2026 at 3:18 PM
firstamendmentgirl.bsky.social
Madonna and Child by Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio, c. 1495- 1496, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest (Hungary)

#ArtHistory #HighRenaissance
Leonardo da Vinci warned his fellow artists: "No one should ever imitate the style of another because he will be a grandson rather than a son of nature." But it seems that in his own workshop he did little to encourage his pupils to develop their own style. All over the world there are manv Madonnas and portraits which only under the scrutiny of a practised, expert eye reveal that the brush that painted them was held not in Leonardo's own hand. This is particularly true for this Madonna which is said to be "the finest Leonardesque picture not painted by Leonardo himself" - although some scholars believe the master may, after all, have guided the hand of his best pupil, Boltraffio, during the execution. The picture is perfectly Leonardesque in every respect: there is the famous sfumato, or the delicate shading softening the outlines of the forms, the Virgin's enigmatic smile and her characteristically large hands, and the pyramidical composition. Indeed, it was recently revealed that the wood on which it was painted was hewn from the same log as Leonardo's London Madonna of the Rocks. Yet the most Leonardesque part is the basic idea: the Christ Child reaches for something which has already disappeared, and it is forever a mystery to the viewer what the object might have been. It was once thought that the picture was unfinished, and that the master planned to paint a rose in the fine faience bowl, but technical examination has proved beyond doubt that this is the finished state.
January 1, 2026 at 1:06 AM
firstamendmentgirl.bsky.social
Pope Alexander IV Presenting Jacopo Pesaro to St Peter by Titian, 1506(?), Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (Belgium)

#ArtHistory #HighRenaissance
Painted to celebrate the defeat of the Turks at Santa Maura on 30 August 1502: the victorious papal fleet was led by Jacopo Pesaro while his cousin Benedetto commanded the allied Venetian fleet. Due to its awkward passages, this used to be considered one of Titian's very earliest paintings and dated c. 1506. However, the painting has notable stylistic similarities with the altarpiece in the Santa Maria della Salute (St Mark Enthroned with Saints) which is dated c. 1510, thus the Antwerp painting should be given a later dating around 1510.
December 31, 2025 at 2:59 PM
firstamendmentgirl.bsky.social
The Fitting by Mary Cassatt, c. 1891, McNay Art Museum (San Antonio, TX)

#ArtHistory #ModernArt #Impressionism #Japonisme
This image contrasts an elegant woman having her patterned gown fitted with the kneeling form of a seamstress, who wears a simple brown dress. It is one in a set of ten color prints that Cassatt showed at her first independent exhibition, held at the Galerie Durand-Ruel, Paris, in 1891. All depict women engaged in everyday activities, with four using mirrors to extend and complicate the pictorial space.
December 31, 2025 at 12:50 AM
firstamendmentgirl.bsky.social
For the millionth time, I shake my first at the sky and yell, "Hasn't Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg endured enough?"
December 30, 2025 at 7:50 PM
firstamendmentgirl.bsky.social
After Luncheon by Berthe Morisot, 1887, Private Collection

#ArtHistory #ModernArt #Impressionism
December 30, 2025 at 3:24 PM
firstamendmentgirl.bsky.social
And Russia only wants Europe
Putin, thinking "Russia only wants peace," sits on a tombstone above an open grave. The tombstone reads "Ukraine democracy R.I.P."
December 30, 2025 at 3:10 AM
firstamendmentgirl.bsky.social
Boy and the Candle by Gerard Sekoto, 1943, Smithsonian National Museum of African Art (Washington, DC)

#ArtHistory #ModernArt #Expressionism
Sekoto, a pioneer of African modernism, was among the first black South Africans to work with oil paints. He found steady patronage in the 1940s before the policy of apartheid suppressed his vibrant multiracial intellectual community in District Six, the renowned inner-city area of Cape Town destroyed in the 1970s. This painting, with its alternating planes, flattened perspective, subtle palette, and command of light and shadow, is one of the most recognized works of an era.
December 30, 2025 at 12:48 AM
firstamendmentgirl.bsky.social
Shiva as Lord of the Dance (Nataraja), Artist Unknown, India 10th/11th Century, The Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, IL)

#ArtHistory #TamilNadu #CholaPeriod
Shiva, one of the most important Hindu divinities, is here depicted as the Lord of the Dance ("nataraja""), an iconic image Indian art. Shiva's cosmic dance sets in motion the rhythm of life and death; pervades the universe, as symbolized by a ring of fire that is filled with the loose, snakelike locks of the god's hair. One pair of his arms balances the flame of destruction and the hand drum ("damaru") that beats the rhythm of life, while another performs symbolic gestures: the raised right hand means "Fear not," and the left hand ("gajahasta") pointing down toward his raised left foot signifies release from the ignorance that hinders realization of the ultimate reality. Shiva is shown perfectly balanced, with his right leg planted the demon of darkness ("apasmara"), stamping out ignorance. The tiny figure of the personified river goddess, Ganga, is caught up in his matted flowing locks. Hindus believe that Shiva breaks the fall of the great Ganges River as it descends from the Himalayas by standing beneath the waters, which divide over his hair, becoming the seven holy rivers of India. This classic bronze comes from the Chola period in the south of India. Icons such as this were carried in procession during religious ceremonies.
December 29, 2025 at 4:42 PM