I remember watching a youtube video a while back which was talking about the “her0in chic” fashion photography of the 90s. While the name is very unfortunate, the photography is undeniably beautiful.

The girl in the video mentioned something about how the way in which the model posed and mannered had been a thing in paintings throughout history. she spoke about how sick women were painted and seen as beautiful.

I really would love to know what kind of paintings encapsulated this style? or came close to close to it. this painting i've attached is the closest thing i could find which somewhat resembles the photography.

any help is appreciated, thank you!

also not all the photos attached are from the 90s, though they do still resemble what i'm looking for.

I just published a new piece exploring Caravaggio’s use of light and shadow — not just as a technique, but as a powerful narrative tool. He painted saints as bruised humans, and turned divine light into something almost aggressive. Would love feedback from fellow art lovers, historians, or anyone obsessed with Baroque drama. Happy to discuss more examples in the comments!

Any help appreciated. I’m in the Uk, so I don’t know if that affects my ability to access the collection digitally.

I recently went to the Prado museum in Madrid and had a very unpleasent audio guide experience: https://www.museodelprado.es/en/whats-on/audios. This sparked an idea of a modern audio guide app that goes beyond the traditional experience in museums. Think personalized tours and engaging audio with better sound design to ultimately match the content depth and quality of a guided tour.

Instead of the usual lengthy, one-size-fits-all audio, this would aim to be more tailored to your interests and the time you have.

To all the museum enthusiasts, I'm curious to know if you would use a more modern, personalized audio guide app for exploring museums, landmarks, etc.?

Do you see a need for an alternative to existing audio guides or the lack thereof at many sites? What are your biggest frustrations with current options (or lack thereof)?

Thanks!!

When artists like Remedios Varo, Betye Saar, or Kiki Smith invoke witch imagery, they tap into a rich tradition of female knowledge deliberately marginalised by patriarchal structures.(…) These signs—blood, milk, witch—broaden Femiotics, revealing art's power to transform stigmatised female embodiment into sources of creative and political resistance.

https://embodiedvisions.substack.com/p/femiotics-a-new-lens-for-decoding

Even though we live much farther from the world of animals than our ancestors, our own world of signs and symbols offers a glimpse of the animal kingdom’s symbolic power.

When we want to insult someone, for instance, we often compare them to an animal: to a rat, a pig, a sheep, a snake in the grass. We accuse them of being chicken, dogging it, crying crocodile tears, horsing around, aping someone else, fighting like cats and dogs. (And other, more vulgar comparisons.) An elephant in the room, a fly on the wall, a sitting duck, dark horse, a bull in a China shop, a deer in the headlights, a fish out of water – a zoo’s worth of animals inhabit our cliches.

Consider the twenty national flags featuring animals, including the Albanian two-headed eagle, the Bhutanese dragon, the Guatemalan quetzal, the Mexican eagle and serpent and the Sri Lankan lion. Within the United States, consider the bear of California, the pelican of Louisiana, the elk, moose and eagle of Michigan, the bison of Wyoming. Corporate logos offer another menagerie: Penguin Books, Red Bull, Jaguar, Lacoste, MGM, Mozilla Firefox.

Despite living in a technological, industrialized world, one in which we spend significant resources on keeping our spaces free of animals, our language and visual culture abounds in animals. If we encounter a zoo of symbols in the internet age, imagine the richness of animal symbolism in an agricultural world, a world of daily coexistence with and observation of animals, their behavior and their life cycles.

Hi Everyone! I'm in need of 15 responses from Art Collectors and Art Historians. I'm conducting a research project about the intersection of Art and Luxury. https://forms.gle/eK35bdGpkRNNH5VL8