To be more specific I study the 15th C Burgundian Netherlands and although I am a historian I am actually an art historian.

While I can understand you viewpoint and agree with some of the points you raise I think there is a big flaw in considering history as a science. Even with all the scientific methods methods you mention in another post (genetic clocks, archaeology and forensic science) a lot of history (especially medieval/renaissance…

Hey don't worry, I started with the oversharing :)

Even then a lot of these seem to rely on either folding chairs or chains and tables in a fixed position. The first would be awful for my back and the second I couldn't slide onto. While I do think such living spaces are very interesting I think that there would need to be some fundamental changes to the way they are…

My problem with a lot of these is that you need to be fully able-bodied to cope with them.

That was beautiful.

I did love Jane Foster's reaction to shirtless Thor for the same reason Rob wrote. All the Marvel films have at least one scene shot just for the female gaze - all the guys get shirtless (or some variant thereof) and then pose for a bit whereas none of the female characters do. When I first noticed that I was really…

The Classical we're talking about here is 18th/19th Century (perhaps I should be using neo-classical instead) but yes they are more likely to either be looking out of the image at the viewer or meeting the gaze another man within the image. You also find men in action poses while women are in very passive poses. If…

Tell me about it - one of the reasons I've always stayed away from 19th art is that so much of it is just rows and rows of non-threatening tits and averted eyes. The discourse around it is fascinating but god does it get depressing after a while.

I am so hopeful about this - I loved Reaper and the Agent Carter short. I really liked the premise that she had been relegated to secretarial work but was still super competent. I loved Captain America and completely understand that it was Steve Roger's film not Roger and Carter's film but I still kinda wished they'd…

There was a big feature/interview with her in The Guardian Weekend last week and she looked lovely - beautiful hair and makeup that really suited her. I know there is a world of difference between a photoshoot and red carpet but I thought it was an interesting comparison of what she looks like when attended by a good…

I am very sorry that I can across that way, the way I wrote my comment was insensitive and I can only apologize - I thought the jpg would be taken as the joke it was meant to be (princess bride being one of my favourite things) I should not have assumed that that is the case for everyone. Coming from the Art History…

I remember the controversy back when he was up for the Turner - I thought the linked article was very interesting and excellent at explaining the basics of a ridiculously complex area of art and art-history. So much written about modernism and even more so post-modernism is purposely complex and difficult to…

As pointed out in the article the art world and even more so the art-history world has its own jargon.

The show's triptych was weird - they seem to have got to a lot of trouble making it a realistic size, making the frame appear period accurate and then seem to have said fuck it with the style of the painting itself. I mean if you go to that much effort over some of the details you'd think they'd have put some effort…

Apparently the cover is by her but this inside art will not be - the link has some of Brooke Allen's interior art.

Read this on her tumblr last night - so excited for this - love Nimona and her other drawings (broshop, pacific rim, hulkeye, hunger games etc)

I loved this book so much as a kid that my Mum made me a paperbag costume.

Another Atheist here but one who was raised RC and my Mum is still a practising Catholic. Just wanted to post that it's really refreshing to see someone not being a dick about people's belief's or lack of.

Hell if you go back to the fifteenth century Catholic's saw Mary as even more important. In parts of Northern Europe it was truly believed that she played as important a role in saving Mankind's sins as Jesus did. The idea was that her emotional suffering was equal to Christ's physical suffering and so she shared an…