Better late than never. This was drawn in November, 2014. It is one of my favorite time-change cartoons. This cartoon is notable in another way: it employs a benday pattern, the dots that produce the large uniform gray areas in panels one and three. For more than a century, newspapers printed with only one color, black. Any white was the color of the newsprint itself. All between shades of gray (and gray is all there would be) were created by breaking down areas of black with the use of dots which would vary in size and pattern. This is the benday pattern, named for its 19th-century inventor, illustrator Benjamin Henry Day Jr. Benday patterns have been integral to printing ever since, including the printing of color images, a varying but similar process. I say it is notable in this case, because I seldom have used shading to achieve gray in Arlo & Janis. Usually, it’s just black and white.
219 responses to “Gray Area”
Datums are the points where the artificial spheres used in map-making meet the real Earth. Different spheres, and thus different datums, are used for different maps. The datums are used to relate the two maps to each other and the real world. Sometimes, these are called “datum points.”
Jackie:
That must be Bathsheba after she became Queen. Don’t think she had attendants when Dave first spotted her on the roof. Also, she doesn’t look Jewish, or even Middle Eastern. And what was out on that roof for in the first place, where she could be easily seen from the palace, by anybody, not just lover boy.
A Catholic monk or priest once said [heard or read this somewhere w/in last several years], “Everything in the Bible is true, and some of it actually happened.” Wise.
Peace,
I think the painting was an excuse for the artist to paint a sexually explicit erotic painting for his sponsor and pass it off as religious. Hugh Hefner of the 1600s perhaps? I only consider a few things in Bible to be historically true but your priest nailed it.
The museum considers it a treasure and I thought it over the top beauty salon the Kardashians would have enjoyed.
‘Cuse me, erotic art of the 1700s, midcentury. The attendants look pretty European like English country girls or milk maids.
There was one painting where the country girl is lying sprawled in the dirt by the fields, so realistic the artist included the dirt stains on her big toe!
Here is Rembrandt painting of same subject sans clothing or handmaidens from late 1600s. It belongs to the Met. The review said same thing, erotic intention of a religious subject intended for a quick sale by artist.
http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/437393
And the Getty has an even more explicit Rembrandt of same subject in their collections. Don’t tell me these artists weren’t painting for lecherous clients!
http://media.gettyimages.com/photos/rembrandt-harmenszoon-van-rijns-painting-titled-bathsheba-at-her-picture-id556637913
And here is Bathseba in the “before” painting with only one maid done by Dela Troy, the same artist who did my first example from the Philbrook Museum. Don’t tell me they weren’t doing high class porn. The model had some hefty thighs didn’t she?
https://www.artexpertswebsite.com/pages/artists/artists_l-z/troy/BathshebaatherToilet.jpg
Jackie, I noticed that the pillars King David’s balcony are Ionic, and are probably an anachronism. I’m not sure exactly when King David reigned, but I’m fairly sure it was before that archetectural style had reached Judea, presuming that it had even been invented yet. Probably it’s similar to the way medieval painters would show biblical figures in what was then modern dress, simply because that’s all they knew.
Dear emb, what you said about the truth of the Bible made me laugh out loud. Very funny, and true.
I have gotten a few pedicures as I can’t reach my feet well any more. The last time I went, I said “I’m here for a pedicure,” and the manager replied, “What color?” I was nonplussed and said, “Color?” She waved at a wall full of bottles. I am a Senior Citizen and wear support stockings — it seemed pretty funny. If I go again I’m going to ask for “foot care”.
This is beginning to intrigue me. There are over a THOUSAND paintings of Bathsheba-her-toilet on Pinterest.
The articles about her show she is one of most frequently painted Biblical subjects, yet there are few lines about her in the Bible and nothing historical? They obviously invented a lot of what they painted to get a good erotic painting. Some show a room full of nudes!
But it got me reading about David, Solomon, Absalom and others. Boy, was there a lot of murder, intrigue, war, sex, incest and sin! Kept artists going for twenty centuries on little but imagination.
Porn is ok as long as we rich are the only ones who can afford it. Then there are those cherubim [a nice non-s plural] with three pair of wings, one to cover their eyes, one to cover their ‘feet’, and one for flying. Same ‘feet’ that Naomi told Ruth to uncover.
As Sportin’ Life sings in Porgy and Bess, ‘and found him, she SAYS, in dat stream.’
Peace,
Hall art in the Philbrook: https://farm1.staticflickr.com/533/19027231973_533f820246_b.jpg
And a copy of this was in the fountain on the other side of the same wall: http://c300221.r21.cf1.rackcdn.com/frishmuth-call-of-the-sea-1934-1401229940_b.jpg
There’s a good reason, emb, that cherubim (and seraphim, for that matter) are pluralized that way: they’re Hebrew words, and that’s how Hebrew makes plurals. Also, I realized that all of those pictures of Bathsheba had the exact, same error: there’s an ancient tradition that King David was a redhead, and they all show him with dark hair. Another thing that many people don’t know about David is that his great grandmother was a Moabitess named Ruth.
Heavens, am I the first one up?
Thank you, Jimmy and Villagers. Each day, I learn new things here! (And I refresh old ones, too.)
Side:
Thanks. Learned that a decade or two ago, in connection w/ El and Elohím. Apparently, an ancient Hebrew way of magnifying something was to make it plural rather than singular. Another is behémoth, plural of a word that is often translated as beast or cattle.
Peace,
Sideburns, in some of the paintings of Absalom, caught by his long hair in the tree branches, he is shown as red headed.
The legend is that this is how he died, killed by another of his father David’s swordsmen against his orders after he had led a revolt against David. I’m telling you, the old testament is full of it all, incest, rape, revolts, murders, every crime and sin imaginable!
Mark: There is a sculpture in the Como Park Conservatory on the same order as
http://c300221.r21.cf1.rackcdn.com/frishmuth-call-of-the-sea-1934-1401229940_b.jpg
and the dancing girl niche you pictured. It’s in a greenhouse with a water feature and a bridge at one end, where wedding parties often go for a group picture. Dancing or prancing girl, about [linear] half-lifesize. Maybe I can find a website.
Peace,
Believe this is her. Como Park, BTW, is in St. Paul.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/mhartford/1416837447/in/photostream/
Peace,
Nobody posted while I was at Peak Performance working out. There’s a bacl view of the above sprite one arrow to the left. The photo op bridge I mentioned is where that photo was taken from; the left side view was taken from the path on the canal’s side. Model a bit older than Lewis Carol’s favorite subjects, but close to ideal. As Elaine often said, ‘All men are prancing, leering billy goats.’ Some of us stop at that.
Peace,
back view
Well, I did laundry and cleaned area where new fridge is to go but it wouldn’t clean up no matter what I sprayed and scrubbed with. Ended up painting the entire opening. The fridge did not arrive.
The heating and air people came however and I need a new part that costs $576 but in meantime they fixed it with some bailing wire. If bailing wire works I don’t need part.
There are things I love about the country. And I have lived here long enough to be considered a local apparently and am no longer a “flat land tourister ” as Snuff Smith used to say.
Stuffy Smith comic.