So much in common

I came across the following photograph on the Internets recently and was impressed by the harmony of its content.

Photo by Douglas Friedman

It is similar to my own living room, except that it's more expensively appointed. It is also considerably cleaner, but the general thrust is the same, shades of green studded with taxidermy. I think the placement of two large aquatic birds (Mute swans) in the window alcove is the pièce de résistance, I have only the one (a Pink-backed pelican).

Photo by Neil McCulloch

It transpires that the room I discovered is that of Dita von Teese, a strip-tease artist of some repute (she was once married to a pop singer who looked a little like a zombie).

I think the arrangement on the bear-skin rug must be a temporary measure put there to balance the tableau (otherwise Ms. Von Teese would risk scorching her striking hanuman).

Buccal banter

A lingual frenulum goes into a bar, and the barman says, “Why so down in the mouth?”

How can we know the yawner from the yawn?

The lingual frenulum is rarely portrayed in art.

Hendrick de Keyser (1565-1621), a Dutch sculptor and architect, created a spectacular one (see below) in 1615, it forms one of the lines radiating out from the protester's nose.  

Here's a bust Keyser made in 1615,

but the best-known portrayal of this neglected ligament was made by the extraordinary Franz Xaver Messerschmidt (1736-1783) in 1770;

It was after Messerschmidt's death that someone named this piece “The Yawner”, an appellation that seems to have stuck. Messerschmidt didn't name it anything. He didn't name any of the forty-odd “character heads” that he made after he had been forced from public life (he was thought by his aristocratic employers to be mad). Giving such a name to this piece seems reductive, there is far more than a yawn going on here, assuming there is a yawn involved at all. I suspect we keep our sublingual ligaments hidden when yawning...

Self portrait (circa 1783)

… a pandiculating Joseph Ducreux certainly did. We should pay attention to Ducreux, he was an exact contemporary of Messerschmidt

Self portrait (1893)

… and there wasn't much you could get past him.

Red Tree (1928-1930)

Séraphine de Senlis (1864-1942)

Acceptance

Bees cover your body,

When I come to you

They swarm and swirl

And settle on us both.

SRP

Portrait of a Lady wearing a Green Dress

Herbert James Gunn (1893-1964)

Withdrawal

You accommodate me,

Then squeeze me out like a pip.

I catch my breath

Before heaving myself to one side

Of your nascent resolve.

SRP

Methodist Party-Animal

It's cadence that airs our emotion,

It's demeanour that signals our plight,

In vino veritas est bunkum,

Drunken words that get lost in the night.

SRP

Water closet

   This is an aquarium I found in a junk shop. I mounted it on a pedestal and painted the woodwork black. My intention is to found a colony of Cherry Shrimps (Neocaridina heteropoda var. red).

   Rearing from the floor of the tank is a cow's skull given to me by a friend who had found it in his barn. I'm hoping that the bolt hole left by the abatteur's stun gun will serve as a bolt hole for my crustaceans. Yes, there's nothing like an obscure subaqueous pun of questionable taste to get the party going.

   I have been on the lookout for a vertical tank for some time, they're quite rare and it wasn't until I was setting it up that I realized why; landscaping the substrate is almost impossible. Planting the Eelgrass (Vallisneria americana) was achieved by standing on a chair, stooping over the rim and submerging my denuded upper body.

   Had the chair toppled it would have resulted in a disconcerting discovery for those curious enough to eventually batter down my door (“Strange he left no note”), but it would have been in keeping with my original aim of creating a watery memento mori.