Some thoughts on
Museum bums: A cheeky looks at butts in art
Mark Small and Jack Shoulder
Chronicle Books 2023
Back in the good old days of twitter, I used to follow @museumbums for a daily dose of cheeky art, but now our ways have parted as they're on bluesky and apparently haven't bridged to Mastodon (yet). Hence it made my day when I accidentally discovered their book in charity shop and I mainly bought it as a souvenir to remind me of the happy days of twitter.
Turns out, however, that the cheeky text accomppanying the callipygian photos is very educational too, so I gave the book a proper reading. In the process I learned that callipygian means "with a beautiful bum" - I don't know how I missed that before, that's what you get for not having Ancient Greek at school. I will now use this word at every opportunity to make up for lost time.
The authors are proper museum bums, sorry, experts, who know their art history from the bottom up, and they manage to tie it in with today's social concerns in a highly entertaining way, bringing up all the inherent biases and prejudices in the Western art canon without ever losing the fun side out of view.
Now if only they could bridge their account to Mastodon, I could continue to educate myself every day ...
PS I hear they may be doing wall calendars as well - will look out for that!
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