blakegopnik:THE BAYEUX TAPESTRY IN EXTREME DETAIL: MALE AND FEMALE WORLDS, COLLIDINGTHE DAILY PIC is
blakegopnik:THE BAYEUX TAPESTRY IN EXTREME DETAIL: MALE AND FEMALE WORLDS, COLLIDINGTHE DAILY PIC is a small area from the 70-meterembroidery that we’ve come to call the Bayeux Tapestry, all of which has just now beenposted online as a vastlyhigh-definition panorama.Scrolling through it, I formed a mental image of the communityof women who worked on it in the years after 1066; I could almost hear the humof their peaceable labors. And then I was struck by the extreme contrast thathad with the scenes of bloody mayhem they depicted, and in fact celebrated, intheir “women’s work”. How did a single medieval culture embrace such wildextremes in behavior? The gap survives today: Even in the most “advanced,” least misogynisticcorners of Western society, we men are reliably more violent and aggressivethan the women we live with and around. (It’s a miracle that any of us attractwives.) But I can’t imagine how the Normans bridged their much widergap. Maybe it’s best to think of two essentially incompatible cultural universes thathappen to occupy the same space and time, and of objects like this embroideryas the artistic wormholes that join them.For a full survey of past Pics visit blakegopnik.com/archive. -- source link
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