“How would your life be different if you learned to let go of things that have already let go of you? From relationships long gone, to old grudges, to regrets, to all the ‘could’ve’ and ‘should’ve,’ to the dead friendships you still hang on to… Free yourself from the burden of a past you cannot change.”
Jamian Juliano-Villani is a contemporary painter who mixes art historical, fashion, and pop culture references to create humorous representations of our materialistic era. Her work addresses the changed nature of everyday life in the age of the internet—the dizzying juxtaposition of images, styles, and identities in the media—amid the dissolution of such long-established standards as “authorship” and copyright.
In Three Penny Opera a blue model, recalling characters by street artist KAWS, sports an ensemble by fashion-design collective Vaquera while strutting down the runway clutching banal Amazon Prime and Key Food shopping bags. Combining deliberately confusing high-fashion culture with quotidian consumerism, Juliano-Villani offers this image as a criticism of capitalism itself by titling the work after Bertolt Brecht’s revolutionary socialist play The Threepenny Opera (1928).
Jamian Juliano-Villani (American, born 1987). Detail: Three Penny Opera, 2018. Acrylic on canvas. #BrooklynMuseum, Gift of Bill Block, 2018.7 (Photo: Photo courtesy Jamian Juliano-Villani)
Jesus birth sequence is completely astrological. The star in the east is Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, which, on December 24th, aligns with the three brightest stars in Orion’s Belt. These three bright stars in Orion’s belt are called today what they were called in ancient times: The Three Kings. The Three Kings and the brightest star, Sirius, all point to the place of the sunrise on December 25th. This is why the Three Kings “follow” the star in the east, in order to locate the sunrise—the birth of the sun. And after this time on December 25th, the sun moves one degree, this time north, foreshadowing longer days, warmth, and Spring. And thus it was said: the sun died on the cross, was dead for three days, only to be resurrected or born again. This is why Jesus and numerous other sun gods share the crucifixion, three-day death, and resurrection concept. It is the sun’s transition period before it shifts its direction back into the Northern Hemisphere, bringing Spring, and thus salvation.
Original post from “The Lion’s Roar” Facebook page
“You think you’ve seen her naked
because she took her clothes off?
Tell me about her dreams. Tell me
what breaks her heart. What is she
passionate about, and what makes
her cry? Tell me about her childhood.
Better yet, tell me one story about
her that you’re not in. You’ve seen her skin, and you’ve
touched her body. But… you still know
as much about her as a book you
once found, but never got
around to opening.”
“People think that intimacy is about sex.
But intimacy is about truth.
When you realize you can tell someone your truth, when you can show yourself to them, when you stand in front of them and their response is “you’re safe with me” - that’s intimacy.”
— The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo: A novel by Taylor Jenkins Reid
