Men to Avoid in Art and Life

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Bitingly funny, heartbreakingly relatable, Nicole's take on the painted weary gives new meaning to 'art criticism. Out in the world, we are constantly assessing our interactions with people, like “what is this person going to do?

Sir Peter Lely, Portrait of Sir Henry Capel, 1654-64, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, USA. If you think about it, that’s something that happens a lot, but also makes you wonder about the painter’s position, whether he meant the painting to be a denunciation or he just sat there watching what was happening, doing nothing to help.The way Men to Avoid in Art and Life was born is a great example of how social networks can be allies of arts and culture, but how does a Twitter thread become a book? Nicole Tersigni's inventive book reminds me of reading a narrative by the great comedienne, Jane Austen. She was tired and frazzled from looking after her 8-year-old daughter, who was home sick at the time. I don’t take it personally because it’s clearly from someone who has not given it a single moment of reflection. The concept is pretty played out by the time you get to the end of the book but I felt like for 95% of it, the humor was totally on point, and I found myself giggling out loud more than once.

It's interesting to see how many paintings have a female giving that "ykim" stare directly at the viewer (and which are put to good effect here). Facebook sets this cookie to show relevant advertisements to users by tracking user behaviour across the web, on sites that have Facebook pixel or Facebook social plugin. Probably the situation that I most commonly run into is with the comedian, the guy who thinks he’s so funny while all his jokes are very racist or sexist, and he gets really mad when you don’t laugh at them. He goes to you and says, “it’s a joke”, when he says something terrible, but it’s not how jokes work, and even if it was a joke, it’s not a good one.MEN TO AVOID IN ART AND LIFE is a comical art/coffee table book consisting of classical works of art that have been captioned to make fun of mansplainers.

Tersigni combines art history with social media to create something almost every woman (and maybe some men! It’s both comforting and vindicating to know that listening to men being shitty isn’t new, that our foremothers didn’t necessarily put up with it lightly, and that we can and almost indeed owe it to them to proclaim misogyny unacceptable, whether boldly through direct political action or more subversively through humor like this. So, whichever pronouns you identify with, you should read this book, to laugh about what you experienced or to understand that some of your behaviors are frustrating and make other human beings feel unsafe. I have so many favorites, but the one that makes me laugh every time I see it is Portrait of Sir Henry Capel by Sir Peter Lely, where a man is standing next to a bust of a lady, a statue, and he’s got his hand on her and says, “You are not like other girls”.

I also noticed that in many of the paintings that you chose the titles describe an important couple, but the author just wrote the man’s name and referred to the woman as “his wife”.