Art History

I know practically nothing about art or history, so I have been trying to study a lot for my test tomorrow. Of course, I have ended up just going off on a lot of fun internet tangents instead. I read most of the French Wikipedia page on the history of the corset... this was because I was originally looking for the French term for choker (ras le cou), because I was pretty sure I'd written it down wrong in class... my notes said the French words for rat-of-ass (rat-de-cul) with a question mark beside it.

Anyway, that's what the model is wearing in Manet's Olympia. I've noticed a lot of differences between the French wikipedia and English wikipedia pages about the painting. If I had time, I would go into some examples but I should get back to studying. I'll just say, I think in order to understand a piece of art you need to know the history of the country whose citizen painted it. So it's nice that Olympia is at Musée d'Orsay and not in some godforsaken Anglo-Saxon country.

I also stumbled upon this:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1310438/Kate-Moss-poses-cover-Bryan-Ferrys-album-Olympia.html

Olympia is an early pin up? What? I have no idea who this musician is, but I think he's totally got the wrong end of the stick here. I'm basing this on you know, well, one class and some Wikipedia research. But hey, it was a class taught by a curator of a French art gallery. And that Wikipedia research was bilingual.

Oh, but the reason I wanted to blog right now was because ''shawl'' is spelled ''châle'' in French. How crazy is that?

''1662, originally of a type of scarf worn in Asia, from Urdu and other Indian languages, from Pers. shal, sometimes said to be named for Shaliat, town in India where it was first manufactured. ''


I'm going to have a hell of a time remembering how to spell that on the test tomorrow.