This Sunday I am watching The Exorcist and painting my nails with a design inspired by Dutch artist Piet Mondrian's compositions.
Piet Mondrian, Composition II in Red, Blue, and Yellow, 1930
Piet Mondrian was part of the De Stijl art movement. Mondrian was all about vertical and horizontal lines. Mondrian painted hundreds of compositions with lines but that doesn't mean he's into all kinds of lines. Do NOT show this man a diagonal line. Diagonal lines are NOT OK! See this other guy named Theo van Doesburg (Founder of the De Stijl movement and Mondrian's friend) painted a composition with diagonal lines.
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Theo van Doesburg, Counter-Composition V, 1924
It's pretty cool right... NO! NO! NOT COOL!
Piet was like, WHAT?? DIAGONAL LINES?? NOOOOOO! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?? GET OUT OF MY ART EXHIBITION! FRIENDSHIP OVER!
Then Mondrian painted the Lozenge which he claimed is the only way you are allowed to paint diagonal lines. (Passive aggressive much?)
Piet Mondrian, Lozenge Composition with Red, Black, Blue, and Yellow, 1925
Exorcism time!
The Exorcist was really scary. Props to the director, William Friedkin, for making even the normal stuff at the beginning, just horrifying. So the movie opens at an archaeological dig in Iraq. There's lots of bright red sunsets and men singing ominous religious chants in unison and WOAH it's scary. The Monstrous-Feminine by Barbara Creed describes this opening scene as "foreboding", using this word about 18 times in one page. Now, extreme word repetition really gets my OCD going/enrages me but I'll give Barbara this one because WOAH this scene is foreboding!
The Exorcist presents a very different monster. The monster is a 12-year-old girl whose body is possessed by a female snake demon/the devil. Despite being a little girl, she turns into a terrifying monster. She spins her head around 360 degrees (and does this completely nonchalantly like nbd priest guys who are exorcising me but ima spin my head around while you read your bible stuff), kills at least 3 men, and masturbates/stabs herself with a cross (it's kind of unclear which one is happening). Basically this week, the dark = not my friend.
Barbara Creed suggests that The Exorcist shows the horrors of puberty. Although The Exorcist is an exaggeration, there are similarities between the changes that happen to Regan after she is possessed and changes that occur during puberty. Regan's voice changes. Her body changes (ok so she develops sores and crazy chapped lips instead of like boobs and stuff but still uncontrollable body changes). She develops sexual desires (ok so these sexual desires are kind of towards her mom, haha what??). Also Regan is bleeding like all the time which represents menstruation. Going through puberty is scary and does makes you feel like you don't have control over your body. I mean I wouldn't really equate it to being possessed by a lady snake demon but I can see the similarities.
Back to my nails!
Start by painting your nails white. I used a white matte polish just like last week. It just dries so quickly and therefore we are friends.
Alpine Snow - Matte by OPI, sorry for being goofy my Valentine's Day roses just look so nice.
My Colors
(from left to right) Lightening by Sally Hansen, Tasmanian Devil Made Me Do It by OPI, Ogre-the-Top Blue by OPI & Don't Tell Mama by Deborah Lippmann
Ok so I know this nail polish technique looks pretty intimidating but it isn't! You just need toothpicks and tape.
First up, black lines.
To make these lines you'll need to use the toothpick. Put a small glob of black nail polish on the toothpick (the polish I used is dark green in real life because I own about every color but black, for real I own like ugly shimmery dark green but not black, wtf me?). Then press the toothpick on your nail. Think of the toothpick almost like a stamp. The nail polish with go on straight and thin like the toothpick. Word.
I started with two vertical lines to kind of split my nail into thirds. Then I did two horizontal lines, but don't make a full grid. Also don't worry about spacing your lines perfectly or making all your nails look exactly the same. It looks better when the lines are kind of random.
Toothpick = friend
After it dries, it's time to fill in some of those blocks with color.
You can either use tape or toothpick to color in the blocks. When using the tape, just tape around the area you'd like to paint
Ta da!
I filled in the other block using a toothpick, but if you can't do that you can just use tape on the second block too.
Then wait awhile for your nails to dry before putting on a top coat. Make sure they are totally dry or the colors will run into the white sections. <--- BAD
So De Stijl-in. lolz
