iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Alex Zivkovic @alexzivkovic.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

in honor of the NYT, my top shows! full list out now: www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Alex Zivkovic @alexzivkovic.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

can't stop obsessing over Manet's masterful details!!! such effective faces in the background of his Masked Ball at the Opera (1873). Some have so few brushstrokes! each economically conjures an eyebrow, blush, or five-o-clock shadow

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Alex Zivkovic @alexzivkovic.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

the background details of Manet's A Bar at the Folies-Bergère are just so delightful. love the little dabs of paint that create the hats, gloves, faces, mustaches.

Painted background to a painting by, with little details capturing various figures rendered in loose brushstrokes

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Alex Zivkovic @alexzivkovic.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

unintentional surreal effect: Degas's reuse of canvas for a nude life sketch precedes Pavel Tchelitchew's overlapping bodies (not incidentally the work I will have on my Surrealism's Queer Methods cover!) (1) Degas infrared / (2) Degas 1856 @ Met / (3) Tchelitchew

A black-and-white image of a painting where a reclining nude model is rendered twice. You can see an earlier version's face at his feet on the right.

An academic sketch of a nude model, bearded and posed as if injured or dead

A painting showing one man rendered as two overlapping figures, gripping each other

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Alex Zivkovic @alexzivkovic.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Jean-François Millet, self-portrait, age 31-32 / Nadar portrait, age 42-44 love the intensity of his gaze across both of these images

drawing of a man with wavy, long hair and a thick dark beard, with an intense gaze and a lock of hair near his temple.

Photograph of the same man, with shorter hair, longer beard, and a similar furrowed brow.

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Alex Zivkovic @alexzivkovic.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

wrote a review of Taws’ Time Machines book (which I really loved) about the role of telegraphs and telegraphic thinking in 18th and 19th century France Check it out at H-France: h-france.net/vol26reviews...

h-france.net

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Alex Zivkovic @alexzivkovic.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

h-france.net

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Alex Zivkovic @alexzivkovic.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

the museum of the moving image in Astoria never disappoints!! exhibit on x-rays featuring Soviet bootleg records on tuberculosis scans, shoe fitting, and even a “beauty” pageant judged on straight spines (+ contemporary art, Superman, and more!)

Opening wall text for Overexposed: Art, Technology, and the Body

Two records of different sizes made on x-rays of lungs

A paper with shoe fitting test data including information about an x-ray test

A photograph from a magazine showing three women standing next to x-rays of their spines

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Alex Zivkovic @alexzivkovic.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

first week at Hunter ✅ had an amazing first few days teaching my 19th century lectures (undergrad & grad) and my surrealism writing seminar! excited for the semester ahead

Slide saying Intro — 19th century art, with two artworks: Oath of the Horatii on the left, Redon’s Death or Buddha on the right

Research Methods: Multimedia Surrealism, slide from the first day with a collage of different works by Salvador Dalí

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Hunter College @huntercollege.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Happy first Monday back, Hawks! We're looking forward to another year of learning, connection, and making an impact together 💜 Check out President Nancy Cantor's welcome message and learn about some of our exciting initiatives on- and off-campus! www.hunter.cuny.edu/news/a-welco...

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Alex Zivkovic @alexzivkovic.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

just wrapped up an amazing year at the Met’s Lauder Center! had a blast working alongside with these incredible fellows and I am grateful to not be going far!

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Alex Zivkovic @alexzivkovic.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

some of my favorite moody bearded guys at the Met

A photo of me in front of Courbet’s portrait of Jules Luquet, showing a bearded man

Ilya Repin’s portrait of a writer seated at a desk

Photo of me with a bust of Hadrian as a young man, with beard

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Filmscalpel @filmscalpel.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

EARLY CINEMA’S FISH TANK FILMS dives into the appeal of aquariums for cinema’s pioneers. In a visually rich video essay, @alexzivkovic.bsky.social traces the fascination with fish from Méliès' fantasy films to the documentaries of Jean Painlevé and beyond. Published by @intransition.bsky.social

vimeo.com

Early Cinema's Fish Tank Films by Alex Zivkovic

This video essay encourages us to look closely at early cinema’s aquariums. First, seeing the fish and aquatic effects as a “distraction” in the age of the cinema of attractions (Georges Méliès), then...

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Alex Zivkovic @alexzivkovic.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Paul Alexis Reading to Émile Zola (1869-70) & Paul Alexis Reading at Zola's House (1870) two double portraits, very different moods—love how peaceful and intimate the first is, but the second is way too theatrical

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Alex Zivkovic @alexzivkovic.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

increasing moody self-portraits by Odilon Redon, ages 27–45: 1867, 1875, 1880, 1885 love the way the shadowy background comes in more and more into the face

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Alex Zivkovic @alexzivkovic.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

before the iconic full beard: Monet age 25 and 27, painted by Gilbert de Séverac and Carolus-Duran

dark portrait of a man in a blue striped shirt, leaning over the back of a chair, labeled Monet

Portrait of a man with a patchy beard in a suit, looking at the camera

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Alex Zivkovic @alexzivkovic.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

before the iconic full beard: Monet age 25 and 27, painted by Gilbert de Séverac and Carolus-Duran

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Alex Zivkovic @alexzivkovic.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

I really don’t know much about the classics, but happy to read Emily Wilson’s take on The Odyssey, which meshes with (and contextualizes and expands) so many of my own uninformed takes about the movie’s strange flip-floppy politics www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

lrb.co.uk

Emily Wilson · An Uncomplicated Man

As they say at the awards shows, I was humbled to learn that Christopher Nolan has read at least the first line of my...

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INCSA @incsa.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

📚 INCSA's peer-reviewed journal, Advances in Nineteenth-Century Research (ANCR), calls for books reviews. 〰️ To learn more, click the link in our bio for a list of books as well as an overview of our book review submission process. 〰️ @nathanbossoh.bsky.social

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Alex Zivkovic @alexzivkovic.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

some art about media I recently consumed and loved: - Cormoran Strike book 1 show - Widow’s Bay - Backrooms

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Alex Zivkovic @alexzivkovic.bsky.social · 05/07/2026

excellent profile of the V&A Storehouse where anyone can request to see and handle their objects — highlighting the power of firsthand study!! www.nytimes.com/2026/07/05/a...

nytimes.com

A One-on-One Date With a Museum’s Treasures

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Alex Zivkovic @alexzivkovic.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

lovely portrait of Jean Cocteau by Man Ray, c. 1922

Photograph of Jean Cocteau, illuminated, casting a big shadow against a wall with a model of a ship in the background

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Alex Zivkovic @alexzivkovic.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

Marcel Duchamp at the 1942 First Papers of Surrealism exhibit

Man posing in a corner, with twine arranged in front of him

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Alex Zivkovic @alexzivkovic.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

Courbet's wide-eyed self-portrait (The Desperate Man) has never been my favorite...but I love these two self-portraits I just came across c. 1850-3 (30s) c. 1873 (age 54)

Sketchy self-portrait against a landscape background, of verdant green hills and a hint of sky. A bearded man in a white collared shirt, with the lower half of the canvas a hazy dark color

A portrait of a man leaning at a window ledge, holding a pipe to his mouth, with a street scene below

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Patrick McCray @patrickmccray.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

The fact that no one has made a feature film about Alexander von Humboldt baffles me...he was handsome! Rich! Gay!? Traveled all over the world doing cool things!

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Alex Zivkovic @alexzivkovic.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

two summer garden pendants: John Singer Sargent's Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose (1885-6) and Édouard Manet's Le Linge (1875)

two children carrying lanterns, in a purple-hued garden, with large Lillies and other flowers growing around them

a mother and child in a garden, with hanging laundry behind them, orange hued dappled light

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Alex Zivkovic @alexzivkovic.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

wow—the three existing self-portraits of Claude Monet: ages 44, 46, and 77! each is so distinctive (+ a younger throwback: Carolus-Duran's portrait of a far less-bearded Monet at age 27)

a rough oil sketch of a seated bearded man, with a more resolved scene in the background, with a cigarette in the mouth of the artist

An oil paint self-portrait of a bearded man in a beret against a light blue background

An oil sketch of a man with a white beard, surrounded by a black outline, against canvas

A portrait of a young man with a patchy beard

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Alex Zivkovic @alexzivkovic.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

Manet, Music in the Tuileries, 1862

Painting of a crowded scene under the trees, with numerous people standing and seated

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Alex Zivkovic @alexzivkovic.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

beautiful pendant to Manet's more famous portrait of Zola, here showing Zacharie Astruc (and here together at the start of Georges Bataille's Manet book) (competing art for art, beard for beard)

Painting of a seated man, with a figure in the distance, appearing like a painting, with a still life in the foreground

Spread of two pages from an old book, showing color illustrations of Manet's two portraits of famous writers

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Alex Zivkovic @alexzivkovic.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

a new way to visualize my research output: published and on-going projects arranged by date and methodology, sortable by key themes aleksazivkovic.com/academic-int...

Grid with a bunch of squares showing snippets of various projects

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Alex Zivkovic @alexzivkovic.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

my favorite (surprise!) airport experience was stumbling onto James Brooks' mural of the Marine Air Terminal at Laguardia, now empty due to Spirit's demise gothamist.com/news/histori...

James Brooks with his sleeve rolled up, painting the wings of a figure in a mural at the terminal

Painting of various flying devices, rendered abstractly, with Leonardo da Vinci and others depicted

Mural showing a variety of surreal scenes, including an angel flying, the same figure as in the photograph of Brooks painting

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Alex Zivkovic @alexzivkovic.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

🚨if you look like Duchamp, be at MoMA next week!🚨 there'll be a Duchamp & Rrose Sélavy lookalike context next Thursday at their party! www.moma.org/calendar/eve...

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Alex Zivkovic @alexzivkovic.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

🚨if you look like Duchamp, be at MoMA next week!🚨 there'll be a Duchamp & Rrose Sélavy lookalike context next Thursday at their party! www.moma.org/calendar/eve...

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Alex Zivkovic @alexzivkovic.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

atmospheric photography — Dieter Appelt, The Mark on the Mirror Breathing Makes (1978)

Photograph of a man standing before a mirror, his breath leaves condensation, obscuring his reflection

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Alex Zivkovic @alexzivkovic.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

reading a new article --> wikipedia hopping --> more fantastic 19th-c portraits the playwright Georges Feydeau by Carolus-Duran, c. 1900

Painting of a man with curly hair and a mustache, set against a rich red background, that darkens and merges with his dark suit in the foreground

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Alex Zivkovic @alexzivkovic.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

Banksy for Greenpeace, "Save or Delete" (2002)

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Alex Zivkovic @alexzivkovic.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

love how impossible it is to make out the wallpaper/mirrors(?) in the background of this painting Émile-Othon Friesz's Scene in a Parisian Brasserie, ca. 1905/06

A painting with thick outlines, showing three people seated at a café table, with another man int he back. The background features a plant, chandelier, and awning, and possibly murals, wallpaper, and mirrors

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International Society for the Study of Surrealism @isss-surrealism.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

🎨 OPEN NOW: Leonor Fini: Menagerie 📍 Olney Gleason 🗓️ Apr 2–May 2, 2026 Paintings & works on paper by Leonor Fini span portraiture, erotic drawing & myth. A rare chance ahead of her major 2026–27 retrospective. 🔗 loom.ly/clENRI0 IMAGE: Leonor Fini, L’arrivée de Tibère, 1993

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Alex Zivkovic @alexzivkovic.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

such a compelling comparison—state five vs. state one for a print by Tissot Hollis Clayson argues "the rigging-heavy milieus of the works convey a skepticism about imperially and commercially triumphant Britain by obscuring its identifying signs." OA essay here: muse.jhu.edu/pub/331/arti...

A comparison of two prints, one of which shows a woman and child on a ship with a lot of detail and masts in the background. The other shows just her and the child and a handful of other characters, with a largely blank white background behind her

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Art UK @artukdotorg.bsky.social · 06/04/2026

The perfect painting for today – 'Easter Monday' by Winifred Nicholson 🌼 This artwork explores one of Winifred’s favourite themes. She loved painting views from windows, especially as the light and seasons changed. © Trustees of Winifred Nicholson. 📷 Tullie Carlisle

Yellow flowers in a vase on a window sill

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Alex Zivkovic @alexzivkovic.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

love how impossible it is to make out the wallpaper/mirrors(?) in the background of this painting Émile-Othon Friesz's Scene in a Parisian Brasserie, ca. 1905/06

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Alex Zivkovic @alexzivkovic.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

love the "related artworks" feature on the @metmuseum.org's website—just stumbled upon this lovely little etching Édouard Manet's The Smoker (Le Fumeur), 1866–7

illustration of a bearded man smoking a pipe, wearing dark clothes

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Alex Zivkovic @alexzivkovic.bsky.social · 31/03/2026

excited to check out the latest issue of NCAW—incredibly intrigued by this image of a coral vitrine... www.19thc-artworldwide.org/spring26/win...

Watercolor of a glass-case, full of coral and glass beads

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Alex Zivkovic @alexzivkovic.bsky.social · 30/03/2026

loved “New Humans” at the New Museum! incredible pairings of art and science images, ~1920s-today. provocative and powerful, particularly the rooms on reproduction, prosthetics, and robots

photo of an art gallery with pink carpet, showcasing a series of robots and other human-like forms

Photograph of a dance costume featuring disjointed fabrics and prosthetics

Photograph of a long-exposure photograph showing a worker in front of a grid, with lights streaking capturing their movement

Photograph of a tube filled with white liquid, attached to four breast milk pumps

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Michael Lobel @mlobelart.bsky.social · 29/03/2026

In doing an online image search I stumbled across this X-ray that conservators took of Rauschenberg's "Monogram" in 2016, and only now am I realizing how much I needed this image

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Alex Zivkovic @alexzivkovic.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

one of my favorite history nerd moves is to look up words in the Dictionnaire de l'Académie française. it lets you see when words appear, when definitions change to expand to new contexts, etc. opiacé = containing opium, added in the 6ème edition, 1835

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Alex Zivkovic @alexzivkovic.bsky.social · 24/03/2026

I've just published my first videographic essay!! while my written work focuses on questions of infrastructural mediation, this video essay encourages us to look closely at the fish on screen, asking how they distract, enchant, and otherwise entertain 🐟 intransition.openlibhums.org/article/id/2...

intransition.openlibhums.org

Aquarium Reveries: Early Cinema’s Fish Tank Films

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Alex Zivkovic @alexzivkovic.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

“When the dancer does appear, they are simultaneously a sex symbol on the catwalk, a Greek statue on a pedestal, a bronze monument on a plinth. The piece provokes questions about what sort of bodies you desire to see dancing for your pleasure […]” www.nytimes.com/2026/03/23/a...

nytimes.com

Why Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s Go-Go Dancer Piece Remains Subversive

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Alex Zivkovic @alexzivkovic.bsky.social · 24/03/2026

intransition.openlibhums.org

Aquarium Reveries: Early Cinema’s Fish Tank Films

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