High Art and it's ongoing obsession and denial with bestiality rape. Part 6: Erotica

Erotica

You've come with me this far, and I expect you'd like to know where I'm going with all this.

We've established that there was a mention of a thing that happened in a real old storybook.

We've established this thing has gathered quite the fanbase through the years.

Those fans (Ledacon or Ledis) produce a lot of fanfiction, fanart, cygnetslash, and inspired-by work. I'm focusing on the fanart.

The fanart is kinky porn. Not surprising, considering the source material.

Because this fanart has a loooong history, it has been designated High Art.

The High Art Invested get real uppity when you address the fact that these pictures, in particular, are kinky porn. Forms of silencing include ignoring, evading, and scorn.

I, personally, do not care if you want to masturbate to paintings of swan/girl sex. Go nuts, weirdos. What I resent is being told, disdainfully, that it is culturally invaluable, uncriticizable, not-porn art. The whole goddamn shell of denial crafted around Leda and the Swan by the High Art Invested is infuriating. 

Let's digress for a moment, and I'll state what has probably become obvious; I believe art is for the people, and it's worth exactly as much as your aesthetic experience looking at it. Maybe an argument could have been made for obscenely expensive art back in the days before internet and cheap printing, but the only thing giving it excessive value now is the ego of the competitively wealthy. 

I'm not talking about the $1,000 or $10,000 pieces; pieces that have their prices calculated based on labor, overhead, materials, etc. 
I mean the record-breaking pissing-contest auction battles where the gajillionaire could not care less what he was bidding on, just as long as he gets the status bauble. 
I mean the social-climbing, wannabee elite, nouveau riche who think their trust fund makes them better than most and they buy art based on "what's hot right now". Fuck you. You're not buying art, you're buying status.

It's the difference between people who buy a Porsche because the experience of driving it makes them happy, versus those who buy a Porsche because they want to say they own a Porsche.

Back to the swan thing.

Because this noxious cloud of "status" has gathered around old-ass paintings, the High Art Invested will leap to defend any old-ass painting. I once attended an exhibition in an actual palace, and not one, not two, but twelve of the gilt-framed paintings were of orgies.

Okay, cool. What a historically relevant bit of pornography, with all those wiggly satyr-cocks wildly fucking geese, goats, women, nymphs, other satyrs, etc. How very weird and neat. Please tell me more about it.

It's telling that I made a game of counting all the unwanted satyr dick
while in Italy, but can only find one online on a couple's travel blog.

The placard will say something like Depiction of a fertility ritual, possibly of Dionysus. Noooooooooo shit. You know what else depicts fertility rituals? Hustler. Can you tell me why this orgy is in a palace, surrounded by velvet rope and dudes wearing white gloves? Is it how musty it is? Cause I bet we can go into any baby boomer's garage and find boxes of Penthouse of equal or greater mildew levels.

But one of these things gets to hang in museums and galleries, guarded as Cultural Treasures© and giggled at by middle schoolers to the consternation of their teacher.

Or be tastefully displayed in neon on the street.
AES, at Estrel Hotel Biergarten, Berlin, 1996.

Yet when we pause and ask ourselves what's this all about? we are not given impartial history or a social commentary... 

(Perhaps like: wow can you believe this was acceptable in Florence in 1664? You'd think the fact that this shit hung in a pope's bedroom would mean the society that created it was libertine as hell, but actually it's a product of a draconian patriarchy where the women were literally listed, taxed and sold as chattel! I bet there are at least a dozen different graduate theses you could get out of that clustercuss of a Freudian nightmare.)

...but instead fed this litany of hot, wet bullshit; shaming and cajoling you into blindly accepting 1) that this is High Art and therefore super duper valuable 2) that it is definitely not porn 3) okay it is technically a picture of intercourse and that is technically porn 4) but it is definitely not porn and you should be ashamed for thinking it is you disgusting philistine/pearl-clutching prude 5) it is hella erotic though 6) but not porn erotic. Porn is for poor people.

You know what? The middle schoolers are right. It's giggle-worthy that we have all these Victorian rules about what can and cannot be shown,- down to the friggin areola of a female nipple,- but the blinders come on when it's an old-ass painting. Educate on why this painting is historically relevant, but don't wax poetic on the sumptuousness of Leda's bosoms and the lithe dick neck of the swan. I don't want to know what turns you on, placard writer/art historian/gallery owner. Save it for your readers on fanfiction.net.

Epilogue: Intent

High Art and it's ongoing obsession and denial with bestiality rape. Part 5: Scorn

Scorn

This is from an Evening Standard article from 2012.

There were no complaints from the public when a Mayfair gallery exhibited a dramatic modern rendering of the ancient Greek myth of Leda and the swan in its window.

But the sensitive souls of the Metropolitan Police took a different view when they spotted Derrick Santini’s photograph of a naked woman being ravished by the bird.

An officer took exception as he passed the Scream gallery in Bruton Street on a bus. He alerted colleagues and two uniformed officers from Harrow arrived to demand the work be removed.

Jag Mehta, sales director at the gallery owned by Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood’s sons Tyrone and Jamie, said: “We asked them what the problem was and they said it suggested we condoned bestiality, which they said was an arrestable offence. The show, Metamorphosis, had been running for a month and was really well received.”

“They didn’t know anything about the myth. They stood there and didn’t leave until we took the piece down. They asked us whether we had had complaints and we said quite the contrary. Lots of people were intrigued by it.”

Here's the photograph those pearl-clutching policemen identified as bestiality.

Pictured: not bestiality

And another article about the same incident, from Telegraph UK had additional quotes from the sales director.

“They said the photograph suggested we condoned bestiality, which was an arrestable offence,” she said. “It’s crazy. Perhaps the cultural references were lost on them.”

“It was not meant to deliberately shock or offend. However, the purpose of art is to provoke debate and Derrick’s piece has certainly done this.”

Oh for fuck's sake.

Just because something is old, doesn't make it not what it is. 

I've got an idea! We can render the same treatment to another serial rapist, raping one of his many many many victims! But an older one because then it's okay. Howabout the Butcher of Hanover? He raped all sorts of people! We can pick one and make it sexy oo la la. 

Artists can reimagine his abduction and rape of 10-year-old Friedrich Abeling. I can see it now; the Butcher, while dumping the dismembered body of 17-year-old Fritz Wittig into the Leine, sees young Friedrich, cheekily ditching school to skips stones at the river. The Butcher is stunned with Friedrich's beauty, and seduces him by pretending to be injured beneath a secluded bridge. The alluring Friedrich approaches, ensuring that this scenario can forever be depicted as a consensual sexual encounter, and The Butcher savagely rapes makes love to him. Light plays off the elegant, sinewy lines of cranes as they spread their wings in the morning sun, perhaps to suggest the tender opening of Friedrick's heart. Later, as The Butcher hacks at it with a knife.

The Leine is dappled with lustrous flowers and dancing cherubs, symbolizing the restrained eroticism of the narrative. Beneath the canopy of the bridge, hanging wisteria curtains cocoon the couple in their fragrant intimacy. The Butcher, his lust love nearly sated, bites through the glistening throat of the beautiful young Friedrich. The child's strangled gurgles are not heard over the foot traffic above. Overcome with desire, The Butcher wraps his lithe hands around the boy's delicately modeled neck and strangles him to death as he reaches the heights of their lovemaking.

Scholars dispute whether The Butcher raped and ate young Friedrich's corpse, or if he merely kept his severed, shattered head as a keepsake of the whirlwind romance.

Oh sorry, was that gross? Gross like being raped by an animal and bearing its children? Gross like taking something inherently horrific and making it sexy?

Uneducated, ignorant, knuckle-dragging police officers came into a gallery owned by some very rich, high-status people today and demanded the gallery remove a 10'x10' oil painting of the ancient historical story of Freidrich and The Butcher today, which no one has ever complained about ever because this gallery is patronized by well-educated people, thank you very much.

These buffoonish, mouth-breathing officers of the law knew absolutely nothing of the culture behind this piece of very expensive art. The curator was shocked and confused; for what reason must it be taken down?

"For distributing child pornography," they told her, "which is an arrestable offense." The show has been running for a month and has been very well received by everyone, everywhere.

"The very established and valid cultural significance of this piece just zoomed right over the heads of these low-brow philistines," said the curator, "Observe the exquisitely delicate, almost frangible rendering of Freidrich's naked, prepubescent body being ravaged by the much larger, looming body of The Butcher. The symbolism of Fredrich's later dismemberment is apparent. And here we see the sheen of ecstasy on the face of The Butcher, just moments before he concludes their lovemaking with a passionate, extremely fatal bite to the child's neck. That these vulgar neanderthals couldn't grasp the obvious consent in Freidrich's glassy stare, nor the totally obvious to everyone fact that historical pedophilia doesn't count, caught me by utter surprise. Nobody would ever find this pornographic. It is erotic."

The boorish swine were not swayed by the argument that raping children has been historically acceptable in many cultures.

"Well gosh, I never did mean for anyone, including myself, to masturbate furiously to this image of a sexy little boy being raped,- excuse me, ravaged by a much older man." said the artist, "It is meant to provoke debate."

"About what?" asked an incredulous, ill-bred officer.

"If you have to ask you'll never know." sniffed the artist, crossing his arms.

Part 6: Erotica

High Art and it's ongoing obsession and denial with bestiality rape. Part 4: Evasion

Evasion

The final tactics of those with investments in the high art game are fancy footwork and sneering derision. The latter is the entire reason for this long-winded, multiple-part post; but before I get myself worked into a furious socialist monologue, allow me to elaborate.

Below we have a rare, in-depth description of a Leda and the Swan painting. 

Leda was a Greek Queen of Sparta and mother of Helen of Troy (a Spartan princess), 

[Status check, name drop.]

Clytemnestra, and the dioscuri twins Castor and Pollux. Greek Mythology tells the story of how Zeus, fell in love 

[uh, ahem, no. Zeus did not "fall in love" with anyone, he was a dick with legs] 

with the beautiful Leda, and though she was married to King Tyndareus, ["though"?! Zeus did not g.a.f. about anyone's marital status, including his own. Don't imply there was some lengthy moral quandary on his end]

The King of the gods [status drop again]

seduced her in the guise of a swan. [ah, seduction. Zeus must have used his swanny elocution to recite poetry to her. Or maybe brought her swan-themed gifts? Or probably made suggestive faces with his beady little swan eyes. Bitch no. You're using the gray area between the archaic usage of seduce meaning to corrupt, and the modern usage meaning to charm or persuade. How the fuck a swan gonna persuade someone into intercourse?] 

As the elegant bird, Zeus, fell into Leda’s arms seeking protection from a predatory eagle circling above; [oh, okay. So that "seduction" from earlier was just... falling into her lap. Also, lol, last sentence he was The King of the gods, but now he's suh-suh-skurred of eagles? What you mean is, he pretended to be vulnerable to get close to his intended victim]

she stroked his feathers while the bird made love to her, [there is no mention of feather-stroking in any of the canon myths, you are making that up to downplay the fact that this scene is almost always referred to as a rape. I mean, come on. Zeus jumped on her lap while she was naked and stuck his swan dick in her. Nowhere in that narrative is her consent implied. Hell, it's rare to see consent implied anywhere in Greek myth. She's even on the rape list.

And if I may insert my personal opinion; the phrase "made love" is super gross and awkward. It also implies actual love, which again negates the rape.] 

followed on the same night by Leda laying with her husband.

[But here we definitely want to use the far less sexual and ambiguous word "laying". Because if she had maritals right after she willingly fucked a swan, she's a wicked (and kinky) adultress. But at all costs we will insist the swan sex was consensual, cause that's a much easier moral hair to split. Therefore, Leda and the Swan make love but Leda merely lays with her husband.]

As a result two mortal children were born to the Queen and two demi-gods – often said to have hatched from eggs. Which two children were mortal and which two half-divine is inconsistent among accounts. Castor and Pollux are in some stories both mortal, and others both divine. Whilst the cursed and murdered Clytemnestra is never an immortal, Helen is most often described as the daughter of Zeus. [Note how slightly more words (69) are spent deliberating over the divinity of the kids than are given to the "seduction" (64) which is the actual content of the painting.]

Ovid referred only briefly to the myth in his Metamorphoses [Ovid used seventeen words] 

but the image of a beautiful young queen seduced [you keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.]

by a lithe swan [oh, so now the swan is sexy. Ovid seemed to have forgotten to mention a lot of things.]

proved enticing to artists [those bohemian, free-sexed artists were just so enticed... by their wealthy patrons' requests.] 

in Roman times, and indeed remained so well into the nineteenth century. [note that they make an arbitrary cut-off at the nineteenth century. Perhaps because it's easier to argue that your porn is classy high art if it's been grandfathered in. Or maybe because you could get a new picture of swan rape from a living artist for much cheaper. At any rate, all those new ones don't exist.]

Le Moyne was certainly inspired by the sixteenth century artist Correggio’s Leda and the swan, a painting which in Le Moyne’s time had recently been acquired by the Duke of Orléans, regent of France in the early years of Louis XV’s reign. [Oh, I'm sorry, did I just drop that name oh yes bitch I did] 

Correggio’s painting (today in Berlin) [was stabbed by that duke's son RIGHT IN THE FACE! He had a lil bitty freakout religious tantrum because he was morally outraged at... the... bestiality... NEVERMIND.] 

shows Zeus, as a swan, between Leda’s parted legs, leaning against her nude body. The bird’s beak stretches to kiss the smiling daughter of the Aetolian king Thestius [DON'T FORGET SHE IS VERY HIGH STATUS AND SO IS HER DAD SO THIS WEIRD BESTIALITY SCENE IS CLASSY A.F. AND NOT TRASHY LIKE ALL THAT OTHER BESTIALITY PORN] 

whilst her companions frolic in a pond and winged Eros plays songs of love. [wow, so delightful! Frolicking and songs, you guys! This is not like an animal forcing itself sexually on an unwilling victim at all!] 

Le Moyne’s portrayal of the scene concentrates only on the two immediate characters in the story and in doing so establishes an intimacy perhaps more appropriate to a tale of seduction. [intimacy and seduction are both very important words when trying to plaster intellectualism and class over your overt pornography. Again, how does a swan seduce?] 

The square canvas is composed of a singular strong diagonal, comprised of the swan’s body and neck, the figure of Leda, and the tree behind her. [look how super serious we are talking about composition n shit. If this was porn, would we be saying these things? Heck no.]

Several pentimenti however, demonstrate that the swan may have originally been placed more centrally, perhaps closer to the pose of Correggio’s Leda. [and now we're all comparing/contrasting composition n shit. You have never beheld such scholarly serious high art discussion as you have witnessed here today. In plain English, they're saying the swan was probably initially right up in her snatch.] 

Jean-Luc Bordeaux, who has studied the artist extensively and is the author of the catalogue raisonné (soon to be updated in a revised version) [he is still super relevant plz believe me],

has written of this painting ‘the very original compositional interpretation of this subject belongs entirely and without hesitation to Le Moyne.’ [holy christ, now we're quoting authors of catalogue raisonnés! It just means "explained catalog", but how much more legit does this sound in French?! Pro tip: never translate foreign languages or obscure jargon in your text. Don't even put a footnote translation in there. Because how else are the privileged few who know what it means going to feel superior? Won't you think of them?]

In Le Moyne’s narrative one of Leda’s hands pulls back the fabric which had served to preserve her modesty, [it's not porn if we can identify the symbolism in the narrative. Porn doesn't have either!] 

whilst the other holds the swan’s neck in a way that shows she is not only a willing partner but could quickly terminate the encounter should she so desire. [and we would just like to reiterate again that THIS IS NOT NOR HAS EVER BEEN RAPEY WOW SO CONSENSUAL] 

Unlike his pupil Boucher’s composition, where the young queen and her companion appear to shrink back in fear from the approaching bird, Le Moyne’s Leda seems to welcome the Swan’s embrace. [I'm actually surprised they included this bit, because even though it's yet again affirming how very super duper consensual this sex painting is, it's introducing the reader to the fact that some artists actually depicted it as a rape.]

The alluring Leda here precedes by two years the painter’s monumental-scale composition Perseus and Andromeda (1723, The Wallace Collection, London). [provenance! artistic resume! expensive-sounding art collections!] 

Le Moyne’s Leda and Andromeda mirror each other physically, while billowing fabric is draped across their left arms and the hair of both women seems to be similarly styled. [image description dressed up as scholarly comparison.]  

Their blond tresses, the warm, golden tones of their skin, their rosy cheeks and the rounded soft modelling of their torsos and breasts are characteristic of Le Moyne’s restrained eroticism. [Yeah. "restrained eroticism" is a phrase you find in Leda and the Swan descriptions a lot. What does that mean, exactly? Bondage? Just the tip? Keeping your socks on?] 

In his Leda and the Swan the brilliantly nacreous whites and pale greys in the swan’s downy feathers seem to caress Leda’s skin while the soft clouds behind the entwined figures melt into the diaphanous green foliage of the tree. [aaand throw in a few ridiculously overwrought words for that sweet sweet flavor of inaccessibility]

This gem was swiped from the "literature" (cough cough product description ahem) regarding the painting below, at a fancy-pants gallery in downtown London.

FRANÇOIS LEMOYNE WHO IS VERY FAMOUS WE ASSURE YOU.

Basically, evasion is when high art investors throw as many verbal smoke bombs as they can in the hopes that you'll be so dazzled by adjectives, jargon, and status you'll be sufficiently distracted from THE SWAN HAVING PENETRATIVE SEX WITH A HUMAN.

If you feel like I'm beating a dead horse here, I totally agree. But let me introduce you to the most insidious form of cultural bullying.

Part 5: Scorn

High Art and it's ongoing obsession and denial with bestiality rape. Part 3: Ignored

Ignored

Michelangelo, who spent most of his artistic career yoked by the popes, can paint a bird actively penetrating and impregnating a woman; nobody bats an eye. 

I mean, does anybody else realize how incredible this is? The popes lose their collective minds when plain ol' vanilla hetero matrimonial sex is had, but classical pagan bestiality? Nothing to see here.

The man (Mikey B.) turned the Vatican into an absolute shitshow for years because he painted Mary in her birthday suit, (and this is the important part) unashamed. And The Last Judgement is given more than a little credit for spurring on the counter-reformation, because

a) much nekkid

b) too many muscle

You can't make this shit up. 

Pictured: disgusting beardless, jacked Jesus.
It's enough to turn you Protestant!

The Last Judgement: Uncensored and Uncut!
Seriously though. This is a painting of the uncensored version.

But I digress.

The main difference is that Jacked Jesus was in a church, and Swan Sex was for a "private collection". But that didn't mean these fap folders were made in secret or anything. Don't forget these artists did pretty much everything on commission,- people asked for these. And not just during the sexy sexy renaissance; the popularity of Leda and the Swan scenarios lasted for centuries.

Nor did the infatuation end once Hustler or internet porn became readily available. There are expansive contemporary collections of swan-on-girl action in museums and galleries across the world.

Yasushi Tanaka (1886-1941)

Paul Wunderlich, 1965

Natalya Efimova-Kashmir, 2010

Siegfried Zademack, 1976

Brand new depictions of swan fuckin' are being created, bought and sold,- all very publicly,- daily. In the meantime, furry-porn cartoonists hide behind alter-egos because they don't want to get fired from their day job. 

Just sayin. That's a hell of a double standard.

What, you thought Millenials invented this?

Which brings me to my point. All this high art hanging in world-renowned museums, fawned over by connoisseurs, bought and sold by royalty and dictators:

IT'S PORN.

Duh, you may be saying. But this simple label has been denounced and reviled by, well, pretty much anyone invested in high art as a concept. Mostly rich people, but also critics, art professors, snobs, art historians, high artists, etc. The thing is,- people who care enough about art to write books about it generally fall into one of those categories. 

And people who earn their paycheck from the idea that some pictures are inherently more valuable than others are loathe to admit that any in their class are for fappin'.

I, however, think it's delightful!
Just imagine, this douche jacked off to some kinky-ass bird shit! 

The outcome, consequently, means Leda and the Swan as a category of classical mythological history painting tends to get, at best, terse little paragraphs in art history books (i.e. and here we see a depiction of the classical myth, Leda and the Swan which we will not go into because everyone has heard of it.)

 or evasive critiques (i.e. the artist captivates us with the sensuous curve of the swan's neck, perhaps suggesting the origin of the war-causing sensuality of Helen, the product of this union). But most typically I've found they exist only as titles in lists of artists' works.

Which is a damn shame.

Correggio, 1523

For example, this Leda got stabbed in the face by a prudish duke. Wow! What a great bit of historical drama to add interest to your dry, dry textbook! Oh, but then you have to actually recount the Leda and the Swan story. And then the prudish duke stabbing a painting like a rabid revival preacher just highlights the fact that this is a picture of a swan sticking his dick in a woman.

Nevermind then.

It tends to get wildly downplayed, is what I'm saying. The fact of it is right there in living color,- swan dick in vagina,- so the preferred alternative to admitting you've got pornography on the walls of the Louvre is to ignore the hell out of it.

Boo, I say. Get your head out of your ass and face facts.

Yarek Godfrey (1957- )

This exists. And it exists for sexual gratification.

Part 4: Evasion

High Art and it's ongoing obsession and denial with bestiality rape. Part 2: The Erotic Fan Art

The Erotic Fan Art

The art ranges from pretty tame,

Francesco Melzi  (1491–1568)
This is a copy of the now-lost painting by Leonardo da Vinci.

Marcel Bouraine (1886-1948)
 "Bouraine is considered one of the most representative sculptors of Art Deco."

Paul Cézanne, 1880-1882

to pretty explicit,

Giovanni Battista Palumba, 1500-1510
"Despite his relatively small output, he was a sophisticated artist."
This piece is owned by The Met Museum.

16th-century copy of the now-lost painting by Michelangelo.

Paul Mathias Padua, 1939
Hitler bought this one.

Unknown artist, 1st century A.D.

François Boucher, 1740
 "He was perhaps the most celebrated painter and 
decorative artist of the 18th century."

Ernst Fuchs (1930-2015)
"Painter, Architect, Visionary."
"...legendary founder of the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism."

This one gets its own category: interspecies three-ways.

Charles-Antoine Coypel, 1740
"Charles-Antoine inherited his father’s design and painting duties as premier peintre du roi at the French court when his father died in 1722."

You may notice I included some gushing artist accolades, most of which are quotes from Wikipedia. Simply to illustrate how completely, 100% standard this scene has been in western art since at least the 1st century. Zero stigma attached.

Part 3: Ignored

High Art and it's ongoing obsession and denial with bestiality rape. Part 1: The Actual Myth

Disclaimer: This post is NSFW, unless you work in a museum, gallery or maybe for one of those art magazines that cost $30 an issue; then it is a discourse on HIGH ART. Passers-by will compliment you on your exceptional taste, and a man in a tuxedo may offer you a flute of champagne from a silver tray. If any blue-collar plebian questions the appropriateness of your workplace reading choices, a swarm of wealthy matrons will appear in a poof of Clive Christian No. 1 and quack the word controversy at them. Except they'll pronounce it conTRAWHvuhsaay. This should scare away any salt-of-the-earth types.

***

Part 1: The Actual Myth

Leda and the Swan: Zeus (as swan) rapes Leda (human girl).

He gon fuck you up.

Not really a full story, is it? Just a very typical Greek genealogical preamble for "heroic children to follow". In fact, here's the scene in its entirety from the Apollodorus:

[3.10.7] But Zeus in the form of a swan consorted with Leda, and on the same night Tyndareus cohabited with her; and she bore Pollux and Helen to Zeus, and Castor and Clytaemnestra to Tyndareus.
195 But some say that Helen was a daughter of Nemesis and Zeus; for that she, flying from the arms of Zeus, changed herself into a goose, but Zeus in his turn took the likeness of a swan and so enjoyed her; and as the fruit of their loves she laid an egg, and a certain shepherd found it in the groves and brought and gave it to Leda; and she put it in a chest and kept it; and when Helen was hatched in due time, Leda brought her up as her own daughter.

That's it. Two sentences in a four-book epic, (one of the sentences advocating an entirely different rape scene) buried between some family trees and a mention of the vendetta-style abduction-rapes of various women. And apparently, the hot swan-on-girl action was of less interest to the Greeks than the telegony involved in the quadruplets' conception. 

Ovid gives it two lines in a very very very long list of gods that turn into other things to rape women. Weirdly specific, Greece.

 And shew'd how Leda lay supinely press'd,
Whilst the soft snowy swan sate hov'ring o'er her breast,
-Metamorphasis, Book the Sixth

That's the myth in its entirety.

But if you turn your attention to the noncanonical stuff; holy shit. We've got poems for days, a couple of songs, and SO MUCH EROTIC FAN ART, YOU GUYS. I mean,- I thought I had a pretty good idea about the ratio of swan-rape to not swan-rape in art.

I had no idea. NONE.

Behold, the vast expanse of my ignorance.

This is one of the hot, wet darlings of the classical art world. To quote Wikipedia,

The subject undoubtedly owed its sixteenth-century popularity to the paradox that it was considered more acceptable to depict a woman in the act of copulation with a swan than with a man. 

Hoo boy. There's a lot to unpack in that one.

NOPE.

Part 2: The Fan Art

New Work

Earlier this summer my daughter decided to reenact a Greek myth and rolled a boulder up a hill. I say boulder because it easily weighed as much as she did.
"It would be easier from that way." I told her as she grunted. She was on the steepest part of the sledding hill. The place where she was too scared to go down this past winter.
Nope. Nearly vertical or nothing, ma.
Her target was a stump. She rolled the boulder onto it, and spent considerable time adjusting the position.
And it rolled over her pinky.

Much wailing and gnashing of teeth later, she became fascinated with the idea that her fingernail might fall off. I was constantly peppered with questions regarding timelines, color changes, and the benefits of band-aids.

You guys.

She made a journal recording her pinky nail at all stages of onychomadesis. I cannot even, right now, cause of all the awww.

Awwww! She's confronting unexpected bodily changes by sequential cataloging in minimalist line drawings!

Corruption in the arts

Oh, you guys.
I’ve waited years to post anything about this, cause of all the fury. Also cause I didn't wanna get blacklisted. I still don't, but I give many less cares.

I have a lil pet peeve. Or maybe that’s not the right phrase… it’s like a- like when a shitty parent gives their three-year-old Mountain Dew rather than milk or water. And not just once,- as a matter of course. Modus operandi: Mountain Dew in a sippy cup.

And then the parent gets way too defensive when the fact of their child’s pre-diabetes or malnutrition or rotten teeth get brought up. Like screaming-in-a-Wal-mart-parking-lot, jabbing-their-lit-cigarette-at-you level aggressive.  

It’s like that.

Except instead of a three-year-old, insert Artist. And the role of parent tonight will be played by an Arts Advocacy Organization.

Like corruption in politics, it’s this thing exists so completely in all areas of the art realm that very few people actually notice it; like the wallpaper.

Pictured: Insidious corruption.

I think we’re all familiar with the concept of people trying to “pay” artists with exposure. My response to most of these is bye felicia. Please wash hands after using the restroom.

Typical exchange.

Far more egregious, however, is when those people who claim to be advocates for the arts pull the exact. same. shit.

They should know better. 

So when I received this mass email from an arts advocacy group,- with which I was a paying member,- 

Logo Contest!

[Generic Arts Advocacy Org] would like a new logo.  We had one specifically for the 50th anniversary; but now would like a generic one.   So get out your pens, pencils, markers, paints etc:   and design a logo for [Generic Arts Advocacy Org].

I responded to the group heads with a one-line y’all should know better, and my phone exploded. Behold the 11-part text response from the acting president:

So maybe contest wasn't the 'correct' word. There is a dedicated group of people out there that are trying their hardest to bring awareness of the arts to our community with the limited resources they have! 

Trying to redefine ourselves with a visual identity on a 'scrape-by' financial situation is not a crime and I take offense that some might think that we are trying to exploit an artist out of some financial gain! 

Week after week many in the group continue to labor over how to be more inclusive and meet the needs of the local arts community! POSITIVE, CONSTRUCTIVE input is always welcome!

I agree that the majority of artists don't get paid enough for the time and creativity they put into their art. [Generic Arts Advocacy Org] is not some individual or business out there trying to get something for nothing. We are a 'club' organization that is trying to  provide a service to the community by continuing to bring awareness of artists like you. 

We don't have unlimited funds to commission an artist to design a logo. We are just trying to stay afloat because of things like; now we can't even have a show at many places because we have to buy liability insurance that will cost several hundred dollars a year! 

We were just looking for help and input from other local artists. Don't throw the baby out with the bath water! 

Oh yeah, I totally see how being paid in 'exposure' via a club is 100% different to being paid in 'exposure' via an individual. I decided to graciously not mention that the group heads decided they wanted a new logo on a whim.

In response, I sent him this email:

Okay, now that I’ve got a keyboard in front of me I can be more verbose. [Generic Arts Advocacy Head], I’m interested in your responses, especially as they relate to you as president of an arts advocacy group and a longtime arts board member. 

But first, the issue at hand.

Artists should be paid for their work. Full stop, period. I give zero shits about how noble or deserving or whatever your organization is. If an artist chooses to donate work, that’s different; key words being choose and donate. Other equally important words in this scenario include tax deduction and in-kind contribution.

But we’re not talking about that, we’re talking about a self-professed arts advocacy group asking for free labor in one of the most exploitative ways possible and then using arts advocacy as an excuse for exploiting artists.

To quote, “Trying to redefine ourselves with a visual identity on a 'scrape-by' financial situation is not a crime and I take offense that some might think that we are trying to exploit an artist out of some financial gain!”

You ([Generic Arts Advocacy Org]) are absolutely exploiting artists. That is literally the definition of what you’re doing. It doesn’t mean it’s necessarily sinister, but it is exploitation. You’re using all the resources available to you, and that’s fine. You’re also absolutely doing it for financial gain. Yes, you’re doing it to stay afloat, and that’s still financial gain. You are gaining your choice of logos from a stable of artists who used their accumulated skill, education, materials and time to create a product you will use, benefit from, and not pay for.

Again,- literally the definition of financial gain.

But that’s not what bothers me.
The fact that I have to defend an artist’s right to wages for services rendered to an arts advocacy group should give you some insight into where I’m coming from. In this culture, art creation is a non-job. It’s fun, so it couldn’t possibly be deserving of payment. Never mind that the marketable stuff requires hundreds of thousands of dollars of education, thousands of dollars of equipment and an incalculable amount of skill. Never mind that the people who ask for free art never ask some schmuck on the street; it’s always the people with hundreds of thousands of dollars of education, thousands of dollars of equipment and an incalculable amount of skill.

It’s the people who do it for their job.

Now here’s the thing about doing it for your job: someone has to pay you at some point.

Ooo I get mad just copy-pasting that. And I'm not using this exchange to shake my finger at this group specifically; I'm using it because it's written down. This exact thing has happened to me, and likely all artists, many times. It is the corruption of the very organizations that claim to protect and promote us.

Sometimes it's something little, like a logo. Or, as I encountered just last month, an artist will quietly be "strongly encouraged" to "donate" a large formal piece, and in exchange, the artist gets on the short list to exhibit. Um, hi? Isn't your mission statement to give local artists a low-cost place to exhibit? Funny, I never hear the word extortion at those hoity-toity patron fundraiser banquets.

Unrelated: possibly the best name for a catering company.

Too often I have found that arts advocacy organizations work tirelessly to promote... arts advocacy organizations. Artists are the means to an end,- and that end typically doesn't include an artist being paid for labor. It generally looks more like federal grants and generous philanthropists covering operating costs.

And, as you can see in the exchange above, such do-gooding, for-my-benefit groups cannot be called out on this behavior. Their do-goodingness negates reproach, they say.

Don't get me wrong, there are some supremely excellent advocacy groups out there. There are also bottom-feeding chum-suckers preying on artists' desperation to be recognized. Because if you're as infrequently paid as artists, it's all too easy to forget the point of working is not marketing, but to pay your goddamn bills.