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Showing posts with label Art History. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Art History. Show all posts
2.11.2020
11.11.2019
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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| 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.
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| Or be tastefully displayed in neon on the street. AES, at Estrel Hotel Biergarten, Berlin, 1996. |
(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
Epilogue: Intent
10.04.2019
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.
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| 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
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
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
9.26.2019
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.
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| 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.
6.20.2012
Masks: A Love Affair.
I have a weird aesthetic obsession.
I love me some masks.
I love me some masks.
Here are some of my current favorites!
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| Odumado Mask |
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| Mayan mask |
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| Sande Society mask |
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| Aztec mask |
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| Japanese mask |
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| Olmec Mask |
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| Noh mask |
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| Olmec mask |
The MIA has an epic collection.
5.13.2012
Nymph with the Broken Back
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| I find your armor both functional and tasteful! |
And with all of this talk of broken spines, I can't help but be reminded of the nymph with the broken back.
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| Aw, did you fall out of your tree? Daniel Tixier |
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| Alexandre Cabanel |
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| Don't mind me, just napping naked on the road. Georges Callot |
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| Anders Zorn |
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| Lady crop's comin' in real good this year. Arthur Hacker |
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| Jules Garnier |
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| Ol' floppy head. Paul Albert Laurens |
I wonder if people back in the day recognized how goofy as hell these look.
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| Probably not. Marvel |
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