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 I know Audrey Hepburn's the cliche answer here, but come on. The goofy, candid nature of this picture is adorable Palpatine MD posted:That reminds me of another beauty from the arts, Edouard Manet's Olympia. Art history time, and it ties into the thread content!  Manet loving loved screwing with the Parisian art scene, and his trolling kick-started Impressionism and arguably the entire modern world of art and set the stage for parts of feminism.  This here is Luncheon on the Grass, one of the most important paintings of the century. Even in the modern day the content makes you pause for a moment - a naked woman staring at the viewer with a cocky, daring air, having a picnic with two guys in full clothing while a friend has a skimpy bath in the background. This alone made the Parisian art scene flip a poo poo, because this was a massive affront to the standard depiction of artistic nudes, which were symbols of purity, idealization, relaxation, and decidedly non-sexual beauty. This woman is flexing, tense, engaging directly with the viewer (another huge no-no at the time), intensely sexual just from her surroundings, and depicted as a normal human being instead of some Grecian ideal. In addition to that, his wife modeled for that woman. She provided the nudity, and he used the face of the same woman he'd use for Olympia. The way the painting was made was another long series of middle fingers at Parisian art. It's on a giant canvas, usually reserved for historical or mythological paintings. The brushstrokes and composition are deliberately loose and fast enough to be visible, something that would have appalled viewers, especially in a natural scene. The lighting, if you look carefully at the shadows, is totally unnatural, and combined with the loose background, indicates a studio atmosphere, which is compounded by the style of wear the men are wearing. The poses are probably the biggest slap in the face of the whole thing, as well. They're lifted straight from an engraving by Raphael, who stodgy, conservative art teachers loved and drilled into the heads of everybody they taught. There's also another Old Master painting, The Pastoral Concert, that it visually references. The whole painting, thus assembled, is a gigantic "gently caress You" to stuffy art critics making ridiculously perfect women while simultaneously slut-shaming any woman who wanted to explore the beauty of their own bodies, while declaring itself on par with Raphael and the Old Masters, a message that still rings today through modern media depictions of women. You can probably understand now why people tried to destroy it and Olympia when they were first displayed. Of course, Manet ain't got poo poo on Courbet, who had a painting named "The Origin of the World" which was just a close up on a woman's spread crotch that wasn't put on official display for 120 years. And, to tie a bit more directly back into the subject matter of the thread:  Courbet himself looked freakily like Johnny Depp.
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Apr 13, 2012 20:54
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| # ¿ May 13, 2024 13:47 |
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