How does "boom chika wa wa" sound when played by a string quartet?
Consider that implied lesbianism. Yes, consider it good. Slowly....
Janáček's string quartet #2, "Intimate letters" is the old goat's musical response to a much younger lover. So about like that. It's a nice piece of music.
I'd put on say Lynton Kwesi Johnson or some Sly+Robbie dubs for this subject matter, though.
I can't explain why, but I was sort of disappointed by the Courbet exhibit. Maybe I thought I liked his work more than I actually do. I think I ended up paying more attention to the landscapes and animals, although I can't say I remember the whole exhibit very well even though I was there just a few weeks ago.
Maybe you just don't like titties, communist.
ogged, did you see thatQueen Rania has made a YouTube video asking for people to send her "Arab stereotypes" so that she can "break them down and address them." I figure your people have been stereotyping Arabs longer than Whitey has, so you should definitely send something.
I'd very much like to see the Poussin exhibition that is presently at the Met.
Don't get me wrong. I thought the Courbet was worth going to; I was just surprised by my own tastes, which I thought I already knew.
What distinguishes implied lesbianism from consummated lesbianism is the absence of power tools.
Titties are nothin'. Someone link to a pic of The Origin of the World.
I find the density and distribution of pubic hair in The Origin unconvincing. Nice try, artist person.
Not exactly a Brazilian, IYKWIM
I find the density and distribution of pubic hair in The Origin unconvincing.
Also, the kerning is off.
iBiblio! Best job evar. If it had an alma mater all its own I'd be singing it right now.
13: I find the density and distribution of pubic hair in The Origin unconvincing
Compared to what, exactly?
How does "boom chika wa wa" sound when played by a string quartet?
It's not for string quartet, but the music for the sex scene in Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District was described by an early reviewer as "pornophonic." So maybe something like that.
If you could actually sleep like that (the blonde), cohabitation would be a lot easier.
The angle of the dark-haired one's leg doesn't look so conducive to sleep, either. I had assumed they were supposed to be in action (eyes closed in passion?) until 20 called my attention to the title.
"MUST be considered in relation to the intended male audience"? Fuckin' patriarchy, trying to quell masculine anxiety by reassuring us that the lesbians are there for MEN'S pleasure, not for each other's.
I bet those pigs at the Met think that the girls on Sapphic Erotica aren't really girlfriends, either.
23: I don't even need to ask do I? Please reference the last word in 17, you shameless prevaricator.
Actually, I think you're right; it's not such a cheat.
I bet those pigs at the Met think that the girls on Sapphic Erotica aren't really girlfriends, either.
Sorry, where, exactly?
The angle of the dark-haired one's leg doesn't look so conducive to sleep, either
Au contraire. My wife throws her leg over me like that all the time, even in sleep. Occasionally the action wakes me enough so that I am unable to return to sleep, the results of which are left as an exercise for the reader.
I know you old guys can't resist sharing that you're still getting some, but the brunette's shoulder's are flat on the bed, and her lower leg is on top of her partner's lower leg. Throwing the top leg over is common and not the issue. It wouldn't even be easy to get into her position, let alone sleep in it.
What ogged said.
I actually just got down on the floor of my office to see if that was as awkward as it seemed it would be. Yup.
Minus the other chick, I should specify. My office mate went home three hours ago.
I have to wonder if the pretty girls with implied lesbianism really meant the same thing at the time Courbet painted it as it would to create the same piece today. While certainly there's an obvious dominating male presence in Sleep, being painted by a male, was 'Oooh, two girls in bed together!' really as much of a thing in Courbet's time, for Courbet's audience?
was 'Oooh, two girls in bed together!' really as much of a thing in Courbet's time, for Courbet's audience?
I believe so, yes.
Occasionally the action wakes me enough so that I am unable to return to sleep, the results of which are left as an exercise for the reader.
Answer for reader:
This means TLL tosses and turns for a while, before giving up and going to read in another room.
The provenance of The Origin of the World is sort of interesting -- scroll about 3/4 of the way down.
It adorned the ambassador's palatial bathroom, hidden behind a green baize curtain. Kalil-Bey was eventually forced to sell his substantial collection to meet his more than substantial debts.
...
It was subsequently restored to its owner and eventually passed into the hands of the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, who kept it in his study masked by a quasi-abstract painting by his friend André Masson of the same subject, but veiled and opaque.
...
In the following decades the painting was presumably viewed furtively; then in 1913 it traveled to Budapest, to be housed once more in an opulent bathroom, that of Baron Ferenc Hatvany. It was now in a specially designed frame, which meant that when not being enjoyed the Origine could be shielded under a harmless Courbet winter landscape.
Hidden, masked! In the bathroom! In the study! I found that charming.
XIXc France was much more puritanical than we think. Flaubert, Baudelaire, and Courbet all had serious legal problems because of indecency prosecutions etc.
shielded under a harmless Courbet winter landscape.
That line could launch a thousand comments. Let me start: apparently, vaginas are very dangerous.
there are obviously too many voyeurs in the group. I promise to keep the drapes closed.
was 'Oooh, two girls in bed making out together!' really as much of a thing in Courbet's time, for Courbet's audience?
I still don't quite get the statement that it "must be" considered in relation to the intended male audience, except as a little nose-wrinkling expression of prurience. Would actual 19th century French lesbians have been playing softball or something instead of making out?
Ogged's comment in 4 is why it "must be" considered.
I still don't quite get the statement that it "must be" considered in relation to the intended male audience
Sorry, the authority of wall-text is indisputable.
I'd very much like to see the Poussin exhibition that is presently at the Met.
Everyone in the L.A. area should get to the Bodyworlds exhibit over at the California Science Center. Took my family to it while visiting family a couple weeks ago. It was busy, so buy your tickets in advance online.
But "four titties" is just a documentary observation about the reality of lesbian sex! Artists are obliged to explore reality in all its manifestations.
Would actual 19th century French lesbians have been playing softball or something instead of making out?
It's called "real tennis," thank you.
19: "Humans" s/b "Iranians"
I actually just got down on the floor of my office
...if you know what I mean.
Come on, PGD. Lesbian porn isn't porn for lesbians, it's double your fun porn for guys. In the same way, the XIXc paintings of seminude blonde slave girls being ogled by moustache-twirling Turks are not primarily anti-slavery tracts, or even anti-Turkish tracts.
Die Entführung aus dem Serail is porn?
Gerome (tastefully NSFW) specialized in slave girls.
47: Of course -- we all know women don't get turned on by visual images, just by long conversations about love and committment.
Anyway, pastoral paintings of farmers aren't for the farmers either. But only this painting requires a stern little extra nudge from the official wall text so we don't get turned on. Considering the intended male audience totally ruined it for me.
I've read the comments above about the unrealistic sleep position though, and it's true the title lacks realism. If he was going to call it "Sleep" they should have been lying on their back snoring, with little flecks of drool at the corners of their mouths.
they should have been lying on their back snoring, with little flecks of drool at the corners of their mouths.
Online dating site question: how do you tend to share a bed all night with another?
PGD: well, let me tell you.
OMG! I totally don't snore!
Damn. I'm never getting laid off this site now.
My god, nobody snores, or fitfully asks for the leg thrown across the belly to be removed, because, like, I seriously can't sleep like this, plus my arm is falling asleep. Don't worry.
Theory:
Hot sex is not as important in a relationship as sleeping position compatibility.
Minus the other chick, I should specify. My office mate went home three hours ago.
Actually, I think this is the problem. I just tried it out with Snark in the role of blondie, and it was comfy as could be.
I'm not normally an X-Treme leg draper in the sack, either.
Flaubert, Baudelaire, and Courbet all had serious legal problems because of indecency prosecutions etc.
And among Baudelaire's banned poems are one or two containing lesbianism.
There's something to be said for will's theory.
Some crazily entwined sleeping positions are very comfortable in that 30-45 minute snooze right after sex.
But I think the actual artistic reason her leg is draped is so that the male audience can see her tits *and* her ass.
The only good part of the Courbet show is the paintings. The curation is certifiably daft. I actually think I left knowing less about Courbet than I did coming in, and not in a good, pedagogical way, either.
According to this painter guy I know, the exhibit shows how fucking good Courbet was at flesh. Is there anything more to know?
XIXc France was much more puritanical than we think.
All of it?
Flesh is weak; we need a thread for fox and trout.
Oh, that reminds me about the funny biographical fact about Courbet. He was one of the lead guys in the Paris Commune---became the minister for culture and everything---and personally led the toppling the big-ass statue of Napoleon in the Place de la Vendome. After the Commune and the prison time and whatnot, he was personally held responsible for repaying the costs for putting back up the damned thing; I think he was the only person involved the government could put a name and face to. He spent the rest of his shortish life churning out nature scenes to try to sell as much and as quick as possible to chip away at the debt, unsuccessfully.
I like cuddling as much as the next person, but sleeping in someone's arms just doesn't work because four arms is at least one too many.
I also liked this bit of description from (what I assume is) the wall text for "The Bathers".
Critics expressed their disgust at the dirty feet of the models as well as the fallen stocking of the seated model, seen as emblematic of physical as well as moral squalor. When Napoleon III saw the painting at the Salon, he allegedly feigned whipping the buttocks of the standing nude with his riding crop.
Homo Sapiens, the animal species that lost its way.
was 'Oooh, two girls in bed together!' really as much of a thing in Courbet's time, for Courbet's audience?
I'm guessing yes, considering this painting was privately commissioned by the same guy who commissioned The Origin Of The World.
Also, the abstract panel that enclosed TOOTW is included in the Met's exhibition.
I really like TOOTW. I do think it's a sexist painting, though not in the misogynistic sense.
I realize, now reviewing TOOTW, that if one's legs were spread that wide, you could see a lot more cooch than that.
Doh! Turns out the entire wall text for Sleep is available online. And to think that I transcribed it for you all.
74 et al: Ah, yes, I see. So Sleep really is a very strong example of the male gaze appropriating the sexuality of lesbians for male erotic pleasure, and of historical value at that.
Don't mean to lower the tone, but the NYB review has all the info on the circumstances of purchase and display. Warning: no cooch.
Gautier, a confirmed Romantic.....
Gautier was a Parnassian, which doesn't strike me as really Romantic. He tried to get away from the emotiveness and preachiness and self-dramatization of Romanticism to produce exquisite poem-objects. He did like pretty things, escapism, and exoticism.
I like cuddling as much as the next person, but sleeping in someone's arms just doesn't work because four arms is at least one too many.
if one of the arms is paralysed you could lie on top of it and not cause discomfort. otherwise, you're right.
Petra ten-Doesschate Chu!
What about her? Her book on Courbet and popular media is very good.
Great name for a Bond Girl, especially a villain.
From the wall text:
By 1872, the painting was part of the artist's police dossier, its explicitly erotic subject seen by his contemporaries as indicative of Courbet's moral depravity.
This reads as quaint, but of course there's plenty of porn the possession or creation of which we would consider evidence of moral depravity. Is there art about which we'd feel the same way? Or do things that tread that line get dismissed as "not art"?
83: Having preferred figures which are more Courbet than Degas, I've often wondered if there's a weight threshold below which a girl would cease to paralyse your arm by lying on it. Crudely: is there a bullimia dividend?
86: depends who "we" is, right? Look at UK tabloid reactions to various Brit Art as "filth"... On the other hand Jean-Claude Brisseau still mysteriously gets filed under arthouse (though not necessarily lauded) despite the despite obvious moral depravity [ctrl+f'ing required] involved in their production.
The bullimia comment in 87 is way out of line. What an asshole.
Alright, which one of you got a job in the Clark University Office of Residential Life?
Clark's always been pretty mellow about that sort of thing. At least, I assume that's why they didn't arrest me when they found me, a non-affiliate, passed out in the women's bathroom in one of their dorms.
Great name for a Bond Girl, especially a villain.
Ah. She's Dutch, I believe. I don't recall if she has anything to say in particular about Sleep in her book, but she does talk about The Bathers, also at the Met, a lot. If I remember correctly, she tends to pay more attention to Courbet's pre-1855 work, seeing a lot of his later output, however good, as a sort of coasting after his more radical early work, even before the late drop-off and workshop production that Jackmoron mentioned above.
Oh my. I am very sorry about that. How embarrassing. And her handle is one that I actually have some practice in typing, unlike most others here, as a friend is a former Mormon and enjoys using the term.
91:
I only had a chance to skim _Most Arrogant Man in France_, but her argument seemed to mostly be psychobiographical filigree on more muscular accounts of Courbet's painting. I may have been soured on Dutch art history more generally by Mieke Bal and didn't give it enough of a chance, though.
The Met show definitely needed *someone's* account as an anchor, and hers would have served it well. I don't know if Gary Tinterow meddled too much, or the lack of Courbet's major '48-49 paintings knocked the foundation out from under the whole show or what.
91: I totally can see how Mieke Bal would sour one's view of Dutch art historians, but I wouldn't use her as a comparison for Chu. It's true that there's a biographical component to her work--she was the editor of his letters, after all, and uses them quite a bit. Chu's book, with its emphasis on Courbet's interest in the media, is really more of an attempt to bring a visual studies outlook (with some bows to Bourdieu) into a traditional art history frame. While there's some other stuff going on (a little feminist theory when treating some of Courbet's nudes, for instance), that's the basic line of thought. The work on Courbet she goes most against, a few times explicitly, is Michael Fried's Courbet's Realism.
In re: 89. One of my friends in college was an inveterate practical jokester. He managed, through an elaborate deception involving dozens of confederates, to convince his roommate and the roommate's girlfriend that our college was going to permit co-ed rooming groups on a trial basis, and that the first 10 couples to apply would be allowed to participate in the pilot program. The unsuspecting couple dashed off an application and submitted it to the university authorities. Hilarity ensued.
FWIW the couple got their revenge on my friend with a stunt that had the highest ratio of cruelty to harmlessness of any prank I have ever known.
Are we supposed to say, "Tell us more?"?
Gautier was a Parnassian, which doesn't strike me as really Romantic. He tried to get away from the emotiveness and preachiness and self-dramatization of Romanticism to produce exquisite poem-objects.
His better stuff was done when he was a confirmed, faddish Romantic of the Jeunes-France school, though.
Oh my. I am very sorry about that. How embarrassing.
No worries. It's happened often enough before that I know to recognise it as a typo.
if there's a weight threshold below which a girl would cease to paralyse your arm by lying on it.
No.
if there's a weight threshold below which a girl would cease to paralyse your arm by lying on it.
Depends on the magnificence of your muscles.
87: Given that I can put my own arms to sleep simply by lying in the wrong position, unless by 'bulimia dividend' you mean 'about two pounds.'
Moroni was the son of Mormon. The Morons are a splinter group, sort of the way Christians are a spinoff of Judaism.
Boney Morini was pobably unrelated, unless she was like Oudemia's skinny guinea.
If you want art criticism that's all over the place, try Hieronymous Bosch criticism. Interpretations are all over the map. And his stuff isn't the kind of thing you can describe as pure visual forms, or exercises in light and shadow, or anything like that.
so that the male audience can see her tits *and* her ass.
But not the female audience? Are their eyes tastefully averted?
But not the female audience? Are their eyes tastefully averted?
No, their gaze is distracted by the string of pearls and other baubles in the bedroom.
Alright, which one of you got a job in the Clark University Office of Residential Life?
All kidding aside, I know that a lot of the push for gender-neutral housing at Br/andeis is coming from gay and transgender students, since some of them would be a lot more comfortable if they were able to live with someone of the opposite sex. This is especially an issue for people who are transgender and don't feel comfortable outing themselves to Residence Life in order to get housing accommodations.
101: Which reminds me that I suppose the real issue is the weight of the head.
101: Cat owners know that it takes only the weight of the daintiest paw to set entire limbs to numbness... until breakfast time.
