Archive for art
Dropping Appendages
So, today, on “sick” leave, I took my daughter to see “Roman Art From the Louvre” at SAM. As usual, we managed to completely miss the “concept” and started yawning immediately at the overpowering presence of imperial art. However, at one point, the thing no one was pointing out became perfectly clear. And my ten-year-old daughter wryly pointed it out first:
“All the men are missing something.”
The disease of the missing appendage (and the castration of the imperial Roman Empire) had visited statue after statue. From Nero, to Caligula, to Jupiter, it seemed that no man, and I mean no man, was left intact.
There was no mention of this phenomenon on the little audio headset. None of the docents would divulge anything. I couldn’t get a word in edgewise in the tour group I managed to hijack for about ten minutes. Not even the security guards, usually good for something in a moment of boredom, would condescend to having noticed anything er, missing.
What is the cosmic value of this? When Minerva is missing a forearm, Neptune a nose, and the divine Jupiter a penis? A penis? In the span of history, what’s a penis?
It’s just that when they’re ALL missing one…and Roman art is so…IMPERIAL…and the critics are saying it’s so IMPORTANT…and the penises are all MISSING…well maybe I’m not feeling it. Maybe I’m not mature enough.
I can’t help but picture it: does some art thief have a box of appendages somewhere, in a dusty basement? And what of it? I wonder if, in light of the power of the Roman Empire, the actual size of the human penis seemed insignificant, unable to approach the grandeur of the symbol? The icon not representing reality, as it were? Phallogocentrism, without a center, as it were? Perhaps the Emperor himself dispatched a randy thief to take the penises, and hide them away from public view, lest anyone know the truth…
I’d like to find that box of penises and put it on display somewhere, calling it “The Emperor’s New Clothes: A Study in Retro Symbolism.” I’d mount the missing appendages, next to representations of the approximate size they were believed to be, with metrics relaying the difference.
And there would be sausages for sale at the cafe (snicker).
Because we need mORe deconstruction
So, I believe deconstruction theory would champion those who lip sync on webcams, like Gary Brolsma and “Numa Numa.” Because taking apart the meaning reveals there is no center. That a lip sync of “Numa Numa” is just as important as the actual band who wrote and performed “Numa Numa.”
It’s why Andy Warhol’s perpetual soup can series is important. A copy of the real thing…because this shows us that there is no Original Campbell’s Tomato Soup as archetype. And thus we are free of all the other signifiers which bind us in False Centers of Meaning. This helps free our minds…(once we get done analyzing WHY).
And outside of the perpetual mirrors of lit crit madness comes Billy Reid with this WONDERFUL deconstruction of the IMPORTANT lip syncers of our time. By lip syncing himself in a self-referential lip sync.
Thank the gods and goddesses. I’m going to LAUGH now and try to get back to doing what I was doing before I thought I had to sound smart…
Lip Syncing To The Song
Death of Marat: Wizardry of Images
(Simon Schama’s Power of Art, PBS, Mondays, 10 p.m.)
“The Power of Art” with Simon Schama was a good diversion into the art history world for a Monday evening. But I take issue (and what else would you expect)…? Yes, I dare criticize the latest PBS art history guru in a way I would never DARE talk back to Sister Wendy.
The first installment in this 8-part series was regarding Jacques-Louis David, the so-called propaganda painter of the French Revolution. Above, his painting of the revolutionary icon and tyrannical figure Marat portrays the subject in Messianic light.
And Schama HATES David for propagandizing. Doesn’t forgive him one bit. One simply can’t use art for that purpose, he states, but why not? I ask. So what if he did, I ask. David was a product of his environment and his own mind, which was horribly scarred and humiliated. Of course he would become a devoted, if terrible, protector of those who would challenge the status quo which disabled him…of course David would paint Marat to look angelic, martyred.
That the image became associated with Revolutionary virtue attests to the mindset of the time, not necessary any artistic villainy. How can we place the artist under the jurisdiction of authenticity — when has art ever been done for art’s sake, purely, and not filtered by the response of the artist’s mind?
Of course it’s despicable. If David had painted Marat as he was: ugly, tyrranical, and plagued with a skin disease instead of milky-white, it would have been a different picture. But that wouldn’t have been true to what was going on in David’s mind, and THAT would have been a breach of art, in my opinion.
I’m guessing Sister Wendy might have something more interesting to say about David. Let’s bring her back, shall we…?
What’s more interesting about all this is the power of image to create reality. The artist, in this case, created an image with resounded with the desires of the French collective in 1789. David’s image of Marat may have been manipulative, but only so far as the collective allowed it.
Which just goes to show: be careful what you wish for…or what you dwell on…the universe may just hand it to you.
