Naughty bits and the artist
Abelina Galustian says of her painting Womansword [left, detail] that she is “commenting on the absurdity of gender roles in Orientalist paintings. My attempt is to sound an alarm to women around the world and let men see a different perspective of sexist issues.” [From artist statement on her site womansword.com]
The original source painting Galustian used is “Purchasing a Slave” by Stanislav von Chlebovski, 1879, with - of course - a woman, not a man, as the slave.
While more or less naked women in art may often be erotic - and, especially in commercial art and film, “sex sells” [as someone may have pointed out already] - making that art may not necessarily be sexy for the artist.
In her blog post Wieners & Buns Stateside, designer Susan Kirkland [author of Start and Run a Creative Services Business] notes, “Spending three to six hours a week with a nude model in figure drawing and painting wasn’t sexual; it was hard work in charcoal and terra cotta pencil..”
She goes on to recall what happened when she showed her porfolio to an art director at a small ad agency: “His comments got icy cold when faced with [male] full frontal nudity. ‘I don’t think this is necessary, it’s distasteful.’ I was very polite and asked, ‘Would you think it’s distasteful if it was a female nude?’
“He stopped to think, realized his prejudice and recovered quickly, ‘No, you’re right. I wouldn’t find it distasteful if it was female. I’ll have to think about this.’ Then he gave me my first freelance assignment.”
That taboo endures: one of the still notorious aspects of films like The Piano (1993, directed by Jane Campion) is the inclusion of full frontal male nudity.
Playwright Arthur Miller commented, “Sex is the most compressed set of circumstances that we’ve got. Everything is in that collision… The more sex the better. It may be a good thing to get it out in the open.” [More of his quotes on the page: sexuality]
One of the enduring and real values that artists contribute to culture is to help destroy constricting taboos. Maybe we need more “naughty bits” in art, not less.
