Weblog 268
April 3, 2011~ 12:00 am
Another week gone by and honestly, not much is new. (I was supposed to babysit Saturday evening, but my son-in-law came down with some nasty stuff, so 'dinner out' was shelved and the baby-sitting unnecessary.) Wayne and I did have a lovely repast at 'Silk Road'-- our favorite oriental restaurant, where the atmosphere is quiet, the decor classically spare, and the food is EXCELLENT. (Right now, I have one of those little cardboard 'take-out' boxes with the thin metal handle, nicely tucked inside my refrigerator.) I so enjoy left-overs! It's sitting in there right beside some linguini with Italian sausage I brought home from Calabria's on Friday. This is gonna be a good week for dinners!
(Live alone, and it's mostly sandwiches or peanut butter on bread with some Clementines, but his week I shall dine.) LOL!!
While browsing last week, I found a site with some interesting medical artifacts and saved an image (cropped and redone) of a anatomist's female figure complete with fetus, which is entirely removable. It reminded me of my 'Visible Woman' model I had when I was young. You could take out all the organs and see how things fit together and it also had a second 'pregnant front'- with a tiny pink fetus that fit inside. I remember how fascinated I was by that model when I was ten. The figure I saw online dates back a couple of centuries. I was immediately struck by how 'madonna-like' the woman looked.
That got me to thinking about how often women are depicted in one role or another.... madonna, whore, siren, femme-fatale, ditzy airhead..... on and on. All of them masks, all just stereotypes. Look at this wonderful mannequin head from the Art Deco era.
How would you characterize that? Aloof....remote... perhaps a bit snobbish? Certainly self-possessed and aware of her attractiveness, because she's done her face up quite a bit: she's complete with spit-curls, kewpie-doll lips and a beauty mark.
Compare that to the gussied-up, blue lace-draped face of a hauntingly formidable woman
which I found on a site that features hand-wrought masks of every sort by some very talented artists. How would you describe her? She's not the girl-next-door, that's for sure. She has more than a bit of self-assured hauteur and in that way, perhaps not too different from the Art Deco lady. Both are entirely....... unobtainable.
So what happens when something of beauty and desirability is also beyond reach? Right... that's when the anger begins to creep in, and that's when we begin to see women portrayed as either frightening, banshee-like GORGONS...
(that's another mask from the same site) colored in a kind of glowing RAGE, or just the opposite: a yucking simp...someone you'd see with a cell phone clapped to her ear, delighted by anything inane enough not to tax her brain with serious thought.
Here we have the most easily dismissed face of a 'silly woman'.... someone to crack jokes about. Someone who has no personal power and who only wants to have fun. Someone not a threat. Not a 'problem'. Dime a dozen.
Look around and you'll see them everywhere, mostly talking talking talking. Or flirting flirting flirting. About as exotic as potato chips.
Women and their masks. What's under there, anyway? (I think in a lot of cases.... nothing more than what you see.)
It's too bad. I prefer the older versions, but then, I love a mystery.
April 5, 2011~ 6:45 4m
It's dropped back a season again. Today we were in the midst of what looked (and felt) like early November, with temperatures in the low 30's, wind and rain on and off. Mostly gray, gray skies with skudding heavy clouds.
(Keeping in the 'lady images' theme) - I'd say it was a day like this....
pale face, austere. (Lovely painting, that. By Whistler.) Can't say I've ever viewed it before.
In casting about for some landscape to symbolize what this day and this weather's been like-- (70 yesterday, and I found myself throwing off all covers at 12 a.m. and turning on a fan-- only to plunge right down with the mercury again to freezing this morning!)--I instead found another compelling gray lady portrait.
She is indeed another embodiment of what this day felt like. I was curious about the picture since it's a Millais (painter of the Pre-Raphaelite 'Ophelia') and found that this was the young woman who would become his wife: Effie Gray. The portrait had been lost for years, then found covered in dust in an attic in 1972 in the home of a woman who'd been given it on her 8th birthday as a present from her mother. (Those amazing discoveries always thrill me. Why can't I find some priceless piece of art stacked in an attic? LOL!!) Anyway......back to Effie. This young lady had been the wife of Millais' mentor, John Ruskin, and they'd been married for nearly six years, the union had yet to be consummated. Needless to say... Effie and John Millais promptly fell in love and married (when she divorced her husband three years later) and went on to have EIGHT CHILDREN! (Wow! The girl was making up for lost time!)
I became even more curious about her prior marriage and did some online research. It seems Ruskin found her face beautiful but her body repellent. (Speculation has it that her 'maidenhair' or her 'monthlies' is what repelled Ruskin.) My money is on 'maidenhair' --since Ruskin went on to befriend Lewis Carroll and the two of them surrounded themselves with young girls and the rumor has it their attentions were less than 'kindly'. (So you see..... the weirdos have always been with us. They just dressed more fussily and cleaned up better once upon a time.) LOL!!
All that old gossip made for some very interesting digging this afternoon after I got home from work and stopping by to see Mum. I just love when some odd thing or another I find on the net leads me from one site to the next, reading and reading, learning new things. For all the nonsense on the internet, there is a great deal of beauty and information, so I forgive much of its silly indulgences when I balance it with that. Today's random search pointed the way to painting sites and biography sites--- images and bits of shocking information about folks who lived over a century ago and who made their mark in the arts. That's time well spent.
Also...... something I noticed about MYSELF when I was taking my teeth out earlier to soak. Sans teeth, I'll be darned if I don't look just like
Jack Klugman!
I'm not kidding, I'm the spittin' image! LOL!! (Oh Lord, I loved him in 'Quincy'...... and now......I AM HIM.)
***
(Return To Weekly Archives)
Another week gone by and honestly, not much is new. (I was supposed to babysit Saturday evening, but my son-in-law came down with some nasty stuff, so 'dinner out' was shelved and the baby-sitting unnecessary.) Wayne and I did have a lovely repast at 'Silk Road'-- our favorite oriental restaurant, where the atmosphere is quiet, the decor classically spare, and the food is EXCELLENT. (Right now, I have one of those little cardboard 'take-out' boxes with the thin metal handle, nicely tucked inside my refrigerator.) I so enjoy left-overs! It's sitting in there right beside some linguini with Italian sausage I brought home from Calabria's on Friday. This is gonna be a good week for dinners!
(Live alone, and it's mostly sandwiches or peanut butter on bread with some Clementines, but his week I shall dine.) LOL!!
While browsing last week, I found a site with some interesting medical artifacts and saved an image (cropped and redone) of a anatomist's female figure complete with fetus, which is entirely removable. It reminded me of my 'Visible Woman' model I had when I was young. You could take out all the organs and see how things fit together and it also had a second 'pregnant front'- with a tiny pink fetus that fit inside. I remember how fascinated I was by that model when I was ten. The figure I saw online dates back a couple of centuries. I was immediately struck by how 'madonna-like' the woman looked.
That got me to thinking about how often women are depicted in one role or another.... madonna, whore, siren, femme-fatale, ditzy airhead..... on and on. All of them masks, all just stereotypes. Look at this wonderful mannequin head from the Art Deco era.
How would you characterize that? Aloof....remote... perhaps a bit snobbish? Certainly self-possessed and aware of her attractiveness, because she's done her face up quite a bit: she's complete with spit-curls, kewpie-doll lips and a beauty mark.
Compare that to the gussied-up, blue lace-draped face of a hauntingly formidable woman
which I found on a site that features hand-wrought masks of every sort by some very talented artists. How would you describe her? She's not the girl-next-door, that's for sure. She has more than a bit of self-assured hauteur and in that way, perhaps not too different from the Art Deco lady. Both are entirely....... unobtainable.
So what happens when something of beauty and desirability is also beyond reach? Right... that's when the anger begins to creep in, and that's when we begin to see women portrayed as either frightening, banshee-like GORGONS...
(that's another mask from the same site) colored in a kind of glowing RAGE, or just the opposite: a yucking simp...someone you'd see with a cell phone clapped to her ear, delighted by anything inane enough not to tax her brain with serious thought.
Here we have the most easily dismissed face of a 'silly woman'.... someone to crack jokes about. Someone who has no personal power and who only wants to have fun. Someone not a threat. Not a 'problem'. Dime a dozen.
Look around and you'll see them everywhere, mostly talking talking talking. Or flirting flirting flirting. About as exotic as potato chips.
Women and their masks. What's under there, anyway? (I think in a lot of cases.... nothing more than what you see.)
It's too bad. I prefer the older versions, but then, I love a mystery.
April 5, 2011~ 6:45 4m
It's dropped back a season again. Today we were in the midst of what looked (and felt) like early November, with temperatures in the low 30's, wind and rain on and off. Mostly gray, gray skies with skudding heavy clouds.
(Keeping in the 'lady images' theme) - I'd say it was a day like this....
pale face, austere. (Lovely painting, that. By Whistler.) Can't say I've ever viewed it before.
In casting about for some landscape to symbolize what this day and this weather's been like-- (70 yesterday, and I found myself throwing off all covers at 12 a.m. and turning on a fan-- only to plunge right down with the mercury again to freezing this morning!)--I instead found another compelling gray lady portrait.
She is indeed another embodiment of what this day felt like. I was curious about the picture since it's a Millais (painter of the Pre-Raphaelite 'Ophelia') and found that this was the young woman who would become his wife: Effie Gray. The portrait had been lost for years, then found covered in dust in an attic in 1972 in the home of a woman who'd been given it on her 8th birthday as a present from her mother. (Those amazing discoveries always thrill me. Why can't I find some priceless piece of art stacked in an attic? LOL!!) Anyway......back to Effie. This young lady had been the wife of Millais' mentor, John Ruskin, and they'd been married for nearly six years, the union had yet to be consummated. Needless to say... Effie and John Millais promptly fell in love and married (when she divorced her husband three years later) and went on to have EIGHT CHILDREN! (Wow! The girl was making up for lost time!)
I became even more curious about her prior marriage and did some online research. It seems Ruskin found her face beautiful but her body repellent. (Speculation has it that her 'maidenhair' or her 'monthlies' is what repelled Ruskin.) My money is on 'maidenhair' --since Ruskin went on to befriend Lewis Carroll and the two of them surrounded themselves with young girls and the rumor has it their attentions were less than 'kindly'. (So you see..... the weirdos have always been with us. They just dressed more fussily and cleaned up better once upon a time.) LOL!!
All that old gossip made for some very interesting digging this afternoon after I got home from work and stopping by to see Mum. I just love when some odd thing or another I find on the net leads me from one site to the next, reading and reading, learning new things. For all the nonsense on the internet, there is a great deal of beauty and information, so I forgive much of its silly indulgences when I balance it with that. Today's random search pointed the way to painting sites and biography sites--- images and bits of shocking information about folks who lived over a century ago and who made their mark in the arts. That's time well spent.
Also...... something I noticed about MYSELF when I was taking my teeth out earlier to soak. Sans teeth, I'll be darned if I don't look just like
Jack Klugman!
I'm not kidding, I'm the spittin' image! LOL!! (Oh Lord, I loved him in 'Quincy'...... and now......I AM HIM.)
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