Lauren’s Beans

So we went to Paris, right? And I finally got to see a whole lot of the Paris museums.  In one week we basically zipped through a brief visual history of the most important works of art in Western Europe from classical Greek to contemporary art.  Now I’ve got to tell you what I noticed.  The second day we were in the Louvre, while contemplating Ingres “La Grande Obelisque” my husband Matt made an observation.  He said that he’d seen a lot of naked women that day, and that though they were art you really couldn’t get around the fact that they were naked and women.  It was rather obvious that he was right about the quantity of naked women but, what I got to thinking about was the absence of naked men which I think is more notable then the presence of naked women.  With the exception of the ancient greek and sometimes roman art they were rarely naked men.  What I noticed was that the naked men that were depicted, again with the exception of the ancient greek, were naked apparently not for the admiration of their nakedness per se but because the painting was obviously imitating greek art.  The naked men were almost always in action and usually had some very conveniently placed swords or other similar objects.  It is true that the naked women were very rarely identifiable women, these weren’t portraits of real naked women.  The naked women were usually glorifications of female physical beauty instead.  Which is I think the key difference between the two depictions: men it seemed to be the museums were saying can be naked but, their nakedness is secondary in importance and they are not objects of beauty, women’s nakedness, in contrast, is very often the central theme of the painting and usually considered an object of beauty.  What was even more interesting to me is this same distinction persisted throughout the brief history of art we experienced.  At the George Pompidou I must admit it changes a bit but, there still naked women are blatantly pictured as objects of beauty or desire whereas naked men though they appear fairly often are always grotesque or ridiculous (with the exception of one painting by Picasso…but still not depicted as objects of sexual desire).  Even more interesting to me is that even when the artists were women you found that the same thing was true.   Because for the majority of time men have been the ones painting it has been natural for them to paint women as the objects of beauty or desire….women are objects of beauty and desire for men.  So nothing strange here.  What is interesting is that with the advent of rising women artists that we do not see the opposite phenomenon.  Why do women as artists do the same thing as men?  Wouldn’t it be natural for a woman to paint men as attractive and beautiful in the same way that men have seemingly always portrayed women.  I mean I think that there are plenty of women, and women artists for that matter, that do not find men’s bodies disgusting.  In fact I think there are plenty of women that find them attractive, so why do heterosexual women only paint women as objects of beauty?  I don’t actually buy the argument that women are not visually stimulated and so that’s why. That they aren’t wired that way in the same way as men I will readily admit but, that women are not visually attracted to men whatsoever is a bald face lie.  Anyway so considering that painting naked men as beautiful is just not done, it is also not excepted practice. It’s not traditionally considered art. So here’s my theory…… at our current point in history if someone wants to be an artist he/she has a generally excepted path to take when depicting naked people….woman as object of beauty, woman as grotesque and scary, man as grotesque and scary (or perhaps just a bufoon). Man as object of beauty painted by a man is considered an expression of homosexuality.  Women depicting women as art objects is considered standard practice.  BUT if a woman began depicting naked men as objects of beauty not as grotesque, stupid or scary (I’m thinking like the male counterparts for Degas bathing women) I think she would cause some stir.  I think because it is not done…because in the art museums you do not see men depicted this way it would be scandalous to an extent.  I think the woman artist that decided to do this and do it well might just have a shot at notoriety.  Perhaps it is a sign of the backwardsness of much of the feminism that has changed our society to date.  As women became artists riding the wave of feminism, the same wave that saw women become doctors and politicians, these women have distortedly become male artists rather than female ones.  So that women artists, just as male ones, depict women as objects of desire.  It is as if a female artist must, in order to be an artist, renounce their essentially female view point.  So I guess I’m challenging aspiring female artists to take hold of the fact that they are women and depict men as beautiful, and to rectify the situation.