Facts Are Facts

This from the Guerrilla Girls, 1989, Art Basel. I just did a long search of women in famous paintings. I searched for famous nudes of women. I searched for nudes of older women. It turned up what you surely already know. Most paintings of women in Western art are "White." I put that in quotation marks because I am not believer in the term, really. "White" was an invention. There were no "White" people in Europe. There was no, "Yo. . . my White brother." They all hated one another. The same is true of "Blacks" in Africa and "Asians" in the far east. 

But I get it.  Everybody does.  

Those women in Western art were mostly young, especially if they were nude.  Now you can call it a form of adulation, exploitation, reverence, or simply chauvinistic eroticism.  Makes no difference to me.  I don't see them as being mutually exclusive.  If you want to say it is a bad thing, O.K.  That is you.  If you want to say it is something else, that is O.K. with me, too.  There are naked men in paintings as well, and they are more often old than are the nudes of women.  I am finding that a curious thing this morning.  

What the Guerrilla Girls said in 1989 was a fact.  They had an agenda, of course, but facts are facts.  I wonder how those numbers have changed since 1989.  I'm sure they have changed drastically, times being what they are. . . . 

In my Lonesomeville project, I photographed both women and men.  I should have photographed more men, I'm now certain, but it more difficult and less appealing to me.  The men I photographed were all young.  Perhaps I had a certain amount of envy being no longer young myself, though I thought I was in almost every way.  But there was something else, too.  Having been a jock, I've seen naked men my entire life.  It is custom not to stare, I think, for it could be dangerous.  I never had the urge except when it was unavoidable.  Guys with giant peckers never liked to put them away.  Such things are difficult not to look at.  

"Holy shit--have you seen the cock on Pete?!?!?"

Mapplethorpe sure had a thing for them.  

In old paintings, though, you don't really see the giant cock.  Nor do you often see Verpa Erectus.  I think that is a correct term, though for some reason I want to say en flagrante.  I didn't take Latin in school and all that I know came from getting a degree in zoology.  Mostly, anyway.  

I'm not going to do a lot of research on this, but I do find it interesting.  What I also think--and this without looking into the facts--is that women artist make more images of women than they do of men.  You can correct me if I am wrong.  It is just my impression here on a spontaneous morning ramble.  I've always held (again without research or real evidence) that we, both women and men, like the female form more for many reasons.  Even gay men like the female figure if drag shows are a clue, though the vagina is absent and often off-putting to the gay men I know.  

As an aside, I find it fascinating that they still desire penetration, oral or anal, but only with men.  I, on the other hand, could not become Verpa Erectus for my own gender.  Still. . . $20 is $20!  Ho!  

But I stray.  I wander.  If I were to edit and rewrite, I'd clean this up quite a bit. . . but who has time for that?  I'm just thinking.  

She was a postal worker.  We shot together more than once.  She was really sweet and almost shy.  She was not young, but she was unconcerned with that.  Or maybe that is not true.  Maybe she still believed she was just as I have confessed I felt myself to be.  In every way, she was attractive.  I came across this photo yesterday while going through some digital files.  Its boldness confronted me.  It was really something.  But should I post it, I wondered?  I still do.  I liked this woman a lot.  She dated much younger men.  And she had trouble in her life.  She'd lost many things, including her house, and was moving into a trailer.  When I took photos in the studio, there was always as much talking as there was shooting, and I am a curious and good listener.  People tell me the most incredible things.  They will if you are kind and interested and can listen without interrupting.  People want to tell things.  They want to be heard sympathetically.  There is an underside to every life.  We are confessional by nature, I think.  Murderers, they say, always return to the scene of the crime.  Gamblers like to lose and murderers want to be caught.  Thieves, however, are a different story.  

So. . . here I've buried the lede once again.  I think there are people who only browse the blog, who click on it just to see and don't really read it.  Maybe they will scroll down the page, or maybe they won't.  I don't know.  But I like this woman and I hate what time makes of us. . . and yet. . . .  She was so many things at one and the same time.

I would like another studio.  I would like to do it all again.  I think I would do much differently this time around.