.
Life is full of the unexpected. When I got up this morning I never expected to feel a chill in the air, all around the house, like the threat of autumn, like the end of summer, so soon. It was unexpected, and unwelcome.
I never expected to see a three-legged dog tottering past me on the way back from the shop. I never expected to see Steve The Greek propped up in his corner of the shop at such an early hour. I never expected the Guardian to be sold out, all bar one copy, before 10.30am.
I hadn’t expected the weekend to be so full of ups and downs. For the past two years the Gloucester Rhythm & Blues Festival has been nothing but fun and enjoyment, all the way. I certainly hadn’t been expecting to find Gloucester looking and feeling so tatty, so shabby, so desperately dying to have fun and not knowing how to.
It was like the six young women in the over-priced restaurant on Saturday evening, sitting around a table all wearing identical pink sashes and pink rabbit ears, looking faintly ludicrous, desperately wanting to have a good time, but knowing really, in their hearts, that it was impossible in such a place, with its total lack of atmosphere, and mediocre food.
As recently as last year Gloucester had seemed like a reasonably thriving small city, with good crowds of people turning out to enjoy various blues bands and some great musicians and singers in the open air, and in various venues around the place over the course of a weekend.
This year the very hotel I’d stayed in two years ago was closed down, with paint peeling from its walls and windows. A couple of the larger shops had also closed down. Loud, drunken voices echoed around the otherwise deserted shopping precincts, with their dead, dreary chain stores and their Summer Sale signs. I hadn’t been expecting any of that.
On the other hand, I hadn’t expected to find such a wonderful, perfect place to stay overnight on Saturday as Painswick. In the past, traveling in France and Italy, and also in England, I’ve managed to strike lucky with finding excellent overnight accommodation, even when searching in the early evening time. I thought my luck had run out.
Motoring into the nearby Cotswolds I picked at random from the road atlas a large village called Painswick, which I’ve never even heard of, to look around for B & B. My idea of a perfect B & B is a Georgian or Victorian country inn or hotel, set in lovely countryside, where there’s a bar serving excellent cask-conditioned ale, and where there are comfortable, quiet bedrooms.
The Falcon is such an inn. A sign outside said, “Rooms available. Great Rates.” And so there were. Or at least there was one - the very last one. I definitely hadn’t expected to find a place that was not only brilliant but also very cheap. It was heaven sent.
The weather on Saturday had also been unexpectedly sunny and warm. The forecaster had confidently predicted the opposite. Sunday morning was also bathed in wonderful sunshine, and was almost hot, even up there in the Cotswold hills.
Painswick was an unexpected treat, an incredibly beautiful Cotswold stone village, with every street full of lovely buildings, hanging baskets, and people. The Anglican church was stunning, set in a unique large churchyard full of 99 beautifully pruned, cut and shaped yew tress, which range in age from 200 to 400 years. There were three different exhibitions by local artists, designers and craftsmen in various parts of the village. The place was unbelievable, and a photographer’s paradise.
The blurb in the brochure about the village gives a flavour.
Painswick is set in the largest Area of Outstanding Natural beauty in the country.
There is a variety of small shops in the village, as well as welcoming hostelries and fine dining. The seeming tranquility off the main route through the village belies the vigour and concerns of the 2,000 or so villagers, and the seventy clubs and societies they sustain. Look closely, and find evidence of a deeply caring community.
.
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The blues itself was wonderful, as it always is. Though it seemed a pity that the bands didn’t play on the open-air stage, like before. I didn’t expect that. The main venues were too small for the numbers of people who were hoping to be able to see as well as listen to the performers.
Mike Sanchez and the Portions, as ever, were fabulous. I’ve never seen a performer play with such gusto and panache, and such good humour. At the electric piano he does boogie woogie, rock and roll, and a whole range a stuff from Jerry Lee Lewis to Little Richard. It’s a happy man who finds his own voice, and in doing his special thing sees that he’s able to delight and energise crowds of people who love the music as much as he does, and love listening to it live.
He even makes a plea at the end for people to keep on going out to support live music. It’s his lifeblood.
I hadn’t expected people who were near the front of the stage, and therefore not under the large gazebos or inside the building, to keep on dancing and rocking when it started to drizzle, halfway through the Sanchez set.. There were some real characters there, though, who weren’t about to be put off by mere weather. So they got drenched, some of them, and still kept right on rocking and jiving. Long live rock n roll. Love live rhythm & blues.
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.
I hadn’t expected to hear some sort of food expert on the radio this morning talking about obesity say, “We don’t really understand the link between poverty and obesity”.
YOU DON’T??? Which fucking planet have you been on?
Have these people never heard of comfort eating and drinking? What’s wrong with them?
Let’s run this past again. Poor people with restricted opportunities to find fulfillment, success, a decent standard of living and contentment in life are more likely to suffer from anxiety, stress and depression and therefore are more likely to self-medicate with fatty and savory food and various sorts of alcohol.
They are less likely to live near a gym or health club, tennis club, golf course, squash courts, swimming pool, etc. They are highly unlikely to have the confidence or means to afford membership of any of these. They are less likely to have friends who might encourage them to take part in these activities.
Their working hours and childcare responsibilities are likely to severely limit their ‘leisure’ time and the time available for looking after their personal fitness and wellbeing. They are therefore far more likely to put on weight, and far more likely to find it difficult to work off the weight once it’s been put on. They therefore find themselves caught up in a vicious circle and a downward spiral towards even higher levels of negative self-image, depression, anxiety, lethargy, inactivity and obesity.
Is this fucking rocket science, or what?
Do they go walking on Dartmoor or the Pennines or along the coast? No. Do they go cycling in the countryside, or in Normandy and Brittany, like some of my friends? No. Can they even afford a decent bike, or have anywhere to keep one, where it‘s not taking up living space and won‘t get stolen? No. Do they have a vehicle with a roof rack or a strap-on device for the boot or tailgate on which to transport bikes to their healthy holidays? NO! Can they afford healthy holidays? NO! NO! Do they feel depressed about that? Fucking hell YES! DRINK UP! Have another slice of pizza! Have another kebab! Have some more chips!
And yes, there are individuals on low incomes who somehow pull and push themselves back on track, join local authority gyms and go to local authority swimming pools, and regain decent levels of fitness and wellbeing. But MOST people cannot, will not and do not. End of.
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.
It make me angry to hear experts declaring, with regard to people’s confidence to cook and prepare decent healthy meals, “Nobody teaches kids the basics.” Even though food is an essential part of everyone’s culture, as are mealtimes. Of course we fucking don’t. We don’t have time do we? It’s not a priority is it? We’re too busy cramming kids for academic tests and we don't have either the time or the intention to interest them in being able to make soup or a proper simple bolognaise sauce or even being able to cook a piece of chicken.
So no wonder kids go through the entire school system without learning a thing about food or cooking, without the confidence or interest to experiment and invent and be creative, and so finally they become people who resort to eating the mush you get in cans and packets and ‘ready meals’. Expensive mush, at that. As are all the ‘fast food’ takeaway 'meals' that people spend small fortunes on - the ‘kentucks’ and ‘big macs’ and ‘chop sueys’ and ‘spare ribs’ and doners and pies and chips and pizzas. So no wonder they get poorer, and more lethargic, and poorer, and fatter, and more depressed . . .
Monday, August 4, 2008
Friday, August 1, 2008
Layer 61 A Blogella
.
To read the final chapter of ‘On Chesil Beach’ took an early-morning hour of slow, concentrated effort. Having reached what is effectively (figuratively and literally) the climax of this novella in the previous chapter, what remains is simply the denouement - how will the characters play out the consequences of what has gone before?
The reader approaches McEwan’s ending with a sense of dread and foreboding, but still retaining, perhaps, a slight hope that events will play out for the ‘best’, that happiness and fulfilment is, after all, possible.
And yet we know (because we know that the writer will not cop out - he will not pretend that life is other than it is) he will confirm that the human condition is essentially tragic, and that life cannot be, and is perhaps not meant to be, a simple place where young lovers live happily ever after.
Sex, of course, is the problem. Without sex, life could be easy. Without libido, attraction, yearning for physical fulfilment and release; without arousal, desire for ecstatic pleasure, and the joining of spirits through physical bliss; without a need for transcendence through orgasmic satori experience, life could be so simple. Or so it might seem - to an ascetic, a logician, a virgin or a celibate.
The female character in Chesil Beach, on her wedding night, is, and wishes to be, all of these things. Not that she’s without passion and desire. But her passion is her profession, her vocation and her music; and her desire is to achieve perfection through the creation and the performance of the one thing she loves unconditionally.
Like so many homo sapiens she’s assertive, strong, fearless and decisive - when she’s at work on her beloved profession. She needs no advice and she doesn’t hesitate - she instinctively knows what’s right and what’s wrong. But like so many English women and men, when she needs to manage relationships and her own emotions she hesitates, she flounders, she frankly hasn’t a clue. She no more knows and understands her inner self or other people than she knows and understands the physical structure of atoms or the universe.
Why should this be so? How can university educated, bright young people with talents and aspirations be so socially, emotionally and spiritually dumb? Because that’s the way we do things here - it’s what you might call the English condition, rather than the human condition. It doesn’t have to be this way. Elsewhere, people do it differently. Not a lot, but some.
But what we have here are two clever young people who have been brought up to be emotionally illiterate, to have no understanding of their own feelings, emotions and sexuality. They have no words and no concepts with which to communicate, or to even think about these matters.
They have no idea that to become a mature, three dimensional human being they need to effectively have degrees in three different sorts of intelligence, and that IQ is not only NOT the be all and end all - that the pursuit of ‘academic’ excellence and intellectual refinement precludes, in most instances, the development of the other key intelligences. Locked for hours and days in the individual, egotistical pursuit of certificates and diplomas and degrees is no way to find enlightenment.
It's also precluded by the pursuit of money, fame, professional success, and any kind of material goal, when these things consume so much precious time that could be better spent on more worthwhile achievements. Like knowing oneself, understanding others, and developing the precious qualities of intuition, empathy, generosity, kindness, imagination and creativity, awe and wonder. Out of which love - unselfish, unconditional, unstinting love - might eventually emerge. But that’s not how we do things.
It’s a dog eat dog world, and the masters of the universe, our universe, have decreed these things should be otherwise. The hard-faced decision makers with iron and lead in their toxic and radioactive souls decided long ago that academic attainment, from which they themselves profited, obviously, should be the only goal of what they call education.
Oh yes, they pay lip service to what they see as the fluffy fringes of schooling - the stuff that can’t be tested, graded and sorted - like becoming a decent human being. But they don’t, after all, want others to have what they don’t have, which is rich human relationships, laughter, time to enjoy their loved ones, time to enrich the lives of others, time to relax and meditate, time to create and imagine, and time for fulfilling and mutually enriching sex.
It’s clear from McEwan’s book that none of the older characters has any kind of a sex life. They don’t even have any genuine enjoyment of one another on any level. Each pursues his or her lonely goals within the conventional social frameworks which they, and society, have created.
Not that sex could or would be a cure-all for the things that separate and divide the principal characters on Chesil Beach. Life is more complicated than that. Her background is well-to-do business-owning people with cars and servants. His is relative poverty, make-do and mend, and cramped, chaotic accommodation. She loves classical music and can’t see any merit whatsoever in any other sort. He loves blues, jazz and rock, and can’t see any merit in anything classical. And so on.
We know that love can transcend differences of class and background, and even cultural tastes. But when love hits the rocks, what resources have we to use that will help us to re-float our boat? What means of communication do we have that will allow us to work together, agree what repairs are needed, assign tasks, agree on how to be collaborative and supportive? And in times of crisis can we even be calm enough and patient enough to arrange a meeting where things might be discussed objectively, considerately, disinterestedly? Or do we resort to primitive instincts and let reactions and emotions overwhelm us - fight, flight or freeze? Of course we do.
McEwan’s genius, like any fine artist, is to wrap up the story without condemning either character - both of them have their strengths and weaknesses, their fine points and their faults, their guilt and their innocence. What they’re both guilty of is their age, their inexperience, their ignorance, their egotism, their incomprehension, their lack of communication, their absence of real inter-personal and intrapersonal intelligence, their lack of real empathy, intuition and emotional intelligence. None of which is their fault. In essence they are both victims, living in a world that’s run so badly, so incompetently, so utterly without the benefit of real spiritual intelligence. So are we all.
Chesil Beach is a hard place, though not without its own beauty. Nothing lives there, and nothing grows on that rocky, pebbly, bouldery spit of land between cold, grey waters. Even to walk there is difficult. You wouldn’t choose it for a beach holiday. It’s not really a beach at all. It’s nothing more than a barrier; and it’s desolate, it’s featureless, it’s barren, it’s without colour and it’s where nothing really happens, except the continuous pounding of the elements, of tides and wind and rain. It’s a bit like life as it’s lived by many unfortunate souls.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
.
And if you ever have any doubts that August is the silly season then check out today’s news as brought to you by the good people at Yahoo! Hold that front page!
* Rooney quizzed over spitting.
* ‘Big Brother’ Rex blows the food budget.
* Police hunt for British girl’s body parts in Brazil.
* Dad reveals Destiny’s Child may reform.
All of which rival the classic Sky Sports’ “Leeds in talks with unnamed player.”
Stop Press!
* Whale rescue in Hampshire!
* Thatch Croaks!
* Cameron shags pig!
(Which of these is NOT true?)
.
To read the final chapter of ‘On Chesil Beach’ took an early-morning hour of slow, concentrated effort. Having reached what is effectively (figuratively and literally) the climax of this novella in the previous chapter, what remains is simply the denouement - how will the characters play out the consequences of what has gone before?
The reader approaches McEwan’s ending with a sense of dread and foreboding, but still retaining, perhaps, a slight hope that events will play out for the ‘best’, that happiness and fulfilment is, after all, possible.
And yet we know (because we know that the writer will not cop out - he will not pretend that life is other than it is) he will confirm that the human condition is essentially tragic, and that life cannot be, and is perhaps not meant to be, a simple place where young lovers live happily ever after.
Sex, of course, is the problem. Without sex, life could be easy. Without libido, attraction, yearning for physical fulfilment and release; without arousal, desire for ecstatic pleasure, and the joining of spirits through physical bliss; without a need for transcendence through orgasmic satori experience, life could be so simple. Or so it might seem - to an ascetic, a logician, a virgin or a celibate.
The female character in Chesil Beach, on her wedding night, is, and wishes to be, all of these things. Not that she’s without passion and desire. But her passion is her profession, her vocation and her music; and her desire is to achieve perfection through the creation and the performance of the one thing she loves unconditionally.
Like so many homo sapiens she’s assertive, strong, fearless and decisive - when she’s at work on her beloved profession. She needs no advice and she doesn’t hesitate - she instinctively knows what’s right and what’s wrong. But like so many English women and men, when she needs to manage relationships and her own emotions she hesitates, she flounders, she frankly hasn’t a clue. She no more knows and understands her inner self or other people than she knows and understands the physical structure of atoms or the universe.
Why should this be so? How can university educated, bright young people with talents and aspirations be so socially, emotionally and spiritually dumb? Because that’s the way we do things here - it’s what you might call the English condition, rather than the human condition. It doesn’t have to be this way. Elsewhere, people do it differently. Not a lot, but some.
But what we have here are two clever young people who have been brought up to be emotionally illiterate, to have no understanding of their own feelings, emotions and sexuality. They have no words and no concepts with which to communicate, or to even think about these matters.
They have no idea that to become a mature, three dimensional human being they need to effectively have degrees in three different sorts of intelligence, and that IQ is not only NOT the be all and end all - that the pursuit of ‘academic’ excellence and intellectual refinement precludes, in most instances, the development of the other key intelligences. Locked for hours and days in the individual, egotistical pursuit of certificates and diplomas and degrees is no way to find enlightenment.
It's also precluded by the pursuit of money, fame, professional success, and any kind of material goal, when these things consume so much precious time that could be better spent on more worthwhile achievements. Like knowing oneself, understanding others, and developing the precious qualities of intuition, empathy, generosity, kindness, imagination and creativity, awe and wonder. Out of which love - unselfish, unconditional, unstinting love - might eventually emerge. But that’s not how we do things.
It’s a dog eat dog world, and the masters of the universe, our universe, have decreed these things should be otherwise. The hard-faced decision makers with iron and lead in their toxic and radioactive souls decided long ago that academic attainment, from which they themselves profited, obviously, should be the only goal of what they call education.
Oh yes, they pay lip service to what they see as the fluffy fringes of schooling - the stuff that can’t be tested, graded and sorted - like becoming a decent human being. But they don’t, after all, want others to have what they don’t have, which is rich human relationships, laughter, time to enjoy their loved ones, time to enrich the lives of others, time to relax and meditate, time to create and imagine, and time for fulfilling and mutually enriching sex.
It’s clear from McEwan’s book that none of the older characters has any kind of a sex life. They don’t even have any genuine enjoyment of one another on any level. Each pursues his or her lonely goals within the conventional social frameworks which they, and society, have created.
Not that sex could or would be a cure-all for the things that separate and divide the principal characters on Chesil Beach. Life is more complicated than that. Her background is well-to-do business-owning people with cars and servants. His is relative poverty, make-do and mend, and cramped, chaotic accommodation. She loves classical music and can’t see any merit whatsoever in any other sort. He loves blues, jazz and rock, and can’t see any merit in anything classical. And so on.
We know that love can transcend differences of class and background, and even cultural tastes. But when love hits the rocks, what resources have we to use that will help us to re-float our boat? What means of communication do we have that will allow us to work together, agree what repairs are needed, assign tasks, agree on how to be collaborative and supportive? And in times of crisis can we even be calm enough and patient enough to arrange a meeting where things might be discussed objectively, considerately, disinterestedly? Or do we resort to primitive instincts and let reactions and emotions overwhelm us - fight, flight or freeze? Of course we do.
McEwan’s genius, like any fine artist, is to wrap up the story without condemning either character - both of them have their strengths and weaknesses, their fine points and their faults, their guilt and their innocence. What they’re both guilty of is their age, their inexperience, their ignorance, their egotism, their incomprehension, their lack of communication, their absence of real inter-personal and intrapersonal intelligence, their lack of real empathy, intuition and emotional intelligence. None of which is their fault. In essence they are both victims, living in a world that’s run so badly, so incompetently, so utterly without the benefit of real spiritual intelligence. So are we all.
Chesil Beach is a hard place, though not without its own beauty. Nothing lives there, and nothing grows on that rocky, pebbly, bouldery spit of land between cold, grey waters. Even to walk there is difficult. You wouldn’t choose it for a beach holiday. It’s not really a beach at all. It’s nothing more than a barrier; and it’s desolate, it’s featureless, it’s barren, it’s without colour and it’s where nothing really happens, except the continuous pounding of the elements, of tides and wind and rain. It’s a bit like life as it’s lived by many unfortunate souls.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
.
And if you ever have any doubts that August is the silly season then check out today’s news as brought to you by the good people at Yahoo! Hold that front page!
* Rooney quizzed over spitting.
* ‘Big Brother’ Rex blows the food budget.
* Police hunt for British girl’s body parts in Brazil.
* Dad reveals Destiny’s Child may reform.
All of which rival the classic Sky Sports’ “Leeds in talks with unnamed player.”
Stop Press!
* Whale rescue in Hampshire!
* Thatch Croaks!
* Cameron shags pig!
(Which of these is NOT true?)
.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Layer 60 Klimt
.
It doesn’t seem possible that the Tate Liverpool's exhibition of Klimt is the first ever exhibition of his work in this country. Are we not a nation of art lovers?
How can this be? Perhaps this lack of interest in showing Klimt’s work has been somewhat connected with the fact that Klimt and the Secessionists believed that sexuality is the key to human liberation and fulfillment, and that a good deal of Klimt’s work is highly erotic and a celebration of the beauty of the female form. The current concerns manifested in the British media with sex education and teenage pregnancy are showing us, as ever, how much we still fear and tend to avoid explicit conversation and discourse about sex.
Like his contemporary, Sigmund Freud, and Wilhelm Reich, another resident of turn-of-the-century Vienna, Gustav Klimt focused a lot of his creative energy on the subject of sex and sexuality, and believed that sexual & emotional health and sexual fulfillment play a vital role in human wellbeing - more vital than wealth or status, more important than bourgeois ‘respectability’ and material comfort and security.
Our society’s historical aversion to full-on engagement with human sexuality in any mature way is reflected in the actual location of the Tate show’s semi-darkened room containing drawings of women nudes masturbating - with genitals, fingers and splayed thighs depicted in loving detail.
This small room, which is more like a room within a room, is situated right at the end of the exhibition, and visitors have the option of walking straight past it, and avoiding it, in order to go out of the exhibition, and into the bookshop and merchandise area, where there's a variety of Klimt shopping bags, posters, key rings, fridge magnets, vibrators, etc, on sale.
(I made that last one up. Though they say the Anne Summers shop in the main shopping precinct is selling an exciting range of Klimpt Klit Stimulators, specially commissioned to coincide with and cash in on this exhibition, which is pulling in visitors from far and wide - people who would normally no more visit Liverpool than they would New Brighton or Birkenhead.)
But truthfully, when was the last time anyone went to an exhibition and saw erotic drawings like these by a major artist, depicting this important but virtually taboo aspect of female sexuality? Surely nice girls don't do that kind of thing? Actually they do, but you'd never know it from the output of the world's best-known artists. Klimt is unique, in very many ways.
(To be fair, nobody does paintings of men masturbating either, but that’s another story. At least everybody seems to know that men actually do it, whilst women’s self-pleasuring remains a subject surrounded in mystery, even to many women, unless you happen to be into pornography, which his critics actually accused Klimt of being. ‘Accused’, you see. Like it’s a crime he committed by creating powerful images of beautiful and erotic women, no matter how willingly the models posed, and how much they presumably enjoyed posing, since Klimt was said to have made love to most of them.)
I remember how startling it felt in the Musee D'Orsay a few years ago to come across Courbet's incredibly naturalistic and highly erotic painting of a model’s genitals with her mass of dark pubic hair. Was it OK to stand there and stare at it, like you would any other exhibit? Interestingly no-one else did. Yet it's a wonderful picture, aptly titled "The Origin of the World". (L’Origine Du Monde)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27Origine_du_monde
And it was interesting to observe visitors, including pairs of young women, in the masturbation room in the Tate, where there were also some drawings by Klimt of couples in various stages of love-making. Interesting to observe their somewhat embarrassed and giggly interactions. Clearly, walking round in silence was not an option for cool connoisseurs, but neither was any thoughtful or normal conversation. The attitude seemed to be that one should either be embarrassed, indifferent to, or amused by the drawings. Like it was impossible to be turned on by them, see oneself in them, or just simply enjoy them for their artistic genius.
It was also interesting to consider whether Klimt ever developed any of these drawings into oil paintings - which seems highly likely - and if so what happened to them, and where they are now. And if he didn‘t, why not?
Could it be that to acknowledge that women masturbate would be to acknowledge that women enjoy sensuality, sexuality and orgasm? Enjoy them, need them, and desire them. And how difficult and dangerous would that be for so many men, the majority of whom in Klimt‘s time and Freud‘s time, and it seems often in our own time, are pretty clueless about female physiology and sexuality? Why else do so many women desire, enjoy, and often prefer, vibrators?
Whilst he also painted superb landscapes, and clearly enjoyed painting well-to-do women in fabulous dresses, Klimt didn’t shirk the need for the artist to engage with the sexual and the erotic in the quest to illustrate and depict the human condition, which after all is surely the foremost duty of any artist. Human love, tenderness, desire and intimacy are at the very heart of our lives, or at least ought to be.
Human sexuality is mysterious and yet enormously important for most of us, and the role of the artist is surely to shed light on the emotional and spiritual aspects of our instinctual drives. But how many of us have been enriched and enlightened in this way? How many artists down the centuries have been capable of engaging with such challenging subject matter? It’s impossible to see Klimt’s work and not reflect on ourselves, our sexuality, our desires, our ideas of beauty, our need for kissing, for intimacy, for holding someone close, for physical union.
One of my favourite Klimt paintings, Nuda Veritas, The Naked Truth, is very explicit. A curvaceous nude with lovely auburn hair cascading over her shoulders stands facing the viewer, with lips and legs slightly apart, holding up a round mirror, in which we see our own reflection.
She’s a tall, proud, unabashed figure, asserting her nakedness and beauty, her naturalness, her attractiveness. Her only adornments are a few white daisies, which she’s fastened in her hair. But she’s confronting us with the mirror - daring us to look in it and thereby become aware of our own reactions to her. So what are they? Admiration? Appreciation? Attraction? Desire? Fear? Embarrassment? Envy? Resentment?
She’s not being deliberately provocative - she just IS. As pure and innocent and unadorned as any living creature. Klimt is giving us the naked truth - about another human soul, and about ourselves - if we only care to look. Yes folks - underneath those gorgeous dresses and gowns, this is what women actually look like. Is this a problem? Is this pornography? Or is it a source of awe and wonder, joy and fulfillment?
The printed guide to the exhibition describes the city of Vienna at the turn of the century, and says it was a place where “Sigmund Freud’s theories positing sexuality as a liberating force were highly influential, contributing to an overarching atmosphere of eroticism.” It goes on to say that “Against this backdrop Klimt put the female form centre-stage, oscillating between the extremes of woman as immaculate virgin and sinful seductress.”
The oscillation is the interesting part. Klimt is too much of a realist to have a simplistic view of women as either virtuous virgins, wives and mothers on the one hand, or whores on the other. As an artist he recognizes that every woman contains within her all the stereotypes, and travels through life, whether or not she admits it to herself or others, somehow oscillating between all of them. A woman’s capacity to experience arousal and desire may be stunted or wrapped in chains and vows, but the point is that she has the potential to experience and express herself and her needs sexually. And this was not a commonly accepted view prior to Freud and Klimt and the Secessionists.
The Tate’s booklet tells us that Klimt’s drawings “record the artist’s private investigation and explicit celebration of female sexuality”. And this is where he was such an iconoclast and pioneer - not only celebrating female sexuality, but doing it so explicitly. And for this alone, if for nothing else, he deserves recognition and praise.
Some of the other great pictures in the exhibition include portraits of Hermine Gallia, Eugenia Primavesi, Joseph Pembauer and Helene Klimt. There’s also the stunning Adam and Eve, Judith II, and The Three Ages of Women.
Finally, there’s a reproduction of the Beethoven Frieze, at eye level around three walls of a room. And it’s a truly symphonic piece of work, with so many elements that are in turn elegiac, erotic, spiritual, carnal, joyful, melancholic, lyrical and simply beautiful. One of the newspaper reviews dismisses it as merely a reproduction and not worth including in the exhibition, but for those of us who’ve had to make do with looking at disconnected details in books, and who aren’t likely to be visiting the original in Vienna any time soon, many thanks.
http://www.tate.org.uk/liverpool/exhibitions/gustavklimt/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_Klimt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienna_Secession
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Reich
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/visual_arts/article4014012.ece http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/06/03/baklimt203.xml
.
It doesn’t seem possible that the Tate Liverpool's exhibition of Klimt is the first ever exhibition of his work in this country. Are we not a nation of art lovers?
How can this be? Perhaps this lack of interest in showing Klimt’s work has been somewhat connected with the fact that Klimt and the Secessionists believed that sexuality is the key to human liberation and fulfillment, and that a good deal of Klimt’s work is highly erotic and a celebration of the beauty of the female form. The current concerns manifested in the British media with sex education and teenage pregnancy are showing us, as ever, how much we still fear and tend to avoid explicit conversation and discourse about sex.
Like his contemporary, Sigmund Freud, and Wilhelm Reich, another resident of turn-of-the-century Vienna, Gustav Klimt focused a lot of his creative energy on the subject of sex and sexuality, and believed that sexual & emotional health and sexual fulfillment play a vital role in human wellbeing - more vital than wealth or status, more important than bourgeois ‘respectability’ and material comfort and security.
Our society’s historical aversion to full-on engagement with human sexuality in any mature way is reflected in the actual location of the Tate show’s semi-darkened room containing drawings of women nudes masturbating - with genitals, fingers and splayed thighs depicted in loving detail.
This small room, which is more like a room within a room, is situated right at the end of the exhibition, and visitors have the option of walking straight past it, and avoiding it, in order to go out of the exhibition, and into the bookshop and merchandise area, where there's a variety of Klimt shopping bags, posters, key rings, fridge magnets, vibrators, etc, on sale.
(I made that last one up. Though they say the Anne Summers shop in the main shopping precinct is selling an exciting range of Klimpt Klit Stimulators, specially commissioned to coincide with and cash in on this exhibition, which is pulling in visitors from far and wide - people who would normally no more visit Liverpool than they would New Brighton or Birkenhead.)
But truthfully, when was the last time anyone went to an exhibition and saw erotic drawings like these by a major artist, depicting this important but virtually taboo aspect of female sexuality? Surely nice girls don't do that kind of thing? Actually they do, but you'd never know it from the output of the world's best-known artists. Klimt is unique, in very many ways.
(To be fair, nobody does paintings of men masturbating either, but that’s another story. At least everybody seems to know that men actually do it, whilst women’s self-pleasuring remains a subject surrounded in mystery, even to many women, unless you happen to be into pornography, which his critics actually accused Klimt of being. ‘Accused’, you see. Like it’s a crime he committed by creating powerful images of beautiful and erotic women, no matter how willingly the models posed, and how much they presumably enjoyed posing, since Klimt was said to have made love to most of them.)
I remember how startling it felt in the Musee D'Orsay a few years ago to come across Courbet's incredibly naturalistic and highly erotic painting of a model’s genitals with her mass of dark pubic hair. Was it OK to stand there and stare at it, like you would any other exhibit? Interestingly no-one else did. Yet it's a wonderful picture, aptly titled "The Origin of the World". (L’Origine Du Monde)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27Origine_du_monde
And it was interesting to observe visitors, including pairs of young women, in the masturbation room in the Tate, where there were also some drawings by Klimt of couples in various stages of love-making. Interesting to observe their somewhat embarrassed and giggly interactions. Clearly, walking round in silence was not an option for cool connoisseurs, but neither was any thoughtful or normal conversation. The attitude seemed to be that one should either be embarrassed, indifferent to, or amused by the drawings. Like it was impossible to be turned on by them, see oneself in them, or just simply enjoy them for their artistic genius.
It was also interesting to consider whether Klimt ever developed any of these drawings into oil paintings - which seems highly likely - and if so what happened to them, and where they are now. And if he didn‘t, why not?
Could it be that to acknowledge that women masturbate would be to acknowledge that women enjoy sensuality, sexuality and orgasm? Enjoy them, need them, and desire them. And how difficult and dangerous would that be for so many men, the majority of whom in Klimt‘s time and Freud‘s time, and it seems often in our own time, are pretty clueless about female physiology and sexuality? Why else do so many women desire, enjoy, and often prefer, vibrators?
Whilst he also painted superb landscapes, and clearly enjoyed painting well-to-do women in fabulous dresses, Klimt didn’t shirk the need for the artist to engage with the sexual and the erotic in the quest to illustrate and depict the human condition, which after all is surely the foremost duty of any artist. Human love, tenderness, desire and intimacy are at the very heart of our lives, or at least ought to be.
Human sexuality is mysterious and yet enormously important for most of us, and the role of the artist is surely to shed light on the emotional and spiritual aspects of our instinctual drives. But how many of us have been enriched and enlightened in this way? How many artists down the centuries have been capable of engaging with such challenging subject matter? It’s impossible to see Klimt’s work and not reflect on ourselves, our sexuality, our desires, our ideas of beauty, our need for kissing, for intimacy, for holding someone close, for physical union.
One of my favourite Klimt paintings, Nuda Veritas, The Naked Truth, is very explicit. A curvaceous nude with lovely auburn hair cascading over her shoulders stands facing the viewer, with lips and legs slightly apart, holding up a round mirror, in which we see our own reflection.
She’s a tall, proud, unabashed figure, asserting her nakedness and beauty, her naturalness, her attractiveness. Her only adornments are a few white daisies, which she’s fastened in her hair. But she’s confronting us with the mirror - daring us to look in it and thereby become aware of our own reactions to her. So what are they? Admiration? Appreciation? Attraction? Desire? Fear? Embarrassment? Envy? Resentment?
She’s not being deliberately provocative - she just IS. As pure and innocent and unadorned as any living creature. Klimt is giving us the naked truth - about another human soul, and about ourselves - if we only care to look. Yes folks - underneath those gorgeous dresses and gowns, this is what women actually look like. Is this a problem? Is this pornography? Or is it a source of awe and wonder, joy and fulfillment?
The printed guide to the exhibition describes the city of Vienna at the turn of the century, and says it was a place where “Sigmund Freud’s theories positing sexuality as a liberating force were highly influential, contributing to an overarching atmosphere of eroticism.” It goes on to say that “Against this backdrop Klimt put the female form centre-stage, oscillating between the extremes of woman as immaculate virgin and sinful seductress.”
The oscillation is the interesting part. Klimt is too much of a realist to have a simplistic view of women as either virtuous virgins, wives and mothers on the one hand, or whores on the other. As an artist he recognizes that every woman contains within her all the stereotypes, and travels through life, whether or not she admits it to herself or others, somehow oscillating between all of them. A woman’s capacity to experience arousal and desire may be stunted or wrapped in chains and vows, but the point is that she has the potential to experience and express herself and her needs sexually. And this was not a commonly accepted view prior to Freud and Klimt and the Secessionists.
The Tate’s booklet tells us that Klimt’s drawings “record the artist’s private investigation and explicit celebration of female sexuality”. And this is where he was such an iconoclast and pioneer - not only celebrating female sexuality, but doing it so explicitly. And for this alone, if for nothing else, he deserves recognition and praise.
Some of the other great pictures in the exhibition include portraits of Hermine Gallia, Eugenia Primavesi, Joseph Pembauer and Helene Klimt. There’s also the stunning Adam and Eve, Judith II, and The Three Ages of Women.
Finally, there’s a reproduction of the Beethoven Frieze, at eye level around three walls of a room. And it’s a truly symphonic piece of work, with so many elements that are in turn elegiac, erotic, spiritual, carnal, joyful, melancholic, lyrical and simply beautiful. One of the newspaper reviews dismisses it as merely a reproduction and not worth including in the exhibition, but for those of us who’ve had to make do with looking at disconnected details in books, and who aren’t likely to be visiting the original in Vienna any time soon, many thanks.
http://www.tate.org.uk/liverpool/exhibitions/gustavklimt/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_Klimt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienna_Secession
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Reich
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/visual_arts/article4014012.ece http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/06/03/baklimt203.xml
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