Spirit of the Dead Watching by Gauguin

Maaaaan, I cannot even begin to express how much I loathe Gauguin but this is one of the main reasons that he utterly offends me.

Let’s add the art historian explanation, which is in itself sexist as well as incredibly racist. Also, I want to add that the girl here was Gauguin’s adolescent, Tahitian bride. Fun!

First Gauguin revises Manet, reworks his blunt scene of a Paris prostitute into an imaginary vision of a Tahitian “spirit of the dead”. He inverts the figures, substitutes a black spirit for the black maid in Olympia, and replaces the white body of the prostitute with the black body of the primitive girl. Gauguin also averts her gaze (this is crucial: Olympia returns our gaze, stares the male viewer down as if he were a customer), and rotates her body so as to expose her buttocks (this, too, is crucial: it is a sexual pose that Teha’amana, unlike Olympia, does not control–the implied male viewer does).

Primitive girl? Are you kidding me? I can understand that artists of this period had the ignorance to use the terms ‘primitivism’ to describe they used influences not stemming from the West, but the art historian who wrote this? This further perpetuates the notion that anyone and anything stemming from a different culture is lacking in intelligence and civilisation.

“it is a sexual pose that Teha’amana, unlike Olympia, does not control”
So am I taking this too far or is Gauguin basically picturing/romanticising rape?

Jurispudence by Klimt

I am seriously SO PISSED OFF at the rampant misogyny in many works of “great art” that I am going to occasionally post some examples to relieve my anger when I feel like it. Kicking off with Klimt! First off, I’d like to note that although the sexism depresses me it often doesn’t diminish the fact that I still love certain art works (sadly?). I do love Klimt’s search for expressing human repression and anguish but why are the evils that cause this so often represented by women? This happens so often in art (today still) and seeing women continually presented as a whore/angel dichotomy with nothing in between seriously alienates me.

Now let me open up my art history encyclopaedia and school course (doesn’t matter which because 97 percent of the time you’ll find the exact same view represented without any sort of doubt or mention of misogyny. I admit this is not entirely necessary to mention in a encyclopaedia as you can easily see so for yourselves but as said, this alienates me as a woman. It feel like my gender and consequently I have never and will never have any place in the art world, whether as a viewer or as an active participant/artist. The whole of the Western art canon is riddled with accepting that an artist is by default a white man.)

“These allegorical figures of Truth, Justice, and Law hardly assist the male victim, who, surrounded by octopus tentacles, is at the mercy of three furies of punishment (one sleeps obliviously, one stares vengefully, one winks asif on the take). Here punishment appears psychologized as castration: the man is gaunt, his head bowed, his penis near the maw of the octopus.”

“His very defiance was tinctured by the spirit of impotence” – Schorske

Males are always the victims, eh?

I do love how Truth Justice and Law are represented (vengeful, sleepy, winking) but why are they women and why is the victim a man? Though this is only one example you can find many, not of Klimt alone. This doesn’t so much show personal misogyny but a whole zeitgeist of sexism.

Titus Groan

Titus Groan is a tale riddled with an incomparable fantasy of an astounding encompassing imagination. Expansive but hardly ever trite. The Gormenghast castle is inhabited by the strangest, purest, sweetest, stupidest, funniest and most fascinating characters which are rare to find not only in daily life but in fiction as well. There is so much to be said about all of the impressive protagonists but I feel as if I’d start I’d never be able to end nor will I ever be able to astutely describe how wonderfully round and interesting they are. And funny. So funny.

Some quotes that I want to remember for reasons I shall never reveal :

At the mention of her father Fuschia closed her eyes.
She had herself searched – searched. She had grown far older during the last few weeks – older in that her heart has been taxed by greater strains of passion that it had held before. Fear of the unearthly, the ghastly – for she had been face to face with it – the fear of the madness and of violence she suspected. It had made her older, stiller, more apprehensive. She had known pain – the pain of desolation – of having been forsaken and of losing what little love there was.

‘Glorious’, said Steerpike, ‘is a dictionary word. We are all imprisoned by the dictionary. We choose out of that vast, paper-walled prison our convicts, the little black printed words, when in truth we need fresh sounds to utter, new enfranchised noises which would produce a new effect. In dead and shackled language, my dears, you are glorious, but oh, to give vent to a brand new sound that might convince you of what I really think of you, as you sit there in your purple splendour, side by side! But no, it is impossible. Life is too fleet for onomatopoeia. Dead words defy me I can make no sound, dear ladies, that is apt.’

…also know as the best compliment ever to have uttered everywhere in the universe and possibly several other dimensions. I also enjoy the criticism of the dictionary and how it imprisons language, deadens and stunts it. I feel the same, Steerpike. Albeit not to compliment two annoying and dim-witted creepy sisters.

…accompanied by a tide of white cats.

1.Mervyn Peak’s own cover design 2. Fuschia 3. Steerpike & Fuschia 4. Steerpike via (& also see more)