I like boring things. |
A bit of a rant
Now, first of all, I haven’t been updating in so long because I’m quite busy with school. Second of all, I need to make this update because I am absolutely furious and frustrated about this issue. Google has recently deemed Femme Femme Femme as ‘inappropriate’. This blog is a wonderful art blog, celebrating the female form in art. Google saw that many of the works posted are of nude women so it unrighteously slapped this term on it! This blog is unique in its way that it celebrates all sorts of female body shapes in contrary to the the mass of fashion blogs that are posting nothing but gazelle-like, woman with thin stem-like legs and endless limbs. Personally, I am a fan of these women, they’re so unnatural in their presence and amazingly elegant (though not all..) but I also love women who seem to have stepped right out of a Rembrandt.
Rubens – Three Graces
And why shouldn’t I? Why shouldn’t I love their cellulite? Why can’t I be proud of my flabby arms, my stubby legs and my non-existing breasts that are such a big contrast with my full thighs? I feel that Femme Femme Femme is such a wonderful relief compared to our Special K commercials and anti-ageing ads and I feel cheated and personally offended that it has been flagged with inappropriate content! Oi, let’s celebrate the female body here then?
Eduard J. Steichen – In Memoriam
I absolutely love how this photo makes the female body something abstract and how everything here revolves around the composition rather than anything else.
Though quite unrealistic I feel that Cranach really understands the elegance of women.
This sketch by Klimt is actually called ‘fat woman seen in frontal aspect’. Here you can see that woman who are deemed ‘fat’ can also be gorgeous.
Another gorgeous Klimt sketch.
These are the works I think about when I think of a great use of female nude in art.
Picasso’s weeping women
Both from around the time when he made Guernica, my favourite Picasso era. Deliciously beautiful in my eyes!
Greer Lankton
Greer with dolls by Nan Goldin (?)
I came across Greer Lankton when googling about Candy Darling. Her freak-dolls immediately caught my eye and her doleful, forlorn appearance attracted me more to her (I can’t help it; it’s my nature to be interested in sad people). I quickly found out (thank you Google and Wikipedia!) that she grew up in a Presbyterian family and was born as Greg Lankton. Despite her family’s religion her father (a minister nonetheless!) paid for her sexual reassignment surgery when she was 21. Greg, naturally, got teased as a child for being too feminine and it seems she escaped in her own world by making dolls. She started making her dolls at the age of ten and started taking it seriously at around seventeen. Her transexuality has influenced her work immensely and most of her dolls resemble in one way or another. It seems as if every doll is another piece of her character. Other than that she also made dolls of Candy Darling, Patti Smith, Divine, Diana Vreeland and other heroes of her.
Her work was so visceral, so exposed, that I once told her it was like an operation without anesthesia.- Nan Goldin
(The doll on the left is Divine)
I’d like to add that Greer reminds me of Louise Bourgeois with her doll making and ostentatious way of trying to rid traumas by her art. But Mrs. Lankton does it so sensitively that her work surpasses by far anything that Louise has ever done. (For me at least.)
(The image on the right is of a doll inspired by Diane Vreeland)
Greer was also a muse to other artists such as Peter Hujar (yes, again) and Nan Goldin.
Greer by Nan Goldin
Greer’s legs by Peter Hujar
Greer, sadly, struggled with anorexia and drug addiction for many years and eventually died on November 18, 1996, of an overdose.
Greer by Peter Hujar