Summer Scene
7:00 AM |
| Frédéric Bazille, Summer Scene, 1869 |
I’ve looked at this painting a lot of times, yet the hilarity of it never fails to amuse me. If you weren’t aware, or if the thought hadn’t already crossed your mind - Frederic Bazille was, most likely, gay. What really gave it away for me was the blatant eroticism of a bunch of pale guys swimming together on a summer day. In a world dominated by female nudes and the male gaze, one could say Bazille’s Summer Scene was a breath of fresh air.
This painting is reminiscent of many bathing scenes (Manet,
Cezanne, and Matisse) yet so different from all of them. The first difference:
the men in Bazille’s painting aren’t naked. The act of bathing as ritual
insists that participants must be fully unclothed in order to become clean.
However, Bazille seems to have painted swimming trunks on his bathers almost
like an afterthought. Perhaps he thought the Salon just wasn’t ready for casual
male nudity yet, or perhaps he felt like the scene was just too suggestive.
Bazille’s figures are appropriately covered, but the lack of nudity isn’t what
gets me about this painting.
For me, the best (read: raunchiest) part of this painting is
the poses of the men. The “sky’s out, thighs out” attitude of this painting
makes it playful, yet beneath the playfulness is a seductive undertone. I’m
sure you’ve noticed Mr. “Paint-Me-Like-One-Of-Your-French-Girls” in the center
of the painting, carefully watching two strapping young men partake in a manly
display of romping. And then there’s our friend leaning against the tree on the
left, à la Calvin Klein advertisement. There’s something open, flamboyant and just fierce about these men. For now we can just enjoy the summer air on our bare
backs and the cool water on our skin with these guys.
0 comments