Art as the Erotic - Marcella

Chase Coble
Art as the Erotic
How We Observe Sex in Art
Curated by Chase Coble  
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Marcella, 1909-1910
"I hope that we can create a fruitful new school and convince many new friends of the value of our efforts."  - Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

 The above describes the joint-efforts of Ernst Kirchner and three other German artists who created the Art movement known as Die Brücke (The Bridge). The movement's goal was to coerce artists to live according to the "savage" lifestyle - free from all urban and otherwise modern influence. 

 Freedom being the chief principle of the Die Brücke, the artists also wished to embrace sexual freedom. Determining that the people of Malaysia and Polynesia were to be considered "primitive," the artist believed them also to be openly promiscuous - largely a misinterpretation. The reductionist interpretation these artists assumed gave rise to the number of Asian women depicted in Die Brücke paintings.

 Kirchner's Marcella would unequivocally fall under the aforementioned category. His subject, presumably Marcella, sits both cross-armed and legged atop a van Gogh reminiscent seat-cover. Observe the "discordant hues." Kirchner gives the pre-pubescent girl many markers for innocence: the school ribbon, her flattened chest, and large benevolent eyes, which opposes the nature of her profession - prostitution. This feeling of innocence breaks down further with the extremely suggestive nature of the painting. Under Kirchner's pretense of "studying the nude in all its simplicity," we have little basis to believe that this subject-painter relationship was strictly fantasy.
  • 8:00 AM

Art as the Erotic - The Ecstasy of St. Teresa

Bernini

Art as the Erotic
How We Observe Sex in Art
Curated by Chase Coble 
Bernini, The Ecstasy of St. Teresa, 1647-52
Arguably one of Bernini’s most controversial sculptures, The Ecstasy of St. Teresa depicts the nun’s spiritual vision. St. Teresa recounts her religious vision as distinctly physical and quite sexual.

Beside me, on the left, appeared an angel in bodily form.... He was not tall but short, and very beautiful; and his face was so aflame that he appeared to be one of the highest rank of angels, who seem to be all on fire.... In his hands I saw a great golden spear, and at the iron tip there appeared to be a point of fire. This he plunged into my heart several times so that it penetrated to my entrails. When he pulled it out I felt that he took them with it, and left me utterly consumed by the great love of God. The pain was so severe that it made me utter several moans. The sweetness caused by this intense pain is so extreme that one cannot possibly wish it to cease, nor is one's soul content with anything but God. This is not a physical but a spiritual pain, though the body has some share in it—even a considerable share.
I wonder what her father would have thought? Bernini plays upon her words and her story, and depicts an interesting congress. The artist produces a work that forces the viewer to witness the Saint’s sexuality and spirituality. But which of the two are more apparent? Just like in the Saint’s recounting of her vision, one finds difficulty in discerning which of the two themes has a sharper tone. I’ll leave that question to the individual. 

Above the limp Saint an angel readies his spear to penetrate. Teresa’s mouth is agape, moaning. Her arms fall to the ground while her legs are slightly opened. She is totally vulnerable. Her ecstasy is made all the more evident by the sculptor’s inclusion of rays of light beaming down from the heavens. These rays ask the Saint to savor her ecstasy and blessing – and she does.
  • 8:00 AM

Art as the Erotic - Naked Portrait with Reflection

20th Century

Art as the Erotic
How We Observe Sex in Art
Curated by Chase Coble 
Lucian Freud, Naked Portrait with Reflection, 1980

Lucian Freud, grandson to the famed neurologist Sigmund Freud, often examined the relationship between model and painter. Again, as in Dejeuner sur l’herbe we must pay close attention to the distinction between nude and naked. Freud describes his models as naked, implying his personal observations of the model, furthermore his method as witnessing the human form as flesh. His 1980 Naked Portrait with Reflection examines this relationship under sexual pretenses.

Our model sinks in a deteriorating couch, and her body language mirrors that tiredness. The viewer is given an extremely analytical perspective of her body. We witness the rawness of her skin, appearing thin and easily bruised. She seems lithe with her muscles looking relaxed, and we can see the areas of her body that hold excess fat. The nature of her positioning would indicate either sexual arousal or satisfaction, but which is it?
Freud’s inclusion of the reflection of his own feet in the upper right-hand corner of the painting lends an interesting commentary. We can assume one of two possibilities about this inclusion – the artist’s feet either emit a predatory element or a finished sexual encounter. First we should examine the likelihood of a finished reconciliation between the artist and model. 

Our model’s relaxed nature would lend itself to satisfaction, while the artist’s seemingly quick departure from the interaction would point towards his dissatisfied emotion. Maybe he suffers from a spell of “La petite mort.” Yet, the predatory nature of his feet, looking ready to move, would imply the artist’s arousal and want. Our model’s relaxation can thus be seen as acceptance and openness to the advance.          

  • 8:00 AM

Art as the Erotic - The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors

20th Century
Art as the Erotic
How We Observe Sex in Art
Curated by Chase Coble 
Marcel Duchamp, The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass), 1915-1923
Following Marcel Duchamp’s self-designated three month “exile” in Munich, which he would later call “the scene of [his] complete liberation,” he envisioned his seminal work, The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass). Assuming that much of his preceding works specifically, The Passage from Virgin to Bride and Nude Descending Staircase, concerned the “passage” of a woman through both space and sexual status, the Large Glass mechanized and detached it.

Duchamp made sex analogous to mechanical process.

Large Glass asked the viewer to understand “passage” as a liquid, or as Duchamp called it “love gasoline,” from the lower section to the upper, where the Bride was working as the “motor.” The lower section includes a number of suitors working as “sex cylinders” struggling to move their fuel to their target. The generator or “magneto” that was the Bride sparked the suitors’ fuel. Duchamp asks us to contemplate not the allure and hidden nature of sex, but the actual mechanics constituting the act. The medium of the work, glass, implies fluidity and liquidness.

What truly made Large Glass so revolutionary was the absence of discernable a subject. Whereas Manet subverted tradition by giving us an actual subject, not an ideal, Duchamp deconstructed the actual need for one. We witness the human form as a mechanical instrument that facilitates reproduction.

  • 8:00 AM

Art as the Erotic - Le Déjeuner Sur l'Herbe

19th Century
Art as the Erotic
How We Observe Sex in Art
Curated by Chase Coble
Edouard Manet, Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe, 1863
Edouard Manet’s Dejeuner sur l'herbe was immediately met with crticism by the Salon, and would in fact become the focal point of the heavily criticized Salon des Refuses in 1863. But why was this painting met with such tribulation and given the moniker “taboo”? It was sexually confrontational.

Manet ascribed the painting’s composition to a now lost tapestry by the master Raphael – two men gathered next to a naked Venus. Yet, we aren’t observing a Venus, which was Manet’s exquisite subversion. We find our subversion in the nakedness of the model at the left foreground, mind the distinction between naked and nude. She is a woman, one that you could find walking the streets in Paris, and she is looking directly at us. It is her confrontational gaze that offers us a matter-of-fact description about her sexual desire. And, it begs the question, not what, but who is for lunch?

Manet places our model’s clothes also at the left foreground, and accompanies them with the classical allusions to sexuality - ripe fruit, broken bread, and copious amounts wine – a lunch party indeed. Manet taunts the Salon’s long held traditions by deconstructing all formality, placing sex and desire in open view. His brushwork makes us question what intangible line actually gives us the ability to think sexually, and why there should even be one.

Our naked model is the only subject looking at the viewer, and through this Manet has rejected any illusions towards her sexual readiness. This painting is sex, and we as the viewer are forced to appreciate that.

  • 8:00 AM

Art as the Erotic - Reverie

Art as the Erotic
Art as the Erotic
How We Observe Sex in Art
Curated by Chase Coble

Jean-Honore Fragonard, Reverie, 1771
By 1771 Jean-Honoré Fragonard had cemented his reputation for being the representative artist concerning the Rococo style, which by this time was starting to be considered passé. Nevertheless, in 1771 Madame du Barry, rumored to be Louis XV’s concubine, commissioned Fragonard to create his famed Progress of Love. In the series the artist typically depicts scenes of lovers frantically trying unite. Yet what of his Reverie, the only part of the series with one subject, what does this segment illuminate on the progress of love?

 Clearly, Fragonard subscribed to the ideal that “one must love themselves.” But before we examine the overtly sexual details of this painting, let us gently peruse the more vague hints Fragonard gives us.

 Our subject’s hair gently cascades and flows down her relaxed shoulders imparting a feeling of tranquility and openness. Her left arm indicates her relaxation in the moment, furthermore the relinquishment of her guard. She gazes upwardly, mouth agape with a clear sense of ecstatic pleasure. The positioning of her left leg furthers this entire feeling of readiness and acceptance. We, as the viewer, have been given an incredibly warm invitation.

We should get less subtle now. Notice the staging for our subject. She is sitting at the base of a long, thick, obelisk. And she seems to be in Reverie. 

  • 8:00 AM

Barcelona Chair

Bauhaus
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe made his lasting mark on the furniture world with his creation of the Barcelona Chair in 1929. The long venerated chair derives its name from its original debut at the 1929 International Exposition in Barcelona, a long awaited economic-boosting "exposition de talents" for Spain. Mies van der Rohe was undoubtedly most famous for his then directorship of Dessau's esteemed and progressive Bauhaus. Per Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius' teachings, Mies van der Rohe created a chair that would unequivocally emblematize Bauhaus furniture.
Mies van der Rohe, Barcelona Chair, 1929

So, how would one characterize the physical attributes of this groundbreaking chair, before it garnered its appeal? Simply, sleek, ergonomic, functional, and hopefully enduring - the enduring piece was more than realized. Taking a seat in this work of art, funny to actually put that in a sentence, you notice not only the comfort and intuitive design, but the minute details. Starting with the seating surface, Mies specified the incorporation of Spinneybeck leather, with each individual panel being hand-cut and hand-welted, not to mention the whole chair may only be cut from a single hide. The chair's stainless steal frame stands firmly as it is a single-piece construction, while also providing the ultimate durability. The designer then took the frame's construction a step further by requiring the steel be hand burnished to a mirror finish. The finishing touch comes by way of Mies van der Rohe's signature stamped into every piece crafted.

In the pretentious world of the furniture "who's who," Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona Chair sits atop the metaphorical throne. As one fictional furniture aficionado, Asterios Polyp, would say he's not a "pseudo-someone," and by having a chair as esteemed as the Barcelona Chair one sets their tastes apart. As with most all things wonderful, one must have the means. A prospective buyer would need to cough up $7,740 for an exclusively manufactured piece according to the designer's specifications. Not to mention, this hefty price-tag doesn't include the chair's paired ottoman. Yet, pretentious aspirations aside, the chair really would make a room, as well as a considerable conversation piece.
 
  • 12:00 AM

Muddy Alligators

Chase Coble
John Singer Sargent, Muddy Alligators, 1917
John Singer Sargent was the leading portraitist in both Great Britain and the United States at the turn of the 19th century. But, by 1917, when Muddy Alligators was finished, Sargent’s propensity for portraiture had dwindled. During the decrescendo of his portraiture output, Sargent began to pull away from his usual medium, oil, in favor of experimenting with watercolor. Watercolor seemed to be more emotional for the artist; in fact he suspended his work on a commission for John D. Rockefeller just to paint Muddy Alligators, arguably to provide him with some sort of relief from his perceived banality of oil.

In accordance with Sargent’s virtuoso approach, he sketched this painting four times prior to the final. These alligators, encrusted with mud and clay, presented an extremely difficult subject to depict. The creatures appear to be wriggling, frightening, and famished. Sargent would attempt to bring these large reptiles to life by cutting the canvas to accentuate their teeth, use a wax applicator to denote texture – think scales – and liberally coat the canvas with broad strokes to highlight tree trunks.

We must also explore the political bent Sargent could arguably be taking with these six muddy alligators. Sargent painted this in 1917, nearing the end of The Great War. He paints six alligators, as well as six representatives for the European superpowers: Russia, Austria, England, Italy, France, and Germany. Furthermore, it is acceptable to argue that he uses mud to allude to the birth of a new warfare, trench warfare. Quite literally these alligators are coated in mud, presumably like the many soldiers who fought in WWI, and the shadows of the alligators are “crossing the pond” at the foreground – much like the tentacles of this war did.

  • 12:00 AM

Music and Spring and All

Chase Coble
Henri Matisse, Music, 1907-1910
Henri Matisse painted a great number of pieces centralizing on the form of the human body. In this series, painted between 1907 and 1910, his figures can most commonly be found capering, playing, and making music. These works, at the time, were considered uncomplicated in both composition and color. Yet, Matisse’s work with the human form left an indelible impact on his successors.

“What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter - a soothing, calming influence on the mind.” – Henri Matisse

In Matisse’s series largely characterized by the human form, Music, stands closest to the aforementioned quote. The painter’s five subjects conjure a peculiar reaction: synaesthesia. The image possesses colors that are all exceedingly close in tone creating this pseudo-resonant effect, which gives its viewer a feeling of composite sound. The subjects complement this resonance by forming an even more musical cadence, rising and falling across the painting.

William Carlos Williams’ 1923 poem Spring and All parallels Music in an unconventional way. Now, one could relate a poem like Langston Hughes’ Life is Fine to Music, through highlighting the metaphorical rise and fall of Hughes’ narrator with Matisse’s oscillating subjects. Yet, Williams’ poem of awakening and self-awareness more closely parallels what Matisse accomplished in Music. Williams’ prose forms a gradual crescendo of activity; from a wintery, cold, and desolate setting, to a livelier and less ominous one. Music’s subjects mimic this crescendo perfectly, moreover they parallel Williams’ object in their battle against the ground.

Spring and All
By the road to the contagious hospital
under the surge of the blue
mottled clouds driven from the
northeast -- a cold wind. Beyond, the
waste of broad, muddy fields
brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen

patches of standing water
the scattering of tall trees

All along the road the reddish
purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy
stuff of bushes and small trees
with dead, brown leaves under them
leafless vines --

Lifeless in appearance, sluggish
dazed spring approaches --

They enter the new world naked,
cold, uncertain of all
save that they enter. All about them
the cold, familiar wind --

Now the grass, tomorrow
the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf

One by one objects are defined --
It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf

But now the stark dignity of
entrance -- Still, the profound change
has come upon them: rooted they
grip down and begin to awaken

  • 3:13 PM

Manao Tupapau

Chase Coble
Paul Gauguin, Manao tupapau, 1892
Paul Gauguin desired an escape from Europe, but more specifically from France. Yet, as evinced in his own notes, he was unable to truly ever escape French rule due to his regrettably poor ability to speak any other language. Subsequently, Gauguin would be restricted to only journey the colonies of France.

Within his travels Gauguin’s subjects were most commonly brown, sometimes Samoan, and almost always youthful women. Any critic who would endeavor to cut down Gauguin’s work would almost certainly attack the ostensible flaws, sexism and racism. And accordingly a critic would almost always choose to first examine his most famous work, Manao tupapau, to bolster their arguments.

Through even the most perfunctory reading of Gauguin’s exceedingly abundant narrative/commentary on his life in the isles of French colonized Tahiti, Martinique, and Polynesia, one can understand the reductive quality of the aforementioned criticism.

The two principle reasons Gauguin painted M.t. were to address his distaste for Manet’s Olympia and his ambivalence concerning colonialism. Manet’s Olympia possesses a subject described by many as seductive, inviting, and erotic. Olympia’s viewers feel solicited, if not appealed to come into Olympia’s bed to enjoy her pleasures.

Gauguin expresses his disfavor of this female allurer by making M.t’s viewers feel almost shameful for the entreaties. Tehura, Gauguin’s long-time mistress and subject for M.t., lies frightfully on her stomach exactly opposite the stance of Olympia. Her face evokes auras of fear, abandonment, and contempt – also directly contrasting Manet’s subject. M.t.’s viewer cannot feel the same invitation, if anything he should feel rejection and scorn.

So, what else can we glean from M.t. on the subject of colonialism? With Tehura serving as any indicator, we simply understand that we can’t empathize with her strife. The viewer’s occupation of her home, and attempt at her, cannot be comprehended from the recipient’s end – colonialism can’t be understood via Colonizers to Colonized. Also, let the viewer begin to question the significance of the ominous figure overseeing Tehura. Dark, without discernable shape, and alarming; Gauguin’s reflection on colonialism should be overt.
  • 12:00 AM

Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève

Architecture
Henri Labrouste, Bibliotheque Sainte-Genevieve, 1839-1842
Henri Labrouste’s architectural career was sparked, and consequently defined, with his first public commission, Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève. From 1839 to 1842 the architect worked methodically on his deign for what would signal a new movement in the architecture world at large – eclecticism. The building’s highly anticipated opening for public use occurred in 1851.

The library was devised as a quasi-basilica attributed to the Roman mode, with principal foundation as a prolonged rectangle. The book stacking on the ground floor mirrors the facade's harsh rustication outwardly. Labrouste’s second floor in his monumental library contains an immense reading-room, and can be accessed by a staircase block, which extends centrally from the rear façade. The stairway highlights Labrouste’s mathematical prowess, for a viewer is afforded the ability to supervise any point of the reading-room opposite the entrance.

Of the most astonishing features of the library, the structure of the reading-room stands apart. For the first time in a monumental structure exposed iron framing was employed for aesthetic value. The huge frame is comprised of intricately decorated arches and piers. Along with these iron works, the colossal arhced windows cover the walls of the Library. These large windows let in ample amounts of natural light, which produce an interesting skeletal shadow when shining on the meshing of the framework.
  • 12:00 AM

All Souls

All Souls
John Nash, All Soul's, 1822-1824
In the latter-most part of his architectural career, John Nash designed two churches of entirely different stylistic constitutions. The church that would receive the brunt of the criticism from his contemporaries, All Souls, would later find itself critical acclaim. Now, in the modern view, we can recognize the transcendence All Souls realized. Not only does Nash’s All Souls provide architectural ingenuity in its construction, but also in its ability to marry the two streets of Regent and Portland Place. It is through this adept marriage of the two streets that Nash exhibits his prowess.

At first glance All Souls’ primary vistas sharply tuck away the body of the church. But this “tucking away” effect has been achieved and compounded through the making of an ideal link beginning with the steeple and portico. All Souls’ steeple can be best described as the corrugated tapered kind, and is enclosed by peristyle of Corinthian columns.

Alternately, the capitals of the portico are comprised of an intricate meshing of the Ionic order. The capitals’ material consists of Coade’s pale terra cotta. An interesting removal of the structure’s original balustrade still leaves critics at a quandary, but it should be noted that the balustrade was made of similar material as the capitals – this can be discerned since the balustrade was removed shoddily.

All Souls’ interior adheres to the customary design of its contemporary Classical churches. Yellow marble columns meet its cornice while the gallery covers three sides. The high ceiling has a coffering effect about it and has been elaborately decorated with plaster moldings and sizable rosettes. The organ case, marble font, and Communion balusters can all be attributed to Nash’s original plan.

Around the middle of the Second World War, a bomb crashed through the roof of All Souls. This crash effectively destroyed the church’s interior and smashed the uppermost section of its spire. Credit for its repair should be given to restoration artist, H.S. Goodhar-Rendel.
  • 1:00 AM