Enrique Simonet – Anatomy of a Heart (1890)

I ❤ this so, so much.

Yeah, the rim light along the pathologist’s left shoulder lacks any vestige of subtly. And the two-point perspective is pretty much an attention-starved, sugar-rushed five year old running around screaming lookatmelookatme.

Simonet’s work runs a gamut of influences but his work is consistently unsubtle and painstakingly, hyper composed. The trick with this image is that whereas his work usually features large groups of people presented frozen in position to utter perfection, the stillness resonates here in a way that doesn’t contradict the material.

When you pay careful attention, you start to notice that the regardless of whether it’s clumsy or not the rim light actually causes both the texture of the pathologist’s jacket as well as emphasizes the masterful treatment of graded light on the walls; the unsubtle two-point perspective shepherds the eye across the frame in a way that upon first pass communicates the trope and upon subsequent passes patiently indicates small details, ex. the shape of the heart echoing the shape and heft of the sponge, the exquisitely rendered reflection in the wash basin and the green doodad in in the container on the window ledge.

I might refer to obvious influences: to Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp… but Simonet is actually far less out-and-out theatrical in his staging (I’m reminded of Tony Zhou’s ingenious contrasting of uninteresting framing/blocking in most current Hollywood multiplex fodder vs. the inimitable Akira Kurosawa); while the greenish hint of the woman’s skin is a quote from Caravaggio via Delacroix’s infamous amplification.

In effect, Simonet’s painting one-ups every single one of it’s antecedents. Not through any sort of Newtonian humblebragging but by wearing it’s love and respect on it’s shirtsleeve, demonstrating them through action instead of discursively holding forth on them. The truly great ones always seem to take a perspective on their own work reminiscent of brilliant folk historian Utah Phillips’ metaphor for the relationship between history and the individual:

Time is an enormous, long river, and I’m standing in it, just as you’re standing in it. My elders are the tributaries, and
everything they thought and every struggle they went through and
everything they gave their lives to, and every song they created, and
every poem that they laid down flows down to me – and if I take the time
to ask, and if I take the time to see, and if I take the time to reach
out, I can build that bridge between my world and theirs. I can reach
down into that river and take out what I need to get through this world.

Anastasia Chernyavsky – Untitled (20XX)

This image is fucking wonderful.

It’s also asynchronous with the rest of Chernyavsky’s work–which is muddled and features editing driven more by parental affection and a desire to bolster comparisons with Sally Mann any less by any demonstrably incisive curation.

However, I’m not as interested in commenting on all that. Instead, I’d like to address something else.

When it crossed my dash, this image was presented with the following attribution:

formerlyuncredited:

Anastasia Chernyavsky

Please do NOT reblog on sex/porn-blogs, only art photography blogs please.

Forgive me if I stumble here… but, while I feel both ill-equipped to articulate my objections, such no sex/porn blog caveats REALLY perturb the goddamn fucking shit out of me.

Although ideologically I take issue with copyright laws, it’s not that part of it that bothers me. Generally folks who are assholes about copyright laws tend to belong in the same category as bands who are assholes about file sharing, i.e. they fucking suck shit through a goddamn tube. But sure, if you don’t want your work posted anywhere without explicit written permission, that is absolutely the progenitor’s prerogative.

The part of it relating to either the tendency for stereotypical porn blogs to strip attribution/captions; or, worse: for entitled shitheads to project their creepy fantasies onto the images, is a reasonable motive for adding such a caveat. And by reasonable I mean I can’t really dispute it without sounding all #NotAllPorn/SexBlogs.

What irks me is this caveat is seeming tacked on as an afterthought meant to fill in gaps resulting from lazy and/or shoddy conceptualization.

First, there’s the question of what constitutes porn. In mid-1890’s Vienna, Klimt’s paintings were deemed pornographic. Same with Sally Mann and literally hundreds of other artists through history.

Similar to the exponential rate of technological advancement, the waiting period between art being deemed a pornographic outlier and it’s subsequent acceptance as art is shortening.

Which begs the question what the fuck is pornography even? The most insightful and compelling handling of the subject I’ve ever seen is Beatrix Preciado’s Museums, Urban Detritus and Pornography. (Note: for the purposes of this blog, I generally use the term ‘pornography’ in relationship to prurient and/or obscene materials without any sort of judgment with regards to merit and ‘porn’ in regards to prurient and/or obscene materials the creation of which is driven primarily by the profit motive.)

There are entirely too many Tumblr image makers who produce work motivated primarily by a profit motive–be it monetary or reputational–who although their work is porn dictate that the work not be reblogged to porn/sex blogs. (I’ve little but two big middle fingers and an emphatic fuck you to such wankers.)

Ultimately, my biggest objects is the simple fact that although it is never entirely possible to create an image that participates in the definition of the context within which it is viewed by an audience, all good and meritorious–by virtue of being good and meritorious, shapes enough of the context w/r/t how it is viewed/read that it will never suffer by juxtaposition with lesser/baser work.

So yeah, while I respect matters of consent more than just about anything, I’m calling bullshit. High art vs. low art snobbery is just as bad, if not worse than fucking puritanical prudishness–because art folks really oughta know better.

Lastly, the attachment of the caveat to the above image particularly ruffles my feathers because I see zero indication that the author of the work felt a burning desire to clarify that her work isn’t porn. Hell, it’s not even pornographic.

Thus, someone along the way felt the need to impose their own moral imperative on the work. And that pisses me off because this work not only doesn’t need such bullshit projections, it has no room for them.

Source: mujerypunto.cl

Source unknown – Title Unknown (19XX)

I’d have posted this because it’s solely one of the most creative positions I’ve ever seen.

And yes, it’s a textbook example of #skinnyframebullshit due to the diminution of the overall context; namely, the ostensibly male legs protruding into the lower left third of the frame seem to suggest this is a group sex scenario transpiring in some teenage parental basement recast as an after school late-60’s rock and roll shangri la.

Then there’s the young woman’s breathtaking expression: a blissed out surrender to overwhelming stimulus, mind-expanding chemicals amplifying the almost magical ability music has to vibrate the soul raised to a level of transcendent crescendos of physical pleasure.

I’m actually extremely curious as to the photographer responsible for this. I’d likely disagree with him on a number of technical considerations, but this single image causes me to suspect he probably considered the pleasure motivating the performance to be the point; not the other way round.

Come to think of it: add pleasure over performance to remember empathy to my list of commandments for pornographers.

Source unknown – Title Unknown (19XX)

This reminds me of both Man Ray’s pornographic self-portraits with Kiki De Montparnasse and Hans Bellmer’s test photos for the cover of L’histoire de l’oeil.

But it mirrors (along a vertical axis) the infamous Mapplethorpe photograph.

I’m fairly certain this post-dates the first two and predates the latter. As much as I admire Bellmer’s audacity in presenting the extremity of sexuality without ever losing site of the hunger for physical pleasure that motivates it and how much the clean minimial aesthetic of Mapplethorpe’s image speaks to me, I think this may be if not the better image out of the aforementioned cohort, it is the most interesting.

There’s a way in which it contradicts itself. The intimacy of the extreme and extremely graphic close up with the bracelet dangling from the wrist–at once both private (an intimate document) and public (a jewelry advert). There’s the way the hand on the left hand on the leg can be seen bracing with an implicit violence to administer greater force or a calming/reassuring means of facilitating connection through an intense physical experience.

Source: robotromis221168

Sapphic Erotica – Nicole Scott & Kimberly (2003)

Although hardly a good image, it at least contains elements that had they been deployed with a modicum of artfulness could have easily been great.

Part of what appeals is the scale, It’s what I’d call a medium shot and what other cinematographers would likely term a wide shot, i.e. it shows both women from head to toe in their particular setting.

Now, from the standpoint of composition, this image makes no sense. There’s all that open space in the left and although the texture of the wood siding is interesting (not to mention, causing both women to stand out from the background), the side of the house being more or less vertical with the center of frame demands the women be positioned at or between the vertical third lines and the frame edge. That is unless, you align the side of the house with one of the vertical thirds–bearing in mine what the presence and absence of the sun dappled open field does. (If the side is aligned with the left vertical third, a sense that the two are engaged on the sly; whereas aligning it with the right vertical third includes more of the field and conveys that they are perhaps on vacation at a remote cabin and unlikely to be seen by anyone. Applying the question of scale to either of those suggests that in the former, the camera might ought be further back that it is here and in the latter closer. Of course, you could mix and match depending on how the frame is likely to be read by the audience and how such reading is in-line and/or diverges from the desired reading.)

But for me the thing that sells it is the fact that it’s a little awkward. I can’t say I attribute it to any artfulness on the part of the photographer. It’s likely these two were just initially a little self-conscious of the camera. Yet, instead of awkward it reads here as a vestige of the fact that so much of how sexuality is portray is hyper-stylized when in reality–when it’s at it’s best–it’s clumsy, messy and while always alluring it’s not always pretty as a picture.

I actually tracked down the video which apparently served as the impetus for the photo set from which these images emerged. The quality is awful; but it does illustrated another beneficial lesson for pornographers: if the individuals in your scene have real chemistry between them, the foreplay can be just as hot if not more so than the fucking.

Carter Smith – An Oost (2001)

As fascinated as I am by the transgressive, I’m put off by cultivated hedonism.

It’s not even that I have a problem with pleasure for pleasure’s sake–after all everything in moderation up to an including moderation itself.

But, being an alcohol dependent individual, I’ve learned the middle way is better than the escalating risk/consequence cycle.

Sure, it was great when I was a twenty-something. The strange magic whereby no matter how late I’d been up binge drinking the night before, by noon I was right as rain.

As I’ve gotten older, over-indulging has increasingly long range effects that I simply can’t tolerate. However, I can’t stop drinking. Beyond the fact that I drink as a means of self-medication, I chase this permeability. A sort of running up to edge and dangling as much of my body into the chasm as I can without falling.

Part of the motivation is because I’m damaged goods. Or, a truer way of saying it: so much of what I’ve felt so strongly all my life–contrary to logic or any authentic personal experience–resonates with this image. I drink because every once in a while, if the moon’s in the right house, I remember what it’s like to feel physically present and entirely permeable with another person.

Source: placebo

X-Art – Young Love featuring Maryjane (2011)

If you want you can watch a lo-res upload of the full scene here.

You don’t need to, though. No, really: you don’t–whomever curated this .gif set pretty much grabbed all the best bits.

I’m posting it here for several reasons. While it’s certainly not as pretty as the Sex Art scene with Silvie Deluxe and Whitney Conroy (I’ll honestly never understand the Janusz Kaminski wall of super white light aesthetic… shit PISSES me off)–and glosses over any explanation of who these characters are and how they relate to each other when they aren’t fucking–this scene manages to be extremely graphic and heteronormative without making me feel super skived out.

I think it’s beyond dumb that he pulls the I’m going down on you so you’ll return the favor bullshit typical straight boy routine. And I appreciate any straight porn where the stud getting off doesn’t involve a facial. However, by the same token, it’s really awkward the way you don’t even know he’s jizzed until the tacked on post-coital cuddling. I mean the typical male gender role demands a certain stoicism, but damn boy–would it kill you to vocalize a little? It’s not as if her parents are in the next room.

Le sigh.