Cult of Beauty
Now that my health is back, I’m trying to update my blog regularly though as I continue my final round of edits on my Melancholia essay, I have to keep the posts brief. Good news is I’m on page 16 of 28, so I’m over the halfway mark!
Briefly, I need to mention that the one museum exhibit that Bean and I saw on our trip to the Bay Area was The Cult of Beauty: The Victorian Avant-Garde, 1860-1900.
This is not to say that The Cult of Beauty exhibit is not related to Melancholia. The exhibit focuses on the pre-Raphaelites, and Lars von Trier references the pre-Raphaelites on more than one occasion in his film, including depicting Justine as John Everett Millais’s Ophelia:
Indeed, one section of my essay is on the “Cult of Melancholy” which was part of the pre-Raphaelite movement.
This description I copied from one of the paintings in the exhibit - Simeon Solomon's "Sleepers and the One that Watcheth” - could be a description of Melancholia’s main protagonist Justine:
Sleeping or in a trancelike state, these three androgynous figures do not engage with the viewer. They are absorbed within their private world of dreams and visions, and offer us no clues as to the meaning of the painting.
So certainly I cannot say that my visit to the Legion of Honor was entirely separate from my obsession with Melancholia! However, I did move past that as I worked my way through the exhibit.
It was all fabulous, but one thing I noted is that the title of the exhibit really should have been “The Cult of Sensuality” or something like that. But it’s a weird kind of sensuality. Bodies become free but they also become more androgynous. There is an underlying current of fetishism and sexual otherness even when depicting what seems like standard portraits. Certainly there is no shortage of references to opium and the dreamlike stupor that substance induces. In Bean’s favorite painting (which I don’t have reference to right now), three figures are clad in bright POPPY orange dresses. Poppies are everywhere in the paintings, but not one single exhibit statement mentions opium or sensuality, or the link between getting high and getting androgynous and fetishistic! Hahaha.
Speaking of fetishism, unfortunately there weren’t many of Whistler’s dreamlike city and seascapes, but there was a fairly substantial representation of Whistler’s fascination with women in white, including one of a girl who he made pose for hours and hours and days and days in a dress that he himself designed. Looking at all of Whistler’s “white” paintings, a couple of things came to mind. 1) Even though these are figurative paintings, they are precursors to the abstract use of white which we will see in modernist paintings a few decades later. His brush strokes are bold and messy. The variation in white becomes a plane of visual seduction in itself. The figures seem on one level just an “excuse” to play with the use of white as a subject itself. 2) Whistler had some pretty fetishistic views of women. It’s very interesting because he makes the women objects of his fetishistic technique, yet they are also at quite a remove. I am curious what his sexual inclinations were. I don’t have the time to research them at the moment, but certainly the women seem unattainable in his portraits even while he is obsessed with them. Does he portray them in white as a symbol of perpetual virginity, reflecting his inability to access them sexually? Anyway, I find his portraits in white are really interesting, and I’d like to think, read, write more about them someday.
Finally, I must note how much I really loved the photographs of Julia Margaret Cameron. I’m fascinated with early photography anyway, and these photographs date back to the mid 1860s. They are eerily beautiful and sensual, and actually her body of work contains some of the “sexual taboo” and atmosphere that we see in contemporary photographer Sally Mann’s work. I would be curious to find out if Cameron was an influence on Mann. For the record, I also love Sally Mann’s work and perhaps that is because it evokes 19th century photography.
All and all, it was a fascinating exhibit, and I’m glad I didn’t miss it. That’s all I can say for now because I need to work day job and edit two more sections of my Melancholia essay. Someday I’ll be done with it. Promise!
Bye.
PS: I would have liked to see more of these kinds of paintings by Whistler. I love these:
PSS: I just realized that these remind me of some of duccio’s photography. Duccio - what do you think of Whistler?
Briefly, I need to mention that the one museum exhibit that Bean and I saw on our trip to the Bay Area was The Cult of Beauty: The Victorian Avant-Garde, 1860-1900.
This is not to say that The Cult of Beauty exhibit is not related to Melancholia. The exhibit focuses on the pre-Raphaelites, and Lars von Trier references the pre-Raphaelites on more than one occasion in his film, including depicting Justine as John Everett Millais’s Ophelia:
Indeed, one section of my essay is on the “Cult of Melancholy” which was part of the pre-Raphaelite movement.
This description I copied from one of the paintings in the exhibit - Simeon Solomon's "Sleepers and the One that Watcheth” - could be a description of Melancholia’s main protagonist Justine:
Sleeping or in a trancelike state, these three androgynous figures do not engage with the viewer. They are absorbed within their private world of dreams and visions, and offer us no clues as to the meaning of the painting.
So certainly I cannot say that my visit to the Legion of Honor was entirely separate from my obsession with Melancholia! However, I did move past that as I worked my way through the exhibit.
It was all fabulous, but one thing I noted is that the title of the exhibit really should have been “The Cult of Sensuality” or something like that. But it’s a weird kind of sensuality. Bodies become free but they also become more androgynous. There is an underlying current of fetishism and sexual otherness even when depicting what seems like standard portraits. Certainly there is no shortage of references to opium and the dreamlike stupor that substance induces. In Bean’s favorite painting (which I don’t have reference to right now), three figures are clad in bright POPPY orange dresses. Poppies are everywhere in the paintings, but not one single exhibit statement mentions opium or sensuality, or the link between getting high and getting androgynous and fetishistic! Hahaha.
Speaking of fetishism, unfortunately there weren’t many of Whistler’s dreamlike city and seascapes, but there was a fairly substantial representation of Whistler’s fascination with women in white, including one of a girl who he made pose for hours and hours and days and days in a dress that he himself designed. Looking at all of Whistler’s “white” paintings, a couple of things came to mind. 1) Even though these are figurative paintings, they are precursors to the abstract use of white which we will see in modernist paintings a few decades later. His brush strokes are bold and messy. The variation in white becomes a plane of visual seduction in itself. The figures seem on one level just an “excuse” to play with the use of white as a subject itself. 2) Whistler had some pretty fetishistic views of women. It’s very interesting because he makes the women objects of his fetishistic technique, yet they are also at quite a remove. I am curious what his sexual inclinations were. I don’t have the time to research them at the moment, but certainly the women seem unattainable in his portraits even while he is obsessed with them. Does he portray them in white as a symbol of perpetual virginity, reflecting his inability to access them sexually? Anyway, I find his portraits in white are really interesting, and I’d like to think, read, write more about them someday.
Finally, I must note how much I really loved the photographs of Julia Margaret Cameron. I’m fascinated with early photography anyway, and these photographs date back to the mid 1860s. They are eerily beautiful and sensual, and actually her body of work contains some of the “sexual taboo” and atmosphere that we see in contemporary photographer Sally Mann’s work. I would be curious to find out if Cameron was an influence on Mann. For the record, I also love Sally Mann’s work and perhaps that is because it evokes 19th century photography.
All and all, it was a fascinating exhibit, and I’m glad I didn’t miss it. That’s all I can say for now because I need to work day job and edit two more sections of my Melancholia essay. Someday I’ll be done with it. Promise!
Bye.
PS: I would have liked to see more of these kinds of paintings by Whistler. I love these:
PSS: I just realized that these remind me of some of duccio’s photography. Duccio - what do you think of Whistler?