This blog's title is based upon the best question I ever overheard being asked, by a young Liverpudlian child to his mother, as in "What's..?". The answer seems to be something of a creative and cultural nature which, in deed (primarily the making of art) and word, this blog intends to explore...
Friday, October 03, 2008
Further to...
the previous post & its references to the Venuses of art history comes this article in the Guardian based upon a new book reappraising the life (as an artist in her own right) of Victorine Meurent, who modelled frequently for Manet & not least for both 'Dejeuner sur l'Herbe' & 'Olympia', those icons of modern art & painting which subverted the academic tradition of the female nude & so shocked in their time with their uncompromising directness: note, for instance, how 'Olympia' confronts the spectator with both her unwavering gaze & the unpretentious starkness of the fact of her physical reality, her naked modern womanliness, rather than being merely the passive site & recipient of the viewer's gaze or the coy creature of tradition.
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