In the last pages of Time-Life’s The World of Bruegel, I came across one of the most poignant quotations on art — speaking, it seems to me, particularly to the making of art — that I can remember in quite some time. From page 169:

Great paintings are not photographs but doorways into another world, a world so complete and so compelling that the eye and the mind of the viewer are drawn deeper and deeper into it. If the painting has too little content or none at all, only the eye will be pleased. Nor will the mind and imagination be engaged in it if the content is too literal or commonplace, stating everything but implying nothing. Such paintings, though recognizably real, will remain mere factual surfaces.

This from the editors of a book I criticized, too harshly in my wife’s opinion, this past March. I’m not exactly certain what to take away from the quotation as someone who 1) works in three dimensions as opposed to on canvas or board and 2) is innately drawn to minimalistic and abstract forms, but the observation seems to possess some value so I’m diving deeper into the rabbit hole.

Portraiture is often guilty of attempting to convey too much content in my opinion. Very little is left to the imagination in works such as Jacques-Louis David’s Napoleon. Part of this may be a generational or historical ignorance if the painting utilizes symbolism lost on viewers not intimately familiar with art history, but frankly this work is little more than eye candy in a visual sense.

It’s easy, however, for me to think of portraits that I do find engaging. Girl With a Pearl Earring, the Mona Lisa and — though less formal — Manet’s A Bar at the Folies Bergere come to mind.

Girl with a Pearl Earring is one of my favorite paintings, not just portraits. It is wonderfully successful in it’s use of color, composition and countenance. The slightly open lips and black background add an incredible amount of interest. The Mona Lisa, while not a personal favorite, succeeds in the imaginative department with its surreal setting and, again, a facial expression that’s not quite definable. The Manet pictured above is another on the top of my own list. It is so easy in this painting for the viewer to climb into the bartender’s thoughts through her countenance. And while the proportions of her figure seem a bit awkward (though they may be accurate taking into account the crazy corsets of the represented time), the fact that her body is just off center — note the different spaces between her arms and torso on each side of the figure — lends an incredible sense of believability.

The aforementioned Napoleon has none of these things. It is stern and matter-of-fact, not asking anything of the person looking at the painting.

Perhaps a more interesting direction to take this discussion is how the quote relates to non-representational works, if it does. It’s easy to see how people might think these kind of paintings have too little content. For instance, does Jackson Pollock’s work from his “drip period” have any content to speak of? What about Rothko’s famous works? Does a piece of art need to have a recognizable element in order to have content?

Tim Jones over at Old World Swine responded to a commenter’s comments in his most recent post, The Nekkid Truth, Too. The conversation touched on some thoughts I’ve had in the last couple years, but up to this point had yet to put down. I’m using his entry as inspiration, thus, and putting the keys to the html editor.

Let’s get started with this statement from The Nekkid Truth:

God made us men to be attracted to the female form (I consider it his best work, the pinnacle of physical creation), so that is something to accept and to be grateful for. To acknowledge the attraction and the beauty is no sin, in itself.

The commenter is, through the course of the post, expressing a desire to appreciate masterful works of art which include nudity. However, he struggles with this on account of men’s predilection towards lust, the most common affliction of the fallen male.

The question that burns me personally is how, as a fallen male, do I distinguish admiration from something more perverse? Can I? Is there a black and white line marking the difference between, in Jones’ words, the desire to “possess” a woman and thinking — in overly simplified terms — “She’s gorgeous!” Do men possess the ability to admire without lusting?

As a man and an artist intrinsically interested in all things aesthetic, all ideas and ideals of beauty, this question intrigues me to no end. And I realize, however unfortunate for my own mental well-being, there may not be an end to wrangling with these questions in this mortal life. I struggle interminably with whether or not I can have a pure thought at all, often wondering if everything that goes through my mind related to the female physique isn’t tainted. I constantly reassure myself that this is not the case, but the concern doesn’t go away. Can a man actually think about a woman in a way, however mild, that isn’t perverse? (And I don’t ask this solely in the context of sexuality, although this is the greatest temptation.). Some people may think this last question is a bit off the rocker, but I would counter by suggesting that none of us really know what is Holy well enough to determine what thoughts in our human minds may or may not be completely pure.

Last year my wife and I visited with friends recently returned from a vacation in Singapore. They talked about how it is illegal, against the written law, for men to ogle at women in that country. While he genuinely appreciated the attempt at a modest culture — and thoroughly enjoyed his visit to such a law-abiding society — our friend also understood the problems with trying to legislate such things. He likened what he saw to a police state.

I long to view all of God’s creation with the eye that He intended. Laws, such as those apparently in effect in Singapore, will not change the fallen mind. They will not allow me or anyone else to overcome human tendencies to pervert, basically, everything we think or do. While my attitude may come across as a bit fatalistic, let me assure you that I still strive for and hope to see as much of the glory of God’s creation — including the female form — before I die. This pursuit constantly drives my work in the studio, even if it isn’t obvious in the forms or titles of my sculpture.

Adding: As Jim points out in the first comment, the Titian above is worth some commentary: “The clothed woman is believed to represent earthly vanity and materialistic love, the nude to represent higher, pure love. A casual observer might think it was the other way around.” See a few more details on Wikipedia.

See my other entries dealing with women and beauty via this link.

I heard this morning a blurb about a British documentary, a documentary by two British journalists intending to expose the harmful nature of crash-diets. The journalists undertake a five-week experiment, dieting in an entirely unhealthy (and insane) manner, just like a lot of Americans seem to do.

Mary McNamara of the L.A. Times correctly observed that the drama in this particular film will be lost on most Americans. Apparently the British aren’t so inanely infatuated with being super skinny, with turning your own body into something akin to the living dead. The experimental journalists begin as very healthy people, by no means overweight. Of course, it seems as though a lot of Americans who are dieting don’t need to be either. For whatever reason these people have been duped into believing that the most respectable life-goal is to be as skinny as possible; if you can’t count your own ribs, God forbid!

These aren’t new problems though. Beauty varies, sometimes wildly, from culture to culture, and it even morphs over time within the same culture. Humans have historically acted on foolish mores (foot-binding, anyone?) relating to their appearance, and will probably forever do so.

As an artist who is constantly drawn to the ideas of beauty I find myself continually hashing and rehashing where my own perception of human attractiveness originates. Is it social? Is it deductive? Is it Divine? Is it personal? Does it stem from my idea of a healthy physique?

My hope is that my own ideas stem from and strive for a Divine idea of Beauty. My fear is that the driving force is mostly driven by popular social standards, which are generally unhealthy if not plain stupid. In reality, my own ideas are probably a mish-mash of all of those factors, however I still often fear that the social aspect pushes its way into prominence.

How does a person who realizes the unrealistic and silly nature of these social standards keep them from infiltrating his or her own mind?

I’ve learned, particularly since being married, that women can have very different physical features and still be healthy. (Men’s body types are more predictable, which is why shopping for jeans is no big deal to a guy. We can get away without trying them on and they’ll still fit.) Herein lies part of the problem, it seems, for females — who are by nature more attentive to their appearance than men: The culture establishes one penultimate standard for women who possess a wide variety of features.

I often wonder what Adam and Eve looked like, before the Fall. The mother and father of all mankind, they must have possessed all of the best physical characteristics from within the world’s population since them. The thing is, in our petty, self-serving ways we’re not remotely qualified to determine what these “best” attributes are. This reminds me of a quote by author Randy Alcorn: “To see the face of God is to behold beauty, which is the source of all lesser beauty.”

Alissa Quart’s book on the buying and selling of teenagers has turned to the “pro-ana” movement in the second half of chapter nine. Before reading this, I couldn’t have told you what “pro-ana” was. It is most easily translated as “for anorexia.”

Needless to say, this part of the book is disturbing. More disturbing are videos such as this (Warning to more sensitive viewers: The video is a little racy at points, if you couldn’t already tell by the following still):

Such photo-montages are referred to as “thinspiration.” In the video above, the creator says that she “made this video for all the girls, that want to be the thinnest. for all those girls that want to be perfect. like i do.“

So perfection is equated, in the mind of anorexic girls, with being a gaunt, figureless apparition? I learned from Quart’s book that anorexia has been around for centuries, practiced in the middle ages by religious ascetics on prolonged fasts. By the 1870s, however, it was finally realized such a practice was very unhealthy. Quart then points out how, in 1950s teen magazines, girls were “warned” to be thin.

I, for one, am not in the least attracted to such extremely bony and fragile females. Some of the girls in the above video look, literally, like corpses more than warm bodies — like someone suffering in a refugee camp, starving (which is what they’re doing). Are other men attracted to this? Are these pro-anas trying to appeal to men, other women, the fashion industry, Hollywood? Or do they simply suffer from an emotional and psychological problem (as my very brief scan of some pro-ana websites seems to indicate)?

Girls and women (and boys and men) should strive to be healthy in their own bodies.

A (female) friend of mine posted this essay a while back:

I’ve been struggling with body image lately. I’m the heaviest I’ve been since I was pregnant–quite disheartening with summer and pool season coming on. But I found this rough draft essay that I wrote a year ago that encouraged me.

The Time Before Knowing

My daughter Sadie looks at her naked body proudly in the mirror. She bends this way and that–hands on hips, now twisting from the back, seeing how her budda belly looks from all angles. She looks closely, curiously, then she pinches her nipples and laughs. She runs through the house joyfully yelling ‘naked baby, naked baby! She is three years old and doesn’t know that she is supposed to hate her body.

******

I was running at the community pool. I was wearing my crinkly purple swimsuit, my favorite because of its texture and the round neck—you could pull it tighter and tighter and it became a smaller and smaller O and the strings made a V and tied around my neck. I was running unaware—running after Patrick Bush because it was the summuer after 5th grade and running was fun and fast. I was running through the grass, near the fence, not quite catching him, now closer, laughing laughing out of breath. Then he turned and ran after me. I circled around the slide and the diving boards, then he said it. “Wow. You have Thunder Thighs. Maybe you shouldn’t be running around the pool like that that.”

Read the whole thing via this link.

I’ve mentioned Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty twice in the last month or so, and was reminded of it again this morning while reading Alissa Quart’s Branded: The buying and selling of teenagers. I’m in to a chapter in Quart’s poignant book that’s talking about how commonplace plastic surgery — nose jobs, tummy tucks, breast augmentation — is among teenagers.

I am a man and therefore wired to admire the feminine physique. I am also an artist with a very keen interest in the idea of beauty. The human form, male or female, is arguably the most noble aspect of visual Creation — all of this to say I think about human aesthetics regularly.

The Dove Campaign has brought this to the forefront of my mind recently, although I have not been able to put my vague thoughts into words yet. So this morning I’ll share a few excerpts from Quart’s book:

* Carolyn is like many other middle-class teenagers today. But she is not like middle-class teenagers of a decade ago. Sure, she wants designer threads and, eventually, law school. What sets her apart from her teen predecessors is her most expensive dream: larger breasts. She has been obsessed with getting them since she was sixteen. (pg 113)

* Among teens eighteen and under in 1994, only 392 had breast augmentations and 511 liposuction; in 2001 there were 2,596 augmentations and 2,755 liposuctions among that age group, a 562 percent increase. (pg 114)

* Julie, now a sweet-voiced, well-grounded business student of twenty-one, recalls the thinking that finally led her to get a $6,800 nose job. Growing up in North Hollywood, she recalls, she noticed girls in magazines with their perfect bodies and perfect facial features, and she became acutely aware of her flaws . . .

For Generation Y, liposuction is not just for Bel Air television producers’ daughters but also for eighteen-year-old shop girls in Yonkers. First the province of the syphilitic and deformed, then of theater and movie stars, then of the rich, plastic surgery has become naturalized for the upper- and lower-middle classes. (pg 117)

* The teen breast augmentation fetish has also been egged on by other advertisements in magazines such as Teen Vogue and Seventeen. The two mags have run ads for Bloussant, an herbal breast enhancement tablet. Bloussant is, like all herbal supplements, unregulated by the FDA and costs $229 for an eight-week supply. The results are dubious at best, but these magazines — which have the trust of preteens and young teenagers — have carried advertisements for Bloussant, mixed with the usual stories about boyfriends and makeup tips. (pg 120)

While paging through old issues of Azusa Pacific’s student newspaper, The Clause, I found an article titled Beauty Uncovered: The price women pay to look good. The piece — which doesn’t appear to be available in the paper’s archives — talks about the changing idea of the feminine ideal through the years. It includes this timeline:

1700s: The pear
• Necessity of field work makes a large, muscular physique ideal.
• Eyebrows are shaven and replaced with press-on mouse-skin brows.
• The average woman is a mother of eight; large hips are sign of fertility.

Early 1800s: The rectangle
• “Corset Mecaniques” make corsets more user-friendly.
• Indoor lifestyle makes women pale and frail.
• Small feet and rosebud lips accompany prim and reserved personality.

Mid 1800s: The bell
• Ideal woman is curvy with big hips.
• Corset becomes controversial because of restrictiveness.
• Clothing sizes are developed.

Late 1800s: The hourglass
• Beauty culture develops in the U.S.; first notions of mass-produced beauty.
• Through early 1900s women have small waists and large updos.

Early 1900’s: The thin rectangle
• The average woman is 5′ 2″ tall and weighs 129 pounds.
• The brassiere is patented in 1913.
• In the 1920s women bind their breasts to gain more boyish figure.
• “Flappers” show skin and women become more self-conscious.
• Shaven armpits become popular.
• Comfort and freedom are priorities; bobbed hairstyle popular.
• First Miss America pageant is held in 1921.

Mid 1900s: The hourglass
• Marilyn Monroe embodies the ideal figure.
• Pin-up girls make large breasts popular.
• Large hips come back in style with the baby boom of the 1950s.
• Shaven legs become popular, sometimes by use of sandpaper.
• First official weight-loss drug approved by FDA in 1959.
• The ideal thins out again in the 1970s, repeating trend of the 1920s.

1980s: Muscular and toned
• Death of Karen Carpenter raises awareness of eating disorders.
• Excercise tapes become the new trend.
• Muscular woman is prominent but boyish figure is popular and voluptuous curves gain popularity.

The article was written by Jennifer Miller.

Sunsets and mountains are beautiful. Flowers and classical architecture are beautiful. People are beautiful.

Well, some people, right? The Elle MacPhersons and Cindy Crawfords (showing my age, I know) are supposedly the epitome of feminine proportion. I don’t read People or magazines like it, but I still look for their “Most beautiful people” issue every year just to marvel at the narrow-minded idea of human aesthetics put forward in the publication.

I never personally thought models were attractive. When my high school friends ogled over the celebrities in magazines or on posters, I lingered on the faces and physique of “common” peers in the hallways. Girls like Patty, Amber and Rebekah bore an authentic femininity which is almost completely lost on girls the fashion industry likes to push down the runway.

Musical interlude: “I’m too sexy for my shirt, too sexy for my shirt . . . “

Barbara de Vries, a former model, ponders the industry this Fasion Week. She asks why the industry is so infatuated with these bird-like bony bodies — this “adolescent-boy look” — to fill their chic portfolios when their customers look like the feminine beings they are? Why don’t the female designers in the industry stand up for their own sex? And why do we as a culture capitulate to this false representation, why do we defy the natural beauty of all women? De Vries memoir Stupid Model will be on shelves soon.

Ugly Betty, the recent ABC television adaptation of the Spanish-language original, properly mocks the idiotic vanity apparent in the fashion industry. Will viewers actually get the message?