nudity in art, violence & societal hypocrisy (also google, blogspot)

i've been putting this post off, since it bothers me that it should be necessary -in this day and age- to write about this subject.

all animals are nude. all humans are nude, under their clothes, under the shower, on the toilet seat, what have you. this nudity is natural, far more natural than its covering up.

yet, in this day and age, which is supposed to be modern, we still are the most absolute prudes when it comes to nudity. nudity is shameful. many consider nudity obscene. why, is probably because of the perceived proximity between nudity and sex, or sexual reproduction.

suppose even for a minute that this is true, this proximity. then still: all animals have sex. sexual reproduction is as natural as eating and drinking. however, in the `higher' animals, selection of a mate involves mating behaviour rituals. i can imagine that some form of seclusion, hidden-from-prying-eyes, is part of our natural mating ritual.

this does not for one minute start to explain why this `modern' society is so fxxxed up about sex, pardon my language. and much less so, why nudity-which-can be-seen is considered such a big deal.

oh, you think i'm exaggerating, do you?

for your information, before even being able to let this blog come to you, i have to let google/blogger/blogspot know that this blog does not contain `adult content'. since this is primarily an art blog, i would suppose that it fulfills the criteria for not being `offensive'...but this may need some attention. what does google/blogger/blogspot mean by `adult content'? now, the thing is, i'm allowed to WRITE about sex, porn, anything you like...but i'm not allowed to post IMAGES of nudity...except for medical, or educational reasons...and they may allow artistic nudity on an exception-basis, individually accorded...

of course, i can post most if not all images of extreme violence, no problem, without being subjected to likewise ... intelligence-insulting, spirituality-insulting conditions.

would you believe this? i still have a hard time believing it. google's safe search does not filter out extreme violence, it filters out nudity (and sex, and porn). so imagine this child of say 9 years old. as a society we seriously consider it dangerous for this child to see images of nudity, but we think it's ok if this child sees beheadings, bombings, dead and mutilated victims of crimes...

and everybody says, well ok, i get that, that's logical...

making love is considered dangerous, killing is considered safe. i'm not exaggerating. this is the level of hypocrisy in our society, just in regard to nudity and sex. because for instance the painting below has been considered a true spiritual and classical work of art for centuries:


titian, venus of urbino

but manet's rendition of a similar lady raised a scandal:


édouard manet, olympia

(please follow the links by clicking on the paintings names, to read more about these paintings and the reactions to them).

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just for your information: i consider most nudity to be a natural state of things. i consider most (non-exploiting) consensual sexual images to be a natural state of things. i think non-violent or non-degrading and non-exploiting porn to be generally loveless, but not very dangerous.

but i have never been so utterly sick as when i was watching a news report in which a soldier casually shot an innocent stander-by dead, just for nothing, out of irritation, boredom, `kicks'...who knows.

&&&&&&

we live in a society that spiritually speaking is more primitive than most societies we call `primitive'. and we are extreme hypocrites about nudity, sex and violence. is it any wonder that we are obsessed with sex and violence and technology in movies, rather than with love, building together, nature?

and we have not progressed much in the past 100 years, on the contrary i would say.

(to be continued)

notre dame des anges 2 (spiritual woman portraits)

notre dame des anges (radiant) (own work, 2011-2014, 55 x 80 cm, click on the image for an enlargement)

repeated from the previous post: the woman portraits made in this series share the name `notre dame des anges´. this is a reference to the `medieval´ spirituality i mentioned above. but the portraits are of course not a depiction of maria. they are intended as portraits of contemporary women emanating this type of spirituality which i find hard to describe.

in this series i experiment with all sorts of visual elements. georgia o'keeffe (one of my all-time favourite artists) said:

“I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way - things I had no words for."

(o'keeffe is just amazing, as an artist and as a person, and fits very well in the subject of this post, but i will devote a separate post to her in the foreseeable future.)

anyway, in this post i will show some of my experiments using paint. you will see that i do not shy away from outsider-like techniques. at the same time, i'm also studying the human form and body, as a means of expressing spirituality, vulnerability, openness, unarmedness etc. (this will lead to a next post on nudity in art, and double standards in society)


notre dame des anges as outsider (own work, 2010, click on the image for an enlargement)


notre dame des anges (déshabillée) (own work, 2011, 50 x 90 cm, click on the image for an enlargement)


notre dame des anges at night ii (own work, 2010, 30 x 30 cm, click on the image for an enlargement)

the colours of the above work are impossible to photograph, it seems, so i have little hope that what appears on your screen resembles the original enough, sorry. the same actually holds in a somewhat lesser but still annoying degree for most of the works in this post...one day i will arrange for a really good camera, and really good lighting conditions.


notre dame des anges (curly red hair) (own work, 2008-2012, 30 x 30 cm, click on the image for an enlargement)


notre dame des anges at night i (own work, 2003-2009, 30 x 40 cm, click on the image for an enlargement) (i posted this one earlier)


notre dame des anges (green hair) (own work, 2003-2009, 30 x 40 cm, click on the image for an enlargement) (i posted this one earlier)

notre dame des anges: series of spiritual woman portraits

notre dame des anges (blue ballpoint) (own work, 2010, 21 x 30 cm, click on the image for an enlargement)

my discomfiture with our modern `enlightened' society runs deep. i hesitate to put all of it in writing, since negativism is so often frowned upon. i admit there is something to be said for positive suggestion how to improve, rather than `just' criticizing.

i intend to do some more criticizing also though (like in the previous post's drawing).

but on the positive side, i have been working, for years and years, on a series of `spiritual´ woman portraits...whatever that may mean. maybe it means something like: in the spirit of what i perceive as medieval spirituality connected to maria, mother of jesus.

i wrote earlier on this blog about the stunning 'mare de deu' sculptures from 13th-16th century catalonia. all very different, all very individual, all seemingly derived from real persons (in my eyes of course).

i also stated earlier that i'm not a fan of religion. but some form of spirituality seems to me the only way for humanity to pull itself out of the endless cycle of poverty, violence, greed, hate, war, ... you know.

so the woman portraits made in this series share the name `notre dame des anges´. this is a reference to the `medieval´ spirituality i mentioned above. but the portraits are of course not a depiction of maria. they are intended as portraits of contemporary women emanating this type of spirituality which i find hard to describe.

by the way, there is a similar series in the same vein, with man portraits, called `seigneur notre retraite´, referring in the same way to a `medieval´ spirituality i associate with jesus.

not being in favour of religion didn't stop me from being surprised to realize that religious art is being discriminated against, in the `contemporary art world´. someone pointed this out, i have to google to see who it was, will come back to you on this later. then again, as this same person pointed out, there are many art genres which are not considered `worthy´ by the contemporary art-world's elite.


notre dame des anges (bookcover) (own work, 2010, 19 x 28 cm, click on the image for an enlargement)


notre dame des anges (cutout) (own work, 2012, 21 x 30 cm, click on the image for an enlargement)


notre dame des anges (pencil) (own work, 2011, 21 x 30 cm, click on the image for an enlargement)


notre dame des anges (in red) (own work, 2010, 21 x 30 cm, click on the image for an enlargement)


detail of notre dame des anges (in red) (own work, 2010, 21 x 30 cm, click on the image for an enlargement)


notre dame des anges texting (own work, 2010, click on the image for an enlargement)(i posted this one earlier)

art and life: societal criticism in art

i had a discussion with a dear friend, the other day. not known for my lack of radical views, i stated that i had trouble accepting that so many people in our western society seem to prefer 'positive' untruths to ... well, to the bleak truth that e.g. in a country like ethiopia people have to pick coffee beans at a wage of 40 eurocent a day...7 days a week, for 10 grueling hours a day...just so we can drink cheap coffee. please don't dismiss this statement too easily. think about it for some time.

she said: well, if you are so unhappy about exploitation of poor workers, why don't you do something about it? so i tried to explain to her that this is what i try to do -in my way, which is the only way that i see myself capable of keeping up over the years. which means talking about it, writing about it, painting and drawing about it...although most of my drawings and paintings approach the subject from the other way round: i try to portray how the world would look if we concentrate on a 'spiritual' interaction (compassionate, mild, respectful, you get my drift). and of course i have been buying fair trade as much as i can, for a very long time.

which brings me to another aspect of this thread which has been going on for quite some posts now: societal criticism in art. the theme of societal criticism has been around for centuries in art. a 19^th century example:


jean-françois millet the gleaners (les glaneuses, 1857, musée d'orsay, paris, click for enlargement)

we see three gleaners: poor women, who when the wheat had been harvested scoured the land for the remaining stalks and ears. The so prominent display of the poorest of the population was seen by many as an indictment of poverty and exploitation of the workers. from wikipedia:

Millet first unveiled The Gleaners at the Salon in 1857. It immediately drew negative criticism from the middle and upper classes, who viewed the topic with suspicion: one art critic, speaking for other Parisians, perceived in it an alarming intimation of "the scaffolds of 1793."[1] Having recently come out of the French Revolution of 1848, these prosperous classes saw the painting as glorifying the lower-class worker.[1] To them, it was a reminder that French society was built upon the labor of the working masses, and landowners linked this working class with the growing movement of Socialism and the dangerous voices of Karl Marx and Émile Zola.[2]

One critic commented that "his three gleaners have gigantic pretensions, they pose as the Three Fates of Poverty…their ugliness and their grossness unrelieved."[3] While the act of gleaning was not a new topic—representations of Ruth had already been composed—this new work was a statement on rural poverty and not Biblical piety:[3] there is no touch of the Biblical sense of community and compassion in contrast of the embodiments of grinding poverty in the foreground and the rich harvest in the sunlit distance beyond. The implicit irony was unsettling.

millet was a big source of inspiration for vincent van gogh:


vincent van gogh, the potato eaters (1885, Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam, click for enlargement)

$$$$$$

let me add a drawing which i made yesterday, after having had this discussion. i don't think it's my best work...since my subconscious seems to work better on its own, without a directive from my mind. but i do have enough image-creating experience to get things done, visually speaking. however, i'm left with a low expectation that any of my art works will really have an impact on this persistent problem of greed, wealth, uneven distribution of resources,...human nature you could say. you may call me negative for stating this. but i think we need this negativism in order for anything to change. much of the so-valued 'positivism' in my eyes serves to maintain a status quo which is decidedly injust on a global scale.


we trample on them, to maintain our luxury (own work, 2012, 21 x 30 cm, click on the image for an enlargement)

of human relations & dance of life 4

so, like i might or not have said in previous posts, i'm actually working my figurative butt off to develop some way to portray human relations, human emotions, human connections.

Kunst gibt nicht das Sichtbare wieder, sondern macht sichtbar.

('art doesn't show what is visible, rather it makes visible' - paul klee, 1920)

at times i have found it frustrating to have to explain the above to the lay person...but in later years i find myself explaining less and less. it is hard enough to come up with the images, the techniques, the perseverance in details... this reluctance to explain is not arrogance, it is a form of acceptance that some things cannot be explained.


of human relations (own work, 2009, 21 x 30 cm, click on the image for an enlargement)

some more drawings on dance...where in the first you could notice that i'm working on some new painting techniques to paint people...


dance 3 figures (own work, 2011, 30 x 45 cm, click on the image for an enlargement)


dance 4 figures (own work, 2009, 10 x 15 cm, click on the image for an enlargement)


dance 2 figures (own work, 2011, 15 x 16 cm, click on the image for an enlargement)


dance 1 figure (own work, 2011, 20 x 30 cm, click on the image for an enlargement)

dance of life 3

i came across a reproduction of one of my drawings at a friend's house last week...she made a photocopy of it during one of my previous visits because she liked it so much. i had already almost forgotten about this drawing, but it deserves a place in this thread on art, dance, life.


dance of life iii (own work, 2011, 21 x 30 cm, click on the image for an enlargement)

what is art for? homo aestheticus by ellen dissanayake

as an illustration to the previous post, let me quote from the wikipedia lemma on ellen dissanayake:

In Homo Aestheticus (University of Washington Press, 1995), Ellen Dissanayake argues that art was central to the emergence, adaptation and survival of the human species, that aesthetic ability is innate in every human being, and that art is a need as fundamental to our species as food, warmth or shelter.

What art “makes special”
This aesthetic ability, she says, enabled us to ‘bracket off’ the things and activities that were important to our survival, separate them from the mundane, and make them special. We took the objects and practices involved in marriage, birth, death, food production, war and peacemaking and enhanced them to make them more attractive and pleasurable, more intriguing and more memorable. We invented dance, poetry, charms, spells, masks, dress and a multitude of other artifacts to make these associated activities, whether hauling nets or pounding grain, more sensual and enjoyable, to promote cooperation, harmony and unity among group members, and to also enable us to cope with life’s less expected or explicable events.

Methods of “making special” derived from our evolutionary inheritance
Using her own lived, anthropological experience and a wide knowledge of contemporary literature on the subject, she provides many examples of how this “making special” is done. She argues that in making things special we drew on those aspects of the world that evolution had led us to find attractive and to prize: visual signs of health, youth and vitality such as smoothness, glossiness, warm colors, cleanness and lack of blemishes; vigor, precision, agility, endurance and grace of movement; in sounds - sonority, vividness, rhythmicity, resonance, power; in the spoken word repetition of syllables, verses and key words, the use of antiphony, alliteration, assonance and rhyme. She adds to these pattern, contrast, balance, roundness, length, geometric shapes such as circles, squares, triangles, diagonals, horizontals and verticals) - and more complex forms arising from variation on a theme, or to put it the other way round, the absorbing of asymmetry and difference within a wider, encompassing pattern - the taming of the unruly wild. As such, she argues that art springs from the same sources and interacts with the same physiology as everyday life, but because it is so crafted, more intensely.

Art as a normal and necessary part of human life
In Homo Aestheticus, Dissanayake argues that Art is not an ornamental and dispensable luxury, but intrinsic to our species. And once we recognize this truth, she says “each one of us should feel permission and justification for taking the trouble to live our life with care and thought for its quality rather than being helplessly caught up in the reductive and alienating pragmatic imperatives of consumer and efficiency-oriented and “entertain-me” society.”
“Art is a normal and necessary behavior of human beings and like other common and universal occupations such as talking, working, exercising, playing, socializing, learning, loving, and caring, should be recognized, encouraged and developed in everyone. Via art, experience is heightened, elevated, made more memorable and significant”

Included in the book are more than 16 pages of references covering the emergent fields of Bioaesthetics, Neuroaesthetics and Psychobiology.

what is art for? is the title of another book by ellen dissanayake (this links to her website):



and you will note the nice 'coincidence' that the author uses the same painting by gauguin as the one that started me on this whole thread...;-)