And I still don’t see it at the twelfth glance. I’m beginning to think Cadmus wasn’t so hot as a painter!
It’s kind of ridiculous to say it “wasn’t in his usual style,” when it was EXACTLY his usual style. Why is it so important to you to deny the homoeroticism in this piece? If most everybody else sees it immediately, and if homoeroticism in his work was something the (openly gay) artist freely admitted to, then it’s pretty silly to be so adamant about denying it. Maybeyou’re just using a different definition of “homoeroticism” than the rest of us, but a work doesn’t have to be explicit to have an erotic subtext.
The blonde’s arms have nothing on Rosie’s guns, but Rosie wouldn’t grace the cover of the Post for another 10 years.
Can’t you see that you were just begging the question? What makes you think that “fist” wasn’t the key word the songwriter wanted, and he chose a rhyme accordingly? And although I don’t know what song you are referring to, surely it’s obvious that the word “fist” has connotations that the word “hand” doesn’t.
Yes, people do often over-analyze works of art and see far-fetched connections or unlikely symbolism. But that’s no reason to scoff at subtext in general. In the world of art, a cigar is rarely just a cigar.
I think it has a definite erotic subtext, I just don’t think it is as obvious and homoerotic as many of you do. It isn’t the first thing that hits you, and I think a lot of people might be saying, “Oh, yeah, I see it now, wow!” only after someone else says “my god, you idiot, how can you NOT see that gigantic bulge in his pants?” Which, by the by, was not so big or so obvious. I’ve seen bulges in Old Master paintings that were much more obvious and in-your-face.
And where do you find Cadmus freely admitting to it in THIS painting? The one that caused such a kerfluffle and launched his career? Not that I want to read any more about this…the whole Wiki on homoeroticism was nearly impenetrable (pun intended) and masterfully vague. Basically, anything that might imply an attraction to someone of the same sex, or arouses a desire for someone of the same sex. Since presumably any picture of a good-looking man might just arouse desire in another man, there is NOTHING that can’t be considered homoerotic. The Urban Dictionary, surprisingly, had the best definition, and I had a lot of laughs over the Most Homoerotic Sports Photos link…now THOSE I got!
I just think the first person who got his or her knickers in a twist back in 1934 set the stage for how we are expected to see this painting now. I think my friend’s comments about McCarthyism weren’t far off the mark. The masses tend to get wound up about things that in retrospect are really pretty tame.
[quote=“Biffy_the_Elephant_Shrew, post:64, topic:552579”]
It’s been over ten years since that discussion, and I only vaguely remember some of their arguments. But they really thought he might ought to have used the word hand instead, not changing any of the other words that rhymed, which would not have worked. Of course he deliberately chose that word. It made sense in the context of the line, it worked with the rhyme and the meter, it flowed off the tongue when he sang it. To use hand he would have had to rewrite the entire preceding lines. But they couldn’t give him that. They had to try to find deeper, darker meanings. They had to try to plumb the psychology of it. They had to try to force the rest of the verses into a deeper, darker place than they already were. They tried to seek out any hint of latent abuse and try to link it to events in his life…did he and the wife have a fight? was he upset about his son’s birth? had his parents ticked him off? They were having so much fun showing how insightful and astute they were, how in touch with the artist on a personal level, that they forgot what the whole song was about, in the end. All because one person thought one word was an odd choice, and they didn’t care that it fit the rhyme.
Rosie’s got man-arms too. The only women who have guns like that in real life are female bodybuilders who chug steroids like they was beer.
Sturdy women who do a lot of manual labor can easily have muscular arms like Rosies without using steroids. You don’t see this that much these days as few women (or people period) work that hard physically compared to years past, but you don’t need drugs. The old pictures of a hard working farm wife carrying a pig or a child under each arm aren’t make up. People are lot less physically robust than they used to be. Especially women.
Well, that part isn’t actually subjective. He’s leaning in towards the sailor. Look at his hips, visible under the outstretched arm of the passed out sailor, and compare them to his shoulders. His shoulders are closer to the sailor than his hips are. If he were leaning away, it would be the other way around. And, as you pointed out, in the uncropped painting you posted, you can see his shoe and part of his pants leg propped up on the wall. As you predicted, I’m going to say this is a significant element in gaying this painting up. Not only is he leaning in towards the sailors, he’s practically lying down with them. It’s an overtly sensuous pose. He’s also the only character in the painting who is exuding any sort of conscious sexuality, and it’s unambiguously being displayed for the sailor’s benefit. Sorry, but there’s no way he’s looking at the girls that just walked by. The eyelines just don’t work out. The trio of women are too far into the foreground for him to be looking at them; he’s sighting directly down the wall, his face slightly turned toward the artist, but with his eyes cutting further towards the horizon, with the result that his gaze is fixed directly on the sailor’s face.
I agree that there is an element of disgust in his expression. But there’s also an element of arousal. The character is both repelled and attracted to the sailor. He’s turned towards and leaning into the sailor, which is a clear communication of engagement. He’s offering them a “gift,” in the form of a cigarette, which indicates an attempt to ingratiate himself with them. But his expression is still distant and condescending. It’s clear that he doesn’t particularly like the sailor, but he still wants something from him, otherwise, why is he still there? Why isn’t he moving away? Why is he giving the guy a smoke? Note that he’s not smoking himself: while it’s not impossible that the sailor asked him for a smoke out of the blue, it also suggests that he offered the sailor the cigarette as an icebreaker. There’s really no way around what we’re seeing here: this is an attempted hook-up in progress. The disgust is there, because the character has internalized a lot of society’s homophobia, and as such feels an enormous amount of self-loathing. And it’s that particular combination of lust and disgust is so clearly and instantly recognizable as a gay “type” that pushes the entire painting into homoerotic territory, because once you unlock that particular character, you realize that this painting could only have been made by either a gay man, or by someone with an uncanny understanding of the nature of male homosexual desire as expressed in an environment overtly hostile to any display of homosexuality. And that recontextualizes the entire painting. The interpretation of everything else I’ve mentioned: the lack of closeness between male/female pairings, the intimacy of the male/male pairings, the depiction of the women as unattractive, or faceless, the total lack of female sexual characteristics, and so forth and so on, and it becomes immediately apparent that the artist is drawn specifically to male sexuality, but is expressing no interest at all in heterosexuality. Thus, the sexuality that does exist becomes homoerotic, as it exists only between male characters in the painting, and between the male characters in the painting and the distinctly male gaze of the artist.
Now, would I have formed these conclusions if I hadn’t been introduced to this painting in a thread entitled, essentially, “Explain why this painting is so gay?” I can’t say for sure. But there’s no way I would have missed the guy in the suit. He couldn’t be more gay if he were wearing bike shorts and a Cher t-shirt. And once I’d tagged him, I suspect the rest of my conclusions would have inevtiably followed from there.
Bottom line is, it’s a pretty gay painting, and you don’t need someone to tip you off ahead of time to spot it by yourself.
I don’t think I said anything about perspective when I was talking about how close the characters are. It’s a crowded painting. Everyone is physically close to each other. I’m talking about emotional closeness. Look at every male character who is, in some way, interacting with a female character. They’re all in some form of conflict. Now look at the all the groups where the males are interacting with other males: they’re all in friendly, familiar, fraternal (at the very least) poses: hand around the shoulder, arm in lap, sharing a cigarette. There’s an emotional closeness to the male-male interactions that is entirely absent from the male-female interactions.
Because art interpretation isn’t determined by committee.
I don’t know. Who are they? Why do they have the opinion they have about a piece? What informs it? Can they defend their opinion? How well can they defend it? Can they rebut any of the opposing arguments?
Art isn’t an opinion poll. You don’t win by getting more names on your side. One person who can offer a strong, textually supported argument is worth a thousand contrarians who shrug and say, “I dunno,” when asked why they disagree. Your friend may very well have an excellent insight into this painting. If he does, let him come here and defend it himself. The fact that you happen to know someone who agrees with you does nothing to advance the debate.
Ugh. We need a variation of Godwin’s Law for discussions about art. The longer a debate about art interpretation continues, the probability that someone will compare themselves to the kid in The Emperor’s New Clothes approaches one.
Seriously, that’s a really awful metaphor for this kind of discussion, because the story turns on the idea that most people are too stupid or dishonest to have a worthwhile opinion. If you’re the boy in the story, that makes the rest of us the dupes and sycophants who fell for the con. That’s a pretty insulting position to be placed in, particularly over something as trivial as the interpretation of a work of art.
Sorry if that last bit came across as biting your head off. It’s a personal peeve of mine.
Miller, I don’t disagree with the gist of what you’ve said about the painting itself. I do want to point out that you earlier cited both the general subjectivity of interpretation and the opinions of “audiences in 1934, who had no preconceived notion or background knowledge.” So it seems a little unfair to deride kittenblue’s proposal to “get opinions from people with no pre-conceived notions.” On the one hand, I’d expect many such opinions will be roughly in accord with yours and/or those of '34. On the other, if they find something else going on as well/instead, that doesn’t make them wrong per se.
For what it’s worth, Googling a bit, it seems that the red tie that the guy in the suit is wearing was an example of the subtle signals that gay men in the first half of the twentieth century used for the benefit of those in the know.
Sorry, I may have been unclear when I referenced the audience’s reaction in '34. I didn’t mean to imply that their reaction was any sort of proof that the painting is homoerotic. I merely meant to point out that it was possible to arrive at a reading of the picture as homoerotic without being previously primed for that interpretation. I wasn’t rebutting a claim about the work (which should only be done through reference to the work itself) but instead, was rebutting a claim about the work’s audience, which, similarly, should only be done through reference to the audience itself.
Well, I guess it is time for me to jump off Miller’s jock strap, because I found the last post to kittenblue bordering on elitist.
ETA: I mean, some people can’t present a ‘strong textually supported argument’. That doesn’t mean their opinion is as good as anyone else’s.
Did you mean to say “that doesn’t mean their opinion is NOT as good as anyone else’s?” If so, I disagree with you. Everybody’s opinion is not equal.
Yeah, that is what I meant to say. But I don’t think that means I think all opinions are equal.
I don’t actually believe that. But here’s the thing. Art is different than everything else. It really is. It’s not the same as someone knowing a lot about how to build a car having a stronger opinion on engines than someone who never looked under a hood.
Art is made for the people. Not just for the art majors. And an artist (at least the ones I know, read about, etc. Obviously I can’t speak for them directly) intends to appeal to a wider audience than art majors.
Art can’t be pinned down to a single interpretation. Even when the artist has a viewpoint to get across, I highly doubt that he doesn’t include aspects of other shades and suggestions of alternate viewpoints…leaving room for others to see what they may.
I never studied art formally. But I have always loved it and listened intently to what artists have to say about their work and what critics have to say about it too. People laugh at me for bringing up Sister Wendy, but I thank my lucky stars for her, because she brings art to the laymen without sneering down her nose at us…allowing us to partake and helping us see that we can try to find what the artsist is trying to communicate as well as bringing our own vision to the painting. I love looking at a painting and trying to ‘interpret’ it. I love hearing others’ viewpoint and being pulled into a different understanding, too. That is great. After hearing others comment on the paintings, I haven’t been able to tear my eyes from those paintings!
But to say that someone else’s interpretation of art is wrong because they can’t speak eloquently about the work in a ‘textually strong way’ or whatever smacks of elitism to me. Art is not about that. Even I know that.
And I do get Miller’s frustration with Kittenblue using the term ‘Emperor’s New Clothes’ because I feel that was a bit insulting to the other posters in the thread. But the rest of that last post, rubbed me wrong.
There’s a difference between not being able to speak eloquently and just not getting something, or getting it wrong. And it IS possible for an interpretation to simply be wrong. Charles Manson thought the Beatles were telling him to start a race war. That was not a valid interpetation of the Beatles on any level.
Well said, Nzinga. Art is different.
And validity is in the eye of the beholder. If we’re to take Manson as qualified to be included in our hypothetical sample of art interpreters, then his interpretation of the Beatles was indeed valid, to him.
Two things spring to mind from your comments. If you are sitting on a wall, reach into your jacket and take out a cigarette pack and start to take one out, and someone sitting farther down the wall asks if they can bum a smoke…as you reach over to hold the pack out to them you would have to lean towards them, would you not? He’s not nearly laying on top of them. He doesn’t look that gay to me…he looks like many of the characters you see in 1930’s detective shows on BBC. I had no idea the red tie (I know this wasn’t your comment) was a “signal” and I suspect it’s as much a signal as the earring signal or the flower behind the ear signal or the colored bracelet signal…in other words, little-known and unreliable. I’m not saying the artist didn’t intend for him to be gay. I’m just saying that it isn’t the “most obvious conclusion”
Secondly, the whole thing about the emotional closeness of the male-to-male interactions led me to reconsider the entire theme of the painting…the fleet is in town, and all the sailors have liberty. They know one another. They are buddies. They are most likely from the same ship. They live together, work together, are comrades-in-arms and friends. As military men they have a bond that is tighter than brothers. Of course that bond will be noticeable as “friendly, familiar, fraternal” because that is what they are. And that bond will be stronger than that of the bond with the women they are trying to pick up. Cadmus captured that comradery very well.
I’m sorry if I inadvertently offended you with the Emperor’s New Clothes comment…it seemed more appropriate than my friend’s comment about McCarthyism. I had no way of knowing this was trite and a pet peeve of yours, since I’ve never participated in a debate like this before. I sought out the opinion of a friend who I consider intelligent and well-read merely to see if I was letting my reactions be colored by the background discussion. He didn’t see the gay angle until he googled it…which he did without telling me right after his initial comment about it reminding him of saucy postcards. He mentioned the controversy about it depicting a gay couple, and I asked him, “Ok, which ones do you think are the gay couple?” He had to spend a long time thinking about who someone else might think was the gay couple, because he just wasn’t seeing it. He chose the two sailors accosting the three women, merely because of the tight pants, which he thought were a bit homoerotic. But still, he had to spend a lot of time deciding. And as I mentioned, he told me one of his favorite artists was that Tamara de Lempicka? that was mentioned earlier in the thread, which I thought was a good indicator that he had some experience with the topic.
I still would like to read more about the initial complainant. That is partly where I got the Emperor vibe…someone makes a fuss over something they consider offensive, and a lot of other people think, hmmm, they are really smart, maybe there IS something there to see, and suddenly things get blown way out of proportion and paintings get shuffled off to bathrooms. I’ve seen it happen in many other situations…an expert says something, and people assume they must be right, and change their opinions while still shaking their heads a bit and saying, “well, he knows his stuff, he must be right”.
All I am trying to say is that, while you might clearly see every nuance and hand position and drape of fabric as evidence of one thing, that one thing may be influenced by what we are told to expect. How many people came in to this thread and said, “I didn’t see x in y until someone said that’s what they saw, so I went back and looked again and I guess they could be right”? Sometimes the shape of a woman’s arm is influenced by the model the artist used, or the sketches he made in the park…not a conscious decision to imply that this woman is really a man. Maybe a red tie is just fashionable at the time, or the color he had left on the palette at the end of a long day when he didn’t want to mix up a new color.
So many words and hours spent just to say that I don’t find this to be a **blatantly **homoerotic painting. Sorry I can’t back up my opinion with references.
If so many people are instantly able to read it, then it’s blatant, or at least detectable. I don’t the the artist was trying to trick anybody. The man bulges alone make the intent pretty obvious.
Oooh, Nzinga, Seated, I loved Sister Wendy, too! I need to search for videos of her! She was so much fun!