The bulge wasn’t that big. Just sayin’…
And this is why I spent all my time in the National Gallery of Art last month in the portrait section. So much easier to sleep at night.
I didn’t see it as homoerotic at first but the more I’ve read the thread, the more I see it.
It’s not really any one concrete thing. More a smattering of things. And an overall feeling. You do see a couple of female asses, but in general, I get the sense that the artist didn’t think they were all that attractive. They look more grotesque. Even the woman in the middle with the big breasts doesn’t look like she’s meant to be seen as attractive. She just looks too fleshy and messy. I feel like the females in this picture want the guys really badly, but the guys are looking at them with boredom or even disgust.
There are really only two guys making eye contact with the women (and none of the guys are in the least bit attractive, btw) and they are smiling, with open arms towards the women. One woman is turning away in disgust, the other two are laughing and smiling. So where do you see boredom and disgust on the men’s part? And lust on the women’s? I’m not tryng to pick a fight…I really want you to explain to me where you see that boredom and disgust especially from the men. We are talking about The Fleet’s In!, right?
kittenblue, I’d amend what I said. It’s more disgust/boredom towards women on the part of the artist that I’m seeing.
What made me think that the most was actually AHunter3’s post, especially as it concerns the three female friends in a group:
They look sort of monstrous. At first I thought they were two women, and then I realized there were three heads and three bodies, but one body is sort of tucked away. There’s something very creepy/off about that. It almost looks like the middle woman (whose body is depicted as very ungainly/thick) has two heads, as AHunter3 mentioned. To me, the women look grotesque.
It does seem like the guys are engaging with the women but on a very superficial level. Or that they’re not that into them. The woman with the huge ass towards the left is clearly trying to pull up the passed out guy, but none of the guys in that group are at all interested in her.
The two sailors with arms around each other and smiling at the women, but they’re touching each other. I mean, they might be interested in the women, but I get the sense that the artist is way more interested sexually in the guys than in the weird looking women.
Nzinga, I’m not sure what part of my post you find disagreeable, because I agree with everything you wrote in your last post. I’m not saying you need to be an art major to talk about art. If I were, I wouldn’t be able to post here myself. And I’m certainly not saying that any opinion about art is wrong. What I am saying is, if you can’t explain why you feel the way you feel about a work of art, you’re not adding anything to the discussion. In the context of this thread, having kittenblue go look for people IRL who agree with her is pointless, because getting a bunch of people who agree with her doesn’t make her opinion more correct. Nor, for that matter, does failing to find anyone who agrees with her make her opinion less correct.
Also wanted to respond to this. Obviously, attractiveness is subjective, but attractive or conventionally good looking doesn’t always equal sexual. I’m thinking of R. Crumb’s drawings. Many of the women he draws are rather ugly (Devil Girl, for example), but they’re very sexualized. The guys in this painting aren’t necessarily all that handsome but they’re extremely sexualized.
This phrase rubbed me wrong, Miller.
“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.” … Because it is true, one doesn’t need someone to point it out to them to spot it, but some folks may be a bit slow on the uptake (like me) or may never spot it at all. And I think their interpretation is still as valid, if they are moved by the painting without ever seeing the artist’s intention of a homoerotic work. A good artist gives so much, though, in his work, that there is often more than his main intent in each painting for those who might find it.
Also this,
“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.”
I have stood in art museums and wept like a an idiot in front of paintings that I know nothng about. I don’t know if I would have been able to express why it affected me so. Once of my favorite paintings ever is a bridge. That’s pretty much it. I have no clue why it affects me strongly, and I couldn’t express it well to anyone who asks. I know that many people can take that same painting and deconstruct it, break it down, expose its layers, translate the symbolism and tell me the artist’s mother’s maiden name. But that doesn’t mean that their appreciation of the painting trumps mine.
I can see where I may have read your posts from a defensive standpoint. I may be a bit sensitive to the topic, I guess. And I know you didn’t say only an art major can appreciate art properly, I was just using an art major as an example of someone who would be able to capably wax philosophical about the meanings of paintings.
But I’m a fan of Cadmus now. I’ve fallen in love with his work over the course of this thread and for that I thank you for your awesome post. And the others in this thread that have been so good at showing me other ways to appreciate the work.
But why not? We have experts in all kinds of fields. I’m perfectly comfortable saying that a scientist or doctor’s knowledge of their field trumps mine because of their knowledge. Why shouldn’t someone who’s extensively studied and written on a particular facet of the art world be able to say that they know more?
When it comes to appreciation–enjoying the piece of art–that’s one thing. I don’t think you can quantify someone’s enjoyment. But I do think that some people’s opinions on what the painting means, or where it fits in a social or historical context, are worth more than others.
Well, like I said just a couple of posts up, I think art is different. It is meant to be appreciated. One will appreciate an art through their own interpretation of it. It is one thing to feel it and quite another thing to be able to express it.
The fact that one person has been trained to express what he feels about a painting (or how he interprets or understands it) better than another person has doesn’t mean his opinion matters more. To me. Art is unique in this way, in my opinion. Totally different than exact sciences like medicine or whatever.
No, I don’t think that you would. Particularly if he used his left hand to offer them to the sailor. Which, if you wanted to communicate that he found the sailors to be an unwelcome intrusion, would make a lot more sense compositionally. Having him lean in like that, with direct eye contact, while offering a gift - these are all things that say, “open, friendly, inviting.” Now, his expression does say something different. There is an element of contempt to it, like I said. There’s a lot of tension between the guy’s expression and his body language. The problem with your interpretation is that you haven’t resolved that tension. You don’t have an explanation for why his body language would all be saying one thing, and his face something different.
Oh, he absolutely is. With his leg up on the wall like that, and his body leaning so far in towards the sailors, if he didn’t have his weight supported on his left arm like that, his head would be on the unconscious sailor’s chest.
Sure, but that’s just the surface meaning of the painting. I don’t think the intent here is to depict a bunch of gay sailors shortly before their big gay sailor orgy. The scene we’re looking at, in a literal sense, is a bunch of heterosexual sailors out looking for dames. But the way that camaraderie is portrayed is subtly sexualized, and the interactions with the women is strongly de-sexualized. The end result is that what is, the dandy aside, an ostensibly heterosexual scene ends up with gay all over it.
Quite a few, I’m sure. What of it? If you look atthis picture, and only see a vase until someone points out the two faces, does that mean the two faces aren’t really there?
Which is why I avoid arguing artist intent, and stick with what the picture is saying, not what I think the artist might have wanted it to say.
But you can, and have been! You’re doing a fine job arguing your position, for the most part. I don’t find it persuasive, but don’t let that get you down. The point, ultimately, isn’t to persuade, although it’s always nice when that happens). The point is just to communicate. In the end, when we talk about art, we aren’t really saying anything about the work. We’re saying things about ourselves.
Yeah, I can see how that could be taken the wrong way. I meant that to be a rebuttal to kittenblue’s suggestion that the only reason people were seeing homoeroticism in the painting was because they had been told to look for it. I didn’t mean to imply that anyone who didn’t spot it right away was deficient.
And again, I can see where I was unclear. I meant that strictly in the context of talking about art, and not simply enjoying art. Of course, you don’t need to be able to articulate why you love art in order to love art. But if you want to talk about art, to put forward an idea of what a work means, and how it accomplishes that meaning, you absolutely need to be able to describe your feelings and relate them to what’s happening on the canvas. Otherwise, you’re not discussing the work, you’re just voting on it. And art isn’t a democratic process.
And thank you for reading it. I’m always kind of surprised that people have the patience to wade through the walls of text I tend to throw up when I get going on these sorts of subjects.
Oh, I wasn’t trying to amass supporters for my “side”…I was wanting to get the reactions from people who didn’t find the painting from this thread and have the whole Jerome Robbins/controversy backstory in their head when they viewed it. Just to see if what everyone else thought was obvious, was to the virgin viewer.
Right. Sometimes it’s a pipe.
Now I’ll go back to reading the thread.
What about the tall woman with no boobs and an Adam’s apple?
Anorexic. Former flapper.
Proof that Ann Coulter isn’t human?
They may know more, but that doesn’t necessarily make them more right, except perhaps in some technical aspects.
Art is not really the thing before us, the physical product of the artist’s labor. That’s the vessel. The important part is the function that occurs when someone takes it in. All art is incomplete until it has an audience.
Well, count me in as another person who saw that painting and immediately thought it was homoerotic without reading any of the interpretations posted. In fact my first thought was, “That reminds me of a tame Tom of Finland.”
You mean this? < (mildly NSFW)
I’m sorry. I’m just not seeing the homoeroticism in that.
Now THAT’s a bulge!