Hylas And The Nymphs
Feb. 1st, 2018 12:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphilo J.H. Waterhouse's Hylas and the Nymphs isn't a great painting (or at least that's the current critical consensus) but people do rather like it. I first encountered it in childhood as a black and white plate in H.A. Guerber's Myths of Greece and Rome which was a formative text for me- and think fondly of it for that reason. Me and Hylas go back a ways. It is currently in the news because Manchester City Art Gallery has taken it off the wall and left the space empty in order to "prompt a conversation".
Waterhouse was a second generation pre-Raphaelite specialising in pictures of pretty women in historical or mythological settings. In this particular instance the young women are young and naked and trying to get a Greek chappie to join them in a lily pond. I suppose it could be considered mildly titillating- but then so could 40 percent of the contents of any Art Gallery. Western art- when it's not about praising Jesus or admiring the landscape or immortalising the features of some rich and powerful person- is almost entirely about sex- and- specifically- given that most patrons and artists have historically been men- with pandering to the male gaze. As soft-porny pictures go Hylas is on the mild side. A quick online search would turn up much raunchier works by Titian, Rubens, Matisse, Picasso or almost any other master you cared to name. (Even Leonardo and Michelangelo were at it- only their sensibilities were gay). If the City Art Gallery owned paintings by any of these titans (it should be so lucky) it would be an act of suicidal courage to take them down.
Anyway, the Gallery has certainly prompted a conversation- only it's more like a shouting match. People don't like to be told what they can or can't look at and aren't afraid to offend against Godwin's Law whilst saying so. There may well be a debate to be had- post-Weinstein- about the sexual crassness of the western artistic tradition- but what's happening here is a howl against censorship.
Yes, Hylas and the Nymphs may be a bit naff, but, please (only most people aren't saying "please") put it back on the wall and let us make our own minds up.
Waterhouse was a second generation pre-Raphaelite specialising in pictures of pretty women in historical or mythological settings. In this particular instance the young women are young and naked and trying to get a Greek chappie to join them in a lily pond. I suppose it could be considered mildly titillating- but then so could 40 percent of the contents of any Art Gallery. Western art- when it's not about praising Jesus or admiring the landscape or immortalising the features of some rich and powerful person- is almost entirely about sex- and- specifically- given that most patrons and artists have historically been men- with pandering to the male gaze. As soft-porny pictures go Hylas is on the mild side. A quick online search would turn up much raunchier works by Titian, Rubens, Matisse, Picasso or almost any other master you cared to name. (Even Leonardo and Michelangelo were at it- only their sensibilities were gay). If the City Art Gallery owned paintings by any of these titans (it should be so lucky) it would be an act of suicidal courage to take them down.
Anyway, the Gallery has certainly prompted a conversation- only it's more like a shouting match. People don't like to be told what they can or can't look at and aren't afraid to offend against Godwin's Law whilst saying so. There may well be a debate to be had- post-Weinstein- about the sexual crassness of the western artistic tradition- but what's happening here is a howl against censorship.
Yes, Hylas and the Nymphs may be a bit naff, but, please (only most people aren't saying "please") put it back on the wall and let us make our own minds up.
no subject
Date: 2018-02-01 08:16 pm (UTC)My thought if they really wanted to start a conversation about real rather than represented women was not to take any of the art down (because that does not provoke conversation for me; it shuts down the chance of a conversation about anything but the decision to remove, because the art is no longer there to refer to), but to contextualize it with the lives of the models, Waterhouse's and others. Jane Burden Morris was Proserpine through the Rossetti filter, but Jane Burden Morris as herself was amazing. Or the lives of female artists of Waterhouse's generation, of whom there were not a few. Or the ways that women see the painting, rather than assuming that the only eye on the nymphs could possibly be male. There were lots of options here and as far as I can tell, they picked the least interesting, most inflammatory one.
no subject
Date: 2018-02-02 09:45 am (UTC)I've always thought Rossetti failed to do justice to Jane Morris. The woman in the photographs is so much more interesting than the goddess he turned her into.
no subject
Date: 2018-02-03 01:06 am (UTC)Oh, that's neat: I've never seen that. Water lilies and all. Yes, hanging those two side by side would create a conversation. You could do the same with her Sirens.
The woman in the photographs is so much more interesting than the goddess he turned her into.
I finally realized everybody came through the Rossetti filter looking alike when I saw his painting of Swinburne. I still like a lot of Rossetti. But if I want to see their faces, I look for photographs.
no subject
Date: 2018-02-03 08:14 pm (UTC)I'm very fond of some of Rossetti's early watercolours. His later work not so much.
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Date: 2018-02-03 05:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-02-03 07:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-02-03 05:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-02-03 08:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-02-04 04:07 am (UTC)The conversation seems to have been overwhelmingly negative.