१५ ऑक्टोबर, २०२०

"The artist thinks that this is a feminist statue because it doesn’t portray the usual subject — Perseus, the Greek mythic hero who killed Medusa, cut off her head, and..."

"... used it as a weapon against his foes. [Luciano] Garbati claims that by reversing the roles, having Medusa carrying around the head of Perseus, that this is some radical political act. It is not. The only way this might have been true is if she had maybe been holding his genitals aloft or stomping on his body. As it is, this is nothing more than yet another naked female figure made by yet another white male artist — a.k.a. business as usual. What about the great craft, you ask? The craft is routine. This is generic casting and modeling at best. Mostly, this Medusa looks like a way-too-big version of all those little models of Michelangelo’s David sold at any Florentine gift shop..., As an object, this sculpture is dead, optically inert, intellectually barren.... Really, it is conceptual art 101 at its most obvious and simplistic.... In the real story Medusa turned men to stone. Here she … holds a man’s head. But really she’s still the total object of the male gaze here...."


Other articles about "Medusa With the Head of Perseus": 

५२ टिप्पण्या:

traditionalguy म्हणाले...

War on statues is modern book burning. Iconoclasts arise and destroy stuff.

Biff म्हणाले...

Is it even worth wondering what the writer's evaluation of the work would have been if the artist had been a non-binary BIPOC?

Joe Smith म्हणाले...

Except for the snakey hair she's pretty hot : )

MD Greene म्हणाले...

Maybe it would appeal more to critical theorists if Medusa were wearing one of those hooded red costumes from "The Handmaid's Tale."

If this becomes too controversial, the statue could be donated to one of those classy gentlemen's clubs.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent म्हणाले...

The Neener-Neener School of art. Profound. Subtle. And so transgressive!

Xmas म्हणाले...

The statue would be something if Medusa was holding Athena's head because Athena is who made beautiful Medusa into a monster because Medusa was raped by Poseidon.

daskol म्हणाले...

Sculpture as a medium is obviously too much for us to handle at the moment, let alone the erection of new monuments. We're back on finger-paints.

BarrySanders20 म्हणाले...

New Medusa is so empowered she even shaved her beaver. And I thought that was a relatively new thing with the young gals of today. Learn something new every day. Thank you, artists!

tim maguire म्हणाले...

Joe Smith said...Except for the snakey hair she's pretty hot : )

That's what's really transgressive about it--she's not ugly and isn't built from tampons.

daskol म्हणाले...

Al Pacino probably likes it.

CJinPA म्हणाले...

Behold, the joyless task of critiquing politicized art. Everyone involved seems to have had their soul wounded. The older ones probably remember when art celebrated beauty and timeless stories.

Jupiter म्हणाले...

"Is it even worth wondering what the writer's evaluation of the work would have been if the artist had been a non-binary BIPOC?"

I was rather surprised to discover that the writer is a man. Check your male gaze, Dude!

SoLastMillennium म्हणाले...

So I'm going to start things and ask:

Where do you think that Medusa is on the HOT/Crazy Matrix?

(feminists have become soooo boring so why bother with that?)

Patrick म्हणाले...

Again libs are tied up in knots from their own convoluted ideologies. Are women's bodies something to be proud or ashamed of?

BarrySanders20 म्हणाले...

So I looked up the Medusa story last week. Medusa was treated very cruelly even by the standards of long ago. Maybe in this new hot naked rendition she needed the sword to slay Perseus because her "turn to stone" power doesn't work on gay or trans men. So instead, she had to chop off his head. But that makes her a gay or trans-basher, which is a far worse crime, so I guess she got what she deserved originally and the statue should be pulled down by the mob.

Maybe the artist can start work on a hot naked shaved Lorena Bobbit statute next.

Iman म्हणाले...

For. Fuck. Sake.

Freeman Hunt म्हणाले...

She turns people to stone, so did she cleave through his stone neck to get the stone head?

RNB म्हणाले...

I thought the story went that Perseus (hero) was the good guy, killing Medusa (petrifier of innocent bystanders, whatever her backstory). So 'feminist reimagining' is equivalent to 'bad guy wins'?

SGT Ted म्हणाले...

The 2-bit sexism of 2-bit feminism.

DarkHelmet म्हणाले...

The politics are amateurish. The sculpture is amateurish. The critique is amateurish.

Can't anybody here play this game?

America in 2020 is a triumph of perpetual adolescence. If 'triumph' is the right word. One could also call it 'rule by the misfits.'

Makes sense. We've been glorifying perpetual adolescents and misfits since the '60s. Two generations of undermining what makes a healthy society. So now we have a profoundly unhealthy society and no adult supervision. The adults have been chased from the field. Some of them ran to their tents, put on adolescent trappings and came back to participate in the destruction.

Sad.

Dude1394 म्हणाले...

I do appreciate the shaved vagina.

chuck म्हणाले...

Wasn't Athena responsible for the creation of the Medusa?

Kate म्हणाले...

"...sold at any Florentine gift shop..." HAHAHAHA!! Oh, what a burn.

NorthOfTheOneOhOne म्हणाले...

I guess it's crass, boring and socially unacceptable to question an article about a statue's lack of feminist bona fides that's written by a male art critic named Jerry Saltz.

I mean is this some sort of "who's dick is bigger" contest between the critic and the artist?

PM म्हणाले...

C'mon, that's funny.

mikee म्हणाले...

When my children were small, we would often visit the Baltimore Musem of Art's outdoor Sculpture Garden. Among the boxing rabbit, giant cubist owl head, pint-sized nude Degas, and giant Henry Moore there stands a life sized statue of a lovely nude woman in a gracefully surprised pose.

I used to tell my toddlers, when my wife was not with us, which was often as she was a medical resident, that this was a statue of their Mother. I'd get them to yell, "Hello, Mommy!" as loud as they could so the statue of their Mom could "hear" them. They did so with gusto.

After half a dozen such training sessions, it was fun to watch my wife's confusion when the kids raced over to the statue and yelled, "Hello, Mommy!" I never explained, the kids were too young to do so, and so the mystery became a family legend. Not as exciting a story as when my 2.5 year old son recreated the attack on Pearl Harbor by dive-bombing into the water feature in the Sculpture Garden on December 7th, 1992, but a family legend nonetheless.

Art is there to enjoy. If you've never played hide and seek around a sculpture garden with kids under 4 years old, I strongly recommend you go and do so.

My kids would have counted the snakes on Medusa's head with glee, and examined Perseus' severed neck entrails with rapture.

cruiser म्हणाले...

My God! The things people go on about

Jupiter म्हणाले...

"New Medusa is so empowered she even shaved her beaver."

I think it is rather that she has no pubic hair because she has no vulva. Like Barbie.

tcrosse म्हणाले...

Is it at all possible to judge a work of art on its own, without reference to the artist, the way they do blind wine-tastings?

Maillard Reactionary म्हणाले...

mikee-- I like your sane attitude towards these things. I hope you and your wife pass it on to your kids, who sound like fun.

DanTheMan म्हणाले...

The Greeks are white. She needs to be pulled down!

Jaq म्हणाले...

It’s Lady Ghostbusters redux.

Jaq म्हणाले...

Why would she go into battle naked? Especially against a foe like Perseus?

Jaq म्हणाले...

It’s almost like she’s “asking for it."

mikee म्हणाले...

Maillard: One kid is a princess ballerina rock climbing software engineer, the other is a gun nut weight lifter optical fiber engineer. They are fun.

And anyone who names themselves after the reason beef is best on a grill is OK by me.

rhhardin म्हणाले...

It can't be feminist. There's no vagina.

rhhardin म्हणाले...

Here's Plato and Socrates with the wrong one writing. Also Plato seems to have an erection.

traditionalguy म्हणाले...

Spray paint her pink. Problem solved.

Earnest Prole म्हणाले...

New Medusa is so empowered she even shaved her beaver.

It used to be a mound of writhing snakes.

Lexington Green म्हणाले...

Medusa shaves her nether regions and has no external genitalia. Wat means?

Swede म्हणाले...

Some people bitch no matter what.

The question becomes why even try to make them happy?

ObeliskToucher म्हणाले...

The story of this statue is that Medusa battled Perseus, won... and was then turned to stone by a man.

William म्हणाले...

The work would have had more resonance and significance if had used Kathy Griffin as a model. It would have become a celebrated work of art. He really missed the turn there.

Tina Trent म्हणाले...

What could be a more fitting symbol of the "me too" movement than a wrathful woman cutting the wrong guy's head off?

It's absolutely amazing that the National Women's Law Center would accept donations based on the sale of small versions of the statue -- an image of deranged vengeance triumphing over justice.

Chris-2-4 म्हणाले...

Vulgarity Warning.

Insert Carpet/Drapes Joke.

Warning Off.

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM म्हणाले...

it could have been worse--

...a nude Kathy Griffin with Trump's head.

The Left's infantilism is represented in their iconography--
Ascribing fantastical powers to their heroines like kids with 'superheroes'.

"Fearless Girl" etc.

Hammond X. Gritzkofe म्हणाले...

"The monument has its fair share of critics." - news.artnet.com

What number of critics would be an unfair share?

In these times controversy alone is sufficient to make "art." No talent to tape a banana to a wall, shred a document, or drop a religious bauble into a bottle of piss. The statue has generated controversy. Ipso facto, with or without vulva, it is art.

Jaq म्हणाले...

I think that there are no pubes because it’s not a sculpture, it’s cast from a live model. Tom Wolfe had an interesting little vignette about this in “Hooking Up” which was a pretty good book. There is a Korean War memorial done by an actual skilled artist in Washington, DC and one of these fake artists asked how he got the models to hold that position without suffocating during the mold making process. Which of course there never was any mold made because the artist had mastered his craft. I wish I could remember more about it.

tommyesq म्हणाले...

Isn't that a statue of Kathy Griffin holding Trump's head? Isn't that sufficiently woke?

Maillard Reactionary म्हणाले...

tim in vermont asked: "Why would she go into battle naked? Especially against a foe like Perseus?"

Maybe she was trying to unman him.

If so, she missed big-time.


mikee: Thanks, and well done with the kids, but God help us, not with the steak.

effinayright म्हणाले...

William said...
The work would have had more resonance and significance if had used Kathy Griffin as a model. It would have become a celebrated work of art. He really missed the turn there.
*******************

Ever seen her tits? Think again.

FIDO म्हणाले...

These wimmin are intent on no one liking them and hopefully women in general.