Hennessy Youngman kicks around the question, should art be beautiful?
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Hennessy Youngman kicks around the question, should art be beautiful?
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Comments 9
PinkWithIndignation — May 10, 2012
So beauty=sexy females, because art patrons are all coming from the perspective of the male gaze. Truly a revolutionary notion. Seriously, I hate boobs in art. I do not want to see other females naked, I dislike it. Art with naked ladies in it can be attractive, but 99% of the time it just makes me feel like being in the locker room at the Y. There's nothing inherently wrong with nudity, but, I just have to ask...what makes naked ladies so great that they are all over art (besides patriarchy blah blah) and yet there are very few sexy naked men in what is considered great art (no, David does not count)? Let alone erect penises. I will tell you: nothing. There is nothing special or magical about the female body. It does all the gross stuff (and more!) of male bodies. It is full of flaws. It grows old and dies like every other body. It's just a type of body we've been told is special and magical. Females have been reduced to their outward appearance so much that we are treated like art exhibits every day, to be judged on how well we execute our look. People think they are entitled to see us that way, to scrutinize us as they would objects of art in a museum, and to assign us value accordingly. So much that even heterosexual and bisexual women are drawn to painting naked females and breasts. We are not encouraged to make art about what we desire. We create what society tells us is desirable, what we have been told to believe is desirable, and we want to create what is desirable because we desire success, and if we get approval for the execution of that art it becomes more desirable, and people think that is the key to great art and so it is a vicious cycle. The art he likes is the objectification of women that has been going on for hundreds of years, probably thousands. Isn't it time we find a new standard of beauty? And those paintings of the women as food? I hate them. They are shallow and exploitative and I have seen that kind of thing done to death. If you want to make great art, make something we haven't seen before, or haven't seen enough of.