mew

there's so much to say about today's selection of images, but i won't say it all because to tell you the truth i am simply not interested in who patented what technique and who showed what when. i shall remind you, though, that what all of these artists were doing at that moment of time was nothing short of revolutionary in that they were breaking free of the academy's formal classicism. though each has his own distinctive style, they are clearly friends and brothers, and students of the new japonisme that facilitated that break.

crossword

a woman moves through dog rose and juniper bushes,
a pussy clean and folded

between her legs,
breasts like the tips of her festive shoes
shine silently in her heavy armoire.

one blackbird, one cow,
one horse.
the sea beats against the wall of the waterless.
she walks to a phone booth
that waits
a fair distance from all three villages.

it’s a game she could have heard on the radio:
a question, a number,
an answer, a prize.
her pussy reaches up and turns on the light in her womb.

from the rain,
she says into the receiver,
we compiled white tables and chairs under a shed
into a crossword puzzle
and sat ourselves in the grid.

the receiver is silent.
the bird flounces
like a burglar caught red-handed.
her voice stumbles
over her glands.
the body to be written

in the last block—
i can suck his name
out of any letter.

all three villages cover their faces with wind.

Valzhyna Mort

Source: Poetry (December 2009)

no faces of eve

What great evil has man committed that he deserves this terrifying partner called woman? It seems to me that with such violently contradictory thoughts and so clearly opposed impulses, the only possible relationship between the sexes is that of victor and vanquished. *

Is it fair to understand Felix Vallotton through his artwork? Through his written words? Is it fair to feel one understands a man through his history as told through facts? Through the opinions of his contemporaries? Each is probably just as fair as when we, in all our inescapable subjectivity, judge one of our fellows. All I can say is that, from what I've read, quite a number of his interpreters and critics, and there are many that agree with my conclusions, and many that are wrong.

I'd like to just say... though... or shall I say, "state the obvious" -- These women have no faces! Not only that, but their colors are often practically inhuman, unhealthy, surely, and they look more like moulded plastic than flesh and blood, polished like fine wood, and constructed with all the right angles in all the right places. If touched, these bodies, even sitting by a fire, would be cold.

Consider, if you will, the very numerous images of "intimate" scenes. Here too, women consistently have no faces. As with the nudes, we seem to be peering closely, and yet cannot avoid a feeling of distance. Whose distance is really being registered? Is Vallotton commenting on the falseness of the apparent closeness depicted, demonstrating his despair at this "truth," or is the distance with the heart of the artist, leaving Vallotton himself the one with the inability to close the deal?

Many analyses of his work seem to take misogyny for granted: "the men were frightened by woman's new-found freedoms...." There have been those of his critics, both in his day and now, who will interpret Vallotton's work either as a brilliant and unsentimental exploration of the duplicities and failures inherent in marriage, or as evidence of his fear thus hatred of women. Should we excuse misogyny as temporal? Tell me when it started and when it stopped.

A smooth brow. A pale eye, well placed, but without brilliance under sickly eyelids, a short aquiline nose, a prominent upper lip where the beginnings of a retiring moustache could be detected, a thick-lipped mouth purposefully half-opened over quite beautiful teeth, but separated, and then, suddenly, the failure of everything in the weak little chin, a haphazard little chin which blemished the ensemble and spoiled it with its weakness. *

(He could almost be narrating his own artwork.)

The facts of Vallotton's own sentimental life are also ambiguous: was he a simple loving man dissolved by life's necessities, or a callous, selfish charlatan, motivated only by his need for fame? For ten years, Vallotton lived in the Latin Quarter with Helene Chatenay, a working-class woman whom he painted often, and cherished dearly, grateful for her generous emotional support.

At that ten-year mark, Vallotton leaves her, and marries a wealthy widow, Gabrielle Rodrigues-Henriques, with associates in the world of gallery owners and patrons of the arts. Has he thereby confirmed his own worse suspicions on the nature of love, or merely followed the instructions of his heart? He is quoted as saying words to the effect that, Helene knew I had plans to go off and marry some day.... He is reported to have been dispirited since the day he left her behind choosing, apparently, love over money. However he is also reported to have been, from the time of the wedding, happier than he had ever been in his life.

* The two excerpts in italics are from Vallotton's posthumously-published novel, "La Vie Meurtriere." It is about a painter with many biological details that match Vallotton's, who murders his working-class lover with a distant though passionate blood-lust. These deaths, which are supposedly accidents, fascinate him as participant, as observer, and as narrator.

How I miss my simple stupid days when I thought, when I looked at Vallotton's work, that I was seeing Eros, without catching a whiff of the
Thanatos lurking so closely by.

unlocking the fat trap

i have talked about fat before. but until january 1st, 2012, i had little in the way of stats. below are excerpts from the New York Times' fact-filled magazine piece, The Fat Trap. in the meantime, in my quest to find a decent physician, i had to interview a number of frogs. the one i have in mind is the one who responded to the question as to why he thought so few people kept weight off since losing it. with an expression saying, 'isn't it obvious?' he made it clear: for the same reason they got fat in the first place: they're lazy, and they're not quite honest. these doctors need to be educated.

A full year after significant weight loss, these men and women remained in what could be described as a biologically altered state. Their still-plump bodies were acting as if they were starving and were working overtime to regain the pounds they lost. For instance, a gastric hormone called ghrelin, often dubbed the “hunger hormone,” was about 20 percent higher than at the start of the study.

Another hormone associated with suppressing hunger, peptide YY, was also abnormally low. Levels of leptin, a hormone that suppresses hunger and increases metabolism, also remained lower than expected. A cocktail of other hormones associated with hunger and metabolism all remained significantly changed compared to pre-dieting levels. It was almost as if weight loss had put their bodies into a unique metabolic state, a sort of post-dieting syndrome that set them apart from people who hadn’t tried to lose weight in the first place.

Researchers know that obesity tends to run in families, and recent science suggests that even the desire to eat higher-calorie foods may be influenced by heredity.

That experimental binge should have translated into a weight gain of roughly 24 pounds (based on 3,500 calories to a pound). But some gained less than 10 pounds, while others gained as much as 29 pounds.

The research shows that the changes that occur after weight loss translate to a huge caloric disadvantage of about 250 to 400 calories. For instance, one woman who entered the Columbia studies at 230 pounds was eating about 3,000 calories to maintain that weight. Once she dropped to 190 pounds, losing 17 percent of her body weight, metabolic studies determined that she needed about 2,300 daily calories to maintain the new lower weight. That may sound like plenty, but the typical 30-year-old 190-pound woman can consume about 2,600 calories to maintain her weight — 300 more calories than the woman who dieted to get there.

Scientists are still learning why a weight-reduced body behaves so differently from a similar-size body that has not dieted. Muscle biopsies taken before, during and after weight loss show that once a person drops weight, their muscle fibers undergo a transformation, making them more like highly efficient “slow twitch” muscle fibers. A result is that after losing weight, your muscles burn 20 to 25 percent fewer calories during everyday activity and moderate aerobic exercise than those of a person who is naturally at the same weight. That means a dieter who thinks she is burning 200 calories during a brisk half-hour walk is probably using closer to 150 to 160 calories.

How long this state lasts isn’t known, but preliminary research at Columbia suggests that for as many as six years after weight loss, the body continues to defend the old, higher weight by burning off far fewer calories than would be expected. The problem could persist indefinitely.

Tara Parker-Pope

1112 (sounds almost like beethoven)

all glowing to you

the yoshiwara of paris

with the help of two extraordinary websites, i would like to take you back to the pleasure quarter of montmartre, the yoshiwara of paris.

i feel drawn to the people, those side-liners who represented a working class aching for and gaining some personal liberties and leisure time with which to mingle with the swells and the song-and-dancers in what became one of the first venues where classes met and mixed, and only sometimes for money changing hands.

there has always seemed to me something more comfortable about unrefined folk; in high school i always said i yearned for squalor, and talked in the 'dead-end-kids' jargon. and even the greaser kids, the ones that went to viet nam right after high school, asked me to teach them how to dance.

but in the bohemian, artistic, rebellious fin-de siecle the times still echo in our times today; strikes were rampant, the taste of freedom creating the craving for more. Montmartre's remote location and inexpensive lodgings contributed to its transformation into a primarily working-class neighborhood in the second half of the nineteenth century. Known for its revolutionary politics and underground culture, its liberal reputation lured students, writers, musicians, and artists to the area in the early 1880s.* the geographical division of classes sent the upper class scurrying to the outskirts, looking for the women and wine, for the sin they likely couldn't find at home.

Replacing the Latin Quarter as the locus of the city's intellectual and artistic community, Montmartre boasted a thriving bohemian culture that was driven by its critique of deca- dent society. Its raucous café-concerts and cabarets featured satires and crude, often subversive, performances that mocked the Third Republic's bourgeois morality and increasingly corrupt politics. Cabarets and café-concerts were favorite spots for avant- garde artists, who sought to capture their celebrated performers, hazy atmospheres, and artificial stage lighting.*

i guess that, despite privilege, the follies of the bourgeoisie never fooled me. as the monocled stuffed-shirts ogled the can-can dancers, so the husbands of my parents' friends ogled us hippies. nobody had all the answers (though both sides thought they did) (of course), but one side had less to protect and appeared to have more fun.

By the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the appeal of the cabarets and café-concerts extended well beyond the borders of Montmartre. Its performance halls provided a rare opportunity for the mixing of social classes, particularly between bourgeois men and working-class women, whose interactions were often based on prostitution. The blurring of class boundaries contributed to Montmartre's reputation as a place for escape, pleasure, entertainment, and sexual freedom.

By the time of the World's Fair held in Paris in 1900, Montmartre had developed into a veritable entertainment industry, boasting over forty venues comprised of cabarets, café-concerts, dance halls, music halls, theaters, and circuses. The area's underground bohemian culture had become a part of mainstream bourgeois entertainment through the rapid commercialization and marketing of its venues and performers. As a result, Toulouse-Lautrec and his avant-garde contemporaries lost interest in Montmartre's nightlife and sought their modern subjects elsewhere. What had begun as a critique of decadent society had become a symbol of decadence itself.*

just like what happened with the hippies too.

the two sites i referred to up top are the always valuable Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History in italics with asterisk.* the second is an amazing compendium of theophile steinlen's work. i have never seen anything as comprehensive.

"Days grow longer!" scientists say.

Thanks, Chet. Yes, as all the kiddies out there know, this is the one day of the year that we use up our oil reserves -- Why? -- well, to oil the gears, of course. Yes, every year at this time this ole world has just been getting slower and slower.

Surely everybody out there has noticed the nights getting longer and longer. That's because the earth's gears are running out of lubricant! So let's all take a great big breath and, say it with me, "Spill baby spill!" as we pour that oil, and watch what happens. slowly but surely -- wait -- I believe I can already see... yes! I can feel it! the days are getting longer already! Back to you, Chet....

everyone is the other

i do believe that fear of the 'other' is genetically encoded in each of us, presumably to build strong families and communities, as these are the modes of survival. particularly when you're nomads, wandering in the desert.

i wonder what our genes think of cyberspace. or is our growing likelihood to spend a fair percentage of our socializing while sitting alone at a desk also genetically determined as a response to overpopulation.

but in the current climate of world-wide community, is this genetic imperative as out of date as dragging women around by their hair? in a word... YES!

this train of thought began first thing in the morning when i heard a commentator on the radio announce that the TLC program, 'All-American Muslims" would be cancelled due to advertisers, under pressure from a right fringe group complaining that the evil side of muslims was being hidden & that the whole show was propaganda, pulled out of the show.

he had it wrong. in fact the network is hoping that all the uproar will help the show's ratings. but i still cringe at the mention of that much hatred, that much fear. and it started me thinking about how i usually saw this kind of hatred when it had been encouraged by someone for political reasons. and in this country it's the right that's pretty much the sole contender for the role.

so as i say, i started wondering about how that old genetic drive would come out now, if it were never aroused because someone thought they could benefit in terms of money and power by doing it. and i can barely conceive of it.

if we were never told, well, let's let the song from South Pacific say it best:

YOU'VE GOT TO BE CAREFULLY TAUGHT

You've got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You've got to be taught
From year to year,
It's got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught before it's
too late,
Before you are six or seven
or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught!

we have learned much, in our 'modern' times, about how we no longer have a need to brainlessly act on every genetic imperative. we have been thrown together in shared experiences. is it possible for us to embrace those experiences, those people?

or is this actually something we can never accomplish? if we had the drive to create all these religions (which are all the same at base), all these empowered entities, maybe there is something integral to our very fiber about those boundaries, those fences, those tightly closed gates.

but then, when have you hated the most beautiful girl in the room, or the neighbor whose yard wasn't kept as you liked it? when have you behaved as primitively as a carefully taught being, and can you, could anyone, just not ever be taught?

i once saw in a shop that had a strong anti-ivory stance a postcard that said 'we are all elephants.'

today, we are all muslims.