The John Singer Sargent exhibition in New York at Metropolitan Museum of Art has evoked much deserved comment, if for no other reason than it's not in Boston, which as Murray Whyte has noted, is where the art world endlessly genuflects to his greatness, but it was only in Paris where he was invigorated and truly alive.
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| Crossing the Line |
Before he pursued personal financial stability, he studied art in Paris and it was there, as the 19th century bled into the 20th, Sargent first laid eyes upon the titillating, enthralling and ever so slightly naughty wife of a Parisian banker, whose husband was enough older than she that Paris assumed/knew she satisfied her subterranean passions in the beds of other men. As Professor Google tells the tale, Sargent, whatever his own passions toward Mdme. Gautreau, knew his ticket to fame and fortune would be through a portrait of the lady. His first attempt showed her right shoulder strap dipping off her shoulder, which apparently, judging from the printed reviews in Parisian papers, evoked erections in any man standing before the portrait in the Salon.
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| Sanitized |
Why is not entirely clear.
Clearly, Hugh Hefner would have arranged a different pose.
But the mind is a marvelous thing, especially the mind marinated in testosterone, and that strap looks as if she might have just let it slip as she prepares to remove her dress for her lover, or perhaps, a man has done this or, well, you can go on forever in some version of the New Yorker cartoon caption contest.
Apparently, the original version caused such an uproar, Mdme. Gautreau had to remove herself from polite society for a while, although one can only imagine what it did for her bedroom life.
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| Klimt: Judith & Holofernes |
And then there is Gustav Klimt, operating about the same time in Austria, where he painted women, often Jewish women, who looked as seductive as Judith before Holofernes, the sort of women who might lure you to bed and then cut off your head. Lorena Bobbitt was a girl scout selling cookies compared to Mr. Klimt's women.
All of this suggests to the Phantom that 90% of sex occurs above the nose, as he was taught years ago.
