Category Archives: Art

THE FUNNY PAPERS: TERRY AND THE PIRATES, 1934

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This is the beginning of Milt Caniff's comic-strip masterpiece and he was just starting to flex his muscles as a visual stylist, but check out the sudden shift to the night-time silhouette of Terry at the end of this Sunday page and the three dynamic panels that follow it.  They have the rhythm and surprise of a well-edited shot sequence in a movie, ending in the beautiful but vaguely ominous overhead view of the junks heading for their fateful rendezvous with the steamer.

It's brilliant stuff.

More to come.

THE AMERICAN GALLERY UPDATE

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The author of The American Gallery art blog, like the author of the Femme Femme Femme art blog, has switched hosts from Google to WordPress, fleeing Google's mindless and insulting “Content Warning”.  Other folks with Google-hosted blogs should consider doing the same, as a preventive measure and as a protest.

Both the above sites are well worth visiting.

The nude studies above are by Paul S. Brown, whose work I discovered via The American Gallery.  You can see more of his work here.

THE GOOGLE-ROT SPREADS

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Yet another totally unobjectionable art-history blog has been branded with a “Content Warning” by Google, in response to unnamed readers' complaints.  The complaints presumably were directed against the sites (including Femme Femme Femme, which I wrote about earlier) because they sometimes feature paintings of female nudes, like the fine one above by Paul S. Brown.

Shocking, isn't it?

Brown also deals in food-related pornography, as in the scandalous still-life below, with its provocative depiction of “virgin” olive oil.  At least he had the decency to leave the skins on the onions.

The latest victim of Google's slander is The American Gallery, where I first encountered Brown's work, but I'm sure it won't be the last.  I suspect that the complaints come from either pranksters or religious kooks, but Google should be roundly condemned for letting them get away with it.  The blogging community really needs to rally around and put a stop to this nonsense.  Trust me, if you have a blog hosted by Google, this could happen to you.

Personally, I'm worried that impressionable young children will run across these “content warnings” and get the idea that there's something shameful about the female body and its celebration by artists throughout history.  The female nude in fine-art history is about the only thing our culture has left to set against the iconographic degradation of women in most modern popular entertainment.

FEMME FEMME FEMME UPDATE

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I'm happy to report that the author of the wonderful Femme Femme Femme site is in the process of switching hosts to avoid a shameful “Content Warning” unjustly appended to the site by Google, apparently as a result of complaints from unnamed viewers.

The site, as I've previously noted, posts images of women in art, including nudes, like the painting above, by Julius LeBlanc Stewart, but always with impeccable taste and discrimination.  The idea that a few unhinged neurotics can force Google to label such a site “objectionable” is actually quite frightening.  (Stewart's painting, incidentally, hangs in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris and has not to my knowledge inspired any widespread calls for its removal as an affront to public decency.)

Anyone who has a site hosted by Google should seriously consider switching to a different host immediately, as a protest, unless Google is willing to change its policy and apologize to the author of Femme Femme Femme.  I know this would be a pain in the neck, but accepting Google's irrational policy might in the long run lead to an even greater pain in the neck, if a few kooks decide that your site is objectionable.  So switch now if you possibly can and let Google know why you're switching.

Google, which has collaborated with the Internet censors of the totalitarian regime in China, has always argued that the Internet, in any form, will lead eventually to greater openness there.  In fact, it seems to be leading to greater intolerance here.

The new Femme Femme Femme site, still under construction, can be accessed by following this link.

FEMME FEMME FEMME

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One of the loveliest sites online is Femme Femme Femme — it's one I visit almost every day and which has been listed among my favorite links (to the right there) for a long time.  It's a mostly visual blog that celebrates the female form in art with exceptional good taste.

On Monday, when visiting the site, I had to pass through a “Content Warning” message put up by Google, which hosts the site.  Someone apparently complained that the site contained “objectionable” material.  The image above (by Julius LeBlanc Stewart, from 1900) is about as “objectionable” as the site ever gets, if you think that paintings of naked women are objectionable, and if you do you should probably be in therapy.

Google in China has been a lapdog for that nation's totalitarian censors, and while it hasn't censored Femme Femme Femme it has kowtowed to the totalitarian sensibility by forcing the site's viewers to read and acknowledge what I can only describe as an unhealthy “opinion” about images of women in art.

That's objectionable.

I urge everyone to visit the site and send messages of support to its author — and if anyone knows how to complain to Google about its shameful behavior, please pass the information along.

THE STORIES OF WOMEN

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The stories of women go unheard, I heard her to say, Lila.
     “No one knows what happens to women.  No one knows how bad it is, or how good it is, either.  Women can’t talk — we know too much.”

From the short story “Ceil” by Harold Brodkey, published in The New Yorker, 1983.

[Image: “Venus Rising From the Sea — A Deception”, by Raphaelle Peale, 1822.]

THE CARRY

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A painting by Andrew Wyeth, who died today.  He and Norman Rockwell kept the art of painting alive in a barbaric age.

A “carry” is a rocky part of a stream where one's canoe needs to be portaged to smoother water.  From the rocks Wyeth looked downstream, towards a bend he couldn't see around.  We can be pretty sure, though, that he's there now, on his way to the sea.