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For that matter, what about the idealization of woman/man? The flip-side of
misogeny/misandry (nice, Alison)--the figure of Venus/David, the Beatles'
"A Girl (ahh)," or The Leader of the Pack? Good to confront each other in
full awareness of each other's humanity, but it's not the only way we do
confront each other--the passions distort, and the distortion is a way to
know ourselves if we see selves as coevolved and contingent. Nothing nice
about it, but there's a lot there's nothing nice about. If the job is to
create out of the midst of a life political correctness is rather beside
the point.

A brief sidenote on Picasso. To see him as the predator and the women who
involved themselves with him as victims is to diminish those very strong
women. They were there because it suited them as well.

And a note on De Kooning: the paint-laden, heavily impastoed paintings of
the 70s, before the minimalist work of his last period but after the women
paintings, are to my mind among the great works of the century, as
different as can be from the great Rothkos, but on a par. Which is not to
take anything away from those last miracles.

Mark

At 11:08 AM 7/31/2001 +1000, [log in to unmask] wrote:
>Joe asks:
>
>>is a painting that exhibits misogyny for the viewer's
>>inspection necessarily misogynist?
>
>No - I saw Tennessee Williams once described as "sexist", which is a
>laugh, by a critic making precisely that mistake.   Nor is misogyny
>necessarily a flag of bad art.   Unfortunately; life would be much
>simpler if it were.  Strindberg, for example -  Though I'd go so far to
>say that in works where it's paramount, even the most gifted artist
>becomes lesser, their perception clouding.  Sheer misanthropy has the
>virtue of being evenhanded in its approach - and who said artists had to
>be _nice_ people?
>
>What about misandry?
>
>Best
>
>A
>