A Call for Nudes

Does anyone have anything to submit for tomorrow's Evening Nudes? Calling one and calling all.  And please, don't anyone mention Olympia. ;-)

Oh, and this little bit for you to consider

Gauguin's Postcards: The naked truth about women in Polynesia by Sarah Unger

Art Trigger

A reaction to Linda's (and she is indeed, linda) comment about A Modern Olympia, featured in this week's Friday Evening Nudes. I don't especially love the painting but I found it interesting that a painting with such a title would be painted. Sort of like a popular song remake, rarely as good as the original. Who knows? Well, someone must know, but I don't.    ;-)  I don't think Olympia looks herself at all in Cezanne's version.

 A Modern Olympia

Paul Cezanne

Anyway, that triggered the image of the Olympia by Manet. My favorite nude of all time.

 

And because it's been too long since I posted any poetry, a repeat of the poem by Margaret Atwood, my favorite writer and thinker

Manet’s Olympia

By Margaret Atwood

She reclines, more or less,

Try that posture, it’s hardly languor.
Her right arm sharp angles.
With her left she conceals her ambush.
Shoes but not stockings,
how sinister.  the flower
behind her ear is naturally
not real, of a piece
with the sofa’s drapery.
The windows (if any) are shut.
This is indoor sin.
Above the head of the (clothed) maid
is an invisible voice balloon:   Slut.

But.  Consider the body,

unfragile, defiant, the pale nipples
staring you right in the bull’s eye.
Consider also the black ribbon
around the neck.  What’s under it?
A fine red threadline, where the head
was taken off and glued back on.
The body’s on offer,
but the neck’s as afar as it goes.

 This is no morsel.

Put clothes on her and you’d have a schoolteacher,
the kind with the brittle whiphand.

 There’s someone else in this room.

You, Monsieur Voyeur.
As for that object of yours
she’s seen those before, and better.

 I, the head, am the only subject
of this picture.
You, Sir, are furniture.
Get stuffed