BOUCHER AND FRAGONARD (EXPANDED)

Francois Boucher was one of the great painters of 18th Century France, but he seems to have fallen out of favor in recent years.  If I had to guess about the reason I'd say that he's considered by critics to be shallow. Look at the picture above. The dress is exquisite but the artist doesn't seem to have anything  to say about the woman wearing it. Lots of his pictures are like that. Truth to tell, some of Boucher's work is a bit cold, there's no denying it. So why, you ask, am I writing about him?

The reason is that Boucher made a massive contribution to art in spite of his flaws. The critics were only half right.

Boucher's early heroes were Tiepolo and Rubens, except he didn't have their depth and insight. What we see in Boucher's first pictures is skill merely. They are kind of funny though. You can see the eroticism that characterized his later work (above) slowly creeping in, even though it seems out of place.

Boucher didn't really find his own voice til he got into soft core porn.  He became a favorite of the licentious French court, maybe because he somehow managed to connect eroticism with something deep and profound. The man who had difficulty drawing faces managed to articulate something important about sex and life that no other painter had before. He gave his subjects a light-hearted, delicate charm that came to exemplify the new French style.

Boucher's contemporary Chardin had that charm and so did his pupil Fragonard, but I think they got it from Boucher.

I digress to air this parody (above) of Boucher's picture.

Boucher also did some pictures (above) that were pretty extreme. They're well done, and even funny on some level, but they strike me as decadent and beneath Boucher's talent.

Poor Boucher got typecast and found himself stuck with doing endless paintings of nudes and cupids (above). His overtly sexual charm diminished over time, but never disappeared.  He just sublimated it into sumptuous lines and shapes and colors.

His pictures from this period are often juicy and erotic, even when the subjects aren't. The man who figured out how to put charm and delicacy into a nude, now figured out how to put it into abstract shapes. Pretty good for a guy who publishers deem unworthy of a book. 

To keep from going crazy all those years, he amused himself by simplifying his humans and letting the cupids steal the show. They became more and more vivid and grotesque. Look at them (above)!  One of these days I should do a whole blog about the man's surly cupids!

Boucher's star pupil was Fragonard (sample above), who took up a lot of Boucher's themes and pushed them farther in the direction of what we would call illustration. You can see a large part of the future of art in pictures like this. In this one I see Mary Blair and Freddy Moore as well as fine artists like Renoir, Lautrec and DeKooning.

BTW, many art critics consider Fragonard to be as shallow as Boucher, but the public likes him so he grudgingly gets the occasional book. 

Fragonard (example above) had his teacher's knack for lightness and grace. Sadly it all came to an end with The French Revolution. According to a comment by Thomas, David helped Fragonard get a job at the Louvre, which at least kept him safe for a while. In a sense you could say that Fragonard prevailed, because a hundred years later his techniques, along with those of Boucher and Chardin, had a big influence on the Impressionists. 

Interesting, huh?

THE BEST BACKSHOT OF A WOMAN

The best sexy backshot of a woman ever drawn has to be the one Wood drew of Louis Lane for "Superduperman."

You'd think that a having a jacket like Lane's would break the clean line of the silhouette, and maybe it does, but it doesn't matter. The shoulders and lower back on the jacket form an arrow pointing down to the butt. The flare on the jacket bottom acts like a rising theater curtain, creating a reveal for what's below. 

Wood rightly perceived that seamed stockings trump unseamed ones, at least in cartoon drawings. That fine little line catches your eye, and makes you want to follow it upward.

Seams (above) are no longer a manufacturing necessity, they're there for looks.

While I'm on the subject of backshots, I can't resist mentioning that I like the dynamism in photos that show a woman walking briskly away from the camera.

Does this (above) remind you of the Don Martin's gag where the chivalrous men shoehorn a fat lady onto an escalator?

Painter John Currin's women (above) would never have that problem. They're designed for the modern urban environment.   

BACKSHOTS IN PHOTOGRAPHY

I promised to write more about Geoff Dyer's book of photography essays, and here I keep that promise. Reading Dyer, I'm amazed how many discoveries were necessary to bring us to the point that photography's at now, where it's universally considered an art form, and can handle almost any subject we throw at it.

Take the Ben Shahn picture of a sheriff's back above. In 1935 when this picture was taken, backs were a new subject for photography. Dyer says Dorothea Lange discovered them earlier that year, and the innovation spread like wildfire. Amazing as it sounds, backs had to be "discovered" by somebody!

I love this photo. Dyer's a British radical and he interprets the subject as a big American bottom and a big American gun. He extrapolates that this sheriff likes to sit a lot and probably spends a lot of time reading on the can. Haw! Maybe there's some truth in that.

What I see is a symbol for the fact that somebody's always regarding us and judging us, just as we're always regarding and judging others. We're like social insects who are always on the lookout for mutants and deviants.

Dyer, Lange and Shahn see authority figures (above) as lummoxes who are always looking to perch on something. It's a funny way to see the world, one that's very useful for cartoonists.

Some big people have the ability to enclose the space around them with their limbs. They carry with them a tiny universe and they're good at sucking you into it.

Lummoxes learn this behavior when they're kids by observing other lummoxes on the street. Most lummoxes are nice enough people but they're big and can't resist a little harmless intimidation of the skinny. It's just the way things are. It's lucky that we have cartoonists to point things like this out.

But I digress. The topic is backshots.

Even raggedy farm laborers (the Lange shot, above) possess great dignity in a backshot. When viewing somebody from the front we too often see what what we disagree with or take exception to. Look at the same person from the back, especially if that person is observing something and doesn't seem to be aware of us, and we see that person as a thinking human being...a noble creature who can take in information and make decisions of great importance.

Aaaargh! There's more to say, but I'll have to save it for another post!

NERD GIRLS

It's an inadequate definition, I know, but for me a nerd girl is simply a nice girl who appears to have a soul. That doesn't mean that other girls don't have one, just that you have to get to know them to discover it. With nerd girls you see it instantly. What you see is what you get, and it's usually pretty good. 

I got that notion about having a soul from a one time visitor here, who said that she/he liked my site because it appeared that the guy who put it up (me) actually had a soul. I don't know if I deserve that or not, but it was a nice compliment. Now I look around for other people who it applies to. 

Nerd girls can be soooooo sexy.

There's a nerd girl site on the net that I think is great. I was surprised when a couple of my friends took a look and pronounced it lame. Is it? Geez, they have high standards!

Some of the girls on that site are only borderline nerds. Like the girl above...would you call her a nerd? She might be, I'm not sure. 'Not bad, though.

Lest you forget what a real nerd is, I offer the example above. Er...gulp!

The fact that there's so many borderline nerds is disconcerting. Is the girl above a nerd? I can't tell. Now I'm getting confused. It's fashionable to be a nerd now and the market is flooded with nerd wannabes. 

BUSY! 'BE BACK SUNDAY!

FUNNY POSTCARDS (EXPANDED)

This is about old postcards. Some of them date back to 1900 or so, some are as recent as the 50s.

Most of them were sold at vacation spots. Workers got two weeks paid vacation a year, and they took off for the country or the seaside at the the first opportunity. They were looking for more than a simple change of scenery. They were after a lightening of the mind: a release from adult responsibility and a return to primal urges. After a year of doing what society expected of them, they wanted to say what the man above says: "Now I am my real self!"

If you were a guy, "being your real self" meant leching after girls, at least in your fantasies. 

.   

Mosquitoes owned the countryside and you had to pay the price if you wanted to live in their domain. Amazingly even mosquitoes were drafted into vacation sex fantasies. 

Bathroom humor, too. The vacationer allows himself to be a five year old again, amazed by body functions.

Cards (above) could be incredibly explicit...

...or over-the-top tastless (above).

Few things are out of bounds in the world of vacation cards. Probably the text in this picture (above) is urging the man to throw up over the rail, but it also looks like it's telling him to commit suicide.

I'm surprised to see that none of the famous newspaper cartoonists who tried their hand at vacation cards seem to have done very well.with it.

Vacation cartooning is a specialty, and most ordinary cartoonists can't do it. The artist has to come off as mischievous but not mean, the kind of guy who would be good at telling dirty jokes.

BTW, how do you like the intense color in this card (above)? It makes it seem like the characters are in Hell. The vacationer is depicted as Orpheus who's willing to risk everything, even damnation, in pursuit of forbidden fruit. The idea would appeal to the working man who's repressed himself for a year and has only a short time to psych himself into a bacchanalia.

More "husband with a wandering eye" humor.  Most artists botch it.  If you don't have a knack for it, that kind of thing becomes tragic. You feel sorry for the woman who has such an unfaithful husband.

Here's (above) a very skilled and funny artist...but he can't beat the vacation artist at his own game. Every artistic medium has its own unique requirements. Interesting, huh?

BOOK REVIEW: "THE 9TH INFANTRY DIVISION IN VIETNAM"

The illustrations are of some of the great military captains in European history. I explain who they are at the end of the post.

I've read a number of books about strategy and tactics on the battlefield. I usually avoid books about wars fought in the last two hundred years. It's hard to be objective about them, and modern armies tend to resemble bureaucracies. Reading about their sluggish and doctrinaire reaction to things makes you yearn for the days when Morgan the pirate could assault Panama with a plan of his own making, or Scipio could attack Carthage with only minimal interference from the Roman senate.

Even so, there's some worthy modern war books. One that all armchair generals agree is worth reading is Rommel's "Infantry Attacks." It's about Rommel's days as a young lieutenant in WWI, fighting in the Alps. The book is crude and hard to follow, but it's unique because it puts you behind the eyeballs of a young soldier who is in every way a natural for what he does. He loves his work and doesn't wish to be anywhere else. He regrets the need to harm others but delights in problem solving. Where others see only the fog of war, Rommel sees opportunity.

If America had its own Rommel in the last 50 years, that might be the then colonel Ira Hunt who commanded the amazing 9th Infantry Division in Vietnam in the late 60s. I never heard of Hunt or his men before I saw him talking about his book on BookTV. He was a marvelous speaker. According to the interviewer Hunt aggressively fought and won battles, kept morale high, and the casualty rate low. You have to wonder, how did he do it?

Hunt said that when he first arrived in Vietnam the situation was daunting. Our guys scored victories in the daytime, but the enemy owned the night. It was sometimes impossible to tell the difference between friends and foes. Helicopters were shot down when they attempted to land troops. Tunnels protected the enemy against artillary and air attacks. Booby traps took their toll, and the soldiers sucked at pacification. Hunt had his job cut out for him.

Hunt's reaction to all this was to simplify. Let professionals handle the pacification. Take back the night by fighting in the dark. Ambush, don't be ambushed. Make the tunnels a liability. The booby traps? Throw something heavy on a rope infront of you. Above all, keep the enemy engaged and on the defensive.

Things changed pretty quickly when Hunt took charge. Where previously helicopters avoided ground fire by landing troops 600 feet away from the enemy, now they landed them at night, right into the enemy's back yard. Hunt correctly guessed that few enemies would risk giving away their position by shooting at copters in the dark, especially if they knew their avenue of retreat was cut off by more helicopters.

And the tunnels? Hunt says he actually thought of them as being an asset for his side. Relying on pre-existing tunnels for protection reduced the enemy's mobility. At night heat and chemical sensors mounted on helicopters could detect areas of recent activity where tunnels were likely to be. The tunnels were more and more perceived as death traps by the enemy.

I'm simplifying here. Hunt didn't claim to come up with every new idea himself, and the enemy had clever ideas of their own, but you get the sense that Hunt was a superserious competitor. More than that he was that rarity in military history...a natural.

BTW: Just for the heck of it, I put up pictures (in no special order) of a few of what historians consider the greatest military commanders in European history. The top portrait is. of course, Napoleon. Under him is Scipio Africanus, the general who beat Hannibal and handed Rome an empire. For his trouble he was humiliated by Cato and left Rome, never to return. Beneath him is Alexander the Great, and beneath him is Turenne, the legendary general who fought for Louis XIV. Beneath him is Gustavus Adolphus, who fought in the bloody Thirty Years War. At the very bottom is John Churchill, better known as Marlborough.  He fought Louis XIV after Turenne's time. It's said that he never lost a battle.