Renoir is seated

In his wicker armchair

The model opposite

Exceeds his dream exquisite

That a beauty can bear

On offer baited

The painter's squinting eyes

Come to settle gently

Like resting butterflies

An amazing perfection prize

Plump curves of her body

Softness of her skin velvety

A beautiful embodiment

The shape of her breasts

Her tummy pearls so best 

Folded legs of fulfilment

That Renoir would touch them

With his magic brush’s long aim

Jacques HERMAN

TRANSLATION BY JULES LETAMBOUR.

ADAPTATION BY ROBERT URBANOSKI.

Jacques Herman is a Belgian artist born on May 11, 1948, in Tirlemont. He is known for being a painter, poet, historian, and teacher. His diverse talents reflect a rich involvement in the arts and education, contributing to his recognition in the field.

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Renoir’s Problem Nudes
An argument is often made that we shouldn’t judge the past by the values of the present, but that’s a hard sell in a case as primordial as Renoir’s.

BY Peter Schjeldahl

Who doesn’t have a problem with Pierre-Auguste Renoir? A tremendously engaging show that centers on the painter’s prodigious output of female nudes, “Renoir: The Body, the Senses,” at the Clark Art Institute, in Williamstown, Massachusetts, sparks a sense of crisis. The reputation of the once exalted, still unshakably canonical, Impressionist has fallen on difficult days. Never mind the affront to latter-day educated tastes of a painting style so sugary that it imperils your mind’s incisors; there’s a more burning issue. The art historian Martha Lucy, writing in the show’s gorgeous catalogue, notes that, “in contemporary discourse,” the name Renoir has “come to stand for ‘sexist male artist.’ ” Renoir took such presumptuous, slavering joy in looking at naked women—who in his paintings were always creamy or biscuit white, often with strawberry accents, and ideally blond—that, Lucy goes on to argue, the tactility of the later nudes, with brushstrokes like roving fingers, unsettles any kind of gaze, including the male. I’ll endorse that, for what it’s worth.

Renoir’s women strum no erotic nerves in me. There’s no beholding distance from their monotonously compact, rounded breasts and thunderous thighs, smushed into depthless landscapes and interiors, and thus no imaginable approach to intimacy. Their faces nearly always look, not to put too fine a point on it, dumb—bearing out Renoir’s indifference to the women as individuals with inner lives. They aren’t subjects, only occasions. (His models were often amazed at how little they recognized themselves in pictures that they had posed for.) Peculiarly, Renoir did grant the women wonderfully articulated hands, the body part hardest to render convincingly—good for doing things, perhaps around the house. In his later work, his most prominent models were his servants or other lower-middle-class women.

He’s great, though, according to the standard of art history that values the refreshment of traditions by way of radical departures from them. The brilliant curators of the Clark show, Esther Bell and George T. M. Shackelford, demonstrate Renoir’s pivotal place in French painting of the nude by interpolating apposite works by such predecessors as Boucher, Corot, and, especially, Courbet, whose nudes are like libidinous four-alarm fires; by Renoir’s contemporaries, the sardonic Degas and the conscientious Cézanne; and by members of the next generation, notably Picasso, Matisse, Valadon, and Bonnard. (The show is a romp for connoisseurship, illumining, by abrupt contrasts, the core qualities of the respective artists.) Picasso adored and collected Renoir nudes, the more outrageous the better. I think that he responded to something about Renoir that he also found in the consummate religiosity of El Greco and in the hieratic integrity of African sculpture: downright, forthright art, uncompromised by social niceties and free of apologetic irony—a bit akin to what Kierkegaard wanted from God, the capacity “to will one thing.”

Everything in Renoir that is hard to take and almost impossible to think about, because it makes no concessions to intelligence, affirms his stature as a revolutionary artist. He stood firmly against the past in art and issued a stark challenge to its future. You can’t dethrone him without throwing overboard the fundamental logic of modernism as a sequence of jolting aesthetic breakthroughs, entitled to special rank on the grounds of originality and influence. The more politicized precincts of the present art world are bent on just such a purge, and it’s hard to contest their point by sticking up for Renoir’s only too confident, even embarrassing, panache. But there’s no gainsaying his historic significance.

Class is key to understanding Renoir. He was born in Limoges in 1841, the sixth of seven children of a tailor and a seamstress. The family moved to Paris four years later. He left school at the age of twelve or thirteen to apprentice as a decorator of porcelain, quickly advancing to a mastery of rococo forms and images; that training persists in all his painting, in which he centers the subjects in space that goes vague toward the corners of the canvas. Meanwhile, he haunted the Louvre. Committed to fine art, he entered the École des Beaux-Arts in 1862. His schoolmates included Monet, Sisley, and Bazille. He produced strong works from the start, under the spell of Courbet’s audacious realism and Manet’s celebration of urbane modernity. (His earliest nude in the show, “Boy with Cat,” from 1868, isn’t only rare for him, with its male subject, but startlingly homoerotic.) This was the era when artists started to forsake aristocratic and institutional patronage—bucking the bias of the annual Salon while hungering for inclusion in it—in favor of support from a burgeoning middle class.

READ MORE:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/08/26/renoirs-problem-nudes

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE FITS WELL IN THIS COLUMN... DEDICATED ARTISTS FOR ART PRIZES WOULD UNDERSTAND BEYOND THE STEREOTYPES OF F and A....

“The party has lost nearly all of its inner metropolitan seats,” reads one 2022 observation.

“Of particular concern in the results is that in seats with high numbers of female professional voters, the Liberal Party only holds three of the top 30 seats where previously it held 15.”

Then there is the conclusion that “the only demographic class where the Liberal Party and the National Party have a stronghold is in rural electorates”.

And its blunt follow-up: “No party that is seeking to form government has a pathway to a majority solely through rural and regional electorates.”

Further: “Liberal Party performed particularly poorly with female voters, continuing a trend that has been present since the election of 1996.”

This is a kind way of saying that its share of the female vote has been falling for nearly two decades, with no serious attempts to arrest the decline. No acknowledgment, outside this review, that the lady-vote is not a boutique item, not an interest group or a minority to be pandered to, but instead, that it represents the numerical majority of voters.

Also from the 2022 review: “A significant number of submissions to the review cited the Liberal Party’s declining vote among women as a decisive factor in the 2022 election loss. It is clear from the party’s research and post-election analysis that the party’s standing with women was an important factor in the party’s defeat.”

Add the statement: “Liberal defectors in ‘Teal seats’ were highly likely to agree with the statement that ‘the treatment or attitude toward women within the Liberal Party had a strong influence on my vote’.” Or: “Immediately following the election, a clear majority of Australians (across different electorates) agreed with the statement that ‘the Liberal Party has fallen behind the views of middle Australia’.”

There are sections on the swing against the Liberals among Chinese-Australian voters, and a warning that the Liberals’ policy agenda “appeared to be limited and unclear to the electorate”. There is a call for the proper vetting of candidates, and the preselection of candidates in good time to prepare for the election campaign.

And then the most damning conclusion of all.

“Many of the matters raised in this review were also discussed in the reviews of the 2016 and 2019 federal elections,” the authors write. “Many of the problems identified have been constants for a decade or more.”

What now? At the time of writing, Deputy Liberal Leader Sussan Ley had declared her candidacy for the leadership. On Friday, she told the Sunriseprogram, “We did let the women of Australia down”.

She continued: “I’m determined and convinced that I am the right person to lead the party forward at this time and I think my appointment would send a strong signal to the women of Australia, but it’s about much more than that.”

Even in this brief statement, you can read the internal conflict of the Liberals: We know we have done a bad job with women, and we know we need to promote them to positions of leadership. But we can’t allow the impression to settle that they are promoted to positions of leadership because they are women.

The conservative side of politics, in Australia and abroad, has always had difficulty embracing the values of feminism. In its furthermost right quarters, women are valued chiefly for their roles as homemakers and mothers, with a reluctant concession that some women have something to offer the public sphere.

ormer prime minister Tony Abbott eventually put out a replacement-wage maternity leave policy with the explanation that women should not be educated to a high level, only to be denied a career.

“If we want women of that calibre to have families, and we should, well we have to give them a fair dinkum chance to do so. That is what this scheme of paid parental leave is all about,” he said in 2013.

In 2014, then-minister for foreign affairs Julie Bishop rejected the label “feminist” for herself.

“I don’t find the need to self-describe in that way,” she told the National Press Club.

Feminist, she said, “is not a term that I find particularly useful these days”.

She said she would never “blame the fact that I’m a woman” if something didn’t work out in her career.

And yet, it is difficult to conjure any reason other than her gender to explain why Bishop was never treated seriously as a leadership contender by her own (majority male) colleagues.

The Labor Party has achieved gender parity in parliament (if not in high leadership positions) through the effective implementation of quotas.

The right side of politics has an anathema for the Q word, even though Liberals have, for years now, tentatively used the more gentle word “targets” to assert they are onto the problem of the gross under-representation of women in their ranks.

The Liberals should be the party of aspiration, and the party of peak economic productivity. Quotas are productive – in the sense that they work, and they work quickly.

Feminism is a byword for female aspiration – the aspiration for what countless politicians like to call the Australian principle of the “fair go”. Why is that F-word so ubiquitous, while the other one is so difficult for Liberals to utter?

Jacqueline Maley is a columnist and senior writer.

https://yourdemocracy.net/drupal/comment/reply/55235/599607

PLEASE REVISIT JULIA GILLARD'S SPEECH:

DEPUTY SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: The question is that the motion be agreed to. I call the Prime Minister.

JULIA GILLARD: Thank you very much Deputy Speaker. And I rise to oppose the motion moved by the Leader of the Opposition, and in so doing I say to the Leader of the Opposition: I will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by this man. I will not.

And the government will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by this man — not now, not ever. The Leader of the Opposition says that people who hold sexist views and who are misogynists are not appropriate for high office.

Well, I hope the Leader of the Opposition has got a piece of paper and he is writing out his resignation, because if he wants to know what misogyny looks like in modern Australia he doesn’t need a motion in the House of Representatives; he needs a mirror. That’s what he needs.

Let’s go through the opposition leader’s repulsive double standards when it comes to misogyny and sexism. We are now supposed to take seriously that the Leader of the Opposition is offended by Mr Slipper’s text messages, when this is the Leader of the Opposition who has said, and this was when he was a minister under the last government — not when he was a student, not when he was in high school, when he was a minister under the last government.

He has said, and I quote, in a discussion about women being underrepresented in institutions of power in Australia, the interviewer was a man called Stavros, the Leader of the Opposition says: “If it’s true, Stavros, that men have more power, generally speaking, than women, is that a bad thing?”

And then a discussion ensues and another person being interviewed says, “I want my daughter to have as much opportunity as my son,” to which the Leader of the Opposition says: “Yeah, I completely agree, but what if men are, by physiology or temperament, more adapted to exercise authority or to issue command?”

Then ensues another discussion about women’s role in modern society, and the other person participating in the discussions says, “I think it’s very hard to deny that there is an underrepresentation of women,” to which the Leader of the Opposition says, “But now, there’s an assumption that this is a bad thing.”This is the man from whom we are supposed to take lectures about sexism.

And then, of course, it goes on. I was very offended personally when the Leader of the Opposition as minister for health said, and I quote, “Abortion is the easy way out.” I was very personally offended by those comments. You said that in March 2004. I suggest you check the records.

I was also very offended on behalf of the women of Australia when in the course of this carbon pricing campaign, the Leader of the Opposition said, “What the housewives of Australia need to do… what the housewives of Australia need to understand as they do the ironing …” Thank you for that painting of women’s roles in modern Australia!

And then, of course, I was offended too by the sexism, by the misogyny, of the Leader of the Opposition catcalling across this table at me as I sit here as Prime Minister, “if the Prime Minister wants to, politically speaking, make an honest woman of herself …” — something that would never have been said to any man sitting in this chair.

I was offended when the Leader of the Opposition went outside in the front of parliament and stood next to a sign that said ‘Ditch the witch’. I was offended when the Leader of the Opposition stood next to a sign that described me as a man’s bitch. I was offended by those things.

Misogyny, sexism, every day from this Leader of the Opposition. Every day, in every way, across the time the Leader of the Opposition has sat in that chair and I have sat in this chair, that is all we have heard from him.

And now the Leader of the Opposition wants to be taken seriously. Apparently he’s woken up, after this track record and all of these statements, he’s woken up and he’s gone, “Oh dear, there’s this thing called sexism; oh my lord, there’s this thing called misogyny. Now who’s one of them? Oh, the Speaker must be because that suits my political purpose”… doesn’t turn a hair about any of his past statements, doesn’t walk into this parliament and apologise to the women of Australia, doesn’t walk into this parliament and apologise to me for the things that have come out of his mouth — but now seeks to use this as a battering ram against someone else.

Well this kind of hypocrisy should not be tolerated, which is why this motion from the Leader of the Opposition should not be taken seriously.

And then second, the Leader of the Opposition is always wonderful about walking into this parliament and giving me and others a lecture about what they should take responsibility for; always wonderful about that — everything that I should take responsibility for, now apparently including the text messages of the member for Fisher.

Always keen to say others should assume responsibility, particularly me. Well can anybody remind me if the Leader of the Opposition has taken any responsibility for the conduct of the Sydney Young Liberals and the attendance at this event of members of his frontbench? Has he taken any responsibility for the conduct of members of his political party and members of his frontbench, who apparently when the most vile things were being said about my family raised no voice of objection.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!

JULIA GILLARD: No one walked out of the room, no one walked up to Mr Jones and said that this was not acceptable. Instead, of course, it was all viewed as good fun — until it was run in a Sunday newspaper, and then the Leader of the Opposition and others started ducking for cover.

Big on lectures of responsibility, very light on accepting responsibility himself for the vile conduct of members of his political party.

Third, Ms Deputy Speaker, why the Leader of the Opposition should not be taken seriously on this motion. The Leader of the Opposition and the Deputy Leader of the Opposition have come into this place and have talked about the member for Fisher.

Well let me remind the opposition, and the Leader of the Opposition particularly, about their track record and association with the member for Fisher.

I remind them that the National Party preselected the member for Fisher for the 1984 election, that the National Party preselected the member for Fisher for the 1987 election, that the Liberal Party preselected Mr. Fisher for the 1993 election, then for the 1996 election, then for the 1998 election, then for the 2001 election, then for the 2004 election, then for the 2007 election and then for the 2010 election.

And across many of those preselections Mr Slipper enjoyed the personal support of the Leader of the Opposition. I remind the Leader of the Opposition that on the 28th of September 2010, following the last election campaign when Mr Slipper was elected as Deputy Speaker, the Leader of the Opposition at that stage said this, and I quote; he referred to the member for Maranoa, who was also elected to a position at the same time, and then went on as follows:

… and the member for Fisher will serve as a fine complement to the member for Scullin in the chair. I believe that the parliament will be well served by the team which will occupy the chair in this chamber … I congratulate the member for Fisher, who has been a friend of mine for a very long time, who has served this parliament in many capacities with distinction …’ 

The words of the Leader of the Opposition on record about his personal friendship with Mr Slipper and on record about his view about Mr Slipper’s qualities and attributes to be the Speaker. No walking away from those words — they were the statements of the Leader of the Opposition then.

I remind the Leader of the Opposition, who now comes in here and speaks about Mr Slipper and apparently his inability to work with or talk to Mr Slipper, I remind the Leader of the Opposition, he attended Mr Slipper’s wedding.

Did he walk up to Mr Slipper in the middle of the service and say he was disgusted to be there? Was that the attitude he took? No, he attended that wedding as a friend.

The Leader of the Opposition, keen to lecture others about what they ought to know or did know about Mr Slipper but, with respect, I would say to the Leader of the Opposition after a long personal association, including attending Mr Slipper’s wedding, it would be interesting to know whether the Leader of the Opposition was surprised by these text messages. He is certainly in a position to speak more intimately about Mr Slipper than I am and many other people in this parliament, given this long personal association.

Then, of course, the Leader of the Opposition comes into this place and says, and I quote: “Every day the Prime Minister stands in this parliament to defend this Speaker will be another day of shame for this parliament; another day of shame for a government which should already have died of shame.”

Well, can I indicate to the Leader of the Opposition, the government is not dying of shame, my father did not die of shame. What the Leader of the Opposition should be ashamed of is his performance in this parliament and the sexism he brings with it.

Now, about the text messages that are on the public record…

JENNY MACKLIN: You used those words. It is a quote.

JULIA GILLARD: That is a direct quote from the Leader of the Opposition, so I suggest those groaning have a word with him.

On the conduct of Mr Slipper and on the text messages that are in the public domain – I have seen the press reports of those text messages, I am offended by their content.

I am offended by their content because I am always offended by sexism. I am offended by their content because I am always offended by statements that are anti-women.

I am offended by those things in the same way I have been offended by things that the Leader of the Opposition has said, and no doubt will continue to say in the future, because if this, today, was an exhibition of his new feminine side, well I don’t think we have got much to look forward to in terms of changed conduct.

I am offended by those text messages. But I also believe, in terms of this parliament, making a decision about the speakership, that his parliament should recognize that there is court case in progress, that the judge has reserved his decision, that having waited for a number of months for the legal matters surrounding Mr Slipper to come to a conclusion, that this parliament should see that conclusion.

I believe that is the appropriate path forward and that people will then have an opportunity to make up their minds with the fullest information available to them.

But, whenever people make up their minds about those questions, what I won’t stand for, what I will never stand for, is the Leader of the Opposition coming into this place and peddling a double standard; peddling a standard for Mr Slipper he would not set for himself, peddling a standard for Mr Slipper he has not set for other members of his frontbench; peddling a standard for Mr Slipper that has not been acquitted by the people who have been sent out to say the vilest and most revolting things, like his former shadow parliamentary secretary, Senator Bernardi.

I will not ever see the Leader of the Opposition seek to impose his double standard on this parliament. Sexism should always be unacceptable. We should conduct ourselves as it should be always unacceptable.

The Leader of the Opposition says, ‘Do something.’ Well he could do something himself if he wants to deal with sexism in this parliament. He could change his behaviour, he could apologise for all his past statements, he could apologise for standing next to signs describing me as a witch and a bitch—terminology that is now objected to by the frontbench of the opposition.

He could change a standard himself if he sought to do so. But we will see none of that from the Leader of the Opposition, because on these questions he is incapable of change. Capable of double standards but incapable of change. His double standards should not rule this parliament.

Good sense, common sense, proper process is what should rule this parliament. That’s what I believe is the path forward for this parliament, not the kind of double standards and political game-playing imposed by the Leader of the Opposition, now looking at his watch because, apparently, a woman’s spoken too long—I’ve had him yell at me to shut up in the past.

But I will take the remaining seconds of my speaking time to say to the Leader of the Opposition I think the best course for him is to reflect on the standards he has exhibited in public life, on the responsibility he should take for his public statements, on his close personal connection with Peter Slipper, on the hypocrisy he has displayed in this House today.

And on that basis, because of the Leader of the Opposition’s motivations, this parliament today should reject this motion, and the Leader of the Opposition should think seriously about the role of women in public life and in Australian society—because we are entitled to a better standard than this.

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

MEANWHILE ARTISTS SHOULD NOT BE PENALISED BECAUSE THEY ARE MALE....