I. Guards, sentries, guides, they stalk the halls like silent wraiths clad in their dead blue blazers and knee length skirts. To speak to them is to encounter monotony made woman: instructions enunciated with the indifference usually associated with divorcees.
The majority of them are aged, infirm, with bloated ankles, using the numerous rocking chairs provided to them out of the kindness of the administration. The presence of these women, if they can really be called this, in this palace of art, is anomalous. Their presence does not give affirmation to the things they so jealously guard.
They represent change, age, wrinkles, flaws, sweat, and disfiguration – imperfection. Some are, undoubtedly, beautiful – with fine Castillian features, small angular noses one would pay to trace with his tongue, the pert neck of a swan, curly hair springing with life. Still, their staid standoffish conservatism weighs against the dance, the mirth, the laughter, the flowers, the cherubs, the saints, lechery, hedonism, and lust on display in so many paintings.
In a place where so much is given over to celebrating the glorious sacrifice of Christ, the desensitized omniscience, the ossified haughtiness, the indolent emptiness of these women is a slap in the face. In comparison to the affirmation around them, their lifelessness gives the impression that beauty doesn’t exist today; that it is only a purview of bygone times.
I would like a museum to be dedicated to nurturing every kind of beauty; a place where the mix of divine and human perfection is not just on display upon walls – but found in a more perfect, timeless, eternal form among the living. Why does immortality only belong to the dead?
II. When you look upon the walls of the Prado, you will see astonishing amounts of Christianity. Christ, the Virgin, and the Saints dominate the walls in unheralded numbers.
The initial impulse – especially for a Muslim who is used to religion being so front and center – is to immediately declare that this place called “the West” isn’t really as irreligious, as secular, as divorced from the clerics and saints as everyone pretends it is; that Christianity is still a powerful and omnipresent force. “After all, just look at the walls,” you might say, “these people were really religious!” I imagine the conservative Christians who’d like to take pride and ownership in so much of this sacred art would probably have the same response.
This is completely the wrong reaction.
If you take a close look at much of this “sacred” art, you realize that it is really quite profane. These artists, painters, and architects did what subversives in every society have ever done: they took the popular myths and slogans among the people, and then introduced their own particular ironies and mysteries and critiques and nuances and whispers and lecheries and desires into them.
Just as an example, consider the vast amount of paintings featuring a bare tit. I had never previously been exposed to so much Christian art in one place so never had a chance to make a survey of how much play, pun intended, the breast gets. I am not speaking about the breast in the mythic works – featuring Venus or the Sabine women – where female nudity is found. Nor am I referring to the portraits of villagers or courtesans – like Goya’s Nude Maja. Nudity there is expected and to an extent, trivial.
I am talking about the making bare of the breast of The Virgin, perhaps the second most important religious figure in Christianity.
There is a painting called The Virgin of the Milk, by Orley. There is a painting called The Virgin With the Souls of Purgatory, by Manchuca. There is a painting by Ribera, one of the foremost Spanish painters, called Man with Breast, which in style is very similar to the paintings of The Virgin with breast. They all contain a very meticulously depicted tit, usually just one, the left one, ready to feed the babe.
The breast is pornographically perfect. Its youthful and lively and inviting. It doesn’t evoke a bit of maternal warmth. Its bright and pronounced and pert, looking nothing like a breast full of milk. Had I not started to feel self-conscious about the fact that I was looking at Mary’s nudity I probably would have been able to make a survey of all the paintings in the Prado – yes there were more – that render her naked (note that 5000 paintings are not even currently hanging).
To see the Virgin Mary exposed, over and over again, makes it very easy to conclude that these so called religious painters were anything but. One is, in other words, able to see that dissent and subversion within Christianity have been going on for centuries. This gives you pause.
You then start looking at the paintings of the saints, even the paintings of Christ, with a suspicious eye. Does this starving saint represent the oppression he suffered or is this a critique of Christian asceticism? Is this garish depiction of a broken and bloodied Christ supposed to make me feel religious fervor, or is it actually supposed to arouse contempt?
This is, at least, the evolution that my gaze underwent. I went into the Prado, astonished at how pious historical Christianity was, and, I left astonished at how impious they might have been.
Then it occurred to me that this is pretty much how things within Islam are as well. For example, looking back at the astonishing mosques and minarets we are wont to think that the Caliphs and Sultans that patronized them were vanguards of piety, only to realize, either from studying their lives, or hearing of their harems, or just from understanding human nature, that they were often far more lascivious, lusty and wanton than any of us even conceive of being.
Just the other day I learned there were cross-dressing Caliphs…
Wow Rootie. You call me a name and then talk about “maturity.”
As to the piece, pardon me if I take a moment to celebrate youth. No one must have ever done *that* before. Certainly old people never sit around and do it. You should read some late Marquez.
I also referred to them as:
“beautiful”
“curly hair springing with life”
“pert neck of a swan”
“fine castilian features”
People without reading comp shouldn’t comment.
I found these guards lifeless. I am not out of place to expect that the people who work in beautiful places internalize some of that beauty.
Now if you wanted to say that there are probably economic or other social reasons behind their woeful state, that’d be fair, and probably even true.
Finally, – octagalore: I am not asserting that femininity is dependent on age. The phrase “if they can even be called this” is a reference to the possibility that they might not be human i.e. a reference to the “wraiths” in the first line.
At the end of the day, this is what I *saw* and *felt*. This is not an op-ed. I am not positing anything as fact. For all you know when you go to the Prado you might feel disgusted by the art. That wouldn’t make you sophomoric. It’d make you, you.
I think you answered this question with the first half of your essay, Ali.
Human beings age, and then they die.
There’s nothing shameful or horrible about it either. In fact, it’s what makes us respond so viscerally to great art – great art captures a moment that is fleeting. The beautiful women who posed for the masters (when female artists were, of course, practically nonexistent or else discouraged) also aged, and died, as did the masters themselves.
Meanwhile, older women are already severely berated for their waning appearance – and also made fun of cruelly if they attempt to recapture some of their youth. If only we could accept aging and dying as acceptable phenomena, perhaps we could treat each other better.
Ali, an interesting piece. It would indeed be wonderful if the kind of affirmation captured in the paintings could be seen as often in the living.
The reality is, though, I think, that one does not always see the living in the forms captured in paintings. These women are old and infirm and at work possibly beyond when they would have wished. They should not be expected to show the kind of emotion and beauty they evidence when with family or at leisure.
As you say, the artists have introduced their own passions and spirit to the forms they paint. We do not have that kind of creative license in reality, unless we indulge it mentally. In this case, it might be called empathy. These women probably were not trained to do things that might bring them more joy than a fairly thankless and low-paying museum sentry position. Age is not easy, and especially not so for women — eg, the fact that you would characterize a negative response as typical for a “divorcee.”
“Why does immortality only belong to the dead?” is a fascinating question. But I think it can be found in the living, with a little more effort from others of us who are living.
The living have no need for immortality. The living are always alive. They look for it in others and find it more easily in the dead – to imagine longevity and art and the lasting impact on history. It’s all imagined upon an object.
This piece is beautifully written but very problematic. The “indolent emptiness” and “staid conservatism” you imagine onto them is just as random as the indifference to young bucks and tourist types getting their art on that I imagine on to them from your description. They are not the object. The object is on the wall, or in the case, or in Mary’s bodice, even. The people are people.
Beauty lies in imperfection, and in the very things that you recount as flaws among the museum guards – “change, age, wrinkles, flaws, sweat, and disfiguration.” The story behind these imperfections is what interests me more than the paintings.
I dont’ quite understand the hullabaloo, or what I have to explain.
I am young. When it comes to exteriors, I find young women more beautiful than old women. If I make it to old age maybe I’ll reconsider my views. Sorry if that hurts old people’s feelings but if I make it to old age, young women can exact revenge on their grandmother’s behalf by spurning me.
Am I a looks-elitist? Yeah, probably. *To look at* I generally prefer prettier people to the un-pretty ones.
To love, that’s another story; that’s where the insides counts; that’s where I never choose on the basis of looks. Here, I am not talking about love. Here, I am talking about looking, especially since I’m at an art-museum, where the primary activity is…looking at images.
Now, could it be that the old people have great thoughts going on in their heads? Yes, I’m sure of it, b/c old people are wise and wonderful, and in my life I prefer their company to young people. However, I wasn’t looking at the old guards as subjects worth investigating mind to mind, but as objects, much like the paintings. Now unless people are going to tell me which one of my thoughts are acceptable and which ones they prefer I have, I have every right to be petulant.
The other part of the passage has to do with lifelessness. The guards at the Prado are lifeless. Like someone beat them up and left their husks standing. Don’t believe me? Go check out the place yourself. I frequent hundreds of museums and the guards in all the museums – Smithsonian, MOMA, Philly Museum of Art, Louvre – are not like that.
Also I don’t particularly buy Rootie’s subsequent spin. Her first post didn’t say my writing was sophomoric. It linked sophomoric to my maturity via my education. Nice try though.
How incredibly sophomoric. I’d expect more maturity from someone with your apparent education. Do you plan on growing old, or loving someone who grows old?
Ali, that doesn’t really wash. First, Rootie didn’t take issue with your celebrating youth, but with your using terms like “emptiness,” “ossified,” “wraiths” about old women, and adding “if they can really be called [women]” (as if gender is somehow dependent on age).
Second, just because other people have done something doesn’t justify it. As a lawyer, hopefully you can come up with a better argument that that.
I’m a (new) fan of your writing, Ali Eteraz. I have to say that questioning whether or not older women should even be called women is not the same thing as celebrating youth.
I understand your desire to be provocative, and I like the fact that you ask the question concerning immortality belonging to the dead. But the opening you could have done better.
I called your writing sophomoric. Are you your writing?
You didn’t answer my question- so I assume you have no plans to grow old, or don’t intend to love someone who does. That is a behavior characteristic of teenagers, who tend to behave sophomorically. Therefore, can I safely call *you* sophomoric, Or should I stick to your writing?
Insulting old women (if you can even call them that) is not the same a celebrating youth. Surely you can see that, with all your education and lofty ideals.
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) –
soph·o·mor·ic /ˌsɒfəˈmɔrɪk, -ˈmɒr-/ Pronunciation[sof-uh-mawr-ik, -mor-]
–adjective 1. of or pertaining to a sophomore or sophomores.
2. suggestive of or resembling the traditional sophomore; intellectually pretentious, overconfident, conceited, etc., but immature:
Beauty lies in imperfection, and in the very things that you recount as flaws among the museum guards – “change, age, wrinkles, flaws, sweat, and disfiguration.”
Thank you, you’ve said it perfectly. The museum guards sound like they would make a beautiful subject to render in paint, though. Or maybe charcoal. Those age spots and wrinkles bring to mind as much of (and usually more, imo)a tale as youth since the idea of age denotes experience.
I’ve yet to meet a person whose skin would not be considered flawed in some way regardless of their age as flaws rely on the viewer to decide that they are, indeed, flaws. One person’s beauty mark is another’s bane. I’d like to point out that such flaws often cement the skill and personality in such artwork to the viewer.
As for a suspicious eye when looking at religious works, of course they included themselves in it. You can’t not do that, really. I don’t have the faith of the Virgin Mary or the honesty of Christ so the best anyone gets is what and how I feel about such figures since I’m not them. Besides, after a time the artists were more likely than not to be half mind-wandering about the events of the day while trying to ignore growing discomfort, ‘cuz after a few hours the cramping of your hand and wrist takes precedence over personal musings about work. And it is work to paint in such a complicated scale, the idea that all the artists are only painting those things for the love of their religion seems a bit odd to me. Work is work and you do have to please the buyers, s’not all fun and games.
You’ve a very nice writing style, it’s a pleasure to read, but the content could stand to be pondered upon.
“I’ve yet to meet a person whose skin would not be considered flawed in some way regardless of their age as flaws rely on the viewer to decide that they are, indeed, flaws.”
My proofreading was for naught, the word skin is supposed to be body.
Ali — thanks for the clarification. Stating, however “[t]he presence of these women, if they can really be called this” right after discussing “aged, infirm, with bloated ankles” does appear to refer to their gender rather than their humanity. So perhaps, if you meant the latter, a wording change is in order.
Also, “[p]eople without reading comp shouldn’t comment” is a fairly petulant response, a questionable choice if you are trying to counter Rootie’s analysis. Unfortunately, a positive statement doesn’t cancel out a negative one. If my husband made a habit of saying I had the pert neck of a swan but was wraithlike, “with the indifference usually associated with divorcees,” there’s a good chance it would become a self-fulfilling prophesy.
“that they might not be human”
Lots of people are imitating humans these days. It’s a bloody epidemic!
(And, what Rootie said.)
That divorcee statement was downright offensive.
I can understand why people find this piece offensive especially the fact the reference to guards, and the fact that Ali found them out of place. However, I think Ali has decided to make a non PC statement in a very PC world, where we hide how we feel and really think har not to offend people. Where people are not short, but vertically challenged.
There is grace in age and there is a beauty in that grace. However, not all old people are graceful. Otherwise, we would not all be looking at youth to define beauty. The fashion shows would be lined with old, wrinkly, obese women running on the rams, guys would use them to masturbate and not perfect size 2 figures. There is beauty in youth, which is not graceful but is definitely carnal and unfortunately no beauty of old age can compete with the beauty of youth. The same way the grace of age and wisdom has no comparison amongst young.
I think Ali is very much on point that when we look for beauty, we look for perfection of youth.
The beauty in old transforms from outside into inside, but when you go to museums and art galleries, you are going to look to the expression of beauty, pain etc and not what is inside. Therefore, it is not wrong to want the guards who guard the expression of beauty to be externally beautiful too.
Ali, maybe I’m misunderstanding you, but you seem to believe that you can, at a glance determine whether the women you find so offensively unattractive have or have not internalized the beauty they are helping to preserve.
How would you, an artist in your own right, be able to make that kind of judgment?
I would also like to ask you about the creators of the works of art you admire? Many of them were unattractive, leading ugly lives. All of them got old.
Would these people not be welcome in this temple of beauty that you are striving for?
As a painter myself, I think that this piece presents beauty as one-dimensional. I also have to tell you that the art world is filled with different people. Most of them are not muses sipping flower nectar.
I forgot to add that I wish you’d really respond to the many valid criticisms and responses here. Having a piece referred to as “sophomoric” is not in the same league as being called names. If you can dish it out, I’m sure that you can take it.
Various responses:
Kristin:
“You honestly think it’s okay to treat people as objects? Honestly, I think the guards are there to point people in the right direction and ensure that no one sets a painting on fire or steals one, not to further your aesthetic pleasure. They’re people, not pieces of artwork.”
I am not *treating* any one as an object. I am *looking* — with my gaze — at them as objects. Big difference. Frankly, when you use a guard — “hey tell me where to go” — *that* is using them as an object i.e. a map. When you are asking for directions of a guard do you ask yourself: I wonder what this guard feels? I doubt it. Even if you do, do you bother to stop and write them down and then share them with others? Non.
You are engaged in moral superiority without bases.
Lynn:
“If the tour guides, male or female, are falling short on doing their jobs, that’s one thing; that is fair game for complaint. Whether or not they’re still pretty to you really isn’t.”
Haha. Are you serious? You don’t consider *that* degradation of a worker? Hey worker, all you can ever be known as, described as, understood as, is in the context of your job, never anything else. Look, you may consider my description of these people problematic, but the fact is, I described them.
To describe is to identify. Next time you go to Prado, or any museum, you’ll actually look at the guards, and maybe in order to shove it in my face you’ll even try and talk to a few.
Ali–You say that you are treating the guards as “objects, much like the paintings,” and you really don’t see the problem with that? You honestly think it’s okay to treat people as objects? Honestly, I think the guards are there to point people in the right direction and ensure that no one sets a painting on fire or steals one, not to further your aesthetic pleasure. They’re people, not pieces of artwork.
Further, you state that you “frequent hundreds of museums” as if this gives you the authority to dictate what people in museums should look like. How exactly do you propose ensuring that such museums meet your aesthetic requirements in their hiring practices? No ugly people need apply? Who decides who counts as ugly? You? No one over 35? Do you seriously fail to understand why people find these sentiments offensive?
I don’t think anyone is trying to tell you what thoughts you’re allowed to have. Just that putting some of these thoughts in print makes you look like an asshole. And, certainly, we all have the right to challenge you for doing that.
“I wasn’t looking at the old guards as subjects worth investigating mind to mind, but as objects, much like the paintings.”
And you seriously don’t see why this might be considered problematic?
Well – regardless of your feelings on old, young, or middle aged women, I would like to talk about the ‘subversion’ of Christianity by the art.
I’m more of an italian renaissance man myself, but in all my art study I find that the pieces you are talking about would have been dictated mostly by the patron. so, if the picture of the breast was so offensive or subversive, I’d imagine it would have never become a trend in northern early renaissance art in the first place.
Along those lines, in the time period where this breast feeding motif was popular, I would imagine that it was pretty common to see this going on considering the lack of formula in the 16th century. So, I’m not sure how subversive showing the Virgin Mary breast feeding jesus would be considering that one, being able to breast feed at all is a miracle since she was a virgin, and two, it seemed to represent life and in art history it is said to symbolize salvation.
Now, this image did phase out and was stopped as a Christian motif, and apparently was replaced with a more violent, depressing, and sacrificial imagine of christ on the cross.
And on a final note, Ribera’s painting probably had more to do with a trend of painting “abnormal” / “shocking” / “ugliness”. (maybe he should paint the guards? — JUST joking..trying to lighten the comment mood) From what I know, this is about a woman who started growing facial hair in her 30s and she become a subject of debate/examination. however, just because art history says so, doesn’t mean much. It seems a bit to strange to not be somewhat of a commentary on previous mary breast feeding pictures.
in the end, i think your subversion of christianity may not be the case, at least for a lot of these paintings. perhaps for some. However, your final thought, i think, is a good one. the fact that these painters and/or patrons rarely represent the ideals of the religion. and most of the time, all this great artwork was commissioned out of guilt/hope of salvation.
that’s my 2 cents.
“Sorry if that hurts old people’s feelings but if I make it to old age, young women can exact revenge on their grandmother’s behalf by spurning me.”
Ali, can’t you understand the difference between preferring, as a young man, to date younger women, and snarking, as a young man, that older women are employed where you can see them? With a snide “women, if they can really be called this” line?
Men aren’t expected to resign any jobs in which they’re in the public eye the minute they reach middle age, nor should women be. If the tour guides, male or female, are falling short on doing their jobs, that’s one thing; that is fair game for complaint. Whether or not they’re still pretty to you really isn’t.
“Beauty lies in imperfection, and in the very things that you recount as flaws among the museum guards – “change, age, wrinkles, flaws, sweat, and disfiguration.”
…MANY people mention the beauty in physical imperfection,(and perfection)
but has anyone realized how much beauty there is in intellectual/educational flaws? Flaws that create humor in dry circumstances. Mental flaws, whosoever calls them flaws go ahead imply made judgment, but there is such sublimity
in a elderly, middle-aged, and young person’s poor spelling,grammar, and reasoning. It’s an artwork in itself–one’s complete, or incompleteness
in of a “well-rounded” education of any sorts. Doesn’t that perpetuate life?
“Now unless people are going to tell me which one of my thoughts are acceptable and which ones they prefer I have”
It isn’t so much ‘prefer you to have’ as ‘why is he going on about how old and apparently empty the women are when the purpose of a gallery or a museum is to enjoy and study art. And did he really have to insult the elderly guards to raise a question about lifelessness when the two concepts are often mutually exclusive and there’s plenty of lifeless, empty figures represented in actual paintings’.
There’s something you’re missing in the whole exchange. The personel, the guards, they are not part of the artwork, ~they never were~. They are there for no one’s amusement. They do not come with the collection, what you think of them is most likely not what they actually ~are~ because they are not inanimate objects. It doesn’t matter who the guards are or how aged they are or what vibe you think they give off, the museums and galleries are not about the guards. If the personel can screw up your study and contemplation so badly there’s a problem there, but it isn’t with them.
Ali, the hullabaloo is that you wrote an ageist and sexist piece. People are calling you on it.
Is this piece concerned with what you find attractive? Or is it concerned with taking offense at what you see as the pollution of a rarefied space? I lean toward th latter.
Several people have responded to you here as fellow artists, or admirers of art. “Feelings” are not being assaulted here, something else is.
Seeing a person as an object is only the initial step that the artist takes. If you don’t go deeper than that, the meaning of your piece is muddled and muddied by the objectification, which is what happened here.
I would like to read more about cross-dressing caliphs, still.
My initial reaction after having read the article and the comments following is this:
I am not interested in this comparison of the women employees of the museum and the art within the museum itself. I find your observation to be shortsighted for one reason in particular.
Museums are not meant to simply house and nurture beauty; they are meant to encapsulate humanity. All art, regardless of the time period, captures and reflects the human condition, and that condition is what inherently binds us as people. The imperfection of these women is EXACTLY what the museum represents. Art mirrors our flaws and our fragility; it speaks of our undying (and futile) attempts of capturing beauty and immortality. There is that same “lifelessness” within the art on the walls as you saw in those women. Your experience with those women should have been embraced not criticized; it had as much to teach you as any of the art within the museum.
on a side note- in regards to this ageism debate you guys have going on- i would keep in mind that art too has a lifespan. It is young and beautiful for a time, but even it will wither, and age, and crumble over time. Is a painting less beautiful or less appealing when it begins to fade and chip away? Perhaps. But i don’t think that is the point.
Alright, look, I think I found a way to explain it. Have you ever seen Magritte’s Ceci n’est pas une pipe? That’s the point I’m trying to make, right there. The picture is not the thing. The picture represents an object, idea, opinion, feeling, person, what-have-you. People like the guards, on the other hand, are not emotionally flat representations of a thing. What you think you see is rarely what you actually get.
“I would like to read more about cross-dressing caliphs, still.”
So would I. And, though I agree with Patrick Rivenbark that the depictions of Mary breastfeeding wouldn’t have been so subversive as you make out (maybe it’s more our modern notions of the asexuality of piety that are askew?), I’m still more interested in your views about the paintings than about the appearance of the guards.
Lynn:
Your comparison of how male workers are treated compared to female workers are valid.
However, this piece has nothing to do with that. Do I ever for a moment compare any of the guards to the male guards there? You can’t just introduce a social commentary into a passage which doesn’t receive it. That’s not even good deconstruction.
I am not going to accept this being “called out” foolishness. I described what I saw. This is not a political piece. Its not social commentary. Its not an op-ed. I am not asserting facts. I am not particularly concerned with what you think about such pieces — and even less so when you impose socio-political maquillage upon it. I have never accepted the entire bs about: all art is political, nor will I.
Correction:
I have in the past accepted that all art is political, but then I left college.
Yes, Ali, I’m serious. I’m seriously happy, on the job, to be praised or criticized based on my job performance, and seriously not happy, on the job, to be praised based on whether I’m pretty or criticized because I age like a normal human being. If you’d ever been a woman, and had to go through the gamut, when young, of men who don’t know you and address you as “honey” or “sweetie” and you can’t put them in their place because you’ve got to be “professional,” you’d understand the difference. And if you’d been a woman, and seen how women like you, for some jobs, can lose their jobs when they start to look older, even though still otherwise competent, while men in the same jobs keep theirs, you’d understand the difference. You don’t get it, because you don’t begin to know what it’s like to be reduced to your appearance. Men aren’t reduced to their appearance the way women are; they may be admired or not, but they aren’t treated as if other people are entitled to have them be decorative.
Sure, talking to the people who are serving you, whether they’re guards in a museum or clerks in a grocery store, as if they’re human beings and not just automatons doing a job, that can also be a good thing. But, you know something? If I’m dealing with someone at work, say a phone caller back when I was working tech support, and all that person wants is my job skills, that’s OK; I can take satisfaction in doing the job well, and know that when I’m off the job I’m known for other things than my job skills. If I’m “honey” or “sweetie” on the job when young, and an offense to someone’s eyes when old, there’s no place I get to go to be off duty from that.
Kyla:
Ali, the hullabaloo is that you wrote an ageist and sexist piece. People are calling you on it.
No. It is not an ageist and sexist piece. It is a very good piece about describing women guards as they were – out of place in a place where beauty is displayed.
It is describing things as they exist. Guards in Prado are old women. They are not good looking. Some of them are unfortunately not even graceful. They do just sit and rock on chairs. Some of them are very polite, and yes, if you stopped and talked to them could tell you the stories that may be more interesting on the beauty on the wall or the young. These are all facts. These are not ageist or sexist comments.
My question is why is Ali required to dress up facts and his thoughts so that he can be politically correct. He is not.
Ali, you have so rightly been called out. And the sad thing is, at the end of the day you will still think that it’s much ado about nothing.
You just don’t get it.
“Why does immortality only belong to the dead?”
Because to the mortals, God is dead.
Ava said: “…a very good piece about describing women guards as they are — OUT OF PLACE in a place where beauty is displayed” (capitalization added).
Why would such women be “out of place”? As a previous commenter said, museums are meant to bring us together, rather divide us between the “beautiful” and the “not-beautiful.”
As the same commenter noted (I think), these elderly women guards would not have seemed “out of place” to the Renaissance painters whom Ali Eteraz calls attention to. Death and decay were not horrifying abstractions to artists in the past. Until the second half of the 19th century, in the developed world, even young people of the privileged classes lived very precarious lives, surviving mostly on luck and their native immune systems. Thus Ali’s favored artists, in paying minute attention to the realities of skin, muscle, and bone even in idealized portraits, were not ‘rebelling against ugliness’ but insisting on the importance of human physicality itself despite its precariousness (or perhaps because of its precariousness). If such such artists were rebelling against anything, it was against the abstraction from human physicality that is typical of earlier medieval art and sculpture, especially for religious subjects. Such artists were not necessarily less devout than their medieval predecessors, nor were they necessarily making ironic comments about Christian belief (although they might have been); rather, they are insisting that, for example, the Virgin Mary is not only the Mother of God but also a physical human being with all that her physicality entails, and that human physicality and participation in eternity are not necessarily mutually exclusive, at least not at all times. Unlike their medieval predecessors and also some folks today, Renaissance artists were not schizoid about human physicality. They and their patrons, and, I think, their Christian contemporaries, did not feel annihilated by human fraility. That’s why such painters would not have found the elderly women guards “out of place,” and
that’s what I think Ali Eteraz misses in his comments both about the paintings and about the elderly women guards.
I realize my above paragraphs have mostly re-emphasized the remarks of a previous commenter, but I wanted to get that out there. I hope it hasn’t been out of place.
Correction to previous post, 2nd paragraph, 2nd line:
“… rather divide us …”
should read,
“… rather THAN divide us …”.
I’m disppaointed that you continue to view this as just a PC pile-on.
I hope you’ll find out one day that objectification in and of itself does not equal art.
hahaha, maybe the Prado should import the women in the bathtubs outside of Tao in Vegas, but even they seem bored and unimpressed, when they should at least represent the energy inside. Yet, if those nearly naked women were fat or old, who would pay to get in? I think you can find beauty in the fact that millions of people still visit the Prado, even if they are turned off by the guards. But what if the guards were lifeless, ugly men? Would it even matter? I think you appreciate women so much, that you want them all to be beautiful (as you define it) and were therefore saddened by the appearance of the women guards.
I value your description because it’s honest. To describe the Prado without it would be masking your experience. Why is it so hard for people to accept that intellectuals live in the same world as the rest of us, and that they too have surface-level reactions?