Posted by Frank/Wondering/Ian on August 9, 2005, 4:16 am, in reply to "Life drawing classes / There's something about art" DaVinci, the artist who painted the Mona Lisa, had his deviations too. All through the centuries it was never known who the woman in that masterpiece was. But finally sometime in the mid-1980s, computer technology figured it out: it was a self-portrait of DaVinci himself, disguised as a woman. Now why would he want to do that? Obviously he was gay and a transvestite. I’m not cutting gays, I’m just saying that was his motive. Why else would a man want to paint a picture of himself as a woman? And no doubt it was the same type of thing. No doubt he used the painting to do a few perverted things like, maybe, show it to his friends and say something like, “Isn’t she beautiful? Here. Every man wants to kiss a beautiful woman. And if there isn’t a real woman around to kiss, it’s normal to like to kiss a painting of one. Here. It’s all right. Go ahead. Kiss her. Right on the lips....” while he watched and got sexually aroused as they did. He probably went on. “Would you like to meet this woman and really be able to kiss her and have a love affair with her? I can arrange that. I know her. I know she would like you....” Many people have been naïve about art and artists throughout the centuries. Yeah, sure thing, if they’re seriously interested in art there are no sexual motives behind it. Again, it’s all a question of consent. If you have artistic talent and can use it somehow to get together with someone, then fine. Except one thing: the above approach. The part about transvestite men tricking heterosexual men into thinking they’re women, to deceive them into a homosexual romance by making them think it would be a heterosexual thing. That’s deceiving someone into sex they don’t consent to. That shouldn’t be done. That’s like a man who’s able to imitate voices pretending to be a blind woman’s husband so he can have sex with her by making her think he’s him, when she wouldn’t be unfaithful to her husband otherwise. That’s underhanded. (Don’t be surprised if somebody kills you if you pull a thing like that.) What I mean is, if you have artistic talent and you can use it to get together with a girl, and she consents to the relationship with you, that’s fine. Yes, sometimes art can have an aesthetic effect on someone that can change their mood and maybe help in forming a relationship. I don’t see it as a violent, threatening thing, I see it as a soothing, peaceful thing. I think it’s good. Positive. I say go ahead. Have at it. Frank _________________________ [No text] _________________________ In fact, I think I’d call that a sweeping overgeneralization that could be taken as incriminating, or at least unjustly humiliating to a lot of innocent people, those involved in art. I’ve been doing a little bit of research on the subject, investigating what the standard reference materials say about the personal lives of some of those considered the world’s greatest artists, enough at least to skim the surface. I have to conclude that, although there are a few cases that perhaps could be called something like that, with many, although telling some details about personality characteristics, nothing is mentioned about any anomalies in their personalities that could indicate sexual deviations, nor do they tell of acts in the artists’ lives that provide any evidence of it. Two cases that pop up in my mind of those who do, though, are Vincent Van Gogh and his friend Paul Gaugin. Van Gogh had a very unstable personality, serious difficulties in relating to the opposite sex, in maintaining a balance in passions (and I am not referring to sexual passions; I mean mental and emotional), which led to him cutting off his ear at the mocking request of a woman he was falling for, and finally to his suicide. With as much emotional imbalance as that in a person’s life, I have to concede that that does point to a high probability of the presence of some sexual imbalance as well, though what I read didn’t spell anything out about it. With Gaugin, there was, of course, his tendency toward pedophilia, which—I assume—must have played at least some role in his decision to move lock, stock and barrel to Tahiti, a society in which it could be done, dump European civilization and spend the rest of his life living there. A reference work I read says that, in Tahiti, he spent the rest of his life “in poverty,” but I have to question, when you’re living in an island paradise that hasn’t yet adjusted completely to the civilized world’s monetary systems, where there are coconuts and wild fruits and vegetables in abundance that you can have whenever you want (especially in those days when the population was so much smaller and there was so much more available proportionately than we assume there must be today), where, because of the climate, you didn’t NEED any kind of housing other than your grass hut, where he had his 13-year-old Tahitian wife, her family, all their friends and a social life he appears to have been happy with, what is “poverty” supposed to mean, measured by European standards? That’s a matter of perspective about which they should perhaps employ a little more objectivity in stating as “fact.” One whose life I searched carefully was Rembrandt, and in it I couldn’t find any evidence of imbalances that could suggest sexual problems. Ditto for a few others. All right, it is true that sometimes some people’s emotional and sexual problems can lead to them creating and contributing to the world some works of art, literature and music that may be filled with passion, some degree of poignant pathos and an ingenious projection of feelings that may touch many people in many ways. Surprisingly, some people with imbalanced personalities can be talented at producing humor, maybe sometimes without even trying to, but accomplishing it and doing a good job of it, becoming popular because of it (Rodney Dangerfield is one example of that; he says he spends his life on a psychiatrist’s couch). No doubt some with sexual imbalances may have the same talent. But I think we should avoid the sweeping over-generalizations. Many people involved in art are entirely balanced persons, some of whom even come out with the world’s masterpieces. Let’s refrain from slandering their personal lives in our speculations when there’s no justification for it. Ian
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Message modified by board administrator August 8, 2006, 3:19 am
DaVinci too
Posted by Frank on February 12, 2001, 7:59 pm
Does that mean all artists have some kind of sexual problems? (n/t)
Posted by Wondering on April 24, 2001, 8:51 pm
No, I wouldn’t say that
Posted by Ian on April 29, 2001, 3:29 pm
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