Kirsten and Egon

 

Amirasolo and Other Essays

Part 3. In my Book

Essay 32. KIRSTEN AND EGON

I had an online tiff in 2011 with Kirsten Anderberg. An American, she described herself as a feminist, historian, human rights activist, musician, and writer. She was also a 1997 graduate of the Whittier Law School. So, she must be a full-pledged lawyer by now. Awesome credentials indeed, anyway you look at it. And I, who didn't finished college, was definitely in awe.

Our conversation began amiably enough. A fan apparently of my artworks, she offered to do a write-up on me and my art. But she got nasty and started to label me a male chauvinist and homophobe when I began contradicting her so-called  'feminist' views which I thought unfair and out of line. In the end, she withdrew her offer to write about me, to which I replied, good riddance! I said that I wouldn't want to collaborate with a person who goes ballistic everytime she's contradicted.

Our disagreement was caused mainly by the paintings I did of nude female models featured in the girlie magazines I kept at home. Kirsten wondered why I was doing only female nudes. She asked me to add male nude paintings to my repertoire, to which I answered that it's a big no-no for me, because naked male bodies disgust me. Apparently, she overlooked , the "hahaha..." I end my answer with to indicate that I'm just being facetious. She assailed my saying that, because she must have thought my disgust real. She quickly presumed that i was homophobic, which word she, who claimed to be a writer, thought meant hater of males. Homophobic actually meant a person who dislikes or is prejudiced against  homosexuals.

She next told me that she can't quite believed that I see nothing beautiful in Michelangelo's naked male sculptures. Well, which artist won't be entranced by them. In fact, when I was still in art school, Michelangelo's paintings of powerful males were the first art works I tried to emulate. I was so enthralled by Michelangelo that I bought two books that featured his art.

But Kirsten should understand that when an artist admires male nude artworks, it doesn't follow that that artist will be inspired to also create male nude artworks. Not wanting to paint naked male bodies doesn't imply hating them, or the male specie in general.
Kirsten insistence on their being one and the same is stupid logic.

My fascination with Michelangelo's paintings of naked males is over, and I'm now pouring my efforts in painting, not only female nudes, but also picture book illustrations and other paintings depicting a variety of subject matter.

Her supposedly observant eye then focused on a female nude painting I did, that of Marilyn Monroe in high heels - "Maria Lina Desnuda". She remarked that Marilyn shouldn't be so glamorized because she led a sad life. She may have achieved fame and fortune, but she in truth felt exploited. That's why she succumbed to the lure of drugs and was so depressed that she eventually committed suicide. How true and how sad.

But what Kirsten said next floored me. Here, unedited, caps and all, are her exact words: " I ask you paint a few of her DEPRESSED, LONELY, DRUNK ALONE DESPERATE let's paint REAL portraits of who she was for once! Paint THOSE pictures, not this trite predictable made up crap of a "fairy tale" of what women never should want to be unless they want to be MISERABLE AND DIE YOUNG."

What temerity! Who does she think she is? She has no right whatsoever to dictate to me what I should paint next. It's none of her business if I want to paint a thousand portraits of a glamorized Marilyn Monroe oozing with sex appeal and joy.

Kirsten's opinion on my art doesn't count. She may affixed to her name all those highfalutin titles, but still, I won't consider her "art criticism" valid and relevant because I can see at a glance that her knowledge about art is sparse and threadbare. The only opinions about art I highly esteem and put a high premium on are those of my peers - my fellow artists; those of the art critics, art dealers, art collectors; and most especially those of my family and friends, because I know that they always mean well even if they negatively criticized my artworks.

If she wanted more male nudes painted, I, a male painter, shouldn't be the one she should pester. She should ask the female and gay painters she knows to do it for her. Maybe, she should also request the best painter nowadays of pin-up style female nudes, Olivia de Berardinis, to cease painting those naked women in porn poses and stiletto heels and instead start painting male nudes from now on.

And Kirsten should also stop lumping us painters of female nudes with pornographers. Nude female art, when executed tastefully, is not pornography. By tasteful, I mean those pictures where the models posed demurely and without showing in an obscene manner their private parts.

But even the blatantly prurient quality of artworks are sometimes overlooked when done by artists of high historic value like Austrian artist Egon Schiele for example. Schiele was active at a time when pornographic drawings enjoyed a rather large clientele in Vienna.

Egon Schiele drew female and male nudes that obviously weren't meant as mere exercises in anatomical drawing. These nudes, of both adults and children, depicting them with their vulvas and phalluses in open display were obviously intended to arouse sexual desires.

Egon is considered one of Austria's significant artists. He could have stood out alone at the top and produced many more wholesome artworks, like portraits and urbanscapes had he lived longer. But he died young at age 28, during the Spanish flu pandemic in Europe in 1918, which also claimed the life of his great mentor Gustav Klimt.

Egon's drawings enthrall me. How I wish I could draw like him. My having two books about him is proof that I am his big fan. I could have acquired a third had I enough  money to buy the book of his nudes I saw on sale many years ago at the National Bookstore. These books on Schiele were what prompted me to try my hand at creating my own suite of nude paintings of women,  but minus the luridness, of course.