Not just any blue gown
NPR has further details on the updated Statue of Liberty.
Artist Amy Sherald is canceling an upcoming show of her work at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. Sherald’s boldly colored portraits documenting the African American experience have graced magazine covers.
She is best known for her painting of Michelle Obama commissioned by the museum.
Amy Sherald: American Sublime was scheduled to be on view at the National Portrait Gallery for five months beginning Sept. 19. Described as “the largest, most comprehensive exhibition of the artist’s work to date,” the exhibition was organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, or SFMOMA, and is currently at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.
Sherald is canceling the show because of a dispute over her painting of a trans woman with pink hair and a blue gown holding a torch, called Trans Forming Liberty, 2024.
That’s not quite all there is to say about the painting though. About that blue gown…
See there’s more to it than just swapping a “trans woman” in for the woman in the original. There’s also the pose.
The original stands squarely on her two feet, holding the torch of liberty aloft with one strong arm and a tablet bearing the date of the American Declaration of Independence in the other. She is not, repeat not, poking one leg out of a split skirt in a “wanna fuck me?” manner, nor is she holding a vase of posies next to her ear, nor is she clutching her hip with the other hand, nor is she lifting her left heel off the floor for no reason in the manner of India Willoughby.
Censorship is bad; in other news, that painting is a woman-hating piece of crap.
Are there any specific clues from the art that this is specifically a “trans woman” , i.e. a man? It’s not drawn with any real anatomical precision, and the bodily proportions look more like a woman than a man.
No, not really, so it’s yet another of those cheats that we see so often.
The title is Trans Forming Liberty. Cute, huh?
Arguably the face and neck are pretty dudely, adam’s apple included.
I visited Napoleon’s tomb a few years ago. The central rotunda is supported by columns, and in front of each column is a sculpture of an angel–a robed woman with wings–and the figures of the women are just massive. Solid, imposing, thunder-thighs all the way. I just looked at the pictures of them on Wikipedia. You can kind of see the effect in the pictures, but it’s nothing like as impressive as seeing it for real.
Perhaps the angels were made that way to reflect the female aesthetic of the day; perhaps they were made that way to project gravitas. But it seemed to me that the biggest driver of their forms was that any smaller or slighter figures would have been dwarfed by the surrounding architecture (which was also entirely over-the-top).
The Sherald figure has no background to provide scale. Comparing it on its own to the Statue of Liberty, it seems overall less impressive and imposing.
“Are there any specific clues from the art that this is specifically a “trans woman” ?”
Tacky, gaudy, gauche . . . a hideous satire of womanhood.
Steven, that’s interesting. Michelangelo sculpted some pretty muscular female angels or similar iirc.
Thanks to Ms. Eunice Robeck, AP Humanities ’80-’81, Michalangelo had to use men for models and just added on the extra bits (and removed the extra ones). I forget the exact reason, something about the Church disallowing female models at the time, but don’t quote me, she’s passed so I can’t clarify. Great teacher, though.
What I saw in the gray, blue, pink and gold picture in question above: Shoulders wider than hips, no discernable waist, looks like a well-muscled chest without breasts, prominent Adam’s Apple. I instantly clocked that as male, though could be wrong as it’s likely not really a human.
Michaelangelo was almost certainly gay and I’m sure that I once read that most of his models were young men, even when the work depicted the female form.
Now I’m curious about the female model issue. I know that was forbidden in some places until the recent past, but I don’t know specifics. I’m tempted to say the Vatican was the Taliban, but then again, there’s a lot of Renaissance Italian painting that appears to feature non-male women.
Summoned Botticelli women via Google images. They mostly have broken necks, but they don’t look like men.
Steven, I think they are caryatids, not angels. The most famous ones are on the Erechtheion, on the Acropolis. The architecture in Napoleon’s tomb was Neo-Classical (much like the architecture of Washington, which makes Agent Orange’s plastering of gilt Rococo motifs all over the White House all the more clueless).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caryatid
What I found interesting about the Napoleonic ones was that each was labeled for a famous battle and most were crowned with laurels. The one for Waterloo, however, was bare-headed, but then, we all know where that was won.
Heh.
Irving Stone’s fictional biography of Michelangelo had some comment about him having no access to female cadavers for dissection.
I wouldn’t have realized the painting alludes to the Statue of Liberty without further context. Then again,, I don’t get a “wanna fuck me?” manner from it as much as a “wanna fuck with me?” manner, so maybe I’m just a philistine.
I wouldn’t either. I saw What a Maroon’s comment about the painting first, and then looked for the painting. I don’t think the S of L would have crossed my mind just seeing it.
On the other hand – the “I don’t get a “wanna fuck me?” manner from it as much as a “wanna fuck with me?” manner” bit – really? Compared to the original? What is the point of the skirt split at crotch level then? What is the point of changing a woman in robes standing on both feet holding two heavy objects to the one with hand on hip and conspicuous naked leg? Are we supposed to think “Ooooh, empowered!” Because that’s not empowered. If he does want to fuck with her she’s not going to be able to fight him off. He’ll be able to stamp on her bare toes, just for a start.
No. Women looking conspicuously sexual but in a fake-tough way is not remotely empowering. Greta Christina please note.
I think … Yes, we are supposed to think empowered. Sex-positive feminism has gone completely off the rails. Like, we really are supposed to look at Bonnie Blue and see the apotheosis of female autonomy, because if you dare have any objections or qualms or concerns, well, that’s slut shaming. Haven’t you heard how absolutely horrible slut shaming is? It’s apparently the primary—perhaps only—thing that feminism cares about.
My misanthropy knows no bounds nowadays.
Reminds me of something JKR once tweeted about male “feminists” whose interest in women’s issues is (from memory) entirely limited to pornography, pole-dancing, and “sex-work” (as well as opening up female-only spaces to males, of course). Turns out there are plenty of female “feminists” like that as well.
So it’s both “wanna fuck me?” and “wanna fuck with me?!”
Ok, I can agree with that.