#caseylorne

Upside Down #4 by Leah Emery, 2014.

(Embroidery thread on Aida cloth.)

Perhaps not the most comfortable position to receive oral sex, but mainstream pornography skimps on cunnilingus and depictions of women’s pleasure in general, so we should be grateful for what we have, right?

Emery’s needlework reconstructs spam images she received while working as a video game developer.

I sought to utilize this predominantly phallocentric imagery through a medium that had its roots in feminine tradition to juxtapose the confrontational world of sex and smut with the graceful qualities of laborious and beautiful craft work. Topics of a sexual nature are still socially taboo, despite being a necessary component of human existence, particularly thanks to increasing internet censorship of seemingly benign material. To view my work is an invitation to voyeurism as the viewer is confronted with the unsettling experience of publicly looking at imagery that on face value should be consumed privately and secretly.

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If ever there’s a smutty remake of Bonnie and Clyde, I suspect the aesthetic will match Emery’s 2013 piece, Green Car.

Military recruitment parody posters by Masturbate For Peace, 2002.

Though it didn’t enter World War I until 1917, the United States produced more posters in support of mobilization and civilian service than any other country. The government established a Department of Pictorial Publicity with 300 artists who were ordered to “draw until it hurts.”

The backlash fifty years later against the Vietnam War included the co-opting by activists of propaganda posters. They substituted anti-military themes, often featuring the slogan, “Make Love, Not War.”

Joan Baez and her sisters Mimi and Pauline posed for a poster challenging the popular notion that refusing to serve was cowardly or unmanly. Their message, that liberated women would have sex with draft dodgers, perhaps recalls the heroine Lysistrata, who organized a chastity movement among Greek wives to force peace negotiations.

Scott from Toronto Men (series) by David Gray, 2006.

What David [displays] in his work are very tastefully mastered, erotic visions of your average, everyday man. There are beards, tattoos, hairy guys, smooth chests, piercings, beautiful long-haired manes–and the black and white photos are fantastic to say the least.

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The Morning by Leo Putz, 1909.

Nude by Christian Peter, undated.

La photographie n’est pas un métier, c’est une passion, qui vous traite avec plus ou moins de bienveillance, cela sans regard des frais engagés ou du temps passé, c’est injuste aussi bien que salvateur.

Photography is not a profession–it’s a passion that treats you more or less benevolently, but without regard for the expenses incurred or the time spent. It is an injustice yet also a salvation.

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Errors in the nuance of translation are mine.

After Henri Matisse by students at the Visual School of Arts, New York, 2015.

Of plagiarism I once wrote, “It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Mere copying, in other words, also my words, had no value.

Three years ago, a photography instructor decided to challenge my unique perspective, arguing that within his medium true plagiarism was not possible. An inherent originality, he said, would transform the imitator into a creator.

His students were told to mimic as best they could a famous image containing nudity.

When I was in art school I remember becoming discouraged, believing any worthwhile image had already been made. The goal of this assignment was to teach that even if you try very hard to remake someone else’s work, your photographs can only be your own.

I must admit that the ensuing product, prepared by the students, looks nothing like Matisse’s Blue Nude.

FromPheromone Hotbox (series) by Amanda Charchian, 2012-2016.

What happens when a woman photographs another woman in the nude? Photographer Amanda Charchian calls it the “Pheromone Hotbox”: an elevated, erotic state of tension that seesaws from sexuality to creativity.

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It’s often the moments before photographing someone, their shy gestures, the way they prepare, the way they react to imminent danger or threat of being caught nude in public, that shows me the most about them…

In the case that a woman willingly takes a nude portrait, it becomes a letter to the world; broadcasted message of here-ness. You cannot exploit the empowered.

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The model is Alysha Colangeli posing at White Sands, New Mexico.

The Tempest by Aleah Chapin, 2013.

I feel strongly that things should be real. I wanted to show a different way of seeing and to get at something universally human. A woman’s body is a map of her journey through life.

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Photograph of Chapin by Maria Teicher.

Reclining Nude by Priscilla Warren Roberts, 1916-2001.

(tw: allegations of incest and sexual abuse)

Crouching female nude with bended head by Egon Schiele, 1918.

On June 18th, 1915, three days after his wedding, Schiele was conscripted into the Austrian army. Due to his excellence in handwriting, he spent most of the war working as a clerk in a POW camp. He continued to draw, encouraged by his commanding officer.

Despite avoiding action on the front lines, Schiele did not survive to see the Armistice. His wife, six months pregnant, fell victim to the Spanish Influenza pandemic on Oct. 28th, 1918. Schiele, who had also contracted the disease, capitulated three days later. He was 28.

One hundred years after his death, Schiele is categorized with a group of erotic artists that includes one of his mentors, Gustav Klimt. I’m not sure that’s the right place for Schiele, as although his major works have sexual themes, they are often grotesque.

In 1912, Schiele was arrested for seducing a girl under the age of consent. He was ultimately convicted on a lesser charge of showing pornography to a child. He may also have initiated an incestuous relationship with his sister, Gerti, when she was 12. On at least one occasion, he was forced to move out of town due to suspicions he had molested teenage girls posing for him.

Whereas Klimt unabashedly celebrated eroticism, I think Schiele had a much darker perspective on sexuality. Although there can be beauty in brutality, Schiele’s work is tinged by a sense of repulsion, perhaps self-directed.

The gap of time does not allow for confirmation or rejection of the rumours surrounding Schiele, The art he left behind, however, has a distorted and delinquent quality (for example, the portrayal of the genitals of the redheaded model, above) which–and mine is a minority opinion–isn’t so sexy.

Photographer: “Let’s take some pictures of you sitting on Doug’s face while he licks your asshole.”

Model: “That sounds so romantic!”

I searched near and far but the image won’t reveal its origin, which is sad: a mission accomplished deserves recognition.The bridge spanning the chasm between romance and carnality has been well-built.

Representations of sexuality tend to show one or the other, but I don’t think tenderness in bed and the exploration of dark caverns (metaphorically) must always be mutually exclusive.

The separation seems so limiting.

Flowers and ass-eating, in my uncouth opinion, combine to make a charming Valentine’s Day gift.

I chew-chew-chews you.

Male and female nudes by Paul Cadmus, 1904-1999.

I remember the only sexual advice my mother ever gave me. She said, “Don’t ever accept a ride if anybody offers you a ride because they’ll take you home and strap you to a bed and abuse you.”…I thought it sounded rather interesting, I guess.

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This may or may not be a picture of my butt.

As for the ruby slippers, I clicked the heels three times and they took me to Roatan, affectionately known as the Kansas of Honduras.

Like Kansas, Roatan is an island in the Caribbean Sea, about 70 km long but only 7 km at its widest point. The land is an outgrowth of the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef and the waters which surround it contain rare species of turtles, mollusks and fish–along with world’s largest population of manatees.

Anyway, back to the bum, which, as I noted earlier, is not necessarily mine. It was on display last week with about a dozen others at the Paya Bay Resort, a large property toward the eastern end of Roatan. Despite the long coastline and an extensive network of rain forest trails, only a smattering of people visit at a time, as lodging facilities are limited to about 15 small bungalows. (Some units were vacant during my stay.) For people who prefer to wear swimming outfits, there’s a (suit)able beach, but the rest of Paya Bay encourages or requires naturism.

So that’s the update, the reason for my Tumblr lapse: I officially took out a card-carrying membership in the sorority of fraternal nudists (which, frankly, can be a bit aggravating when you don’t have any pockets).

Evangelical naturism, I think, backfires when it tries to persuade people they must undress to find some sort of mystical joy. That wasn’t my experience. Forsaking clothes while on vacation was not such a big deal. It helped me connect to the luscious environment but, unlike yogic flying, I knew I wasn’t changing the world.

Well, maybe there was a small sense of liberation in letting go of the fear of being seen as imperfect. Sometimes achieving peace can be as easy as deciding to stop fighting.

Whether I was napping under the sun or swimming in sea, nakedness allowed me to feel completely immersed in nature. So, yes, I would do it again–and seek out opportunities, not just wait for them.

Anna du Pire as Granida (with detail) by Bartholomeus van der Heist, 1660.

In Holland during the 17th century, the fashion among the nobility was to be painted as characters from pastoral plays.

Grandia is the heroine of a platonic love story named for her and rewritten for the stage by Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft in 1605. A princess from Persia, she is rescued by a kindly shepherd after she loses her way during a hunt.

The excuse that the model was not herself but instead the embodiment of a literary fiction allowed for costumes that were otherwise too racy in a society shaped by puritan influences.

The exposed nipple may still have been intolerable for some viewers but van der Heist had another advantage to help sway public opinion: Anna du Pire’s husband approved of the picture. Indeed, he had painted it.

FromHappy in my Skin (series) by Leah Crossley (in collaboration with Hazel Anderson), 2014.

The series taglines are:

• An all female naked dip in the ocean.
• A collection of inspiring and empowering images of women.
• An opportunity to be part of something special.
  

We are building a collection of Images that will exist online and as part of a touring exhibition. The images readdress the balance, to inspire and empower. We want to create beautiful images of real women feeling free and fully expressed in all their glorious forms.

- Crossley and Anderson

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The misogyny that shapes every aspect of our civilization is the institutionalized form of male fear and hatred of what they have denied and therefore cannot know, cannot share: that wild country, the being of women.

- Ursula Le Guin, 1929-2018

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(Photograph by Justine Kurland)

Cumulus by Russo-American artist Margarita Sikorskaia, 2009.

What do you see in the clouds?

The right answer is a bear about to pounce on a spawning salmon. Chinook, I think. 

Uber? Nein!

Next time, take a mind trip with Uberfrau.

Hot Summer Prairie by Robert Ford M. McInnis (born 1942).

Strong design compositions are made from geometric shapes of buildings, such as grain elevators, houses in winter [and] prairie landscapes. I have traveled across Canada to paint the unique aspects of each region.

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McInnis has lived and created in New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Alberta and British Columbia.

Les mots croisés (The Crossword Puzzle) by Francine Van Hove, b. 1942.

My main theme is, without a doubt, that intimacy and peace which women know when they are alone, when they enjoy such simple pleasures as reading during breakfast, or losing themselves staring into the eyes of a cat, or just sleeping.

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Cupid and Psyche by Emily Stedman, 2006.

Storytelling, an integral part of my nudes, is a part of life, intrinsic to most cultures. Stories help people make sense of the world. While the nude transcends time, the telling of stories too is as basic to human beings as eating. Maybe more so, since while food allows us to live, stories are what make our lives worth living.

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Poor Austria, land of lederhausen and edelweiss, lonely goatherds and singing nuns: Rogers and Hammerstein sliced off your balls and made you the eunuch of Europe, at least as seen through North American eyes.

Crossing the ocean to pay homage to the musical, pilgrims will soon discover they were mislead. Austria is virile. The hills are alive with the sounds of orgasms. Sex work is legal (though regulated) in most Austrian provinces and the country has a lively sauna culture, usually with no gender segregation. Spas, pools and lakeside beaches often have “free body culture” zones–invitations to go skinny dipping–and television commercials may feature naked people selling coffee or cars. An academic study concluded that women in Austria are the most sexually-satisfied in the world.

Now, exporting sex- and body-positive values might get a country in trouble (even if those are things badly needed in most places.) Austria’s Post Office, however, has come up with a subtle way of sharing the pleasures of sexual freedom and equality in the bedroom: issuing stamps decorated with artistic erotica.

Both of those stamps are gorgeous and the artists, Dina Larot (top) and Silvia Gredenberg, deserve the recognition. Highlighting art by women seems appropriately Austrian, too–but perhaps the greatest painter in the erotic genre, Gustav Klimt, is not ignored.

What’s that I hear? You prefer your stamp nudity to be more masculine? Well, Austria really does have something for everyone. You can even see penis.

Both models, by the way, are rendered by women: Cornelia Schlesinger (top) and Astrid Bernhart.

So, have Austrians always appreciated the nude in art? That’s hard to know. We can only go back about 27,000 years. As you would probably expect by now, yes, that item is featured on one of the country’s stamps, too:

caseylorne:

Photograph by Toronto’s James Ogilive featuring Hamilton-based model NicoleNudes, 2012.

Bather of Tehuantepec by Diego Rivera, 1923.

Nathan by Mike Tossy, 2016.

The 9th Field Brigade by Samuel J. Hood, 1938.

Currently on display as part of The Unflinching Gaze: Photo Media and the Male Figure at the Bathurst Regional Art Gallery, Australia.

If you set out to make pictures about love, it can’t be done. But you can make pictures, and you can be in love. In that way, people sense the authenticity of what you do.

- Emmet Gowin

Three images, all taboo, yet infused with gentleness. The subject is Gowin’s wife, Edith, whom he married in 1964. Knowing that changes something. It adds an invasive intimacy–a summoning to a place where an outsider is not supposed to go.

The out-of-focus woman in the first photograph is Edith’s grandmother. Her presence shouldn’t conjure discomfort; nor should Gowin’s, unseen behind the camera. But they are not supposed to be there at the same time, not when Edith’s breasts are exposed in such a determined way. Particularly in his early work, Gowin suggests that the alienation of family from sexuality is inauthentic. Sex, after all, is part of what creates families. He knew this message was open to misinterpretation. “Everyone thought my photographs were incestuous,” he remembers in a 2014 Guardian interview. Of course, that was not his purpose. He saw the same wonder in everyday familial relationships that others go to mountains or jungles to witness.

According to artist Chris Wiley, the second picture of the set, which shows Edith urinating in a barn, is “the most intimate photograph.” He’s not limiting himself to Gowin’s portfolio. Of all the images in the world, it is the one that “brings love near enough we can feel it’s hot breath.” Wiley writes:

The picture is so piercingly intimate that I find it difficult even to look at it. This is not because I feel as if I am intruding, or being shown something that I was not meant to see, but simply because it seems to hover too close to the vital force of human connection. It is too poignant, too alive.

When skimming explicit photographs on the Internet late at night, you’re sure to encounter pictures of people peeing. For me, they have this terrible effect of causing mindfulness of my bladder, forcing my sleepy body out of bed for a trip to the bathroom. Such images are not really intimate, despite the subject matter; rather, they are bold and confrontational.

Wiley’s private moment with Edith doesn’t offer anything for the fetishist–unless being in love in a intensely familiar way counts as a fetish.

The last photograph features no grandmas in rocking chairs or puddles of urine, but for me it is the edgiest and best illustrates the concept of loving trust. Edith’s pose is not flattering. Seen out of context, perhaps the viewer would misinterpret Gowin’s intention as a meditation on the entropy of old age.

The miracle of lasting love is that we never stop seeing beauty in the bodies of our partners. Though the image is not romantic, I feel overwhelmed by the photographer’s affection for the creases of his wife’s neck, the slouch of her breasts and the folds of her stomach.

Then there is Edith’s faith, purer than the most zealous nun’s belief in God, that Gowin will see her accurately yet love her as devotedly as he always has, always will.

Scott Church takes pictures for Playboy, Penthouse and Hustler, but his range is broader than the merely pornographic.

Actually, I don’t like that sentence. The ultimate naked history lesson is that trying to draw a line between pornography and erotica is futile. Let’s go with:

Scott Church takes pictures.

Ah, much better.

The big brains behind Canada’s good sex.

(Not sure about the photographer. It may be Manitoba’s Purdy Morgan.)

Two to Tangle by Margarita Sikorskaia, 2007.

If you don’t like where you’re at, and getting where you want to be seems impossible, all you can do is learn to navigate through the murky waters towards the light and enjoy your buoyancy.

Reclining Nude on a Couch by Priscilla Warren Roberts (1916-2001).

Precision and pets preoccupied the Connecticut artist. Though she painted up to 16 hours every day, it could take her months to complete one still life. As for pets, Roberts estimated she had opened her home to 60 cats.

Jiz Lee by Dave Naz for Identity: In and Beyond the Binary.

Dave Naz spent eight years photographing transgender, genderqueer, gender variant and other people from the queer community. He has been documenting lives, poems and stories from the community in his zine Identity, now collected in this striking book.

Having an umbrella can come in handy.

On humid summer afternoons, thunderclouds invade the cornflower skies of the Upper Northwest, leaving Minneapolis sidewalks drenched in puddles of purple rain.

The epicenter is often the First Avenue and 7th Street Entry, built as a bus depot but converted into a music venue. Joe Cocker played two sets there on opening night, April 3rd, 1970.

Fourteen years later, a local talent made First Avenue famous. Prince rented the club for $100,000 over 25 days to serve as the main location for his first film. The soundtrack for Purple Rain included Let’s Go Crazy and When Doves Cry and earned an Academy Award. Prince simultaneously had the top single, album and film in the United States.

He continued to visit First Avenue is subsequent decades, both to perform and listen to new musicians. On the day Prince died in 2016, more than 10,000 people converged near the venue for an impromptu celebration of his life.

(Photograph by Scott Church from DeviantArt.)

Nest by Joyce Polance, 2013.

newdaynewbackyard:

Barriére, British Columbia. August 5th, 2016.

It was a forestry town until Hank Jennings, at the behest of Josie Packard, burnt down her late husband’s sawmill, nearly killing Catherine Martell and Shelly Johnson.

Wait–that’s Twin Peaks.

It was a forestry town until Mike Barre, with the assistance of a smouldering cigarette butt, burnt down the Louis Creek Sawmill along with 73 homes in the path of the ensuing fire.

That kind of nuance is what makes Barrière different from Twin Peaks. Sure, they’re both haunted by evil spirits named Bob, but mysteries in Barrière are resolved before the audience loses interest.

Officially designated as a municipal district, Barrière, for many people, is a bathroom stop on the main highway between Edmonton and Vancouver, a long drive of 1,159 km (720 miles) on a road that winds through mountain passes. There’s no Double R Diner serving slices of cherry pie. The place to go for local cuisine is Murray’s, where a sign over the front door advises:

The NewDayNewBackyardigans, Steph and Rob, seem to have bypassed Murray’s. Instead, they went for a walk on the train tracks, naked, which is also a kind of happiness.

After all, what could be more fitting than showing off a derrière in Barrière?

Let’s hope they go to Regina.

The Pear by Konstantin Antioukhin, 2010,

She opened her thighs. Vera reached, gently, with careful, ferocious hands, pulled wide her own thighs. The bees moved. It was love, it was pure love, her body beginning to move, again, unable to stop and yet no longer urgent, the hiving bees arriving home, the whole nectar of her world-old virgin body poured into their instinct to begin again.

The men, below her, downriver in the valley, in the town: they heard the surrendered call. Years later, they would claim to have smelled the moment too: the crocus and cold earth smell, the smell of spring earth, breaking alive. Vera, moving, not able not to move, crushing the silken stems of the crocus bed, breaking the petals back from their pollen-yellow tongues. They heard the outcry of her painful joy, those men, the extremest coming; they heard, each of them, and they knew. Not knowing her name, or where she was, or what had touched her into that fierce and passionate and desperate ululation: they knew no man would satisfy her. Not one. No mortal man would satisfy her.

- From What the Crow Said by Robert Kroetsch.

Erosion No. 2: Mother Earth Laid Bare by Alexandre Hogue, 1938.

From the murals funded by the Works Progressive Administration to John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, the artistic output of the Great Depression generally depicted Dust Bowl farmers as victims of an environment and an economy turned savage.

Alexandre Hogue insisted on a different narrative: the recklessness of human agriculture, enhanced by mechanization, funded by capitalism, had raped the essence of the land.

His paintings show no sympathy for the refugees moving to California or the families that stayed behind, living on New Deal welfare. For desecrating the sacred earth, they deserved the revenge nature was inflicting upon them.

Scientific discoveries in land reclamation and the development of new farming methods, funded by the Roosevelt Administration, partially restored harmony to the ecosystem. However, many homesteaders remained reluctant to accept the reforms. The government had to pay a dollar per acre to early adopters to encourage compliance.

As humanity stumbles into a warming climate, a new Dust Bowl, I suspect more artists will adopt Hogue’s point of view this time. It feels like we have forsaken the privilege of sympathy.