i saw this in a museum once and i gotta go off on this for a secondā not only is it a gorgeous display of technical mastery over light, darkness, composition, form. itās also a slap in the face to artistic conventions at the time. at the time, you could have nudes but they had to be heroic. they had to be virtuous. 1875, parisā art was supposed to be elevating. it was for the wealthy, it was to be uplifting, it was so everyone who commissioned the pictures could flex their classics education. okay?
so hereās the floor planers. theyāre workmen. theyāre workmen. theyāre not some rent boy you dolled up with a helmet to be achilles or adonis. artists have been hornily painting working-class models (and sex-worker boyfriends) into their portraits forever, but youāre supposed to frame your appreciation for the male form as an intellectually irreproachable appreciation for the heroic body from literature, or, conversely you could depict the humble beauty of peasants, if you must, but it had to be a sort of ode to nature and the simple life. peasants could be art, as long as they were⦠out there, you know. in a field. being a metaphor. so thereās your options for looking at a shirtless guy: heās got to be mythic.
but no. look, here, at the workmen. the floor planers. the workmenās bodies not dressed up in sandals and helmet, in flowers, on a pedestal. the workmen not employed as some distant paean to an arcadian countryside, not stacking sheaves or holding a lamb or elevating the beauty of nature. theyāre here, theyāre urban, theyāre in a room just like you might have. the workers of your world, in your home, in this reality. the male body as a very real, very nonfigurative tool, humble and employed, but still gorgeous. the beauty of the men that the patrician class pays not to see. the men who come into your mansion through the back door and work unseen and leave unseen. those men. there, right there, this painting, glowing and beautiful.
not adonis. but beautiful.
anyway at the time everyone fucking hated this picture because itās a direct slap across the classist chops. they were BIG MAD, this was filthy, it was an affront. they hated it. the paris salon rejected it. established intellectuals didnāt want anything to do with this kind of confrontation. it wasnāt art.
like, look at those hot guys go. look at the shine on the floor and the way their arms are. no virtuous framing, no classic allusions. just some regular guys making the floors nice for a rich fucker who never laid eyes on them at all. but here they are: look at them.
theyāre still beautiful.