i saw this in a museum once and i gotta go off on this for a secondâ not only is it a gorgeous display of technical mastery over light, darkness, composition, form. itâs 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, parisâ 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 hereâs the floor planers. theyâre workmen. theyâre workmen. theyâre 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 youâre 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 thereâs your options for looking at a shirtless guy: heâs got to be mythic.
but no. look, here, at the workmen. the floor planers. the workmenâs 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. theyâre here, theyâre urban, theyâre 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 itâs 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 didnât want anything to do with this kind of confrontation. it wasnât 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.
theyâre still beautiful.
discoholicmusic
germansingergirl
prguitarman
blakekathryn
tangentwithtanner
kianamaiart
pixelskylines
gracieabrams
snowghoul
