Category: Deep Posts

In terms of social media, Pinterest is one of my favorite places. Why? Because it’s barely social media. It is the least social media out of every platform I have been on. I don’t see any other people, unless I look in the comments. My feed is pretty well curated. If I search in the search bar, I get what I want. Pinterest also doesn’t really have any video content. The short form content is hard to come across, and when you do it’s rather annoying to watch because it always has some sort of problem (pausing issues, rewind, etc). Besides the excessive amount of ads–which every platform has now–I have no complaints about it. It is actually one of the most positive social media platforms I have ever been on. One of my favorite aspects is the lack of sexualization I see. Maybe that is because of how my feed is curated, but overall I have never heard any problems with Pinterest and sexual content. 

    My feed is made up of mainly three things; content related to tv shows I watch, memes, and art. That’s it. For the art content I get all sorts of things. Art history paintings, memes related to art, and people sharing their opinions on art. However, my favorite art is figure art. The nude. I saw this post on pinterest recently that asked a good question. I am paraphrasing but it asked “When did the nude become so sexual?” 

     I have seen a couple other posts like this asking similar questions, or having similar sentiments about the loss of the appreciation for the nude and how it’s just become a sexual item rather than something to be appreciated. I share this feeling too. I mourn the fact that the nudefigure can no longer be appreciated. However I want to talk about my view on the figure, and also show different art in this paper or whatever I am writing. 

     To give a brief history of the nude (this is about the female nude because you know there is always a problem with women having a body). In the beginning of Western Art, the female nude was always someone divine. Like a Goddess such as Venus. It was never a real woman. 

 Sandro Botticelli, Birth of Venus, 1484-1486, tempera on canvas, 

38 1/4 × 42 1/2 in

Alexandre Cabanel, Birth of Venus, 1863, oil on canvas, 

59 in × 98 in
    This trend continued until Manet painted “Luncheon on the Grass” (French: Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe) which caused a MASSIVE uproar. Because the women in the painting weren’t divine. They weren’t a goddess, or allegories. They were real women. The painting was not received well, and was critiqued harshly. So was his following painting, Olympia. Because that also portrayed a real woman, in the nude. It showed a prostitute being served flowers from an admirer. And worst of all she was looking directly at viewers. In previous paintings, women never acknowledged viewers. They were oblivious to our presence. Whereas this painting she was assertive and looked right at viewers. This woman forced viewers to recon with our potential perversion. The same year Manet painted Olympia, Cabanel’s Birth of Venus won at the Academy’s show. It was a sensation. People loved it. However what Manet did was more important to history than the soft nude that Cabanel did that year. 

Édouard Manet, “Luncheon on the Grass” (French: Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe), 1862, oil on canvas, 

81.9 × 104.1 in

Édouard Manet, Olympia, 1863, oil on canvas, 

51.4 in × 74.8

in Now that is not to say I do not love the other nudes like the academic era ones, or the previous ones where they do represent divine people or ideas. They are beautiful. However in order to get to where we are today we needed Manet’s paintings (and I do love Manet’s paintings). Now there were a lot of different nudes between Manet’s and now. However I feel like this was the most important shift. The shift from idealized, divine, unreal, to a real person. Someone you would see in life. A real woman. 

    Now I have discussed this with some friends (mainly my art friends), but I feel as an artist I view things differently. I didn’t always have this lens, but it started when I began to have this love for the figure. I began to draw the nude figure more frequently. I thought it was beautiful. But not sexual. I never thought that for a second. The way everything flowed and connected to the human body. The way the shadows fell on the ribs as they popped out, or how the shoulders would jut out on the back. The more I drew the figure the more I saw it as a piece of art itself. However it wasn’t until I was talking to someone who didn’t do art one day that they made a comment on my art that made me realize not everyone views the nude figure like I do. They thought it was weird how I always did naked women. I was in a group of people, and some other things were discussed. But I realized at that moment that people don’t look at the human body the way I do. The nude specifically. Many still think of the nude as sexual, or unpleasant in some cases. I couldn’t find it in me to look at a nude figure and view it in a sexual nature. I just saw the human body as something beautiful. As more time has passed I found it in almost every person I come across. My art and practicing the figure has given me a passion for seeing the beauty in humans. Not in their personality per se, but the features. Someone’s eyes and how they capture light, someone’s hair and the texture it has, or someone’s skin and the uniqueness it has. What is captures. The scars, freckles, sun spots…what it shows. Or the muscles someone has. Showingwhat the human body is capable of. Or the softness of someone’s body. Every body has beauty to behold. Not in a way that I find attractive. A way that I find inspirational. A beauty that I want to paint or draw. I don’t think humans should be constantly idealized or sexualized. I think that is boring and sometimes even disgusts me. I don’t like drawing or painting sexual things. It grosses me out actually. I think there is something beautiful or precious about the nude body. However I also love the grotesque aspects of the human body. The skeleton, the muscles, the blood. You can’t have the beauty of the skin without the ugliness of the inside. I have been studying anatomy recently to help my figure art, and I think it is changing the direction of my art. The insides of the body is how we are able to function. The skeleton is our foundation, and all that is left of us once we have rotted away after we die. The muscles allow us to move. They allow us to live to full extent…run, jump, paint, and do so many more other things.  Of course I am simplifying things, but after learning more, the outside just seems so plain after learning about the rest. Plain isn’t the best word, but there is just that there is so much more to appreciate below the surface. There is beauty in the grotesque. And I want to show it and appreciate it. Peel away the skin, show the muscle, and bone. There is such beauty in all the human body has to offer. Everyone can relate to having one, but not everyone sees the beauty. Especially below the surface. When I say the figure, or the nude is beautiful I mean all of it. Give me the flesh, muscle, bones, and blood. Being human is more than just skin. Being human is also blood, tears, hurt. It’s also what we are made of; bones, and muscle. 

    How would I be able to explain to a normal person that I think all of that is beautiful? The grotesque aspects of being human? Especially during a time when people lean towards idealized images of people by using photoshop. Some could argue we are back to an era of idealization, except it’s not in art…it’s in real life. So how would a normal person react to the grotesque?    People can say body positivity all they want but showing love to the insides…what about that? The things that make you run, and stand, and the things that remain when you are gone? Would you be able to look at yourself with everything stripped away and see the beauty in the essence of what humans are? Beauty is very superficial. As a society many people say this…but I doubt we actually know what it means. The minute we are presented an opportunity to take a flaw away like a scar, many take it. Anything that isn’t viewed as ideal, or beautiful. Right now ozempic is all the rage…what happened to body positivity? And what about the damage you are doing to your body to make yourself look beautiful just externally? You are eroding your body just to make yourself look good by society’s standards. 

     People aren’t beautiful. They have scars, stretch marks, wrinkles, and god knows what else. But to me I think it’s marvelous. To be human is beautiful. The nude to me represents more than just a naked individual. Being naked is being vulnerable. Vulnerability is precious. Also I think every part of being human is beautiful. To be alive is something beautiful. But there is also beauty in death, and rot. 

    Now that’s my hot take on the nude, and the figure. That is how I view it. I could never view it as something sexual as for me it runs much deeper than the flesh on the surface. I hope one day people can begin to appreciate the nude figure once more, and not sexualize it—female or male.

Ok that’s my yappathon about the nude in art or whatever. Stay Silly.

Sadness is a broad category. If I were to compare it to anything, sadness is similar to a primary color. There are so many different types of sadness, too. There is grief, loneliness, anguish, homesickness…the list goes on. Each type of sub-emotion of sadness can lead you on a different path through it. Some you can get out quicker with a more simple solution, such as homesickness. Others, such as grief, are not as easily solved. 

    Why the intro on sadness? Well, I want to talk about grief and the complexity of sadness (in a way) a bit. It will mainly be me pondering in a way. I have mostly been contemplating my reactions to things as of late. I always like to figure out why I do what I do. I want to know myself. However, something that intrigued me lately is how closely tied I seem to be with grief. Now, just so we are on the same boat, the definition of grief is, ‘deep sorrow, especially that caused by someone’s death.‘ To put it plainly, I have been sad a lot lately (womp womp). Everyone experiences sadness differently, and over the years, it changes too. Most recently, my experience has changed as well. When I become sad–and I mean sad enough to cry–I begin to think of what my Grandma would think of me now. She passed away in 2016 when I was 11. I am 21 now. I also begin to think of my dog Pixie dying. She is currently 15. I have had her since I was 5 (she is a little soulless, but I still love her). 

A lot has happened since 2016. So much so that I could write a book. Friends have come and gone, people and pets have died, and me…I grew up. Or did I? I ask,’ Would she be proud of me?‘ Or ‘what would she think of me now?‘ almost every time I have a bit of a breakdown. It also leads us to think of Pixie’s (my dog) inevitable death. She is 15, and that is old for a dog. She is in very good health right now, but I have to come to terms with the fact it’s coming up. As I write this, I hear her breathing in the hallway outside my door. My family makes fun of her loud snoring and tongue that hangs outside her mouth, but I find it to be some of the most endearing things about her. But right now, her breathing gives me comfort. It makes me happy even. 

    Why have I begun to have this weird mixture of grief and sorrow? I have suddenly started to mourn someone I lost years ago, and I am also already mourning someone I will lose soon. It’s not quite grief. When I began college, I began to despise change. I started to have this thought more frequently about ‘what if everything stayed the same?‘ But the thought would stress me out so much that my mind would just space out afterward. It would just be impossible. I began to like the concept of snowglobes since they hold moments in them that never change. 

As I have grown, so much has changed. I think I yearned for the steadiness and success I had as a kid. As silly as that sounds. I was a good kid. I got straight A’s in middle school, except maybe one or two B’s? Before my Grandma’s death, I was genuinely a very happy kid, and I did good. However, a couple months later, things began to take a turn. Starting with my epilepsy diagnosis (boo), things never felt the same after sixth grade.. 

    Since then, I feel like I have only succeeded a handful of times, and as I have gotten older, my success has become even worse. Maybe this is the path to adulthood. However, I feel like I am running so far behind. I feel like I am just lost. I constantly hear how I will never succeed and that I am very different from the rest of my family. So, I find myself looking back to times when I was more successful and grieving the loss of those eras. Grieving what I had then. Grieving my connections to those eras.

    My Grandma knew me only before I became a mess. She always loved and supported me. I don’t remember her saying a single negative thing to me. Maybe that’s why I desperately want to know what she would think of me now. Would she be disappointed in who I have become? Would she hate my art? Or would she still love me and my art?

Pixie is one of the last connections, if not the previous, connection I have to my childhood. She is the living and breathing connection to my childhood.  She has been with me through my highs and lows (whether she knew it or not). I am 90% sure she knew I was having seizures before anyone else did because she started coming into my room in the morning and chilling with me. Then, when I got my medications all sorted, she stopped. I feel that the love between a person and an animal can’t be appropriately described by words when one of them doesn’t speak. Although she probably doesn’t love me because I constantly hunt her down to pet her, I have begun to grieve her death. Even though she is still with me. I think that may be because I know she has loved me unconditionally. I believe it is rare to feel unconditionally loved by anyone. They may say their love is unconditional, but when times get tough, they leave, or their ‘conditions’ start to show. Generally speaking, I feel that is why people love animals so much. They love unconditionally. 

    I think that is how I felt about my Grandma, and I believe that is what I yearn for now: someone who loves unconditionally. I know that is impossible to ask of anyone. Could I even love someone unconditionally? People say they can, but do they know what it really means? Loving unconditionally comes with a heavy burden and may not always come with a reward. But everyone can ponder the topic of unconditional love in their own way. 

    So, what’s the point of this post? Rambling, of course! Just kidding…or am I? I wanted to write about how I have recently handled sadness and ‘crash-outs.’ This was probably word vomit, and I hope it made sense. Definitely a heavy first post. Hope to follow it up with a more fun one…maybe talking about music or something. I don’t know. 

    Hope those of you reading liked my first official post. 

       Peace up, A-Town, 

Claire