Degas Landscapes and The Female Form

     Wow, I've started doing my art history studies again, after a long break.

     Youtube may be one of  the most valuable sources for artists in the history of humans.  No longer do I have to rely on books for images when I am not at a gallery or museum, but I can watch artist interviews and documentaries, and it is a wonderful thing.

     Anyway, watching a documentary on Degas, they didn't mention it in the video, but I could see female forms in the landscape.  One area showed the pubic region, and another are showed a form of a woman laying, with the woman's head toward the viewer.

     Being an artist, I know a lot about the motivations of why artists do things.  A lot of it involves the female form, and the desire to be close to that form.

     If you see what I see, you'll never look at certain landscapes, and still lifes the same ever again.

     That involves the uneasy relationship between porn and art, which has existed through the ages. 

     Even today, I was just watching a Titian video, and I can make a case that he invented 'Playboy'...haha, with his reclining Venus, and her 'come hither' look.  It is the female looking at the viewer from within the picture, breaking the fourth wall.

     Now that I'm 42, and studying art, having lived in the world for a time, I am seeing things in art, that I never saw before with such clarity.  It's nice.

     Instead of what I used to do, which was to type feverishly on the typewriter for hours, I can just blog my thoughts, and put it on the web.

     I hope people realize some of the nice things in the world today.

     The next time you snap a digital photo with your cell phone, try to remember once in a while, that people used to have to sit still for photos, or it would blur, and there was no erase button.