Which Way Should the Male Gaze?

 

"Sunlight" by Joan Semmel (1978)

Is it wrong to look pruriently on Courbet's"L'Origine du monde" with its headless model in a wanton splayed legged pose? Joan Semmel is known for her nudes, currently on display, in her solo show, "In the Flesh," at The Jewish Museum. Does the artist defang the male gaze by virtue of her own agency? Is it an act of esthetic corruption to get turned on by "Sunlight," or another of Semmel's nudes where a female subject is pictured underneath her male lover with one hand grasping his balls and the fingers of her hand reaching tantalizingly towards his anus?

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Kepler

Johannes Kepler

There are billions of galaxies. The Milky Way is only one, though a Kepler planet, an inhabitant, is still going to be 1200 light years from earth. In addition the cosmos is filled with a dark energy that's causing objects to drift ever further from each other. Space is getting darker, with celestial objects becoming ever more evanescent. No wonder humans constantly and futilely need to assert their self-importance. However delusory, it provides an anodyne. So, much maligned ego does have a function--as a momentary respite from cosmic indifference. 

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Chance

What are the chances of being spotted by somebody you barely know in the middle of nowhere aka Main Street in a strange city. Not much, right? How much more improbable is it to be spotted by the same person a second time? The improbability of an improbable occurrence repeating increases exponentially. Those who believe there are no coincidences  argue there are other spiritual algorithms at work. Is it a mere throw of the dice? Or...? 

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Ozempic Personality Disorder

Apparently weight loss drugs like Ozempic have side effects—one of which is anhedonia or the ability to experience pleasure. In the course of quelling one appetite by way of reducing dopamine flow other temptations are eradicated and patients may start to ponder the point of living. Hamlet comments "that the dread of something after death/The undiscovered country, from whose bourn/No traveler returns, puzzles the will." Suicidal ideation is not compatible with those taking GLP-1 receptor agonists.

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

L.H.O.O.Q.

 

L.H.O.O.Q.

"I have forced myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste." Duchamp's quote which graces the wall in the current MoMA show, sounds a bit like an artist trying to punch his way out of a paper bag. One admires the cleverness of his famed vandalizing of the "Mona Lisa," which sets the state for Rauschenberg's erasing of de Kooning and later guerrilla art such as Banksy. However, to complete the circle and in a Duchampian way turn Duchamp upside down,  can the Dadaist enterprise compete with great art "works?" Compare the experience of "View of Delft," "The Night Watch" and, yes, the "Mona Lisa" to any number of conceptual strategies--that seek to redefine the nature of beauty and art, and you may find you may feel shortchanged. 

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Le Dereglement de tous les sens

 

"Le dereglement de tous les sens” is both a call to arms and ars poetica from Arthur Rimbaud. It's also an expression used by the playwright Antonin Artaud, famed for his "Theater of Cruelty. Is it akin to the 60s where people dropped acid? Is it a loosening of the bonds of mimesis or reason? Certainly, the idea more related to content than style, relates to the emotion within the mind of the creator. From your mouth to God’s ears goes the old saw. Ghosting is when you don’t get back to someone. However, the state Rimbaud refers to emanates from an extreme out of body experience, similar to that of someone who has just seen a ghost.

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Stimulation

"Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe" (Manet, 1863)

What makes for stimulation. Neurologists point to serotonin flow between synapses, but that relates to a result. It’s similar to discussions about consciousness by Daniel Dennett and others who create theory. Is consciousness a biological process akin to digestion? Or does Cartesian dualism still hold sway? In any case you are left with theorems for which proof is offered. But, where does the feeling of excitement originate in art as well as sex? Sexual fantasy, for example, is a form of preconception--fulfillment a matter of the shoe fitting the foot. “Le Dejeuner Sur L’Herbe” is an idyll about which there’s a consensus. It’s one of the most beautiful paintings in the canon of proto-modernism. But how to account for interstice between art and mind, between the eye and the emotion that looking produces?

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star