Album Covers: Bijelo Dugme

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(Last Updated On July 23, 2023)

Translated as “White Button”, Bijelo Dugme was perhaps the most important band in Yugoslav rock. Since Yugoslavia was a non-aligned state equally open towards the Eastern bloc and the West, it was able to absorb musical influences like rock ‘n’ roll. The band would appear in local festivals in the region including the Italian San Remo festival which aired on television.

Although interest in rock waned in Yugoslavia by the 1980s, there was a real resurgence with Bijelo Dugme, a group from Bosnia led by international music star Goran Bregović. As was the case with many of their contemporaries, they had to publish four successful singles before they were given the opportunity to record an album. Their appeal most likely came in combining Bosnian traditional music with prog-rock. Unusually, their LPs were as popular as their singles and record companies started to understand that rock albums were a viable commercial product. This likely opened the doors for the next generation of rockers to publish their own labels, culminating in the 1980s boom of Yugoslav rock. The album shown here was from a live performance on April 5, 1981 at a club called Kulušić in Zagreb. This was their last performance of a tour starting in 1980 called Doživjeti stotu (Live to Be a Hundred).

Bijelo dugme – 5. april ’81 (1981)

Bijelo dugme – 5. april ’81 (1981) (CD cover)

The album cover was designed by photographer Dragan S. Stefanović who held a photo session with the daughter of actor Mladen Jeličić. The girl was wearing a grownup’s robe and high heels but she started taking her clothes off when she needed to use the potty. Stefanović continued shooting and three of those ended up on the album cover. During that time in Yugoslav history, no one gave a second thought to such images. The later mix of US puritanical influence and reestablishment of the Catholic religion in Croatia, required that the CD version be released omitting the middle image.

Research for this post came from a devoted reader and was only edited down to the current length to cover only the most relevant aspects of the album. You can find more on this band and the album here, here and here. -Ron

Random Images: Bernard Hoffman

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(Last Updated On July 23, 2023)

Bernard Hoffman (1913–1979) was an American documentary photographer. Most of his work appeared in an 18-year period in Life magazine starting in 1936. Most famously, he was known as the first American photographer on the ground after the dropping of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs. Hoffman left Life in 1951 to improve photographic technology by establishing Bernard Hoffman Laboratories. Most notably, the lab was asked to process the famous Kennedy assassination footage. He retired in 1973 but stayed active running photography workshops—along with his wife Inez—until his passing.

Bernard Hoffman – Bored schoolgirl in Maine (1942)

Two Nude images by Carl Larsson

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(Last Updated On July 14, 2023)

Carl Olof Larsson was a Swedish painter who has been featured in Pigtails here and here. Larsson was born in 1853, and had an unhappy childhood because of his irresponsible father. At age 13 he applied for the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts, and was accepted. Larsson became a professional illustrator for two newspapers, as well as books and magazines. His income was sufficient to support his parents as well as himself.

Carl Larsson – Graziella Asking Whether She will do as a Model (1888)

In 1877 Carl Larsson moved to Paris and in 1882 moved to a Scandinavian artists’ colony at Grez-sur-Loing. There he met the Swedish artist Karin Bergöö, whom he married. They had eight children. In 1888 the Larsson family returned to Sweden. Larsson is most famous for his depictions of happy family life, often using his own family as models. Larsson wrote in his memoirs of the family paintings, “… these pictures are of course a very genuine expression of my personality, of my deepest feelings, of all my limitless love for my wife and children.”

Larsson is also famous for his frescos in public buildings. His nudes are not as well known, even though he won his first medal in art, while still a teenager, for drawing nudes. The two illustrations in this article are examples of his nude illustrations.

When Larsson was living in France, aspiring models frequented the artists’ colony looking for work. In 1888, before the Larsson family moved to Sweden, a young Italian girl came to Larsson’s studio and asked if she would do as a model. Larsson apparently thought that Graziella, the girl, would do as a model, for we have this drawing he made of her. She was more slender than was considered to be ideal at the time. Her expression is not one of confidence. Nevertheless, Larsson’s drawing of her is quite touching. Suzanne Larsson, Carl’s oldest child, would have been about four years old when Graziella modeled for this drawing. Perhaps the artist’s affection for his daughter, who was only a few years younger than Graziella, helped him to create a sympathetic image of Graziella. I found two examples of this drawing online, a scan of an etching and a scan of a postage stamp. The illustration on a 1982 Swedish postage stamp is sharper than a scan of the etching, so it is the one shown here.

Carl Larsson – Mammas och Småflickornas Rum (1897)

The second nude in this post is typical of Larsson’s paintings of family life. The painting shows the mother’s and little girls’ room. Since it was painted in 1897, the nude girl on the left must be the artist’s daughter Brita, who was born in 1893. The infant in the middle of the painting would be Kersti, born 1896, and the older girl on the right would be Lisbeth, born in 1891.

Maiden Voyages: July 2023

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New Email: I forgot to bring this up last month. For some inexplicable reason, Yahoo terminated the old email with no explanation and acted like the email didn’t even exist, and yet I was not able to create an account using the same name. This is suspicious and I don’t have the time to deal with this. Therefore, I have established a new email with Gmail. If you wish to contact us directly, there is an image of the new email on the Contact Page.

Future Photo-Lolicon Articles: Due to the popularity of Moko’s recent Rika Nishimura post, he plans to write about photographer Shuetsu Otomo and his star model Satomi Hiromoto.  Readers have been so generous in finding hard-to-find images due to censorship. Moko was able to find many non-nude and censored images here and there but it would be ideal to have uncensored photos and photos of better quality than can be found on the internet. Please contact Pigtails if you can help and we would be happy to forward these images to the author. If successful, he hopes to have an article put together later this year or early in the next.

Savior or Pawn? Much has been made of the pleas of Greta Thunberg for taking climate catastrophe seriously. It is hard to imagine that, at the time, Miss Thunberg was sufficiently self-possessed and educated to understand the full implications of her work. And in our modern cancel culture, anyone making this perfectly reasonable point—as I am now doing—have been ridiculed for attacking the girl. Suspicions were raised when Thunberg was seen in photo opportunities with many of the same “economic elites” who are the worst culprits and expected to be threatened by her. What is going on?

Where Are the Girls? We are not always kept in the loop in a timely manner, so sometimes we have to point out news items from the recent past. This item is from 2018 and is connected to the Trump Administration’s handling of refugees and immigrants. An observation was made by Matt Agorist from The Free Thought Project. He noticed there was a “minuscule” amount of footage released by the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) the previous week that showed any girls. The images seemed to show only boys, and only those age 10 and up. Besides girls, there also seemed to be an absence of toddlers and babies. It is hard to imagine a political spin in which this does not point in a dark direction. The most generous interpretation is that the Trump Administration did not want the public to feel overly sympathetic about the plight of these people.

The Siren of Scrap Metal: One of the grassroots economies in Mexico is the collecting of scrap metal for profit. To solicit donations, the merchants play recordings from their trucks in the various neighborhoods of Mexico City, announcing their services. These iconic calls (or pregones)  have become a part of the city’s everyday auditory landscape. In fact, one particularly popular one was recorded using the voice of a 9-year-old girl and has, over the past two decades—has been used in remixes by DJs and musicians ever since.

Allan Österlind

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(Last Updated On June 14, 2023)

In 1874, 18-year old Allan Österlind began his studies at the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts. In 1877 he went to Paris, and enrolled in École des Beaux-Arts the following year. He wanted to study sculpture, but his teacher recommended that he instead become a painter. He became well known for his watercolor paintings. In 1893 he visited Spain, making several sketches from which he would later paint watercolors. After the death of his wife in 1916 he developed severe depression, and died in poverty in 1938.

The first of Österlind’s paintings in this article is Modell Framför Staffliet (Model in front of the Easel). The watercolor painting is approximately 20 inches by 29 inches. I was surprised to see that this painting was sold in 2014 for $409, and again in 2021 for $328. A beautiful painting by a famous artist sold for what seems to me to be a low price in 2014, and in spite of inflation sold for less in 2021. The girl’s right hand is positioned as if she has drawn back the bowstring, yet the bow is flexed very little if at all. If the model actually held back the bowstring, it would be difficult for her to hold the pose for any reasonable length of time.

Allan Österlind – Modell Framför Staffliet (no date)

The next painting is Spansk Gatuscen (Spanish Street Scene). This 24-inch by 19-inch oil painting, like most paintings in this article, is not dated. It was painted some time after Österlind’s 1893 trip to Spain. Spansk Gatuscen, like Modell Framför Staffliet, is a realistic depiction of a scene familiar to the artist.

Allan Österlind – Spansk Gatuscen (no date)

Råttfångaren från Hameln (The Rat Catcher from Hamelin) is Österlind’s interpretation of the Pied Piper legend. The oil painting is approximately five feet long by two feet wide. The haunting expressions on the faces of the doomed children is typical of the dark style that is present in many of Österlind’s later paintings. In the standard version of the legend the piper led the children into a cave. In an alternate version, apparently the one used for this painting, they were drowned in the river. According to records in the city of Hamelin, this incredible event actually happened in the year 1284. Österlind painted both the piper and the girls dressed in 1890s style, contemporary with the painting. This contributes to the somber mood of the painting by making the incident appear as happening in the present, rather than “once upon a time” in an ancient fairy tale.

Allan Österlind – Råttfångaren från Hameln (1897)

Thirteen children in the front of the line are all girls. Details of the children farther behind are hazy, but they may also be girls. Why did Österlind not include any boys among the ill-fated children? Did he think girls would arouse more sympathy? Did he like painting girls better than boys?  One of the girls looks directly at the piper, and he looks back coldly, not in malice, but in what seems to be a complete lack of emotion.

The last painting is titled in French Autour de l’enfant (Around the Child). It is a watercolor, slightly larger than three feet by two feet. As in the previous painting, the facial expression of the child is disturbing. I am not sure what is happening in this painting. It appears that the girl is either being treated for an injury, or is being treated for a disease by bloodletting, which continued to be practiced into the early part of the 20th century. The child’s face is in the light, and is more realistic than that of the adults in the painting. She is staring at the viewer in apparent fright, while the adults are calm. There is something disturbing about the scene.

Allan Österlind – Autour de l’enfant (no date)

Maiden Voyages: June 2023

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(Last Updated On June 23, 2023)

Bayard’s Iconic Image: Pip did a short post a while ago on the iconic image of Cosette from Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables. What he discovered in the course of this research is that Émile Bayard published a book Le nu esthétique : l’homme, la femme, l’enfant which is a collection of nude photographic studies used by the artist to produce much of his work. It was just discovered that the French site Gallica has collected volumes which can be downloaded either as pdf files or paged through one jpeg at a time. Volumes 1 & 2 have been collected together into one book. And if you click on the link that says ‘See all documents from the same set’ there are four links, Pip suspects it will contain most if not all of the series.

Role of Butterfly in Portrayal of Psyche: A reader had a question regarding the use of butterfly wings in images from Pip’s Psyche series. In response, Pip sent me a link on the folklore of butterflies that should clarify things.

Pathologizing Intimacy: You have probably heard stories like this a hundred times, but one of our readers was kind enough to dig this one up for us. Not only was this a scandalous story which caused an outcry in Oberlin, OH, but the story was so compelling, the author Lynn Powell decided to write a book about it. The incidents in question took place before 2000 and the book, Framing Innocence, was published in 2010.

More Album Covers: Album covers were really more Pip’s thing so I can’t say much about the albums, but I am happy to share any discoveries passed on to me by readers. Here are some covers for: Dolphin, Lustro, Niurose, an album of Stories for Rainy Days and even an album offering a common-sense guide “Explaining sex to your little girl”!

Carnival Kids in Tokyo: As a kind of follow-up on a random image posted on Pigtails, a reader has found a cache of photos [link broken; see comment below] of some of the child participants. Given the perception of Japan as a conservative culture, these kids are baring an awful lot of skin for a public setting.

Delightfully Ironic: Pigtails in Paint has a reputation for opposing censorship. A reader was kind enough to share this t-shirt on the subject.

Rika Nishimura, a Photo-Lolicon Supermodel

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(Last Updated On May 21, 2023)

Rika Nishimura (西村理香) was the professional name of one of the most famous child models of the Japanese Photo-Lolicon era. Photographer Yasushi Rikitake (力武靖) is responsible for making her famous. Photo-Lolicon first became popular in Japan in November 1969 with Kazuo Kenmochi’s nude photobook of model Tae Umehara. Popularity of the young girl photobooks grew fairly slowly in the 1970s, as naturist magazines were imported into Japan, and some photographers, notably Sumiko Kiyooka began to photograph young girls. Then around 1980 Photo-Lolicon started to boom. Over a hundred Photo-Lolicon books were released in the early 1980s, and some of them sold millions of copies.

Yasushi Rikitake – Before Waking Up Cover (1994)

The first work I can find of Yasushi Rikitake is the omnibus photobook Lolita Sisters, which was released in October 1983. Rikitake was one of eight photographers who contributed to Lolita Sisters. In August 1984 Lolita Friends was released, another omnibus photobook by six photographers including Rikitake. Popularity of Photo-Lolicon peaked in about 1984, and then began a slow decline until 1988. In 1988 Tsutomu Miyazaki was arrested for kidnapping and murdering four girls, age four through seven. A large amount of lolicon anime and manga was found in his home, and the crime so shocked Japan that many came to see lolicon as evil. It was still legal, but less popular that it had been. It became more difficult to find models among Japanese girls since lolicon was tainted with a stigma, so many of the photographers who remained in the business sought models in foreign countries, especially Southeast Asia and Russia.

Yasushi Rikitake – Rika Nishimura in Before Waking Up (1994)

Yasushi Rikitake – Rika Nishimura in Six Years Trilogy Volume 1 (circa1994) (1)

Yasushi Rikitake – Rika Nishimura in Six Years Trilogy Volume 1 (circa1994) (2)

Yasushi Rikitake – Rika Nishimura in Six Years Trilogy Volume 1 (circa1994) (3)

Yasushi Rikitake – Rika Nishimura in Six Years Trilogy Volume 1 (circa1994) (4)

In 1989 Rikitake began to be more active in Photo-Lolicon, and in ten years had published about 150 photobooks under his own name, and nearly a hundred more under the pseudonym Ryu Kurokage. He went to Thailand hoping to find models among the girls in rural areas where it was acceptable for pre-pubescent children to go naked. Rikitake was introduced to an alcoholic who needed money and was going to sell his young daughter to a brothel in Bangkok. The man’s wife had run away and deserted the family. Rikitake could hire the girl as a model, but the problem was that after he returned to Japan, the girl’s father would still be able to sell her into prostitution. An arrangement was negotiated in which the girl would live with a loving aunt, and Rikitake would send the aunt a monthly stipend to support the girl. In return, the girl would model for Rikitake when he visited Thailand. This was a very good arrangement for both the girl, who now had a stable, happy home; and for Rikitake who now had a model who would become perhaps the most popular of all Photo-Lolicon models.

Yasushi Rikitake – Friends IV Cover (1995)

Her real name is confidential, as is her hometown. She is known only by the Japanese name she adopted for modelling; Rika Nishimura. Modesty may not be a trait commonly associated with nude models, but Rika likes to keep her personal details private.

Yasushi Rikitake – Rika Nishimura in Friends IV (1995)

Rika made her debut with the mook (magazine/book) Before Waking Up (目覚める前に), which was released in 1994 by the Rikitake Yasushi Photo Office. This is a photobook of Rika, both clothed and nude, posing alone in the outdoors. Although she is young and this is her first book, she appears to have a natural talent for modelling, and seems to enjoy it. It is not known exactly how young she is. No age is given in Before Waking Up, but she looks to me to be about eight or nine. In 1996 some photos from Before Waking Up were republished in One Million Rem Gaze (百万レムの視線), and her age when photographed is given there as ten. In 1998 some photos from Before Waking Up were published in both Six Years Trilogy (SixYears三部作) and Portraits of Jenny (ジェニー達の肖像), and in each of those works she is said to have been eleven when the photos were taken.

Yasushi Rikitake – Friends V Cover (1996)

The first two illustrations in this article are the cover and a clothed photo from Before Waking Up. The photos are from kansai.nymphs.us, which has many more lolicon photos, all non-nude.  The Japanese text on some of the photos gives the title of the publication, the model’s name, and the photographer’s name. Nude photos of Rika and other Japanese models were common on Japanese internet sites in the 1990s, but the photos suddenly disappeared in 1999 when photographs of nude minors became illegal in Japan. When I wrote this article, I thought it was unfortunate that a nude photo was not available, because Rika Nishimura is famous as a nude model. Two days after this article was published, Bob Freely submitted some nude images of Rika from Six Years Trilogy, Volume One. Many thanks to Bob for making it possible to include a sample of the nudes for which Rika Nishimura is best known.

The next four images are some of Bob’s contributions from Six Years Trilogy. They appear to be from the same photo shoot as Before Waking Up. Judging from her facial expression, Rika appears to be more relaxed in the nude photos than when she is clothed. Perhaps she was more accustomed to going naked, and was worried about getting her new clothes dirty.

 

Yasushi Rikitake – Rika Nishimura in Friends V (1996)

Rikitake worked at that time with three publishers; Rikitake Yasushi Photo Office, Pepe, and Circle Company. His own company, Rikitake Yasushi Photo Office, and Pepe were both specialists in Photo-Lolicon, and sold their books in dedicated lolicon shops. Circle Company was the biggest publisher and sold its works in general bookstores. Circle Company censored photos in its books very slightly, by blurring the pudendal cleft, thus making them acceptable for general bookstores. Photos in books by Rikitake Yasushi Photo Office and Pepe are not censored. None of the books with Rika’s photographs were published by Circle Company. In spite of Rika’s books being less widely distributed than books of the models who were published by Circle Company, she became the most popular.

Yasushi Rikitake – Rika Nishimura in Six Years Trilogy Volume 1 (circa1994) (5)

Pepe published Rika’s next two books; Friends IV (1995) and Friends V (1996). The original titles were in English, the universal language and thus more fitting for books that were presented as fine art. The Friends series consists of five books by Rikitake, and in each book, two or more models were photographed together. In Friends IV the two models were Rika Nishimura and Kayoko Miura. According to Wikipedia, Friends IV was the fastest selling of the Friends series. Rika and Kayoko were also featured, along with four more models, in Friends V. Rika and Kayoko were both twelve years old when Friends IV was photographed. In Friends V Rika’s age is still given as twelve but Kayoko is now thirteen. This would indicate that the ages were reckoned by the western method of adding a year of age at the anniversary of her birth, rather than the traditional oriental method of adding a year on New Year’s Day. Other girls from Rika’s village in Thailand modeled for Rikitake, and in order to maintain good relations with the people of the village, Rikitake was obliged to photograph all of the girls who volunteered. Therefore it is very possible that girls photographed together in the Friends series were actually friends in real life.

Yasushi Rikitake – Rika Nishimura in Six Years Trilogy Volume 1 (circa1995) (6)

Yasushi Rikitake – Rika Nishimura in Six Years Trilogy Volume 1 (circa1995) (7)

Yasushi Rikitake – Rika Nishimura in Six Years Trilogy Volume 1 (circa1995) (8)

Yasushi Rikitake – Rika Nishimura in Six Years Trilogy Volume 1 (circa1995) (9)

Yasushi Rikitake – Rika Nishimura in Six Years Trilogy Volume 1 (circa1995) (10)

Yasushi Rikitake – Rika Nishimura in Six Years Trilogy Volume 1 (circa1995) (11)

Yasushi Rikitake – Rika Nishimura in Six Years Trilogy Volume 1 (circa1995) (12)

The next photobook in which Rika appeared is One Million Rem Gaze, Published in 1996 by Rikitake Yasushi Photo Office, but no new photos were in this book. It was only a selection of sample photos of more than one hundred models from books previously released. In January 1998 Rikitake Yasushi Photo Office released the three-volume Six Years Trilogy which is the largest collection of photographs of Rika. Volume One consists of photos of Rika at age eleven and twelve; Volume Two shows her at ages thirteen and fourteen, and she is fifteen and sixteen in Volume Three. It was never explained why Rikitake kept photos of Rika for up to five years without publishing them. By this time Rika was not only Rikitake’s star model, but she was also his photographic assistant and interpreter.

Yasushi Rikitake – Rika Nishimura in Six Years Trilogy Volume 2 (circa1996) (1)

Two clothed photosfrom Six Years Trilogy which I found on the internet are followed by six photos that Bob Freely submitted. Bob also submitted a scan of the title page for Volume One of Six Years Trilogy, which has the following quote, “No one knows where they came from, where they go, where the wind blows and the seas go round, but no one knows.From Robert Nathan [Portrait of Jenny].”

Japanese publishers during the Photo-Lolicon era were very careful to avoid any sexual activity in their art. While there are some people who would find any nudity offensive, these photos are devoid of any laciviousness. It is surprising that Japanese lolicon nudes are so difficult to find, when edgier works such as the Sally Mann’s Three Graces or some of the photos of Jock Sturges are easily found. In these photos the background is blurry, thus focusing attention on the model. Other photographers who deemphasize the background include Lucas Roels and F.R. Yerbury. Rika seems relaxed and happy to pose.

In 1998 it was apparent that Photo-Lolicon would soon be prohibited. The Law Concerning the Punishment of Acts Related to Child Prostitution and Child Pornography and the Protection of Children was introduced into parliament, and was passed in May 1999. On November 1, 1999 the law became effective, and Photo-Lolicon was outlawed.

Yasushi Rikitake – Rika Nishimura in Six Years Trilogy Volume 2 (circa1996) (2)

Rika was in two more books just before Photo-Lolicon was banned. The first was the seven volume Portraits of Jenny. This work was an attempt to leave a legacy that would, because of its artistic merit, remain legal under the new law. Each volume was a full size hardcover 160-page book, printed on acid-free archival quality paper, with what Rikitake thought were his most artistic photographs. About 200 models were included. Some models had photos that were previously unpublished; others had photos that were previously published in a censored version, but all photos in Portraits of Jenny were uncensored. No new photos of Rika were in Portraits of Jenny; all were from the Six Years Trilogy. Portraits of Jenny was an expensive book when it was released in 1998, at over ninety dollars for each volume, and it is even more expensive on the used book market today.

Yasushi Rikitake – Rika Nishimura in Six Years Trilogy Volume 3 (circa1997)

Rika continued to model through age 22, but only one more book of her photos, Last Christmas (ラストクリスマス, 1999, Sanwa Publishing), was published before the lolicon era came to an end. She was seventeen when photographed for Last Christmas, and was really more of a young woman than a girl. Technically she was still a minor, so for the sake of completeness I have included a photo from Last Christmas in this article. I wonder if Rika thought it was ironic that the business which saved her from being sold to a brothel was abolished by a law that in its title claimed to oppose “Acts Related to Child Prostitution”.

Yasushi Rikitake – Rika Nishimura in Last Christmas (1999)

Jacob Maris (1837–1899), Dutch oil painter and watercolourist

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(Last Updated On May 3, 2023)

Among the many Dutch artists, Maris started his interests in the arts during his teenage years. At the age of 19 he joined the Hague Academy of Art, in The Netherlands. During that period, he studied with Lawrence Alma-Tadema.

Maris was one of the founders of a group of artists from The Hague, who, influenced by the Realist school, used a color palette tending towards earthy and gray tones. A more neutral color palette constantly made the areas of light in the works stand out even more, creating an interesting aerial effect, especially where the sun cuts through the clouds, characteristic of the Dutch school at the time.

Although most of Maris’ works dealt with seascapes, woods and mills, some portraits of young girls were painted.

A brief comment: oil media is characteristic of greater stability and, above all, control over the canvas. There’s plenty of time for the artist to make whatever modifications he wants before it’s completely dry. This usually results in works that are more elaborate and complex in detail.

Below are some works by Maris in oil on canvas. Note that edges and lines are more defined, as are shadow and light regions. The planes are also more evident and separated from each other.

Jacob Maris – The Pet Goat (1871)

Jacob Maris, The Girl feeding her Bird in a Cage (1867)

The dimensions of the canvases are very small which makes it difficult to execute any details, even in oils.

Maris married Catharina Hendrika Horn in 1867 and had two daughters, Tine and Henriette. The two girls are represented in some of his works, but now using watercolor as a medium. The key frame shown below shows the two girls blowing bubbles. Notice how changing the paint medium makes the image more dynamic. Due to the rapid drying rate of this medium, the artist only has a few seconds to make adjustments and often the transition effects come from spontaneous and rapid blending between adjacent or rapidly overlapping layers. This more dynamic aura further suggests the instability the soap bubbles present in the work. Maris often places props like intense blue ribbons in the models’ hair.

Here, however, this more intense blue was reserved for the ceramic bowl on the table, creating an interesting focal point, intensifying even more with all the gray and brown present on the canvas. Probably this blue was made from Lapis-Lazuli, a very expensive pigment.

Jacob Maris – Two Girls Blowing Bubbles (1880)

A second appearance of his daughters is in the work below, where the eldest daughter appears to be teaching her sister to play the piano. Here, the dark brown of the wood contrasts even more with the blue ribbons present in the girls’ hair, which have now been painted more intensely. A much less saturated version of this blue is present on the bench and in the vase of flowers above the piano. You can almost hear this painting as they talk with each other about the piano—like you are there, watching them.

Jacob Maris, Two Girls, Daughters of the Artist at the Piano (1880)

The third painting depicting his youngest daughter was also done in watercolor, now in a lit external environment. The white of the white dress, the focal point stands out even more. The blue ribbon in her hair is still present, and a slightly more desaturated version is also present in the bouquet of flowers she holds. Everything is very light, loose and spontaneous, characteristic not only of the medium used, but also of the painting object itself and the plein air technique.

Jacob Maris – Young Girl (Artist’s Daughter) Picking Flowers in the Grass (1899?)

[Christian at Agapeta has made it known that he has an extensive collection of on-topic paintings that can be used in posts. So if anyone is interested in having a higher-resolution copy than what is found on this site, contact him. Also, he would be a good resource if you are interested in writing an article for Pigtails on a particular painter. -Ron]

Maiden Voyages: May 2023

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Membership Instructions: I feel I have to remind readers about membership procedures. Please remember that this site is run by volunteers and that we cannot get to requests immediately. Also, some registered members are not realizing that logging in for the first time does not guarantee that the process will be automatic after that. You need to keep the instructions I sent you in case you have to log in again. Changes in email will not affect the log in procedure except where changed passwords are sent. You can go into your account and alter your information or I will be happy to do it upon request.

The Demise of More Image Accounts: A reader who has been in communication with Christian has reported about the demise of a couple of his Tumblr accounts. He has been active on Tumblr since 2010 and his main blog, Foxy’s Fancies, was very active over the last four years, containing over 8000 posts. A couple weeks before I received the email, he added a secondary blog called Ada’s Angels whose purpose was to follow recent developments in AI generated images and share photorealistic work that was especially beautiful. After posting the image below, the blogger was notified that his accounts were terminated. Attempts to follow up were just ignored. He’s been rather depressed ever since (been there) but grateful to have Christian to share his predicament with. Pigtails will be making some efforts to preserve some of the more interesting examples for members to view.

[The blogger generously preserved both posted and yet-to-be-posted images from the Ada’s Angels blog and readers are welcome to view and download them (or the zip files). -Ron]

Secret Dreams: It may seem strange to many of us, but sometimes young girls dream of becoming Victoria Secret models. In their naivete, they are probably not aware of the culture of misogyny before that company’s demise (this news item was in 2016), but some like Gigi and Bella Hadid followed up on their dreams and achieved their goal. Interestingly, their mother shot the girls dolled up in angel’s wings years earlier.

Art on Art: Some have posited that the human body itself is an artform and so the notion of body-painting has always struck me as a kind of double art. A reader has shared the site Projet Symbiose whose focus is to share photographs of body painting from various sources. Some of these look familiar and must have been shared on this site before. I had hoped to do a proper post on the subject, especially as a customary practice in naturist communities.

Mystery Album Cover Art: A reader just submitted an interesting album cover for something called ‘Sax Club Number 14 “Romantic”‘ by Gil Ventura (1977). There is a girl on the cover art reminiscent of Fabio Cabral’s work. We were hoping some of our readers would recognize the image and confirm the photographer’s identity.

Show Me More: A while ago, Pigtails did a post on Will McBride and Helga Fleischauer-Hardt’s famous and controversial work Show Me! (English title). What I didn’t know at the time was that a sequel was made—probably only published in German—Zeig Mal Mehr! I could not tell the reader who brought it to my attention any more about it. The question is: how different is this volume from the original, are there any digital copies and how does one get access to them? A few links have been provided to help with the research: here, here, here, here and here.

Forgotten Flattery: There was an interesting artist, Vladimir Timofeev, who created an image imitating Hajime Sawatari’s ‘Alice’ series. The site that hosted that image has been shut down because of violations of Terms of Service—big surprise, right? We don’t always archive images discussed in ‘Maiden Voyages’ so if any readers know where this image is or has a copy, would you please share? [Christian was kind enough to provide a link to this artist’s page. There are many portraits of little girls but I don’t think any of these were meant to emulate Sawatari. -Ron]

Ludmila Šechtlová, Model for a Photographer and a Sculptor

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(Last Updated On April 28, 2023)

My language is English, so I initially had some confusion about the Czech names. The model’s legal first name is Ludmila, but in the titles for the photographs she is called Lída, Lidy, Liduška, and Lidušky. These photo titles are from the Šechtl & Voseček Museum site, operated by the Šechtl family, so I have no doubt that they are correct. Lída is a diminutive nickname for Ludmila. Ludmila’s grandfather originally spelled the family surname as “Schächtl”, the German form of the name. Later he began using the Czech spelling “Šechtl”. The feminine of Šechtl is Šechtlová. J.V. Dušek is the most common form of the name of the sculptor for whom she modeled, but in three of the photo titles Lída is identified as the model of J.V. Duška. Dušek and Duška are different forms of the same name.

Josef Jindřich Šechtl – Rodinné, Liduška (1915)

Lída also modeled for her father, the renowned photographer Josef Jindřich Šechtl. Josef Jindřich’s father, Ignác Schächtl, opened his photography studio in 1876 in the town of Tábor, now in the Czech Republic. Schächtl Studio became Schächtl & Voseček when Jan Voseček became a partner, and later it became Šechtl & Voseček Studio. Josef Jindřich Šechtl operated the studio after the death of his father in 1911. Photos from the Šechtl & Voseček Studio of another model, Eva Záhořová, were featured on Pigtails here.

Josef Jindřich Šechtl – Lída Šechtlová (1919)

Josef Jindřich was one of the outstanding photographers of his time. He was known for his use of light and shadow in his photographic art. Photographs of women and children, and photos documenting the history of Tábor were his specialties. (The historical photos would later get his son sent to prison.) Josef Jindřich married Anna Stocká in 1911 and their daughter, Ludmila Šechtlová was born in 1912. Anna, like Josef, was artistically inclined. The two were friends with other artists, including the sculptor Jan Vítězslav Dušek, who was also a resident of Tábor.

Josef Jindřich Šechtl – Liduška (1919)

Many childhood photographs of Ludmila may be found on the Šechtl & Voseček Museum site. A few are included in this post. The first photo is of Ludmila at age two or three. The new clothing, willow branches, rabbit figurine and artificial egg indicate that this was an Easter portrait of Ludmila. Rodinné means “family”, and Liduška could either be her nickname or a Czech word for a human. Ludmila was six or seven when the next two photographs were taken.

Josef Jindřich Šechtl – Lída Šechtlová, model pro J.V.Duška (1921) (1)

The last five photographs of Ludmila in this article, all nudes, were taken in 1921, when Ludmila was eight or nine. In three of these five photos, she is proudly named as the model for J.V. Duška. She was also the daughter of the photographer, but perhaps it was more prestigious to say that she was the model for a famous sculptor. In the first of these Ludmila is posed between two stands; her pigtails are supported by one stand and her hands by the other. I get the idea, but I am not sure of this, that the stands would allow her to hold a pose for a longer time when modeling for a sculptor. She appears to me to be a bit like the girl on the banner illustration for Pigtails in Paint. The other four nude photos show her posing without any props. Several other photographs like these, with only minor variations to her pose, are in the Šechtl & Voseček Museum.

Josef Jindřich Šechtl – Lída Šechtlová model pro J.V.Duška (1921) (2)

Josef Jindřich Šechtl – Lída Šechtlová,model pro J.V.Duška (1921) (3)

The last illustration in this article is a photograph of a statue modeled by Ludmila Šechtlová, sculpted by Jan Vítězslav Dušek, and photographed by David Peltán. The statue of a girl holding a beehive is titled Spořivost, which means thrift. Dušek created this statue for the Tábor Savings Bank. Dušek was one of the most prominent Czech sculptors. He is famous for his monuments, portraits, and for his competition as an artist in the 1924 and 1936 Olympic Games.

Josef Jindřich Šechtl – Akt Lidušky (1921)

Spořivost portrays Ludmila as slightly older than she appears in the photographs in which she is identified as “model pro J.V.Duška”. There may be another statue of Ludmila by Dušek, made when Ludmila was younger, but in searching for Dušek’s works on the internet, I could not find it.

Josef Jindřich Šechtl – Akt Lidy Šechtlové (1921)

Josef Jindřich Šechtl died in 1954, and Ludmila’s brother Josef Šechtl inherited the family business. In 1957 the Communist government of Czechoslovakia put Josef Šechtl in prison for a year and confiscated his belongings. The excuse was that he photographed a wedding without obtaining the correct government permit, but the probable real reason was that some people in the Communist Party in 1957 had been supporters of the National Socialist Workers (Nazi) Party during World War II. They believed that the historical photographs documenting Tábor during the war could be embarrassing if the photos gave evidence that they were Nazis, and therefore wanted to confiscate and destroy them. Josef Šechtl’s wife, Marie Šechtlová, was able to save some of the most important negatives, but the majority were lost. It is sad to contemplate what may have been in the art that was destroyed.

Jan Vítězslav Dušek – Spořivost (c1925)