André Durand (b 1955) is a Candian painter and is best known for his allegorical portraits. Because he works in the Hermetic tradition, he is one of the few modern artists capable of conveying the mythic dimension of both Classical and Christian cultures.
André Durand – Vermeer’s Camera (Date Unknown)
Elvira Amrhein (b1957) was born in Germany, the daughter and granddaughter of artists but works in France. Her paintings are meant to have a spiritual depth “For a moment the divine becomes alive, imbuing the artist’s creations with the power to transform viewers into initiates … Ageless legendary characters bring a breath of the divine with them”. It makes sense that a young girl’s body should represent the archetype of agelessness and spiritual purity. In addition, the prevalence of bare skin (only the requisite accoutrements of angels is needed) also helps detach the characters from the fashion of the day giving them their timeless quality.
Elvira Amrhein – Angel #3 (c2016)
Jana Brike – The Last Dancer in the World
This is the fourth post in the Sublimated Sexuality series. You can view the first three posts in this series here, here and here. Let’s get started.
12) Body horror – This is another fairly broad category that covers a lot of these images, and as with several of the categories, there is a good deal of overlap with some of the other categories (for example, the monstrosity, violence and general weirdness categories). At any rate, this category covers physical deformities and mutations, sickness and disease, bruises and wounds, and what I would deem “frankensteined” people and animals—that is, beings who are something other than a full human or a full animal. Sometimes they are animal-human hybrids; other times they are biomechanical monstrosities.
Ana Bagayan – The Experiment
Ana Bagayan (Official Site)
Jackie Skrzynski – Scratch (2003)
Jackie Skrzynski (Official Site)
Jana Brike – Self Portrait with Erected Tail
Squarespace: Jana Brike
Kokomoo – (Title Unknown) (1)
Cornelia Renz – A Girl Without Hands (2008)
Cornelia Renz (Official Site)
Here there is some overlap with the twins category. Yang Jing’s work often incorporates dolls, which we’ll get to in yet another category.
Yang Jing – We Did Nothing
Ravenel International Art Group: Yang Jing
The following image is perhaps the quintessential example of the thesis of this blog series. The implication in Nicoletta Ceccoli’s Dulcis Agata (Latin for Sweet Agatha) depends partly on how you read this sort of art overall. It also references the next category to be addressed in this post, the presence of food, particularly sweet treats, in these images. Ceccoli often uses cakes and candies in her images to symbolizes childhood, especially girlhood, but there is frequently a sinister undertone to these images, and that is the case here. The title references St. Agatha of Sicily, a girl from a wealthy family who, at age fifteen, refused the sexual advances of a lowborn Roman prefect and was subsequently arrested, tortured and eventually murdered. Among the punishments she supposedly enduring was the cutting off of her breasts.
Here Agatha is presented as a young girl who offers either some sort of dessert drenched in strawberry or cherry sauce, or her own severed breasts. If it is the latter, one can read it in at least two ways. The first is as a feminist allegory in which women are expected to look ever younger for men, and thus a young girl might sever her own breasts to remain child-like in presentation. The second reading is actually not far from the first, and it is that culture desexualizes young girls to keep them pure and holy, by violence if necessary.
Nicoletta Ceccoli – Dulcis Agata
Nicoletta Ceccoli (Official Site)
Cristina Vergano – Escorial, Madrid, September 1705
Cristina Vergano (Official Site)
13) The presence of food, especially sweets – Food is sometimes associated with sex, and no food more so than fruit and candy, both of which are sweet. (Refer to my Cherry Ripe! post for some insight into at least one fruit that commonly symbolizes sex or sexual development.) Sweets are also associated with children, which makes the symbolism in these images especially potent. Add in a healthy dose of satire and you have the makings of a clever commentary on the conflicted view of the young girl in modern society.
Hiroyuki Mano – The cake is a lie
DeviantArt: DensenManiya
Ceccoli’s girls generally exist in some sort of dark Candyland.
Nicoletta Ceccoli – Barbara
Nicoletta Ceccoli – Consumed by You
Scott G. Brooks – Food Chain (2009)
Scott G Brooks Studios (Official Site)
Rene Lynch – Icons – Honey Dipper (Bee Queen) (2006)
Rene Lynch (Official Site)
Mmm, tasty black soup.
Rieko Sakurai – (Title Unknown)
Artnet: Rieko Sakurai
James Jean – Recess – Horse
James Jean (Official Site)
Kokomoo – (Title Unknown) (2)
Kokomoo – (Title Unknown) (3)
14) Masks, especially animal masks – Masks are another recurring emblem in this sort of art. Much can be said about masks in art just in general, but with respect to kids, one immediately thinks of Halloween, which is associated with devils and darkness too, and that of course intersects with one of the persistent themes in these images: horror of one sort or another. If we think in terms of sublimating childhood sexuality, these images are not too dissimilar from the human-animal hybrid pieces, only the artists are perhaps more aware of the sublimation and are acknowledging it. Thus, the masks are in essence a reflection of both the artist’s neuroses with regard to children and a sly acknowledgment that there really are human children behind the false faces being offered to the viewer.
Caleb Weintraub – Ashes Ashes Splashes Splashes
Caleb Weintraub (Official Site)
Jana Brike – The Last Dancer in the World
Here Red Riding Hood becomes the wolf. Yet another clever commentary on the nature of girlhood and how it is perceived.
Nicoletta Ceccoli – My Favorite Costume
Nicoletta Ceccoli – A Girl Hides Secrets
While some may debate whether music videos can be a form of art I believe that they can be and this is because they are able to have a plot, even though it is within a considerably shorter time frame than a full-length film. Additionally, they can create wonderful images, more so when there is a big budget, which the following videos have. Finally, they do make you think about what is happening or what the visuals and lyrics mean, something that I was doing when watching the third video in this article.
Five music videos have already been mentioned on the Pigtails website and I have decided to add a few more. The following three videos were created by the directors Fleur & Manu with music and lyrics written by M83, more commonly known as Anthony Gonzalez. The videos are of the narrative style and can be watched either as a loosely strung together trilogy or can be viewed as individual, though basic stories. The lyrics that appear in the videos are not related to the videos in any way, though I do recommend listening to them as well. The lyrics for Wait in particular are very moving and after reading the comment section this seems to be a widely-held feeling. Other than being artworks, these videos belong to this website due to the depiction of female children in them.
In the first video, entitled Midnight City, we are introduced to the main characters of the story and what they can do. At the beginning of the video we see a young boy being walked through a classroom full of children. On closer observation the children appear to have telekinetic abilities with one levitating objects while others read minds and distort television signals.
M83, Fleur & Manu – Still from ‘Midnight City’ (2011) (1)
The boy clearly does not want to be there so, using his telepathic abilities, he tells the other children they are going to escape. In the next scene it is now nighttime and the children are standing in front of a door, which they destroy and then run out of the building.
M83, Fleur & Manu – Still from ‘Midnight City’ (2011) (2)
Running through the woods they are chased by some of the scientists, however they escape and by the time morning arrives they have discovered an abandoned warehouse. They enter and proceed to run amok, using their powers to move around objects, the youngest child finds the biggest object there, a caravan, picks it up and throws it into a wall.
M83, Fleur & Manu – Still from ‘Midnight City’ (2011) (3)
They eventually make it onto the roof where they perform their biggest show of power: they make the sun set; this is the final scene and it moves on to the next music video.
M83, Fleur & Manu – Still from ‘Midnight City’ (2011) (4)
While the first video focuses little on the female characters—they are simply individuals within the larger group—in the second video, entitled Reunion, a female child takes the lead role. In this film the story continues and we find out that one individual, a girl, was left behind and she is being controlled by the scientists; it is not revealed whether this control is through intense brainwashing or via the machines that are connected to her.
M83, Fleur & Manu – Still from ‘Reunion’ (2011) (1)
The mind-controlled girl, whom I will refer to as Apollonia, takes possession of the weakest of the runaways and lights her up like a beacon, which simultaneously sends a signal to the scientists control room and reveals the location of the runaway.
M83, Fleur & Manu – Still from ‘Reunion’ (2011) (2)
The scientists send a team of people out to canvas the area where the signal came from to hopefully find them. Meanwhile the children start to run again; one girl tries to stay with the now unconscious female child but is convinced to leave her behind. There is then a chase scene which is limited to only thirty seconds (the full video length is less than five minutes). When the runaways are finally cornered, the boy who encouraged the escape in the first video, tells everyone to stop and fight the chasing car. Unfortunately for the runaways the girl possesses the car driver, which in turn gives him telekinetic abilities. The car driver then gets out of the car, levitates it above himself and throws the car at the runaways. They successfully stop it, however, this now creates a tug-of-war situation with the car hovering between the runaways and driver.
M83, Fleur & Manu – Still from ‘Reunion’ (2011) (3)
The scene also shows that Apollonia’s powers are equal to several of the other children’s abilities, something that is important to know when watching the third video. The escapees win the battle and launch the car back at the driver, crushing the driver and simultaneously breaking the mind control of the other girl. They then enter a church and light themselves up—though you need to watch the third video to find out what is happening.
M83, Fleur & Manu – Still from ‘Reunion’ (2011) (4)
The third video, entitled Wait, is by far the best video and can be watched as a stand-alone story. The highly professional acting continues and as the story is no longer restricted to the city we get to see some impressive cinematography, with large scale landscape scenes; this further enhances the argument that these music videos can be a form of art. As the music video is only five minutes long, the behind-the-scenes video, which is also five minutes long, should be viewed to get further insight into what is happening.
The first minute and twenty seconds of the music video shows where the runaways have gone, they are within futuristic pyramids that are floating in space, therefore they have all survived the previous video.
M83, Fleur & Manu – Still from ‘Wait’ (2011) (1)
Apollonia has been left behind on Earth, which is now in a state of decay. From the behind-the-scenes documentary, we can presume several dozen or maybe hundreds of years have passed since the second music video, although the child has not aged.
M83, Fleur & Manu – Still from ‘Wait’ (2011) (2)
We then get to see the remaining humans fighting each other and there is a large explosion, not caused by the remaining girl as we next see her within an an undamaged landscape dressing herself in a sheet she has just found. Several thousand years pass and Apollonia is shown walking though a desert landscape (good cinematography here) where she catches and saves the last drop of water on Earth, as stated in the behind-the-scenes documentary.
M83, Fleur & Manu – Still from ‘Wait’ (2011) (3)
The documentary also states that the video is about cycles of decay and regeneration and as we are now in regeneration mode the pyramid containing the boy starts travelling back to Earth. The rest of the film show the boy travelling back and crash-landing on the planet while the girl waits for him.
M83, Fleur & Manu – Still from ‘Wait’ (2011) (4)
What isn’t mentioned is how much is natural decay then regeneration or how much is caused by Apollonia, it would be nice to think of her, a young girl, being Mother Nature. Another reason I chose to mention these artworks are because of modern society’s desire to find and display powerful females and with this one possibly destroying then rebuilding an entire planet; it would be hard to find a more powerful creature.
These three singles come from the album ‘Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming‘, released by M83 in 2011.
The title of this article, Microcosmic Theaters of Dichotomy, comes from the Statement page of Norwegian collage artist Ashkan Honarvar‘s website:
Ashkan Honarvar´s collages present the human body at the center of microcosmic theaters of dichotomy in which irrationality permeates logic, serenity belies violence, and luxury secretes exploitation. Tragically vulnerable to injury yet resilient in its ability to heal, the body itself is a living paradox: its vitality can be beautiful; its deformation, grotesque.
That’s as good a description as any for the often contradictory nature of Honarvar’s work, wherein one can find paradoxical juxtapositions as a matter of course: babies and flowers next to images of war casualties, deformed and diseased flesh elevated to both holy relics and confectionery delights, cheap pornography in the most luxurious surroundings. Perhaps this paradox arises in part from Honarvar’s own history and sense of identity. Born in Shiraz, Iran in 1980, as a child his family moved to Utrecht, Netherlands, and then later to Norway—what an incredible culture shock that must have been for young Honarvar, going from one of the most conservative parts of the world to one of its most liberal.
Of course, children show up frequently in his art, often nude. The symbolism cannot be overlooked here: purity and innocence violated by the artist’s despoiling black ink and unfeeling, implacable blade. This symbolism is used to great effect in the series Children, which his site describes thusly:
This project was created after studying child sexual abuse. By inscribing lines on and adding negative spaces to the actual photographs, Ashkan Honarvar has attempted to record not only the physical, but also the mental scars that stay with a victim for the rest of their lives. Each collage was based on a different case of sexual abuse.
Ashkan Honarvar – Children (1)
Ashkan Honarvar – Children (2)
Ashkan Honarvar – Children (3)
Ashkan Honarvar – Children (4)
Ashkan Honarvar – Children (5)
Ashkan Honarvar – Children (6)
Ashkan Honarvar – Children (7)
In the series Identity Lost, Honarvar uses medical images of both humans and animals to comment on the modern world, where individual identity is frequently subsumed by social utility.
Ashkan Honarvar – Identity Lost 6 (1)
Ashkan Honarvar – Identity Lost 6 (2)
Ashkan Honarvar – Identity Lost 6 (3)
The Reality series demonstrates the malleability of our perceptions with respect to movies, and ultimately our environment as a whole. We tend to see what we want to see, sometimes missing vital facts and ignoring things we’d rather not think about, such is how consumption of media may be impacting children negatively.
Ashkan Honarvar – Reality (1)
Ashkan Honarvar – Reality (2)
Ashkan Honarvar – Reality (3)
In The Crust, one of Honarvar’s longest and most complex series—which is broken up into both subseries and phases—he looks at humanity on a much larger scale, examining our place in the universe, what makes us human, and the origins of evil. He says of it:
My work deals with the human condition and the search for the roots of evil latent in every human being. I have been working on this subject for couple of years now. Projects like Faces, Ubakagi and Children focused on specific sub-sections of this subject such as war and identity, rapists from the Congo and child abusers. One of my main goals with The Crust was to view the topic of evil on a grander scale. To dig deeper into the origins of the projects mentioned above. However different these projects may look on the surface, their core is the same. They all revolve around us, humans. To understand evil we must understand ourselves.
Of particular interest to our readers is The Crust 1, Phase 1, the very beginning of the series. It asks, how is the innocence of children first corrupted? Where are the origins of evil in us as a species?
Ashkan Honarvar – The Crust 1 – Phase 1 (1)
Ashkan Honarvar – The Crust 1 – Phase 1 (2)
Ashkan Honarvar – The Crust 1 – Phase 1 (3)
Ashkan Honarvar – The Crust 1 – Phase 1 (4)
Ashkan Honarvar – The Crust 1 – Phase 1 (5)
Ashkan Honarvar – The Crust 1 – Phase 1 (6)
Ashkan Honarvar – The Crust 1 – Phase 1 (7)
Ashkan Honarvar – The Crust 1 – Phase 1 (8)
Ashkan Honarvar – The Crust 1 – Phase 1 (9)
Ashkan Honarvar – The Crust 1 – Phase 1 (10)
Ashkan Honarvar – The Crust 1 – Phase 1 (11)
Ashkan Honarvar – The Crust 1 – Phase 1 (12)
These final few images I have no commentary on, save to say that they repeat some of the same themes present throughout Honarvar’s work.
Ashkan Honarvar – King of Worms – Parasite
Ashkan Honarvar – Paradise Lost 5 (1)
Ashkan Honarvar – Paradise Lost 5 (2)
Ashkan Honarvar – Paradise Lost 5 (3)
Ashkan Honarvar – Paradise Lost 5 (4)
One final point I’d like to make: despite the nudity, sexual content and violence therein, the message behind Ashkan Honarvar’s art is surprisingly conservative. After all, he didn’t create the original content that he uses to make his collages; he only repurposes it to demonstrate his ideas. As is often the case with nude child art, a mere surface reading of it completely misses the point.
What little I know about stop-motion animation is that it takes great patience and discipline. As a result, the results are usually quite imaginative; otherwise, why bother? In the course of reviewing Illustrating Alice (2013) by Artists’ Choice Editions, I found an interview of Czech animator Jan Švankmajer in which he shares how the works of Lewis Carroll have influenced him.
Švankmajer was born in Prague in 1934 and studied at the Institute of Industrial Arts and the Marionette Faculty of the Prague Academy of Fine Arts in the 1950s. He began experimenting with filmmaking after becoming involved with the mixed-media productions of Prague’s Lanterna Magika Theatre and produced his first short film in 1964. Always in the back of his mind was the idea of making a feature-length film based on Alice in Wonderland. He has persevered despite persistent efforts by Czech authorities to ban or undermine his work. He has been a member of the Prague Surrealist Group since 1969.
Jan Švankmajer – Alice (1988) (1)
Lewis Carroll’s Alice is rooted firmly in my mental morphology. To me, she’s not someone who stands apart from me. And since I have worked throughout my entire life in the fashion of a dialogue conducted with my childhood, I have also been in dialogue with Lewis Carroll. -Jan Švankmajer, Illustrating Alice, 2011.
The animator’s first venture into Carroll’s material was in 1971 with the short film Žvahlav aneb šatičky slaměného Huberta based on Carroll’s poem, “Jabberwocky”. According to Švankmajer, this video collage was an expression of the history of his childhood up to the moment when he first rebelled against his father. After each scene, a black tomcat representing the animal subconscious, disrupts the carefully arranged setup and, in the end, is locked up in a “cage of domestication”. The the only spoken words are an introductory recitation, by a young girl, of Carroll’s poem which appeared in Alice Through the Looking-Glass. The voice in the Czech version was done by his own daughter, Veronika, who was nine at the time. In Czechoslovakia, the film was banned because the censors said it contained political allegories. He proceeded to make the English version which travelled the world as an American film through Weston Wood Studios. After 1989, the proprietor of that company generously transferred the rights to the film to Švankmajer and thus, after a delay of 16 years, it was finally shown in Prague.
Jan Švankmajer – ‘Jabberwocky’ (1971) (1)
Jan Švankmajer – ‘Jabberwocky’ (1971) (2)
His most autobiographical film was also inspired to a degree by Alice. Do pivnice (Down into the Cellar, 1983)¹ tells of a little girl (Monika Belo-Cabanová) sent to the cellar to fetch some potatoes and what befalls her down there. Like other filmmakers such as Carlos Saura, Švankmajer decided to portray himself in the feminine person perhaps giving the viewer a stronger sense of the child’s vulnerability. In its fantastical sense, it is much like Alice but, compared to the later film of that name, gives a relatively straightforward linear account of a child seized with terror in a giant grown-up world.
Jan Švankmajer – Do pivnice (1983) (1)
Jan Švankmajer – Do pivnice (1983) (2)
Jan Švankmajer – Do pivnice (1983) (3)
In Czech there’s a saying, “Strach má velké oči” (Fear has big eyes). The saying is meant to convey the idea that our fears tend to overwhelm our willingness to take risks. In reality, the dangers are often much less than we imagine and Švankmajer’s life exemplifies this point perfectly. It is a testament to his tenacity that he followed through with his projects. He says his excursions into the underworld played a major role in developing his imagination. Do pivnice also ran up against the censors and was locked away for a number of years. The film had to be produced in a studio in Slovakia and the studio there demanded changes that the artist was unwilling to make. The concern was that it might cast a negative light on Slovakian life when viewed by an international audience. They also objected to the fact that there was no clear distinction between scenes taken from reality and those taken from the child’s imagination. Only after those first two films did Švankmajer dare to attempt a “complete” Alice.
Jan Švankmajer – Alice (1988) (2)
Alice thought to herself, “Now you will see a film made for children, perhaps—but I nearly forgot—you must close your eyes otherwise you won’t see anything!” -Jan Švankmajer, Alice, 1988.
This is a strange introduction for Něco z Alenky (1988), a film about to offer the viewer a visual spectacle. But once one understands the filmmaker’s intent, it is clear that he is setting the stage for a kind of lucid dream peppered with nonsense.
Jan Švankmajer – Alice (1988) (3)
The filmmaker understood that he was embarking on well-trodden territory with countless film adaptations having come before.
… in my belief film-makers will never stop coming back to her [Alice], since the book’s oneiric imagination cannot fail to inspire and cries out for ever new interpretations. Yes, it is written as a dream-record and, just like the dreams of any of us, it is in code … with Carroll there are two forms of his Alice: one, the ‘manifest’ form that doesn’t change, and the other, the ‘latent’ form that mutates according to the age at which we happen to be reading it. -Jan Švankmajer, Illustrating Alice, 2011.
Most adaptations of Alice try to force it into the genre of a fairy-tale, but Švankmajer believes that doing so deprives it of the free flow of dream. There is no real moral message to a dream and it refuses to conform to socially acceptable criteria. In that respect, the animator has tried to stay true to the experience without presuming to interpret Carroll’s musings.
Jan Švankmajer – Alice (1988) (4)
Dream may be regarded as the domain of the fantastic and yet it is grounded in mundane reality. Švankmajer takes those things with which Alice would be most intimately familiar—the things found in her own little room—then expands them into the vast landscapes of her imagination. In the film, we are taken into the world of imagination through a desk drawer. One of the amusing running gags of the film is that every time Alice pulls the handle, it comes off in her hand and she then has to pry her way in.
Jan Švankmajer – Alice (1988) (5)
Jan Švankmajer – Alice (1988) (6)
The artist realized that one must constantly resist the urge to tell a chronologically ordered tale and, indeed, there is no feeling of continuity between discrete scenes.
All the objects, props, dolls, toys, costumes and Alice herself (Kristýna Kohoutová)—the only live actor—are practical elements and not specially crafted for the film. Švankmajer says this is important because, “After all, nothing in our dreams ever astonishes us, since anything that makes up our dreams seems utterly natural.”
Jan Švankmajer – Alice (1988) (7)
An interesting convention in the film was to use a doll as a stand-in for Alice whenever she was in her “small” form.
Jan Švankmajer – Alice (1988) (8)
Another running gag is whenever a character is “injured”, there is a short pause in the action while sawdust is replaced and tears in the fabric sewn up. Because dreams are inherently autobiographical, the only voice heard throughout the film is Alice’s (Camilla Power), even when “doing” the voices of the other characters.
Jan Švankmajer – Alice (1988) (9)
No Czech state studio showed any interest in the film and so all financing and resources came from out of the country. This was a major hindrance since after World War II, the film industry was nationalized and the Czechoslovakian government held a monopoly. The help of institutions such as Artcentrum were enlisted to give the project legitimacy and to avoid running afoul of the law. Another parallel with Saura was the use of restored, discarded cameras in the filming and editing process.
Jan Švankmajer – Alice (1988) (10)
The point of my film had been apparently modest: to bring some attention back to dream, which modern civilisation had ceased to lay much store by, which society had tossed on the scrapheap of our psyche. After all, the last serious scholarly work on dreams, Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams, was almost a hundred years old! … Until we begin once more to tell fairy-tales and ghost-stories at bedtime; and to recount our dreams on waking up, there is now nothing to be hoped for from modern Atlantic civilisation. -Jan Švankmajer, Illustrating Alice, 2011.
Jan Švankmajer – Alice (1988) (11)
In 2006, Švankmajer was asked by a Japanese publishing house to illustrate both of Lewis Carroll’s Alice books. An excerpt from that Foreword elucidates the artist’s core philosophy:
Lewis Carroll’s Alice is one of the basic books of this civilisation, one of those we should take with us to a desert island, just in order to survive. It has taught dozens of generations of ‘atectonic’ children. I am no exception. And it’s not just a book for children. On the contrary, it is evidence that no specific ‘art for children’ actually exists, and that that notion is just commercial flimflam. We may only argue over whether this or that book (picture, film) is appropriate for children. Carroll’s Alice can be read at any age.
Jan Švankmajer – Alice (1988) (12)
The artist concludes that Alice continues to be an inexhaustible source of inspiration (as does his own childhood). Those creations that did not come from these sources have never left him fully satisfied and he feels that he must sit down in peace and quiet, pick up a pencil and start once again.
And so whenever in the course of our lifetime we pick the book up, it is, each time, a different book, a book with different contents, and yet it remains the Alice of our childhood. This is a miracle to be observed with only a tiny fraction of all the books ever written. -Jan Švankmajer, Illustrating Alice, 2011.
Jan Švankmajer – Alice (1988) (13)
In 1990, a BBC documentary was aired called The Animator of Prague. It describes some of Švankmajer’s influences—such as Bohemian ruler Rudolf II—and how Surrealist art is much more developed in Central Europe than in the West.
Jan Švankmajer – Alice (1988) (14)
*All quotes taken from Illustrating Alice were copyrighted and translated by David Short.
¹ In the interview, Švankmajer says the title of the film is Do sklepa which means roughly the same thing with a slightly different connotation. Interestingly, this error reflects his point that our perceptions of memories, stories and phrases change with time and we may find ourselves translating our ideas into our current context.
Christian recently brought this artist to my attention. At first blush, many of the sculptures seem to show an idyllic and intimate scene of innocent little girls.
Christina Bothwell and Robert Bender – Secret Life of Girls (2014-15)
Christina Bothwell – Little Friends (2016)
Yet there is something eerie about these pieces as well. A survey of her other work reveals why. Most peculiar are a series of sculptures of a girl in the presence of her disembodied soul.
Christina Bothwell – When the body sleeps (2003-06)
Christina Bothwell – When You’re Sleeping (2007-09)
Since I was very young, I have been fascinated with the concept of the Soul… the idea that the physical body represents only a small part of our beingness. I am always interested in trying to express the that we are more than just our bodies …
Christina Bothwell was born in New York City, spending her youth in towns and cities until finally realizing that she needed to be immersed in nature. She now lives in rural Pennsylvania with her husband and three young children. She says glass gives her the same versatility of other sculptural media with the added feel of an “inner space” augmented by the special way it transmits light. She is currently exploring the idea of metamorphosis by incorporating one figure inside another as though the figure were “pregnant” with its own life affirming potential.
Christina Bothwell – Bow (2012-13)
Christina Bothwell – Bees (2014-15)
Bothwell considers nature the main source of her inspiration and finds it a constant reminder of the interconnectedness of life. This attitude is apparent in many of her pieces and the juxtaposition of human an animal elements give her work a mythic dimension.
Christina Bothwell and Robert Bender – Dream Within A Dream (2016)
Christina Bothwell – Sweet Candour (2014-15)
Christina Bothwell – Mermaid (2007-09)
Estella Louisa Michaela Canziani was a painter and illustrator born in London in 1887. Her mother, Louisa Starr, was also a painter, though in a much more conventional mode, and I prefer the daughter’s work to the mother’s. Canziani tended towards supernatural themes, particularly fairies, and religious themes. Both thematically and stylistically her work fits well into the Symbolist tradition, although at the tail end of it. Here we have one of her loveliest and most memorable paintings. As a knight holding a newborn infant bends down to baptize or wash the child, fairies suddenly emerge from the brook to offer the babe their blessings. I searched the web for a larger version of this image but was unsuccessful. Nevertheless, I’ll keep looking.
Estella Canziani – Fairies Bless the Newborn Child (1923)
I must apologize to Arizona and Pigtails readers for not getting to this sooner. Ideally, this would have been posted before Halloween. -Ron
Back in 2015 Pip produced a Halloween themed post featuring the work of Samantha Everton. As this is not the artist’s only project to feature girls, I thought it would be a good idea to create another Halloween post featuring her series entitled ‘Vintage Dolls’, which also has a spooky feel to it.
Everton is a multi-awarded and exhibited photographic artist who completed a degree in photography at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. When she graduated in 2003, she was at the top of her class and had also received her first awards, one for having the Highest Aggregate Score Winner for photography students and the other was the Steve Vizard Most Creative Folio Award.
Samantha Everton – Adagio – (2008)
The creation of her photo shoots can sometimes take a year, from sketching the idea, finding the location, sourcing the props, then the models and even deciding on how the styling, hair and makeup appears. In her ‘Vintage Dolls’ shoot the house was the most time consuming prop to find, largely because Everton planned on partially demolishing it. After many months of searching she found a house that was about to be torn down, which also had an owner who was willing to give her complete control of the building. After signing a one month lease she set about changing the appearance of the place by putting up wallpaper, smashing holes in walls and planting a tree in the lounge room.
Samantha Everton – Masquerade – (2008)
The series ‘Vintage Dolls’ is a collection of twelve works depicting several children participating in a surreal game of dress-up and make believe, however the artist never explains the symbolism or narrative content of the images, instead leaving the viewer to guess the meaning behind the photographs. She does give some clues as she explains that:
The house had a ghostly feeling and remnants of a past life; it juxtaposed against the playfulness of the children … It’s like the children are in an attic and they’re play-acting but on a deeper level, I wanted to show how children interact with culture and how they absorb and re-enact what they see. I wanted there to be a child with whom each person could identify.
The two images below show how surreal some of these images can become with the aforementioned tree, featuring in Nocturne, and a levitating cat, appearing in Camellia.
Samantha Everton – Nocturne – (2008)
Samantha Everton – Camellia – (2008)
Each of these images are a meter in width and height, therefore some don’t transfer well to small image sizes. For example, in the image entitled Black Forest you cannot tell whether the child on the bed has her eyes open or not, even a small difference like this can change one’s interpretation of the artwork’s meaning. The reason for including it here is because it seems to be the favourite among these images. At the exhibition for this series when other images had either not sold, or had sold up to only three prints, the Black Forest had sold over six prints.
Samantha Everton – Black Forest – (2008)
While the symbolism to that image is complex and obscure, I cannot see beyond the Red Riding Hood imagery. The next is clearly about racism; in Party Dress a young girl stands in front of a mirror, in reality wearing western clothes, but in the reflection she wears the clothes of her home country. The image suggests that the girl is wishing that she was living in a place that is more accepting of her appearance.
Samantha Everton – Party Dress – (2008)
The next two artworks imply a desire to escape something. In Secret Garden one of the girls looks out a hole in the wall but is seemingly unable to get out there. Whereas in the Bewitching Hour one girl, who is the only child in the series to smile, literally takes flight on a flamingo, while the other unsmiling girl is stuck on a bird that stubbornly refuses to move.
Samantha Everton – Secret Garden – (2008)
Samantha Everton – Bewitching Hour – (2008)
The entire twelve images from this series can be seen on Samantha Everton’s website, though these images are rather small and nine larger images can be found at the Arthouse Gallery website. Additionally, if anyone else wants to share their theories about what any of these images could mean then please leave a comment below.
Contemporary surrealist painter Saturno Buttò was born in the Portogruaro district of Venice, Italy in 1957. He first began to exhibit his work in 1993, with his first monograph titled Ritratti da Saturno: 1989-1992 (Portraits from Saturn: 1989-1992), a play on his given name. This would be followed by Opere 1993-1999 (Works 1993-1999), Martyrologium (published in 2007), Blood is my favourite color (published in 2012) and finally Breviarium humanae redemptionis, which is currently available for purchase at his website.
Buttò’s portraits often juxtapose style and iconography taken from traditional Christian art with elements of modernity, surrealism and unapologetic sexuality, and this is no less true when the images are of children. The kids—usually girls—in Buttò’s work are both confrontational and loaded with mystery and metaphor. It would be quite easy for shallow and morally sensitive observers to dismiss these works as exploitative and shocking for the sake of being shocking, but that would be a grave mistake. It is the work of artists like Buttò for which Pigtails in Paint was first conceived, those artists who might be controversial and seemingly pugnacious in their depictions of the child’s body, but who nevertheless have something important and honest to say.
These pieces are rife with contradictions and paradoxes which strike at the true core of modern childhood, and girlhood especially, the young girl’s body politicized from so many different angles. In this early piece, we see a toddler girl, Linda, dressed as both a jester and a hamadryad, two personas which couldn’t be more disparate. A tassel suspends from her “trunk” like an oddly low-hanging phallus. In fact, there’s nothing intrinsically feminine about this little toddler. The only hint we have of her femaleness comes from the title of the painting. At this young age, children are fairly androgynous.
Saturno Buttò – Frau, Simon e Linda (1994)
Are they really angels? These little toddlers are dressed as putti, complete with wings attached by an uncomfortable-looking harness. Here we begin to see Buttò’s critique of the way society restrictively frames childhood, especially girlhood, for its own convenience. I suspect the fact that one of the toddlers is indisputably female is no accident either. If we were to move away from the subject of childhood for a moment, this portrait also shows us a realistic and unflattering view of womanhood, as we see Simon shaving her armpit to appease society. On more than one level this can be viewed as a feminist piece, as can many of Buttò’s works.
Saturno Buttò – Simon e tre bimbi (1994)
Here we have a masculine figure holding two more toddlers. Are they twins? Again, note the combination of jester apparel and plants on the children, subtly suggesting that nature is playful and innocent. One can almost think of these children as elves or sprites, beings associated with both nature and trickery, often depicted as children. There’s also something both godlike and satyric about the man in this image. Could this be Dionysus? The title of this peace, Domiziana-Domiziana, is somewhat mysterious. If we were to substitute an ‘o’ for the ‘a’ at the end of these words, we would have the Italian translation for Domitian, a Roman emperor known for his harsh policies and his ruthlessness which eventually led to his assassination. Domiziana would thus be a feminized version of the name, and given that it’s doubled, we can safely assume it applies to the little twins. Surely Buttò isn’t saying that these two little girls are vicious autocrats, is he? But then, toddlers are known for being cranky and demanding.
Saturno Buttò – Domiziana-Domiziana (1997)
It’s quite interesting to see that Buttò’s work thematically ages as many of his recurring subjects mature. Red is a carnal color, and the leather-upholstered throne, which has the little girl’s name on it, is both eroticized and slightly menacing. The little nude Lola herself, brightly lit and tracking something into the otherwise pristine throne room with her bare feet, confronts the viewer with her gaze, her miniature curled pigtails mimicking the horns on the back of the chair. Lola is a force to be reckoned with, and yet she is also vulnerable and defensive, as we look down on her from above, her body turned slightly away from us. Childhood is full of contradictions.
Saturno Buttò – Lola (2004)
This little girl, Solange is again patently feminine, her subtle curves accentuated by the harsh light, and she is also unquestionably a child. She is both confrontational—her eyes meeting ours—and somewhat coy, her face turning away from us. The purple cloak she holds provides a note of nobility as well as echoing certain representations of Jesus. This little girl is both holy in her innocence and sensual in her femininity. She has weight, gravitas. Unlike Lola in the last piece, we are on Solange’s level. Is this an erotic depiction of a child? It depends on how you define erotic. If you mean by that a blatant attempt to turn on the viewer, then I would say no, this piece is not at all erotic. However, to me eroticism is much more than just titillation.
Of course, most child nudes aren’t about eroticism at all, and anyone who sees lewdness in those is certainly projecting. The conflation of simple nudity with sex is mostly an American conceit and demonstrates a simplistic and uninformed view of art. That’s not surprising. Most Americans couldn’t tell their Picasso from a hole in the ground (yes, I’m aware I’ve used that joke before, but I’m quite fond of puns), and they don’t much care. It is all too often a badge of honor for Americans to show just how ignorant and uncultured they really are. Such nuance is beyond them. So they really struggle when presented with an artist like Saturno Buttò, who does invest an element of eroticism in his work but isn’t doing it to sexually arouse. I seriously doubt that Buttò is a pedophile, nor is his work featuring children meant to appeal to them. The idea here is to challenge those simplistic conceptions of the perfectly innocent child which often do more harm than good.
Saturno Buttò – Solange II (2004)
Solange again, this time in the role of the biblical dancer Salomé, who demanded John the Baptist’s head on a platter. Salomé’s salacious dancing done in exchange for John’s head is one of the most famous stories from the Bible and has long been a subject for artists to explore, one of the earliest presentations of the femme fatale in all of literature. It might seem bizarre to depict her as a child, but the fact is we have no idea what Salomé’s actual age is. Knowing what we know about Hebrew customs of the day and interpreting the language of the Bible quite specifically, there’s good reason to believe Salomé was actually a young girl around the age of 12. This puts a completely different spin on the story, doesn’t it? The belief that Salomé was a sultry and experienced woman who used her feminine wiles with some knowing evil intent is one that has developed over time, but the Bible does not actually support that view.
Thus, the seeming contradictions of Buttò’s Lolita-esque Salomé may not be as far removed from the truth as many may think, and that’s the point here. That and the fact that, while we adults may comfort ourselves with the notion that children aren’t thinking dirty thoughts, in reality they are not always as innocent as we might think. It’s interesting to read about the fantasies of young girls with respect to their blossoming sexuality, such as the ones presented in this article. To be sure, acknowledging that children may have a sexuality and that it is often complex is not synonymous with advocating its expression, certainly not with adults. But somehow our culture has arrived at this simple perspective that any intersection of childhood and sex is automatically abuse. It becomes very difficult, then, for artists like Buttò to present a full and honest depiction of childhood, or even of adult sexuality, which is usually rooted in childhood. That picture is left incomplete.
Saturno Buttò – Solange – Salomé (2005)
Danaë is a figure from Greek mythology. Prophecy said that she would bear a son who would kill his grandfather, Danaë’s father, King Acrisius. In order to prevent this from happening, Acrisius locked his daughter in a towering structure without doors or windows, the only entrance being through an open skylight. But naturally, Zeus, being taken with the girl’s beauty, comes to her as a golden rain (no golden shower jokes here, please) and impregnates her, and eventually the prophecy is fulfilled. A frequent subject of classical artists, images of Danaë often include Eros, the love god, who of course is usually represented as a small boy. In Buttò’s piece, it is a little girl who stands in for Cupid, catching the raindrops in a chalice.
Saturno Buttò – Danaë (2005)
Solange was a frequent model for Buttò throughout 2006. In one we see her as a young saint. In the next, she wears a demonic mask. In the third, she is something between an angel and a demon, a creature which has taken on aspects of both. We can see, faintly, the outline of a uterus. This image can almost be viewed as a throwback (or perhaps a tribute) to the works of the Symbolist painters, for whom woman was both virgin and whore. Only, here the girl is too young to be a whore. The idea is that, beneath her seemingly innocent and childish facade, there lurks a creature on the precipice of sexual flowering. We can see her hips beginning to widen, to take their womanly shape. This is one of the most honest depictions of a preadolescent girl in contemporary art.
Saturno Buttò – Solange (2006)
Saturno Buttò – Solange Mask (2006)
Saturno Buttò – L’età dell’oro (2006)
Solange at the easel. We can almost picture her doing a self-portrait as she examines her own nude body in a mirror positioned somewhere to the left of the picture frame.
Saturno Buttò – Solange al Cavalletto (2007)
And here the girl is about to dig into a blood-red birthday cake. I’m not sure if it’s intentional, but I count only nine candles on the cake while the girl is clearly well past nine years—I estimate her age to be between twelve and fourteen here. Intentional or not, I think it hints at every parents’ fear that their child will blossom sexually well before their time. The black-streaked gray Elizabethan wig along with the freakishly organic chair and Buttò’s usual bright red palette gives this image a sort of Bride of Frankenstein feel.
Saturno Buttò – Birthday Party (2007)
Salomé again, even darker and more surreal than the last one. The child rubbing the bristles of the brush against her torso unconsciously echoes a similar scene in the stop-motion animated video for Prison Sex by the rock band Tool. Both the song and the video are about incestuous sexual abuse.
Saturno Buttò – Salomé (2007)
Buttò’s take on a Tarot card: The Star. It’s unfortunate he didn’t do the rest of them. I really would love to own this Tarot deck!
Saturno Buttò – La stella II (2010)
Saturno Buttò – Lola (2011)
Saturno Buttò – Lisa + Alice (drawing) (2014)
Saturno Buttò – Lisa + Alice (2015)