I have become too old and cranky to bother much with blog posts any longer. It is easier to sit back and read a book, but every once in a while something grabs my attention. And such it was when I saw the painting for the December 23, 2020 post on the That Is Priceless blog:
http://thatispriceless.blogspot.com/2020/12/masterpiece-2606.html
The painting is titled Familiar Birds by Émile Friant. It is oil on canvas and was done in 1921.
Before reading the discussion below, I recommend opening this large scan of the painting. It provides a better view of the detail:
Oh my goodness, look at her, she is magnificent!
OK dear reader, I suspect at this junction you are thinking what the hell is with this guy, he is getting himself worked up over a breast. Indeed yes, a quite lovely breast, and yes I like it, but dear reader the internet is loaded with lovely breasts. My wife has lovely breasts. Do you honestly think that I am going to come out of a 20 month hiatus from posting on this blog over a breast? The breast, albeit lovely, is just the icing on the cake. Here is what I love about this painting.
I love realism in paintings. As such, I have always been a fan of William Adolph Bouguereau's works, and this painting puts me in mind of a Bouguereau. So being a work in realism, our young lady is very real, no tawdry outfits or over sexualized poses and pouts of a pin up. She is just ecstatic to be alive and sitting here with all these lovely birds. Look at her expression, she is just really happy and it makes me happy looking at her. She has that wholesome girl next door look, maybe a little too wholesome. Hell, she looks like Shirley Temple's Heide very much grown up.
I love the detail in her hair, you can almost see the individual strands. At first glance she appears to be young, but if you look at the larger and more detailed scan (see above) you can see there is some maturity in her facial features and she is a little dark around the eyes. She is young but not too young. The cleft in her chin is quite charming. A very lovely spot is directly below the bird on her right shoulder where her jacket is pulled back. The dark hollow above and below her collarbone and the rounded softness of her exposed shoulder ache to be gently caressed.
Her casual posture is given some authority by her left hand placed on her hip. I like her garments which I assume are some manner of French early 1920s casual lounge wear, something of the equivalent to a house coat with trousers although perhaps considered a bit more elegant. Alas the high waist, it obscures what I am sure would be a most exquisite belly, yet the curious bunching of the material with taught downward V shaped lines suggest the sacred feminine triangle and gives her a subtle suggestion of female eroticism further emphasized by the curve of her derriere.
What really thrills me about this painting is her crossed right leg with the raised pant leg exposing her calf and ankle. This is no girl, she has a woman’s calf, there is nothing delicate about it. In fact it is so ordinary that I find it absolutely erotic. I revel in the subtle coloration difference between her shin and calf. You can follow the line of her shin bone right into her ankle. The front surface of her shin appears to have some mottled depressions, old healed wounds. She is a real woman, and she bangs her shins now and again in her life.
And now, pause for a deep breath. Her bare right foot, artfully up turned. Another deep breath. Oh my, my! Yes I confess to a minor foot fetish, and hers is so heartbreakingly real, it thrills me. Look at it, it's dirty. This is no Athenian goddess, ethereally hanging in airy gossamers. Her foot is dirty. This is a flesh and blood Goddess who walks the Earth, but a Goddess nonetheless, and far more real than any resident of Olympus. I love the coloration on the ball of her foot and her upturned toes. The curvature of her instep demands a one fingered caress.
The damned cockatoo! Why didn’t he steal her other slipper also. We have been denied the beauty of a bare left foot by a lazy cockatoo. Alas our loss. But what we can see is enthralling, Are those hints of veins that I see on the front and side of her ankle?
Roland Barthes describes the concepts of studium and punctum in a book on photography, called Camera Lucida. I assume perhaps due to my ignorance, that the concepts would apply to paintings and other forms of imagery and not just photography. Studium is the physical, cultural, and political aspects of the photograph. A young woman, birds, slippers, her green outfit and colorful sashes and pillows are elements of the studium of this painting that apply to anyone including myself. The punctum of the painting would be that which pierces one’s heart. For many people there would be absolutely no punctum in this painting. For some perhaps the bared breast or her wonderful smile would pierce their hearts and be the punctum for them. For me, the punctum is that this lovely young woman reminds me of a woman that I never knew.
When I was cleaning my mother’s house after she died, I found a photograph of her that I had never seen before. My father took the picture when they were first married before I came along. It showed a happy young woman that very much had a sparkle in her eye. What this woman seemed to be saying was “I just got laid, and I am about to get laid again, and I can’t wait.” If such thoughts about one’s mother seem unsavory, again, I remind you, I did not know the woman in the photograph. And if you think that thoughts of your parents having sex are somehow unseemly, you should try the reality of a childhood that witnessed a father that was habitually drunk and an extremely unhappy mother that fought him tooth an nail over his drinking and the almost daily violence that resulted from this union. I would have loved to have heard the bed springs squeaking.
I wept when I found that photograph. It indeed pierced my heart. I never knew the woman in that picture, she was long gone by the time I was old enough to understand the interactions between woman and man. My mother was once a vibrant and erotic young woman, and I never knew that woman.
So the punctum in this painting for me is not that the woman looks like my mother, a minor resemblance perhaps, mostly in their similar hairstyles, but that the woman in the painting (and yes the bare breast helps in this regard) seems to be saying “I just got laid, and I am about to get laid again, and I can’t wait.”
Here is a review of the painting by someone that actually knows something about art:
You can find more works by Friant at the following two sites:
https://thewomangallery.com/emile-friant-1863-1932/
https://eclecticlight.co/2018/03/11/the-last-naturalist-emile-friant-2/
Post Script: Ok, maybe the breast has more bearing than I give credit. Ten years ago, I wrote a blog post on John Waterford’s painting, The Soul of the Rose.
https://navfin.blogspot.com/2010/08/soul-of-rose.html
At the time, I yearned for a peek inside the woman’s heavy robe.
Image credit: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%C3%89mile_Friant_-_The_Familiar_Birds_-_1921.jpg
