One more Guy Bourdin

Food!!

Bill Viola

Still ruminating about the possibility of using video in LULU, I started to think about the painting that is created in Act One and persistently sticks around through the entire play; how in the last act Lulu's devastated body pales in comparison to the image of her former beauty; how Alwa, Schigolch, and Geschwitz kneel before the icon in worship of their now dissipated goddess. The painting's fixed impression of Lulu is integral to the story, yet isn't the act of painting portraiture somehow dated in a modernized production? How else could Schwarz capture the image of Lulu?

The following images are stills from video installations by Bill Viola, whose slow-motion portraiture could be an eerie reference point for a less-dated approach to the ever-present picture of Lulu. Click the links for the full videos.

"Acceptance"
2008

"Silent Mountain"
2001

Guy Bourdin

Speaking of the Male Gaze, these are some photos from Guy Bourdin. He was a French photographer who shot for Vogue as well as Charles Joudan's shoes. Notice how the legs are completely disembodied. I believe that these two are from his shoe campaigns, which would seem to strip these female appendages of even more meaning. The legs are simply exhibited so to sell the comodity which they display. I love the bright colors.

And this one below is a very interesting take on the question of blood. Highly styalized - almost cosmetic.

Glee's Lea Michele in Marie Claire UK

http://www.marieclaire.co.uk/celebrity/pictures/29545/14/lea-michele-glee-marie-claire-november-cover-shoot.html#stop

This photo in particular:

Is a little bit of what I imagine the painting of Lulu could be. Dr Goll is into Lulu's dancing and also likes the little girl thing- just flatten the boots and make them, the tutu and the hot pants pink. The whole spread reads, to me, uncomfortably little-girl-playing-at-sexy. Maybe that's me putting my "Rachel from Glee" baggage on the adult actress? I'm also a little distressed at how thin she looks. She lost a lot of weight between the first and second season of Glee, presumably to fit in in Hollywood. It's just another way women- real actual human women- need to work really hard to appear as the idealized image of woman.

The 4th image in the slide show also strikes me. Her face, the high angle, the rope in the background, and her pose all put us, the viewer, in a position of power. We, the viewer, are about to do violence to her. Sexy, sexy violence. It plays into the old tropes of sex as something that harms women, how hot it is to degrade women and "take" them sexually, and that penetration = domination.

More About Madame X

This further explanation of the painting and the model reveals that the model was treated pretty similarly to Lulu- she hated the painting but didn't own it herself and therefore didn't have the power to destroy it. The painter loved the image of the model but not her personality (he complained that she was "lazy"), which calls to our attention the differences between the celebrated images of women and the mostly hated group of people, women. The painting apparently ruined her reputation because being sexy, not even necessarily sexual, is a very bad thing for women to be.

The link above is basically a fansite for the painter, John Singer Sargent, so read it with a grain of salt. I just ordered the book those long quotes are from and I'll have some much better analysis pretty soon.