2009 September | Phillipa Fioretti

Memento Amor

September 30th, 2009

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Paintings and photographs of Pompeii

How Does Life Stack Up?

September 30th, 2009

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Photographs of Pompeii

Marylou’s Yellow Dress

September 30th, 2009

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Enmeshed

September 26th, 2009

Dorothea Tanning and Max Ernst

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Dorothea Tanning

‘Art has always been the raft onto which we climb to save our sanity. I don’t see a different purpose for it now.’

Dorothea Tanning

Max Ernst

“My wanderings, my restlessness, my impatience, my doubts, my beliefs, my hallucinations, my rages, my revolts, my refusal to submit to any discipline, even those of my own invention… none of these have succeeded in creating a climate conducive to a calm, serene body of work.”

Max Ernst

Dorothea Tanning

Max Ernst

Tanning and Ernst

Max Ernst

Dorothea Tanning

Pondering the Phallus

September 25th, 2009

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The title of my book being published next year, The Book of Love, refers to a French book of lithographs detailing the erotica excavated at Pompeii in the eighteenth century. The book is called the Musée royal de Naples; peintures, bronzes et statues érotiques du cabinet secret, avec leur explication

What is extraordinary about the images, to our modern eyes, is the sheer quantity and usage of phalluses. Phallic wind chimes, phallic lamps, phallic charms, birds with phalluses, fauns with phalluses, you name it, there’s a sodding phallus on it. It’s a lovely appendage but is there, or was there, nothing else to decorate wind chimes with?

Yes, it was a male dominated military society and the phallus is good shorthand for male potency. But it was also more than that, the phallus symbolised generative powers and was believed to bring good luck and a fertile garden if you did go for the wind chimes and hang them over your carrot seedlings. Romans celebrated sexuality, and were quite open about it. But don’t romanticise them, it wasn’t a ‘free love,’ Woodstock-in-a-toga set up.

It’s no surprise that the phallus was such a common symbol in everyday Roman life if you consider the following. There were strict rules about who could do what to whom. At the top of the pile were the freeborn Roman men – they were the ‘penetrators’ and could not, by law, be penetrated. Males of this rank could initiate sex with whomever they pleased, except wellborn free boys. Males and females of lower status had to accept the passive, ‘penetrated’ role. For high ranking men to be on the receiving end was a mark of shame.

And if we think in terms of symbolising power we probably have more in common with the ancient Romans than we realise. We have a far more sophisticated visual culture, but it’s still there in our language. Money is our symbol of dominance, not the phallus, yet the symbolic power of the dynamics of penetration, as an active act for real men, has travelled down over a couple of thousand years in language and phrases. ‘I was screwed,’ (cheated), ‘he f**ked me over, (took control), ‘take it up the arse’, (be dominated), and so on. This is the language of power – and you can bet that those at the top of our political and financial food chains are busy metaphorically doing what those ancient Romans did to establish a pecking order.

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If you grew up in Ancient Rome and saw, everyday, male dominance and the sexual symbolism of that dominance being in evidence in all levels of material culture – and were dropped into our culture you’d be forgiven for thinking pretty, curvaceous women symbolise a feminine dominance.

So, is she in charge, asks our sandal clad time traveller? Is that why breasts are everywhere? Yes of course, it must be - this culture values the feminine, the nurturing, and the breast as symbol of life giving. We know better though, don’t we? Ms Breasts is not up on that billboard because we celebrate and value the feminine. She’s up there because someone decided her breasts could sell a soft drink or a computer game. Her fleeting moment of power is only bestowed on her, and then only in the service of financial capital.

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Plutarch declared that a good wife should lie still during intercourse. Another Ancient Roman echo in these pictures?

Plus ca change

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A Chartreuse Moment

September 23rd, 2009

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legs via popartmachine.com
earrings by Holly Modine

Let a Thousand Blogs Bloom

September 22nd, 2009

Teacher's Pet

I recently read a comment on a blog by someone who, although a published writer, felt that to blog about themselves and their writing would demonstrate an excess of self absorption, (and thus be uninteresting to others), and that being published did not qualify one for commentary on writing.

I stopped and re read the comment and have been pondering on it all day – because it raised an interesting point. A point I thought worth considering at length because it is the commonly held wisdom these days that as a writer one should go forth and blog.

When I asked the marketing people at Hachette Australia what I should blog about, they suggested I blog about writing, not about my personal life, but as an author presenting a public profile to the world. I thought to myself – ‘what the hell do I know about writing? - It was a bit like explaining how you breathe, once you start you your throat closes up and you start gasping for air.

So what could I offer the visitor to my blog who was interested in writing?

I remembered taking a drawing class and being asked by a student what it was like to work as an artist. What could I tell her? There as many different answers to that as there are artists. I just told her how it was for me, and some of the lessons I’d learned along the way. We were having a good old natter when I realised students were stopping their work and coming to listen to our conversation.

That’s what they wanted to know – yes, they needed skills, occupational health knowledge, financial knowledge, mentors, networking skills and all that, and some attempts were made within the curriculum to address this, but formal education does have limits. These people had a hunger to hear the personal musings on the ups and downs and obstacles they might face on the same journey as myself.

So for my blog I decided I’d ramble about my creative experience of writing and making art. Not as an expert, not as someone who can give a ‘how to’ lesson, but just what happened to me, and how I make sense of it.

I think it’s worth something to those moving in the same direction on the writing road. I share my experiences and thoughts on the whole writing/publishing experience because I’m articulate and people are curious about other’s experiences. If they’re not interested in mine, they can go elsewhere. There’s how many billion blogs out there?

Learning from the experience of others is the fundamental way of learning - children watch adults, apprentices watch tradespeople, acting students watch actors, painting students watch and follow painters.

Now having someone watch you does not mean you are an expert or an authority, the watcher makes their own meaning out of what they see. We’ve all seen our parents’ stuff up. I know my kids have seen me make poor calls. Apprentices see tradies taking short cuts, actors might think, ‘I would play Lady Macbeth differently.’ And so on. It is a primal human experience – watch and learn, or in a blog’s case, read and learn, filter it through what you know, use your critical skills to determine what you can take with you when you shut down your computer.

The wonderful thing about blogs and blogging is the lack of hierarchical structure, where no one is set up as an expert and no one needs qualifications – because the reader decides for themselves which blog qualifies for their continuing interest.

via Talking Biz News

Akhmatova’s White Stone

September 19th, 2009

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Like a white stone in a well’s depths
A single memory remains to me
That I can’t, won’t fight against
It’s happiness – and misery.

I think someone who gazed full
In my eyes, would see it straight
They’d be sad, be thoughtful,
As if hearing a mournful tale

I know the gods changed people
To things, yet left consciousness free,
To keep suffering’s wonder alive still.
In memory, you changed into me

Anna Akhmatova

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Photo of girl mummie National Geographic

Climate Catastrophe - A Writer’s Place in the Sun

September 14th, 2009

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My friend discoursed at great length on climate change as we walked along. He told me the gritty details about sustainable energy, the facts on solar radiation, the theory of Gaia and how we are doomed to be trampled by the four horsemen of the apocalypse. I asked if there was a sandpit nearby as I had an overwhelming need to stick my head somewhere. There being nothing available I let him ramble on about the termination of our species while I secretly re examined my character’s motivation for giving up on love so easily.

Yes, I am trivial. I stand before you exposed. But let me say, before you shave my head and march me down the Street of Shame in a tofu fibre sack dress, I do my bit. I recycle copious amounts of cardboard, I flush only when absolutely necessary (this is a reference only Australians will get), I have energy saving lightbulbs, I feel helpless and hopeless regularly and I don’t use plastic bags anymore.

Not good enough?

Well, there’s more. Climate change is taking us to hell in a handcart of our own making – so I’m told. And what is there to do in hell apart from be hot? Read, of course. And if you need books you need writers - writers of escapist amusing tales.

While we shelter under our solar reflective shields we’ll want something to laugh at, apart from each other, so why not a funny book? Yes, I predict sales of books will skyrocket right through the ozone layer. The bits of it that are left, that is. And note that I say books, not stories.

I say books because my friend tells me that in the next ten years over half the world’s power will be used to drive the Internet. And this, as we all know in our brave new world of sustainability, is not sustainable. We won’t be downloading at will or Kindling whatever we’ve browsed for. We’ll be huddled around our solar powered air con reading fifth hand copies of books that are handed around in exchange for the last pots of bio dynamic yoghurt.

And some of those books will be romantic comedy. Now the comedy bit we all get. Nothing like a bleak end-of-world scenario to bring out the gallows humour. After 911 it was noted that sales of sweets and chocolate skyrocketed, people stayed home in bed and shagged more, and also drank more. Sort of like that scene from the film Downfall where, as the Russian army advances on Berlin and Hitler has done away with himself, the German officers run around with women in French knickers drinking and carousing. I know I’d be in bed swigging from a bottle of crème de menthe, surrounded by chocolate wrappers and worn out from some final fling of the senses.

And the ‘romantic’ bit? Right up to the last pre annihilation moment there will still be couples. And where there are couples, there are issues – ranging from wild jealousy to who should put the garbage out. The last loved up pair may be dressed in solar reflecting, urine recycling, substitute polymer hemp, pollution resistant, full body suits but they will still be psychically intertwined, full of lust, bewildered by their mate’s way of seeing things, pissed off at some housework issue, full of tenderness, guilt, denial, boredom, passion and ambivalence.

We all experience it, and some of us like to read about it, or even write about it - because we can’t all go around on our daily business thinking about how many nuclear power plants we must build to power our net addiction.

I rest my case.

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