There is no conspiracy.

[daphnep]

Okay, after a fair amount of interest in my "Improving Aphrodite" post from the other day, I made it public, and I'm happy to see so many people as piqued by the injustice to art and anatomy as I was.

If you're here linked from another site, welcome, and come right in.

I feel I need to say one more word, though, in defense of the company (and the individuals) making the models and reproductions. This is my industry, it's my profession, and I'd like to tell you a little bit about how it works, and in the process, what YOU can do to stop it when you see something like this that enrages you.

Basically, there is no conspiracy. These are NOT a deliberate and wanton desecration of the original artworks; the sculptors and model-makers are "innocent victims" of the system and not deliberately trying to persecute women or harm anyone's body-image. In reproducing art, we often have to alter it a bit to fit the medium, heightening and brightening a painting's colors to make it look better (and more salable) on a poster, for example. What happened here wasn't someone saying "let's make Venus stick-thin and bobble-headed, anorectic and childlike, and carve away the flesh of her tummy and the bones of her hips", they just made a little sculpture and thought, looking at it, that it didn't look "right". So they adjusted a bit. They adjusted using their best eye and their best judgment, in a world where their own eyes and judgment have been formed by a million other images that came before this one. For every Aphrodite this model-maker has seen, he/she has also seen a million Photoshopped movie posters, advertisements, and magazine covers. His/her kids probably play with "Bratz" and "Barbie" dolls. He/she probably has body issues of his/her own, as most people do in our culture today.

And when that individual went to produce a model, they didn't see that it was inaccurate and grotesque, they thought it looked like something their customers (potentially YOU) would want to buy in a store or catalogue. And this is retail, and as I always say, "retail is the purest form of democracy", and it's a democracy that works really well: we can't keep producing anything that you, the consumers, won't buy. Keep in mind that I took those photos from a wholesale, to-the-trade publication. I didn't order those items to put on the shelf for MY customers. You probably haven't seen those on the shelves where you shop. The democracy is working. If no-one orders it, if I and all the other buyers think the pieces are hideous, the model-makers are going to come up with something else to sell. That's how the system works.

So you can write letters to companies if you want to, and explain why you won't buy their products, but it's the "buying the product or not" that the company cares about most--the system has been shaped by consumer sales: Oprah on a magazine cover, thin, sells more issues than Oprah on a magazine cover, curvy. Movie posters that show a disproportionally stretched actress sell more tickets than movie posters that show the actress as she is. "Bratz" dolls sell better than "Happy to be me" dolls, no matter what lip-service is paid to body-love and self acceptance.

So I want you to see these images, so that you can become a more savvy consumer of images, and so that you can recognize the distortions when you see them on retail shelves and advertising yourself. But I'd also like to implore you, before you dash off an angry letter to a wholesale art reproduction company (especially if it's a business you have not previously supported with your dollars) to think about the businesses you do support and the ways that you can positively encourage them to change and improve their habits, and watch out for times you find yourself "voting" for unrealistically deformed bodies, yourself, by responding to advertising that builds on all the same values and misconceptions that formed the terrible shapes of the plastic goddesses, below.

That's all. Thank you, again, for reading.

Comments

[miriam-heddy.livejournal.com]

I get what miera_c is saying about feeling betrayed by one corner of the universe that seemed not to be filled with fat-hatred. And I'd like to offer a critique of your argument that, "But a little perspective reminds us that we do still have the originals, we still have the whole genre of "classic art" as well as the good quality reproductions."

Walter Benjamin, in "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," introduced the idea that the art copy affected our perceptions of the value of the original. He wrote, "For the first time in world history, mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual" and that the reproducibility of the art can destroy its aura.

Anyone who's ever seen a "classic" piece of art that's much reproduced (like, say, Van Gogh's "Starry Night") in a museum has had the experience of feeling that the original is smaller, less impressive, different, and maybe even wrong in some way. We may expect it to be smooth when it's textured and layered with paint. We may think it looks darker and less lovely than we thought it would be. The very fact that it's such a big deal may raise our expectations to levels that can't be fulfilled. For the most part, we may come away with a sense of "eh" and then feel bad that we couldn't get caught up in the ritual worship of the original.

Reproductions change us and the way we see art just as our experience of it is changed by the way it's displayed in the museum. (And I know that, as you study it, none of these ideas are new so I don't mean to lecture to an expert but instead want to bring these ideas into the context and let the butt up against your claim and miera_c's post.

I cannot now see the Venus de Milo without thinking, "She's naked without her magnetic clothing." That's a silly example, of course.

How many of us, though, having seen these examples won't look at the thicker-waisted originals differently and see them as flawed in the way that we are likewise conditioned to see ourselves as flawed?

I stand with miera_c in thinking that it's not so simple to opt-out or not buy in or to just apply a media critical lens and remain unaffected.

[daphnep.livejournal.com]

Huh--fascinating. Thanks for this. I guess one of my principle long-held conceptions is that in art, the reproduction is always inferior to the original--we just can't duplicate (far less transcend) the original piece. (I mean, art can be transcended, obviously, but by another piece of art...not by plastic kitsch copies) I look at Starry Night and say "huh, look how richly dark it is! I never realized it was so textured!" We make postcards and put as much detail in as we can, fully aware of everything we're leaving out, shrugging at one point and saying "well, that's as good as we can get"...being grateful that that's ten times better than last year's technology ever got.

I also get scornful of people who say "this poster is not the same as the original!" Sometime I even respond, "well, no. Unfortunately, you can't afford the original." I'm joking, but I'm also being kind of snide. It seems so obvious to me--I figured that out as a young teen, looking at an original painting: "OH. You CAN'T see it like this from the books!" Then I devoted a bunch of time and money traveling around and looking, just because of that realization. I think that's a key part of art education: the WHY of going to originals, even in a world where reproductions come so cheap and easily. It's why I take kids groups into museums, to instill that idea as early as possible: the reproductions will never be the same, never be as complex, as nuanced, as good as THIS.

The thought of accepting the exact inverse of that value, of admitting that in this particular culture, real art has somehow become so rare and inaccessible that some people WILL be satisfied by reproductions, that they will turn the measuring tape around, even, and hold the originals up to those, well, frankly, it challenges everything I work for.

Not to say it isn't true--just that it's going to be incredibly disappointing if it does turn out to be the case (to me and a lot of other people working in museums and fine art education).

I'm ordering the Walter Benjamin book online right now: thanks for that tip. I'm going to think on this...probably for quite some time.

[miriam-heddy.livejournal.com]

I live within a train's ride of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and I've actually heard people comment on original works in a disparaging or disappointed tone. And it's not all that surprising, given that many of the great paintings are reproduced to be quite a bit larger than they are in real life, and to the untrained eye, many of the fine distinctions are lost.

I think art education is useful, but most don't get much of it in schools, and so artworks (especially via reproductions) have become just another commodity, often indistinguishable from advertisements (and in fact many pieces of art have been used in advertisements in one form or another). It doesn't help that the Metropolitan Museum charges $20 for adults and is beyond the reach of many people who might be interested (and yes, the fee is "suggested," but if you don't pay that or want to pay less, you have to deal with major scorn from the ticket sellers).

My own perspective is to see art from within that commodity culture, and so it's sad but not surprising to see that reproductions are being influenced by the same beauty standards in place right now.

I remember what happened when there was that attempt to colorize old, classic black and white films, and how there was a real break between historians and the masses (many of whom won't see a b&w film as a rule).

I can't help wondering if at some point we'll get to a point where people will suggest actually changing paintings--improving them in similar ways. I suspect reproductions are a step along that path, as reproductions are often the closest people ever get to seeing the original artpiece.

Art doesn't really have a fixed value (witness the resurgence in popularity of the Pre-Raphaelites). So we're definitely conditioned to view art through our current aesthetic.

Anyway, rambling on now. But I hope you enjoy the Benjamin! My husband, who got his BFA in film, introduced me to him, and then I read him again in grad school in literature.

[daphnep.livejournal.com]

Let me follow that rambling by veery widely off-topic, myself:

I know what you're talking about with the "disappointment" when looking at art, I'd put the Mona Lisa up there as the obvious example of a widely "disappointing" painting. But I wonder (and wonder what you think) if that's really due to comparisons to reproductions, or just because the reputation is so large, the original can't live up to it? Like whenever you see movie stars, they inevitably seem so short--their presence on the big screen automatically, in my mind, makes them large, so large that a real person (who then turns famous) can never live up to it. What if it's the same with art--not that we've seen so many beautiful mugs and calendars with Mona Lisa on them, that the painting can't compare, but just that people wonder, looking at the actual oil, why there are so many mugs and calendars? That people disappointed by the Met (Oh! my heart!) are comparing to some ethereal "something" that they didn't notice in the reproductions, and that they didn't notice in the galleries, either?

And speaking of the Met, I am personally crushed to hear that you've gotten scorn from ticket-sellers there. It is one of my favorite features of that museum that the ticket price is, indeed, suggested, and all through college I could continually pay $1 a visit, and still to this day encourage all the students I know to do the same. I always felt that it was more of a *wink* *wink* *nudge* when I went to that window and said "I'd like to pay a dollar, please", and got, in return, that little metal clippy badge. Say it ain't so!

But you're right, art absolutely does not have a fixed value. I say almost every day, simply, "it's worth whatever anyone will pay for it." And then go back to work, making sure that certain art will continue to be appreciated so that someone will continue to pay for it, indeed, so that it can be preserved and remain relevant in our community.