I did a Google search just now for paintings in blood and everything was unbelievably ugly and amateurish.
I'm sure someone has done a decent painting in blood.
I don't think the idea is impressive or particularly interesting. It seems to appeal mostly to the juvenile mind. It's become one of those horrible cliches in art.
And then you'll have idiots hurting or killing animals to get blood for something like this. Or hurting themselves.
I remember liking Marc Quinn's head in supercooled blood back in the early days of Saatchi.
I'm more impressed when artists can evoke blood than when they garishly incorporate it in their work.
I suppose there are some cases where artists work with their own menstrual blood and it doesn't feel exploitive or anything. I think that's almost a "blood exception," because there blood is being taken from one's body without one's consent. So it almost feels like a "taking back" of something that could even be seen as "stolen." Granted, this is part of the cycles of fertility which allow us to bring forth new life. So it gets complicated. To what degree is this "taking" a "giving" by nature? This sort of blood art broaches the usual taboos concerning menstruation. I think instantly of the heightened fear this can cause, particularly in males. It probably scalds the male gaze. This recoiling is sort of funny but also illuminating. To what degree is this recoiling a form of control of the female? By stigmatizing this process, the male is able to "put the female in her place." We think of the isolation of menstruating women in so many cultures. Is it true fear on the part of the male? Is it rooted in the power of fertility, its mojo? Or is it about males not wanting to be discommoded? In "modern" cultures, it seems to be more of a primal fear of blood. This is not a uniquely male fear. But I have to wonder whether post-pubescent women generally have less fear of bleeding as a result of their cycle? Probably studies have been done. Yet I have known women who get faint when they see bleeding, just as I have known men who have this reaction.
I realize there are probably countless works of art in which human (or animal) blood figures prominently. I'm not so interested in this that I want to read in depth about it. It was just a passing thought, wondering if a search would bring up anything of (problematic?) visual beauty.
Sometimes blood in art is just there as part of nature. I saw a pretty powerful photograph tonight of a dead deer where the last few moments of its life had been written in blood on a country highway. It had obviously been hit by a car and staggered to the other side of the road and fallen there. Its suffering was almost certainly mercifully brief. Would that it had been instantaneous, but this outcome was still so much better than those cases where struck animals wander off in horrible pain that lasts on and on. That photograph was like a painting but there was no manipulation, no animal abuse by humans, no human-laden guilt for us to process because of some ridiculous wile laid out by a manipulative and unethical artist. It was just horrible nature drawing an ideogram with her finger on the earth. It was just that force, that voice saying, "Look on my works."
I'm sure someone has done a decent painting in blood.
I don't think the idea is impressive or particularly interesting. It seems to appeal mostly to the juvenile mind. It's become one of those horrible cliches in art.
And then you'll have idiots hurting or killing animals to get blood for something like this. Or hurting themselves.
I remember liking Marc Quinn's head in supercooled blood back in the early days of Saatchi.
I'm more impressed when artists can evoke blood than when they garishly incorporate it in their work.
I suppose there are some cases where artists work with their own menstrual blood and it doesn't feel exploitive or anything. I think that's almost a "blood exception," because there blood is being taken from one's body without one's consent. So it almost feels like a "taking back" of something that could even be seen as "stolen." Granted, this is part of the cycles of fertility which allow us to bring forth new life. So it gets complicated. To what degree is this "taking" a "giving" by nature? This sort of blood art broaches the usual taboos concerning menstruation. I think instantly of the heightened fear this can cause, particularly in males. It probably scalds the male gaze. This recoiling is sort of funny but also illuminating. To what degree is this recoiling a form of control of the female? By stigmatizing this process, the male is able to "put the female in her place." We think of the isolation of menstruating women in so many cultures. Is it true fear on the part of the male? Is it rooted in the power of fertility, its mojo? Or is it about males not wanting to be discommoded? In "modern" cultures, it seems to be more of a primal fear of blood. This is not a uniquely male fear. But I have to wonder whether post-pubescent women generally have less fear of bleeding as a result of their cycle? Probably studies have been done. Yet I have known women who get faint when they see bleeding, just as I have known men who have this reaction.
I realize there are probably countless works of art in which human (or animal) blood figures prominently. I'm not so interested in this that I want to read in depth about it. It was just a passing thought, wondering if a search would bring up anything of (problematic?) visual beauty.
Sometimes blood in art is just there as part of nature. I saw a pretty powerful photograph tonight of a dead deer where the last few moments of its life had been written in blood on a country highway. It had obviously been hit by a car and staggered to the other side of the road and fallen there. Its suffering was almost certainly mercifully brief. Would that it had been instantaneous, but this outcome was still so much better than those cases where struck animals wander off in horrible pain that lasts on and on. That photograph was like a painting but there was no manipulation, no animal abuse by humans, no human-laden guilt for us to process because of some ridiculous wile laid out by a manipulative and unethical artist. It was just horrible nature drawing an ideogram with her finger on the earth. It was just that force, that voice saying, "Look on my works."
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