Grotesque

Grotesque RightAsRain hates women and loathes fat women in particular -- so does Starax (or whoever 3D Soup is). Let's not prettify this assault by calling it "art". I'm just here to report that RaR is decivilizing again. Visit Black Swan (197, 122, 252)

Posted via email from Prokofy's posterous

Comments

[Dale Innis]

I thought it was beautiful.

[Lem Skall]

You're really losing it lately. At least entertain us with a long rant about it.

[Prokofy Neva]

Oh, I don't need to rant with something that is that blatantly brutal and is meant to show contempt -- of women, art, Second Life, lots of things.

It is meant to pretend to be art, so that everyone will get all pious and politically-correct and feminist and anti-weightist about it, but then have the last laugh because its makers and curators are in fact bludgeoning SL with nihilism and hate.

[Lem Skall]

"meant to"? Riiiight, and LL should have called the police for the vandalization of their building by Woodbury University.

[Darien Caldwell]

Black Swan? I thought Rezzible left the grid and made their own. Or does it belong to someone else now?

[Prokofy Neva]

Of course it's meant to be a slap. Starax does kitsch; but he does kitsch with venom (the Hummelware fisherman being picked up by his collar by a predatory bird).

Lem, you are fucking *ridiculous* if you think the Woodbury chalk expedition isn't the grandest form of vandalism on multiple levels, the literal, the banal, the evil. The point of "8/14" was to make everyone complicit in the Lord of the Flies. To make it seem like even revered people like Philip Linden or Filthy Fluno were involved in writing BAN PROK which they weren't. It is about decivilization, destruction, nihilism.

I thought you were smarter than that, even with your own nihilist tilts, but I guess not.

Black Swan didn't leave the grid, they are having a hard to getting off because they can't even steal their own objects fully, so they say narf-narf.

But it's not over until the fat lady lays down and dies.

[Lem Skall]

Prok, you're spinning. You made a case for the police then, which it wasn't. Also, you have no evidence it was the WU. And you have no clue what Rezzable "meant" to do now. But it never matters to you. A target is a target and everything goes. What's really crazy is that you probably really believe that crap.

[Jacek Antonelli]

Awww, relax and learn to love a little, Prok! One could just as easily view it as a tribute to the beauty of the female form, in all its variety of shapes and sizes. :)

It's you, as the viewer, who chooses to project malice onto the piece. The artist did not put it there.

[Prokofy Neva]

1. The Woodburies have confessed and blogged everywhere, of course there's evidence, huh?

2. Yes, the police might well have been called, frankly, and it's merely manipulative bullshit to claim otherwise and to join in their malice. Are you one of them?

3. Of course Rezzable's Jon Himoff is pulling yet another vicious stunt.

4. I don't project malice; it is there, the artist is as much a manipulator as anyone.But it's not art, it's an assult.

[Lem Skall]

Ah, yes, my bad. I see now that WU organized it even if it's not clear who actually wrote "BAN PROK".

No, police has nothing to do with it if LL owns the building and they approved it. Yes, I MUST be one of them: http://www.geckogo.com/Guide/Thailand/Ban-Prok-To-Lem/

Of course YOU are pulling another stunt.

No one else saw the malice that is "there". And I can't be blind to it because I see the malice right here.

[Prokofy Neva]

The Woodburies have explained who chalked the BAN PROK: it was a Linden. Perhaps Pathfinder, perhaps Soft, who the hell knows. A Linden.

The police might well have been called to deal with a drunken busload of assholes even given "permission".

The fat lady is a deliberate assault. It is not art.

Not everything that looks like art is art; art is an assault and not civilization, then it is no longer art, Numb Skull, but then, I don't expect you to be alive to these distinctions.

[Lem Skall]

Prok, whenever you set your mind on someone you start making up stuff like this to inflame everyone against your target. THAT is a "deliberate assault". And let me tell you that it's not working.

Let me also tell you what is probably the main motivation behind the Odalisque. It's not for the sake of art and I definitely won't defend it as being great art. It's most of all a showcase for what is technically possible with the right tools. And it is a very smart choice for such a showcase.

Realistic skins and bodies have been some of the most difficult things to render in SL. So a naked person is a good choice for starters. Now, if it would have been a typically attractive woman or man, it would have been pornographic. If it would have been an overweight man, it would have been simply confusing for most people because we are more used to art that represents female nudes. Hence, an overweight woman, in a peaceful, non-provocative state.

There. Nothing malicious, no deliberate assault. If it offends you in any way, that is your problem and it doesn't make it an assault, let alone a deliberate one.

[Prokofy Neva]

No, Numb Skull, I just write what's up.

It's clear there's an agenda here.

It's totally about dissing Second Life, and also about pushing some new tool thing with sculpties. Yeah, we all got that.

It's not even about objectification; it's about derision and even assault; the creator and the sponsor could have made something beautiful; they could have even made *this* woman beautiful (a live model may have been used) but instead they chose to show her like a lit-up slab of beef, asleep, unconscious, not even dreaming.

We're "more used" to art showing females? Well, that's only because males have dominated the art world over the years.

Pity Himoff, who is himself a total dick, and his lap-dog artist Starax/3D Soup didn't draw on the rich trove of penis art including of this realistic type, available in SL.

Of course it's malicious, as it not only objectifies, by showing a naked unconscious and grotesque figure; it snickers and ridicules; and it does it "for the sake of the tools".

People who make art "for the sake of the tools" are tools themselves; they are engaged at best in engineering; at worst in assault with a tire iron (a tired irony?).

This is a case of assault. It's malicious, and there's no need to prettify it.

[Lem Skall]

Thanks, Prok. At least we finally got the rant we normally expect from you.

[Prokofy Neva]

Sarah Nerd has a different take on this:

http://www.your2ndplace.com/node/1578

I disagree with her that the face of this woman illustrates "shame-free content". The face looks the most awkward and grafted on of the entire work -- it floats almost free and pasted-on from the body. The hair is particularly weird, like some sort of wig or doll, which is off-putting when the skin and shapes of the body were made realistic.

It's about the tools; it's by tools; it's not about showing the beauty of a woman; it's about using tools to show what in fact these males find ugly.

What happens with a social exhibition of this type is that people are so shocked and so conditioned that they try to turn it into something comprehensible, either "art" or "my self portrait, and it's a good thing" or "beauty" or "comfort with sexuality" or whatever double-plus-good thing they can dredge up.

It's about tools and tools, however.

[Lem Skall]

Thanks, Prok. At last we got the normal rant from you.

[ichabod Antfarm]

"Not everything that looks like art is art" It doesn't even *look* like art and I am the last person who thinks art is decoration and pretty pictures. It doesn't even rise to the level of kitsch. At best, it is "art" the way a semi-literate teenybopper does "art" when they report the startling discovery that God spelled backwards is Dog. PASS!!

[Paisley Beebe]

Its one piece of Arse...ahem Art where the bottom really does follow you around the room..Derek and Clive...Pete and Dud..

[melponeme_k]

It looks like a rip off of another artist.

Particularly Lucian Freud.

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?in_article_id=147546&in_page_id=34

Which I'm not surprised. I see a lot of that on the Grid. At least some acknowledge it, but not most.

[Prokofy Neva]

Good eye, melponeme, I'd forgotten about Lucien Freud, and yes, it's very much reminiscent of his realist nudes, and frankly, I can't help wondering if he falls into the "tool exploiting a tool and hating women" category too.

At least Malevich made tasteful squares and circles when he moved into the realm of the objectless to forsake painterly figurative and Impressionist art.

These are assaults.

[Lum Lumley]

Wow, for someone who consistently castigates "wikitards" for having no background in humanities, you really are pretty tone-deaf about art here.

From an artistic standpoint, it's fine. There are plenty of ways to communicate the malice you attribute, and this does none of them. Frankly, the most "offensive" thing you seem to find of this sculpty is that the woman's fat. She wasn't portrayed in a degrading or pornographic manner, and she seems to be quite happily sleeping.

From a technical standpoint, I was unaware that they were pushing a tool to generate sculpties like that, but it does make a certain amount of sense - it's clearly a render from a RL model and it'd be interesting (and of course, people being what they are, sometimes horrifying) to see what else could be done with it.

My main reaction when seeing this? I buy art in SL all the time but this is pretty wackily overpriced, even if it is unique :) If they were asking $L1500 instead of $L15000 I'd find room for it, though, and not because I hate women or think SL is dying or whatever.

Really, I do think you are projecting a bit here. Which is fine - art does that.

[Prokofy Neva]

Actually, it's because I'm NOT tone-deaf about art that I get that this is not art, dear, but nice try.

This is definitely a Two Cultures debate in which the scientists pretend they are now artists like they pretend they are a lot of other things merely because everything is digitalized. Lame.

You are merely participating in the manipulation of this "art," Lumley, by fetching up to give homilies about how we must all embrace the fat lady within, that we must all love the fat art form, that this is beautiful, if we were but to only recognize it and withhold our prejudices, blah blah blah.

Emperor's new clothes.

You are missing an entire context for this art:

1. Rezzable is leaving and wants to make a "statement", a "Swan Song" and a "Fat Lady Singing" except...she's not singing, she's dead.

2. The fat lady is showing a tool more than anything -- it's about showing a brand-new use of sculpties. It could have been used to show a fruit plate, like Qarl Linden did in his first rendition -- nobody called the fruit plate art. This is a fruit plate.

3. Rezzable wants to make a grand statement about the inadequacies of the platform for him and his vaunted 'science' of pushing new tools blah blah.

4. The perfect way to make this statement is to hoist all the SLintelligentsia by their own petard and get them all gushing emotionally about how beautiful fat ladies are.

5. You fell into the trap neatly OR you are part of the conspiracy (likely the latter) in which you know that it isn't art, you know that we know that it isn't art, but you play the game so that you can try to belittle and shame someone pointing this out (me).

6. Yes, 'art does that' and you're projecting -- but this isn't art. It's an assault. Assaults of this meta type make people project as part of the assault.

[VBMeister Young]

Prokofy Neva please go to a doctor and get some prescription drugs. I don"t want to visit america if it is populated by people like you.

[brinda allen]

@ VBMeister....thats OK...we got nuff ppl here.

[VBMeister Young]

Yes, you have a lot of terrible people.