THE IDEAL - CRETIN AND WHORE

Here is another image inspired by one of the deriding slogans from the original Enartete Kunst exhibit in Munich, 1937. "The Ideal - Cretin and Whore", along with "An insult to German Womanhood", were slogans used to describe works of art that certain Nazi art/cultural theorists felt graphically expressed base sexuality and exalted people of the lower classes, likes pimps, prostitutes, idiots etc, above the German bourgeoisie. In the exhibit these slogans largely referred to the work of Otto Mueller and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner.

I was interested in these two judgments, the cretin and the whore, but was at a loss at how to portray them (without defaulting to stereotypes), or how to incorporate them into a composition. At first there was just a single character, and various attempts were made using different compositions, poses, colour schemes etc., but it never seemed right. It came together when I added a second character, each symbolizing one of the ideas.

The cretin is located at the bottom of frame. Her features: the submissive pose, the blank expression, the cool colour scheme (with an almost sickly green), are meant to represent her stunted, or limited mental nature. The whore, with her more open posing, and the red based colour speaks to her sexual nature, but the desaturation and her inversion indicates that this apparent promiscuity is excessive, forced, unbalanced.

The hit of red represents the anger and intensity of these words, this judgement. The red is splattered on the page, representing how quickly theses judgements can be made, and how the effects of these ideas can bleed out in unanticipated ways. The orchids growing out of these trails represent the true strength and beauty contained within these individuals that is obscured by the judgements placed upon them.