2.4.12

Lady with a Parrot by Eugene Joors

(cross-posted from my very new & addicting tumblr).

I love this picture!

The more I look at this image, the more innuendo I seem to see. So suggestive, the way her dress almost flesh-toned, and the manner in which she’s stroking the parrot’s head… I’m guessing she’s a prostitute or someone’s kept woman.

The setting is mash-up of 19th century orientalism and japonisme, possibly (or probably) meant to evoke a sensual and luxurious atmosphere, ripe for the projection of European (sexual and colonial) fantasy.

The crane in the background (whose pose mirrors the parrot's position) reminds me of Manet’s Nana. There, it was supposed to signify female vanity. Here, the avian imagery in this painting is taken further, with the parrot and the feathered fan. By visually linking the lady to the parrot and the crane through the fan, Joors is casting her in the role of a decorative pet. Her fan looks like an evening fan, while her dress— her dress is odd. It has the high collar that one would expect on a day dress, but the sleeves are short enough that she can wear long gloves (causing that unexpected slash of flesh, right at the middle of the sleeve, so that the sensitive spot inside the elbow will be exposed if she unbends her arms). I suppose her clothing is as ambiguous and as erotisized as the lady’s social position.

Her face is turned away from the viewer, which both impedes our access to her as a subject, even as it allows our gaze to view her face more comfortably as an object. Her body, corseted and padded into fashionable curves, is turned directly to us- is almost offered to our gaze as a thing we can apprehend— and her meticulously painted pink ear is an open orifice, passively (yet alertly) awaiting someone’s command: come over here.


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