Saturday, March 13, 2010

We get mail!

A postcard from the Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts turned up in the Riddled tea-room, held to the beer fridge with an amusing fridge magnet in the form of an animated drag-&-drop spider.






We're not really sure what is going on here, but it is probably Allegorical, or even Anagogical, because it used to be OK to paint ladies who are over-supplied in the breast department as long as they were symbolic of philosophical abstractions. The other side of the coin was that you could not paint philosophical abstractions, for fear that people would see them as symbolic of ladies doubly-cursed with multiple boobies and a wardrobe malfunction.

To put it another way, the paintings of Rubens with their rich visual language and political subtexts were what Baroque audiences read over coffee in the morning, where today there are Day-by-Day strips. Such is progress.

Personally I interpret the lactiferous lady as representing The Welfare State, while the delapidated old dude beside her represents the Liberal Sense of Entitlement; both have been humbled by the Ineluctable Logic of the Free Market, who is not visible in this truncated detail. Which is just as well because no-one needs to see Milton Friedman without clothes.

On the other hand, Zombie J. G. Ballard reckoned that she symbolised "the polymastic mushroom cloud of the Priscilla test, the Ephesian Diana icon of the post-Hiroshima media marketplace, her multiple mammary outgrowths holding out the promise of regression and oblivion". On the prehensile tail other other hand, he was talking shite, and judging from the tide's-out state of my akvavit supply he's been self-medicating embalming again.

8 comments:

mikey said...

I find myself torn. While I REALLY want to live in a place where people seem completely unable to keep their clothes on and their junk covered, especially if that place also supports a rare population of multibreasted cutiepies, it appears to have a significant negative side effect.

Yes, I speak of their unfortunate crippling spine disease. If I can live a place where boobs are not only out, but they are not limited to a mere pair per babe, but the trade-off is that I'll have to shuffle along, hunched over like an ancient osteoporitic centenarian, I'm going to have a very difficult time making up my mind to travel to this Reubens place you speak of...

Smut Clyde said...

A rucksack would help to balance the weight.

mikey said...

Lending a whole new meaning to the concept of "Humping Ruck"...

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

I'm just so happy to know that my postal cards are delivered by hunchbacked beakbills on ice skates.
~

Smut Clyde said...

Say what you like about the Thurn-und-Taxis postal service, they are at least an equal-opportunity employer.

mikey said...

I like him. Of all the images in constant rotation on the intert00bz, from has cheesburger to carrie prejean to ghotse to sarah to jonah to dancing babies, I want to hug that little motherfucker.

And fix him up with my casually dressed monkey...

Substance McGravitas said...

I'm just so happy to know that my postal cards are delivered by hunchbacked beakbills on ice skates.

Have you not heard of a little thing called GLOBAL WARMING???

Hamish Mack said...

That beak headed little fucker has been nicking the staff do-nuts I think.