I think everyone around the globe loves the French language for so many reasons even when they don't always understand it. What is it about that breathy self-assurance that casts a spell over us all?
Like many 'foreign' languages it holds an aesthetic resonance, but then so does Italian, Japanese, and Spanish, among others. Personally, I kind melt when I hear a Russian woman even just explaining street directions in Moscow.
Some languages are so melodious that they roll off the tongue in such a way that we're instantly transported to distant lands across the ocean. Naturally, our cultural legacy is that each language after centuries of evolution possess personal expressions that evoke the flavour and temperament of each country.
One of my favourites is indeed from France. It's the following:
"The best part of sex is climbing the stairs to the bedroom."
Now, because I often frequent Dr Google, I typed this curious adage into his little window to see if I could find out where it came from. Sadly, all that came up were thousands of articles like the following;
Sex Tips for Women: 15 Handy Tips on How to Be Better in Bed
And from Men's Health, a real beauty for the insecure man:
40 Foreplay Tips That Will Make the Sex So Much Hot
So as you can see, I was not going to come anywhere near anything heady or highbrow that might lead me to a reference page or a linguistic history of expressions from literary sources around the world. But, hey! I'll do further research on this and keep you posted.
So, "Revenons à nos moutons!" Another favourite of mine that means; 'to return to the subject at hand'. And thus, the subject I want to investigate is about Desire and Painting.
It occurred to me while watching a small TikTok clip of a sexy young woman singing and dancing to a slow Cha Cha Cha French song from the 1960's (Zsiou Bisou Bisou). The first minute of it was positively electric and desire appeared to spread like the measles throughout the cocktail party. I quickly understood that it was from the American television hit show,'Mad Men'. I missed that series, but anyway, like I said, the first minute of this clip was riveting to watch. Desire seemed to drip from everyone, men and women included during this 3:00 minute song. It was very sexy in the way that the French can sometimes be in real life though not always, because French films which we're all programmed to believe aren't real despite all the hype.
So, apparently, this one minute of TikTok got me all hot and bothered about desire, something we all know about because we feel it all the time. Isn't it that mysterious carnal perfume that floats around us at the moment when we're suddenly turned by someone, or something?
For centuries advertisers have exploited it to push certain brands of coffee, drive certain vehicles, smoke cigarettes, everything in fact. Without desire there would be no Art of Advertising, no Madison Avenue.
Being a painter, I naturally pondered this nuanced human sense in so far as it manifests in the world of Painting. How has desire infected the world Painting? It's so unlike the verisimilitude of photography that was invented at the end of the 19th century and which changed mankind forever. It was also immediately hijacked for the purpose of making lewd photos of women, by, and for men. Pornography had again erupted when desire was re-configured into a celluloid art form.
Somehow, it's not as easy to imagine something like an oil painting as provoking the same ardent verisimilitude of lust so easily transmitted through photographic means. 'Sexy' just doesn't seem to cut it in the abstract world of oil painting, though I do confess that I've personally seen at least one painting of a women which aroused in me something quite close. A picture of St Margaret and the Dragon by Titian in the Prado.
Titian (Titiano Vecellio) painted in 1565, The Prado Museum Collection, Madrid
It turned me on in the strangest kind of way when I saw it in my early and vulnerable twenties. Frankly, it turned me upside down and I've loved every woman painted by Titian ever since. Btw, his daughter Lavinia Vecellio was his muse and posed as a model for many of his pictures.
But when it comes to the creation of a painting I'm really talking about something completely different. It's not about the subject matter that interests me, but about how an artist paints a picture by pushing it right up to point that leaves a viewer on the edge of their seat. If the artist is clever enough to leave the picture in that state, then it will live on leaving future viewers in a state of perpetual longing. This is a place of limbo that can separate a great work of art from all the rest. A successful painting, like any other work of art, leaves us in a state of desire.
So I propose the painting above (top), from October 3, 2023, to illustrate this idea. (And btw, I use my own work to show what it is that I'm pontificating about, because as they say, "I have a dog in this fight.")
So I guess what I'm trying get at is that it isn't the content, or subject matter, that is as important as the way a picture is painted. That is to say that what is left out of a picture is often more important than what has been included in it. Thus, the desire is created in the viewer by the clever manipulation of the painter.
When a painting arrives at its apex of desire, isn't it bit like a being on a roller coaster at the amusement park when the fragile cable car into which we are all strapped teeters at the very peak of the first drop before plummeting earthward leaving us screaming with delight? It's a place between two worlds of thought, where pure emotion resides.
This is the exact opposite of pornography, because paintings too, can also be pornographic when they reveal more to us than is absolutely necessary in order to convey an idea. Consequently, an image that is overloaded needlessly die from excess weight. A successful picture draws the viewer in, while an unsuccessful one pushes a viewer away.
For instance, I was once walking with a friend on a busy boardwalk by the sea. A young woman wearing just leggings skipped past us. My friend remarked that Leggings were the greatest thing that Fashion had invented in our own generation. I didn't say anything, but all at once I saw just how differently we understood sexiness in a woman. Indeed, the majority of men seem to love leggings too because the woman's outline is promptly available for all the world to admire and judge so instantaneously.
I realised just how differently I looked at women (and art), almost 180 degrees actually. I am clearly in the minority on this because for me, a desire is evoked when a women strolls the boardwalk not in leggings but wearing a French dress from the 1940's. But hey! Isn't it great that we're all so different?
So as a painter, especially in this series at the beach, I'm mostly interested finding that exact moment at the very place when the parameters of an image might suggest the fullest expression of the sea and sky. It's a place of yearning to be sure, one not unlike some of the symphonies of Mahler.
Here is a more recent picture from the 18th of April 2025, that might further speak of my search of this ideal lyricism. Of course every painter must work from his/her own ideals. These are simply my own.
Addendum: Because I'm a dreamer, my secret desire as a painter is to leave a viewer astonished. Yes, yes, I know, I know,,, lots of artists desire this as well, and so they should!
After all, we creators like to think that we are all gods and maybe we're all just too foolish enough to attempt it in the first place. Me, maybe even more so because I apparently want to explain it too.
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