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Nude Today with Dr. William A. Lipsmacker
Saturday, January 19, 2008
Walter Richard Sickert: his brush was more impressive than
his penis
Saturday, January 19, 2008
Walter Richard Sickert: his brush was more impressive than
his penis
“Sickert makes out the forms which
move in obscure London
bedrooms,” wrote Gustave
Geoffrey. That’s more than I could
do last night, inveigled by one of
my students to join a rowdy
bacchanal in his filthy, smokefilled
bedsit. Still, a fascinating night, full
of mystery and suspense. Gingerly
sipping my triple espresso this
morning, I find myself wondering
who “Persephone” was and why her
telephone number is scrawled on
the back of my right hand.
Sickert himself would have loved it.
It was even in Camden, where he
came to paint his heavy-set
prostitutes a century earlier.
Today, of course, the place is full
of young, pretty, intoxicated girls
move in obscure London
bedrooms,” wrote Gustave
Geoffrey. That’s more than I could
do last night, inveigled by one of
my students to join a rowdy
bacchanal in his filthy, smokefilled
bedsit. Still, a fascinating night, full
of mystery and suspense. Gingerly
sipping my triple espresso this
morning, I find myself wondering
who “Persephone” was and why her
telephone number is scrawled on
the back of my right hand.
Sickert himself would have loved it.
It was even in Camden, where he
came to paint his heavy-set
prostitutes a century earlier.
Today, of course, the place is full
of young, pretty, intoxicated girls
| Updated at least 26½ times a day |
© lizardmagazine.com, 2008
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who will have sex with you for fun, especially if they think it might improve
their grades. And yet, leafing idly through my Sickert catalogues, and
deciding to give Amanda Reilly’s sloppy module an alpha double plus, I
am reminded that is not quite right. Sickert would have hated our fun;
and he would have loved to paint it with brutal frankness.
That hatred sprang from his hideously deformed genitals. Picasso
claimed his penis as his paintbrush, and it was, by all accounts, plenty
big enough for the task. Walter Sickert suffered from the most extreme
form of hypospadias, which meant that his penis was perhaps a third of
the normal length, pointed downwards when erect and he ejaculated
out of a slit between his testes and his anus. It is a fair conjecture that
this somewhat soured his attitude toward sex. Certainly, when Sickert
chose to dip his penis in paint the result wasn’t pretty.
This is one reason why when looking at his Camden Town Nudes one
can find none of the unsophisticated joy with which Helen Coates
danced on my lap last night (she deserves at least a β –).
Sickert claimed that he was showing the ‘gleam of light’ that a real
naked woman can throw on the shabbiest interior. That must be taken
with salt, as we can see by gazing at any of the 20 Watt bulbs he
actually produced. By comparison, when Susmita Khan introduced me to
her sister Kunthi, I was half-blinded by a pair of brilliant floodlights.
Beauty of this kind wasn’t on Sickert’s agenda.
No, Sickert offers not beauty, but lessons in power. He paints again and
again the same thing: the iron bedstead, the cheap room, a clothed
man and a naked woman. He does so with consummate brilliance, using
the sort of quick, hard strokes he would never have been able to give
to a nineteen-year-old bracing herself against a Billy bookcase. His dabs
and blocks of colour anticipate Bacon, dissolving detail to intensify
mood: and the mood is always concerned with sexual power.
Who is using whom? Sickert painted the ambiguity at the centre of
every sexual encounter. Sometimes the power is all in the suited man,
standing over his victim like a murderer (as Patricia Cornwell sees);
sometimes, however, it is the unabashed whore who is in control of the
buttoned-up customer, her hand on his knee. Always we sense that
events hang on a knife edge: their positions could so easily be reversed.
Sickert’s brilliant talent was to watch our sexual power games and show
them shabby, uncertain and defiling. He was right, of course, which is
why he is the master of the realist nude. And yet, because his own
equipment could not cope with the rigours of a reverse cowgirl, Sickert
could never grasp the ecstasy involved. Our games of give and take are
still worth playing. But he is right that there is no equality in the
bedroom: someone always climbs on top. Nor, I find, is there any in the
kitchen, when a naked girl bends herself over the worktop, begging for
a double first.
their grades. And yet, leafing idly through my Sickert catalogues, and
deciding to give Amanda Reilly’s sloppy module an alpha double plus, I
am reminded that is not quite right. Sickert would have hated our fun;
and he would have loved to paint it with brutal frankness.
That hatred sprang from his hideously deformed genitals. Picasso
claimed his penis as his paintbrush, and it was, by all accounts, plenty
big enough for the task. Walter Sickert suffered from the most extreme
form of hypospadias, which meant that his penis was perhaps a third of
the normal length, pointed downwards when erect and he ejaculated
out of a slit between his testes and his anus. It is a fair conjecture that
this somewhat soured his attitude toward sex. Certainly, when Sickert
chose to dip his penis in paint the result wasn’t pretty.
This is one reason why when looking at his Camden Town Nudes one
can find none of the unsophisticated joy with which Helen Coates
danced on my lap last night (she deserves at least a β –).
Sickert claimed that he was showing the ‘gleam of light’ that a real
naked woman can throw on the shabbiest interior. That must be taken
with salt, as we can see by gazing at any of the 20 Watt bulbs he
actually produced. By comparison, when Susmita Khan introduced me to
her sister Kunthi, I was half-blinded by a pair of brilliant floodlights.
Beauty of this kind wasn’t on Sickert’s agenda.
No, Sickert offers not beauty, but lessons in power. He paints again and
again the same thing: the iron bedstead, the cheap room, a clothed
man and a naked woman. He does so with consummate brilliance, using
the sort of quick, hard strokes he would never have been able to give
to a nineteen-year-old bracing herself against a Billy bookcase. His dabs
and blocks of colour anticipate Bacon, dissolving detail to intensify
mood: and the mood is always concerned with sexual power.
Who is using whom? Sickert painted the ambiguity at the centre of
every sexual encounter. Sometimes the power is all in the suited man,
standing over his victim like a murderer (as Patricia Cornwell sees);
sometimes, however, it is the unabashed whore who is in control of the
buttoned-up customer, her hand on his knee. Always we sense that
events hang on a knife edge: their positions could so easily be reversed.
Sickert’s brilliant talent was to watch our sexual power games and show
them shabby, uncertain and defiling. He was right, of course, which is
why he is the master of the realist nude. And yet, because his own
equipment could not cope with the rigours of a reverse cowgirl, Sickert
could never grasp the ecstasy involved. Our games of give and take are
still worth playing. But he is right that there is no equality in the
bedroom: someone always climbs on top. Nor, I find, is there any in the
kitchen, when a naked girl bends herself over the worktop, begging for
a double first.