"The Old Man's Boat" by Eric Fischl (1982)

This was written around 2005. I edited it, removed some pedantic semi-colons, and replaced nonexisting words by words that actually do exist.

I am going to focus on a recent painting. Eric Fischl is probably not a painter most of you have ever heard of, and as a matter of fact, I am myself not extremely familiar with him and his work. So mostly I have never read anything about Fischl nor this particular painting and everything I am about to talk of comes strictly from my good ol’ lil’ self and therefore I bear no claim to exactitude or anything whatsoever.

There, now I can say whatever I want. So, I assume at first one feels a bit bad, maybe even disturbed, by this weird scene. First thing you think of is: "what is this about?" As for myself, I first thought of some dubious orgy organised on said old man's boat far away from civilisation, in the middle of the sea for the purpose of ghastly fornication and God knows what. And I probably am not too wrong about that. Indeed, most of the characters in there are naked. Let's proceed to the analysis now.

This is obviously depicting debauchery. People lying about, fishing, drinking beer, etc. So what we do make of it? I'll start with the middle part of the picture. The naked woman with generous hips is resting on a kind of bluish mattress. You can, according to me, date the scene by the sunbathing marks on her behind; people wore bikinis of that kind in the 60's or something, probably through the 70's as well. Not sure what the relevance of that detail is, but it's there. Now, one of the very first things I noticed in that painting was the dog, it's a Dalmatian, and he seems about to get it on with the naked lady. It's a disturbing hint to zoophilia and it strongly adds to the general feeling of decadence and icky atmosphere. His forelegs are over her right leg and well, he seems about to do her, sorry. Interestingly enough, a little on the background, you can see a parallel thing going: some naked buddy is crawling towards another dude whose face is literally cut off by the edge of the painting. Hint to homosexuality? Maybe. This would not seem too heterogeneous to the ambient feel of the scene so I assume this is highly likely. [Given the times in which we live, I feel obliged to actually state that nothing here is meant against homosexuals; the painting is from 1982, and it brings together forbidden and culturally tabooed sexualities, and homosexuality is part of it, that is all.]

The debauchery being exposed, now comes the little story of the painting. As you can see, everyone is naked except one. That one person to be non-naked is a woman on the foreground. Significantly enough, she is wearing a safety suit and is dressed in her bikini, unlike the other woman who wears neither. Also, she is fishing, with the fishing-rod between her toes. Like the naked lady, we cannot see her face because she looks away from us. Her hair is brighter than the naked lady too. And she is the only one really sitting; the others are either lying or "sitting" in too loose positions to be termed thusly. I think this is highly meaningful. What is even more so, is the fact that she is pointing. She points towards this big high wave that is coming towards the boat and threatens to swallow it like God's Judgement over the sinners. No one in the boat is looking in the wave's direction except maybe the naked lady, but if she does, she doesn't seem to be alarmed or to perceive any imminent danger. Again, the parallel between the two only women of the boat is very interesting.

It is time to get to one of the most disturbing element of the painting: the beer-drinking dude. What is disturbing, apart from the fact that he's unashamedly showing us his willy, is that he is actually looking at us. In other words, he sees you. That includes you in the painting; you're not outside of this ghastly orgy, you're right in it. You're on the boat with them, same planet, same boat, same wave going to drown you soon. Moreover, for those who still have the title in mind--The Old Man's Boat--where is he? this old man? He's nowhere to be seen, so the idea is that maybe you are him. Maybe the old man is nowhere to be seen because he is in the position of the watcher, yours. How do you feel now? Now that you have become the dreadful pervert old man who organises homosexualozoophiliac orgies far away from official waters? And it's all because of the beer-drinking dude. If he wasn't looking at you, you'd not have become such a vile creature. I don't like naked dudes to stare at me drinking beer and exposing their floppy cocks like that. I admit it is a problem to me. Be decent you fucker! Anyway...

As a conclusion, we may see this painting as some dark portrayal of modern times, decadence, and incoming doom (the wave). There are those who see the wave (the dressed and life-jacketed lady) and will therefore be saved because they see it coming and have taken the measures to survive the event, and there are the others, who are too much into their passivity and decadence to see anything coming. And that beer-drinking dude, he'll be a ton less proud about his cock when he is drowning in the cold depths of this sea, let me tell you.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As a bonus, I share with you the comment written about this chapter by artist Laura Z

"I think your analysis of The Old Man's Boat, the Old Man's Dog is pretty spot on. I hadn't really noticed the wave, the single dressed girl pointing at the wave but I did get that feeling of decadence.

I'm not familiar with Eric Fischl's works, either, but paging quickly through that site you can see some themes: homosexuality, lost youth, corruption, illicit lovers/sex.

The thing that struck me about "The Old Man's Boat, The Old Man's Dog" was the title, at first: you rightly pointed out that the one female figure has tan lines from a 60's-style bathing suit. I think the term "Old Man" was kind of popular for "husband" back then: "Meet my old man, meet my old lady." So the boat could belong to an absentee husband. Given that boats are rather expensive and take money to maintain - you tend to be well-off if you have one that can hold that many people - the old man's boat is quite possibly one of the orgy participant's husbands. I don't think the old man himself is there, given that everyone looks relatively youthful.

And then the dog: man's best friend. There's almost an outrage in the sentence: whoever has access to the boat also has access to the dog. His dog is a dalmation, and it is worth noting here that dalmations are reputedly high-strung and difficult dogs because they're so purebred (apologies if anyone owns one - I'm only saying what I've heard). My sense of this particular dalmation owner is that he's older, well-off, and likes to collect things for appearance and status.

So to put some context around the painting, my take is that some spoiled high-strung younger trophy wife got bored with the "Old Man" and took his boat and his dog out for an orgiastic cruise with her friends and lovers. And, as you rightly pointed out, it appears they are in a heap of trouble given the high wave and incoming storm.

Thanks for sharing your analysis - I love dusting off my old Art History notes and seeing what's out there. It's always helpful when someone helps explain a little too!"

Sweet Jesus: The Astounding Story of the Chocolate Christ

April 1^st, 2007

Every now and then, you get to hear about Christians on the news. This is rarely to their advantage. In fact, it is usually because they are bitching about something. In the present case, Catholics in New York are pissed off at a six foot tall chocolate Jesus.

Created by Cosimo Cavallaro - an artist I understand to be fond of using food - the "My Sweet Lord" sculpture has been described as "one of the worst assaults on Christian sensibilities ever" by Bill Donohue, head of the Watchdog Catholic League. Don't think I know any of these people, I'm just quoting from an article for exactitude's sake, in case you want to do your own research.

It became a problem, the Chocolate Christ, because the place where it was on display was owned by the same people who own a hotel nearby, which people said they would boycott in case the delicious blasphemy remained.

I have seen the sacrilegious thing, and honestly it's very well done. It's made to be anatomically perfect, and it is. The thing is, Jesus' penis is showing. And it is made of chocolate, too.

I first saw that whole affair on CNN, and one of the angered Catholics interviewed notably said something about how insulting it was to show a naked Jesus with a chocolate penis on the Holy Week, which I found interesting. I honestly don't know if Catholics fast during the Holy Week or what, but the connection between delicious chocolate and a penis, all embodied in a single thing - well, that is enough to make a Catholic angry at himself or herself, apparently.

Now, seriously, this is ridiculous. The people in charge of the displaying received hundreds of threats, death threats, complains, etc, etc. First of all, what IS the problem with the chocolate Christ? If He had been shaped with elephant dung, I'd see the problem, but chocolate? Since when was chocolate a damnable thing? And as I told you, the sculpture is beautifully executed; it shows Christ crucified on an invisible Cross (only His body is showing, no loin cloth either). The artist himself is a Catholic, and I saw him interviewed, he meant no insult at all. So, it can be safely assumed that there was no ill intent on the account of the artist. And I can't say that there is anything obviously anti-Christian in the artwork per se.

It all annoys me very much, for various reasons. First, it's all so God-damned stupid. Think of this, if the Catholics of New York had said nothing, the Sweet Jesus sculpture wouldn't have attracted any spotlight; I'd never have seen it on CNN, and you'd not find so many blogs about it. Now, thanks to those angered and angry religious people, Our Saviour of Chocolate is all over the place. Secondly, those Catholics once again give bad promotion for Christianity, and religions on general. This is typical of Catholics, I must say. They don't have a single ounce of sense of public relation. Honestly, I see their anger at the choccy artwork, I wonder about the mental state of people who even bother with it, and send death-threats. Seriously, Your Saviour was tortured to death for you, and you can't even tolerate someone making a chocolate sculpture of Him? How hard is that? Even assuming that it was meant negatively (which it wasn't), how hard is it to just let it go? It's utterly ridiculous and inexcusable. If only for the other Catholics the world over who certainly do not appreciate such an image of them being widely promoted. Let alone the entire Christian community.

I'm upset because it is hard enough to get interested in Christianity without having those idiots every now and then reminding you of how dumb Christians can be. If I sound harsh, so be it, but I cannot be any nicer to acts such as this, which are, by the way, not Christian acts. What caused such an anger? Would everything have been ok had the artist added a loin cloth to Jesus' private parts? Come on, we're not children anymore and the sight of a penis shouldn't be such an apocalypse. Yes, Jesus had a penis and may even have had wet dreams; what's it to you? I mean seriously, it's a detail and it doesn't matter. It's beneath all of us.

This being New York, I'm horrified - yes, horrified - that those Catholics team up in the thousands against a Chocolate Christ but don't act the same when they meet homeless people. Hundreds of bums in the street, that's fine, but a chocolate sculpture, that's blasphemy. Homelessness is much more a blasphemy to God than art. God is not stupid, damnit, He's more shocked by people suffering than by artwork of any kind! Even if the said artwork was the Virgin Mary incestuously gratifying Her own Son with oral sex. I can take it, so God can take it too. And as to Christ, I think once you've been through what He went through, you're not hurt or insulted by such petty things, insofar as they are meant to insult, offend, or hurt, which was not the case of the artist.

I am upset in the name of Christianity because I would really appreciate if those Christians stopped making fools of themselves and staining the image of the religion with such ridiculous and unChristian acts of childishness.

However, I understand that the media will be more interested in such cases than in any case where the same Christians would actively help homeless people and others in distress. But the same Christians are also aware of this, hence bad public relations handling.

Lastly, a call for all artists in New York. Next time you feel like teasing Christians, I recommend you take a live bum from the street and crucify the fuck out of him in a fancy contemporary art museum. Don't forget to put a wooden board so he can rest his feet and thus won't die of asphyxia. Provided you give him water and food, he should last a few days. Call it a "happening" and pray that maybe this would attract people's, and Catholics', attention to the homeless situation in New York. If this doesn't work, you just cover the fucker with a thick layer of fucking chocolate, and don't forget his fucking cock.