Major bimbo energy
Brian Calvin paints girls with glossy lips and no single thought behind their eyes. If this sentence already made you cringe, there's even more to unpack in his exhibition "Still" at Palazzo Cavanis.
Brian Calvin: Still
Brian is a Gen X artist who lives and works in Los Angeles. Maybe it’s the industry that promises young girls stardom and fame that inspires him to take up these portraits. Actually, I am not sure whether portrait would be the right word here, because it implies depicting an actual person, while Brian’s models seem to be only caricatures of people.
A generation messed up by TikTok
Not me calling myself out on this one (my daily TikTok screen time is way beyond two hours), but it’s true that social media has changed beauty ideals beyond any connection to reality. Previously believing that nose jobs did not make it beyond the 90s, it’s quite surprising how many young girls undergo plastic surgery to adjust their faces just a little closer to the beauty filters of social media. The girls and women that Brian shows are presented as victims of a social media mentality, staring out into a void beyond the canvas, never acknowledging each other.
Picasso, is that you?
Brian literally takes all the depth out of the subjects he paints. He takes most of the figures out of context and erases all clues of environment or surroundings. They are void of any profound character, just flat shapes on flat surfaces. The connection to the notoriously misogynistic painter Pablo Picasso (1881-1973, Spanish) is obvious. Pablo introduced Cubism into the history of Western Art, leaving the third dimension out and squeezing several perspectives into flat shapes.
A new era of hyper-femininity?
This exhibition comes just in time for a cultural shift. The figure of the bimbo has undergone a sort of Renaissance, from being an unintelligent, pretty woman to one that taps into her feminine energy and refuses to participate in a capitalist system valuing people through the marketable skills they possess. With the Greta Gerwig life-action Barbie movie hitting cinemas this summer, beauty and femininity are back on the scene after the I’m-not-like-other-girls-era. For some reason, any self-awareness of beauty is immediately judged as shallow. The curatorial statement for the exhibition, too, has some of that judgemental tone to it.
Worshipping the Feminine Divine
Some works give us a clue that there is more to Brian’s work than just a critique of digital beauty ideals. The upper part of some canvases is round, making the works look like religious icons, images used to worship the portrayed saint or deity. Thinking again of femininity, I am reminded of the Madonna-Whore Complex: In a world of straight male desires, women can only be either worthy and pure or worthless and sexual. There is no in-between. Women who are worshipped for their beauty, therefore, never get the chance to be seen as fully human with depths, flaws, and uniqueness. And still, I can’t tell whether Brian is aware of the issue and trying to make us understand or whether he is just another male artist seeing women as pretty little things. Still, there has to be more.
Up for a staring contest? Brian Calvin: Still is on view until July 2, 2023 at Palazzo Cavanis.
Palazzo Cavanis
Fondamenta Zattere Ai Gesuati, 920
30123 Venezia VE, Italy
Open from Wednesday until Sunday from 10 am to 6 pm
Free entry
info@palazzocavanis.com
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See you soon!
Jennifer