It
is a very sensual painting - an exquisite evocation of female sexual beauty.
Many people – especially men – admire it for that reason alone. But there is more to this painting than sex;
it has a political history too. Why? Well, if you look at it closely enough, questions
begin to arise.
Why
has she got her back to us? A masterly touch surely; a tease, tempting us to imagine
more. But it was also, probably, a way for Velasquez to placate the Inquisition
in 1650. ‘I only painted her back,’ you can imagine him innocently protesting
to the morals police. ‘So what’s your problem? Nothing pornographic about that.’
Hm.
Another
question: what is going on with that mirror? Perhaps she’s admiring herself –
after all, the painting was originally called The Toilette of Venus – but actually, that can’t be true. Why not?
Because, reflected in the mirror, we can see her face; and the laws of physics
– which Velasquez knew very well - are quite clear about that: if I can see you
in the mirror, you can see me. And if she can see us, she can’t see herself.
Oh
ho. The plot deepens. So it’s not just you and me, standing in the gallery,
staring at a naked lady; she is watching
us too. That changes things quite a lot, doesn’t it? What is she thinking,
about those teenage boys drooling behind her? Is she amused, flattered, angry,
contemptuous? We don’t really know, because unfortunately, the artist has made
the face of the lady in the mirror rather blurry, hard to make out. No
enigmatic Mona Lisa smile here. That’s a pity, I think – it might have made the
painting even more intriguing.
This
is of course a painting about sexual politics. Whatever the lady herself thinks
about it – and it’s hard to be sure about that – she is most definitely
portrayed as a sexual object. And not all ladies throughout history have been
entirely happy with being portrayed like that.
Take
Mary Richardson, for example. Mary was a suffragette, a member of Mrs
Pankhurst’s Women’s Social and Political
Union, campaigning for the women’s right to vote. She was a very active
member: in her time she set fire to several buildings, smashed windows at the
Home Office, and put a bomb in a railway station. She’d been arrested and sent
to prison several times. And in 1913 she’d seen her colleague, Mary Davison,
killed when she stepped in front of the King’s racehorse in the Epsom Derby.
Most
importantly, Mary had seen her leader, Emmeline Pankhurst, arrested again and
again. Each time she was sent to prison, Mrs Pankhurst went on hunger strike
until she was so weak she was released. Then, under the notorious Cat and Mouse Act, she was sent back to
prison, where she went on hunger strike again. It was like torture; Emmeline
was only a small woman in the first place, and each time she was released she
was a little smaller, a little weaker.
But
Mrs Pankhurst refused to give up. She just kept on giving speeches and thinking
of new ways to protest. And so did Mary.
On
March 10th 1914, Mary Richardson entered the National Gallery and
walked up to the Rokeby Venus. But
she didn’t just stand there reverently admiring it, as most people do. Oh no,
not Mary. Instead, she took out a meat cleaver which she had hidden under her
coat, stepped over the little rope that keeps visitors back from the painting,
and attacked it. Violently. Very violently; it was like murder, some newspapers
said. By the time someone stopped her, she had inflicted seven heavy slashes on
the naked woman’s back.
What
one earth did she do this for? Well, Mary was a woman, of course – a real live
woman, not a painting – and so was Mrs Pankhurst, who’d just been arrested
again the day before. And Mary Richardson didn’t think of herself or Mrs
Pankurst as women in quite the way that Diego Velasquez had thought about his
mistress. Mary didn’t see herself as a sex object, she was a human being; and to
her, people were more important than paintings. Here’s some of what she said:
‘I have tried to destroy the picture
of the most beautiful woman in mythological history as a protest against the
Government for destroying Mrs Pankhurst, who is the most beautiful character in
modern history … If there is an outcry against my deed (there was!) let everyone remember that such an outcry
is an hypocrisy so long as they allow the destruction of Mrs Pankhurst and
other beautiful living women.’
Much
later, in 1952, she added: ‘I didn’t like
the way men visitors stood in front of it and gaped all day long.’
Well,
quite. Luckily for art, the painting has been restored; and luckily for
democracy, real women are now allowed to vote.
But
it seemed to me, reading about all this, that there was something more going on
beneath the surface at this time; something quite powerful and exciting and
strange. Why were men so very cruel to the suffragettes, repeatedly arresting
little old ladies like Mrs Pankhurst and quite literally force feeding them
with rubber tubes down their throats? Why did the suffragettes make men so
angry? And what else was going in the mind of Mary Richardson, to commit an act
of such shocking violent vandalism?
Why
did men and women hate each other so much?
Questions
like these led me to write my book, Catand Mouse, which begins with my heroine Sarah Becket committing the same
act that Mary Richardson did. Sarah Becket is not meant to be Mary Richardson;
I’ve just borrowed the action, nothing else. In every other way Sarah Becket
and her sister are fictitious characters, but they are living in the same time,
through the same sort of political and sexual conflicts as real suffragettes
did, which makes the story interesting, I hope. And for the new cover of the
book, I’ve borrowed the picture of the Rokeby
Venus, with one crucial difference, as you see.
When
Venus looks in the mirror, what does she see?
****
Cat and Mouse was first published by Simon & Shuster UK in 1993. You can find it on kindle at Amazon UK and Amazon US, or visit Tim's website or blog
You've go my interest, Tim.
ReplyDeleteGlad to hear it, ma'am.
ReplyDeleteThis was so interesting. I never knew that Mary Richardson attacked that painting. I didn't even realize she set fire to buildings or smashed windows or planted bombs. Or the cat and mouse act. Thanks for an informative post. I'm tweeting it.
ReplyDeleteGreat post Tim- and I live in the city that bred the Pankhursts. Such a shame that we as a society that treats voting so casually. I think the suffragettes must be spinning in their graves!
ReplyDeleteI was aware of some of this history when it came to the Suffragette movement, but I had not heard about her attacking the painting. You brought out some fascinating points about the painting itself.
ReplyDeleteThanks!
Thanks all of you. I particularly agree about today's casual attitude to voting; I have tried, without much success, to impress upon my daughters how important this right is. Think of women in middle eastern countries - they are having similar struggles for recognition today. Only a hundred years ago, men in this country - like the young Winston Churchill - thought the idea of women voting was a joke.
ReplyDeleteBut at the same time, it's a great painting!