Evening Standard refers to painting of older woman as "this ancient crone...ghastliness of ageing flesh... this repellent body."

I agree his critique is harsh but he is probably doing it to gain publicity? Most people are aware she looks like a typical woman of her age. Beauty is subjective through, as is art. Freedom of speech applies here I think although, I find his comments saddening.

I knew this was Brian Sewell just from the thread title. David Sexton in the ES is just as bad. Narrow, male gaze whatever the sexuality.

I agree with LRD that being gay does not mean you cannot see the beauty in the opposite sex. One of my close friends is a gay male - he is very aware of his appearance, always preening, and he loves to gossip - but one day he was looking at me funny across the table in Wetherspoons (we were a lot younger :o) and he said how beautiful looking he thought I was. I really have to add here this was a good ten years ago and pre-children and when I cared about my appearance. I have since joined the ranks of the unshaven, no make-up lot!!

This friend always points out pretty women, of ALL ages. I remember he said he was speechless when he first met his boyfriend's mother, as she was so gorgeous and elegant, and she must be in her seventies.

Anyway, I am so sorry for this sermon. Just wanted to say I think Sewell's rubbishy comments have more to do with him being a pillock than anything else.

And to Joanofarchitrave, I for one only read this part of mumsnet. I dipped into the rest at an earlier stage, but this is the only part I liked and was filled with intelligent people who make me think hard about stuff.

Yes. And it's not necessarily all long-ago-and-far-away either. You can buy bum-padded knickers alongside everything else on perfectly standard UK-based lingerie websites. Not everyone thinks slim=pretty, or even agrees about which areas 'should' ( at 'should') be curvy.

Exactly LRD, there are places now and there have been times in our history where lack of food and the fear of starvation has led to the ideal woman being very plump, symbolising of course that she is of high status and able to have to access as much food as she likes.

That's not really true though, is it xenia? Plenty of cultures don't associate weighing in the normal healthy range as being attractive at all. Likewise, to talk about dressing 'well' is pretty meaningless. Do you mean if I wear a ruff and accessorise with black teeth like a well-dressed Elizabethan, I'll be more attractive? I doubt it.

It is a subjective issue. This is pretty well understood, I think.

I have heard the stuff about proportions only really works with cultures that are Western or have been exposed to Western media, which I find really interesting. It might be what you are interpreting from your experiences is more to do with the increasing dominance of Western culture than anything else?

I would like to say that I did not mean what Xenia is saying

I think you can. If you weigh normally and are fit and dress well you will look better.

I was not suggesting that if you fed a gay and a straight teenage boy the same foods, took the same exercise with them and gave them the same clothes one would look better than the other although the ravages of father hood and sleepless nights and the fact more straight than gay men have children probably is another reason.

You can also measure if people have even features on a face and most cultures find women with a 10 inch difference between bust, waist and hips attractive i.e. traditional page 3 girls (which means she is more likely to be fertile but not so obese or skinny she cannot get pregnant)

Yeah, but you didn't state those things, xenia. That was rather my point!

Perhaps it is just semantics, but I would say there's a big difference between saying that studies have shown gay men are slimmer and fitter than straight men, and saying they 'look better'. You can measure weight/body build and fitness level, you can't really measure whether or not people 'look better', can you?!

There have been countless surveys showing gay men stay slimmer and are fitter than straight as they age and plenty that most violent crime in London is by black youths and that Chinese children do best in our schools. We can certainly state those things. BS is free to make comments which appear to be anti-female so he can hardly object if we feel some of what he says is probably a result of his being gay. He is the one who is raising gender issues. On my link above why is he saying David Beckham great, Victoria Beckham ugh... yet against presumably because he has a thing against women which of course not all gay men do by any means.

I do not hugely disagree. I don't normally like statements that are too generalised but it did seem relevant in this case. He hardly goes to bed thinking of women with enormous breasts so therefore might object to a portrait of one with large breasts.

But .... not to rehash the whole debate, but isn't that a bit dodgy to assume it's to do with them being gay rather than them being, um, not very nice people? I'm sure many people are not very nice.

'they look better often than straight men' sounds to me uncomfortably close to the other rather cringey 'positive' stereotypes people come out with like 'black men are often such great dancers!'.

Maybe I am showing too much liberal squeamishness, I dunno.

I think some of us just found that that tallied with our own experience of some gay men on a personal level. That is certainly not the case of all, however I think there is a group that do have those views. Indeed one reason they look better often than straight men is because they have better views of what looks good, superior in one sense although in the case of BS he seems to be anti woman too. I still love to sing his father's music however.

I don't get the gay=finding the opposite sex 'repulsive' thing. You can find someone attractive without finding them sexually attractive. Finding an entire sex repulsive is not a normal aspect of sexual orientation.

I think Brian Sewell is just a bit of a misogynistic twit.

"Tethersend. My point was that the way you would teach your teenagers isn't really comparable with this accomplished piece of art."

Hilarious

I have always imagined that Brian Sewell is gay and has therefore never found women attractive. An ageing woman is therefore repulsive. As others have said, his reaction is visceral.

He is right about the proportionality though. I don't think her tummy-button is too high. But the head/boob ratio is a bit off.

The face is just wonderful though. Just absolutely wonderful. For that alone, it deserves the prize.

But then, mel, I've been in galleries with schoolkids saying 'ewww' at paintings of beautiful naked young women and men, too! There's an age at which anything naked is 'ewwww'.

Also (more sadly IMO), I think there is an issue that the airbrushed look of magazines is so over-exposed that the sight of anything that looks as if it has skin texture, or light and shade over the skin, looks 'ugly'. I think you get used to an almost cartoonish look and then see everything else as too full of detail (=flaws). It's really disturbing.

Evening Standard last night had a response to Sewell pointing out that his comments were crap.

*pallid, not plaid

Whoever was suggesting that I was homophobic by wondering when the last time Brian Sewell say a naked lady was- how is it homophobic to suggest that he is unlikely to be familiar with the reality of women's bodies? That is, natural women, not pumped up, slimmed down, airbrushed bodies that are deemed acceptable viewing to the public these days? The fact that the majority of posters here can look at the picture and see a woman who has experienced life and whose character shines warmly in her expression but Brian ignores this and focuses on an apparent exaggeration of grotesqueness in her body that we can't see is a criticism of his judgement not his sexuality. In the same way my nieces think its disgusting to have any body hair and not have a fake tan, because that is what they are experiencing as normal whereas plaid and hirsute is my version of normal

As an art critic he should have enough knowledge of his subject to know that the womans body was in no way like the way he described her.

That man has serious issues. Most of his description comes across as a rant about his personal feelings of repulsion at that type of body, rather than a critique of the actual painting.

I went to the exhibition this week and loved that painting - it really made me smile. She looks radiant, full of confidence and it's great to see someone with a realistic ageing body looking proud and strong.

There was a group of teenage schoolchildren in the gallery and a couple of them saw the picture and responded "ewwwww!" I was tempted to point out to them that they will be that age in future, and given that 99% of us have flawed bodies that don't measure up to media stereotypes you're setting yourself up for a lifetime of disappointment (and self-hate) if you regard anything less than 'perfect' as repulsive.

The "ewww!" attitude is relatively excusable for a teenager, but I would hope that most adults have the maturity not to publicly describe people as repulsive in such vitriolic terms. The subject of the portrait is a real person who may read Brian Sewell's article - hopefully she has the confidence to shrug it off and laugh at it, as it deserves.

Tethersend. My point was that the way you would teach your teenagers isn't really comparable with this accomplished piece of art.

I was going to write a longer reply but i can't be bothered so Im off to look for the hairy feet thread instead

You're very diplomatic tethers...

"but with all due respect, i always found the 'art' which is taught in secondary schools is largely of the copy life, form, shape, light etc variety. Rather then what you learn later on at university about expression and what art is, can be, where it comes from inside a person and what it means to create it."

I did do a fine art degree, you know- they don't let you teach with just a GCSE

Look at the life rooms in the Royal Academy, The Slade, and City and Guilds, for example. I'm sure they would be delighted to be told that they are not part of the 'grown up art world' . Measuring, light, form, shape etc. is taught- I find it odd that you would cite such things as precursors to 'expression', and presume they are only taught in schools. When painting the human form, it is necessary to study the human form, at any level. Picasso was able to abstract the human form so well, as he knew where everything was supposed to be; observational drawing/painting is just one facet of art, not a rung on a ladder leading to 'expression' or 'coming from inside'. I find those terms a little trite, TBH.

Conversely, GCSE syllabi require very little in the way of observational drawing, and require much more 'expression', contextual understanding and personalisation. In other words, it is very different from when we were at school (assuming we are about the same age?) and, far from being the end product only reached at university level, is many secondary students' first experience of art education. Formal life drawing and painting is rarely taught in schools.

BTW- pretty watercolours of boats are massive in Hackney right now