The Guardian, again

This is a new low even for the Graun.

@AnnaMagnani your DH hit the nail on the head. I would have paid good money to have heard the ranting.

👏👏👏👏👏

It makes viewing them an uncomfortable experience, as if looking through the eyes of an obsessive, misogynistic stalker.

Yes that is accurate. Only the very next sentence is:

And then Girard found one image that he believes changes how we should interpret the Polaroids.

Natural instincts should be thrown out of the window if a man thinks we should think differently about a perverted man.

This is off the scale, even for the Guardian.

Glad this has been posted here, it's been winding me up all day since I read it this morning!

What bollocks. Making out like it's so mysterious why he didn't take any more Polaroids after 1982. Um, I'd hazard a guess that's when he acquired a VCR. Presumably the rest of his porn collection wasn't considered very artistic.

To the editor of The Guardian - what are you thinking?? I grew up reading The Guardian and their women section.

I occasionally wonder what Jill Tweedie would have made of it.

Or Martha and Mary. Would Martha be more MN and Mary more #BeKind? (Do I remember correctly that this was a regular column?)

…missed the final sentence though - the link in The Guardian article where the actress could buy a book on the whole experience so she could see if she featured in it whilst lining the coffers of the man who exploited the man who exploited…..

The Guardian made it so easy.

How about going all Carol Ann Duffy and viewing it through the female lens?

Imagine you are an actress and you get a part. You auditioned and beat hundreds to it. It’s a good story and pays well but one scene involves stripping down to your underwear. You’re uncomfortable but it’s part of the script and you tell yourself it matters. Cameramen and production crew are there fully clothed whilst you take your clothes off and try and not feel self conscious. It’s over and you have a drink and tell yourself it’s ok and everyone around you pretends it’s a normal day. Now it’s 10 years later and they are showing re-runs of tv. Everyone has recording devices and you realise people can make stills of these recordings so it chips away that your image in your underwear can be used and copied. Still - out of sight out of mind. Then twenty years later you read The Guardian and you find out a man used to take photos of actresses when they were in their underwear and catalogue them - a twisted serial voyeur. He also liked wearing women’s underwear. He died and it could have finished. But no. Some other man got hold of the photos and thought I could make some fame/money out of this. It’s art! Especially with the man dressing up too. You think of the liberal high-brow audience at the exhibition imagining him taking the photos and what he must have felt as he photographed these women. And now your reading an interview in The Guardian with the man who bought the photos and pretends its high art. And is lauded by The Guardian. You scan the photos- can you see you? While you feel the waves of vulnerability all over again.

——————-

To the editor of The Guardian - what are you thinking?? I grew up reading The Guardian and their women section. Ffs.

Ah so if he has made Polaroids to wank too whilst wearing a rugby shirt he’d have been a pervert but as he made Polaroids to wank too whilst wearing a bra he is clearly an artistic Jaynius

Charles Saatchi purchased My Bed by Tracey Emin for £150, 000. It was sold at auction by Christie’s in July 2014 for £2,546,500.

Personally, I would not have paid that much. There is a lot about the art world I do not understand but I suspect the likes of Saatchi are very good at promoting young artists and making a bloody fortune from gullible idiots.

There is a lot of twaddle in art galleries, a lot of money made. I could not care but do take exception at the promotion of this absurd ideology wherever it occurs.

his gender remain shrouded in mystery
Why do you constantly call him "he" then, Guardian? Tut tut!

"We thought this man was a pervert, until he put on a bra" is an absolutely A+ summary of the handmaidens right now.

So much male art is simpy about appropiating women by re-creating them as not-subjects, as objects of the male gaze. This man (like other cross dressers) just went one step further by re-creating the object of the male gaze on his own body instead of just in his 'art'. The exhibition doesn't (just) show that he was a sexual obsessive; it draws attention to the fact that the male artist's gaze is by its nature a sexually obsessive appropriation.
To paraphrase Girard, "“That’s the mystery and genius of it. This shows how, as a man, you dive into the object of your desire – you become that object (in order to possess it more fully).

I mean, talk about hiding in plain sight NOW IN A PUBLIC GALLERY.

'Nothing to see here..." 👀

🚩 🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩

“Tom Wilkins was not a pervert”

Well, many right thinking people would vehemently disagree with that sentence.

In the spirit of the season

"Tom Wilkins was not a pervert"

Oh yes he was 😒

That journalist is on glue.

So open minded their brains fell out.

It is an uncomfortable experience* because you exactly are looking through the eyes of an obsessive misogynist stalker.*

This. He's merely piggybacking on the objectification of women in films and tv by creepy directors anyway.

Absolute fucking sicko.

I like the cut of Anna's DH's jib.

Polaroid Guy is clearly a pervert. Because he was being a pervert while wearing a skirt doesn't make him any less of a pervert. Certainly doesn't make him a genius. And if all it took to become an artistic genius was wearing a skirt then the National Gallery would be full of female artists. But it's not, is it.

How would you rate this compared to the grubby Unmade Bed which was declared to be art? And Tate Modern paid a lot of money for?

not only are they declared not a pervert but they launched into the category of artistic genius

“This is the absolute key to deciphering the mystery enveloping the work,” says Girard. “Tom Wilkins was not a pervert.”

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

oh god though, this is terrible. I’m almost glad this idiot made the principle explicit. All men have to do is put on women’s underwear and they automatically get designated Not A Pervert and people can’t see obvious, OBVIOUS, 🚩🚩🚩OBVIOUS!🚩🚩🚩pervert behaviour for what it is. How the fuck do we fix this?

Are there really throngs of visitors craning their necks to get a glimpse of grainy old photos of Mrs Cunningham from Happy Days in nightie?