Brutishness by Fernand Khnopff (1858-1921)

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Brutishness

Fernand Khnopff (1858-1921)

1885

Pastel, watercolor, and pencil on paper

728.3 x 25.4 cm

The death's head or skull that appears in the sphinx in Khnopff's After Joséphin Péladan, The Supreme Vice here tops the pillars, making clear that the overtly sexual nude is associated with, and probably brings, death — a point not so strange in an age when syphillis had no cure. Below the skulls are three rows of bag-like objets, the multiple breasts found on ancient statues of Aphrodite or Venus in her role as life-giver or nurturer. The heavy-bodied nude, who could be an ancient temple prostitute, gazes directly at the viewer, whom I assume the artist coinceived as a male viewer.

Compare Khnopff's image with Rossetti's far more reserved Lady Lilith, which is accompanied by a sonnet, "Body's Beauty." Both works speak to the danger posed (for men) by the female body, but by calling a work Brutishness that depicts a lush, large-breasted nude, Khnopff, who here creates an image of woman diametrically opposed to that found in his many images of contemplative woman, seems to be saying, "Brutishnes, thy name is woman." Pretty sick. Like Rossetti and so many Victorians who separated women into two diametrically opposed categories — Virgin and whore, or unapproachable Fair Lady and already-approached Fallen Woman — Khnopff seems to find such simplifying dichotomies preferable to more complex conceptions of human nature.

I also have to point out that although Khnopff here makes the female body the emblem of brutishness, a long tradition of political cartoons makes men, particularly foregn men, such as the Irish in England, embodiments of brutishness. — George P. Landow

Bibliography

Fernand Khnopff (1858-1921). Ostfildern-Ruit, Germany: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2004. no. 131.

Last modified 14 November 2005