Celebrating Bishop 15

12-10-2016
This is a bit of fine tuning. The picture I've chosen this time is (obviously) good, but not one of Bishop's best drawings; it's also a bit later in his oeuvre. But what I do like about it so much is that it expresses movement! Now, I talked about this before, when I showed you this piece: but since then I realized that some fine tuning needed to be done. For instance, there is of course a great deal of movement in lots of Bishop's work! Women struggle, fight each other, or to get out of their bindings.They're lifted up, thrown around and slapped around.

But what caught me when I saw these drawings, I realized later on, was that there is an impersonal, unavoitable character to the subject matter: it's mechanical!

And in this drawing, you can so obviously see how things work: how she's bumped up and down in such a way her hair would look like that!
In a way, that makes it more degrading, I think. You can hate, or fight or plead with a person that makes you swing from here to ther, or tickles you, or moves you around in any which way. But machinary doesn't care: it just makes you hop up and down, or back- and forward. This leads to some sort of objectivication of the victim in question also found in 'bondage furntiture', at the other end of the spectrum. (And of course, I forgot to mention that in the case of the mechanical horse, we're dealing with a mature woman, upping the humiliation)

I did try my own hand at this idea years ago, and although the result wasn't terrible, I gladly recognize the master in comparisson!

Coco

Updates in New, the Combi page and the Sketches. And there is a new story in under New: a interview fragment from the female POW magazine!

Untill next time,

CBAP