Reba Maybury’s medium is men and her work is often made by her submissives under her orders.
For MAN IN HOUSE the artist had Amanda, her crossdressing, apparently recently reformed misogynist submissive complete a paint by number kit of Degas’s painting The Star, The Dancer on Stage (1876). However this work’s name is Amanda, British civil servant, 50, Blackpool, 2. (2023).
The work of Degas has superficial powers to provoke feelings of lightness, nostalgia, ease and even prettiness in its depiction of the ballet. His oeuvre acts with a sort of perfect iconography for Paris’s art history tourism machine in its palatable aesthetic digestion. The dancers in Degas's paintings were often children. In this artwork we can see this particular young girl's sponsor both watching and waiting for her in the wings.
To Maybury, the act of ordering the completion of a paint by number kit is a way for her submissive men to have an experience of art without being an artist, a sort of pathetic leisure activity for adults that bares no demands for creativity but instead relaxation. This is not unlike a john visiting a sex worker or a tourist visiting a city - a consumable experience of pleasure that bares no responsibility for the culture, politics or wellbeing of the city or the person you pay to visit.
Countess Danner founded the Danner House in 1875. She was the daughter of a servant and once a ballet dancer. It was at the ballet that she met her future husband, the soon to be king of Denmark, Frederik VII. |
|
