Ula, Print

What is this 'truth' that is real but cannot be spoken? --Which is there but is deprived of the property of existence? In "Ula" (2002) we see another example. We see a woman with evidently broad shoulders, great sagging breasts, but the sort of Eastern European arched eyebrows that even among the so-called lower classes is able to communicate a haughty disdain. Her roundish cheeks communicate a kind of vulnerability. Her arms are raised, hands gripping a transparent or missing frame. It is as if she were carrying some great basket. But the object she holds above is as naked as she is; so it cannot be seen. With the gigantic breasts and the protruding belly, it is clear this woman is carrying herself, her body, as a great bulk just as her life might be spent in daily labor carrying other things. She does not experience her body any longer as the lithe, youthful body of the woman who has not yet given birth. Her body is a burden. Is this kind of truth permissible? It, too, falls beyond true and false, which is to say, beyond the limits of our discourse. Women are objects that give rise to sexual fantasy, to lust, by definition. Women are permitted to exist inasmuch as they generate these feelings; in other words, they are allowed to be naked to this precise extent. Painting a female nude body that does not generate an erection, but one that nonetheless contains a complicated set of meanings that demand the right to exist is an achievement of the first order. Many artists today paint unattractive bodies. But this contrarian tendency remains firmly within the (P-N) paradigm as art-as-beauty vs. art-as-ugliness. Biletnikova succeeds in this piece to convey truthful humanity that the vast majority of painters not only fail to communicate but fail to even see. One finds perhaps the same (degree of) humanity in Lucien Freud's Sue Tilley series. But despite Freud's technical maturity and evident brilliance, one finds that he is laughing at Tilley; representing her body as a great set of cushions, a distended marshmallow. (Perhaps that is because Tilley is British and lends herself to being laughed at.) No Eastern woman of similar bulk would allow herself not to be taken seriously. There is a more human vision in Biletnikova's "Ula" than in Freud's Tilley series.

Print:Giclee on Fine Art Paper

Size:8 W x 10 H x 0.1 D in

Size with Frame:13.25 W x 15.25 H x 1.2 D in

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