Objection Annotation #7

Jo Ann Callis' Cheap Thrills and Forbidden Pleasures (XIII) (1993)

The sinking of the strawberry pie in the silk sheets symbolizes indulgence. The idea of sinking into something connects to feeling of the erotic, in which you are deeply, intimately engaging and giving into your desires. Paul Barolsky mentions this symbolism when he analyzes the work of Boucher's rendition of depicting the Roman godness, Venus. He writes: “he (Boucher) conveys how her limbs and her body feel as they sink into her discarded garments, heightening the viewer's sense of her soft presence and the pressure of her body as it is touched by clothing.” (107) The viewer's depth perception of the pie sinking into the sheets aids in envisioning how heavy the pie is and how deep the impression within the sheets are.

This piece is a part of a series of photographs taken as commentary on the erotic and domestic undertones of everyday life. Jo Ann Callis is originally from Cincinatti Ohio and was born there in 1940. Her work traditionally centers around ideas of feminity and dismantling notions of the socially constructed public and private sphere. The reason why I chose this piece is because I drew upon elements of eroticism in food, the artistic eye, and the imaginative viewer's role in thinking about the post-climatic experience in viewing erotic art.

Overview

Background, Context, etc.

In class on November 20th, we returned to the idea of aesthetics from the Gabriel Starr reading. Her commentary asks if pleasure would be achieved through viewing this image, and because Callis names it as a "forbidden pleasure" pleasure perhaps is achieved and yet concealed. Thus, by inserting the public object of food into a private setting of viewing someone's bedsheets there is a pleasure aesthetic achieved and yet subjected to public consumption, thus minimizing the actual fulfillment of release that could be achieved in viewership. It also relates back to Barolsky's idea of the post-climatic in order to reflect back on what hasn't happened yet. Which is prominent through the medium of food standing in for erotic iconography.

Paul McCarthy, foundationally emphasized ideas of consumerism in his work. Jo Ann Callis intentionally titled this collection as Cheap Thrills and Forbidden Pleasures to project onto viewers a catered idea of the erotic. Carnal is a base response and refers to basic human need. Pairing this with food blends ideas of human needs AND desires. The additional layer to address is the dessert of it all. Although food here is represented as a carnal need, the type of food doesn't necessarily get into the weeds of overconsumption and desire that is explored in Anja Foerschner's "Food, Decay, and Disgust: Paul McCarthy’s Bossy Burger as Contemporary Still Life." She posits that contemporary still lives of food function in a time "characterized by an ambivalence between prosperity and luxury on the one hand, and global conflicts, economic crises, and a constant struggle to define ourselves and our identity in a rapidly changing environment on the other. Our fetishism with commodities might well be read as a mechanism to cope with the mix of opportunity and anxiety we are presented with. Food serves as a paradigm; it is a basic biological need, but nowadays claims the characteristic of the most polyvalent consumer object.” (104) thus, this piece particularly engages a viewer's biological material such as glutamate to invoke arousal. Ironically, the food represented here is not one that particularly contains high levels of glutamate which makes me wonder about the impact of highly processed food as it is crucial to overconsumption.

Cultural context is something important in this image because there is also ideas of disgust because generally speaking in society, food doesn't belong in the bedroom. Thus aspects of social cognitive mechanisms are informing a viewer's assessment of something that is misplaced or not supposed to be there. Part of this idea is also bolstered by Paul McCarthy's Bossy Burger. Although this image is not as gory as McCarthy's, the utilization of a food that can leave a red, sticky, mess behind does signal imagination of what would happen if the indulgence of eating or even touching the pie would ensue.

This collection of photography was most recently on exhibit at the Joseph Bellows Gallery located in La Jolla, California and other exhibitions of hers have been showcased at locations like the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, CA and the Cleveland Museum of Art in Ohio.