Polytropy

Following up on my last article, here I continue to bring together images from different times and places, albeit with no particular conclusion to draw.

1. Another painting from Pompeii, paired with a photograph by Sally Mann; the similarity was pointed out, and the electronic files were provided, by a friend who read my earlier article.

   
   

2. Jade disks, some originally from China, now in the Freer Gallery of Art, and others from Mexico, now in the Dumbarton Oaks Museum.

   
   

   The Chinese disks, called bi, are said to be nephrite and to have been found in burial sites, but their significance is unknown. The disks from Teotihuacan are jadeite, and adorned headdresses.

3. Having spent some June days in Ravello, Italy, gazing at the town of Scala on the next hillside, in July I liked the hillside in a painting called Tohickon by Daniel Garber, on display in the Renwick Gallery opposite the White House in Washington.

   
   

4. The Freer Gallery of Art displays two similarly posed full-length portraits, both by Whistler, though the two subjects are of opposite sexes.

   

   The man is Frederick Leyland, in whose house Freer created the Peacock Room; the woman was Whistler’s mistress, Maud Franklin.

   The Smithsonian website has a brief discussion of the two pictures, together with a picture of a couple looking at the couple of pictures.
   I think the Whistler paintings should be contrasted with some recent images of men and women discussed in two articles in the Sociological Images blog:

   • Gendered Positioning in Promotional Posters

     

   • Men Walk, Women Pose: The Gender Politics of Silhouettes

     

Note added, July 25, 2013: After publishing this article two days ago, I found an example of man walking, woman posing—on the wrapper of a package of paper in my department’s office:

Actually all three figures are posing; but the man on the left faces us, head on; the man in the middle with his head in his papers ignores us; the woman on the right turns away, coyly. Am I wrong to think she is still looking at us, as in the Star Trek poster above? Perhaps the figures on right and left are both looking at the fellow in the middle, who is impressed by the quality of the copies he has just made.