There are plenty of schlongs in art

I have to say that is one of the best retorts I've heard in years. Maggi Hambling was having none of the criticism to her nude depiction of Mary Wollstonecraft, especially since it came mostly from stuffy old men whose schlongs have probably shriveled up. "Criticism has got to be like water off a duck's back," she said her art teacher once told her. However it is just not men who hate the sculpture. Rhiannon Lucy Cosslet finds it needlessly distracting. Still, you wonder why Hambling would choose to portray the feminist icon in this way.

Hambling is renown for her art and sculptures over the years, often finding unusual ways to present her subjects, such as a giant scallop shell honoring Benjamin Britten on the beach at Aldeburgh in Suffolk. The piece was also met with criticism, but since has become a popular tourist stop. So, controversy isn't necessarily a bad thing.

No doubt more Britons are becoming familiar with Mary Wollstonecraft than otherwise would if she had simply been draped in clothing from her era. The author of Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1792, would have slipped into the background of the city, as most sculptures do. People are taking notice, even draping the sculpture as if Mary is somehow embarrassed by all this attention. Hard to say what Wollstonecraft would have thought of such a depiction. Maybe a wry smile?

It is more the spirit of the feminist icon that Hambling wanted to capture, challenging our assumptions, especially in this MeToo era. Mary seems to be rising up on a giant plume, as if overcoming the centuries of male oppression to appear unscathed by the male order that she so strenuously questioned.

We forget that Wollstonecraft's life was intertwined with the early years of the French Revolution. She wrote one of the more cogent appraisals of the infamous uprising: criticizing the Reign of Terror but at the same time commending what the revolution stood for. She was particularly indignant of Edmund Burke's dismissal of the "furies from hell." Wollstonecraft noted that these were angry women visibly upset with the massive food shortages while the King and Queen lounged at Versailles. Burke had idealized Marie Antoinette, whereas Wollstonecraft saw her as a femme fatale. Her account remained virtually unread until renewed interest in Wollstonecraft emerged with the feminist movement in Europe and America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

She had a tumultuous life, ending in tragedy when she died giving birth to her second child, Mary Godwin. Not quite 40, there was much more she would have written on the vindication of the rights of men and women, but that was left to the women that followed her. For over a century, the only monument that stood for her was her raised slab at Bournemouth. Now, we have another monument to contemplate her rich contributions.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Welcome to this month's reading group selection. David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908. At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades. Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society. I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran. Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...

Team of Rivals Reading Group

''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005

The Searchers

You are invited to join us in a discussion of The Searchers , a new book on John Ford's boldest Western, which cast John Wayne against type as the vengeful Ethan Edwards who spends eight years tracking down a notorious Comanche warrior, who had killed his cousins and abducted a 9 year old girl. The film has had its fair share of detractors as well as fans over the years, but is consistently ranked in most critics' Top Ten Greatest Films . Glenn Frankel examines the origins of the story as well as the film itself, breaking his book down into four parts. The first two parts deal with Cynthia Ann Parker and her son Quanah, perhaps the most famous of the 19th century abduction stories. The short third part focuses on the author of the novel, Alan Le May, and how he came to write The Searchers. The final part is about Pappy and the Duke and the making of the film. Frankel noted that Le May researched 60+ abduction stories, fusing them together into a nar...

Dispatches from Vilnius

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