The Scottish painter Jack Vettriano has passed away at the age of 73. He was a mainstream artist, not explicitly a femdom or fetish one, but kink was clearly an undercurrent in a good amount of his work. I featured two of his paintings in past posts – here and here.
While he had a lot of commercial success he was despised by the critics and art world. This article on him was one of the more positive ones I’ve seen, and even here the writer can’t resist finishing with how he finds his paintings ‘heinous and grim’. It’s a somewhat incoherent article, but I think there’s one thing it gets right…
The main issue for snobby art types like me isn’t the work itself. It’s that he lacked a conceptual edge, a sense of irony and any postmodern self-awareness. He didn’t paint sexy midnight trysts between half-clothed women and Brylcreemed men as a comment on gendered power dynamics or as a riff on art historical depictions of the female nude. He painted them because they were sexy.
There’s something to be said for that. One can enjoy a simpler message without it detracting from other more complex works. Unabashed sexuality and hedonism for the joy of it makes people uncomfortable. Undercutting it – as this writer does by likening it to a greasy double cheeseburger – relieves that discomfort.
They’re not paintings I’d choose to hang on my walls or spend thousands of dollars on. But one can still choose to appreciate them and their openly kinky themes.
This is by Jack Vettriano and entitled ‘Wicked Games’