Brooke Shields' Calvins Return to Sexualize Teen?

In Vogue's YouTube channel video, "Brooke Shields Tells the Story Behind Her 80's Calvin Klein Jeans Campaign" (Oct 28, 2021), Brooke Shields shared that she was naive about the sexual nature of the "Nothing Comes Between Me & My Calvins" advertisement:

"I was naive. I didn't think anything of it. I didn't think it was - [it] had to do with underwear. I didn't think it was sexual in nature [...] I was a kid. And where I was - I was naive. I was a very protected, sequestered kind of young woman [...]"

Although, Shields claims that she was naive at 15, is it safe to assume that Shields' mother was in on the sexual innuendo? #rhetoricalquestion 

However, now at middle-age, Shields appears to condone the Calvin advertisements by admitting that (teen) sex sells:

"Yeah, at 56, I can go back and look at the camera, and say, "Oh well it's zooming in. And yeah, it's sort of on my crotch area. And then it comes to my face." Like, okay, but sex has sold since the dawn of time." 

Shields even admitted that, due to the allure appeal of nymphets, her Calvin campaign was "extremely successful", she admitted that Richard Avedon, the photographer, and Klein "knew exactly what they were doing", and she shared that her Calvin campaign was life changing for her and Klein. #intherightplaceattherightime

"The campaign was extremely successful."

"There's an appeal to it that is so undeniable. And they tapped right into it. You know, they knew exactly what they were doing."

"[...] he [Calvin Klein] said it changed his entire career and life. And it put Calvin on the map [...] which was what I think they had hoped for it."

"He said, 'You know, you changed the course of my life and my career.' And I said, 'Well, you did mine too.' We were in the right place at the right time." 

Survival of the Fittest (2022)
Source: Louis K Meisel 

Thus, it's no surprise that Shields shared with Katie White in the artnet news interview "[...] Brooke Shields on Why She [...] Volunteered to Model for Her Latest Work" (Wed Apr 27 2022) that not only does Shields still have the, what White referred as "iconic", Calvins from the infamous (sexualized teen) advertisement but Shields gave the Calvins to Grier - her 15-year-old daughter (to volunteer) to pose in two Tara Lewis paintings.

Grier modeling for Tara Lewis

Shields: I even went into the archives and pulled out my very original Calvins. 

White: Oh, wow, the Calvins you wore in the famous ad?

Shields: Yes! I don’t fit in them anymore, but my 15-year-old does so she’s wearing them in one [sic] [two] of Tara’s paintings, recreating a pose from that shoot. 

 Family Jean (2022)
Source: Louis K. Meisel

In the Balthus like paintings, we can only imagine how Nicholas Fox Weber would describe Lewis' paintings of Shields' 15-year-old with the nymphet's peek of (bare) midriff and proposing posterior. 

Unsurprisingly, Survival of the Fittest 2021 has sold. But surprisingly, Family Jeans 2022 is available, which will be on view at the aptly named “Role Modeling” exhibit at Louis K. Meisel Gallery in SoHo starting May 4, 2022.

Rowan modeling for Hell Yes (2022)

And Rowan, another teen daughter of Shields, modeled for Tara Lewis. In Hell Yes (2022), Rowan stares seductively at you with the words Hell Yes exclaiming from her bosom between her pigtails that drape her fountains. 

Shields has come to condone her Calvin advertisements so much so that the exhibit even includes a, sort of, shrine of Shields' (sexualized) teen magazine covers with a Calvin centerfold spread - front and center.

Richard Prince's Spiritual America (1983)

White wrote that Shields: "[...] has famously played muse for photographers, from Richard Avedon to Bruce Weber, and artists, including the painter Eric Fischl." But White failed to mention Richard Prince’s Spiritual America exhibit at the Guggenheim where a photograph of a nude 10-year-old Shields was on display. Interestingly,  Shields' mothers reportedly sold the photograph to Playboy Press for a whopping $450.

Nor did White mention Shields' 13-year-old "womanly" bikini pose in Life magazine that was written about in the Vanity Fair piece "The Photo That Changed My Life". 

Pretty Baby (1978)

But maybe it wasn't relevant for White to mention Shields' role as a pre-teen prostitute in Pretty Baby (1978), where her virginity was sold for a whopping $400.

Girl Museum's Girl for Sale Exhibit: Teen Sex Slaves Depicted in (Highbrow) Art

Here's part of the description of the Girl Museum's Girl for Sale online exhibit:

Every year, thousands of girls are tricked, intimidated or forced into the shadows of sweatshops and brothels for labor and sexual exploitation. Some are taken across oceans, others just across the street. This modern day slavery is the second most lucrative international illegal trade [...]

Would you sell your daughter for food? [...]

Girl for Sale is a collaborative virtual outreach exhibition about girl trafficking that interrogates and responds to the issues through poetry, art and education. [...] This [is a] co-production of Girl Museum and the American Poetry Museum, launched on 31 March 2011 [...]

Here's an excerpt from the images section:

The answer to the question of ‘What do we want from art?’ is continually evolving. [...] It is very hard to misinterpret a painting of naked girls on an auction block, unless you want to believe it is something other than the obvious. Historically, we seem to demand less from art. We want beauty and familiarity, and will readily forgive scenes of violence, sexual exploitation and perversion as ‘of its own time’. However, ethics and morality did not suddenly spring forth in the 21st century as newly invented, so to not interrogate imagery that celebrates the sale of people as commodities is a bit naive [...]

And here are some of the images:

The White Slave, Abastenia St Ledger Eberle, 1913

This is the description of The White Slave by Abastenia St Ledger Eberle, a female sculptor, on Girl Museum:

"This statue caused controversy when it was first shown. The child in the statue represents child prostitution. [Abastenia St Leger] Eberle produced many pieces as a form of social protest after ‘The White Slave’. Child Prostitution, at the time of this statue, was known as White Slavery. The positioning of the child, as her hands are held behind her back graphically illustrates her entrapment and prevents any freedom. The man who holds her is shouting out, shouting out perhaps her price or her age."

The Greek Slave, Hiram Powers, 1844

This is the description of Hiram Powers' The Greek Slave on Girl Museum:

This 1844 statue shows a standing nude girl with chains around her hands and holding a cross. The cross seems to indicate her Christianity having been made captive and being sold off for sexual means. She gazes away from the viewer as though humiliated though this could also be read, because of the presence of the cross, as Christian shame.

The Girl or the Vase, Henryk Siemiradzki, 1881

Here's the intriguing Wikipedia entry for Henryk Siemiradzki's The Girl or the Vase:

The Girl or the Vase (Polish: Wazon czy kobieta), also known as The Presentation of the Slave, is an 1878 painting by the Polish artist Henryk Siemiradzki. The subject is from ancient Rome and shows a patrician who contemplates on whether he should buy an East Asian vase or a slave girl. The painting earned Siemiradzki the gold medal at the 1878 World's Fair in Paris and the French Legion of Honour.

The painting last changed owner in 2005, when it was sold through Sotheby's in New York for 1,426,000 dollars.

Slave Market in Rome, Jean-Leon Gerome, 1884 

Lastly, here's the description of Jean-Leon Gerome Slave Market in Rome posted on Girl Museum:

The theme of nakedness runs through all these images. In this painting, the girl being auctioned is stood on a stage in front of all those who are bidding for her. Not only is she without clothes but the other [very young nymphet] slaves behind and to her side are naked and stare out despondently at the crowd. The girl at the centre has her arm up and looks away, unable to look at whoever will buy her.

Louis-Léopold Boilly: French Painter of Teen [Lipstick] Lesbians & Foot Fetish Nymphets

Louis-Léopold Boilly, Self-Portrait

Per National Gallery of Art, by 1779, Louis-Léopold Boilly (French: 5 July 1761 – 4 January 1845) was painting portraits in Arras, but he moved to Paris in 1785 where his family portraits attracted attention and commissions. Beginning in 1791, Boilly "[...] regularly exhibited portraits and genre scenes at the Paris Salons. [But] [w]hen private patronage dwindled after the outbreak of the Revolution, he sought to reach a wider popular audience by painting boudoir scenes, of mildly licentious character [...]"

Two Young Women Kissing (Deux jeunes femmes s'embrassant), about 1790

Boilly's Two Young Women Kissing (Deux jeunes femmes s'embrassant), about 1790 and Comparing Little Feet (La comparaison des petits pieds), 1891 are two examples of the French painter's erotic pieces that profiles nymphets. 

Per Alain.R.Truong: "'Comparing Little Feet' (1891, The Ramsbury Manor Foundation) uses a seemingly innocent competition between two young women as a means of exposing their legs and décolletages, whereas works such as 'Two Young Women Kissing' (about 1790–4, The Ramsbury Manor Foundation) are more explicitly erotic."

Comparing Little Feet (La comparaison des petits pieds), 1891

Here's an excerpt from Sotheby's catalogue notes for Comparing Little Feet:

This unique erotic composition reveals an interior in which a woman, seated at left, crosses her right leg over her left knee in order to remove her shoe and compare her foot with that of her friend. Both have one red shoe and one blue shoe each; they have obviously exchanged them. The woman on the right, standing with her breasts casually uncovered, lifts her skirt. In the doorway a voyeur observes the scene with an interested, if not salacious air. Such licentious genre scenes caused their creator, Louis-Léopold Boilly, no little trouble during the so-called Reign of Terror (1793-94) for the loose morals they portrayed. With a polished technique, the artist here reveals how capable he is of rendering the intimacy of the scene through the magnificent play of fabrics and subtle lighting. 

Alexandre Chaponnier (d’après Louis-Léopold Boilly) La comparaison des petits pieds (fig. 1)

At least three versions of this composition, entitled Comparing Little Feet, were made, including one now lost and only known through an engraving by Alexandre Chaponnier (fig. 1. The principal group of the scene is identical but the third figure is now on the floor, in a grotesque pose, trying to see even more. 

Maurice Ehlinger: French Painter of Nude Nymphets [Teens]

I learned about Maurice Ehlinger (1896-1981) on the blog Novel Activist via Art Controversies. Ehlinger was an award winning french painter whose aesthetic and muse, like Serge Marshennikov and Balthus, was the nymphet. 

Ehlinger was born in Saint-Die-des-Vosges, but he eventually settled in Paris where he was accepted at the famous l'atelier de Flameng. Subsequently, Ehlinger earned money as an art instructor by day, which allowed him to paint in his studio by night. 

Ehlinger's nude nymphets can be found in a number of French museums including the Museum of Pierre-Noël Saint-Die-des-Vosges 

Balthus @ the Gagosian & the MET: Art or Teen Pornography?

I went to the Gagosian's new ground floor-gallery on 76th and Madison avenue this past Friday to see the Balthus: The Last Studies exhibit. The exhibition displayed a series of little-known Polaroids that Balthus took of Anna Whali, who was the youngest daughter of Balthus' physician. Balthus started photographing Anna when she was eight-years-old.

Anna was topless in most of the Polaroids, and the exhibit reminds me of the subjective nature of the United States child pornography laws. For example, Balthus and David Hamilton are considered artists, but photographer Donald Raymond Croft II was charged with child pornography in 2012 for his photographs of nude nymphets.  

From Vanity Fair (October 2013)

BALTHUS Untitled, c. 1999–2000 at the Gagosian

On Saturday I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MET) to see Balthus Cats and Girls—Paintings and Provocations and once again the lines were blurred between art and nymphet pornography. For example, Balthus' pre-teen neighbor, Thérèse Blanchard, is posing provocatively in a number of the paintings in the exhibit. 

BALTHUS Girl and Cat (1937) at the MET

However, there is at least one Balthus that even the Gagosian or the MET won't touch and that is Balthus' Guitar Lesson. According to New York magazine, the Guitar Lesson debuted in Paris in 1934 in an backroom exhibit that lasted for fifteen days. Then in 1977, the painting was exhibited for a month in Pierre Matisse’s mid-town Manhattan art gallery. From 1977 to 1982, it sat in the storage area of the Museum of Modern Art. And after being exchanged between buyers over the years, it landed in the possession of multi-billionaire Stavros Niarchos. 

Guitar Lesson (1934)

Update 03/23/14: The Museum Folkwang in Essen, Germany has cancelled the “Balthus: the Last Pictures” exhibit that was scheduled to open next month. More details can be found here.

Balthus' Polaroids via Purple Magazine

Update 3/20/16: Purple magazine published "Balthus Polariods" in the S/S 2016 issue 25. From Benoit Peverelli's presentation we learned that a few years after Balthus' death, thousands of documents were discovered in his Rossinière, Switzerland based studio at the Grand Chalet. Balthus found it difficult to draw due to his age which is why he switched to using a Polaroid camera to capture his nymphets. The Polaroids were used for Balthus' last six paintings - three of which were never finished. 

Balthus the Painter (1908-2001) [Documentary]:
Anna Whali Visits Balthus