Someone once called me “Pumpkin Head” because they thought my face is round. and maybe I used too much bronzer. I thought the description was undeserved.
However, in this case, it appears Judith does actually have a pumpkin on her head.
Unknown artist, Lombard School, http://www.wikigallery.org
One more! One more!!
How could I forget Judy Monroe? How could you forget Judy Monroe?
In the musical A Chorus Line, Judy Monroe is a nervous, scatterbrained, gawky, tall, warm, and hopeful woman – who reflects on her problematic childhood during the audition in “Montage Part 3: Mother.”
Enjoy Heather Parcells as Judy starting about 11m20s. She is the redhead in the mauve leotard who acts like a Judy.
What can you do after you determine that your butt looks big?
Buy a new handbag, of course.
Dagmar Calais, “Judith and Holofernes,” 2008, Oil on canvas, 200 x 160 cm, http://www.dagmar-calais.de
I could continue to ask: DOES THIS MAKE MY BUTT LOOK BIG?
However, this is actually a posterior view of the Maid – not Judith, who is standing in the background with the fauchion – and I have tired of making cracks about butts.
So instead I would rather talk about Frank Brangwyn.
Frank Brangwyn, “Judith and Holofernes,” 1948, Oil on wood, 42 x 30.5 cm, William Morris Gallery, London, England, UK
Imagine producing over 12,000 works across paintings, drawings, illustrations, lithographs, woodcuts, stained glass, furniture, ceramics, table glassware, interiors, and buildings. Imagine mural commissions that cover over 22,000 square feet of canvas (1). Imagine being commissioned to paint 16 large works that cover 3,000 square feet of the Royal Gallery at the House of Lords at Westminster – and then having them refused for being “too colourful and lively” for the location. Imagine being the jack-of-all-trades, Frank Brangwyn.
The rejected murals – known as the British Empire Panels – were commissioned in 1924 to commemorate the First World War. Brangwyn, an official war artist, was selected and chose to create a “decorative painting representing various Dominions and parts of the British Empire.”
Brangwyn’s intention was to enliven the gloomy Royal Gallery with ‘decorative painting representing various Dominions and parts of the British Empire’. No geographical logic was intended; the panels have a spirit of fantasy showing a protected world of beauty and plenty, based artistically on Brangwyn’s many travels and also his studies of animals in London Zoo. (2)
Obviously not the intention of the House of Lords, who rejected them after seven years of labor. Thus the panels were acquired for the Swansea Guildhall and installed in Brangwyn Hall in 1934, where this artistic achievement is enjoyed by the public on a daily basis. (3)
In order to see all 16 panels, go to BBC: Your Paintings – British Empire Panel. They truly are an explosion of color and life and lushness that would have put the House of Lords in a stupor. If they were not in a stupor already.
So much more fun than talking about the butt of Judith’s maid, don’t you think?
(1) Clifford Musgrave, ‘Sir Frank Brangwyn RA’, The Studio, April 1953, p136
(2) Frank Rutter, The British Empire Panels Designed For The House Of Lords By Frank Brangwyn, R.A. Essex: F. Lewis, 1933.
(3) City and County of Swansea, British Empire Panels – Sir Frank Brangwyn R.A.
Continuing the question: DOES THIS MAKE MY BUTT LOOK BIG?
Sometimes it helps to see things from different angles.
Dario Ortiz Robledo, “Judith y Holofernes I,” 2006, Oil on board, 70 x 50 cm, http://www.darioortizart.com
Dario Ortiz Robledo, “Judith y Holofernes II,” 2006, Oil on board, 70 x 50 cm, http://www.darioortizart.com
Dario Ortiz Robledo, “Judith y Holofernes III,” 2006, Oil on board, 70 x 50 cm, http://www.darioortizart.com
Judith goes on wondering: DOES THIS MAKE MY BUTT LOOK BIG?
Unknown, Venice, “Judith and Holofernes,” 17th century, Oil on canvas , 22 x 111 cm, Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, New Jersey, US
Judith: (sigh) All this working out and I’m still not happy with the size of my butt.
Maid: Well, wearing white across your bum doesn’t help.
Judith: Also not a good choice for decapitations.
Maid: True … what kind of work-outs are you doing?
Judith: I was spinning three times a week, but then my coccyx was acting up.
Maid: You mean you had a pain in the ass?
Judith: Yes, that’s another way of saying it. Then I was using the stair climber but that seemed to be going nowhere.
Maid: Squats and lunges?
Judith: Yup. Leg and hip extensions, Dumbbell stiff-legged dead lift, fitball glute bridge, Frog Butt boosters …
Maid: Maybe you’re overworking it.
Judith: I hadn’t thought of that.
Maid: Who is your trainer?
Judith: Some girl named Kim Kardigan. Or was it Kashian? Or maybe …
Thanks to Rebecca Daroff DiMattia, Stories in Art for this find.
For the next few days, I have a series of paintings that all ask the same question:
DOES THIS MAKE MY BUTT LOOK BIG??
Roman Bures, “Judita a Holofernes,” 2010, Watercolor on paper, 21 x 30 cm, http://www.galerie-online.cz
It appears that Holofernes gave the wrong answer.
Not the end of the line!
Judy on the deck of HMS Grasshopper
Judy the Dog was born in Shanghai Dog Kennels in 1937. A pure-bred liver and white Pointer, she was presented to the Royal Navy as a mascot at a young age and assigned to HMS Gnat, an Insect class gunboat. Judy was known for pointing out the approach of hostile Japanese aircraft long before any of the human crew could hear them. She was transferred to HMS Grasshopper, a Locust class gunboat, where in February 1942, the ship was attacked by fighter-bombers and was forced to beach on a nearby Sinkep island – uninhabited with little food and no apparent water. Judy appeared two days later covered in oil, and began to dig at the shoreline to unearth a fresh-water spring and is credited with saving everyone’s lives.
The crew, along with Judy, commandeered a Chinese junk and managed to sail to Sumatra, where they embarked on a 200-mile cross-country trek across the island in an attempt to reach Padang but were captured. The crew became prisoners of war and smuggled Judy along with them, hidden under empty rice sacks, for five days during the journey to the Gloergoer prisoner of war camp in Medan. There she met Leading Aircraftman Frank Williams (1919–2006), who adopted her and shared his daily handful of rice from August 1942 onwards. She was the only animal to have been officially registered as a prisoner of war during the Second World War. During her stay at the camp, she would alert the prisoners to the approach of the Japanese guards and also if other animals such as snakes or scorpions were around.
In June 1944, the men were transferred to Singapore aboard the SS Van Warwyck. Dogs were not allowed on board, but Frank Williams managed to teach Judy to lie still and silent inside a rice sack. When he boarded the ship, Judy climbed into a sack and Williams slung it over his shoulder to take on board. For three hours the men were forced to stand on deck in the searing heat, and for the entire time Judy remained still and silent in the bag on Wiliams’s back. The conditions on board the ship were cramped with more than 700 prisoners. On 26 June 1944, the ship was torpedoed. Williams pushed Judy out of a porthole in an attempt to save her life, even though there was a 15 feet (4.6 m) drop to the sea. He made his own escape from the ship, not knowing if Judy had survived.
Frank Williams was recaptured and was sent to a new camp without news of Judy’s survival. However, stories began being told of a dog helping drowning men reach pieces of debris on which to hold, and others recalled how the dog would bring them flotsam to keep them afloat. The dog would also allow men to hold onto her back while swimming them to safety.
Williams was giving up hope of finding Judy when she arrived in his new camp. “I couldn’t believe my eyes. As I entered the camp, a scraggy dog hit me square between the shoulders and knocked me over! I’d never been so glad to see the old girl. And I think she felt the same!” They spent a year in Sumatra, with the Japanese using the men to cut through the jungle to lay railway track. Rations were a handful of maggot-ridden tapioca a day, which Frank continued to share with Judy. Frank credits Judy with saving his life during his time spent there, “She saved my life in so many ways. The greatest way of all was giving me a reason to live. All I had to do was look at her and into those weary, bloodshot eyes and I would ask myself: What would happen to her if I died? I had to keep going. Even if it meant waiting for a miracle.”
The guards had grown tired of the dog and sentenced her to death. She managed to hide out in the jungle where she supplemented her diet with snakes, rats and monkeys.
Once hostilities ceased, Judy was smuggled aboard a troopship heading to Liverpool. With the help of the troops with which she had been imprisoned, Judy managed to avoid the dock police and was delivered into the care of the ship’s cook, who ensured that she was fed on the voyage home.
She was awarded the Dickin Medal, “the animals’Victoria Cross” – the highest military decoration awarded for valour in the face of the enemy. Her citation reads: “For magnificent courage and endurance in Japanese prison camps, which helped to maintain morale among her fellow prisoners and also for saving many lives through her intelligence and watchfulness”. At the same time, Frank Williams was awarded the PDSA’s White Cross of St. Giles, the highest award possible, for his devotion to Judy.
She was interviewed by the BBC for their coverage of the London Victory Celebrations of 1946 on 8 June and her barks were broadcast to the nation on the radio. Frank and Judy spent the year after the war visiting the relatives of PoWs who hadn’t survived; Frank remarked that Judy always seemed to give a comforting presence. On 10 May 1948, the pair left to work on a government-funded food scheme in East Africa. After two years there, Judy was discovered to have a tumour, and was put to sleep at the age of 13 (February 1950). Frank spent two months building a granite and marble memorial in her memory, which included a plaque which told of her life story. In 2006 her collar and medal went on public display for the first time in the Imperial War Museum, London, as part of “The Animals’ War” exhibition.
I think she deserves a movie!
www.frankwilliams.ca
Wikipedia – Judy (dog)
Ferencz Paczka, “Judith And Holofernes,” 1883, Oil on canvas, 61 x 76.5 cm, auctioned by Leslie Hindman, May 2, 2012 (Lot 415) Chicago, Illinois, US
So much for the Nazarenes. Does it look like Judith is doing a little light housework, or is it just me?
John Rogers Herbert, “Judith and Holofernes,” 1863, Oil on canvas, 107.3 x 76.2 cm, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, England, UK
In the middle of an upheaval in art history, that is. Let me see if i can keep this straight:
John Rogers Herbert started as an academic painter, then moved to the Nazarene style and influenced the Pre-Raphaelistes. His conversion to Catholicism about 1840 was a defining point in his career when his art became more personal, merging work and religion. Herbert’s career-changing commission was a share in the decoration of the new Palace of Westminster – based on his friendship with A.W. Pugin, the co-architect and a proponent of medieval revival. Over 13 years, Herbert created the fresco Lear Disinheriting Cordelia (1848) for the Poet’s Hall and nine frescos for the Moses Room (named for his large fresco of Moses Bringing Down the Tables of the Law). (1)
This Judith was painted during this period and hardly appears to be revolutionary. Unless you compare to it to predecessors Etty and Vernet or contemporaries Le Clair and Regnault – who are sensual and impulsive and murderous. This Judith is like Sandys‘ depiction – sad, ambivalent, hesitant and fully clothed. She is actually thinking about what she must do without seeming self-righteous. And while these paintings may not have changed the world, they do perpetuate the importance of Judith and restore her spirituality – if not her clothes.
So here she is – between the Academics and new art perspective, between action and indecision, between darkness and light. We already know which way she goes but it never hurts to remember what it is like at that moment of decision when you are in between.
(1) Nancy Langham, John Rogers Herbert, R.A. (viewed Mar 17, 2013)
judith2you 