Beach Burlesque Print

Oil on Belgian linen. 30” x 30” (unframed). This picture is a paean to Rachael Carson’s groundbreaking work,Silent Spring, which, as the book jacket proclaims, was “Serialized in three parts in The New Yorker, where President John F. Kennedy read it in the summer of 1962, Silent Spring was published in August and became an instant best-seller and the most talked about book in decades. Utilizing her many sources in federal science and in private research, Carson spent over six years documenting her analysis that humans were misusing powerful, persistent, chemical pesticides before knowing the full extent of their potential harm to the whole biota. Carson’s passionate concern in Silent Spring is with the future of the planet and all life on Earth. She calls for humans to act responsibly, carefully, and as stewards of the living earth. Additionally Silent Spring suggested a needed change in how democracies and liberal societies operated so that individuals and groups could question what their governments allowed others to put into the environment. Far from calling for sweeping changes in government policy, Carson believed the federal government was part of the problem. She admonished her readers and audiences to ask “Who Speaks, And Why?” and therein to set the seeds of social revolution. She identified human hubris and financial self-interest as the crux of the problem and asked if we could master ourselves and our appetites to live as though we humans are an equal part of the earth’s systems and not the master of them.” Carson’s work serves as background material to illustrate the various analogies that Beach Burlesque cogently describes. An analogy between animals and social categories is, of course, evident. A succinct summary of the various homologies evident in the Scriptures is most evident in a major work of Mary Douglas, Implicit Meanings, which states, “At the level of the individual living being impurity is the imperfect, broken, bleeding specimen. The sanctity of cognitive boundaries is made known by valuing the integrity of the physical forms. The perfect physical specimens point to the perfectly bounded temple, altar and sanctuary. And these in their turn point to the hardwon and hard-to-defend territorial boundaries of the Promised Land.” (1975:269). Beach Burlesque sought to show ideas about the body have a symbolic dimension. The form of symbolic interpretation represented in this painting moves the discussion away from the specific focus on prohibitions, but is a development of ideas contained in Douglas’ Purity and Danger, where she sought to show that ideas about the body have a symbolic dimension. Pollutions, she writes, are used as analogies for expressing a general view of the social order, for the structure of “living organisms is better able to reflect complex social forms than door posts and lintels.” (1966:193). By examining the pollution ideas of the Hebrews, suggests that preoccupations with the boundaries of the body express dangers to community boundaries. The one of a kind original painting Beach Burlesque includes the copyright to an accompanying poem: To The Ocean In seven tongues the warning does appear Lest anyone should fail to get the word; Grim caution: Posted signs declare, “BEWARE— CRAB, SHELL AND BOTTOMFISH FROM THE FJORD MAY BE POLLUTED AND UNSAFE TO EAT.” Nearby, the shore is peopled with red flags That ward the swimming public off the beach. Plastic detritus ‘cross the coast’s replete, Thus making obsolete the crimson tags. This global blight does every landmass reach. Conveyed to oceans through the river’s flow Comes dung for and hypodermics to the shore. An ebb may tampon applicators tow With sutures and stained bandages galore. A virus can through drainage ditch transmit As blood-filled vials sail to open coast. Crack vials, needles and syringes spread Man’s foolishness upon beach timely writ; While duty to environment is tread. Mindless graffito! mar not nature’s work! Broadcast an ocean’s distress with debris; Your turbid disgrace is man’s handiwork, And by him held in low priority. Both red and brown tides blot each coastal bay While algae blooms block sunlight from plant’s growth. As oxygen depleted dead zones thrive Fish suffocate as algae beds decay. Such toxins are to tidal disperse loath; From ‘fish kills’ few sea creatures can survive. The snouts, the flippers, and the tails are pocked With blisters, craters, acid burns, and rot. Anoxic-toxic waters dolphins dock With sloughed-off patches of skin fungi blot. Non-biodegradable plastic waste Entraps marine life and and can maim or kill. Sea turtles choke to death on plastic bags Mistook for jellyfish and taste in haste. Death by entanglement or poison spill Is rife in estuaries, shores and crags. O caustic cocktail, chronic discharge dump! Your film of filth corrupts our food web’s flow. From fjord to fjord sea farmers jump In effort to evade pollute plateaus. Conceivably contaminants can lay Quite undisturbed upon an ocean floor; Wave action, tides, and currents can disperse Contaminants in widespread disarray. Sea creatures, storms, and earthquakes can impure As more resurfaced waste is interspersed. A mix of copper, cadmium, and zinc Can chart the history of industry. Core samples of deposits serve to link Depression’s date to war’s last remedy. Electrical-equipment plants produced Seas rich in PCBs from sludge-dump sprees— In sediment, compounds and metals show When first used, banned, and when reintroduced. Pollution’s text tells time’s tale by degrees, And is the shadow such extinctions throw. Through education residents are taught The surface of pollution’s gross effects. Stiff fines and prison sentences have wrought A slight deter if careless intellects. Sur-(legislature-levied)-tax on wares Has helped to foot the bill for cleanup’s cost. And retail food establishments have banned The use of plastic wrappers, tabs, and tears. But when the seas’ resources are exhaust Land will one ecological heed demmand! Steven Mozer (1989) Beach Burlesque renders a symbolic system, based on the image of the body, whose primary concern is the ordering of a social hierarchy. Thus we can understand pollution rules if we are prepared to see in the body a symbol of society. The body provides a basic scheme for all symbolism. There is hardly any pollution which does not have some primary physiological reference. Beach Burlesque relates pollution rules and corporeal restrictions to the way in which people conceptually and symbolically structure their environment.

Print:Giclee on Fine Art Paper

Size:10 W x 10 H x 0.1 D in

Size with Frame:15.25 W x 15.25 H x 1.2 D in

Delivery Time:Typically 5-7 business days for domestic shipments, 10-14 business days for international shipments.