Heidi Taillefer's Venus Envy painting

Heidi Taillefer created this stunning painting titled "Venus Envy." Taillefer is best known for painting the poster art for Cirque du Soleil's "Dralion." von Scaramouche Gallery is now offering limited-edition lithographs of Venus Envy. Heidi writes:

The painting “Venus Envy” is a work emphasizing the beauty and potency of women and motherhood. The name “Venus Envy” is a play on words of the Freudian “Penis Envy”, and implies the enviable female advantage of being the carrier of new life. With the predominance of taboos and limitations against women in so many cultures throughout the world, the piece exposes with pride and irreverence, female characteristics, whether beautiful or unsettling. It is an attempt to absolve women of their generally complex nature, and free them from harsh social standards foisted upon their physical, social, and spiritual selves. It also explores the sensuality of pregnancy, and the mystical and intimidating power with which it was once regarded.

"Venus Envy" prints (von Scaramouche)

David Pescovitz is Boing Boing's co-editor/managing partner. He's also a research director at Institute for the Future. On Instagram, he's @pesco.

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DrPretto

Beautiful, Medusa+Major Motoko Kusanagi(from Ghost in the Shell).
Anonymous

From all the pregnant woman I’ve known I have never envied them.

That said this picture is oddly erotic and grotesque at the same time.
Amelia_G

Great attitude. Great start. Trying to change motherhood from a bug to a feature, from my unholy perspective.
seachange

I can’t say I understand all the symbolism, and I don’t especially like the “style,” but I was mesmerized by this painting. I wonder why the apple, orange, and bunches of grapes but no pomegranate?
moniker42

I should get a tattoo of that.
Daemon

The “female advantage of being the carrier of new life” is just about the last thing I would ever envy. I’ll never understand the desire to reproduce.

Now, female fashion – that I envy. Guys clothing is boring as hell unless you go well outside the mainstream.
Anonymous

As a currently pregnant woman – with twins, no less – yep. This painting depicts just about exactly how I feel right now: glorious, powerful, huge and kinda gross. All at the same time. Bravo.
jtiii

I agree with the mesmerizing comment. I have to say this might be the weirdest painting I’ve ever found to be absolutely beautiful. Really impressive.
Katos

I’m really quite surprised by the negative reactions to this painting in the comments above. I was stunned when I opened this post at the glorius technical accomplishment, level of detail, and layers of interest this piece of work contains. Why the hate, haters? It’s pretty amazing in my view. Don’t feel threatened! Embrace!
salsaman

Wow, such a perfectly ugly image. If the idea was to strip any sense of beauty from the female form, it’s a success. Grotesque. People like this? No accounting for taste.
- damiro
  
  I guess if snakes, fruits, flowers, goddess images, and babies are ugly and grotesque, you’re right. No accounting for taste.
Anonymous

I can’t but think that this painting would’ve been considered sexist back in the 1980s.
Fang Xianfu

This has always struck me as one of the most bizarre claims of the last couple of waves of feminism – that is, “womb-envy”. I mean, I get that there are things that’re great about being a woman, I never thought that was firmly an advantage. It always struck me as something that comes with a serious set of cons to go with its pros – as many comedians have said, who wants to bleed from their privates?

Which makes this a really great painting, because it promotes all manner of contemplation of this stuff. Thanks, Pesco.
Anonymous

I didn’t notice till I looked at the website, but the orange she’s holding is clearly shaped like a vagina down the center. Just thought I’d point that out to anyone that isn’t grossed out enough already :)

Still, great concept and superbly executed, but I don’t think I could stomach having it on my wall.
spejic

For some reason, I feel like eating an orange now.
PapayaSF

She’s got man hands!
Anonymous

I like the transition of thought/philosophy down to work/practical, from head to foot.

..as a side note/just random thought..

Saying I envy women because they are life givers is wing shot. It’s more accurate to describe it (the ‘envy’) as a rampant curiosity about a power & set of rules that are relatively alien to me.

and I agree with the above statement that women’s fashion is more interesting in variety/style. Unless of course you live in a world drawn by Peter Chung..
Anonymous

the artist says she wants to “free them from harsh social standards,” yet she depicts her burdened with a child? the whole “mystical and intimidating power” associations came from a time when it wasn’t understood why/how pregnancy happened, and from the ignorance sprang the idea of woman as “creator of life.”

from the point of view of a person who refuses to define myself or my life according to the organs i was born with — we ar emore than teh sum of our parts — i regardless cannot help but notice that her BRAIN has been left out of the painting.
- Anonymous
  
  Is having a baby a “harsh social standard”? Rather I’d say it’s a biological one. And I find it interesting that you characterize her as being “burdened” by a child, as if that’s a negative or unwanted thing. I believe that most women don’t think of their fetuses as “burdens.”
  And in the artist’s explanation of the piece, she notes that it is “is a work emphasizing the beauty and potency of women and motherhood,” not an attempt to define women by their intellectual aspect. It seems to me that everyone has a body and has to deal with it, one way or another. She’s choosing to celebrate certain feminine qualities that have been viewed by many societies as weaknesses.
brassandlace

That’s really gorgeous. I hope they release some cheaper copies as well since I’d love to support the artist.
Anonymous

Wow, this is so interesting
latent_ravening_ferocity

Good thing she explained the title. I never would have picked up on that.
Anonymous

I agree that it looks like a Dali… wish I could remember who said that Dali was “a genius, right up to his elbow.”
Benoisito

In reply to various folk. I think perhaps a useful point of the picture is to show how much we can isolate aspects of the female as “gross”(be it the physical mechanics of motherhood or feminine sensuality and eroticism) without seeing their bound interconnection and intrinsic beauty in the whole woman as gaurdian of the life cycle… or at least that’s some of what I got from it.

This is also just a downright radiant piece of art. Brings to mind both Kahlo and Mati Klarwein, not bad company to be in.
Anonymous

I would change one of the nipple to arrow head
Anonymous

very similar to one of her early works that was the front cover of a poertry book called hacking the future

http://www.heiditaillefer.com/index.php/texts/48
Anonymous

The way of painting is similar to the work of Dali. I like it.
Anonymous

eh, i’m female, and i think it’s kind of gross.
g0d5m15t4k3

It’s kind of mesmerizing.
Anonymous

“Joyce defines Improper Art as kinetic and breaks it down into two categories: the pornographic and the didactic. Pornographic art is any expression that inspires desire in the observer to possess the object. All advertising art is pornographic in this sense and therefore improper.

The second category of Improper Art, in Joyce’s aesthetic, is the Didactic. Didactic Art is any artistic expression which instills fear or loathing in the observer and thereby pushes them away from the object being observed.

All comedy is didactic, at the least the best comedy is. All tragedy is didactic and all social expressions of anger are didactic. Whether it’s Dave Chappelle, Saturday Night Live, Nine Inch Nails, or KRS-ONE–it’s improper by Joyce’s definition.

98% of all art produced since World War II (Post-Modern or whatever ridiculous term the literati call it now) is improper in Joyce’s sense because it has been inherently kineticï¿½suffused with internal movement that either pulls the observer toward it in a desire to possess or pushes the observer away with fear or loathing.

But then we get to Proper Art which Joyce defines as static and this is where things get interesting. Joyce defines proper art as that which does not pull the observer toward it or push the observer away from it, but rather holds them still in aesthetic arrest of the moment.

In this definition, if a work of art is true, it uses the forms of time and space in terms of contemporary life (people, objects, and their relationships to each other) to blow apart the illusory divisions that allow us to exist as individuals who are born from the great blank, grow old through similar stages of life, and die back into the great blank. And here we finally get to the Holy of Holies.

The Great Blank is the space between thoughts and it is what proper art is concerned with–leading the individual observer back to The Mysterious Ground of Being. We are talking about a sublime and complete dissolution of the individual and collective ego into the great void of creative energy from which all life springs. All great art that has moved individuals, and hence the world, along from social epoch to epoch has been rooted in The Great Blank.

But here’s the catch–Proper Art is a near impossible thing to plan out and achieve. It’s a divine gift of inspiration so rare that only the most foolish of artists would claim that they “actually set out to create it as such.”
Below is the link I quoted this from

http://www.thepauper.com/artrepreneur/content/library/james_joyce_proper_art.asp
Crashproof

Agreed, Daemon.

Also, I could easily see the argument that this painting idealizes women as mere child-bearing, milk-producing sex machines, and something or other about how the ropes on the legs clearly indicate bondage and servitude…
Anonymous

I’ve heard of penis envy. I can say as a guy that being able to pretty much pee anywhere with some secrecy is a huge plus. But there is the downside of all those hydraulics that can fail (impotence) and the risk of getting hit in the junk.
Anonymous

I think commenters who discuss the mechanical pros and cons of having a vagina or penis are failing to truly engage the work. The artist is clearly challenging the viewer to see the female body, and its life-bearing power in a mythic context.