Silencing Calisto
Diana and Callisto by Titian, Oil on canvas, 187 cm × 204.5 cm (74 in × 80.5 in), 1556–1559, National Gallery and Scottish National Gallery, London and Edinburgh
The image shown is a remarkable detail from Titian's Diana and Callisto in which Callisto is stripped to reveal her pregnancy as the result of Jupiter’s rape. What is astonishing to me in this vignette is the depth of Titian’s cold eye on the status quo of women’s sexual enslavement shown in the cruel expressions in the women’s faces and bodies- calm, relaxed imposition of the status quo. Cruel for how impassive they are.
Titian caught the pitiless shaming and torture by the gatekeepers of the status quo of the victim. The secret evidence of her pregnancy was torn from her and the pitiable anguish in her face about the helplessness of the naked victim. Callisto’s expression is remarkable because in all his other renderings of women, faces are meticulously and thinly painted over cautious underpainting with careful attention to the modulation of surface and nuance of color. Uniquely, Callisto is painted with the rough fluidity Michelangelo gave his own self-portrait in the Sistine Chapel, “Most writers agree that Michelangelo depicted his own face in the flayed skin of Saint Bartholomew.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Judgment_(Michelangelo), an afterthought of anguish. I choose to consider Michelangelo’s “comment,” as about his hiding to escape imprisonment for his political views in the Bargello, the city prison of Florence. I spent time studying his sketches, the underground closet where he hid in that period and his face in the Sistine chapel during a 1979 trip to Italy. Titian’s portrayal of Callisto looks passionate and fresh.
The scene Titian presents is from one of the 6 Poesies for the Spanish King Philip II's bedroom depicting male sexual control often aided by other women, also shown in the maid’s collusion in the rape of Danae. Even more telling is that Titian replaced the cherub with the older woman, conniving to drug and betray the younger woman. Evidently, Callisto’s helplessness and the collusion of other women was meant to bolster the king’s self-confidence with Queen Mary. Philip is described as young and slight. In a portrait, Mary was and looks older and personally formidable. Perhaps, ripe for drugging and rape. Pretty sickening and not so far away from how sexism is expressed and enforced in our own times. In both Titian and Michelangelo’s work, they found a niche for self-expression in their own painterliness and a means to make political commentary despite the constraints of the times and the structures of power. The guilty party here is patriarchal power.
It is rational to feel fear in the face of powers that leave us powerless. I think the task is to accept the fear (naked terror in my case) and still do what we can.
Pragmatism brings me back to trigger point theory- WHERE is the critical point to exert attention that will effect change? Affect alone is evidently as inadequate as facts. I have thought discourse across divides is the political trigger point these days. When I took the train to Boston to see the Titian show at the Isabella Gardner Museum it was a beautiful day and my seatmate was an Indian venture capitalist. As we chatted, it came out that most progressive business thinkers these days are not only using the word trigger point but identifying it as discourse. On the way home that evening, I had a lively exchange with a Nigerian yellow cab driver about politics in Africa. He described the rise of radical fundamentalist Muslimists such as the Taliban and Boko Haram as the inevitable consequence of British colonialism, squishing peoples arbitrarily together to profit from extractions. He was adamant that discourse was impossible with the people, such as Boko Haram who have risen to power on the coattails of that cynical manipulation for profit by the British. He saw a clear through line to the Jan. 6 insurrection and the rise of white supremacy here. He then segued to the oppression of women, getting to the finish line before me but losing me in a rant against Hillary Clinton’s role in Libya .
In recent years, I have put a lot of emphasis on the potential in the legal system. In a recent conversation with a law student we discussed at length the question of what kind of activism is effective? We both agreed that street demonstrations don’t seem to have any impact at all. Specifically, we speculated on where the nexus is between activist art and legal activism to create new political narratives (not to mention how art manifests that transition)? In our conversation, I advocated for more moot trials. Any moot or mock trail is a means to advance legal discourse.
There is a long colonial history of not only enslaving people of color but women. The mildest form of that oppression manifests when women are publicly and personally vilified with impunity for simply voicing strong opinions. That impoverishes discourse for us all. And when is it useful to close off open discourse by pushing women out of the arena?
When strong personal opinions are voiced by women, they often experience attacks privately or publicly for voicing clear points of view, men attack directly first, bolstered by gatekeeping women.
On a trajectory of silencing and exclusion, the most pernicious form of sexist oppression is femicide and rape. Silencing surviving women who voice their fear and rage and injury maintains the same extractive status quo that creates inequity. Even sadder is when this status quo is supported by the collusion of other women.
So how to discourse with people who would rather murder you or see you murdered than listen, especially if they are charged, as in the case of Danae, with your protection?
During COP26, I heard a passionate plea from an African leader that gave me pause. His point was that without the aid that was promised at and never came from COP15, it is impossible for the 800 million people of the African continent to make an adequate transition to guarantee clean water or electricity without fossil fuels, even if they have and are trying to implement clear alternatives. He went on to make the explicit connection that by holding Africa to divestment, not only that once again rich nations are victimizing the poor nations that they have historically exploited and ruined but setting the globe up for a bloodbath of international retribution. This seems to come back to accountability. Can we come to just accountability without discourse?
Later, I spent some time searching for the WNYC interview on interlocked climate change dangers in Africa and from Africa to the rest of the world I had heard. Africa is projected to be the continent most affected by global warming that I referenced earlier this week. I couldn’t find it but found other relevant links.
It doesn’t take too much additional data to grasp the implications of escalating tragedies in Africa forcing at least 100 mil hungry, angry, desperate and ill-used people from their homes and into disastrous migration conflicts. This goes beyond arguing over abstract reparations, netzero dates, morality, etc etc even if we have to continue to do that. These are imminent red flags about the collapse of civilization and support for the interdependent survival of humanity. Angling for 2030 is a joke because it’s too far off. This is global genocide-ecosuicide.
This is an issue I’ve been tracking since 2006-7, when it became known that the US military was assembling research on the security threat of climate change. This video from my work with Jim White from 2007 was about our observations about the link between conflict zones and deltaic impacts of climate change: Trigger Points/Tipping Points.
These are the relevant recent news links I found about the impending disaster in Africa:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/06/opinion/africa-cop26-climate.html
https://www.icrc.org/en/document/cop26-three-calls-strengthen-climate-action-conflict-zones
My opinion today is that democracy comes from process and modeling. The more we encourage a variety of voices, the more others see the salient abundance that comes from inclusion, including the abundance of peace, the greater impetus we give to justice and freedom. I still think the answer is in discourse.