Hiding in Plain Sight - James Maroney Inc.

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“amusing confrontation” between a spinster and modern technology. In Adolescence she describes another amusing confrontation between two, older, wiser “chickens” and an adolescent. Telephones do have long necks, black torsos and anthropomorphic mouthpieces. But Iowa chickens, whether young or old, male or female, do not, when alive, ever stand thus erect, day or night, completely featherless on rooftops: and perhaps we have not paid sufficient attention to these birds’ feet and menacingly sharp toenails. All in all, Wood’s title Adolescence would seem to refer to some other properties of the bird, as he is so improbably presented, besides his age. Adolescence, 1940 Since time out of mind, a “chicken” is a timid or cowardly person, a recruit, or any young man who appears to his seniors to have potential as a homosexual partner. 73 But it was Horst W. Janson who pinpointed this particular chicken’s origins. While pursuing his graduate degree in art history, 1938-41, Janson taught at the University of Iowa, where Grant Wood was Chairman of the Art Department. According to local lore, Janson, a progressive, is said to have taken his art students to Chicago to a Picasso show, thus drawing the ire of the chairman, a traditionalist. Notwithstanding this apocryphal incident, in 1955, long after Wood’s death, Janson wrote a fair deconstruction of Adolescence entitled “The Case of the Naked Chicken.” The author cites as the source for the picture’s singular iconography a chiaroscuro woodcut of Diogenes by Ugo da Carpi (ca. 1480-1520) itself after a painting by his Florentine contemporary Parmigianino (1503-1540). In the woodcut, a rooster, standing on his feet, plucked of all his 73 Webster’s New World College Dictionary, 4 th Edition or Random House Dictionary of American Slang, 1994 44
feathers, unmistakably similar to the one in Adolescence except that Wood, four hundred years later, has elongated and stiffened the rooster’s already improbably elongated neck. 74 It is unlikely that Grant Wood would have independently conceived this queer bird and then, looking for an antecedent, gone into the literature. But had he, a seasoned art historian, been interested in Diogenes, he may well have serendipitously found Parmigianino’s (or da Carpi’s) naked cock and adopted it for his own use. So why would Wood have been interested in Diogenes? Diogenes (ca. 412-323 BC) was a celibate Greek philosopher and a beggar who made a virtue out of extreme poverty. He taught contempt for human achievements, social values and institutions and, in keeping with his teachings, made his home in the streets of Athens. Diogenes believed that human beings, who he said live hypocritically, would do well to study the dog, which, besides performing its natural, bodily functions in public, will eat anything and make no fuss about where to sleep. Dogs, he mused, have no use for the pretensions of abstract philosophy and know instinctively who is friend and who is foe. Diogenes was supposedly exiled (from what is now Turkey) for "adulterating the coinage.” Diogenes' mission in Athens, his new home, became the metaphorical adulterating/debasing of the "coinage of custom,” which, he alleged, was the false coin of human morality. Instead of being troubled by what is really evil, people make a big fuss over what is merely conventionally evil. When asked how one should avoid the temptation to lust of the flesh, Diogenes began masturbating. Rebuked, he replied, "If only I could soothe my hunger by rubbing my belly." It is said that he used to stroll through the Agora at full daylight with a torch (or, as legend sometimes has it, a lantern, “looking for an honest man." Quoting Plato, who gave Socrates’ definition of man as a "featherless biped,” Diogenes famously plucked a cock and flung it into Plato’s Academy, saying, "This is Plato's man," after which the words "with broad flat nails" were added to Plato's definition. Diogenes’ interest in Plato was obviously complex but most importantly for our purposes here, it comprised the concept of Platonic love, which focused partly on the beauty of a person's character and intelligence. More to the point, Plato belonged to the community of men who desired boys, and they engaged in erotic, pedagogic “friendships” with young boys. The concept of Platonic love thus contrasted mundane, sexually expressed pederasty with a philosophic—or chaste—pederasty. Pederasty, or sex between men and boys, was considered at the time to be just another form of human sexuality, not a moral or civil crime. 74 Horst W. Janson, “The Case of the Naked Chicken” College Art Journal, vol. xv, no. 2 (Winter 1955) pp. 124-27, illus. p. 125 45
Page 1 and 2: Hiding in Plain Sight: Decoding the
Page 3 and 4: Summary The image we have today of
Page 5 and 6: Introduction I n Return from Bohemi
Page 7 and 8: sensibility prevented him from mock
Page 9 and 10: Foreword: Art Historical Methodolog
Page 11 and 12: Unlike Robert Hughes, who applied t
Page 13 and 14: to categorize him according to his
Page 15 and 16: Remember that symbolism’s goal is
Page 17 and 18: e sufficiently obsessed to want to
Page 19 and 20: insistently inflicted upon itself.
Page 21 and 22: Chapter II The Author’s Methodolo
Page 23 and 24: Chapter III Sojourn in Munich: Wood
Page 25 and 26: Prior to his departure for Munich,
Page 27 and 28: conveyed her tenderness—and the p
Page 29 and 30: Window, 1927-29, we first see “an
Page 31 and 32: Plants—Oedipal, generational, inc
Page 33 and 34: excavating a deep, dark hole. 58 A
Page 35 and 36: Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two
Page 37 and 38: pastures. As such, Haying and The N
Page 39 and 40: Chapter V Xenophobia in 20 th Centu
Page 41 and 42: The hand pump, with 4 appearances,
Page 43: anatomically intriguing throat in V
Page 47 and 48: historians, as was H. W. Janson, an
Page 49 and 50: At this late stage in his career, W
Page 51 and 52: The years 1932-33 were characterize
Page 53 and 54: with gin. The success of female imp
Page 55 and 56: I aver that Wood’s fascination wi
Page 57 and 58: claim descent. 88 That interpretati
Page 59 and 60: of the fence, without which we woul
Page 61 and 62: anthropomorphizing the contours of
Page 63 and 64: hand pump, chickens, hands, horses,
Page 65 and 66: left-leaning artists all over the w
Page 67 and 68: the catalyst required for making su
Page 69 and 70: keep out blacks, Jews, Catholics an
Page 71 and 72: dispensing it. The dilemma was that
Page 73 and 74: explain Nan’s extravagantly wavy,
Page 75 and 76: the ascendance of both Nazi and Sta
Page 77 and 78: that his outward life and work did
Page 79 and 80: Obviously, certain lines like “Ga

Hiding in Plain Sight - James Maroney Inc.

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