It's not about the breasts

Thanks to Perez Hilton for the photo of Hillary Clinton, which caught my eye because of the notable absence of nipples on her preternaturally youthfully perky breasts....and also because of said preternaturally youthful perkiness, which, juxtaposed with the aging face perched above them, leads me to ask that age-old question: "The hell?"

My first thought, which I feel that I am uniquely qualified to have come up with, was that perhaps Mrs. Clinton (secretly) has had a double mastectomy with a simple saline implant reconstruction and has not yet gotten around to having her nipples done?

My next thought was that perhaps this was some sort of Stepford Wife prototype that Mr. Hillary Clinton worked on with the Stepford Men's Club. Perhaps the idea is that they'll keep the prototype in the museum until such time as it becomes important (not just to Bill, but perhaps to an entire nation) to put the wife back in her proper place: the House (of Representatives, ha ha, I just had to repeat that old chestnut).

Turns out that neither of those thoughts was particularly on target. Or, at least that is what the oddly (perhaps intentionally?) vague and (at least to me) unsatisfying explanation given by the sculptor would have us believe.

See, it turns out that the Daniel Edwards sculpture, entitled, "Presidential Bust" and unveiled recently at the New York City Museum of Sex was intended merely to "spark discussion about sex, politics and celebrity.....to capture Clinton's age and femininity." I think it is important to note here that Edwards was also the sculptor who gave us Birtney Spears as a sinewy-muscled, naked earth-mother, giving birth to K-Fed's spawn on all fours on a bear-skin rug. I do not believe that a sincere explanation of Spears' fantastical (as in pure fantasy) appearance in that sculpture was ever provided. Likewise, I do not believe, not for one second, that it is sincere (or accurate) for Edwards to claim that Presidential Bust is a rendering of Clinton's "age" (breasts like that do not exist past childbirth, or past 25, for that matter, without the help of a surgeon's scalpel) and her "femininity" (um, whose what, now?)

My theory is that Edwards is not just a sculptor but also a performance artist. His seemingly creatively inspired depictions of celebrities that do not fit with our visual experience of them is only half of the equation. The other half is his incomplete and borderline nonsensical explanation of his work. It is within the almost disturbing clashing of the juxtaposition of the sculptural work against the background of the visual reality of the subject with the subtitle of the artist's verbal exposition, that the "art" can be found. Art as disconnection between what the eye sees, what the ear hears and what the mind believes. Art as dysphoric disunion. Art as the opposite of yoga.

That's my opinion, and I'm stickin' with it. And no, I was not the actual model for the Hillary bust.

YC