Behind the Scenes Minis: Gustave and Griswold

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class A production of I Heart Radio, Hello and Happy Friday. I am Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. So we talked about the interesting, inspiring, and sometimes a little bit difficult. It goes off Courbet this week. Um, I will see. Before we get into my thoughts on Corbett, there's another piece in the what we do in the Shadows opening credits that I really wanted to do an episode on, but it's impossible. It is the portrait of Salom a by Area Regno. He died really young, he does not have a whole lot of life stories. So maybe at some point we'll do a Six Impossible Artists or something along those lines. Because I am in love with that painting. And this is one of the cases, like throughout that opening credit scene, which is very clever and super smart and beauty really done, you know, I in some cases recognized the art and of course it's like, oh, that's funny. The one that they did where they inserted not just face into Salom I think is actually better than the original painting. Like there's something about the balance of her facial features and her hair and the way her dress is draped. That is perfection to me, and I love it so much. But anyway, Corbet, we read that quote about how Corbet was obsessed with his own looks and how he always made himself look more beautiful than he was. This is very fascinating to me, and I found myself thinking about it a lot in the last week because we have reached a point socially where I think people understand that it is not cool to comment on people's looks. Not everyone has reached a point, but most people. But Corbet is one of those people that, like, no one seems to have any hesitancy to go oh, he looked like that. He was like kind of pudgy and looked a little dumpy when he painted that. But he painted himself like he was twenty and hot. And I just find this fascinating. So I I I get the art that's going to go on our social media. It used to be art that would go on our website back when we had a website, but now it pretty much goes on our social media and the where else. And when we have an artist, I usually try to see first if they did a self portrait that could be the art work because when you're seeing a work by the artist and what they look like together in one picture, And there were many, and as I was I was clicking through them, I was like, he looks like Trouble. He looks like he should be friends with Franz List. He looks like a person who would inspire a Listomania style response. If I were a gifted painter, I'm sure I would also paint myself hotter than I well, and to be clear, I mean, I think most descriptions of him when he was young, everyone does kind of agree that he went through like just a smoking hot, super appealing. Everyone thought he was gorgeous period, but then it ended kind of early in his life. Um, which again, like that also gets into play of like universal societal standards of what is beautiful and what is not right. Sure, but yes, to compare him to a young France List is very on point. And he did continue to paint himself as looking more like that when he had ceased to really look like that later in his life, and apparently to paint other people not as attractive as they naturally were. But I don't know if that's just somebody being kind of um judge, kind of snippy about everything. Yeah, but I I really do love his self portraits, and some of them they he looks like exactly the poster child of like dangerous romantic era party boy. And then you see a photograph of him and you're like, I didn't quite line up the way I was thinking, which is again, no, he listened. He still had a lot of romantic entanglements. Plenty of people found him attractive throughout his entire life, although there is a story that he was involved with a young woman younger than him, woman when he was in his his fifties. I think, and he did not understand for the life of him. We talked about how he said he's never getting married. He did not understand for the life of him, why this young woman would choose a different suitor who wanted to marry her over the life of passion and excitement that he could offer. He just didn't see the appeal. He was like, why would she do this? That's foolish. Again. This is so we get into the I have trouble with his arrogance. I cannot imagine being that conceited or arrogant. Those are two qualities I do not delight in, and so for him to be so self aware of it, like, do you not know what the most arrogant man in Paris get out of? Here? Is a lot I also promised some gossip. So the model for the origin of the world has been debated for a long time. Um there have even been some people who have put forth the theory that he hasn't in fact painting a dead woman. That's not a very common or widely accepted one. I think that's a sensational and thrilling one to think about. But most people would agree that the model or I don't know if I should say most people would agree. A lot of our historians believe that the model for that piece was a woman named Joanna Hiffernan. I don't know if that's how she pronounced her. She was a Johanna, she was Irish. She modeled for him for a lot of pieces. She was also the girlfriend of James Whistler, and she may have had an affair with Corbett what because he and James Whistler were friends and then at one point they stopped being friends completely And a lot of people have theorized that it was because of this romantic triangle problem going on, and that Whistler was like, not cool with any of that. Um. There's also an interesting piece, This isn't really um gossip. But again, much like the way the artist studio continues to get debated over what it means and what it is, the Origin of the World also continues to get debated outside of whether people think it is pornographic. I would say it's not safe for work, but whether people think it is pornographic or not. Outside of that, there are discussions about whether that is the entire painting. Uh. Some people have suggested that it had included it. Again, it's from a pretty severe angle on the body, so even if you could see the woman's head and face, it might look a little weird. But there are some people that have found this other portrait he did of Hiffernan and said like, no, this matches up. But other art historians are like, no, it doesn't. You're kind of grasping at straws. So there are certainly like theories to play with there about whether or not he cut that part off of his canvas to try to avoid getting anybody angry, and apparently that didn't work, if in fact that was the cause of his his sudden severance of his friendship with Whisling. It's all very dramatic. I feel like his personal life was particularly romantically very dramatic at all times. Um fascinating dramatic. I really love a lot of his work. I think he probably was insufferable to be around maybe, or maybe he was delightful unless you were an art critic. I don't know, hard to know, hard to know. I mean, he seemed, you know, like we said, completely devoted to his family. He adored his parents, he loved his sisters, he loved the people of Ornan. So he wasn't like so arrogant or conceded that it was all about him. He certainly cared for other people, but also seemed you know, more complex. Possibly it's suffrable. One of the things we talked about this week was Chris Wald versus Connecticut, uh and connected to way more recent Supreme Court decisions, maybe future ones. Who knows this point. So one of the things that amused me really when I was working on this was there was the part we talked about about United States versus One Package. Full name is United States versus One Package of Japanese pessaries, but it's usually just written out as United States versus one Package, and so having just seen that name crop up before, I then stopped to like go look into the details of that case. I had thought that one Package was like a store that would discreetly send you contraception or something like. It did not occur to me that it was going to be a literal box. No, it's an actual box of stuff. Yeah, yeah, And I have a number of thoughts about that, and I think you did too well. Mine are the silly ones, which I think we needed after that episode. But um, I know that at that point, when a case is going on, the whole point of it is really like to examine and potentially make changes to interpretation of the law off. But in my head, I find the hilarity of like a package being sentenced in some way very funny. Like I'm instantly render the cartoon in my head of one package having to do hard labor somewhere and just like sitting by the side of the road for like a couple of hours a day, or like one package with a fine issued to it and it's not having pockets to look in for money, And that's the cartoon that my brain plays. I think I would have had a really hard time wrapping my head around just the basic existence of that case. Had I not learned about multiple cases recently that are about cases granting personhood to basically elements of nature, So like a river being granted personhood, so the river has the right to sue in court over being polluted, like stuff like that, which is an interesting way to think about that. And there's an episode of the podcast Invisible It talks about a few different it cases like that, a few different circumstances where there's been either in tribal court or in like US or state court, the idea that a natural system would be granted a personhood um. And one of the arguments was about how, okay, so if the river has the right to sue against a polluter, and then what if, like what if there is a flood and the river floods your house, do you have the right to sue the river for having done that? Like what how does that all work out? Uh? And I was like, what an interesting argument do you even think about? And so yeah, I had I had over the last few months learned about various efforts or cases or arguments or whatever about that particular idea and I think that made it easier for me to even imagine that there would have been a suit filed against a box of pessaries that were used for contraceptive purposes. Yet it's funny. Yeah. My other to take away from this episode on the later things I can pluck out of it is that PT. Barnum is everywhere. I know. I just did, uh, and it was fairly late for whatever reason. I mean, I had read all of these things about the Connecticut law and what it included and what the text of it was and blah blah blah, and then I saw things like introduced by P. T. Barnum and I was like, for real, though, because I think folks that live in Connecticut may learn more about his work as a legislator when other folks mostly know him because of the circus. I do not have any idea if the episodes that previous hosts of the show have done about Barnum, if they talk about that part at all, because I know there are some of the archive. He also popped up on our episode on Spirit photography. Oh yeah, because as you'll recall, he testified in court that those people were fleecing people because he was like I'm an expert on ridiculousness, and this is absolutely ridiculous, and I just find it hilarious that he had his nose in so many different places. Yeah. I said during the episode that I I had previously just not been able to understand the reasoning in ro versus Wade. Again, we're talking about the outcome, talking about like the argument that the court took to get there, and I was like, I don't understand. I would try to read an explanation, I would still be like, I don't I don't understand how you got there. And that's been one of the like ongoing until now it's been overturned. Like one of the ongoing concerns about it was like to have an issue that is that morally and ethically and emotionally involved to so many people from so many different angles, to have it rest on something that feels kind of like an argument house of cards. Yeah, it's scary, scary, uh, for legitimate reasons because now it's a returned Yes. Yeah, I those always those always similarly to me. I'm always like, this is really the best tech to take. But yeah, and that was one of the reasons why every time I would idly go, okay, should we do an episode on Roe v. Wade? And I'm like, okay, number one, how do we? I mean, a lot of teachers use our show in their classrooms, and to me, an episode on contraception is already kind of like on the line of whether whether that's gonna work in a in a classroom setting, and like an episode on abortion is like probably gonna be something that most teachers are like gonna have to watch out for it, like not leave the podcast playing in the background if their kids, the kids they're teaching are in younger grades, right, Like that that was the thing that I would sort of think about, but then I would also kind of go And I also don't understand the ruling. And also there are also all these other issues around, like the facts of the case and the people involved, and when Norma McCorvey, who was the person who was anonymously known as Jane Roe during this case, like when she died, all of these facts and allegations came out about how she had personally felt about it and whether her things that she had said about it in the times that the court case happened, whether they were genuine, And I was like every time there's just more layers of complexity and mess and like, how is this even possible to talk about in a way that feels all ages friendly? And I could never really wrap my head around it, and then the Supreme Court overturned it. Yeah, it's um, it's it's difficult on a number of of levels. Right, it's a lot to pluck apart those decisions, and like how they came to their reasoning, which again I still even though I technically understand it, I'm like really um. But then also, as you said, like this is a very complex issue that is not just like intellectually important to look at, but also it is very emotional for a lot of people, And so um, I'm very glad you decided to finally like pounce on it. Yeah. I think I ever would have gotten well And I found I found Griswold versus Connecticut to be well. I like I said in the show, it made it a lot easier to understand what the reasoning had been during roversus Wade, but then also the facts of that case, the cases involved, I felt better able to to lay out in a way that was accessible to people and would be as hopefully as I know, I know some states and school systems have incredibly strict rules about what's okay to have playing in a classroom or to use in a classroom resource. But like, I felt more able to write out the facts of this in a way that I felt like was going to be hopefully more able to like not turn the podcast into a a no go for classrooms in general. Uh, not necessarily the specific episode. We always say, like, pre listen to stuff if you're concerned about listening to it with kids or in a classroom or whatever. But um, anyway, anyway, many complicated factors to think through With all of that, m h. If you'd like to send us a note about this any other podcast history podcast, I heeart radio dot com. It's Friday. Hopefully everything that's happening on your weekend is going to be good and RESTful. If it can't be RESTful, I hope there's just like a moment of peace you can grab in there for yourself somewhere if you're working. I hope everybody is great to you. Uh, no terrible customer service encounters or similar. We'll be back on Saturday, Saturday Classic, and then Monday with a brand new episode. Stuff you missed in History of class is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H