Hyperreality
(La maladie femme)

Kofi Fosu Forson

Georgia O’Keefe is the most beautiful woman that ever lived. I see her in Dawn Cherie. I never met Georgia O’Keefe. I know her from the photographs Stieglitz took…That and her paintings. Is Georgia O’Keefe a fantasy or supposed reality? If Dawn Cherie is my Georgia O’Keefe, is this then hyperrealism? Would that then lead me to say Dawn Cherie as Georgia O’Keefe is the most beautiful woman that ever lived?

Who is Dawn Cherie? Have you not known love? That beauty besets the eyes is merely a notion. Would you mate at a time of disease? Does that not define her wholesomely, if not handsomely with a cancerous or East Village-chique-bald head?

I have heard of Georgia O’Keefe as the most beautiful woman that ever lived. But I believe Dawn Cherie is better at being Georgia O’Keefe than the former artist and model herself.

Much like I do martinis, I breathe women. Speculate the femme as a disease, who dares come close. Whether it’s the lipstick temperature, taste of urine in the pubis, bits of blue paper within the vaginal hair, unshaven armpits or legs, should a man cancel any former or future plans with the woman in question? How then does he rise to the occasion at the time of disease?

Love is not a piece of paper. It’s a painting by Francis Bacon. Resist the temptation to fantasize. It’s nothing without reality. In reality we are compulsively in an attempt to mirror. The reflection isn’t always to our advantage. But in truth the trivial joy is found in the image, as in the literal mirror. Where reality meets fantasy is that need to mirror. The pleasure can be found not only in reality. Reality and fantasy can be lived in a totally different realm.

The mind is a tool, at times, it’s a toy. Is it possible for sexual pleasure to take place between two people centuries apart? Forgive the mild euphoria…boroughs apart. Fair to say that sexual pleasure is manifested purely by the manipulation of the organs… What then is sensation? Feeding off the memory of an old lover would somehow lead to a sensation. Why can’t it end there? Should it? Must coitus be always definitive of pleasure?

From women featured in Pre-Raphaelite art to those in Man Ray’s photography, the artist has always had the upper-hand in how he manipulated his muse. She was a figure under his guidance. Therefore, he mastered the plan which was to make art. The muse is a body afloat, as if by magic. The model is significantly a body, much like the mannequin. In the modern day, it is futile, not by circumstance but the equation drawn to the history of sex, rock’n roll and pornography.

Artists and politicians…men in general are threatened by the female body. Instead of introducing a new language between the sexes, men find it appropriate to indulge in a game of sadism and power play. The relationship between the artist and the muse is not the same. With a contract, it’s business as usual. Given the in-betweens, anything goes, especially if money is offered.

Fantasy and reality rule the discipline by which the artist and muse manifest as forces in the game of art. Demoiselles d’Avignon is to be understood as an example of what will always be a marking of an artist capturing his muse(s) not in reality but as reality begetting fantasy as reality. I haven’t seen an actual image of the women who represent "Demoiselle..." but in truth they live on in that very painting by Picasso.

Hyperreality. Is it even decoded in the mind of the modern artist? What is the impetus that causes the all too real fascination with art? Art is dangerous. If not, then it’s the affectation which many artists apply to the process. The process, definitive of what…?

Unbeknownst to the general public, the artist is governed by a neurosis, whether intellectual or psychological. It is “the process” that allows the artist to express and define for him/herself what is determinable given the neurosis and how it subjects itself within the ramifications of art.

How the artist manages to conceive of an idea and implement it within the social discourse of what is and what is not art is an illusion. This is carefully articulated in many studios around the world.

What we are as artists to ourselves is a magical equation and conclusion drawn from the sub-realities stationed in our conscience. Neurotically, we favor the light to dark, dark to light sequence, through which we create, somehow accepting that love as a disease permeates all that is art.

Our destiny is not found in the far-too-often pompous world of gallery openings. It is necessary in the creating of art. This process governs us as children of a higher and holier conscience.