Airy Parrish and Wet Waterhouse

Maxfield Parrish and John Williams Waterhouse are similar in some ways--temporally they overlap, they both use classical motifs and subjects, but at heart they are very different. Yes, I know, one is an illustrator, working with watercolors while the other is a painter working in oils, but the main difference between them is sex, well, a particular kind of sex. Both of their bodies of work are suffused with desire: Parrish's work by a sensual adolescent desire, while Waterhouse's desire is erotic, physically sexual. Parrish's desire is purified, rarified, airy. Waterhouse's desire is grounded, earthy, corporeal, and, above all, wet. Parrish paints mountains and lofty crags, with water in the background in the form of waterfalls and fountains, whereas Waterhouse paints the lowlands, the pools and hollows filled with water. Mucky plants and bodies dripping with surprisingly viscous fluid.

Here is Parrish's Daybreak, which I've read is the most reproduced piece of American art. Here we have a naked man and a woman asleep. Where might this go . . .? But, no, it's nothing like that. There is a sensuality here in the thick, misty air, the unbalance of the canvas, making the elements unstable, as if they might tumble together, her leg raised, her skirt tumbled up above her knee. All the possibility is there, but like the trees, they are held at bay by the cool marble and serve only as a frame.




So here's another Parrish piece: waterfall. Two lithe young women in loose tunics of purple and white. Water gushing, seething, rushing past. And these women have a sensuality, you can see it in their tunics, especially the woman in purple, whose leg is raised, close to her friend, creating a shadow beneath its hem. And her gaze includes her friend. But the women are safe above the spray and they watch with detachment. This desire is stable, frozen as the water, and these women will never succomb.

In contrast, consider Waterhouse's Hylas and the Nymphs:

The nymphs are right down in this stagnant pool. This water isnt rushing, seething, or gushing, it's already infused everything. The ground, the nymphs' hair, and it drips on their bodies. More than that, it is part of them and they are part of it (they are nymphs, after all, or more properly naiads) women are water and water is sex, and poor Hylas is about to fall in head first.

Spacially opposite, but thematically identical is Waterhouse's the Siren. Here, the woman sits high on the dry rocks, while the man drowns below. But, of course, she's the only reason he's in the water in the first place, and she is not, after all, completely dry. For a siren, she is remarkably human. Many sirens, like mermaids, turn fishy well before their genitals, but Waterhouse here gives his siren an almost complete female body, and the point where she becomes piscine allows her to blend right into the water. So, again, woman is water and water is, well, sex. After all, look at the man: he's definitely whipped. I think it's neat that Waterhouse elects a different fate for this poor sailor than I always heard described for the victims of sirens. Instead of being dashed on the rocks, this man has made it to some place where he can tread water, and he does so, too enamored of the siren to pull himself out. He has reached up. He has the ledge, but he is slack-jawed, weak, soaking in the fluid that drips down off the sirens legs.

I'd like to say this is a place I've never been, but sadly I know this man's fate all too well.