This actually occurred about six years ago but I just read about it yesterday and was so amused/puzzled by it that I thought I’d pass it on. One of my favorite watercolor artists is the amazing Catherine Anderson. She does gorgeous landscapes, florals, buildings, all sorts of things…and she seems to have an affinity for cows, painting lots of them.
The Lodge at Sonoma (a four-start resort) asked her for a painting of cows. The one they wanted was already sold, so she took them “Fresh Air.” The person who accepted it was pleased and gave her a check. Later, she was contacted and told the painting was unacceptable because one of the cows was in a “provocative position.” They told her “we have guidelines for paintings and one of them is no animals in provocative positions.”
You people just don’t get the symbolism in this picture, do you.
On the right (Get it? Right), we have a healthy, middle-american, republican, christian cow relationship – one white cow and one black and white cow. This is a hetero-patterned relationship, and this is what god intended.
But on the left (Are you with me? Left), we have two black and white cows engaging in a public display of cow affection – a case of overt homo-patterning if ever there was one
There are some who would argue that these black and white cows can’t help being black and white and that we should not judge them, but if that’s the case, why are there so many black and white cows who are hetero-patterns.
You let these cows get away with this, and the next thing you know, a cow will be wanting to marry your daughter.
I just sometimes feel like it’s all too much to bear. I know they say that as you get older things will seem to be going to the dogs and I try to keep that in mind----I tell myself, things aren’t really any worse than they have always been, you are just getting older and they just seem worse. But I just can’t help it. It really seems like there are more idiots around now than there used to be.
I thought there was a joke in the picture. I like a puzzle. So I studied it and tried to find the hidden figures that would be provocative. I went to her website. No evidence that she paints pictures with hidden figures. So, the provocative animals are the two cows that are close together? Can that be what they mean? How could anyone look at that picture and have it even occur to them that there was something provocative there? What kind of a mind would that person have? I can’t see it completely perfectly, but aren’t the heads of the two cows pressed together and both facing this way? That is what is provocative? I mean, I’m no expert on cows but I thought I understood the basics. Is there something about cows I don’t know?
Wouldn’t a NORMAL person look at the cows and feel that it was a pleasant pastoral scene, peaceful, restful, a slightly eerie feeling of isolation, a little group of lives that we can’t be part of but that we can see as beautiful?
It beats me how you can just zero in on things like this. What kind of mind immediately strays to this way of thinking, I wonder.
Statistically, there are more people now than ever before, so the associated average for the portion of people that are idiots must needs rise, too. Therefore your original perception is correct: there are, indeed, more idiots. There are also that many more bovine predators lurking in hotel rooms. Be afraid. Be very afraid!
The “people upstairs” at the Lodge at Sonoma had apparently rejected another of her paintings because there were too many cow posteriors. The only thing I can see in the “Fresh Air” painting that they might have considered offending is another cow posterior.
after many years of being around a farm that milked 1300 head of “black and whites” (known as holsteins) a day, I honestly don’t see what the problem is with that picture. Other than the cows don’t have yellow tags on their ears.
same here. the white cow looks lumpy - i can tell front from back but that’s it. as for the two together, maybe it’s provocative because they’re talking to each other?
I’ve met some very nice people in sonoma. never guessed they were into cows!
Hmmm… sounds to me like the place needs a different clientele… folks who see the rear of an animal and get sexually aroused, or fear doing so, are not who I would want to be serving, personally.
