Behind the Scenes Minis: Gustave and Griswold

Holly and Tracy talk about Courbet's arrogance and some gossip about his life. They also discuss the legal loopholes that enable inanimate objects to be named as parties in court cases. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
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.

(00:23):
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

(00:44):
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.

(01:05):
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

(01:26):
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

(01:46):
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

(02:09):
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

(02:29):
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

(02:52):
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

(03:17):
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

(03:41):
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

(04:03):
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

(04:25):
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

(04:46):
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.

(05:07):
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

(05:27):
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.

(05:48):
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

(06:14):
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

(06:36):
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

(06:57):
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,

(07:21):
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

(07:43):
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,

(08:07):
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

(08:41):
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

(09:05):
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

(09:28):
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

(09:50):
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

(10:11):
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

(10:32):
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

(10:53):
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

(11:15):
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,

(11:38):
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

(11:59):
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,

(12:23):
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

(12:45):
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

(13:05):
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,

(13:26):
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

(13:49):
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

(14:12):
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

(14:33):
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

(14:55):
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

(15:19):
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

(15:40):
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,

(16:00):
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

(16:21):
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

(16:43):
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

(17:04):
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

(17:26):
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

(17:49):
on Saturday, Saturday Classic, and then Monday with a brand
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