Moten, Taste Dissonance Flavor Escape (Preface to a Solo by Miles Davis

In The pain­ting of modern life T. J. Clark says Olympia has a choice, wor­king against the defi­ni­tion of the pros­ti­tute offe­red by Henri Turot, for whom pros­ti­tu­tion implies ‘first vena­li­ty and second absence of choice’ (Clark 1984, 79). For Turot, fur­ther, the prostitute’s very exis­tence depends upon the tem­po­ra­ry rela­tions she enter­tains with her cus­to­mers, the sub­jects, rela­tions that are public and without love. An absence of pri­va­cy, then, where pri­va­cy implies a self-pos­ses­sion ali­gned not only with rea­son, will, choice, but also with fee­ling or with the abi­li­ty to feel. An absence of sove­rei­gn­ty where sove­rei­gn­ty implies a kind of auto-posi­tio­ning, a posi­tio­ning of one­self in rela­tion to one­self, an auto­cri­ti­cal auto­po­si­tio­ning that moves against what it is to be posi­tio­ned, to be posed by ano­ther, to be ren­de­red and, as such, to be ren­de­red inhu­man, to be pla­ced in some kind of mutual appo­si­tion with the in/human and the ani­mal (the black female ser­vant ; the las­ci­vious lit­tle cat). The lit­tle girl’s image extends a line tra­ced by Clark from Olympia’s pose, to the pose of Titian’s The Venus of Urbino (see Figures 2 and 3). That line moves within the his­to­ry of the idea­li­za­tion and re-mate­ria­li­za­tion of the nude, the his­to­ry of the pros­ti­tute as artist’s model, the his­to­ry of the wres­ting of mode­ling from pros­ti­tu­tion and the yoking of it to peda­go­gy.