That is Priceless by Steve Melcher for November 01, 2024

/// Gérôme sculpted her over life-size.

More heroic to most viewers’ eyes.

This nude’s seared in his sight,

(to get everything right).

Here he concentrates, smoothing her thighs.

The sculptor’s wife had become accustomed to him calling to her ‘stiff’ and ‘cold’ as a complement.

The Natural Robot Pose

Opps, slipped that’s quite a gash, should I fill it?

My eyes are up here.

When Geppetto steps back… Anyone want to guess which direction the model and sculpture are going to go?

The greatest ancient sculptor must have been Medusa. Her statues looked so lifelike, you’d think they were human.

Willie has a brilliant driveway idea after seeing the little jockeys with lanterns.

Tradition (thatijustmadeup) has it that Gérôme dabbled in the Hebrew occult. And fascinated by the interesting possibilities in the Pygmalion-Galatea story, he researched the work of Solomon ibn Gabirol.

That mystic/ misfit/ poet, who lived in the 11th century, is said to have created a female golem for household chores. And so, it is said, he sculpted a representation of Tanagra (Greek Goddess of Women and Marriage) from the model Emma Dupont.

Apparently the embedded inscription that mobilized the female golem was somehow dislodged, and the sculpture reverted to lifeless clay.

Decades later, the golem-making process that Gabirol used was rediscovered and refined, as represented in the insidious technology that made “The Stepford Wives.” (—

His WHAT grows now?!?

I wônder when J-L.Gerôme/

Decided that he wôuld becôme/

A sculptôr ôf nudes/

A Prôvôker ôf prudes/

And my favôrite “dirty ôld hômme”…

“Why do I need to hold my cupped hand exactly at this height?”

Among Gerôme’s numerous quirks/

Depicting the harems of Turks/

As places replete/

With lesbian “heat”/

(Provoking sophisticates’ smirks)..

“Hey, dude, my eyes are UP HERE!”