Monday Review: Me and my sad girls

One of the first pieces of artwork that I ever purchased was a pencil drawing that the artist had titled "Sad Jenny". I couldn't put my finger on what drew me to this sad face... it was just a slight frown with slightly unturned eyebrows. Sort of pitiful, I guess. Maybe she reflected how I was feeling at the time. I'm not sure, because I want to smile thinking of her even now.

With this thought in my tired, rain-addled mind (it's going to be a long, stormy week apparently), I thought I'd review my current favorite work of art:

Girl at the Mirror by Norman Rockwell

(from http://arteyartistas.files.wordpress.com)

I find her sadness so stunning...

So, obviously, we're looking at a young lady looking at herself in the mirror with a maudlin kind of longing. The scene plays out a little like this to me:

Young girl was flipping through Mom's magazine in frustration. Once the parents went out on the porch after supper, she tip toed upstairs, moved the tall mirror out of the bathroom and into her room, propped it on her desk chair, and then the fantasy begins... She pulls out her comb and a lipstick she found weeks ago in her mother's purse. She pulls up the ends of her hair that her mother had left dangling down around her shoulders after braiding up her hair that morning. She opens the magazine to that perfect face... Jane Russell smiles up from the page to no one. The girl starts to compare herself to the vixen(a classic feminine pastime), shrinks down onto her little bench, and sighs.

It's so heartbreaking... in the bottom left-hand corner, one sees a worn doll crumpled at the edge of the mirror. Seems to me this represents the pushing aside of childhood, looking towards adolescence and adulthood. The girl has abandoned the carefree charms of youth to contemplate a time in life far ahead of her and beyond her current understanding. At this age, what girl could put together all the aspects that make Jane Russel the kind of woman upon which people want to gaze...

What I really love is the reflection. The light coming into the room shines on her skin and white slip. The luster in the glow Rockwell has painted makes it seem as though she had been spun from gold (in spit of the disappointment on her face). I'd like to think that this shimmer insinuates that this girl is lovelier than she wants to see. She's in a beautiful time in life at which we all look back with some regret. This idea one can see in the painting seems to say, "If knew then what I know now..." I know I certainly wanted to grow up too fast. I don't regret being serious, but I do regret not taking a few chances due to the fear that I'd never do better...

This moment reaches across the board to so many women. Most ladies admit to having spent some portion of their time comparing themselves to the better looking women. I think I talked with one of my roommates from VCU about that topic. We actually laid on our bellies on a sheet in the Engineering courtyard and watched the people walking into building through the glass. We took turns at complaining about what those girls had that we didn't... We all ridiculously disregard what we do have going for us to idolize the fleeting gift of beauty. We all have to get old. Even Jane Russell aged...

Here she is when she played "Dorothy" opposite Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes:

(from http://upload.wikimedia.org)

And here she is towards the end of her life:

(from www.contactmusic.com)

You can say what you want, but despite the gray hair, wrinkles, and change in attire, I don't see any less spunk in this older woman than the young woman... and I feel that's half of what determines a beautiful person. There has to be something behind it (just LOOK at those eyes).

It's a simple work that conjures all these thoughts about youth, beauty, womanhood... and I guess that's what I like most in a work of art. I like wanting desperately to fill in the story that the artist depicts... and I think great art provokes conversation, wonderment, and some image or feeling that sticks inside your own heart as if you were there or the actual subject of the painting.

Here's a link to a Googlebook that goes into more depth on this painting and the times of the great Norma Rockwell: The Underside of Innocence by Richard Halpern