One of the most wonderful spring rituals of the NYC area is the New York Botanical Garden’s Orchid Show. A fabulously steamy display of the sexiest flowers nature has to offer. You’ve got more sexual organs on display than even the wildest backroom. It’s on through April 21. If you’re in the area, check it out.
Over the last couple of years, flowers have been showing up more and more in my paintings. So, on the occasion of my visit to this year’s extravaganza, I posed myself the question: why do flowers speak to me, call to me, demand supporting—or starring—roles is so much of my work?
I love them because they’re visual sex. Little ocular orgasms everywhere. I love them for their uninhibited exhibitionism and living in the moment. Their brief explosions of pleasure remind me that the moments of life are all too brief. I’m compelled to capture that temporary vitality and exuberance in paint. I want to both be able to relive it vicariously and to share my wonder and joy across time and space. I might evoke similar feelings in you, darling viewers, or maybe something entirely different. It’s all a part of the magic of art.
I’m not alone in my fixation. So, I got to wondering about the role of flowers in the larger cultural context—or should I say landscape, lol—that I operate in. There’s certainly no shortage of examinations and explanations out there. In my thorough(ly disordered), and (utterly un)representative sampling, I thought I’d these share some gems for your delight. Here’s a fun little bouquet of flowery readings for you.
This brief and breezy round up of queer flower symbols delights the eyes with some great photos. The words are nice, too. It offers some lovely tidbits of recent queer history in the US and Europe through the flowers that came to be adopted as symbols of resistance and celebration.
This dense bit of French philosophy, called “The Language of Flowers” by George Bataille didn’t really resonate with me despite the alluring title. However, he makes a fascinating, and kinda sad, observation that's stuck with me:
For flowers do not age honestly like leaves, which lose nothing of their beauty even after they have died; flowers wither like old and overly made-up dowagers, and they die ridiculously on stems that seemed to carry them to the clouds.
Carpe diem, indeed!
For those of a more literary bent, I came across a fascinating and wide-ranging essay “Flowers of Manhood” by Christopher Looby. (Despite JSTOR’s intimidatingly academic interface, anybody can register for free to do a little bit or reading. A pandemic-era relaxation of the rules that will hopefully stick.) While there’s plenty to enjoy and ponder, this quote really is worth sharing. It’s from a Union army officer stationed in South Carolina during Reconstruction. Clearly also in the flowers-as-sex camp.
We have sometimes looked in, for a passing moment, at the green-house, its dwelling-place, during the period of flowering,—and then stayed for more than an hour, unable to leave the fascinating scene. After the strange flower-bud has reared its dark head from the placid tank, moving it a little, uneasily, like some imprisoned water-creature, it pauses for a moment in a sort of dumb despair. Then trembling again, and collecting all its powers, it thrusts open, with an indignant jerk, the rough calyx-leaves, and the beautiful disrobing begins. The firm, white, central cone, first so closely infolded, quivers a little, and swiftly, before your eyes, the first of the hundred petals detaches its delicate edges, and springs back, opening towards the water, while its white reflection opens to meet it from below. Many moments of repose follow,—you watch,—another petal trembles, detaches, springs open, and is still. Then another, and another, and another. Each moment is so quiet, yet so decided, so living, so human, that the radiant creature seems a Musidora of the water, and you almost blush with a sense of guilt, in gazing on that peerless privacy. As petal by petal slowly opens, there still stands the central cone of snow, a glacier, an alp, a jungfrau, while each avalanche of whiteness seems the last. Meanwhile, a strange rich odor fills the air, and Nature seems to concentrate all fascinations and claim all senses for this jubilee of her darling.
There’s lots more where that came from. Looby details all sorts of savory and not so savory floral writing from a variety of sources with interesting interpretations and cultural observations around race and sexuality. Some pretty thicc prose here, darlings.
Speaking of thicc, how about some floral underwear for enhancing your assets? Oh, and btw, that famous Anais Nin quote may not be from Anais Nin after all.
Perhaps you’ll agree with me, flowers are anything but simple. They’re deeply embedded in our culture and in many of our psyches. They’ve accumulated, both individually and collectively, a lot of symbolism and history. They can also take on deep personal significance, resonant with or in total opposition to what their shared meaning might be. They’re marvels of evolution, potent reminders of impermanence, and just so damn lovely. What do they mean to you, darling?
Until next time, flame on! 🔥