In The Eye Of The Beholder
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday January 17, 1998
A man with a nose ring, studded genitals and a tattoo has written a book - a might, transglobal tome on human beauty. Should we trust him? DAPHNE GUINNESS met the outrageous Julian Robinson.
"I'VE taken out my earrings, my nose ring, my Prince Albert's gone, and I've had my ladder removed," says Julian Robinson, sounding quite prissy on the telephone from Queensland. Bit of a shock, then, to meet him at the Art Gallery of NSW in baggy bloomers, plunging shirt, hair pony-tail'd, flashing ruby-and-turquoise earstuds. "I've brought my nose ring for the photograph. I've got my penis studs on and I'm still tattooed and branded. I wore the earrings for you," says the author of The Quest For Human Beauty: An Illustrated History (W. W. Norton/Jacaranda Wiley, $49.95). This first pop-academic look at why we do what we do to look beautiful is up for the Premier's History Award (General and Young Adults categories) 1998. Bob Carr's due for a frisson.
For a start, lipstick: when Este?e Lauder says today's mouth must be accentuated so a woman's lipstick says "Hello!" she is nuts.
Women wear lipstick to simulate the way they look having sex: lips, cheeks, ears, even the skin around the eyes engorge with blood and they glow. That's why they slosh on the blusher, mascara and all the rest. And that's why Robinson says enough of this pussyfooting around: beauty is based on the heat of the loins, not on genteel drawing-room aestheticism.
Even the historian Sir Kenneth Clark said no nude work of art, however abstract, should fail to arouse some erotic feeling in the spectator. If it didn't, the work was lousy. It was Clark who urged Robinson to write a book exploring this provocative theme and now he has: 75,000 words and a galaxy of pictures, some quite rude, tackle the subject head-on. "It's quite simple. Beauty is what pleases us and what pleases us most is the male erection, so if a comely girl gives us this heat we say she is pretty. And if a nude painting arouses us, our subconscious links the curves to male-female attraction."
It was this sort of talk that got Robinson the heave-ho as head of design at the Sydney College of the Arts in the '80s: he sued, the college settled and he bought a Darlinghurst house, now worth half a million dollars, with the windfall. It was his bizarre dress sense (Turkish trousers, diamante codpiece, clanking jools) which triggered his arrest followed by police apologies and settlement. (He thanks past tormenters in his book and says without their help he would never be where he is today: living it up in tropical Queensland with his Anglo-Amazonian-Indian paramour Velvet Moon). The denouement to these escapades was his appearance full-frontal naked on ABC-TV's Anything, But Anything, Goes to illustrate his freedom of choice.
Human Beauty is about that too: freedom to deck the body any which way and phooey to the control freaks. With l7 titles to his credit (The Brilliance Of Art Deco - the Louvre, Paris, has it - and The Fine Art Of Fashion both sold 100,000 copies and have been re-issued), being published in London, Paris, Los Angeles, Sydney and now New York, the 60-ish historian has reached a new high in his career. He says the Americans printed Human Beauty not because they were brave (though actually they were: some parts are quite risque?), "but because I decided the time was right to be published in New York. It was a proving to myself, I guess, you climb the ladder by proving."
We sit in the gloom of the gallery boardroom examining Human Beauty, which he admits is toned down. "The reality is there, so I accept reality. There's been a little censorship and some of the linework on the computer has come out as funny digitalised pictures" (I noticed that; I thought it was new Japanese-speak). Still, it's interesting. He was speaking to a young woman on the plane today - showing her the book in fact - "and before you know it, one's confessing to being branded in one's private parts with wings and wearing studs". "Oh studs," she says, "that sounds intriguing." (Studs, tattooing, branding: New Age Beauty is a wonderful conversational opener.) Where was this chat going? Was she reciprocating? "Oh, she lives on the Gold Coast and never has anyone intelligent to talk to, but she was fascinated by the book. I've had previous books thrown at me. People get up and fast change their seats."
He grumbles about censorship for another five minutes (he enjoys riling people) and I have to yank him back to beauty. His book starts quite mildly with examples of l5th-century cuties, then into tribal (New Guinea/New York), then Hollywood and Frederick's crotchless knickers (Neiman Marcus, arbiter of good taste, sells them), and chunks about male beautification: corsets to flatten the crotch bulge, moustache maintenance, body customisation (menspeak for plastic surgery) then suddenly it turns into the shattering. Was that deliberate?
"Oh yes, like writing music." But do today's Hollywood icons actually use urine to clean the skin, get rid of dandruff, to bleach the body hair and keep it silky? Can he vouch for it? "Oh yes, it works. May I be personal? My beard is an apocalypse; it's growing profusely and it's soft."
He says we should embellish every part of the body, even the unseeable, but we must chop-chop: some parts are passe? because we are hooked on what he calls "forever change". So what's passe? now? "Earrings are passe?; I haven't worn them for a year. Tattooing is passe?. Branding is in, scarring is in, amputation is in" - ugh! - "but the publishers wouldn't allow it in the book; it's part of body customisation. Anorexic is passe?, exercising is becoming passe?." That doesn't leave much: pubic hair decoration, nipple piercing . . . oh, and inlaid teeth.
It took 12 years' hard slog, or five times around the world visiting tribal communities, villages, cities, museums, art galleries, archaeological digs and studying film, music, fashion trends and sexual mores to complete Human Beauty. Robinson's background as child actor (knowing Joan Collins), studying at the Royal College of Art, London (knowing Sir Kenneth Clark, Professor Janey Ironside), lecturing fashion (knowing Zandra Rhodes, Mary Quant), designing clothes (knowing Pierre Cardin, Yves St Laurent), heck, knowing everyone from the art historian James Laver to the hairdresser Vidal Sassoon and even working for Norman Hartnell, the Queen's dressmaker, provides great cred. He name-drops like mad in the book.
"The publishers made me. `You know all these people,' they said, `well, say so. Americans love it.' " He made clothes for Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies, the showgirls in England's 1960s John Profumo spy-sex-scandal, "paid for by Lord Astor, son of the free-thinking American heiress Nancy Clifford". Says that, too. Translated, Taiwan will adore it and the UK, Ireland, Europe, Middle East, Africa and India, in which countries 1,500 booksellers, 500 libraries and 500 media have been targeted. Amazon.com (the world's biggest Internet bookstore) says: "Add The Quest For Human Beauty to your shopping cart, you can always remove it later."
"Hope they choke first," growls the author, but then he lives on a different plane: he's outrageous, daring, non-conformist, a challenge, and at times testy. At one point he writes: "Beauty is not a reflection of the biological body but of the socially invented body." What does that mean? He sighs. He thought he'd explained it clearly. He tries again, repeat after him: Fijians admire other Fijians, Prussians admire Prussians and the root of that admiration he calls beauty. "It's the difference between this or that group. Does that make sense?" Not really. To me the phrase "socially invented body" conjures up Este?e Lauder/Revlon, and while he talks of tribal long-neck beautifying coils I visualise the beauty practised in Sydney, New York or London. "It's all the same. Except ours is a display of commercial difference and the island's is not."
He is slippery on male beauty, though, especially on why "beautiful" is avoided and "handsomeness" is preferred. At first he says the hang-up is religious - the Greeks admired the male body more than the female - then says it is homophobic (his big bee is bigotry), then concedes the subject is creeping into the media, which makes it OK for men to do things with their faces. (Madame Korner at the Hilton has been ripping off truck drivers' body hair, giving them facials for years.) Even so, why do my toes curl when I see Kerry O'Brien wearing blusher on ABC teev?
"It's because you learnt your language and culture when you were six months old." So babies today will accept men in mascara when they are adult? "No, it doesn't take 50 years for change, it takes 500."
Robinson says human beauty is angled towards the young. "I'm trying to open up the world of self-adornment and youth is where it's at." He has the knowledge; he must spread the word. But beauty shifts. Marilyn Monroe's famous '50s nude Playboy picture in his Current Coded Signals chapter is old-fashioned compared with the '80s body-building women in Embellishing the Psyche.
"Black leather, studs and chains, body painting, tattooing, body branding and piercing are in the repertoire of young people." Put that way it sounds as thrilling as ironing. But hold on, even oldies love bondage: one 70-year-old British multi-millionaire travelled the world to be with his Australian pal for excruciating sessions. The actress Marisa Berenson, now middle-aged, feels fabulous in a tightly laced corset. Still, what male body-builders do to their penises to qualify for Mr Universe is vile. "I realise the subject may offend readers," Robinson writes, "but if it does, that's their hang-up."
Money buys it all: for $4,500 the body can be permanently freed of unwanted hair, for $3,000 a nose changed, for $3,750 a chin reshaped. Hands can be made thinner, calf muscles added, even a makeover into a Barbie doll replica (any nationality) or Arnold Schwarzenegger lookalike is possible. But, Robinson warns, real beauty is more elusive. (Maybe a soul is required?) Nevertheless it is a beauty we seek. And every time Hollywood or television throws up another face and body, that's whom we emulate.
The new breed of showbiz royals - Brad Pitt and Pamela Anderson, for instance - are streets ahead of Demi Moore, Madonna, Sharon Stone, the late River Phoenix, who alive now would be old meat.
It's a gripping read, esoterica scattered among the pop. Who would have thought Mixed Bathing, Naughty Novels, New Morality, Cecil B. de Mille's Forbidden Fruit - all his films actually - had any bearing on the present subversive geometric face-daubing of the northern winter? Robinson says it's all connected. "I've tried to open the mind. To perceive things in a different way. That's all I've tried to do."
Time for the nose ring (curiosity is killing this cat). Robinson fishes in his bag, pulls out an object and fiddles with his face. Silence. I anticipate a stud. It's a bull-ring. "At cocktail parties aren't people transfixed?" I ask. It's riveting; he has transmogrified into another being. "The only way I can explain it is Leo Schofield saying, `Julian, you're the only man who can wear feather earrings and not know you have them on.' He does look extraordinary.
At this point the photographer and PR arrive in their tribal jools. What a coincidence, and here's the academic in his nose ring, earrings, penis studs, not his Prince Albert and disappearing ladder; they're passe?. PR reels back horrified. She has two ideas for his picture: against the Henry Moore sculpture ("No thanks," says the photographer) or against Debat-Ponsan's Massage In The Hammam(naked broad mid-pummel). "But I don't know if either are right from what you've said . . ."
"What's wrong with this room?" says the photographer. It's boring, that's what, but the author is prepared to Drop The Lot. "Well, we don't want him naked in the boardroom or anywhere else in the gallery," sniffs PR. "And I don't want him against a painting," says the photographer.
Seething, we traipse down to the Orientalism show. "Every conceivable anti-attitude is thrown up still. No hope for anybody," mutters Robinson, squatting under The Massage. Then, whipping off his shirt, he poses naked to the waist with Trouillebert's The Harem Servant(girl with big tits holding tray).
No-one, absolutely no-one, looks twice. The Quest For Human Beauty by Julian Robinson, W. W. Norton/Jacaranda Wiley, $49.95.
BEAUTIFUL ONE DAY, PASSE THE NEXT
FORGET the beholder. Beauty is in the eye of the possessor. It is demanding and difficult. Pay attention, please. "From the puberty rites of orthodontia to slimming diets, fitness classes and aerobics, silicone breast implants, penile enlargement, nose jobs, manicure and pedicure, the wearing of coloured lenses, electrolysis and laser treatments, exfoliation and liposuction, visits to the hairdresser, to the plastic surgeon who can sculpt the bum into a facsimile of Naomi Campbell's, or make Christy Turlington's lips, it is clear that we in the West are far from normal in our approach to beauty," says Julian Robinson.
And while bound lotus feet, stretched necks and duckbill lips are not to our personal liking, "we must be careful to remove those decorative bones from our own nose before passing judgment on our neighbours".
In other words, while our preoccupation with physical appearance is relentless, take stock before going overboard. But not so seriously that the fun escapes. Beauty changes. When Marilyn Monroe went starkers in the '50s she shocked and delighted, but no more (think about it) than her modern body-building counterparts decades later. Their rippling muscles repel or excite in equal amounts. Next century they will be considered normal, if not boring.
Likewise the businessman who turns back a nonchalant cuff to expose a tattooed wrist, which says what a non-conforming fellow he is and, with luck, makes his peers green with envy. Sitting next to him may be a man of real power, whose all-over body tattoo is hidden from view (invisibility is said to add oodles of confidence). Though tattoos are passe no-one should nix theirs.
(Besides, no treatment is perfect: a mark is left.) Passe? in this context means tattooing has reached mainstream and will continue well into the millennium.
This is of no concern to the Kauil tribesman in Papua New Guinea. His black-and-red face and torso are achieved by mixing charcoal and burnt red earth, together with booster watercolours bought from the corner store to make him dazzling, dazzling bright. He wouldn't be seen dead without his omak : a ladder-like chest decoration made from strips of wild pit-pit cane, which denotes (in Western parlance) not how much he has in the bank but how much he has given away. He is Mr Wonderman. A top 500 chap.
His beauty equals the ermine robes of aristocracy: by giving away rather than keeping.
Then consider Robinson's thesis of freedom to decorate his body as he pleases: jeans are too restrictive. Loose bloomers are his preferred coverage. Underneath sometimes silk cami-knickers. Why not? he asks. They are more comfortable than Y-fronts. Best of all, since his skin is so fine, he'd rather wear no underclothes at all. Sometimes he slips into Chinese operatic garb and wanders down the street (even now it provokes). Other times, he stays home starkers. Just like Marilyn.
© 1998 Sydney Morning Herald