My most lasting memory of a visit to the Musee de Orsay in Paris is of Clesinger's "Woman Bitten by a Snake." Her naked body, sculpted straight from the artist's model, is curvaceous and pockmarked with cellulite. I couldn't take my eyes from it. The unaltered form shocked me--sadly--as the unhealthy obsession with ideal breasts, butts and lady curves is oft displayed under the lofty banner of "art." Modern woman's preoccupation with "perfection"--flat stomachs, perky C cup breasts, piano legs--is an endless heartbreaking campaign, as Eve Ensler says. Perfection doesn't interest local artist Rosemary Meza-DesPlas in her exhibition Fat Bottomed Girls and Hip Boobsters. Meza-DesPlas' treatment of breasts, painted in the soft strokes of watercolors, are elongated and shapely; the curvy buttocks seem to protrude from the paper. Brava! The exhibition is open through November 21 at Gallery 414, at 414 Templeton in Fort Worth. Gallery hours are noon to 5 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. For more information call 817-336-6595 or visit gallery414.org.
Saturdays, Sundays, 12-5 p.m. Starts: Oct. 23. Continues through Nov. 21, 2010