Wednesday, September 04, 2019

मर्ढेकरांची एक कविता आणि गे कलाकार जे सी लेनडेकर....J.C. Leyendecker and Mardhekar's Coal Man

जे सी लेनडेकर (J.C. Leyendecker) १८७४-१९५१ हे अमेरिकेतील अतिशय गाजलेले चित्रकार. नॉर्मन रॉकवेल यांना त्यांचं कॉपीकॅट म्हटल जायच. 

अमेरिकन पुरुषत्वाची प्रतिमा त्यांनी जनमानसात तयार केली अस म्हटल जात....पण ते स्वत: गे होते... 

"...Over the next few decades, the fictional Arrow Collar Man became an icon, supposedly receiving more fan mail in the 1920s than any male film star of the decade. In an era before the Marlboro Man and Calvin Klein underwear models, the Arrow Collar Man gave Americans an iconography of style and status that would be longed for and lusted after for at least a half century, in which two world wars would come and go but a particular image of masculinity would remain fairly dominant. As Time Magazine once said of the Arrow Collar Man, “All the men wanted to look like him. All the young ladies just plain wanted him.”
Yet though all the ladies wanted him, it was Leyendecker himself who had him. The inspiration for the Arrow Collar Man was Charles Beach, Leyendecker’s main model, muse, and live-in lover. The Cutlers claim that Leyendecker “enjoyed the irony of painting Charles as a prototype, the classic all-American male.” For the time, it would certainly have been subversive and risky to base the country’s most prominent symbol of haughty masculinity on Leyendecker’s own gay lover. Their forbidden love was in everyone’s faces in the ads of one of the country’s most prominent clothing manufacturers and on the covers of America’s favorite conservative magazine, though it remained hidden in plain sight—so much so that few sources even mentioned Leyendecker’s homosexuality until fairly recently. The Arrow Collar Man specifically, and the Leyendecker Man more generally, became the model of style, sophistication, and masculinity...."

(Tyler  Malone,  Lapham's Quarterly, June 2019)

लेनडेकर यांचे हे १९१७ सालचे चित्र पहा:



 हे पाहून मला बा सी मर्ढेकरांच्या ह्या कवितेची आठवण झाली :   

"दण् कट दंडस्नायू जैसे 
लोखंडाचे वळले नाग;
कभिन्न काळ्या मांड्या जैसा
पोलादाचा चिरला साग.

धगधगणाऱ्या भट्टीपुढल्या
प्रकाशांत ही तळपे कांती,
 जशी ओलसर शिसवी-नक्षी
 पॉलिशलेली चांदण्यांत ती.

 टणक्‌ कोळसा पवित्र्यांत हा,
खोरुन घेई पावड्यांत अन्‌
 झोकुनि देई पहा लीलया
 तसाच भट्टिंत अचूक झर् कन्‌.
 ...
.यंत्रयुगांतिल नवनृत्याचा
स्थाणुभाव हा प्रगटे येथें
मनोज्ञ मुद्रा शिल्पित एक
संगमरवरी मांसामध्ये,

-अहा, कोळसेवाला काळा !
नव्या मनूतिल गिरिधर-पुतळा !!"

(४६, पृष्ठ ५८-५९, "कांही कविता", "मर्ढेकरांची कविता", १९५९/१९७७)