nothin Don’t Call Them “Baby” | New Haven Independent

Don’t Call Them Baby”

Bill Saunders

“My Name is Babette,” from Saunders’ show at Ordinary.

Bill Saunders

Saunders with Michael Brotschul’s “Hot Rod to the Stars” and Nancy Shea’s “My Name is Viola.”

My first big litmus test is: do women like them? If I passed that test, then I did my job.”

So said artist, musician, and provocateur Bill Saunders about Don’t Call Me Baby,” an exhibit navigating the controversial lines between art and exploitation, between erotica and pornography, from the walls of a popular downtown gastropub.

The show, which runs at Ordinary on Chapel Street through July 25, is made up of 34 4‑inch-by-4-inch paintings of women inspired by none other than the films of Russ Meyer, who Saunders described as a true American original — the first feminist film director, presenting women as empowered individuals rather than as objects. And the films are funny.”

Which means we should take a step back.

For many, Meyer is nearly synonymous with the term sexploitation. In a 50-year run of movies — his most famous is probably Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! — he created a formula of campy humor, satire, and strong women with really large breasts that has turned out to have a lasting influence on American popular culture. It’s hard to imagine John Waters, Quentin Tarantino, or Robert Rodriguez without him, to say nothing of the dozens of raunchy sex comedies starting in at least the 1980s that are essentially playing on a corner of Meyer’s playground. He died in 2004. King of the Nudies,” his headstone reads; I Was Glad to Do It.”

There are people who find Meyer’s work pornographic, or something close to it. But some feminists have championed him, too. He also has a high-profile defender in Roger Ebert, who wrote the screenplay to Meyer’s 1970 movie Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and in 1985 did a profile of him that dived into how complicated he is. If there are mindless sex objects in an R.M. film,” he wrote, they are invariably men.”

Meyer is an auteur whose every frame reflects his own obsessions,” Ebert concluded. Like all serious artists, he doesn’t allow any space between his work and his dream.”

Which is how it’s easy to understand the connection to Saunders, the former cross-dressing mayoral candidate (which he has said in the past was really a kind of art project), alternative festival organizer, and still artist and musician.

As in Ebert’s depiction of Meyer, Saunders is all in, and like Meyer, Saunders seems to have a real knack for making something compelling of the seedier aspects of American culture. He takes those seeds and makes them grow.

Bill Saunders

“My Name Is Bridget.”

The idea for this show began with opportunity. Artist and Craftsman Supply was having a 4 x 4 panel contest,” Saunders said. I’d wanted to do a series of paintings of women for a long time. And,” he added with a chuckle, I was bemused by the idea of large endowments on small panels.”

He began the first panel on March 13. A little while later he tucked one of the finished paintings into his pocket and brought it to Ordinary to show friends what he’d been working on. The panel caught the eye of Ben Zemke, who works at Ordinary.

Brian Slattery Photo

He said, I have this idea for a show,’” Saunders said. The concept was to hang the tiny panels well above eye level, and out of reach, and then to have a telescope at the bar for anyone who wanted to get a closer look at them — intentionally turning anyone who wanted to see the paintings into an obvious voyeur.

So now I had a concept and a deadline,” Saunders said. He finished the last panel on June 13.

Between March and June, however, he found his perspective on his own project changing. If you’re going to spend three months painting large-breasted women, you muse about things, and one of the things is that it desexualizes it. It’s almost more about nurturing. About food.”

At the same time, Saunders said, he took pains to make sure that the women were more than objects. It started from the title of the show and proceeded to the names and short biographies he gave every painting. (For example, the caption for My Name is Babette,” above, reads: Babette Bardot was a Swedish born actress who starred in Russ Meyer’s Common Law Cabin and Mondo Topless. She claimed to be a distant relative of Bridget Bardot, and to have posed for Pablo Picasso as a teenager.”) It continued with the way he talked about what he had made.

They always kind of move forward,” Saunders said of the portraits. They always tell you when you’re done. You see how the subtlest shift in tone changes everything. The wrong dot someplace, and everything’s ruined.”

A few people have told Saunders, as they told Meyer, that his paintings are pornographic. Others call them erotic. A few people have bought some of the pieces, or commissioned others. Another interesting reaction I get from women is that they want me to paint them,” Saunders said. But most people, according to Saunders and his longtime partner-in-projects Nancy Shea, have seen the humor and respect for the subjects Saunders has brought to the paintings.

Bill Saunders

“My Name Is Astrid”

They all have names,” Shea said. You learn who they were and what they starred in. It’s like they’re saying, I’m a real girl. I’m someone who made my mark. So don’t call me baby. It’s an empowering thing to say. I’m posing nude here, but don’t call me baby.’”

Don’t Call Me Baby” runs at Ordinary, 990 Chapel St., until July 25. 

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