The Modern Female Grotesque

This is my literary contribution to our oral presentation.

We have selected a few of the illustrations Sander L. Gillman included in her article ‘Black Bodies, White Bodies: Toward an Iconography of Female Sexulality in late 19^th century Art, Medicine, and Culture’ to exemplify the icon of the female grotesque. These are explicit cases of the categorisation of the female body, specifically here, the black and the prostitute’s body.

Gillman focuses on the development and utilisation of the icon of the black and sexualised body and how it operated in art, culture and medicine in the late 19^th century. This is a room of articles rather than distinct art pieces; the medical journal illustrations in particular, are an important inclusion as their very nature gives them higher, and subliminally factual status above the aesthetic subjectivity of paintings.

‘Icons represent rather than present the world’. J.J. Virey, an 18^th century writer of race studies heavily contributed to the ideology surrounding the Hottentot female body, by attributing physiology to physiognomy and thereby explaining a pseudo-scientific trait of heightened sexuality. For example, due to the slightly elongated labia, and the supposed ‘over development of the clitoris’ of one examined indigenous female, Sarah Bartmann, an animalistic style of sexuality became a logical alignment. She was reduced to her sexual parts and developed into the icon used for the black female throughout the 19^th century. This is what is particularly important about the illustrations on display in our exhibition of the ‘Female Grotesque’. ‘The Hottentot Venus’, for example, is an image used by Saartjie Baartman in his 1810 exhibition, which caused outright scandal due partly to the recent abolishment of slavery, and her openly displayed nakedness. There was a sense of a connection in the public’s reactionary attitude to her ‘lewdness’ and her ethnicity. Something particularly telling in the Parisian reception of the image, used at a ball given by the Duchess Du Barry in 1829, was that ‘The Hottentot Venus’ was somewhat of a prize winning attraction, which invokes the concept of the carnavalesque and the freak show. The composition of vaginal illustrations objectify almost to the extent of something you might come across in a curiosity shop. This entrenches the idea of otherness, and an ideological bias and implicit fear of and against the female sex.

The poor treatment of Sarah Bartman threw our inclusion of Kara Walker’s still from her film ‘8 Possible Beginnings or: The Creation of African-America, a Moving Picture by Kara E. Walker’ into an ethical disrepute. In one respect it may be disrespectful to exhibit such images in relation to one another, only repeating and perpetuating what we originally set out to expose and disprove- the iconography of the sexualised body. On the other hand however, it is important to bring to an audience’s attention, to the affect of the implication of the icon of the black body and how that has been associated with the sexualised female. Kara Walker providing an accurate, contemporary example of how this continues to manifest itself today. The artist renders exaggerated facial and bodily features in her puppets and drawings of stereotyped black caricatures. Her use of the silloutte is particularly interesting in that it corresponds to the idea of reduction; one can only view outlines, relying heavily on our ideological conditioning to identify and place the people, and their narratives, in her films and images, inadvertently highlighting the myth of difference racially and culturally, specifically between Africa and America.

The postures of the ‘Hottentot Venus’ and ‘An Italian Protitute’ evoke something like a ‘mug shot’ of potential criminals- a quality that may not have been intentional upon their conception as images but certainly operates as such with our modern day visual conditioning.

The prostitute, for the 19^th century zeitgeist, was the epitome of the sexuality, which incorporated both passion and disease. Legal documentation for medical controls include the literary work of A. J. B Parent-Duchatelet, who uses the modal of public health that eluded to the idea of prostitutes being another form of pollution, implicitly comparing them to the Parisian sewers. He also presented various inherent traits of the prostitute’s appearance to their occupation; black thick hair, a strong jaw, a hard spent glance’ Such features also fulfil Virey’s categories applied to the Hottentot female thereby establishing the link between the black and the white body, producing the icons of sexualised women.

This is explicitly illustrated in Manet’s ‘Olympia’. We have placed the painting in the introductory room of our exhibition almost as an icon itself, to visually establish for the viewer, the themes we are concentrating on- the prostitute and the grotesque. Here, the linkage is made between the icons of the black servant girl, and the white sexualised woman both representing the ills of a specific aspect of late 19^th century society, signified by the combination of the two categories of degenerate women.

Bibliography

Clark, T.J. Olympia’s Choice from ‘The Painting of Modern Life: Paris in the Art of Manet and His Followers’ 1984

Clayson, Hollis ‘Painted Love’, New Haven ; London : Yale University Press, c1991

Douglas, Mary ‘Purity and Danger. An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo’, Routledge, 2002

Gilman, Sander L. ‘Black Bodies, White Bodies; toward an iconography of female sexuality in the late 19^th century’ from Henry Louis Gates Jnr, “Race”, Writing and Difference’ 1989

Gillman, Sander L. ‘Disease and Representation; Images from Madness to AIDS’, Cornell University Press, Ithica and London, 1988

Krauss, Rosalind, A Voyage on the North Sea; Art in the Age of the Post-Medium Condition’, Thames & Hudson, 1999

Nead, Lynda, ‘The Female Nude; Art, Obscenity and Sexuality.’, Routledge, London, New York, 1992

Wright, Thomas ‘A History of Caricature and Grotesque in Literature and Art’, Fredrick Ungar Publishing co. New York, 1969

Keyser, Wolfgang, ‘The Grotesque in Art and Literature’, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1963

Feminism In the foreground?

‘For us the category of feminist art has acted as a way of reading the material, a tool for clarifying questions of sex, gender and power…an unfixed and ever changing process in which our understanding of identity, body, sexuality, biology, nature and culture play a decisive role.’

‘Konstfeminism!’(‘Feminist Art’), the 2005 exhibition, held at Liljevalchs Konsthall in Stockholm indicated to me that feminism is particularly active in Sweden. The work exhibited spanned from the 1960’s to the 21^st century. The show’s aim was commendably ambitious, attempting to pay quality attention to the many areas of Feminism, and to comment on the two in-depth and ‘comprehensive’ issues concerning the art system generally- firstly, women artist’s attitude towards its development since the 1970s. Secondly, the conversation art practice has with feminist theory, in terms of how the fields have influenced one and another. The political movement itself was emphasised in its plurality through the variety of artworks included. I was struck by how many this amounted to and the innovative and how exciting they could be. I am baffled as to why I have not heard or seen many of them before, as my own practice often draws inspiration from contemporary female, feminist artists.

I have selected a few artists from ‘Konstfeminism!’ and their exhibited works, and some that I have subsequently researched. Mentioned in the catalogue introductory passages is the ethos of the show which, emphasises that art and feminism are ‘integral’, and presumably the curators feel no need to separate the two as subject matter. Perhaps this is due to the title ‘Woman Artist’. The very act of adding the word ‘woman’ to a profession that is now not exclusive to one gender perpetually implies them as an exception. The idea presented by ‘Konstfeminism!’ is that by the very act of a woman making art, marks a feminist alignment, due to the inequalities rooted the field.

"After seeing the exhibition, you realize that the openness of today's art comes from the emancipation movement of the '70s." (G. Pollock)[1]

Benedicte Bergmann, ' Livmodern (Detail)’, 1980[2]

Benedicte Bergmann’s piece, ‘Livmodern’ (1980) struck me as an important example of innovative installation and multimedia art making. The vaginal-resembling tent is a playful and celebratory example of imposing the female sex in a similar way as the phallus has been, and still is, in our visual experience. This is also true of Cilla Ericson. I particularly enjoy her simple, and almost archaic style of sculpting the female body. This is something I have aimed for in my own work.

[3]

These ‘womanettes’, were sculptural explorations, developed from certain buzzwords such as ‘bulbousness’, ‘voluptuousness’ and ‘growth’, to produce tactile interpretations of the female form. I reduced the feminine features to create signifiers, to make fun of what women are so often judged for. Displaying the few physical attributes by themselves indicates the absurdity of this idea.

[4]

Annika Liljedahl is an example of the contemporary artists included in the show. Her work seems to take material and physical qualities, stereotypically associated with the feminine, and crudely yet skilfully mashes them together to form grotesque and almost comic and figurative forms. Liljedahl’s work specifically answers to the exhibition’s aim of responding and recognising elements of artworks that do not strictly relate with, in particular periods of times, what is deemed as ‘art’.

[5]

[6]

The selection of artworks for ‘Konstfeminism!’ proposed to centre on the themes of narratives, and notions concerning sex, gender and power. In the work I have chosen to exemplify, the body seems to be the most common visual tool utilised, which does not seem, superficially, to tackle a variety of strategies for feminist art aesthetically. However, I am drawn to them in how they influence my own practice, and should not dominate any other’s view of the show as a whole.

I recently visited a retrospective of French/American artist Niki de Saint Phalle (1930-2002) at the Tate Liverpool. I went to research her use of found objects in representing the female form. It was interesting that the exhibition put the artist forward as a political artist but not a distinctly feminist artist. The catalogue, gallery guide and curation of work were hugely biographical (obviously anticipated as it is a retrospective). Yet, the word ‘feminist’ surprisingly, was not used concerning her depictions of women as the mother, whore and virgin. The explicative texts for each room, mention feminist themes of inequalities and entrapments of women yet distinctly avoided specific words that would indicate an explicit ideological grounding. I wonder if this is because of Liverpool’s aspiring profile of ‘Cultural Capital of Europe’, and the sometimes-hostile attitude to Feminist thought apparent in today’s society, directed a dampening of this motivating element and integral aspect of de Saint Phalle’s work.

---

[1] Griselda Pollock, quoted in Art Forum, ‘INTERNATIONAL NEWS DIGEST’, 09.05.06, http://artforum.com/news/week=200636 [accessed April 08]

[2] Benedicte Bergmann, ‘Livmodern’, 1980 http://www.bbergmann.com/galleri.htm [accessed April 08]

[3] Cilla Ericson, ‘Untitled’, 1962-65, http://www.euran.com/cillaericson.htm [accessed April 08]

[4] Personal photographs, taken April 06 and November 06.

[5] Annika Liljedahl, http://www.euran.com/annikaliljedahl.htm [Accessed April 08]

[6] Ibid.

Space, Modernity, The City

The 19^th century brought a significant change to gender roles and positions in society due to the industrial revolution and the implication and rise of capitalism. In ‘Vision and Difference’, Griselda Pollock paraphrases Janet Wolff’s description of modernity expressed through literature.

‘…literature of modernity describes the experience of men. It is essentially a literature about transformations in the public world and its associated consciousness…modernity as a nineteenth-century phenomenon is a product of the city.’ [1]

An essential question, with regards to gender depicted in painting in the late 19^th century, is could women experience it? Furthermore, how is space represented according to the feminine and the masculine?

Fig. 1

Fig. 2

Fig. 3

Fig. 5 Adrien DE WITTE Femme au corset rouge (1880)
I have selected a few paintings by Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, which communicate various forms of gender difference, space and modernity that are very much indicative of the late 19^th century city life.

‘The artist's mother comtesse Adele de Toulouse-Lautrec at breakfast, Malromé Chateau’, 1881-1883, ‘The Laundry Worker’, 1884-1888, ‘Mlle Marie Dihau at the Piano’, 1889 (figs. 1, 2 and 3) I have collated to exemplify the interiority and domesticity of the middle class woman. The chaos and dirt of the city influenced families to move to the suburbs therefore making the former mentioned arena to be a largely masculine domain. Elegant family women were out of place here unless chaperoned, and present in the daytime. And when they do, the hassle to be had in making themselves presentable (the costume to be adored to permit the status of acceptable and civilised femininity) was something in itself to prevent and hinder women to step into the public sphere. Figs. 3 and 4 are particularly interesting in displaying the occupied eyes and hands when under observation as the subject matter of a painting, in this instance. Their surrounding interior is heavily decorated and blended, rendering it almost suffocating to the sitter. ‘Mlle Marie Dihau at the Piano’, 1889 is slightly different, as there seems to be an opened newspaper in close proximity to our main focus. This indicates that the woman is in a public place; a bar or café. Therefore, confirming her status as kept woman, courtesan or prostitute (fallen woman). Nonetheless, her eyes and hands are looking away from the voyeurism of the artist. She is occupied, and seemingly unaware of the interest she attracts. What connects these images is how they indirectly display the flaneur- a definite masculine phenomenon of a mediatory stance between the impersonal and aggressive atmosphere of the city and the emotionally involved and intensity of the family home. Flaneury allowed for the erotics of enjoyment- the viewer could see and experience intimacy in an impassive manner, in intermediate spaces such as the arcades and the cafes. This is particularly explicit in fig. 5, where a seeming lack of self-consciousness gives licence over what the male voyeur desires to see. [1]

I have included the remaining images as they primarily involve the significant factor of looking. ‘The Laundry Worker’ interested me as a comparison to the afore mentioned paintings as it depicts a woman momentarily breaking from her work, and looking out of, what the light source indicates as being a window. This action gives rise to the possibility of the female flaneur. Although still very much from the private sphere, she is observing the life to be had outside of her immediate experience. However, it is notable that her hair is covering much of her face, particularly the eyes, so her looking is still very much concealed.

Edouard Manet ‘The Balcony’, 1869

‘ Edouard Manet, 'The Railroad’, 1872-73


Edouard Manet, 'The Waitress' 1879

Edouard Manet is particularly famous for his paintings of women looking out from their circumstances. ‘The Waitress’, 1879, ‘The Balcony’, 1869, ‘The Railroad’, 1872-73. I have selected due to their use of barriers, a painterly prop, as identified by Pollock in ‘Modernity and spaces of femininity’. In these paintings, women of different social classes are each looking out from their occupation i.e. nanny, debutante, café worker, directly at the viewer implying their thoughts and fantasies go beyond what they are all physically confined to. The young girl’s action, in ‘The Railroad’, of holding the railings and peering through to a relatively new and radical invention of transportation, hints at an aspiration of travel and dislocation. The very quizzical stare of the main subject in ‘The Balcony’ is especially significant in this area of discussion, supported more so by how the faces of the two other figures are blurred and seemingly unfinished. The clear and detailed rendering of the balcony railings forces

‘…the viewer to experience a dislocation between her space and that of the world beyond it’s frontiers.’[2]

I have included ‘The Waitress’ as the woman seems to have a balustrade of men fashioned between the audience, the painter and herself. The flaneur seems to be evaded in ‘The Railroad’ and ‘The Waitress’ as the depicted women are looking out at the voyeur- he is not impassively able to observe his interest, which is something particularly significant with regards to outlining the zeitgeist of the 19^th century concepts and experience of gender relations and spaces of femininity and modernity. The latter mentioned paintings, in particular, bring forth of our 21^st century analytical eye, that individuals were aware, and indeed scrutinised the problems presented to them as part of the industrial revolution, and the effect of the phenomena of the city.

---

[1] Vision and Difference, G. Pollock, ‘Modernity and the spaces of femininity’, 1988 & 2002. Pp.76

[2] Ibid. pp.63

---

[1] Vision and Difference, G. Pollock, ‘Modernity and the spaces of femininity’, 1988 & 2002. Pp. 66

BODIES OF DIFFERENCE: EMBODIMENT AND REPRESENTATION

Lisa Ticker aims for the establishment of a system of categories, for which to place materials from the zeitgeist of the 1970s. She begins by outlining the pressures and contradictions that face the work of women artists- something that cannot be discussed without this preface.

The question of embodiment is particularly significant in The Body Politic: Female Sexuality and Women Artists Since 1970 by Lisa Ticker. The subject of female activity in the visual is something largely untouched in mainstream Art Histories, quite possibly because the female body is something that features heavily as subject matter. Tucker importantly identifies that although women are present in numerous artworks, in influence and endeavour, they are absent in the public sphere, i.e. the gallery context; the female body operates as the arbitrator sign for the male.

‘What can we possibly deduce from this fact that she can be everything, but the knowledge that she is nothing?’

Two categories consist of the fantasist and realist, equalling double yet contradictory expectations of women, i.e. chaste yet the instigator and repository of sin. Disguises of accommodation. Eve and Mary. Female lust only exists for the arousal of man, and serves as a ‘prelude to her submission before the phallus’. Alien, instead of reversing the roles, placing women in the position of men, there is a need for a completely different viewpoint. Often reactive- Colette exemplifies this.

Judy Chicago, "Dinner Party-Place Setting, Ceramic Plate of Georgia O'Keefe", 1974-1979, www.wsu.edu/~fa308310/fa310/r41.jpg

Chicago- reminder of what the female body provides, showing both power and feminine. In ‘The Dinner Party’ the fetish of the vulva seeks to displace the obscene. The use of humour by Shelly Lowell and Sam Haskins subverts inherent disgust of female genitalia by indulging in clichés and innuendos. This is thought to be in place of challenging stereotypes by Haskins, although the work seems to do just that. Re-presenting a joke or seeming universal is something particularly striking, especially if the one who is conventionally on the receiving end of the commentary delivers these.

Two tactics of female artists- to attack or ignore. Should not be simply seen in this light as that means the body is an inescapable subject matter for the female artist, whether through presence or absence. Nevertheless, the 1970s presented women with a new sense of authority over their bodies, therefore making these tactics symptomatic of art practice and commentary.

Four categories for exemplified artworks: The male as motif, ‘vaginal iconology’, transformations and processes and, parody: self as object.

Sylvia Sleigh, 'Philip Golub Reclining', 1971, http://www.sylviasleigh.com/

Sylvia Sleigh, ‘Philip Golub’, 1971. The title itself is evidential of her use of specific male modals, her friends, rather than anonymous women. He is passive and positioned in a traditionally feminine pose, emitting an androgynous quality. In the background, the artist is featured, which creates a relaxed atmosphere rather than erotic. The painting has received criticism in the form of role reversal, in that Sleigh is objectifying the male as a reactionary tactic.

Colette Whiten, Structure #7 (casting process - detail 3 of 6), 1972, http://www.ccca.ca/artists/work

This is something Colette Whiten denies as a theme of her work. Whiten makes casts of the figure through complex contraptions that hold the depicted in place. The machines coerce passivity (an interesting contradictory), leaving the male subject dependant on female care and provision. The participating modals were also friends or unpaid volunteers. Perhaps the undertones of erotic domination were what attracted the participators but the integrity of the work is dedicated to the idea of sensuality free from a power hierarchy. These pieces were included in the article to illustrate the lack of language and experience of true female emancipation that leads to the assumption of reactionary tactics and role-reversal sexism.

Suzanne Valadon, The Blue Room, 1923, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzanne_Valadon [accessed February 2008]

B. September 23 1865 – April 7 1938. The first female painter permitted to join the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts.

Encouraged as an artist by Edgar Degas and highly regarded by Picasso, George Braque and Andre Derain. A beautiful woman, she modelled for Renoir, de Chavannes and Lautrec. Her experience of being the subject matter, even the object of paintings may well be why her own work endeavoured to depict women untainted by the voyeur.

Moorgraben, 1900-1902 (‘Avant Garde, the Art Blog; http://blog.buelent-guenduez.de/2007/10/31/paula-modersohn-becker-wird-geehrt/)

Paula Modersohn-Becker (February 8, 1876 - November 21, 1907) was a German painter and one of the most important representatives of early expressionism. Modersohn-Becker joined an innovative artist community in Worpswede who protested against the academy and the dominance of the city in culture economically and socially.

Georgia O'Keeffe (November 15, 1887-March 6, 1986)

Narcissa’s Last Orchid, 1941 (www.princetonartmuseum.org) [Accessed February 2008]

An American artist, whose work from the deserts of New Mexico, in particular, has been hugely significant since the 1920s. Having seen a selection of her paintings of cattle skulls and flowers displayed the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the intensity of colours used and beautiful linear quality permit a striking effect. I enjoyed the invisibly obvious connotations or sublimations of the female form in these particular objects. They seem to operate in the same way as phallic iconography has seemingly unconsciously featured in our aesthetic experience of the world.

Cow's Skull: Red, White, and Blue, 1931 (http://www.metmuseum.org/works_of_art) [Accessed February 2008]

Kathe Köllwitz B. (July 8, 1867 – April 22, 1945)

The Call of Death, 1934/35, Kathe Kollwitz museum, berlinhttp://www.dhm.de/museen/kollwitz/english/death.htm [accessed March 08]

I recently visited the Kathe Köllwitz museum in Berlin. It is a small, privately run gallery in the western area of the city of Charlottenburg. The collection is held on 4 floors, and in the sculpture garden of the elegant academy building. The exhibition begins on the ground floor with a few portraits of the artist, a timeline of significant dates in the artist’s life, and a selection of early etchings and drawings for political campaigning posters and publications. Köllwitz was exceptionally active in the Peasant War, a violent revolution that took place in Southern Germany in the first decade of the 20^th century. The preparatory work is fascinating to see; Köllwitz was clearly a highly skilled and diligent illustrator as well as a truly innovative creative as shown through her precise pen and ink portraits and her almost character-like representations of death and mourning. The following floor consisted of satirical cartoons and illustrations as, I assume a contrast to Köllwitz’s work. They were often acutely squalid in tone, crude and unrefined. This may be an accurate depiction of the sitz im leben of late 19^th century Germany, or a subsequent comment from one of early 21^st century.

The Peasant War related prints were of the few images that include adult male subjects, as the large majority of images and objects exhibited at the museum concerned a distinct mother and child, or ‘women’s struggle’ theme.

Her drawings and lithographs often include a personification of death, with whom the mother figure is grappling with or is often overshadowing a family scene. Köllwitz herself had to endure a great deal of loss and bereavement; both her son and grandson were killed in the first and second World Wars. The intense melancholic quality was inevitably conditioned by the depression of the 1930s, and enhances the visceral elements of the artwork. Köllwitz unique style renders her subjects of mothers and children into absorbing, almost alien creatures of anguish and sorrow. With or without a clear evidence of process i.e. mark making, the images and sculptures are incredibly tactile- something that might explain their power of engagement.

I have been attracted to Kathe Köllwitz’s work since I first saw an image of the archetypal ‘Mother with Dead Child’ (1903) but am now enlightened to her huge role in political activism, graphic design, and Expressionism, which has provided an invaluable representation of an incredibly significant period of time.

The Fragmented and The Grotesque

Caviness, Madeline H. Visualizing Women in the Middle Ages, chap.3 “The De-Eroticised Body: Aesthetic codes, fragmentation and the problem of agency”, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press (2001)

- Power of fragmentation that forms the grotesque. Seemingly ambiguous yet shows the gray area between the two approaches of the female body as artistic subject matter. St. Agatha alter panel by Francisco Zurbarán shows the saint holding a platter of her severed breasts that function as a fetish to displace unwanted attention to her body. Confronting the gaze? It is a general view that there was no medieval concept of the gaze. The artist seems to disprove this idea, especially with regards to the St. Agatha panal, which seems to illustrate a fantasy. The segregated body- also applied to male subjects but not the sexual organs/areas with exception to the foreskin of Christ. Furthermore the Passion of Christ is a sado-erotic example of the displacement, not the signification of sexual desire. However, their masculinity is not altered or decreased, whereas as women are de-feminized. However, a problem of the erotic male nude is that it seems to immediately assume a homoerotic quality.

- Decay, not an effective artistic tool to de-eroticise the female nude as risks a sublimation of fantasy. A more violent gesture is required. C.W. Bynum- Christian thought is relentlessly troubled with ‘deep anxieties about decay.’

Often looked at without arms and legs therefore no protection. ‘Structured by the absent voice’. –Fragmentation decreases the power of the grotesque body. What Is the Grotesque Body? Something that is both dead and alive- Jesus Christ interestingly fits that description.

Russo, Mary, The Female Grotesque: risk, excess and modernity, chap.2 “Female grotesquses: carnival and theory.”

-Introduces with examples and effects of the dangers of women’s behavior in society, and their subsequent perception. Cultural politics is an underpinning theme of this text. It aims to participate in the re-presentation of femininity, ‘Womanness’ and female experience that are determined by symbolic and cultural constructs, in order to form a revised, pro-active and fresh ideal for social subjectivity.

Exemplifies the taboos of the grotesque bodies as pregnant, irregular and ageing.

Carnival- a time where rules were abandoned. Includes extracts from an article by Natalie Davis, ‘Women on Top’, which describes how the carnivalesque woman was not only used to discriminate but also to broaden the social actions of females, in or outside of marriage. Furthermore, for women and men, as an implicit protest of communal restraints and traditional power hierarchies. On the other hand, this could have transgressive effects; Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie shows evidence for women raped and executions of Jews in Carnival at Romans. Nonetheless, the carnival and the carnivalesque offer the possibility of a ‘redeployment or counter production of culture, knowledge, and pleasure.’ (p.62) Along with the category of the grotesque body, Russo proposes could be utilized for the undermining of the given concepts of female beauty, and to ‘realign the mechanism of desire’.










Above are some images I have collected for the presentation 'Modern-female Grotesque'


I visited a film showing this week of a series of woman artist interviews from the 1970s. The short documentary films were first created by Kate Horsfield, and have since been re-formated for DVD under the direction of Vanalyne Green, both of whom founded the Video Data Bank (V.D.B.) in 1976. V.D.B. is an invaluable resource for video archives, created at a time when this media began to be widely used by artists. The artist's interview is something I find particularly insightful in understanding and fully appreciating bodies of work. The compilation of video interviews, including Louise Bourgeois, Lee Krasner, the Guerrilla Girls and Lucy Lippard, is an important and relevant resource in bringing seminal artists to the forefront of our socio-historical reading, in this case, of the 1970s.

The Re-presentation of Eve

The image above is of Byzantine style, which is evident through the iconographic features of that period. For example, symbolic forms and signs are used rather than exactly similar reproductions of subject matter. It has the autonomous and surprising Christian imagery, uninhibited by Renaissance artisan constraints. After the totalitarianism of the Roman empire, society and culture looked elsewhere, Ancient Greece offered an interesting influence to fictive imaginations of the body that were not primarily concerned with beauty.

The unknown and alien complimented the move from Paganism to Christianity. A rather sinister black tree that morphs partly into a snake immediately indicates the exile of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. It is interesting that only Eve is depicted here. This could be exposing her as the sole perpetrator of God’s punishment of human kind. However, Eve does not seem to be rendered aggressively or experience any discomfort. She embodies a quality of beauty; her shading of white compliments the Christian association with goodness. Her demeanour is calm, her posture is open, and the wing like adornment attached to her side is decorated with similar stars as the ones featured above, indicating an angel like character. The twinkling stars in particular serve to capture the visionary. This signifies the author’s alternative interpretation of the temptation of Adam by Eve.

‘The Fall’ was created by a Byzantine mystic named Hildegard op Bingen. Despite Catholicism’s categorical rejection of women’s role in the church, Hildegard stood as an exception. She was permitted to preach and write about female sexuality, health and morality. An exceptional number of eight volumes of her authorship were accepted by the church. Having been educated by an anchorite from the age of eight, Hildegard was a known mystic, which formed as a threat to ecclesiastic hierarchy. With regards to Hildegard, this was quite possibly a way of penetrating the patriarchal and patronised society. The utilisation of the mode of resistance known as the hysterics, could communicate knowledge and operate influence, granted, based on the supernatural rather than the educated and accepted means of the church reserved for its male members. However, mysticism worked for Hildegard to gain spiritual and intellectual commendation, and therefore power.

Hildegard presents Eve as the mediator of the transfer of humanity beyond the Garden of Eden. The traditional story is often told in an implicitly misogynistic tone. For example, Eve is an unseen creation, and specifically for Adam therefore, establishing a hierarchy of roles from the outset. Eve is responsible for the fall of human kind, and is only redeemed by the Virgin Mary- the new Eve. Hildegard’s rendition expresses a significantly different viewpoint. Eve is instead responsible for humanity’s development and growth. She is curious, and wants to learn about her world and the things in it. Hildegard’s representation of Eve is a positive icon of the transition of childhood into adulthood and indicates god’s gift of free will.

The image inspires a sense of astonishment at medieval Christian imagery. Instead of viewing it as a primitive and undeveloped era of creativity and development, ‘The Fall’ exemplifies medieval sophistication of iconoclasm and inventiveness. Hildegard, in particular provides a much-needed alternative stance in the representation of ostensible universals concerning gender fundamentals and relationships.

Who was Anicia Juliana?

Anicia Juliana lived between 462 and 528. She was a Roman imperial princess, the daughter of western Roman Emperor Olybrius. Described as a Pre-Justinian of Constantinople, and ‘both the most aristocratic and wealthiest inhabitant.’ (Michael Mass, The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Justinian. Cambridge University Press, 2005. P.439)

This portrait of Anicia Juliana Is found In the Vienna Dioskurorides, which is a huge volume devoted pharmaceutical knowledge from the 5^th century. Juliana’s very feature in it tells us a lot about her influence in early Constantinople. The people of this society were expected to be responsible for the public good, and those with the means did.

In ‘Byzantine Garden Culture’, Leslie Brubaker aligns Juliana with a Pagan rather than Christian orientation. Juliana was head of a materfamilias[1], a luxurious household but also potentially practical as a medical compendium for domestic use, and importantly as a means of higher social rank. Brubaker emphasizes the significance of Juliana’s presence in this book by iterating the importance of plants in a time before penicillin.

In the image, Juliana is flanked by personifications of magnanimity and prudence. She presented with a closed book by an allegory of ‘Gratitude for the arts’. Possibly the most significant clue of her embodiment of dynastic ideology is the inscription at Juliana’s feet that reads ‘Great Patron’, which is reinforced by her ‘costume’- something only worn by those with power in the ecclesiastic matters of the community. Imperial duties and ability was something generally reserved for men, therefore making Juliana’s contribution somewhat exceptional.

---

[1] I feel it is poignant to mention here that the little red line, indicating a spelling error, appears under ‘materfamilia’, and it’s spelling suggestion is ‘paterfamilias’.

Power And The Image

‘The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences’ by Michel Foucault asserts art as a means of thinking, and of finding ones place in the world. Velasquez’s ‘Las Meninas’ breaks the rules of the logic of depicted space to represent a group of people looking and thinking.

Although hidden, a pivotal element of ‘Las Meninas’ is the artist’s inclusion of himself. How and why did Velasquez do this? Foucault writes of a ‘double invisibility’, that shows his triangle of activity; to step back from the canvas, to look and to make a mark. The canvas simultaneously highlights the artist’s invisibility. It seems that precisely because the invisibility was there that we, the viewers, failed to see it.

The canvas is used as a visual tool to represent himself as both thinker and maker. This is something that is supported by the mirror in the background. This should show the backs of the figures and objects in the foreground. Instead it shows Prince Philip IV and Queen Mariana of Austria, whom the painting is for. Their presence also seems to re-emphasise how all depicted are subjects to the order of things in the world. There is a sense of reciprocity in that the viewer is observing themselves being observed by the painter, ‘…and made visible by the same light that enables us to see him.’ (‘The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences’ Foucault, Michel)

Foucault iterates that the viewer must attempt to make sense of the painting in the same way one would a piece of text. However, how do we respond to more subjective phenomena? Carol Duncan and Allan Wallach present this question in the article ‘MoMA: Ordeal and Triumph on 53^rd Street’. In comparison to the traditional survey museum, the Museum of Modern Art in New York proposes itself as an autonomous space for which to independently explore. For example, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has a huge and grand staircase up to its entrance, and once inside specific routes are implicitly mapped out for the visitor to receive a linear exhibition of artefacts. The MoMA on the other hand has only a pane of glass between the gallery and the street. I also found the museum itself, quite difficult to find, as it does not hold the same sort of monumental or ceremonial presence as such places as the Metropolitan Museum. Wallach and Duncan expose a fascinating curatorial tactic of placing Medusa-themed paintings at certain points of the museum, which subtly direct the viewer through the maze of the MoMA. They propose the garden as a refuge from both the frightening experience of the labyrinth and from materialist society.

‘the museum exalts precisely the mundane values and experiences it ostensibly rejects by elevating them to the universal and timeless realm of spirit.’ (p.56)

However, the time of writing must be taken into account here as there is now a café, restaurant and gift shop to be found. Perhaps these are secondary medusas.