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.
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.
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 20th 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 19th century Germany, or a subsequent comment from one of early 21st 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.
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