“…gruff but poetic.”
Nud Nob at
Gladstone Gallery in Chelsea, New York is British artist Sarah Lucas’ first
show in the US in almost ten years.
Lucas’ work is blunt, in keeping with the way she speaks.
It’s gruff but poetic. As J. J. Charlesworth writes of her work from the 1990s
(which includes said banana works as well as Chicken Knickers, the photo in
full view from West 24th Street that superimposes a raw chicken on a
woman’s panty-covered crotch), its sophistication lies in its vulgarity. Blush
and turn away, though, and you might miss it.
One of the nuances is the evidence of the artist’s hand, and
I don’t mean that in a Sarah Lucas-double
entendre kind of way. Rather, the artist’s hand is revealed through asymmetrical
forms and pockmarked surfaces that make for imperfect phalluses. Displayed on
cubes of crushed metal cars, there’s a bit of a thumbing of the nose at
machismo. Also, the evidence of labour differentiates Lucas’ sculpture from,
say, minimalist sculpture (which was also very macho) and emphasizes the kind
of labour that isn’t automatically associated with art made by a woman.
What you can’t miss, even if you stick to the street view,
is the size of the works. It seems proportional to the cultural value assigned
to sex and functions as a reference to the notion that bigger is better—an absurd ode to penis
enlargers, breast augmentation, and big numbers notched on bedposts. There’s an
element of playful pop mockery with the scale quoting Jeff Koons and Claes
Oldenburg, but there’s a sinister quality too: if you’ve seen the movie, A
Clockwork Orange, it’s unlikely you’ve forgotten a large white phallic
sculpture used in a lethal rape scene of a woman.
There are smaller works as well that Lucas showed in the Venice
Biennale last year. The Nuds series began as stuffed nylon stockings that stand in for
human figures but look kind of like Gumby. Sometimes they appear with chairs,
sometimes with toilets. Sometimes they are breasts, sometimes legs, sometimes
intestines. The later versions in the show are bronze, like the large
vegetables (which might be eggplant, zucchini, or butternut squash; whatever they
are, they bring to mind urban myths of self-pleasure leading to hospital visits). The
shift to bronze gives them a refined quality that announces, “I am Sculpture.”
As a Young British Artist who is not really so young
anymore, being in her 50s, and somewhat androgynous in appearance, Lucas is
well positioned to make audiences rethink the conventions of sexual desire by
disrupting the privileged male gaze that has dominated art history. You might
say she’s carrying the torch for the late Louise Bourgeois. Even so, the extent of the feminist dialogue she encourages has been
debated. As a librarian, I have noticed that some of her articles are indexed only with
‘feminist art’ while many are indexed with practically everything but that. Her
work has also been called ‘trash-feminism’. Although I have yet to encounter
this term as a noun, I assume it to refer to artists like
VALIE EXPORT,
who
entered a Munich movie theatre in 1968
wearing crotchless pants and taunting audience members. Lucas, in turn, has cut
a hole in her shirt to expose her nipple in response to Marcel Duchamp’s
catalogue cover of 1941
and she has certainly used base materials to comment on sexuality in the past,
like tabloid publications, cigarette buts, and old mattresses. Regardless of
whether she’s a feminist, I feel an affinity with her because of her stance
that we construct our reality and therefore, we should reflect on that process.
The exhibition closes tomorrow.
Sources:
Charlesworth, J. J. “Sarah Lucas Profile: From YBA to
Classic Pervery—Making the Ordinary Extraordinary.” Art Review. Jan./Feb. 2013 http://artreview.com/features/sarah_lucas_profile/
Lucas, Sarah; Cook, Angus; and Fairhurst, Angus. Sarah Lucas: After 2005, Before 2012. Walther König, Köln.
Grayling, A. C. “An Uncooked Perspective on the Nature of
Sex.” Tate Etc. Autumn 2005, issue 5.
