Artist in Transit

Starting the Year with an Oedipal Tragedy

2012-01-05T11:20:00.000-08:00

"Which is harder to stomach about the unfortunate pairing of Guterson’s characters?"

A week into December, around the time New Year’s resolutions start taking shape, I visited the University of Toronto for the Book and Periodical Council Idea Exchange about public school libraries. When panelist Annie Kidder referenced a study about the positive neurological effects of reading fiction, I slunk down in my chair in the sea of librarians. It hit me that 2011 was about to pass without me having read a single fiction book, as I’d been completely absorbed by non-fiction. As luck would have it, that very day, the winner of the bad sex in fiction award was announced, making for an easily attainable resolution: the first book I would read in 2012, once my inter-library loan came in, was David Guterson’s Ed King (2011, Alfred A. Knopf). [Spoiler alert: skip the following paragraph if you want to avoid the details of the plot].

A modern day Sophoclean tragedy about patricide and incest, the novel begins with the events leading up to the conception of an Internet visionary. Walter Cousins, a father of two, has an affair with his au pair, Diane Burroughs, while his wife is hospitalized for mental illness. She becomes pregnant and demands child support even though she secretly leaves the baby on a Seattle doorstep. The baby is raised as Edward Aaron King by a local couple but is never told he is adopted. This choice may or may not have affected his emotional development, contributing to his predilection for older women and to the adolescent rage that causes him to drive a stranger, who happens to be Walter Cousins, off the road to his death. The book ends with his suicide at age 54, as he flies a plane above the allowable altitude while processing the sickening news that it was his biological father he killed and that his wife of almost twenty-five years was his biological mother.

I found myself reflecting on the caption on a General Idea photo screen-print called Oedipal Triangle that I’d just seen at the Art Gallery of Ontario: “This three-way relationship is easy to set your sights on”. In contrast to that sentiment, when Ed King finally discovers his father’s identity via DNA analysis and phone calls, his reaction, just before asking the question, “Who was my mother?” was “He wasn’t sure he wanted to look.”

Guterson acknowledges the complicated position of the reader. When Ed and Diane begin their romance, he interrupts by saying, “Now we approach the part of the story a reader can’t be blamed for having skipped forward to…most people, on hearing about the Oedipal complex, feel both resistant and drawn.” Independent of the phrasing, which is rife with euphemisms, it would be difficult to interpret Diane and Ed’s encounter as anything but ‘bad sex’. Which is harder to stomach about the unfortunate pairing of Guterson’s characters? The fact that Diane’s mind flits back to Walter Cousins while in the act, or the thought of adult Ed smelling “breast-fed”? Shudder. In spite of his “general body worship,” it is a match made in hell. Even so, their physical chemistry is described as exhilarating years into their relationship. If Ed and Diane were not tied by blood, it would still be distasteful to read about Ed calculating the number of times they’d had sex in the same way that Rachel called Ross a loser on Friends when he boasted the number 298 in response to a furniture salesman who didn’t believe they’d once dated.

It’s only marginally easier, to use General Idea’s wording, to read a description of statutory rape (Water and Diane) and the next closest thing, Ed having sex with his adult math coach when he is in the eleventh grade. Even the healthiest relationship supports the award, thanks to the account of Ed’s adoptive mother—then pregnant with Ed’s younger brother—copulating with her husband with flabby legs likened to cottage cheese and milk laden breasts compared to squirt guns.

Further to the announcement of the award at London’s In & Out Club, Guterson commented, “Oedipus practically invented bad sex, so I’m not in the least bit surprised.”

Gail Levin on Lee Krasner

2011-12-29T18:03:00.000-08:00

“Krasner was rightfully frustrated with her unshakable identity as Mrs. Jackson Pollock, but she perpetuated it…”

After seeing how much I enjoyed reading a biography of Christo and Jeanne-Claude, my husband surprised me with a biography of Lee Krasner (HarperCollins, 2011) under the Christmas tree.

Art historian Gail Levin traces Krasner’s life from her Orthodox Jewish roots in turn-of-the-century Brooklyn to her death at age 75 (just before witnessing her dream of a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art).

For a painter that lived in the shadow of her husband—the infamous Jackson Pollock, who set an auction record for painting five years ago—it’s interesting to note that only one-third of the book is devoted to life with Pollock. This ratio contrasts the movie Pollock (2000), which doesn’t even show Krasner as a widow. It also contrasts the self-indulgent memoir of Ruth Kligman, Pollock’s mistress who survived the car crash that killed him (note that if you have the impulse to read Love Affair: A Memoir of Jackson Pollock, it is as tiresome to read as a tabloid). Whereas the movie left me bewildered as to why Krasner would stay with an unfaithful, verbally abusive alcoholic, Levin’s biography reduces the size of that question mark. A close-up photo of the couple smiling at each other outside their Springs home on Long Island says it all, capturing their love and implicit artistic support. There’s also the telling revelation that Krasner moved between five post-secondary art schools for her studies, determined not to suffer through a bad fit. Change was not something she feared.

It could be said that Levin’s thesis is an excerpt from Pollock’s obituary: “Lee Krasner, [was] an established painter in her own right” (1). As Krasner herself noted, “I painted before Pollock, during Pollock, after Pollock” (2). During Krasner’s lifetime, Levin curated a show in which she emphasized Krasner’s use of abstraction before she met Pollock. This strategy was necessary because individuals like Ellen Landau (then affiliated with the NCFA, which is now the Smithsonian) wrote about Krasner’s pre-Pollock work in relation to her eventual husband. Jed Perl notes in his New York Times book review that Levin doesn’t personally make a case for Krasner’s artistic importance in the biography, instead relying on interview excerpts, but it seems only fair to consider her entire professional contribution since she knew Krasner personally.

One thing everyone can surely agree on is that Krasner’s association with Pollock’s ‘male genius’ was a blessing and a curse. It caused Krasner to minimize the significance of a long-term, loving relationship with the artist Igor Pantuhoff that preceded Pollock, presumably to prevent her from looking like an artist groupie in the same camp as Kligman (who went on to have an affair with Pollock’s rival, Willem de Kooning). The constant comparison to Pollock’s style also made her defensive. For example, she differentiated the small-scale controlled dripping she used in her Little Images from Pollock’s action painting technique of moving with his whole body above a painting while drizzling and splashing paint. The book recounts a story of her sitting at the table, cataloguing the features that Pollock picked up from her. The suggestion that her work was derivative of any of the male abstract expressionists must have stung for someone who didn’t let a broken arm stop her from painting, for someone who described painting as an extension of life. Krasner was rightfully frustrated with her unshakable identity as Mrs. Jackson Pollock, but she perpetuated it by doing things like angling for a solo show as part of a package deal with a posthumous show for Pollock. The biography is a good read, in large part because—by virtue of her humanity—Krasner is a flawed character.

As is the case with artists like Artemisia Gentileschi and Frida Kahlo, Levin notes that there is a tendency to view Krasner’s life through a feminist lens even when it’s inappropriate. Krasner may have been suspended for sneaking into a space reserved for male students in a segregated art school, broken tradition by refusing to marry her newly widowed brother-in-law, and gotten angry with an acquaintance for giving up her maiden name in marriage, but a self-described feminist she was not. She eschewed all-women art shows, but at the same time, she expressed gratitude at the surge of interest in her work that accompanied the second wave of feminism. She considered feminism to be the one true revolution of her time, but she felt separate from it. Levin’s clearest example of mislabeled feminism is the attention paid to Krasner’s name changes: from her birth name of Lena to Lenore, and finally to the noticeably gender-neutral Lee. Levin points out that she was first called Lee when she was in an all-girls’ school, which weakens the argument that it was to mask her gender. Incidentally, she assumed the pseudonym Mary Cassatt (the Impressionist painter) when she and other artists were arrested for protesting lay-offs by the Works Progress Administration, for whom she collaborated on public art projects. She quipped, “I didn’t have a big selection you know, it was either Rosa Bonheur or Mary Cassatt” (3).

The shortage of prominent females in modern art made Krasner a natural role model, not just for her aptitude in the studio but also for her ability to work the commercial side of the art world. Her significance to the next generation is captured by an anecdote of Krasner being approached by artist Deborah Kass at Krasner’s exhibition, being called her hero, and continuing the conversation outside the gallery. The local colour of New York—the image of Kass initially seeing Krasner in a fur coat carrying Bergdorf Goodman bags in both hands along West Fifty-seventh Street—peppers Krasner’s life story, spinning a rags to riches tale that can’t help but romanticize the stereotype of the impoverished artist. However, what she wanted to be paid in was respect, not money. The importance of this monograph, the first of its scope about Krasner, is underscored by her lamenting, “…there’s never any mention of me in those history books, like I was never there” (4).

Sources:

(1) p. 312

(2) p. 410

(3) p. 118

(4) p. 3

Big Thumbs Up for Little Free Library

2011-12-11T10:42:00.000-08:00

“I ended up going home with a hardcover biography of Christo and Jeanne-Claude by Burt Chernow…”

I learned about Bill Wrigley’s Little Free Library from the Toronto Star, which I still read in spite of Mayor Rob Ford’s vocal boycott (1). The library is the first of its kind in Toronto, and was even rumoured to be the first in Canada. On December 3rd, it opened to the public on Lee Avenue in The Beach with a ribbon cutting ceremony. When I visited seven days later, my husband and I were the only ones there. Even so, I could picture it becoming the neighbourhood equivalent of a workplace water cooler for generating conversations in warmer weather. The idea is simple: take a book, return a book.

Wrigley’s library sits at the edge of his front yard, within reach of the sidewalk. A quick scan reveals a large birdhouse on the side of his house, making the new addition complementary. These structures, which have been popping up across North America since 2009 in association with the US-based Little Free Library, are modeled on birdhouses. Comparable in size to a medicine cabinet, the Little Free Library in the Beach has a glass door to reveal the contents while protecting the collection from the elements. It sits on a post, meaning little kids would need to be hoisted up, which is probably for the best. You wouldn’t want someone in primary school to grab the copy of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo that was in the upper of two shelves when I was there. I decided to donate a paperback that would appeal to all ages, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West.

There are a number of things I like about the Little Free Library concept. As security in libraries becomes more sophisticated with RFID technology, starting a Little Free Library is a gracious gesture that assumes the honour system will work. It also makes us rethink the definition of a library, bringing to mind initiatives like the living library, which allows users to ‘check out’ a person and spend time with them. The Little Free Library is similar to the living library in appealing to the emotional side of sharing and community building. Or maybe I was just charmed by its darned cuteness. After all, with its architectural setting, it feels more celebratory than your run-of-the-mill laundromat pile of books that operates on the same principle.

I opened the gold closure gingerly, made my selection, and rearranged the books to prevent pressure on their spines. (Old habits die hard.) Since I like to put a feminist spin on my blog posts, I had hoped to read the chapter on girls in The Dangerous Book for Boys, which was mentioned in the Star article. Alas, it was gone, demonstrating the circulation potential of libraries with 24/7 access. (To give an indication of how much use a Little Free Library might get, one outside a shop in Madison had over 1,000 transactions in ten months).

I ended up going home with a hardcover biography of Christo and Jeanne-Claude by Burt Chernow (St. Martin’s Press, 2000). In keeping with the spirit of circulation, it had clearly made the rounds before landing in the Little Free Library, as the penciled-in price—a second hand trademark—revealed inside. Christo and Jeanne-Claude (d. 2009) were an artist couple who, like Wrigley, made delightful public interventions, although theirs were anything but little. The introductory chapter was a fitting segue, underscoring the power of books with tales of Christo’s Bulgarian family burning volumes of Russian literature illustrated by avant-garde artists to avoid the wrath of the Nazis, followed by his discovery of modern art through unauthorized books shared discreetly at the Sofia Academy of Fine Arts. As the story of his political asylum unfolded in tandem with Jeanne-Claude’s glamorous upbringing in Casablanca and Paris, leading up to his commissioned portraits of her family, a brief dalliance with her half-sister, and finally, a first kiss between Christo and a then-engaged Jeanne-Claude so powerful it broke a tooth, I was totally engrossed. Great week-end reading…all thanks to the Little Free Library!

(1) For background on this ongoing controversy, see http://www.thestar.com/news/article/1095141--rob-ford-boycotts-the-star-but-we-ll-fight

Sources:

http://www.thestar.com/news/article/1096071
Scrivener, L. Book lovers alert! This teeny library will be open 24/7. Dec. 2, 2011.

http://www.thestar.com/news/article/1055331
Scrivener, L. The Little Library That Could. Sept. 17, 2011.

Portrait of the Artist as a Mother

2011-11-27T13:17:00.000-08:00

“While Long has portrayed women who really desired pregnancy, Page set out to make art about ‘everyone supposedly wanting a baby’.”

In 2005, Toronto artist Jennifer Linton made the trek to the blustery city of North Bay for a solo show I coordinated at White Water Gallery. On top of exhibiting, she gave an artist talk where her newborn baby was indisputably the youngest audience member, demonstrating that the roles of artist and mother are hardly mutually exclusive…though as artist Lindsay page notes, they do tend to be “in direct competition”.

Fast forward six and a half years to Women’s College Hospital, where I caught up on Linton’s work the other night, while also taking in artist talks by Page and Jennifer Long. Their panel, Portrait of the Artist as a Mother: Visualizing the Unspoken, was part of the monthly Mother Outlaws’ Speakers Series organized by the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement.

The merging of art and motherhood has arguably never been more pronounced than last month when Marni Kotak gave birth in Brooklyn's Microscope Gallery, surrounded by a midwife, a doula, and a handful of gallery visitors. Bringing the focus back to the northern side of the border, what does it mean to be an artist-mother hybrid and what forms might it take beyond having one’s water break on a gallery floor?

The works discussed by the three artists cover the timeline of pregnancy, the postpartum state, and well into motherhood. Panel moderator Judith Mintz noted that they “challenge the myth of motherhood as celebration.” After finding that their peers mostly dismissed their concerns about mothering, they turned to art as a “safe place to have those conversations” (Linton). In stripping away the veneer, they are, in fact, outlaws of a sort.

Long’s MFA thesis revived the precursor to photographic portraits: black silhouettes in oval frames. In Swallowing Ice, she explored personal anxieties about being “on the…fence” about becoming pregnant. For example, a woman pulls a strand of hair insecurely beside repetitive text like, “What if I’m a disappointment?’”that spills out of its oval frame. She also photographed forlorn looking friends with fertility aids such as saliva tests. As an artist focused on the pink-blue divide, I appreciated her disdain for the gendered “colour coding” of prenatal vitamins and ovulation sticks that appear in her work. She actually found a pink paint chip called ‘doll’s dress’ that was the exact same colour.

While Long has portrayed women who really desired pregnancy, Page set out to make art about “everyone supposedly wanting a baby”. Werewolf (see image 1 under 'Spawn' in the photography section) shows the artist standing naked in a forest with a swollen belly, with an unnerving background of scraggly branches. With this piece, she wanted to convey the severing of body and mind where bodily control is lost. Linton similarly portrayed the unnatural, with multiple self-portraits in a single ominous image.She represents herself pregnant with an animal and inanimate objects, inspired by common dreams of expectant women.

Each of the artists have addressed the bodily realities of postpartum life. Linton made a largescale drawing, Breastfeeding Ridley, with “heroic proportions” to convey the exhaustion of the process and the transition to “flabby stretchy leakiness”. Page portrayed herself hunched over and naked, with her daughter strapped to her back (see image 9 under 'Spawn' in the photography section), bringing to mind a snapshot of Linton at her drafting table with her son strapped to her front. Page describes her self-portraits as a defense against the erasure she felt in becoming a mother, as her daughter’s quickly developing physicality seemed to eclipse her own presence. Seeing Linton and Page present first on the panel made one of Long’s opening comments instantly clear: “As you step into motherhood, there’s a mourning that occurs.”

Long’s newer photos, the Fold series, don’t necessarily read as mournful, although there is a sense of loneliness because the human interaction I associate with her earlier work is gone. For example, we see a woman’s arm with milk dribbling down it, without the supportive partner or the baby who make it all worthwhile. There’s a bittersweetness to these images. A photo of half-eaten grapes bathed in sunlight reads not so much as domestic chaos as serenity. (While editing this post, I realized that the grapes may actually be halved to prevent choking. Long notes that it’s difficult for people to interpret these works as anything but images from a mother’s life, and the kind of childless naivety I just revealed undoubtedly factors into that complication). She explains that like author Alice Munro, she draws attention to the overlooked but precious in-between-moments. Her own in-between-moments are shrinking, she finds. By the time she would set up her beloved 4 x 5 camera, naptime would be over, causing her to turn to digital photography, which also eliminated the need to leave the house to buy and drop off film.

Linton also adjusted her process after becoming a mother. For example, she chose drawing over printmaking for an alphabet book because of concerns about toxicity, and also because a single hour became “weighted with meaning” and drawing required less set-up. It’s no ordinary alphabet book. To cite a few examples, C is for consumerism, Q is for queer, and T is for tattoo.

Page changed how she worked too. For one thing, her daughter became a ready “prop”. She asked her to recreate a pose in which she was hidden under a chenille blanket and upended couch cushions, with one leg dangling from the couch. A second photo taken by Page shows the scene rearranged by her daughter, with her standing in front of the couch and holding a camera herself, with a man’s legs poking out from the blanket. So, in answer to the question ‘What does it mean to be an artist-mother?’, maybe, in part, it means raising children who find self-expression and creativity to be second nature.

A Girl’s Guide to The Guy’s Guide to Feminism

2011-11-13T19:14:00.001-08:00

“Problems are discussed with just the right amount of hard facts backing up the authors’ progressive viewpoints.”

The sole wedding party I’ve been in was for a male friend from art school. He is the only man I’ve known personally to describe himself as a feminist, which makes me love him even more. It makes me wonder, why haven’t more men in my life embraced the so-called f-word? Enter the book that just launched in Toronto, The Guy’s Guide to Feminism (Seal Press, 2011) by Michael Kaufman and Michael Kimmel, who are both educators, activists, and seasoned writers.

Billed as a humorous book by three-quarters of the advanced praise, it does have LOL moments. For example, the Michael Ks suggest that the reason men get out of the lion’s share of housework is fear of having ‘it’ caught in the oven door or sucked up the hose of a vacuum, while the cause for women’s historical absence from academia was the massive size of their dresses, which could not be accommodated by school desks. Also humorous is the authors’ occasional macho posturing, but it didn’t make me laugh out loud because it was clear as satire—thankfully, and in marked contrast to the horrifying Facebook groups that have been getting press lately, like ‘You know shes [sic] playing hard to get when your [sic] chasing her down an alleyway’. Clearly, there is a need for The Guy’s Guide to Feminism. For me, the biggest laugh came from their website promoting the book: they write, "If you read (or write) a review...let your local Tea Party chapter know about it, which will quickly land the review on Fox News, and with all their announcers ranting and raving against it, we'll hear about it that way."

The book takes the form of an encyclopedia—albeit a hip one complete with cartoons—with short entries arranged alphabetically. I found myself fantasizing about having a son and answering prickly questions like, “Mom, why is feminazi a bad word?” with the simple turn of a page. The tone is casual, thanks to slang like ‘pussy-whipped’, and concepts like heteronormativity simplified as ‘the male-female thing’. Reluctant readers will surely be comforted by the absence of academic jargon (at one point, the authors even include a poem as an alternative to the "boring lecture version" and refer to the impenetrability of scholarly texts). Of course, this is all a non-confrontational lead-in to deconstruct serious problems, in the same way that my chipper dentist makes me feel at ease before drilling into my enamel; the gentle intro to hard work isn’t fooling anyone. Problems are discussed with just the right amount of hard facts backing up the authors’ progressive viewpoints. Data, like the sobering difference between female representation in parliament in countries that have affirmative action quotas versus those that do not, is kept to a minimum, so it doesn’t feel too encyclopedic. Equally modest in degree are the historical tidbits, like job ads from the 1950s that specified the gender required of applicants. The authors give us a break from their own voices with the interspersion of fictional dialogues between, for example, a sergeant and a defiant recruit hell-bent on defending women’s right to serve in the military, or an exchange between a porn producer, a director, and a feminist executive assistant. Shifting to characters doesn’t so much reduce the effect of the two Michaels up on a soapbox as break up the format for the sake of variety.

There’s plenty of practical advice for the young man, like how to deal tactfully with the bill at the end of a date, and critical advice like how exactly to identify consent between the sheets. The discussion often comes back to the question, “What’s in it for me?” (in the former example, a guy avoids offending his date; in the latter example, a guy avoids being a date rapist) but it’s never without asking, ‘Dude, can you believe this is the situation? Do we really want this for our moms, our sisters, our girlfriends, etc.?’

As an adult reader, I found myself distracted while reading entries on topics such as homophobia and honour killings by making connections to news stories like Brett Ratner stepping down from the Oscars last week after using a pejorative term for gay men, or the current Ontario Superior Court trial for the drowning of several family members in Kingston. Like the Facebook group mentioned above, these news stories underscore the relevance of the book. Another distraction was my impulse to connect unjust experiences of mine or of my friends to the topics. That made me think that this could also be a great gift for a young woman, to encourage her to reflect on how she should be treated.

The holiday season is approaching, and what’s a better gift than feminism?

Kaufman and Kimmel’s next launch date is November 22 at the always fabulous Bluestockings in New York.

Jennifer Dalton at Winkleman Gallery

2011-10-13T17:19:00.000-07:00

“The Colbert Report…had the poorest representation of female guests at only 17.5%.”

While making travel arrangements for New York Archives Week, I was pleased to discover that Winkleman Gallery was only four avenues over on the same street in Chelsea as the Artists Records in the Archives Symposium where I presented yesterday on social media.

The title of Jennifer Dalton’s exhibition at Winkleman caught my attention. Cool Guys Like You is a nod to the 1988 movie, Heathers. It was one of my favourites in high school, not so much because my name is Heather but because it critiqued the popular girl clique (to which I was diametrically opposed). Living in a rural area during the pre-Internet era, I even managed to find the Heathers soundtrack, which I held onto until Toronto musician David Lush had a goth garage sale in Parkdale. Anyway, back to the movie: Winona Ryder plays Veronica, a jaded student who purges her high school of the queen ‘megabitch’ (one of two named Heather) along with a few sexist jocks, after being lured to the dark side by her psychotic boyfriend, Jason, played by Christian Slater. When she battles him to try to dismantle a bomb and finally washes her hands of him, she says, “You know what I need? Cool guys like you out of my life.”

Among several text-based works in the show, there is one in which Dalton addresses the movie explicitly by commenting on gratuitous shower scenes and wardrobe changes. Although the show continues in a feminist vein, the title Cool Guys Like You does not refer only to men. In fact, in the press release, it is used as a gender-neutral colloquialism aimed at talk show personalities. Dalton commends Brian Lehrer, Terry Gross, Leonard Lopate, Stephen Colbert, Charlie Rose, Rachel Maddow, Bill Maher and Jon Stewart for featuring “impressive, fascinating, intelligent guests” (1), but she is nonplussed about the number of women and ethnic minorities they interview. From the first piece in the show, To Whose Opinion Am I Listening? I learned that The Colbert Report, which I logged a lot of hours watching while living in the US, had the poorest representation of female guests at only 17.5%. (2) In response to this disparity, the press release asks, “WTF?” Fortunately, Dalton’s exploration in visual terms is more nuanced. For one thing, she displays the data “lovingly by hand” (3). Pie charts with pencil contours and painted pastel interiors (shown here) reveal that Colbert is not the only culprit: the lion’s share of guest spots (65%+) for all these American shows go to men. Thus, the artist questions whether she would be better off not watching them.

Another way Dalton represents this problem is with horizontal rows of celebrity photos, categorized not by the talk show on which they appeared but by their vocation. In What Does An Important Person Look Like?, male guests have gold frames and female guests have—you guessed it—silver frames. (There is a surprise in one photo of a mixed-gender band with a part-silver, part-gold frame). While this might seem redundant in light of the pie charts, it is novel in introducing race as a second factor to consider in this winnowing of guests. For example, in the realm of politics, Condaleezza Rice was the sole female interviewed on any of these programs last year. Using screen captures of their interviews rather than graphs highlights that Rice was in the company of surprisingly few politicians of colour.

Politics takes centre stage in a graphite piece that could easily be called Uncool Guys, but is instead called Libido-based Idiocy and Assholery in Modern Political Scandals. Republicans and Democrats are represented along the border by the usual star-adorned elephants and donkeys, with the addition of prominent phalluses. Bill Clinton is smack dab in the middle of the timeline of impropriety. Each politician has a letter or letters following his name, which is explained by a legend. Arnold Schwarzenegger acdm, for instance, refers to “betrayed and humiliated wife,” “lied to and/or about his own children,” “creepily pursued much younger people and/or subordinates,” and lastly, “when push came to shove, lied like hell!” Here, Dalton moves from observation to unabashed judgment. Personally, I tend to extend back to politicians the spirit of Pierre Trudeau’s statement, “There’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation” (4). Maybe it’s because certain lotharios like JFK seem to slip under the radar, preserving their reputation as—what were those qualities Dalton identified?—impressive, fascinating and intelligent. Also, I’m sympathetic to the confusing crossroads life presents, represented by a piece called Only in America (or, I Can’t Trust Myself). It is a set of two machines—the type you find in shopping malls with five-cent candy—that contain temporary tattoos. One machine has a sign that says, “When you are afraid of something that usually means you should do it” and its counterpart says, “When you are afraid of something that usually means you shouldn’t do it.” While it’s hard not to chuckle at the piece picking apart Democrats and Republicans, I do wonder if pulling such big punches detracts from the seriousness of the rest of the show. Then again, the tone may be spot on, if you consider the burgeoning Occupy Wall Street protests and related dissatisfaction with the government.

Dalton details the idiocy and assholery, to borrow her phrasing, to which she is subject as an artist. Another text-based graphite work lists common questions she hears. Ones like, “What have you got against men?” and “What does your husband do that you can afford to do this?” raise the proverbial red flag. Others are more ambiguous, like queries about what it’s like to work with certain men such as gallerist Edward Winkleman. On the one hand, asking this defines a woman in relation to a man in a position of power, which is uncool. On the other hand, it seems like a reasonable question that a sincerely interested partly might ask. Its inclusion among more obviously irksome questions suggests annoyance on the artist’s part. Here’s my question: would the possibility of provoking a knee-jerk response discourage talk show hosts from inviting feminist artists, or feminists in general, to be guests? I ask that as an artist who is similarly driven by having a “bee in my bonnet”. (5)

On my way out, I slipped my hand into an opening in a grey box and lowered a lever as instructed. Had I been a man with larger hands, I would have walked away with ‘cool’ stamped in a lovely black script. However, it only printed ‘ol’ on my hand, which seemed dangerously close to ‘old’ and a cruel reminder that even now, coolness eludes me. And yet, had I been successful, I would have found that coolness is both messy and temporary.

Cool Guys Like You closes October 15.

(1) Press release, Winkleman Gallery
(2) Since I spent the past two days watching presentations about artists using archival material, I wanted to point out that this is yet another example (in case any of my symposium colleagues are reading). Dalton was able to access online archives for all of the talk shows except The Colbert Report, for which she relied on Wikipedia data.
(3) Text taken from To Whose Opinion Am I Listening?, 2011
(4) December 21, 1967, House of Commons, Canada
(5) Press release, Winkleman Gallery

John Shipman at Nuit Blanche

2011-10-02T10:52:00.000-07:00

“…the intention was to select an imaginary lover’s sex and gender…”

Never before have I arrived at a subway station, turned around, and left because the lineup not only filled the staircase but exceeded single file. Until last night. Hordes of people squeezed into Kipling station, presumably to head to Scotiabank Nuit Blanche, the all-night art festival in Toronto. I don’t want to sound like an old fogey, but I have fond memories of walking through the drizzling rain with my sister in the first year of Nuit Blanche. Bumping into mutual acquaintances before all the hype, it felt, dare I say, magical? I would compare the next visit to my first experience at a music festival wherein I got caught in a Ministry mosh pit—I remember grasping for hands in the crowd of art lovers at the University of Toronto and feeling empathy for those afflicted by claustrophobia. That experience caused me to avoid attending last year, even though I was in a show at Red Head Gallery. This year, I decided to wise up and brave the crowds once again.

After failed attempt #1, my husband and I returned home and set out again at midnight with the requisite Laura Secord bar tucked in my purse. Arriving at a heritage church at about 12:45 am, I thought to myself wryly, “Well, I’ve never been to church this early on a Sunday.” I was too tired to laugh at my own joke, let alone share it with my husband. However, I was determined to catch this particular show. In St. Matthew’s United Church in Zone A, Toronto-based John Shipman exhibited Listening to Love: Next Time Can We Choose Our Gender? Incidentally, Shipman was part of a three-person installation last year in the same location. It it, the artists invited visitors to explore their own mortality through condolence books and CoffinPhones containing audio tracks of expressions of grief.

This year, the entrance contained artifacts from the so-called Museum of Gender Archeology. Mounted on a hut-like structure were vestiges of our gender binarism, like figurines with arms amputated by pink and blue razors (pink for girls and blue for boys, of course). In addition to these grim assemblages were signs of hope, like a tongue-in-cheek gadget called the ‘gender changer’ and an unaltered sign for a unisex bathroom, which are becoming mandated at more and more schools.

In the church proper, last year’s CoffinPhones were replaced by GendeRphones. I got myself situated and looked at the dials containing the bathroom pictograms for male/female and the letters XX and XY. I had to remind myself which gender is XX and which is XY. “Oh right,” I thought, “Henry VIII had no right to be upset with his wives for not giving him a son because it’s the man who contributes the determining chromosome.” (My father and high school biology teacher must have been rolling in his grave). Looking at the press release in retrospect, I realize that the intention was to select an imaginary lover’s sex and gender, which underscores society’s tendency to lump them together. Mistakingly, I saw it as an opportunity to select my own gender and my prospective lover’s gender. No matter. I think it engaged the same principles of fantasy and open-mindedness.

The digitized voice made endless loving statements in the same static voices library phone systems use, which turn my name into ‘Heether’. It was a quirky contrast to the sentiment of the expressions, especially “I hear your voice on my skin”. Some were clichés, some were so poetic you can’t imagine anyone actually saying them, some were riddled with everyday references (I love kissing you when you’ve been drinking diet Coke) and others had contemporary references (I love how Facebook tells me we are in a relationship). Most were outpourings of love but some were invitations to love. In terms of the latter, I imagine I was not alone in having a hard time feeling an affinity with the disembodied digital voices. Thus, it was appropriate that business cards were inserted throughout the installation that quoted Marshall McLuhan: “When you are on the phone...you have no body.”

It was a challenge to hear the voices because of the music playing in the church. When there was a pause between songs, you could hear a trace of the female audio track overlapping the male audio track on the phone, and vice versa, offering a wonderful (if possibly unintentional) metaphor for the complexity of gender and love. I found myself wishing the music were off so I could enjoy this element. That impulse went away when Leonard Cohen’s incredible song, Hallejlujah, belted out over the speakers. For the duration of the song, I was overcome by hope for freedom in the realm of gender identity and knew it was worth it that I’d be crawling into bed at 2 am with my XY.

This woman's work...

2011-09-11T19:59:00.000-07:00

“…craft and art have become rather comfortable bedfellows.”

The apparent absence of external signage for Project Space worked out alright last night because my husband and I took in many of the sights and sounds of Supercrawl before attending the opening that brought us to Hamilton. A child transfixed by a harp, a chorus belting out a song with lyrics consisting of but one word (meow), street planters adorned with cozy wraps containing messages like ‘fail better’, and general market merriment are just a few that come to mind.

This woman’s work…is on show at Project Space until October 1. Curated by Sally Frater, it features textile-based work by seven female artists from southern Ontario. Amongst the emerging artists is Shelley Niro, who acts as a keystone. Maybe the spectrum of emerging to established artists would feel more palatable in a larger exhibition, with the inclusion of other artists of her ilk to create balance. As is, the closest thing is a reference to Joyce Wieland, in Erika De Freitas’ Oh Canada, In Conversation, an embroidery which is a nod to Wieland’s print of lip marks while singing the national anthem. The date of Niro’s works, the oldest being 1993, makes her something of a double anomaly in relation to the rest of the show, which features mostly new work. It was back in 1993, incidentally, that Estella Lauter wrote of the legitimization of craft in art as being “still partial” (1). Today, though, the Project Space show is promoted by Toronto Craft Alert, and craft and art have become rather comfortable bedfellows.

De Freitas is a logical choice to highlight on the invitation for the exhibition, given that she has addressed gender directly in past work (such as the intriguing colouring book, Self-Portrait as a Coloured Woman). Curiously, though, the invitation image, A Teleplasmic Study With Doilies (A Selection), is from a photographic series of crocheted doilies draping a woman’s face and spilling out of her mouth that is actually about grief and the absence of breath, according to her website. On the other extreme, some of the works are almost too easy of a fit for the theme, such as Hitoko Okada’s intricately constructed beehive dress. Emphasis on construction of the work is apparent in most works, like the needles hanging from red threads that in turn descend from the pubic area of Insoon Ha’s all-white nightgown; the half-covered hanger amidst traditional Hungarian (I believe) stitching by Ingrid Mayrhofer; areas of concentrated pins puncturing the whitish-pink surfaces of Simone Aziga’s sculptural dress-like forms that hang overhead; and Colina Maxwell’s machine-stitched cityscape made from a sweater, accompanied by a video of its production. The latter is another example of work that, on the surface, makes sense in the mix, but ultimately seems to be less about the convergence of feminism and craft and more about other issues (in this case, recycling and, by virtue of its floral motif shifting vertically in the collage process, the downsides of urban sprawl).

References:
(1) Estella Lauter, “Re-enfranchising Art: Feminist Interventions in The Theory of Art,” pp. 21-34, quotation p. 28, in Hilde Hein and Carolyn Korsmeyer, eds., Aesthetics In Feminist Perspective. (Hypatia, Inc.).

!Women Art Revolution

2011-08-28T18:02:00.000-07:00

"Altogether, 12,428 minutes of footage were 'patched together like a quilt'."

Amidst graffiti that spelled ‘vomit,’ neighbourhoods of dilapidated homes, and scenes like this one my husband shot, we found ourselves in a stunningly beautiful place in downtown Detroit last week-end. We attended the final night of the summer film series at the Detroit Institute of Arts in this stellar auditorium: (click here). I was as excited about the venue as I was about the film: !Women Art Revolution, directed by Lynn Hershman Leeson (a featured artist in the exhibition whose catalogue I worked on at the Neuberger Museum of Art earlier this year, The Deconstructive Impulse).

Leeson recounts in !W.A.R. how she wrote reviews of her work pseudonymously when she was an emerging artist, resulting in her first exhibition. Her next big accomplishment was a major sale of her work, but the collector backed out upon learning her gender because he said it would be a poor investment to buy the work of a female artist. (It’s no wonder Eleanor Antin said of her nude self-portraits, “I’m so…obviously a woman. They’re not going to take me seriously.”) Today, that body of work by Leeson is valued at 9,000 times its original price. Look who’s laughing now. Impressively, Leeson financed the film with sales from her own work, which makes me want to promote it even more.

!W. A. R. is not unlike The Heretics, which I blogged about last year. That’s not a criticism, and it may be inevitable given that both documentaries cover similar time periods, with Leeson’s being about the development of feminist art in America and Joan Braderman’s The Heretics being about the development of a magazine in New York City about feminist art. !W.A.R. is a great counterpart to The Heretics, in part because much of the footage was filmed on the opposite coast, from her living room in Berkeley, California. Some interviews were filmed elsewhere, like the one with Judy Chicago in a bathroom noted for its decent acoustics. Many of the same artists and critics, such as Harmony Hammond and Lucy Lippard, are interviewed in both films. And both films have a quirky sensibility, complete with sound effects and playful cartoons/animations. For example, !Women Art Revolution shows a cartoon of Nancy Spero being forced to show her portfolio to a gallerist on the floor instead of on a nearby sculpture stand. That is the least of the unconscionable behaviour discussed in the interviews. As in The Heretics, many of the women interviewed by Leeson root the feminist art movement in social justice and general consciousness raising. For me, there are two unforgettable clips in !W. A. R.. One is Arlene Raven’s deadpan description of her effectively going on strike as a domestic servant, followed almost immediately by the collapse of her marriage; right when you might laugh at the absurdity of cause and effect, she reveals that she was raped three days later. The other clip is of African American artist, Howardena Pindell, remembering how as a child, she was tied to her cot during nap time to prevent her from using the same bathroom as the white children. The film balances these sobering tales by including interviews with the likes of Marcia Tucker, who notes that humour is the greatest tool in fighting adversity. And it is interesting to hear from artists like Faith Wilding, who didn’t feel feminist rage as a newly married woman but found herself in the movement nonetheless.

Altogether, 12,428 minutes of footage were “patched together like a quilt”. A highlight of the film is its inclusion of archival footage other than interviews. It was a real treat to see the opening of the Womanhouse installation in which CAL ARTS students each took over a room in an old house; Congress debating whether Judy Chicago’s installation, The Dinner Party, was pornographic; and protests at the Guggenheim when a survey exhibition excluded female artists and included Carl Andre, who was acquitted controversially shortly beforehand in the murder of his artist-wife, Ana Mendieta, who fell to her death from their New York apartment.

The focus of !W. A. R. is definitely on the 1970s, but it does extend to later developments, such as the creation of the Guerilla Girls (the mask-wearing educators who continue to ask pointed questions of institutions through posters, protests, and lectures to remedy the double standard facing women artists). Also included is a discussion of the major feminist exhibition, WACK!, and interviews with several contemporary feminist artists. The one that stood out for me as a librarian was Jane Antoni saying that she couldn’t find library books on any of the feminist artists her professors suggested she look up.

Towards the end, film critic B. Ruby Ritch expresses concern that the survivors of the feminist artist movement are like old KGB agents, relegated to a scrapbook that no one’s interested in now. With its poignant interviews and its plethora of images by women artists, !Women Art Revolution will hopefully prove otherwise.

p.s. As a Canadian, I thought it was great to see images by Suzy Lake and a quotation by Blake Gopnik included in the mix!

The Ardours of Youth

2011-08-09T17:57:00.000-07:00

“The titillation factor of the show is striking…”

The other day, I was surprised to read that Nirvana’s Nevermind album was released twenty years ago. Has that much time really gone by since my high school friends and I donned plaid shirts and made moon-eyes at boys playing Nirvana covers in local bands? Gulp. It seemed timely that the latest exhibition at The Art Bar at Toronto’s Gladstone Hotel featured a collective named for a Nirvana song. And that the theme of the collective’s recent photo shoot in Vice magazine, many of whose images are in the show, was crushes.

The international collective Ardorous is spearheaded by eighteen-year-old Petra Collins, an incoming OCADU student. I was eager to catch the show before it closed today, to support young female artists and to see what all the buzz was about. The collective’s first exhibition is called In Bloom. Given my fixation on signifiers of femininity in my own work, I was keen to see a show emphasizing “girly imagery of flowers, hearts and the colour pink” (1). The curatorial statement noted that the show was a “response to what has been ingrained in our hearts as ‘feminine’ which we have chosen to embrace and celebrate.” (2) Not knowing if ‘we’ meant society or the collective, I felt some trepidation. The word ‘celebrate’ had come up recently in another curatorial text, in relation to Alex Prager’s CONTACT installation, and that didn’t jibe so well with me. It was unclear whether In Bloom would be a critique of society’s celebration of femininity and be heavy on irony, or if it would simply be a celebration.

The show struck me not as ironic but as—to use 2.0 parlance—WYSIWYG. The soft focus and 1960s-style colour of the photographs make them easy on the eyes, but what really makes them eye candy is the subject matter. The statement for the collective explains the origin of its name beyond its namesake by including the definition of ardour (sexual excitement and a temporary feeling of warmth). The titillation factor of the show is striking: young women in the shower, a young woman’s buttocks poking out of denim shorts, long blond hair brushing against the waistband of a pair of tighty whities, etc. It made me wonder, does placing images of sexy young women in a bar complicate the art viewing experience? There was one gratuitous online comment about the collective that turned my stomach, causing me to doubt whether the combination of alchohol and these images is advisable. Also, in light of the recent controversy surrounding ten-year-old model, Thylane Loubry Blondeau in Paris Vogue, how young is too young for sexy photos? In spite of a risqué reading, there is an earnest quality throughout In Bloom that is a welcome change to the plethora of garish images exploiting sexuality and going viral these days. Perhaps fresh-faced sexuality verges on “girl power” (3) after all, because the young women are controlling their presentation in the same way that classic boudoir photos did. ‘Boy of my dreams’ hand-written over the pubic area on floral cotton briefs is far less disturbing than the catchphrases silkscreened onto store bought underwear; obsessive though it may be, the writer is thinking with her own mind. Or heart. Or libido.

Mostly, however, I’m stumped by how the show portrays girl power, since the artists don’t seem to be fighting any of the restrictions placed on them. The one exception might be a photo by Swedish artist, Emma Arvida Bystorm of a young woman lying on the grass with her hands behind her head, with bright red lips, carefully coiffed hair, and unshaven armpits that buck Western convention. It’s the counterpart to the promotional image by the same artist used for the show: a close-up of a tangerine coloured bikini bottom, with sprawling pubic hairs that must have done wonders for attendance. Its title, Lolita, reveals cultural awareness. One thing about exhibiting at a young age is potentially lacking sufficient artistic/cultural awareness: the image that comes to mind is from a heart-shaped montage of 4 x 6 prints without individual artists identified, in which two girls have their hair braided together in a fashion that is disturbingly derivative of Relation in Time (1977) by artist Marina Abramovic.

The show was so heavily focused on photography that it would have been stronger with one medium. Ardorous' website takes this approach and feels substantially more cohesive. Besides photographs, In Bloom included a few paintings and multiple floral headbands (the latter begs the question(s), "Is it art?" "Is it craft?" without like-minded works to build the case either way). Equally distracting was the Metro article on Collins, which was torn at the edges and attached to the wall in the middle of the show. Most distracting were the permanent botanicals strewn throughout the room, taking the interpretation of the ‘in bloom’ theme too far. The most curious installation of them was in a corner beside the montage of photos: on a pedestal surrounded by devotional candles, it functioned as a makeshift reliquary. On the one hand, you could regard it as a commentary on the veneration of youth and beauty (which is a bit strange considering the irreverent quality of the show). On the other hand, with business cards on top, it ran a serious risk of coming across as self-aggrandizement.

(1) (2) (3) Curatorial text by Madelyne Beckles.

For images, click here.

Nolite te bastardes carborundorum (Don’t let the bastards grind you down)*

2011-07-29T18:24:00.000-07:00

“...it’s difficult to bottom line a library.”

I can’t call myself a Torontonian without reservation: I was raised in a rural village two hours away and I only spend five days a week downtown for work. Cumulatively, however, I have had a Toronto address for exactly half of my adult life. Thus, I can relate to the swell of Toronto pride this week, apparent in others’ conversations and social media comments about “my [their] city”. It’s a direct response to the new era defined by the mayorship of Rob Ford.

Threats to close Toronto Public Library branches alarmed the masses not just because of what was at stake but because of the cavalier attitude that accompanied the push towards privatization. Rob Ford’s elder brother, Coun. Doug Ford, noted that his Scarborough neighbourhood has more libraries than Tim Hortons—as if the two are mutually exclusive? My hometown, incidentally, went for years without a Tim Hortons but I think if the library were missing, it would leave a gaping hole.

Celebrated author Margaret Atwood became the unofficial spokesperson for the fight to save TPL. Her alliances with the library world have been apparent for years, notably in her presentation at an American Library Association conference. At any rate, she appealed to fans through her Twitter feed on several occasions to sign an online petition. The surge of John Hancocks actually crashed the TPL Workers Union server, and at last count, I heard there were 39,000 signatures. On Tuesday, Coun. Doug Ford retorted that he didn’t know Atwood and wouldn’t even recognize her. Yet, this is a woman whose portrait has been painted by Charles Pachter. I can picture the low-brow response: Q-Who’s Charles Pachter? If he walked right past me, I wouldn’t recognize him. A-Oh bother! He painted the Queen. There you have it, Atwood is in line with the Queen…not in line to be Queen, but she is Canadian literary royalty, with a stunning 21 honourary degrees and myriad awards including the Giller Prize, the Booker Prize, and the Governor General’s Award. Even Indigo Chapters have acknowledged her heavyweight status by knocking 30 per cent off all Atwood titles until the end of July when customers present a Canadian library card.

It was at my hometown library that I first made my way through the entire Atwood collection. Some of her sentences are such zingers that I would read them repeatedly before moving on, taking forever to finish a book. I wasn’t always a prolific reader. With great embarrassment, I remember being at the same library for preschool story hour and trying to convince a friend I knew how to read by mimicking silent reading. I knew reading was cool, and beyond that, it was empowering. How did I know that? Because I watched my mother do literacy tutoring with an adult at the library, something I did myself years later with not-for-profit organizations. (If it doesn’t break your heart to learn that illiterate adults get by in Toronto by doing things like memorizing the colours and murals at TTC subway stops, then society is doomed and we can congratulate Atwood on her dystopian visionary powers, revealed in such classics as The Handmaid’s Tale). I actually watched an adaptation of this book by the Canadian Opera Company, which you might argue is an economic benefit to Toronto of me having used a public library in Ontario years earlier. Do you think City Council would buy that as an argument for the butterfly effect?

I’m being melodramatic on purpose, for two reasons: one, to point out that there is no need for melodrama. This situation, which caused concerned citizens to camp out for the 24 hour City Council meeting, is frightening enough, and two, it’s difficult to bottom line a library. The fact that my hometown library gave me my first art show and gave me an alternative to working in the tobacco industry for five years? Priceless. The impact of helping a user with a dictionary to decipher a letter from an employer? Priceless. Of helping a senior use a computer? Priceless. Of helping an adult read? Actually, you probably can put a price on that if you consider the increased employability of the individual.

Every story I’ve read about last night’s meeting quotes the same 67-year-old woman. Mary Trapani Hynes proposed that Toronto obliterate the public library system altogether, since the burdens of a politically aware and literate community are too great. Now that’s satire, Atwood style.

*From The Handmaid’s Tale, McClelland & Stewart, Houghton Mifflin, 1985.

For background on the proposed cuts, which will be followed up in September, click here.

Artists in transit: Riding the rails with Galerie du Nouvel-Ontario

2011-07-16T19:39:00.000-07:00

“Art in Motion…involved 30 artists travelling from Sudbury to Chapleau…”

Back in May 2009, I chose the title and concept of my blog on a whim and started the next day without a plan. As an artist-commuter, I wanted to write about my artistic experiences and influences in the context of transit. Over time, it became taxing to tie art and transit together creatively, but I still cherish the moments when they converge and present a potential hook for a new post. For instance, two days ago on the Go train out of Toronto, I was reading the Shout Outs in the t.o.night newspaper when I saw this compliment paid from one Go train passenger to another: “When Botticelli painted, he was dreaming of you.” Ha!

Images: Making a flip book (top), Arriving in Chapleau, ON (bottom)

By far, the best pairing of art and transit since I began blogging has been the residency and exhibition I participated in today with members of Galerie du Nouvel-Ontario. The theme was Art in Motion and involved 30 artists traveling from Sudbury (almost 5 hours northwest of where I live) to Chapleau (an additional five hours in the same direction). It's hard to believe it takes 10 hours to get from Mississauga to Mississagi River. I knew we were going into the great beyond when my cell phone lost service, and it sure felt off the grid when we reached our final destination and there was no Tim Hortons in sight. We travelled by Via Rail, making art en route from a Budd car. The scenery was spectacular and the ride was smooth—a relaxing combination conducive to art making, though my concept was actually rooted in tension.

I deviated from my usual practice of feminist fibre art and made a flip book called Les Mots Que Je Comprend (The Words I Understand), based on snippets of French conversations surrounding me. I’ve been interested in the social element of language learning ever since I taught ESL after art school. Recently, I’ve been reflecting on the isolating nature of language—in preparation for a presentation at the International Conference on Image and Imagery at Brock University with the theme, Silence and the Silenced, I’ve been making sculptures with baby clothing containing perplexing statements like ‘Dangerously Cute’, ‘I Heart Shoes’, and 'Gentil gamin, je suis très chic' that speak for pre-literate girls. Back to the piece at hand, I was interested in the social experience of an Anglophone artist (me) amongst Francophone artists (including my husband), since I’m interested in the concept of the Other in general in my work. I wanted to capture the experience of being in transit and taking in conversations in a foreign language, where my impulse is to fixate on a familiar term until leapfrogging to the next one. The end result is a bit like poetry. I chose the flip book format because of its dependence on motion and its easy fit with the theme. Rather than creating an animated image, I opted for a nonsensical blur with overlapping words in keeping with the anxiety of FSL. I keep thinking if it were an instructional piece by Yoko Ono, it would go something like this: Ride a train in a foreign culture. Write a word you hear on each page of a small book. Watch the words fly. Serendipitously, the word I recorded on the final page of my notebook was ‘encore’; it was the perfect segue to volume 2, which I plan to make on the return trip tomorrow and display at the second Art in Motion exhibition at the train station in Sudbury.

Artists came from as far as Ottawa, Cochrane, and Thunder Bay and explored an impressive range of media: sculpture, works on paper, photography, film, relational performance, storytelling, poetry, and music. At the debut of the works tonight at Aux Trois Moulin Motel where we stayed, I lost at Bingo, got fingerprinted, and was implicated in a murder mystery (the last two were unrelated), but it was still a great day. À demain!

Lynda Benglis at the New Museum

2011-06-20T18:08:00.000-07:00

"All my art is erotic, suggestive..." — Lynda Benglis

After working for 15 days straight, I was thrilled to get away on the week-end before starting a new job this week. What does one do with exactly 12 hours in New York, besides feel badly about not having more time for social engagements? Between breakfast in Bryant Park, subway transit toward Coney Island surrounded by 14 matching mermaids, a Trivial Pursuit game at Brooklyn’s Pizza Plus (where, incidentally, I answered the question, “What noted women’s rights activist got married in 2000 in the home of Wilma Mankiller? (1)” correctly, thank-you very much), dinner in Hell’s Kitchen with an artist friend in her last week in the city, and a late night stroll through Greenwich Village, I managed to squeeze in a pit stop to the New Museum with my husband.

It was the closing week-end of Lynda Benglis’ first retrospective exhibition in 20 years, organized by the Irish Museum of Modern Art (Dublin) in collaboration with Van Abbemuseum (Eindhoven). I was familiar with Benglis primarily as a counterpoint to my favourite artist, Hannah Wilke: besides both being Second Wave feminists who poured latex to create sculptures in the spirit of abstract expressionism, referenced Marcel Duchamp in performative work, and appropriated Greek costuming in self-portraiture, they upped the ante of nude self-advertising in lockstep. The culmination was Benglis unwittingly providing Wilke with a venue to undress in protest to Benglis’ infamous Artforum ad; not only was it at her exhibition at Paula Cooper Gallery, but it was at her opening reception (2). When I read this in Nancy Princenthal’s monograph, Hannah Wilke (Prestel, 2010), I sat on my little Ikea couch feeling stunned and somehow betrayed by my ‘idol’. Her audacity struck me as the antithesis of how my former colleague, Julian Kreimer, described Benglis’ approach to art making: “respectful irreverence.” (3)

The fact that I have used Kreimer’s quotation out of context to home in on feminism substantiates Emily Nathan’s observation that the importance of concept and form in Benglis’ art are equally weighted (4). It is tempting to have a singular focus, and had I not traipsed through New York in the heat beforehand, I would probably have indulged in finding evidence of Benglis’ insistence that “All my art is erotic, suggestive” (5). I was too fatigued to process innuendo-laden titles like ‘Come’ (1969-74) for an amorphous floor sculpture until writing this post. So, form it was. The highlight of the amorphous sculptures was Phantom (1971), which has not been exhibited for the past 40 years; I actually exclaimed aloud when I entered a darkened room to find five large glow-in-the-dark sculptures reminiscent of the overlapping blobs and shards of ice that accumulate in Niagara Falls during the winter. As the air conditioning took hold and I moved through the other rooms, I was delighted to discover her wall-hung cocoon sculptures, not the least because of my longstanding interest in the convergence of this medium and subject matter. These oblong panels were like cocoons cruelly bisected to reveal interlocking slick shapes in colours evocative of—strangely enough—gummy worms. In my state of probable dehydration, I fixated on these interlocking forms with each new piece, especially in the huge monocrhomatic abstract forms that deviated from the cocoon shape entirely. With no obvious focal point, they become an invitation to let your eyes dance around the surface, which was a trance I welcomed. Although I was not in a position to make the most of this show, I was reminded that seeing work in person is always worthwhile, to appreciate some element that eludes reproductions. For me, this eureka moment was spawned by the cast lead version of the same double-headed dildo that fractured the Artforum editors in 1974 when Benglis straddled it naked, save for a pair of sunglasses. Seeing nails positioned ever so precariously around the semicircular shaft to keep it in place, I couldn’t help but smile, which is fitting since that is the name of the piece.

For images, see the New Museum.

(1) Answer: Gloria Steinem.
(2) This intervention in New York in 1975 was entitled Invasion Performance.
(3) Kreimer, Julian. “Shape Shifter: Lynda Benglis”. Art in America. 12/1/09, pp. 95-101.Quotation ¶5.
(4) Nathan, Emily. "Lynda Benglis: Top Form". Artnet. February 11, 2011.
(5) Seiberling, Dorothy. “The New Sexual Frankness: Good-by to Hearts and Flowers”. New York Magazine, 8 (7), pp. 37-44. Quotation p. 42.

Alex Prager in CONTACT

2011-05-21T23:15:00.000-07:00

"Her allure, in my opinion, lay not in the femme fatale reference..."

Well, Judgment Day has not yet ensued as predicted and the dire hour of 6 pm has passed. Even if it happens tonight, I can regale the world with at least one more blog post in this final hour.

My husband and I headed to Toronto the other night to catch Alex Prager’s installation, curated by Bonnie Rubenstein, in the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival. The Week-End series features panels and billboards of women evocative of a by-gone era of cinema. These staged photographs of starlets and femme fatales reportedly celebrate the “trappings of femininity” (1), which—big surprise—caught my attention. Without actually referencing Baudrillard's concept of the simulacrum, the artist's statement mentions the victory of female-generated illusions over reality. Irony is a tricky business, as the image Four Girls (2007, not included in this particular installation) demonstrates: the central figure is shot from below with her back to viewers, tantalizing them in a string bikini top and bottoms wedged to emphasize the contours of her buttocks. Rubenstein isn’t kidding when she writes that it’s difficult to see beyond these facades. It’s no wonder Prager’s voyeuristic style has occasionally been misinterpreted as that of a male artist, undoubtedly reinforced by her gender-neutral name.

The previous CONTACT exhibition I saw was Suzy Lake: Political Poetics, a retrospective curated by Matthew Brower and Carla Garnet at the University of Toronto Art Centre. After seeing her seminal works, notably On Stage, in which she plays dress-up and vamps for the camera, I paused at the entrance of Prager’s installation to consider the novelty of her female figures. The curatorial text notes Prager’s examination of cinematic tropes; after seeing Lake’s performative photos made before Prager was even born, I had a hard time not seeing them as tropes within tropes. Or, as more simply put by one commenter on the MoMA blog in response to Prager's inclusion in the group show, New Photography, 2010: “How is this new photography?” (2) What overcame my misgivings was the simple act of walking through the site and appreciating the photographs in an urban landscape.

When I read that Prager’s installation was at the site of a former drive-in theatre (3), although this was not confirmed by the curatorial text, I grasped the role of nostalgia in appreciating the work. I have maybe one memory of attending a drive-in, so that’s not a source of nostalgia I can tap into personally. In fact, I think my generation takes movies for granted. (This past week, I started watching one movie a day while embroidering and found myself feeling shortchanged because there were no outtakes on the DVD of Gray Matters I rented and that I couldn’t get the extended version of Forgetting Sarah Marshall to play on a rental the day before. Also, I once teased my frightened mother when we watched The Birds--one of the films to which Prager has paid homage--because I was reared on superior special effects...though my reaction might differ now after a recent Hitchcock-style attack from a red-winged blackbird I experienced at the Port Credit harbour). Today, I was reminded of the power of movies while I was waiting for film to be developed at Photo Metro in North Bay. I started reading George Tremblay’s book, Break at Nine! (4), about the author’s career as a projectionist. The opening chapter recounted his receipt of a red ticket at elementary school in 1935 for the first film he ever saw, how his classmate missed out on the perfect seats because he ran down the aisle and slipped, how he got so excited he stood up on his chair and bonked his head. It wasn’t just the film itself, but the entire experience, that rocked his world. The same is true of installations and it would be unfair to assess Prager’s work as stand-alone photographs when they are part of a curious setting.

The film I had developed contained images of Prager’s work in situ to jog my memory while writing this post. As I pulled out my camera to snap a two-dimensional, glamorous redhead behind a three-dimensional dumpster a neighbour scowled at me and later, a man on a rooftop patio yelled, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you” (I imagine I have misremembered his proper use of the subjunctive). I wasn’t operating outside Ontario law, so I was perplexed about what was so infuriating. The patio man got his wish because my film ran out before the final image I encountered of a woman in profile called Barbara (2009). Her blond locks, heavily lined lids and fur coat channeled Marilyn Monroe and Edie Sedgwick. Her allure, in my opinion, lay not in the femme fatale reference, but rather in the combination of high and low contrast, and I'm not referring to darkroom technique. Like the redhead behind the dumpster, her image competed with an urban setting, namely graffiti in the lower right corner. At the same time, its beige-grey colour morphed seamlessly into the fur of her coat, tarnishing her glamour. (These and other images can be seen here).My favourites were the works that functioned like chameleons in the environment, like Lois (2009), the buxom blond amidst broken down cars above vehicles at an actual dealership/autobody shop; and a woman descending a red brick building via a rope, installed, fittingly, on a red brick building (below).
I found myself—to borrow wording from Dermot Wilson’s exhibition that I was glad to catch today at Art on Main in North Bay (5)—embracing the faux. Something he wrote about his own nostalgic works resonated with me when I thought back on Prager’s installation: “We’re immersed in the ersatz. So why not incorporate it into our visions of the landscape?” I suppressed my feminist impulses and decided to give Prager a break in spite of her scant artist statement and her rather pedestrian description of her artistic concept in live interviews, which could otherwise do wonders to defend her visually appealing work. Today, it turns out, is not Judgment Day.

(1) Curatorial text.
(2) Tim (last name unknown). http://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2010/11/15/alex-prager-in-new-photography-2010/#more-10287
(2) http://mrwillw.blogspot.com/2011/04/los-angeles-native-alex-prager.html
(3) George Tremblay, Break at Nine: Presenting Those Wonderful Movies!, 2001, Ontario Film Laboratories.
(4) Dermot Wilson, Embracing the Foe, May 2-25, 2011, Art on Main, North Bay, ON.

J. Crew ad signals apparent end of civilization as we know it

2011-04-14T12:28:00.000-07:00

…the fate of the human race hangs in the balance if enough little boys opt for pink nail polish…

The blogosphere has been rife with outrage about Dr. Keith Ablow’s scathing assessment on Monday of a J. Crew ad released last week (1). In his Fox News column (2), he lambastes their president and creative director, Jenna Lyons, for painting her son, Beckett’s toenails hot pink (the five year old’s favourite colour, according to the ad). He laments that “almost nothing is now honored as real and true” (¶4), meaning prescriptive gender behaviour, but what is real and true is that the boy loves pink. Ablow has his fair share of supporters, with some calling it gross and others declaring with homophobic certainty, “He will be gay”. With so many arguments already articulated against this perspective, I don’t want to be redundant. At the same time, I feel the need to weigh in since my art is about gender as a social construct, with a focus on youth and the connection between pink and femininity/sexuality.

At face value, the issue is the painting of his toenails, and that is Ablow’s point of departure. To be fair, last year, I expressed dismay at Shiloh Jolie-Pitt being baited to have her nails painted (3). Where our opinions diverge radically, though, is in my championing of her right to agency, and by extension, of Beckett’s right to agency. Based on his smile, we can tell he adores bonding with his mom in this way and is not being forced into it.

Ablow associates nail painting with costuming, and expresses concern about the slippery slope of dress-up. He writes about girls being sexualized at a frighteningly young age through clothing. That part I agree with. However, Beckett’s navy pants and striped sailor shirt, reminiscent of Pablo Picasso or Jackson Pollock’s attire, don’t belie any underlying femininity (not that I would find that problematic, personally). What seems to be the real issue is marking his body with pink, which amounts to a form of social labeling, or to be more academic, social semiotics/semantics. (I am fascinated by the extent of this labeling: I picked up a shirt in Chicago recently for my art that says repeatedly—like a mantra—“I love pink”. It’s for a one year old).

Are polished nails really a signifier of sexuality? I’ve been watching My So-Called Life lately, in which Rickie Vasquez, a groundbreaking gay television character, first experiments with makeup and later comes out. Positive correlation? Arbitrary connection? Who is to say? Even the prospect of the former is enough to make Ablow take a number of staggering leaps. He implies that the fate of the human race hangs in the balance if enough little boys opt for pink nail polish and don’t grow up to fulfill their biological duty. Then again, if, as he says, girls are being less cautious sexually these days, the whole thing would balance out, wouldn’t it? He also questions whether the next step will be manipulating race by changing skin colour. OK, then.

Why is pink such a contentious colour, anyway? Veronika Koller’s study, Not Just a Color: Pink as a Gender and Sexuality Marker in Visual Communication showed that women associate pink with femininity and positive attributes, but men mostly regard it as neutral. For instance, 45.3 percent of women thought pink was alluring, compared to 23.9 percent of men (4). This would suggest that Beckett is probably unaffected in any substantial way. Still, Ablow insists money should be put aside for the child’s inevitable therapy. That seems about as likely as someone needing therapy because their parents took naked photos of them as a baby and posted them on Facebook (as one of the followers of my blog did just yesterday).

Ablow wants to “hold dear anything with which we were born” (¶8). His birth date, from what I can tell from online sources, is 1961, a mere two decades after the approximated reversal of the pink/blue trend. That is to say, pink used to be the colour of men and boys, as it was associated with the colour of blood and war. So, when Ablow imagines a future where “neither gender is motivated to protect the nation by marching into combat against other men and risking their lives” (¶10), I am inclined to disagree. At any rate, blue used to be the colour of women and girls. It was linked to the Virgin Mary, and it became a colour of morality during the Protestant Reformation (5). Bottom line? Society is fickle. If we’re talking about time-honoured tradition, I’d argue that little Beckett has a classic sense of fashion.

We would do well to update Simone de Beauvoir’s statement, “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman” to “One is not born, but rather becomes, intolerant.”

Sources:

(1) Copy and paste this link, as it does not seem to link to this blog:
http://www.jcrew.com/womens_feature/Jennaspicks.jsp

(2) Ablow, K. J. Crew Plants the Seeds for Gender Identity.
http://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/04/11/j-crew-plants-seeds-
gender-identity/

(3) Copy and paste this link, as it does not seem to link to this blog: http://artistintransit.blogspot.com/2010/03/shiloh-parsing-out-
celebrity-fashion.html/

(4) Pastroureau, M. Blue: The History of a Color. 2001. Princeton University Press.

(5) Koller, V. Not just a color: pink as a gender and sexuality marker in visual communication. 2008, November. Vol. 7, No. 4. Visual Communication. Doi: 10.1177/1470357208096209.

SlutWalk: A protest outside police headquarters

2011-04-04T16:33:00.000-07:00

“…don’t confuse a dress for ‘yes’”

Today Dan Savage posted a video on Slog called What Guys Think of Modesty. (1) The pious maker, identity313, implores females to—I kid you not—“have your dad screen your wardrobe,” lest they “lead men down to death” by revealing “skin that should not be on display” and acting as “bait”. I’m at a bit of a loss, since my dad is dead. I guess I should defer to my husband?

Well, Mr. identity313, this post is for you:

Over 3,000 people gathered at Queen’s Park yesterday for SlutWalk. To the casual (or cynical) observer of women donning corsets, thongs, and fishnet stockings, it might seem like an in-your-face flaunting of the right to sexual pleasure without judgment. Although there were cheers for “hot, consensual sex” (2) and a reclaiming of the pejorative term ‘slut’, that assessment would overlook the all-important irony of the march, which ended outside the Metro Toronto Police headquarters. Artist in Transit blogger in a dress from Forever 21 outside Metro Toronto Police headquarters

Organized by five women, SlutWalk was a reaction against a Toronto Police Constable advising York University students in January that women “should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized.” (3) Although the comment was retracted, and reportedly addressed by Metro Toronto Police (4), the incident indicated a need to redress outdated, offensive, and—frankly—dangerous viewpoints. In the first of 70+ SlutWalks, protestors turned this advice on its head by wearing whatever they liked, ‘slutty’ or not. The idea was to put the onus for corrective behaviour on perpetrators and to stress women’s right to agency without being subjected to sexual profiling. As the marchers walked through blocked-off streets, they chanted, “Whatever we wear, wherever we go, yes means yes and no means no.” Or, as one sign summed it up: “Don’t get raped!” edited as 'Don't rape!'

I remember the first time I was called a slut because of my clothing. It was on an elementary school trip to Canada’s Wonderland. The stranger’s comment was probably provoked by my bicycle shorts, which I actually thought were extremely practical for a day of getting soaked on rides. I couldn’t have been older than twelve, back when the extent of my involvement with boys was dancing arms’ length apart inside a supervised and well-lit classroom. Slut indeed! I have to admit, there is part of me that feels I won the lottery: I grew up in a country where I was not prevented from going to school because of my gender, nor do I run the risk of being shot at during a peaceful demonstration, as happened recently to Ivory Coast women. Is it really so untenable that every time I am sexually harassed, I evaluate my clothing and whether it played a role? (I know the answer is affirmative, but still…). Another reason I felt uncertain about my place at the protest is because of my position as a feminist artist: I believe that gendered stereotypes matter and that clothing matters, and that the two intersect. I am just as concerned about a baby sleeper that says, “Your crib or mine?” as I am about the padded, push-up triangle bikinis introduced last month by Abercrombie and Fitch for their kids’ line. If I feel clothing is loaded, do I belong at a protest that argues the opposite? (Obviously, there is a difference between how we dress and socialize our children and how we dress ourselves once we’ve already been socialized. I suppose the common ground between my artistic concerns and the protestors’ concerns is in pointing a finger at society and wanting the best for females).

Personal conflict aside, there was every reason for me to attend SlutWalk. For one thing, it’s a high profile event, and I feel that is a better approach than Denim Day, which I blogged about last year. (5) It’s easy not to notice an apparently activist pair of jeans, but it’s impossible to ignore sobering signs like “Dykes don’t need correcting” and “I was wearing a sweater + pants. Was it my fault too?” Others, which quoted Mahatma Ghandi or appropriated the look of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s famous poster with ‘RAPE CULTURE IS OVER! if you want it’, underscored SlutWalk’s pacifist mandate while rooting it in a trajectory of historically important protest. The signs were easier to take in than the speeches, because random chanting competed for attention, not to mention the men standing on the rooftops of cars holding questionable signs like “We love sluts”. Organizer Sonya Barnett rallied the crowd by saying, “We need and expect better.” Jane Doe, a survivor who sued Toronto Police in 1986 for negligence, called on Mayor Rob Ford and the MTP to restructure police training and to be accountable to high-risk groups like transgendered people, women with disabilities, Aboriginal women and sex trade workers. And, I can’t remember who made this comment, but as a librarian, I don’t want to leave it out: a female student shouldn’t have to think twice about staying late at the campus library. Agreed.

Scanning the crowd, I was mesmerized by the women whose clothing bordered on art, like the strapless dress made entirely of caution tape. In the realm of performance art, there were a lot of outfits, such as a wedding dress, a retro housewife dress, and parasols toted by goths, which put the final ‘e’ in ‘demure’; that is, they balked at the adjectival meaning of ‘sedate’ in favour of the verb meaning ‘to object’. Impressively, the crowd didn’t have the Lilith-Fair-like ratio of women to men that I was expecting. I felt a compulsion to hug each of the many men in the crowd (save for the ones on top of the cars) who came out in support of friends, lovers, sisters, and mothers, or just to give a face to the men who don’t confuse a dress for ‘yes’. Alas, I held back, because I wouldn’t want to be called a, you know, slut.

POST SCRIPTUM: Thanks to Statcounter, I've learned a lot about my blog. For instance, this is my most popular post to date, which is interesting because it's less art-focussed than my usual posts. Another thing I've discovered is that somewhere out there in cyberspace, people (i.e., not singular) conduct image searches for sluts at Canada's Wonderland. I feel vindicated, thinking of them arriving here accidentally and getting a dose of feminism.

(1) What Guys Think of Modesty
(2) Jane Doe
(3) www.slutwalktoronto.com
(4) For the perspective of the police, click here
(5) To view that post, please copy this link (for some reason the URL can't be linked): http://artistintransit.blogspot.com/2010/04/redress-through-dress.html

Erin Finley at Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center

2011-03-24T18:09:00.000-07:00

"...as Andy Warhol told the Velvet Underground..."

I shuffled off to Buffalo on Friday to hear an artist talk by Erin Finley that coincided with the opening of her exhibition at Hallwalls. The show consists of “knockout drawings” featuring “coyly transgressive subjects,” to borrow curator John Massier’s wording. He described the act of seeing her work in person during a studio visit as startling, because reproductions couldn’t do them justice. One could imagine that he was referring to the teeny narratives surrounding the main action, which are rendered intricately with a cartographer’s pen. Or maybe he was thinking of the glint of light hitting a sparkly baby Jesus atop Marlon Brando’s head or on a glittering Louis Vuitton sandal in a self-portrait of the artist with maxi wings exposed.

What I recall most vividly from visiting her Calgary studio and later, her present Toronto studio, was the denseness of imagery cluttering the walls. Early 80s Madonna hung alongside an oversized colouring book picture of Alice in Wonderland and across from a leaflet for the theatre production of Legally Blonde that Finley picked up while exhibiting at CBGBs. It was as if she had gorged on popular culture and hurled onto the wall, where her entire visual schemata was seeping into the works created below. Thus, it was fitting that she began her artist talk with an overview of images that inform her current work, which ranged from Miley Cyrus with her pants around her ankles to documentation of torture in Guantánamo Bay.

The content of her irreverent drawings makes them au courant, yet they possess a timeless quality by virtue of their style. There are several artists that come to mind whose purposeful disregard for drawing conventions makes them easily confused for one another; this aesthetic, however suited to quirky subject matter, runs the risk of a pressing expiration date. Finley’s deftly drawn and equally imaginative works stand in contrast. It doesn’t hurt that she inserts references to art history, like Borromini’s architecture, Mannerist proportions, and Greco-Roman stories, situating her work firmly in the realm of art and preventing it from being confused with children’s book illustrations like the work of some of her artist contemporaries.

In the context of this blog, I would be remiss to discuss Finley’s work without tackling the prickly issue of feminism, for she is a self-described feminist. At best, feminism is a contentious issue, but it is even more so with her work. A case in point: Rape fantasy (2010) features a scraggly haired girl lying on the ground while reading a short story of the same name by Margaret Atwood. Though her back is arched and her naked bottom is thrust in the air like a cat, she appears absolutely in control. The toe of her running shoe digs into the ground, giving her the ability to sprint away if need be. Her male-like torso, devoid of cleavage, is suggestive of superheroism, conjuring images of Buffy the Vampire Slayer slamming a classmate’s head into the steering wheel when he makes a pass at her after locking the door against her will. There are numerous representations of androgyny in the exhibition, notably in self-portraits, which address the malleability of gender head-on. At first glance, works like Portrait of the artist as a suicide bomber (2010) may seem aggressive and not just because of connotations of terrorism. However, she credits children’s literature as a source for this so-called magical imagery. This perspective casts them in a tender light and reminds us of the endless possibilities that exist in children’s minds before they place limitations on themselves because of gender. And, just as androgyny avoids prescriptive behaviour, so does a portrait of two men kissing, Simon + Jimmy (2007), which she showed in her presentation. Finley noted that the viewer does not watch them perversely. If anyone is the voyeur, it is the birds and the bees in the background, which underscores the naturalness of this encounter. Her inclusiveness of queer sexuality and her prevention of voyeurism are ultimately feminist.At the end of her talk, I asked what her barometer was for gauging whether her subjects were too lukewarm or too far-gone, expecting a self-conscious answer (like wanting to provoke a reaction from family members but not wanting to hide the work from them). Instead, she had the perfect quotation on the tip of her tongue that fused art history with pop culture: as Andy Warhol told the Velvet Underground, “Always leave them wanting less.”

Click images to enlarge; courtesy of the artist:

Portrait of the artist in Louis Vuitton and maxi pad with wings / black and metallic ink on paper / 2011

Portrait of the artist as a suicide bomber / ink on paper / 2010

Simon + Jimmy / Chalk, pencil, cosmetic blush, oil paint on paper / 2007

Mona Hatoum at the Power Plant

2011-03-17T21:26:00.000-07:00

“I’m interested in trauma,” she said, but not in “point[ing] a finger at the source of the trauma.”

Having gone a year and a half without making a cocoon sculpture until recently, I had to dig out some old artist statements and remind myself what they used to mean to me. The crux of the engagement has always been in establishing a contrast between seducing and repelling the viewer, a tendency I hadn’t heard another artist talk about at great length until Tuesday night. When feminist artist Mona Hatoum spoke at the Power Plant, this was a strategy she referenced repeatedly. It would be overly simplistic to call it a strategy, though, because that doesn’t convey the thrill of manipulating the viewer while simultaneously manipulating oneself.

Hatoum explained that she stumbled upon the combination of fear and fascination with her installation work, much of which recontextualizes familiar objects. One method of recontextualizing is playing with scale in sculpture, making for highly accessible works to even the most novice viewers. For example, La Grande Broyeuse depicts a food grinder, and looks enchantingly quirky (somewhat like a creature designed by Tim Burton, towering over the viewer). Similarly, a massive cheese grater (Grater Divide) has an appealing smooth, shiny surface. It would be easy to pass these works off as derivative of Claes Oldenburg’s oversized familiar objects rendered in soft sculpture if it weren’t for their menacing connotations. The grater’s protrusions and the grinder’s capacity to fit more than a morsel of food are disturbing indeed. Collectively, they create the sensation of a domestic environment that is no safer than the turbulent world outside, but is that reaction stemming from the fact that she is a woman representing objects from the kitchen, and from her personal history as a transnational artist born in Beirut to a Palestinian family? The question period at the end of her talk made it clear that she defies essentialist readings.

After taking a semester in Sheridan’s Crafts + Design program this past fall, I was particularly taken by Hatoum’s forays into the realm of craft: a historical map of Palsetine embroidered in hair on a pillowcase is as haunting as her grenades made of coloured glass. Sometimes it’s not the object itself that creates the push and pull of repulsion and seduction, but its positioning, whether it’s a series of barbed wires dangling above the ground precariously, or a world map made on the floor with marbles that threaten to dislocate. The latter work she described as possessing a “double aspect of fragility and danger”.

Although the “internal contradictions” she mentioned could be seen as referring to works that contain this duality, Hatoum actually used the term in relation to viewers. This concept is apparent in her description of the work, Incommunicado, a cradle with a base of only cheese wires stretched across; she noted that you could view it from the perspective of the victim or the abuser. I feel an affinity with this work in particular, as I spend a lot of time scouring second hand stores for baby clothing for my art. The kind of objectivity Hatoum demonstrates eludes me personally, as I seem fixated on the victim’s stance when making art. “I’m interested in trauma,” she said, but not in “point[ing] a finger at the source of the trauma.” Again, I felt a little stuck in my ways when I heard that, as I am an unabashed finger pointer. It will be interesting to see if this open-mindedness will come with time. Perhaps the lesson I should leave with is that balance is key. A visual reminder of that lesson is Plus and Minus. She described this kinetic work which creates and destroys lines as it rotates, as opposites co-existing side by side. It also seems like a fabulous metaphor for art history (and Hatoum did concede that she likes to make art historical references in her work). Art history is not a neat and tidy additive process. Maybe it doesn’t matter if one artist’s approach is different from another artist’s approach, whether it’s Oldenburg in relation to Hatoum or Hatoum in relation to this blogger. Their legacy is in the traces.

Please see http://www.whitecube.com/artists/hatoum/viii/ for images.

An unforgettable project

2011-01-15T20:24:00.000-08:00

“…it makes Masik look like she is audaciously aligning herself with the victims, or that she is regrettably obtuse.”

Yesterday was the first I had heard about Vancouver-based Pamela Masik’s large-scale painted portraits of 69 missing and murdered women from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (six of whose gruesome fates are attributed to convicted killer, Robert Pickton). Tomas Jonsson alerted me to the fact that the MOA, formerly the Museum of Anthropology, announced on January 12 that it would not be exhibiting Masik’s series on the University of British Columbia campus next month as planned. As I climbed into bed shuddering, my mind went to three divergent places: (1) to the public library I worked at as a teenager, where the head librarian decided against buying a book by a murderer because she wanted to deny royalties, though my mother counters that it was a biography of, not by, a murderer; (2) to my third year of art school, when a classmate with no personal association to cancer made a piece about breast cancer, undoubtedly requiring incredible composure from our teacher—a breast cancer survivor—to not react personally; and (3) to the movie, Art School Confidential, in which the main character passes off portraits of murder victims as his own, ultimately implicating himself in their deaths because the actual artist created them as trophies, complete with DNA evidence. What’s the point of my scattered reaction? Tackling this subject matter is likely to get an artist in hot water, and highly sensitive subject matter of any kind may be impossible for a public institution to contend with and for anyone personally involved to accept. My interest is in the artist’s approach to her work, not in that of the MOA (for my thoughts on censorship at art museums, click here).

In short, Masik has been criticized for being the spokesperson for marginalized communities she has limited experience with and exploiting their memories for personal gain without adequate consultation with the victims’ families. Her side of the story is that someone needs to speak up about women going missing; that she is in a position to speak for them—as a woman’s shelter volunteer, as their neighbour, and as a woman; and that she has respected the wishes of family members, many of whom were touched by the memorial.*

I don’t want to lash out against a fellow female artist unduly, so I read her website thoroughly along with each of her 80-plus blog posts, determined to understand her point of view. My objectivity was shaken almost instantly when I read her description of herself as a prolific national treasure in the making. This self-aggrandizing continued with her characterization of The Forgotten Project (the series in question) as ‘hauntingly beautiful’ and other paintings as ‘stunning’. With this degree of confidence, it seems almost inevitable that she would have great expectations for a series that took nearly five years to create. Indeed, she wrote in August 2009 that there would be no denying The Forgotten Project. The MOA cancellation would come as quite the shock, then, especially after the series garnered attention during the Olympics. At the same time, it's not like there is no precedence in this arena: take, for instance, Marlene McCarthy's Murder Girls series (also massive portraits, but in this case, of matricidal adolescents) which her former gallery would not show in 1995, causing a three-year lag before they were exhibited elsewhere.

Masik has been taken to task by writers like Meghan Murphy (The F Word) and Francisco-Fernando Granados (FUSE) for posing in front of these portraits, creating a gut-wrenching contrast to the battered women. Indeed, she is featured in exactly one-third of the 39 images in the photo gallery on the website, www.theforgotten.ca. Thirty years ago, it might just be her beauty that would offend (think Hannah Wilke), but today’s pluralistic feminism accounts for race, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, etc.—factors other than strictly gender. According to her critics, Masik is cut from a different cloth than the victimized women. Thus, the juxtaposition of her against their faces stings.

Whether the posing is out of arrogant pride, sincere attachment, or a combination of the two, cannot be known. Reading her blog posts, I did notice a deep attachment to the portraits. Not only does she personify her paintbrush (Mar. 14, 2010) but she seems unable to separate the paintings from herself (“I was the brushstroke”, Jan. 10, 2009; “The paintings become me”, Nov. 11, 2008). She also has a history of including herself in her work, both in performance art, and in her paintings. When she unveiled a portion of The Forgotten Project in her studio, the promotional material mentioned a painting from another series that shows her naked body with pornographic (her phrasing) undertones. Given that sex trade workers are among the victims in The Forgotten Project, imagine the chilling reaction of loved ones. Also imagine the reaction to Masik detailing the physical wear and tear of making the series—her bleeding fingers, torn rotator cuff, and ‘broken’ body. Surely what she is implying is that she has poured herself into the series, but stating it makes Masik look like she is audaciously aligning herself with the victims, or that she is regrettably obtuse. When she laments the lost opportunity to say good-bye to the first painting from the series to be exhibited as it was crated and sent off to an art fair, it strikes me the same way. A more direct and abrasive attempt at empathy is her insistence that she “know(s) the pain and suffering” (June 27, 2009) of the victims’ loved ones. But someone who is grieving or empathetic wouldn’t compare herself to a child awaiting Christmas morning (Sept. 11, 2009). When she calls Pickton an opportunist (Feb. 15, 2010)**, it’s hard not to balk at the irony of her wording.

*For background reading on the controversy, see
The Province, FUSE,
dpi, and The F Word.

**From the video, The Forgotten Project (Chris Morrow). All other dates in parentheses refer to Masik's blog posts.

Correspondence Course

2011-01-02T21:01:00.000-08:00

“…these exchanges…serve as reminders of the messiness of autobiographical art making. For instance, a film about Schneemann’s lover is screened well after the marriage has ended…”

Three notes about myself: (1) I am of the age that I barely remember carbon paper (from having not-for-profit art jobs at offices equipped with outdated credit card machines, and before that, from my father’s high school biology exams recycled for scrap paper. “What should you do if someone has a heart attack?” one asked. A precocious child, I scribbled, “Call the hospital.”) (2) I consider myself lucky to be part of the final generation to know the joys of giving and receiving hand-written letters, a practice I upheld well into the email era (with no one more than my librarian friend, Laura Wray). (3) I am at an early enough point in my art career that I can forgive myself for not retaining all of my related correspondence, though I vowed redemption after reading of Marina Abramovic’s thorough archive in When Marina Abramovic Dies (James Wescott, MIT Press, 2010).

In spite of my relatively unblackened fingers, my support of the postal system, and my librarian-archivist values, I am—how shall I say—bewildered? awed? inspired? by the simple strategy employed by artist Carolee Schneemann. She has preserved each and every outgoing letter in carbon copy as well as the letters she has received, providing a stunning overview of her career as it moved beyond painting to encompass feminist film and performance incorporating her body*. A goldmine for researchers not only for its source material but also for its footnotes, Correspondence Course (Duke University Press, 2010) is a selection of these letters from 1956 to 1999 excerpted by art historian Kristine Stiles. As a recreational reader, I wondered how much I would gain from reading the letters since the introduction does such a good job of distilling the next 490 pages.

If you fancy yourself to be a grammarian, prepare yourself for Schneemann’s unconventional approach to writing. In fact, consider pouring yourself a glass of wine. Initially, I was perplexed by Schneemann’s liberties with language, such as nouns shoved together and not in a legit, noun cluster kind of way. Once I gave in to the impulse to skim, however, I quite enjoyed creative liberties like “$till between jobs” (p. 373). You get a strong sense of Schneemann’s artistry permeating her language, especially in correspondence with former students with whom you might expect greater convention. Her effusive writing is, in a word (ahem), refreshing in the academic context. The letters to and from her peers range from mutual encouragement to necessary clarifications. (Admittedly, it’s great to see a woman standing up for herself in an articulate, if occasionally abrasive, manner). They demonstrate the importance of what may seem to be clichéd advice given to aspiring artists, that it is prudent to ‘get out there’ and establish a network. Her frankness about difficult issues like finances may also serve emerging artists well, so they understand the choices involved in an art career. Unsolicited mail from artists inspired by Schneemann is also noteworthy, as a testament to her legacy that is less political than awards bestowed from the top-down. Admissions of inspiration for and from Schneemann’s successors as well as her contemporaries refute the mythology of a linear art history (so-in-so begat so-in-so, who begat so-in-so, and so on).

The poetic element of her language is especially engaging in Schneemann’s letters to lovers. There are passages I read and reread to make sense of them—to determine, for example, if she was referring to the recipient or a new lover. I was strangely satisfied with the inconclusive nature of it all. It reminded me of the whispered ending of the movie, Lost in Translation, when Bob (Bill Murray) bids farewell to a tearful Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson): we aren’t privy to the details of what is said, and what can be imagined is more powerful. In the same way that an effective work of art does not provide all of the answers, Schneemann’s writing is open to interpretation, and sometimes entertainingly blatant in its double entendres. Also striking about these exchanges is that they serve as reminders of the messiness of autobiographical art making. For instance, a film about Schneemann’s lover is screened well after the marriage has ended, which some would find intolerable but she seems to accept it graciously. With the passage of time, these letters also emphasize the ability of romantic love to survive in a new form (Schneemann’s letters to her first ex-husband are particularly touching in this regard). Her descriptions of her beloved cats also underscore the myriad kinds of love that exist.

That Schneemann kept copies of the letters she sent begs the question of whether she may have had one eye on the future the entire time. That is to say, on a subconscious level, did she construct herself differently knowing that someone other than the primary reader might someday judge her? Who is to say? What I do believe is that there is a synergism to the collection, especially when the parties comment on the impact of receiving the previous letter or the joy it brings them to write the next installment. The whole of Stiles' Correspondence Course is more than the sum of its parts.

*Note: I am reticent to summarize her career in a single sentence, so please, read the book.

An Object of Beauty

2010-12-24T21:04:00.000-08:00

“If Yeager has a true love, it is art, not men.”

Everyone must know a Lacey Yeager. The main character in Steve Martin’s new novel, An Object of Beauty (Grand Central Publishing, 2010), is a self-involved, brazen, sexy young woman who uses her wiles for professional gain. She’s the kind of woman who leaves her female competitors in the dust and leaves her male onlookers dumbfounded. Good things befall her, from real estate to art investments. When a friend questions her financial success that accompanies her upward mobility from the bowels of an auction house to international travel as an art consultant, she attributes it to magic. A cynic looking closely might notice her batting her lashes, but would fail to detect her cutting corners professionally—such is the combination of cute and cunning.

Several pages in, I concluded that I needn’t continue reading for a fuller understanding of Yeager’s character because there simply couldn’t be one. Understanding Yeager is impossible except by constructing a composite of her relationships and seeing her impact on those around her. Take, for instance, the narrator Daniel Franks. A reserved art critic, he is her former classmate and one-time lover. Tired of his boring relationships, he lets Yeager use him to provoke jealousy with extra-long hugs in front of her suitors. Their combination could be compared to tofu marinated in hot sauce, with Yeager being the hot sauce. The reader can empathize with Franks, but not with Yeager, which is the case with at least one other male character in the book. An example is when Yeager, in a drug-induced state, fondles Franks and he describes his awkwardness, to which she is utterly oblivious in the moment and thereafter. Interestingly, Franks only surfaces intermittently, making him part omniscient narrator, part character who is directly involved in the protagonist’s life. His intermittent appearance also emphasizes Yeager’s inability to get close to anyone. If Yeager has a true love, it is art, not men.

The starring role that art plays in the novel is the main reason I read on, though I persevered for other reasons too: because of confidence in Martin’s creativity; because of a promising plot that delivered; and because of a disturbing impulse akin to staring at victims of an automobile accident (I was curious to see what kind of havoc Yeager would wreak). Aside from the usual reasons to indulge in fiction, there are incentives for art lovers. The book is peppered with colour reproductions of works of art integral to the story. For those less familiar with art, Martin does a stellar job of providing Art History 101. He also encapsulates the quirkiness of the contemporary art world with gem-like descriptions such as ‘high-craft OCD’. The expository sections aren’t overly long, nor are they overly obvious in performing this function. Two notable examples are Martin’s inclusion of 9/11 and the 2008 recession. Both of these driving forces in the art market coincide with Yeager’s major career moves, one being the opening of a gallery and the other being a major investment in foreign art. This strategy allows Martin to explain their substantial effect by tracing the fallout for Yeager. Yeager is such a spitfire that these factors can’t suppress her for long. Ultimately, she falls from grace not because of these external forces, but by her own doing, which turns the book into a morality tale.

With the New Year approaching, and with it requisite self-assessment, I tried shifting the question from whether I know a Lacey Yeager (I do) to whether there is some Lacey Yeager in me. Here’s my admission: we share an appreciation for contrivance. Every move she makes is calculated and loaded, even down to her wardrobe choices. My approach to my blog is similarly controlled. If I know I’m going to attend a certain exhibition, I tailor my reading materials so I can write a post that is enhanced instead of disjointed. Thus, you can imagine my disappointment when I only made it two-thirds of the way through An Object of Beauty on my last road trip two weeks ago. It was my first return trip to New York City since I moved in September, and it would have been the perfect complement since the book is set in Midtown, Uptown, and Chelsea. Ironically, I was unable to get back to the book right away because I was immersed in papermaking and book binding at Sheridan. I had to accept the disappointing reality that I would be reading the New York-based book on a flight to Hawaii, which was totally mismatched. As the flight was about to descend, I stowed the book because turbulence was expected and I felt it would make me an irresponsible librarian to cling to a hardcover that was a potential projectile. I picked up United Airlines’ publication, Hemisphere begrudgingly. And there it was: synchronicity. An interview with comedian Judd Apatow described how he met Steve Martin as a teenager and ended with the line, “Steve Martin is the funniest man in the world”. Mahalo, Steve Martin. (That’s ‘thank-you’ in Hawaiian).

Mele Kalikimaka! (Merry Christmas!)

Source: David Carr, “The Hemi Q & A: Judd Apatow”, Hemisphere, December 2010, pp. 64-67. Print.

In defense of the lethargic bride

2010-11-23T19:16:00.000-08:00

“…chances are she’s going to be bitter”

It’s a toss-up as to which commuting incident was more alarming today: (1) making my way through a crowd of squealing Justin Bieber fans on a narrow platform, ready to fend off potential trampling with my safety whistle…if only it weren’t somewhere deep within my purse OR (2) reading this in a Metro article: “…a girl should start working out as soon as she thinks the guy is about to propose.” I cannot in good conscience deconstruct the group behaviour of the Bieberettes, for I am a former NKOTB fan. (That is to say, as a pre-teen, I walked five kilometers on a regular basis to the general store for New Kids collectable cards and had my first and only foray into ‘fan fic’). Thus, I will turn my attention to the Metro.

I’m not sure what possessed me to read an article on bridal fitness. It’s probably because after a ten-year hiatus, I’ve started jogging regularly. (I’ve joked that the reason I gave up jogging was that it raised my metabolism so much that I was eating dinner twice a night, which was impractical. The part about two dinners is true but there were other reasons I stopped jogging). Pragmatism cannot be overrated, and I appreciate that brides may want to maintain a specific size because of gown alterations. However, the article didn’t seem to appeal to women’s pragmatic side. Rather it capitalized on their insecurities. A case in point: “…every fat bulge, is meticulously captured on high-def camera.”

Why should a prospective bride feel pressured to become more fit (read: slender) anyway? After all, if her beau—or belle—loves her enough to propose, subsequent changes in physical appearance would be irrelevant. If it’s for others’ impressions, like Facebook friends or wedding guests, may I suggest that the bride reassess her values and how much she loves herself? External validation is not the best kind, as intoxicating as it seems. Also, can we please move beyond the assumption that it is the man who must propose? I know several women who have waited for years to be asked that magical question. If a woman pushes herself because she expects something in return and the man—not being a mind reader—doesn’t deliver, chances are she’s going to be bitter. (Indeed, several months after I made this post, Ana Perez from Chicago threatened her boyfriend that if he didn't propose, she would call 911...which she did, prompting criminal charges. Actually, in this case, working out would probably take the edge off, though therapy would be a useful complement).

I thought society had started to move away from idealizing the female figure, based on buxom models like Doutzen Kroes and Portia De Rossi’s autobiography on anorexia, Unbearable Lightness. However, I changed my stance after purchasing my first bridal magazine for art research. I was stunned that every bride featured, without exception, was waif-like. If this is the type of visual input facing today’s bride, it’s no wonder she feels pressured to shed a few pounds.

The piece I made wasn’t about body image. It was an investigation of positive and negative space; a juxtaposition of contemporary bridal imagery and ancient religious garb; and a commentary on a verse from the Apocrypha (“A silent wife is a gift from the Lord. Sirach 25:14) used in a reading at our convalidation ceremony. [Click image to enlarge sample for larger piece, aprx. 1 m x 1 m]. The brides just happen to be slim, and I wonder if viewers will even notice that in multitude, they feel like paper chain dolls disconnected and redressed.

To sum up, I was not an aerobic bride, nor am I am a silent wife. I hope that the Bieberettes—those children with ringlets and eye makeup you may have spotted on tonight’s train—grow up to realize that self-assertion and self-acceptance trump vanity.

*Source: Romina McGuiness, “Wow at Your Wedding”, Metro News, November 23, 2010, p. 27. Print.

You like it WHERE?

2010-10-08T05:33:00.000-07:00

“...it makes gender specific sex fodder for humour, which is where I get my knickers in a knot."

A new viral campaign on Facebook has been gaining momentum, resulting in updates from women to the tune of “I like it on the kitchen counter” and “I like it on the floor beside the bed.” Personally, I used to be indifferent but now I prefer the latter. For any gentlemen still in the dark, these comments refer to handbags, not hand…er, you can probably guess what I was going to write. One can’t help but imagine female friends in the act as a result of these naughty sounding status updates, reminding us of the power of visualization (which interests me as an artist because it reinforces the power of the visual).

As a feminist artist, I’m obviously interested in female power but I dare say this campaign wields none of any consequence. Although its predecessor (January’s bra colour updates) expressed some semblance of girl power by rationalizing itself with an apparent goal of bringing attention to breast cancer, this campaign makes no such claim. In fact, the Facebook message chiding women to participate uses as its incentive the fact that the previous viral campaign made it into the news. May I point out that not all content in the news is newsworthy? A cow on the loose made it into my hometown paper recently. Enough said.

On the surface, the updates seem like an empowering and fun form of sharing female sexuality à la Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte, and Samantha in Sex and the City. Ultimately, though, there’s no meaningful disclosure (except of details that might interest burglars on a tight schedule). It actually underscores society’s lack of openness about sexuality. Plus, it makes gender specific sex fodder for humour, which is where I get my knickers in a knot. Like the bra colour updates, this campaign titillates men by being coy. It seems to aim to even the score with locker-room-style commentary. It makes me wonder, what would be the reaction if men started a similarly covert campaign to state where they like their wallet at the end of the day? Surely they'd be chastised. Or maybe they’d seem prudish in comparison (“I like to keep it in my pants”).

Perhaps what really bothers me is the interchangeability of a purse for female sexuality, adding an element of commoditization. It’s just another way that women’s bodies and sexuality are consumed and it doesn’t make it palatable to this writer just because the woman is the seller.

Writing off women

2010-09-09T12:02:00.000-07:00

“...it’s possible that the viewer might take in the book first and move upward to her décolletage.”

It’s been almost two months since I’ve made a post. My life has taken on a greater degree of chaos while I’ve balanced two overlapping roles: outgoing art librarian at Purchase College and incoming textiles student at Sheridan College. The colleges are eleven hours apart if traffic is good. Apartment hunting, writing an entrance exam, battling mold on items in storage…it has all been a whirlwind. My new commute involves Ontario’s Go Train instead of New York’s Metro North Train. The main difference is access to stray copies of the free Metro newspaper, which I decided to skim yesterday.

My attention was caught by the headline, “Writing off women?” The brief article is about the relegation of female-authored fiction to ‘chick lit’. My intention is not to comment on that issue, but to comment on the presentation of it. Unfortunately, the online version of the article does not include the image I discuss below.

An accompanying photo takes up more room than the text of the article. It shows a young, blond, Caucasian woman lying stomach down on the grass while reading a book. It made me yearn for summer, which—at least in Canada—seems to have disappeared amazingly fast. Then I looked closer. The caption mentions Pulitzer Prize winning author, Elizabeth Strout, but does not clarify if the woman is her. The real Elizabeth Strout is about 30 years older, though similarly blond and Caucasian. This image, presumably a stock photo, is a curious choice.

Our fresh-faced reader could do wonders for libraries as a poster child for literacy. Clad in all white (tank top, pants/shorts, and even her bra, whose strap is visible), she exudes innocence. Her mascara-laden lids and lips saturated with colour guide the viewer’s eye towards her ample cleavage and finally, to the book. That, after all, is the real object in the image, right? Or, because she consumes only the top right corner of the image and the rest is grass, it’s possible that the viewer might take in the book first and move upward to her décolletage. Either way, she rivals the book as the focus.

Interestingly, the book’s pages appear virtually empty. One page is entirely white while its opposing page has a blur of text. I am reminded of Reese Witherspoon’s vapid character in Pleasantville discovering words in the previously blank classics that filled her high school library. I’m also reminded of Medieval Books of Hours, those ornate volumes that women—often illiterate women—toted as accessories of sorts. If I think that far back into art history, I may as well reflect on her demure expression, a commonplace strategy to make female subjects seem capable of being overcome. Her gaze is fixated on the book, and not on the onlooker. She is up for grabs.

As a librarian and as a feminist, I am perplexed by the sexualization of reading in visual culture. I don’t mean to imply that beautiful and sexy women don’t read. However, if the editors are attempting to empathize with, or at least, represent the viewpoints of female authors bothered by male dominance in the industry, they would do well to use an image that doesn’t fall into gender traps, or perhaps they could feature one of the three women mentioned in the article/caption.

Source: ----, “Writing women off?”, Metro News, September 8, 2010, p. 31. Print.

Feminist's advisory

2010-07-14T17:39:00.000-07:00

“…if you are considering becoming a feminist or are trying to convert someone, the most effective book is The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf…”

Yesterday at orientation, the father of an incoming student asked me, “Does anyone still read books?” After finishing Click: When we knew we were feminists (Eds. Courtney E. Martin and J. Courtney Sullivan, Seal Press, 2010) last night, I have a belated answer: Third Wave feminists. Maybe it’s because I’m a librarian, but one of the salient features I noticed in this collection of intriguing essays by women from my generation was the emphasis on books.

The book reveals a pivotal moment or experience that converted each of these women to feminism. The majority of the contributors mention at least a few authors or specific works, and almost all of those works are monographs. Most are recommendations, but equally interesting are the contributors’ ‘anti-recommendations’, if you will (i.e., sources they find troubling). For example, Jillian Mackenzie laments that her female friends and acquaintances bought He’s just not that into you: The no-excuses truth to understanding guys (Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo, Simon Spotlight Entertainment, 2004), hook, line and sinker. These Third Wave feminists persuade and dissuade the reader in the realm of TV, film, and music too, but that’s far less frequent than the references to monographs. Thus, I chose to call this post ‘Feminist’s advisory’; it’s a play on the library term ‘reader’s advisory’, the process of recommending sources to library users.

Below is a bibliography I’ve compiled. Why? Click does not include full citations, so if you’d like to do some summer reading, this list should expedite things. Also, I was curious what a quantitative analysis would reveal. The bottom line is that if you are considering becoming a feminist or are trying to convert someone, the most effective book is The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf, and the author not to be missed is bell hooks. Actually if you cross-reference the list of recommended books with the list of recommended authors, Gloria Steinem is equally popular as Wolf and hooks.

A few notes on my process: Some of the references are to books in the contributors’ parents’ personal library, but I’ve included them if they are mentioned with a hint of admiration. I’ve left out any works that are presented in a neutral or negative way, which has necessitated personal judgment, but for the most part, the endorsements are pretty clear-cut. A few of them, like the book on ADHD, only make sense in the context of the essays, so consider any confusion to be an enticement to read Click.

A Feminist bibliography gleaned from Click: When We Knew We Were Feminists

Online Sources:

Eds. Valenti, Jessica; Valenti, Vanessa; Mukhopadhyay, Samhita; Friedman, Ann; Martin, Courtney E.; Pérez, Miriam Zoila; and Merritt, Pamela. Feministing. 2004 to present, http://www.feministing.com (Endorsed by 1 contributor to Click, who is also an author-editor of Feministing).

Articles:

Banks, Sandy. “A Younger View of Feminism”, Los Angeles Times April 10, 2009. Print. (Endorsed by 1 contributor to Click)

O’Reilly, Jane. “The Housewife’s Moment of Truth.” Ms./New York Magazine, December 20, 1971. Print. (mentioned in introduction as inspiration for the book title; also endorsed by 1 contributor to Click)

Quindlen, Anna. “Public and Private” (column), New York Times, 1990-1992. Print. (Endorsed by 1 contributor to Click)

Rich, Adrienne. “Reflections on “Compulsory Heterosexuality,” Journal of Women's History 16.1 2004, 9-11. Print. (Endorsed by 1 contributor to Click)

Magazines:

Ed. (founding) Pogrebin, Letty Cottin. Ms. , New York Magazine, Ms. Foundation for Education and Communication, Liberty Media, 1971-present. Print.(Endorsed by 3 contributors to Click)

Ed. (founding) Pratt, Jane. Sassy, Matilda Publications, Lang Communications, and Petersen Publishing, 1988-1996. Print.(Endorsed by 1 contributor to Click)

Books:

*juvenile:

Lindgren, Astrid. Pippi Longstocking. New York: Viking Press, 1950.(Endorsed by 1 contributor to Click)

Thomas, Marlo. Free to be…You and Me. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974.(Endorsed by 1 contributor to Click)

*adult:

Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid's Tale. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1985. Endorsed by 1 contributor to Click)

Baumgardner, Jennifer, and Richards, Amy. Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000. (Endorsed by 1 contributor to Click)

Bordo, Susan. Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. (Endorsed by 1 contributor to Click)

Boston Women's Health Book Collective. Our Bodies, Ourselves: A Book by and for Women. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1976. (Endorsed by 1 contributor to Click)

Brown, Rita Mae. Rubyfruit Jungle. Plainfield, Vt.: Daughters, Inc., 1973. (Endorsed by 1 contributor to Click)

Collins, Jackie. Lucky. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985. (Endorsed by 1 contributor to Click)

Estrich, Susan. Sex and Power. New York: Riverhead Books, 2000. (Endorsed by 1 contributor to Click)

Faludi, Susan. Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women. Publication: New York: Crown, 1991. (Endorsed by 1 contributor to Click)

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1925. (Endorsed by 1 contributor to Click)

Friedan, Betty. The Feminine Mystique. New York: W.W. Norton, 1963. (Endorsed by 2 contributors to Click)

Gordon, Mary. The Company of Women. New York: Random House, 1980. (Endorsed by 1 contributor to Click)

Hill Collins, Patricia. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. New York: Routledge, 2000. (Endorsed by 1 contributor to Click)

Kelly, Kate and Ramundo, Peggy. You Mean I’m not Lazy, Stupid or Crazy?!: A Self-Help Book for Adults with Attention Deficit Disorder. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993. (Endorsed by 1 contributor to Click)

Moraga, Cherríe, and Anzaldúa, Gloria. This Bridge Called my Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. New York: Kitchen Table, Women of Color Press, 1983. (Endorsed by 1 contributor to Click)

Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Plume Book, 1994. (Endorsed by 1 contributor to Click)

Pipher, Mary Bray. Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls. New York: Putnam, 1994. (Endorsed by 3 contributors to Click)

Steinem, Gloria. Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1983. (Endorsed by 1 contributor to Click)

Susann, Jacqueline. Valley of the Dolls: A Novel. New York: Grove Press, 1966. (Endorsed by 1 contributor to Click)

Wallace, Michele. Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman. New York: Dial Press, 1979.(Endorsed by 1 contributor to Click)

Walker, Rebecca. To be Real: Telling the Truth and Changing the Face of Feminism. New York: Anchor Books, 1995. (Endorsed by 1 contributor to Click)

Walker, Alice. In Search of our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983. (Endorsed by 2 contributors to Click)

Wolf, Naomi. The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty are Used Against Women. New York: W. Morrow, 1991. (Endorsed by 4 contributors to Click)

Book Chapters:

Higginbotham, Anastasia. “Chicks Goin’ At It.” In Listen Up: Voices from the Next Feminist Generation. Seal Press, 1995: 11-18. (Endorsed by 1 contributor to Click)

Chernik, Abra Fortune. “The Body Politic.” In Listen Up: Voices from the Next Feminist Generation . Seal Press, 1995: 103-111. (Endorsed by 1 contributor to Click)

Authors/poets mentioned (but not specific works by them):

Bella Abzug (Endorsed by 1 contributor to Click)
Simone de Beauvoir (Endorsed by 1 contributor to Click)
James Boswell (Endorsed by 1 contributor to Click)
Patricia Hill Collins (Endorsed by 1 contributor to Click)
Andrea Dworkin (Endorsed by 1 contributor to Click)
T. S. Eliot (Endorsed by 1 contributor to Click)
Ralph Waldo Emerson (Endorsed by 1 contributor to Click)
Susan Faludi (Endorsed by 2 contributors to Click)
Betty Friedan (Endorsed by 1 contributor to Click)
Nancy Friday (Endorsed by 1 contributor to Click)
Charlotte Perkins Gilman (Endorsed by 1 contributor to Click)
Nikki Giovanni (Endorsed by 1 contributor to Click)
Nathaniel Hawthorne (Endorsed by 1 contributor to Click)
bell hooks (Endorsed by 4contributors to Click)
Zora Neale Hurston (Endorsed by 1 contributor to Click)
Kumari Jayawardena (Endorsed by 1 contributor to Click)
Audrey Lorde (Endorsed by 3 contributors to Click)
Catherine MacKinnon (Endorsed by 2 contributors to Click)
Chandra Mohanty (Endorsed by 1 contributor to Click)
Uma Narayan (Endorsed by 1 contributor to Click)
Pat Parker (Endorsed by 1 contributor to Click)
Katha Pollitt (Endorsed by 1 contributor to Click)
Adrienne Rich (Endorsed by 1 contributor to Click)
Margaret Sanger (Endorsed by 1 contributor to Click)
Gloria Steinem (Endorsed by 3 contributors to Click)
Henry David Thoreau (Endorsed by 1 contributor to Click)
Mark Twain (Endorsed by 1 contributor to Click)
Alice Walker (Endorsed by 1 contributor to Click)
Cornel West (Endorsed by 1 contributor to Click)
Virginia Woolf (Endorsed by 1 contributor to Click)
Elizabeth Wurtzel (Endorsed by 1 contributor to Click)

The contributors aren’t arrogantly name-dropping these authors. They seem to genuinely appreciate the role of the written word in shaping their feminism. For example, Marni Grossman remembers reading prolifically during her recovery from anorexia and Jillian MacKenzie describes reading as revelatory.

That made me reconsider my own conflicted relationship with theory. Here’s my theory about theory: I feel that many people, myself included, misunderstand theory but they feel pressured to include it in academic essays. As a result, obscure theorists are touted more than they might be otherwise. Through a kind of skewed citation analysis, the theorist joins the canon. Although I don’t shirk my responsibilities to add theory to our library collection, personally, I’m more inclined to turn to Gilmore Girls than Guattari to contextualize my art. I feel there’s a more direct connection and that it’s more democratic (read: accessible). Before you say anything, GG fans, I acknowledge that popular culture and scholarly theory aren’t mutually exclusive, and that the show’s writers worked Betty Friedan’s death into the script immediately and impressively.

As to how all of this relates to my artwork, last week I updated my artist statement to incorporate theory so it would be better suited to an exhibition I’m applying to. I was researching the Other in a feminist context, which naturally led me to Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. I found a few token passages, and reluctantly added it to my pile of summer reading, figuring it’s a classic I should be more familiar with. Only a few days later, I was watching The Truth About Cats and Dogs, in which the male love interest gives the unwitting female love interest a copy of de Beauvoir’s Letters to Sartre. I searched online to learn more, and I became captivated by the couple’s relationship, which is not unlike my own marriage, at least in terms of an unconventional living situation (I have a long distance marriage) and in terms of mutual support of creative endeavors (we’re both artists). Suddenly I was adding this tome of love letters to my summer reading, along with de Beauvoir’s autobiography, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter. Once de Beauvoir went from being a theorist to a person in my mind, I felt more open to reading her theory. Maybe that’s why I enjoyed the stories in Click so much.

The California Gurl & the Canadian Girl

2010-06-22T07:00:00.001-07:00

“Am I envious that Perry’s video is all the rage and that the cupcake bra has been called genius…?”

Friends have been writing from as far away as Korea to give me the head’s up about Katy Perry’s California Gurls video, which was released mid-June. The reason? Among the many sweet treat brassieres worn by the singer and her entourage is a cupcake bra that bears a striking similarity to my wearable art piece, Sugar & Spice (to see Perry’s in action, see 2:10+ here and for still photos click here).

(PHOTO: Heather Saunders in Sugar & Spice, 2009; click to enlarge)

Without friends, I would be oblivious to the video’s existence. I’ll admit to once thinking Snoop Dogg—who is featured in California Gurls—was called Snoopy Doopy Dog until a more culturally informed friend clued me in; I wish I were kidding. I may not know music, but I do know art: after seeing only a few frames of the video set in a candyland, I thought with admiration, “It looks like an animated Will Cotton painting.” Sure enough, he is the artistic director.

I’m relatively up-to-date on the ins and outs of copyright, having co-presented a workshop on the topic two weeks ago. Thus, I am aware that an artist cannot copyright an idea, including something as specific as a ‘cupcake bra’. Even if Will Cotton knew my work (a notion I’m only indulging for the sake of argument) or if Katy Perry herself had seen Sugar & Spice, I doubt I could make a reasonable case for copyright infringement. Sure, I could say with a childish tone that I made mine first, and that I have three public presentations to prove it, dating back as far as April 2009. However, I can picture the counterargument unfolding like an absurdist play.

Ironically, Perry’s representatives could actually argue for transformative use, which is one of the conditions allowing the reuse of content in US copyright law. Whereas my piece has an explicitly feminist intent (see my artist statement alongside the detail photo here), Perry seems to be objectifying women. At least this is the conclusion I come to based on context—in light of her shooting two cans of whipped cream from another bra, and in light of her lounging naked on a cotton candy cloud. We may be polar opposites in this regard, but we’re more alike than it may seem on the surface. In a behind-the-scenes clip of the filming of California Gurls, Perry refers to her breasts as her assets. When I stepped out of the Green Room in a wearable art show last month in Boston, provoking bold and instantaneous responses with my own cupcake bra, I was well aware of the implications of selling sex.

(PHOTO: Heather Saunders at Artrages Surrealestate Wearable Art Runway Show, hosted by Mobius in Boston, May 2010, photo by Anthony Tremblay; click to enlarge)

Am I envious that Perry’s video is all the rage and that the cupcake bra has been called genius (Trendhunter Magazine) while my piece, which took a week of non-stop sewing to make, lies on the fringes of art world obscurity? Not really. If anything, it gives me the illusion of having my finger on the pulse of popular culture (which, for my Snoop Dogg confusing self, is admittedly flattering). No, if there are any sour grapes (or cherries?) it’s harmless envy about Perry’s personal association with Russell Brand and her professional affiliation with Will Cotton. In my opinion, much of the bad feelings related to copyright lie in people’s insecurities about one work being confused for another, which seems to be bound up in identity and ego. Frankly, I don’t think there’s any risk of me being confused with a singer who straddled a microphone onstage the other day. I’m happy to let the focus stay on similarities between Perry’s ejaculating bra and Lady Gaga’s gun holster bra from the Alejandro video.

Besides, at the end of the day, can I really harbour bad feelings for someone who says she ‘lurve[s]’ my homeland?

SOURCES:

*----. “Naughty Cupcake Bras: Katy Perry ‘California Gurls’ Video Teaser is Sinfully Tasty,” Trendhunter Magazine, July 2010. Online. http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/katy-perry-california-gurls-video.

The Heretics

2010-06-05T20:13:00.000-07:00

“[We] fell in love with each others' minds” – Marty Pottenger

New York is a funny place. It feels so big that it could swallow you whole, but sometimes it seems as small as the rural village where I was raised in Canada. For instance, I had no idea that the friendly woman I was chatting with in the bathroom Thursday night at 92YTribeca was Joan Braderman, director of The Heretics, whose screening I was about to see. What would I have done differently had I known it was her—offered her my lipstick? Opted against using lipstick in front a more seasoned feminist than myself? I’ll say this: it was a fitting way to start an evening celebrating the camaraderie between women, and a reminder that the gap between Second Wave feminists and Third Wave feminists—insurmountable though it sometimes seems—can close in an instant.

The documentary, made by a three-person crew in multiple locations, traces the development of Heresies, a significant feminist art publication that ran from 1977 to 1992 out of New York. A goldmine for feminist art historians, it is replete with archival footage and contemporary interviews with 28 of Heresies’ key figures. Any reservations about the value of this film quickly fall by the wayside: we are reminded of the importance of institutional memory by a montage of contributors’ conflicting or nonexistent answers about where the first meeting was held. The film is effectively a piecing together of history, a kind of collaborative storytelling that establishes credence through repetition.

Watching The Heretics, we are captivated by the inception of the publication—by the list of some 300 titles considered, by the ability to mobilize without the power of the Internet, by the founders’ earnest attempts at organizational equity. We are stunned by Heresies’ perseverance in spite of resistance to a business plan, to male advertisers, and to so many conventions that keep publications afloat. And, I can’t speak for everyone, but for those of us who have lost countless nights of sleep to the publishing world (I even bumped the date of my wedding to accommodate a production schedule), we are inexplicably nostalgic for the smell of wax. Mostly, though, we are enraptured by the stories of the talented women who came together to change the world, who—as Marty Pottenger phrased it—“fell in love with each others' minds” and capitalized on synergy.

Inspiring though the documentary may be, the content is gravely serious. A case in point is Lucy Lippard’s retelling of men and women bringing the same slides to galleries and the women being turned away while their male counterparts generated great interest. Stories like these give insight into the impetus for creating and sustaining Heresies. The serious subject matter carries over into the history of the publication itself. For example, Harmony Hammond recalls the tension of restricting the editorial team to lesbians for the lesbian issue, and Su Friedrich tells the story of how she got fired preparing the sex issue late at night in her workplace. Interestingly, despite the sobering content, the film doesn’t take itself too seriously. A saxophone plays in the background when the aforementioned sex issue is discussed and the dramatic sound of thunder accompanies the first mention of the so-called Heretics; there are many such examples. A cut-and-paste aesthetic lends a quirky sensibility to the film, which might come across as amateur if it didn’t reflect the general look of the publication.

On the surface, The Heretics is about the project that tied these women together but it functions as biography in equal measure. The interviews conducted three decades later emphasize that creating the publication was not an isolated act, but rather part of a trajectory in each woman's life. The Heretics reveals Heresies as a natural outgrowth of the contributors’ existing commitment to feminism, but also as a catalyst for personal change.

For more on The Heretics, see http://www.wmm.com/filmcatalog/pages/c780.shtml

The female fixation on marriage

2010-05-02T14:46:00.000-07:00

“That’s good [said the teenager to her friend]. You have something to look forward to.”

Last night the train out of Grand Central was packed, so I was crammed in beside two young women, who had the following conversation:

“When do you want to get married?”

“Well, I always thought 27 because my birthday is on the 27th and I like the number 27. Are you thinking of marriage?”

“Definitely.”

“Really? With your current boyfriend?”

“Yeah, I know it seems crazy, but I’ve known him for sooo long.”

“That’s good. You have something to look forward to.”

“Some people think teenagers are irrational, but I realize that marriage is, like, a commitment, you know? Don’t go telling everyone in my high school.”

At first, I was fighting the urge to laugh, but then I remembered something pertinent that happened earlier in the day. It was not the conversation I had with a friend about the complexites of marriage, nor was it going to the MoMA and watching the gut-wrenching performance of Marina Abramovic and her collaborator/lover Ulay as they met in the middle of the Great Wall of China after each walking one half of the distance, to say goodbye permanently. What I remembered was a short-lived and embarrassing idea that I had in my studio. When I say studio, I refer to the portion of my bedroom that is overtaken by multiple boxes of fabric, a work table, and a sewing machine in need of repair.

I hadn’t picked up a needle for two months, because I wanted to give my body a rest from the intense sewing I did in February. However, there is no time to waste, as I have to sew a pink crinoline underskirt (by hand, no less) in the next week for the ArtRages Surrealestate Wearable Art Runway Show hosted by the Boston artist-run centre, Mobius. I ended up pleating too much netting and was trying to decide what to do with the excess material. Since it’s gathered at one end and about two feet long, it resembles a wedding veil, aside from its pink colour. When I realized this, I felt a surge of excitement. Why not wear it as part of my costume? I had just booked an appointment with a salon called Shag, and surely they could incorporate the makeshift veil into my up-do. Then I stopped myself, admitting that the concept of my outfit had nothing to do with weddings, so I couldn’t justify adding a veil. I was merely reacting to a hard-wired impulse to enact (or in my case, reenact) the role of the bride.

I touched on this female tendency in a recent post (http://artistintransit.blogspot.com/2010/03/social-media-and-sexes.html) where I wrote about a brochure featuring a little girl trying on a wedding dress. A year and a half ago, I made a cocoon sculpture using a pink wedding gown in combination with underwear that said ‘sexy little bride’, whose wording struck me as eerily reminiscent of the messages written on girls’ clothing. And in 2007, I made a cocoon sculpture with a veil that was based on a t-shirt with hearts on it and embroidered text that said, “Falling for You”. I was reminded of this piece last week-end after visiting a friend who was with me when I bought it in a post-Valentine’s Day sale in Kansas City. I couldn’t believe the shirt when I saw it. My initial reaction, since it was for a two-year-old, was ‘what is society doing, promoting romance to someone so young’? Interestingly, I showed an image of this work to a new media studies class last semester, and one of the students took a different stance entirely. She felt that the original garment was exposing young girls to a positive view of romantic relationships. My lingering question is, why the double standard? Why don’t we see little boys’ clothing teeming with hearts? Do I believe that the association of romance with females but not males, as established through clothing, contributes to the likelihood that I will never, ever overhear a conversation between two high school boys daydreaming about what age they will marry? On some level, I do.

Redress through dress

2010-04-21T10:51:00.000-07:00

“I question the effectiveness of the collective gesture of wearing denim in ‘protest against erroneous and destructive attitudes about sexual assault’.”

Today is Denim Day in the US. For some reason, I was thinking it was tomorrow, probably because our campus is acknowledging the campaign over a two-day period. At any rate, I am coincidentally wearing denim because I am helping install a show of student work at the library, which is bound to make for a messier than usual day.

Organized by Peace Over Violence, the 11-year-old campaign was sparked by outrage about an Italian Supreme Court decision to overturn a rape conviction, based on the reasoning that the victim was wearing “too tight jeans and she must have helped her attacker remove them.”

Let me publicly admit that on occasion I find myself falling prey to the messages women are told by society, including self-blame for harassment. About a week ago, I was riding the train to the Bronx in the evening. A young man asked if he could sit across from me. I said yes, and when he slid into the seat, he brushed his leg against mine and said, “Oh, sorry, I touched your leg” as if to emphasize what might have otherwise seemed like an honest mistake. His friend hopped into the seat beside me, told me I was cool, and held out his fist. I reciprocated with a tap, thinking this was the best strategy in an odd situation, and then he grabbed my hand and kissed it. When I got my hand back, I busied myself with making notes on a printout of a call for submissions. It was for a show about female sexuality, which made me feel self-conscious. Then he told me that if anyone tried anything with me, he’d stand up for me. I got up earlier than necessary for my stop and he said, “Ooh, she scared.” I hate to say it, but I immediately wondered if I had brought on the incident by wearing a dress. This is the kind of skewed thinking that Denim Day attempts to redress, and that is commendable.

Much of my art is about female sexuality and the perception of females based on clothing, so this issue is close to my heart. However, I question the effectiveness of the collective gesture of wearing denim in “protest against erroneous and destructive attitudes about sexual assault”. I am all for consciousness-raising and solidarity, but a number of questions come to mind. With the widespread popularity of denim, will participants blend in with denim-wearing people who aren’t even aware of the campaign, making Denim Day appear more supported than it really is? Does the campaign run the ironic risk of implying that clothing is a factor in assault by using clothing as the solution? Does the campaign fall into the same category as the recent viral campaign on Facebook wherein women posted the colour of their bras to supposedly promote awareness of breast cancer? That is, by taking a small action, will participants sleep better at night believing they have made a difference?

SOURCES:

Peace Over Violence Summer Newsletter, 2008. Online. http://peaceoverviolence.org/media/downloadables/POV_newsletter_summer.pdf

Let them make cake

2010-04-10T21:16:00.000-07:00

“So many cakes. So many girls.” -- Dustin Wayne Harris

Cupcake magnate Magnolia Bakery recently opened up shop in Grand Central Station, the news of which excited me so much I actually clapped my hands and squealed. My roommate and I enjoyed a piece of cake there today, setting the tone for the exhibition I headed to afterwards in the Lower East Side. Cake Mixx by Dustin Wayne Harris at Heist Gallery, which closes this week, features nine close-up colour photographs of cakes and one sculpture.

I take issue with work that depends on expository text. I appreciate the supplemental role that text can play, but I feel that if a viewer cannot ‘get it’ without text in the form of a press release or artist statement, the work might be better presented in the form of a book so that the two are integrated. Cake Mixx is an example.

The cakes were made upon request and without direction by women Harris has dated. They run the gamut, with no two looking alike. According to him, they are reflections of their makers, a notion that makes me nostalgic for the television show Just Like Mom in which parents had to guess which culinary creation their child made after a disgusting taste test. Although Harris sees the photographs as psychological portraits, without the back-story of his approach, they simply read as cakes. The artist says, “Cakes tell it all” but I would argue that it is the press release that tells it all. Furthermore, the viewer is not privy to the details of the makers’ personalities or the nuances of each relationship (as in, say, Sophie Calle’s work) so it becomes an inside joke for the artist and the female participants. Even with the ‘portraits’ being named for the women who made them, it doesn’t function in a biographical way or more broadly in an anthropological way, nor does it function as mere entertainment. The press release says, “The viewer’s head is whizzing” but without the inside story, viewer engagement seems impeded. Unlike the artist—who had the opportunity for continued romantic involvement with the bakers and a vested interest in the symbolism of cake decoration as an indicator of relationship potential—the viewer has nothing at stake, no motivation to probe deeply.

The press release encourages extrapolated meaning: “Is Saran Wrap code for safe sex or daddy issues? Because the frosting is messy, she’s probably wild in bed”. Really? Let me say that again. Really?! I can relate to the impulse to cast baked goods in a sexy light, having recently finished fabric cupcake sculptures with lingerie ‘icing’ (see image below) but ultimately, I fail to see these photographs as sexy...and I’ve read Erin Bolger’s The Happy Baker, which is geared to single women wanting to send messages to their lovers or would-be lovers. At most, I can see the heart-shaped cakes as gendered because they seem like too sappy of a choice for men.

The press release verges on melodramatic by stating, “The cakes cease to be merely relics invested with all the intense beauty and suffering of memory and longing, and instead become infused with a heightened sense of uniqueness, of introspection and of self”. This contrasts the artist’s flippant attitude: “So many cakes. So many girls.” His comment strikes me as the equivalent of making notches on a bedpost. What introspection might occur is interrupted by the perplexing sculpture, Glitter Butt. I actually asked, “Is this by the same artist?” What to make of the disco-ball-like buttocks of a man with a very prominent anus? Is the message that all the concoctions come out the other end looking pretty much the same?

p.s. After making this post, I found Perry Sanatanachote's “Baked With(out) Love” (DNAInfo, April 2,2010), which states, “Harris admits he liked the idea of forcing domesticity and femininity on these women who weren't any good at traditional female roles.” As you can well imagine, this comment made me want to toss my cookies--er, cake.

Explaining, not complaining

2010-04-08T10:39:00.001-07:00

“Yesterday, I overheard the train conductor say something wonderful…”

Further to reading Mira Schor’s A Decade of Negative Thinking (Duke University Press, 2009), I’ve been ruminating on the fine line between critical thinking and critical thinking—that is, critical thinking in the scholarly sense versus negative thinking. It seems that there is a perception of feminists being bitter and focusing on the negative. Chloe Angyal’s article in yesterday’s Guardian, “You’re not a feminist, but…” talks about young women avoiding calling themselves feminists as a way of “play[ing] nice”. Nice and bitter definitely do not go together.

At the risk of sounding obnoxiously self-referential, some of my own insecurities about sounding like a bitter feminist include a summary of a Laurie Simmons talk, in which I wrote, “…after writing blog post after blog post to contextualize my work in feminist art historical scholarship, will I be seen as an overbearing feminist?” And, after attending a book launch for Susan Anderson, I wrote, “Slinking down in my seat, I felt like the feminist curmudgeon, a stereotype that I detest.” Reviewing Erin Bolger's The Happy Baker, I wrote, "Make no mistake: I am not passing negative judgment" and after reading Jeanette Winterson's Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery (Vintage International, 1997), I wondered, "Does advocating for change (say, of gender stereotypes) smack of effrontery?"

Yesterday, I overheard the train conductor say something wonderful that eased my insecurities. He was telling a passenger about his grandmother who was whining about having run out of milk. When he made a gentle comment about her complaining, she said, “Honey, Grandma’s not complaining. She’s just explaining.” Everyone howled. Here’s hoping that is what this blog is accomplishing.

Wanting more of Schor

2010-04-06T11:00:00.000-07:00

“For any cynic who has survived art school or served on a gallery programming committee, 'Trite Tropes' is a ‘must read’.”

Even though it would mean being exhausted on my birthday, I booked the overnight bus last week so I could attend an artist talk by the notorious Lynda Benglis before heading home to Canada. I’m embarrassed to admit that when I learned her talk at the New York Studio School had been cancelled, I did not act my age: I sulked for the better part of the day. And what does a librarian do to cheer herself up? She goes book shopping, naturally. I chose Mira Schor’s A Decade of Negative Thinking (2009, Duke University Press) because I felt the dark title would be a good match for my mood.

My own negative thinking was quickly abated. The only criticism I can make is that Schor’s writing is so luscious that I wanted to relish and reread each sentence before moving on, which slowed the entire experience. Her series of essays on contemporary art is so compelling that I forgot all about the overwhelming stench of urine as I began reading in the bus lineup outside Penn Station. Since Schor is a native New Yorker, I trust that she’ll perceive that as the highest form of compliment should she ever read this post.

It’s much easier to write a post about a book that makes me want to bang my head against the wall than a book that makes me want to nod my head, and Schor’s falls into the latter category. Unfortunately, head nodding contributes little to academic discourse, unless it’s to emphasize the continued relevance of a classic. Nonetheless, it’s worth mentioning that Schor’s observations and opinions rang true for me repeatedly. The book begins with 'She Said, She Said: Feminist Debates, 1971-2009'. When reading the first essay from this section, ‘The ism that dare not speak its name’ in which Schor identifies a troubling trend of women artists not associating themselves overtly with feminism, I found myself thinking, “Yes! Elizabeth Sackler spoke about that very problem at Invisibility to Visibility: Are the Major Museums Opening Up to Women Artists?” (Brooklyn Museum, March 27, 2010). In the same essay, she writes about the importance of the feminist perspective to media literacy and includes excerpts from disturbing news stories as proof. The following morning, I read the free Metro newspaper on the Go Train to stay awake after losing a night’s sleep. Rather than falling mercy to fatigued head bobbing, I engaged in deliberate head nodding with Schor in mind as I read two shocking stories: one about a seven-year-old New Jersey girl whose step-sister allegedly facilitated sexual abuse by multiple men in exchange for cash (no author, Associated Press); and the other about a convicted 27-year-old rapist from Ontario who said one of his victims should now “know to keep her doors locked” (Mattos). These are just two examples that I found myself heartily agreeing with Schor about.

The middle section is on painting. As a non-painter, I’m going to take the liberty of skipping over it in my discussion even though I did enjoy reading it. The final section, 'Trite Tropes', prompted me to vacillate between head nodding and defensive head shaking. For any cynic who has survived art school or served on a gallery programming committee, 'Trite Tropes' is a ‘must read’. Schor considers what makes predictable art just that—predictable. I was laughing along as she rhymed off clichéd elements to which contemporary art is prone: “On one jury in which I participated, we decided that a moratorium should be declared on family photos, cartoons, waifs…” (221). Then, as if a slide of my work had been inserted into the carousel, “underwear, childhood, dresses…” Hmm, it would seem that using dresses and underwear (or ‘intimate apparel’ as I delicately referred to it in a recent grant report) to critique childhood socialization puts me in dangerous territory. I’m too invested to change now, though.

In this same section, in a priceless essay called ‘Recipe art’, Schor facetiously establishes a formula for art world success, which basically involves combining tropes to create one-liners. Although my artistic preferences lean toward the cerebral (but not at the expense of accessibility), I was reminded of the value in one-liners from a current call for submissions for a wearable art competition taking place next month. The instructions underscore the importance of being able to ‘read’ the work from at least six feet away. If accepted, I’ll probably have between 30 seconds and a minute on the runway, so modeling a one-liner is arguably the only viable option. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for ‘Sugar & Spice’, my cupcake bra, or a variation of it. That brings me to another element of Schor's book that provoked me.

Schor subscribes to the tenet that women are still seen primarily as sexual commodities in spite of major advances. Reading this, I nodded my head once again, acknowledging its regrettable relevance even to a seven year old. Reflecting on my own work, I immediately thought of the cupcake bra and the title of my recent show, Titillate. I’m not confident that complicity and self-righteousness (i.e., my belief that I’m creating titillating work for a higher feminist purpose) can co-exist. Someday, someone may call me on it, so in the meantime, I’m trying to sort it out.

Truthfully, I didn’t buy Schor’s book because of the dark title, but rather because of its coverage of feminist art blogs, as I’m preparing a presentation on my blog for the Arlis conference later this month. As much as her coverage of the 2.0 world is exciting, it’s intimidating for me to respond to it from a 2.0 platform. The reason is that Schor critiques the inconsistencies and confusion about feminism that characterize many art blogs. I fear that mine is shaping up to be a combination of head nodding and head shaking, with a fair bit of knee jerking thrown into the mix. If Schor has focused on a decade of negative thinking in her book, in my blog I have chronicled a year of conflicted thinking. For those of you who know me well, you know I’m not referring exclusively to my art, and I appreciate your support. Thankfully, art offers much needed respite.

SOURCES:

---- (Associated Press), “Teen, 15, charged for selling 7-year-old stepsister for sex”, Metro News, April 1-14, 2010. Print.

Melinda Mattos, “Rewriting cultural norms is the answer,” Metro News, April 1-14, 2010. Print.

Mira Schor, A Decade of Negative Thinking. Durham: Duke University Press, 2009. Print.

Doing away with penis envy

2010-03-21T13:36:00.000-07:00

"The Visible Vagina...reminds us of the offensive tropes throughout art history...but it also reminds us of the victories..."

It may have been a poor choice to view the closing of The Visible Vagina, a joint exhibition between Francis M. Naumann Fine Art and David Nolan Gallery, on the same day that I saw the new MoMA retrospective for Marina Abramovic, entitled The Artist is Present. Provocative though the works in the 75-artist show may be, it was difficult to see representations of genitalia as riveting in comparison with actual genital contact at the MoMA.

When I say ‘actual genital contact’, what I mean to say is ‘accidental genital contact’. Google "Imponderabilia MoMA" and you can read a variety of tales like the following. I decided to brave the narrow walkway between two nude actors facing one another in Imponderabilia, originally performed in 1977 by Abramovic and her then lover and artistic collaborator, Ulay (for image and background, please see http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/artist/abramovic+ulay/biography/). While I worked myself up to the challenge, I watched a number of gallery visitors go first, most of them employing strategies like averting their eyes or putting a handbag through first as if to confirm that it was safe. The most common strategy was to turn sideways, which made it easier to go through unimpeded. I felt it was important to avoid this last strategy. My reason was that I didn’t want one performer to be free of voyeurism at the expense of the other, especially because both sexes were represented. As a feminist, should I not aim for equal treatment? (That may seem ridiculous, but it is what was going through my mind at the time). I wonder what stance I would have taken had the actors both been female, which is another combination Abramovic has used. Like most people who have written about the experience, I found the process of making it through to the other side thrilling and panic-inducing. I believe my exact words, whispered in a hushed tone, were “My hip made contact [with the male actor’s penis]. There was definite bumpage”.

If we can’t get past this discomfort and shrill fascination with the human body in its raw state, do we have any hope of appreciating artwork that is one step removed from corporeality? Or is representing the body rather than using the body proper the way to go? In a general sense, it may not be a question worth asking because both already exist in the art world, and both have been well received. It’s apples and oranges, really. For me personally, though, it is more an issue of deciding to stick with a singular fruit regimen or broaden my diet. I still haven’t done the performance I blogged about planning last summer. At the time, I blamed the uncooperative weather, but the truth is, I’ve been stalling because I don’t relish the idea of putting my body on display for my art.

I decided to wait until the end of The Visible Vagina to write about it, in part because I wanted to see what the fall-out would be like. Reading online comments about the show early on, I was amazed by the fixation on the title. It seemed that every commentator was quick to point out that the vagina can’t technically be seen sans speculum and therefore The Visible Vulva would be a more logical choice. Did this virtual equivalent of wrist slapping occur because the organizers were male, or was it an unconscious means to gloss over the actual content of the show because of a collective discomfort with the human body?

It’s not just me imagining widespread discomfort with the human body, and specifically the female body. As television network resistance to the ad campaign released this past week for U by Kotex (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRf35wCmzWw) revealed, ‘vagina’ is unwelcome in our public lexicon. If a picture is worth a thousand words, the equivalent 98,000 inferences to a woman’s private parts in The Visible Vagina are powerful indeed.

My overall impression is that by all accounts, The Visible Vagina is comprehensive. It emphasizes the range of work featuring female genitalia in multiple media throughout art history (encompassing modern artists, Second Wave feminist artists, contemporary artists, and both male and female artists). It can’t be reduced to a peep show because the subjects are shown in states of indifference in addition to pleasure. It reminds us of the offensive tropes throughout art history, like the truncated female nude, but it also reminds us of the victories, like Judy Chicago’s Red Flag (1971), a close-up photolithograph of a woman removing a used tampon (television networks, take note: the art world has already paved the way for public acceptance of the vagina some forty years ago). It includes works that are diminutive/life-size and ones that compelled me to conclude that size does matter. A personal highlight was fibre artist Allyson Mitchell’s installation, Hungry Purse: The Vagina Dentata in Late Capitalism (2006-07). Evocative of a tented harem decorated in grandma’s crocheted blankets and other cozy throw-backs from the 70s, this mammoth rendition of the vagina was exquisite and walking into its mouth felt more delightful than unsettling. (For images, please see http://www.allysonmitchell.com/visualart/hungry_purse/index.cfm).

For the faint of heart, the exhibition can be experienced through the catalog, which includes Anna C. Chave’s valuable essay, “Is this good for Vulva? Female Genitalia in Contemporary Art”.

Social media and the sexes

2010-03-18T14:52:00.000-07:00

“I definitely don’t relate to the aggressive, impulsive, chest-thumping male blogger that Wente bemoans.”

After making a studio visit north of Toronto on Monday, I only got half way back to New York before exhaustion set in. That suited me just fine, as I was happy to enjoy the historic architecture and waterfront of Kingston before heading out the next day. On my way out, I ran a few errands, such as banking in my homeland.

Of the many brochures at the bank, the one for mutual funds/ comfort portfolios caught my attention. The image (cropped version: http://www.tdcanadatrust.com/mutualfunds/tdcomfort/index.jsp) shows a little girl playing dress-up in a wedding gown while her mother looks on, smiling. The veil grazes the floor and the neckline practically comes to her navel, revealing her actual clothing underneath. Her pink top shows two frolicking animals (bears, I believe). They are surrounded by hearts (the classic symbol of love and romance) and flowers (often overlooked signifiers of sexuality). It makes me think of Michael Wolff’s recent assertion that women are popular Tweeters because of their fixation on relationships and fashion. If women can be reduced to these interests (and I’m not saying they are), am I wrong in suggesting a connection with the messages society sends to children through clothing? Back to the brochure, the dominant text—presumably in the mother’s voice—reads, “I’ve got a lot of reasons to invest for the future.” How much would I love that brochure to feature the same girl in a judge’s robes or a surgeon’s scrubs instead of a wedding gown?

Before writing a blog, I’m certain that I would have overlooked this brochure. I would have found artistic inspiration in a pink shirt with bears and hearts and flowers, but it would be in the context of looking for clothing in a store to use in soft sculpture. It would not happen incidentally. Now, though, I feel more attuned to my environment. I’m constantly looking and listening for content that relates to my work. It is one of many benefits I’ve discovered in blogging.

Michael Wolff’s article, “Maybe Twitter is for girls” appeared on Newser (http://www.newser.com/off-the-grid/post/420/maybe-twitter-is-for-girls.html) this past Tuesday, followed by Margaret Wente’s article, “Why are bloggers male?”
(http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/why-are-bloggers-male/article1503780/) in The Globe and Mail on Wednesday. Both have provoked controversy. I don’t use Twitter, so I am reluctant to comment on Wolff’s article. As to Wente’s article, I want to resist the urge to point out female blogging accomplishments, such as the sold-out BlogHer conference. The reason for my post is to consider whether social media is a gendered practice in my personal experience (and yes, I realize that this kind of self-involvement is exactly what dissuades a number of people from reading blogs).

Aside from the obvious fact that the majority of my blog content is feminist, does gender affect my experience of blogging? I think it does. I definitely don’t relate to the aggressive, impulsive, chest-thumping male blogger that Wente bemoans. Far from aggressive and impulsive, I am an occasional and careful blogger. This post, for example, is only my second this month, and it has gone through three drafts. The length of my posts (averaging 600+ words) reflects the conversational tone that Wolff attributes to women, although I believe bloggers can be conversational and scholarly in the same breath. This makes me think of Wente, who compares the act of blogging to ‘mental jousting’ with the public. I agree with the jousting metaphor, but for me, the competition is entirely internal. The challenge is to determine if I can still construct an argument like I could when I was in graduate school (important for working in academia) and if I can continually relate my art to popular culture (important for not losing myself in academia).

Wente connects the shortage of female bloggers to gendered behaviour (namely shyness), but I actually see this trait as a reason for women to be drawn to the medium. Like the younger version of herself that Wente describes, I am a better listener than a speaker. It could be a combination of my Canadian heritage, my gender, and my editorial experience (i.e., learn to ask the right questions and then write like mad when the interviewee responds). Without people interrupting, I find I can really work through ideas in a blog in a way that I cannot in an academic seminar, for example. Similarly, when I attended a session on blogging at the Teaching and Technology Conference at Baruch College last spring, I learned that ESL students tend to be stronger participants in course blogs than face-to-face because the pressures of responding quickly are removed. Wolff writes about the hermetic nature of men and the gregarious nature of women playing into Twitter/ female associations. I think there’s a hermetic quality involved in blogging as well—especially if, like me, you’re more focused on the post being made than on the comments it may generate.

In the ten months that I’ve been blogging at Artist in Transit, the payoff has been wonderful and unexpected. Besides establishing a dialogue outside of my own headspace and becoming more engaged in my subject matter, I have experienced professional perks. Next month, I’ll be presenting ‘Blogging as an Artist/ Librarian Hybrid’ at the Art Libraries Society of North America conference. I will also be exhibiting an excerpt from my blog along with related artwork in Twitter/Art + Social Media at Diane Farris Gallery in Vancouver.

If the blogosphere is the old boys’ club, that's all the more reason for this feminist to retain her membership.

Shiloh: Parsing out celebrity fashion

2010-03-11T06:48:00.000-08:00

“…Shiloh reportedly selects boys’ clothing from stores and insists on being called ‘John’.”

I decided to buy a magazine at Union Station on Tuesday to help pass time during the 13 hour train ride from Toronto to New York. The Economist caught my eye with an image of pink formal girls’ shoes (http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15606229) containing all the cues of femininity I critique in my art. The cover said ‘GENDERCIDE: What happened to 100 million baby girls?’ Economics prevailed, as I realized I could get a hot chocolate and a less intellectually demanding publication for the same price. I settled on ‘Life & Style Weekly’ but as I waded through my whipped cream, I thought back to the term ‘gendercide’. Parsed linguistically, I knew it literally meant ‘to murder gender’ (as opposed to infanticide, which is what the article is actually about). I later looked up the root ‘cide’ and learned that it can also mean ‘to cut down’. Being a concept, gender cannot be annihilated per se, and if you want to get technical, culturally driven infanticide may reduce the numbers of the female gender, but it actually reinforces the gender dichotomy. And, if the cover of Life & Style is any indication, gender is alive and well–more on that in a moment.

Truthfully, I don’t buy celebrity magazines. They aren’t a guilty pleasure, but I will read them in desperation at a hair salon or over a passenger’s shoulder on a flight if I’ve exhausted my own reading material. I couldn’t resist this issue of Life & Style though, because the cover practically screamed, “Why is Angelina turning Shiloh into A BOY?” As a blogger and artist concerned about gender socialization, I was anxious to read the contents.

Let’s not forget that Shiloh has two parents, so fixating on Angelina Jolie alone is ridiculous. If Shiloh were playing into social norms, would Brad Pitt be singled out as the hero? Let’s also not disregard the existence of agency. Androgyny could be Shiloh’s preference. If the article is to be believed, that seems to be the case, as Shiloh reportedly selects boys’ clothing from stores and insists on being called ‘John’.

The juxtaposition of images on the magazine cover contrasts Shiloh’s apparent comfort with the transition to a tomboy version of herself. We see a happy looking Shiloh with sparkling eyes and clothing deemed “trendy but still feminine” (according to a caption alongside a second printing of the photo in the article, p. 26). Beside it on the cover, we also see a boyish portrait. Poorer in quality, the presumably digital photo has a yellow cast (read: sallow skin) and Shiloh has downcast eyes. Her cropped ‘do confirms a statement from an ‘eyewitness’ that her hair was formerly longer and blonder. Is the implication of this comment that the free-spirited celebrity couple has dyed their three-year-old daughter’s hair? Might we not assume instead that her hair is changing colour naturally in sync with toddlers all over the world?

What disturbs me is not the notion of gender bending, but the prospect of gender norms being imposed on Shiloh against her will. A case in point is a promise allegedly made by her nanny: “If you get your nails done, then I’ll give you a prize later” (p. 28). This anecdote strikes me as representative of the pressures of femininity in general: abide by the code, and you’ll get a prize. And what is the prize? Prince Charming? Have I jinxed myself by not painting my fingernails, even for my own wedding?

The first image of Shiloh in the story shows her wearing a pale pink dress. Although it is a casual dress, the caption says, “Girlie in a Gown” (italics mine, p. 27). The caption goes on to compare her to a princess. In closing, I ask, why is it worse for Shiloh to be dressed as a boy (which she is not) than as a princess (which she also is not)? Fantasy and fashion go hand-in-hand and who is to say if her alignment with boys is more or less appropriate than little girls pretending to be royalty?

The heart of the issue is hinted at in an expression appearing in the subsequent article about Shiloh’s parents. In it, a quotation from Jenny Paul’s book released yesterday, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie: The True Story, reads, “Angelina wore the pants at first, but now Brad’s wearing them” (p. 32). Watch out: Shiloh could be a going concern like her mother. She’s wearing pants, and not just in the literal sense.

SOURCES:

-----, "Shiloh's Shocking Transformation", Life & Style, March 15, 2010, pp. 26-29. Print.

-----, "Bombshell Tell-all!", Life & Style, March 15, 2010, pp. 30-33. Print.

Lick it

2010-02-21T08:56:00.000-08:00

“You don’t have to be very visually literate or media savvy to get that Kirstie Alley’s finger in the ad is only marginally bigger than the average erect penis.”

I started sewing at 6 am yesterday, and then it was a mad dash to pack and return to Canada for an artist talk at my alma mater, Sheridan College. On the Metro North train en route to Penn Station, I wondered if I was hallucinating the poster of Kirstie Alley, her head about five times the size of my own. I had been sewing images of cupcakes ad nauseam for the past two weeks; was I just imagining the daub of icing on her nose and lips for the poster advertising her show, Big Life? (To view the image, see http://www.aetv.com/news/images/news_generic_kirstie-alleys-big-life.jpg)

The dominant text on the poster reads, “Life. Lick it.” She isn’t licking her lips, and we don’t see the dessert that is the source of the icing, so the implication is that she is licking her finger (instead of or in addition to ‘life’, apparently). You don’t have to be very visually literate or media savvy to get that Kirstie Alley’s finger in the ad is only marginally bigger than the average erect penis. The finger is surrounded by lips that are about as glossy as could be, making them look like female genitalia primed for intercourse. All the poster is missing is male hands pushing down on her head or shoulders in bad form to cast ‘lick it’ as the linguistic imperative.

Persistence of sexualized images of women eating dessert? Check. Oh, good—not in the sense that I want women to be portrayed like this, but it makes me glad that the series I’ve been toiling away at (Girls I Went to High School With--double click image on left to enlarge) is in fact relevant. I’ve been having a grand time making these embroideries of women eating cupcakes. I start with images found online and alter them, in part for copyright reasons, but also because there’s something satisfying about making them resemble girls I went to high school with. Had the Internet been the social force that it is today, I’m sure many of my classmates would have happily posed with cupcakes in a similarly outrageous manner.

Conceptually, they are enjoyable, but formally, they are as well. I work with printouts of the images pinned to a felt base. I try not to feel sadistic inserting pins into their faces in voodoo fashion and cutting away their features one by one so I can replicate the contours exactly. In true postmodern fashion, I dare say that I am literally deconstructing them. I assumed I would be fixated on the sculptural elements—i.e., the areas of upraised thread wound around each other, mostly in the girls’ hair and cupcake icing. It turns out that I’m also enchanted by the contours. I wanted to them to be virtually unreadable, so that all of the attention is on the girls’ features covered in cosmetics, so I chose a pearly pink that is the same colour as the felt and unreadable from a short distance. I find myself taken by the negative space that is created once I cut out the arm, hand, and cupcake, as the arm reads like the shaft of a penis and the icing like its head. After noticing this effect, I jokingly referred to the embroideries as ‘craft porn’ and said I was cautious about aligning myself with that. My husband asked, ‘Which? Craft or porn?’ It’s a good point—one that I’ll save for another post because I do have to get back to sewing.

Teacher or student, or both?

2010-02-04T13:52:00.000-08:00

"Can I have my (cup)cake and eat it too? Is it realistic to make work for both the general public and the gallery-going public?"

In January, I began co-teaching a class at Purchase College called Art and the Environment. An outgrowth of the campus theme from the previous year (Environment is Everything), it is a collaboration with Environmental Studies professor, Ryan Taylor. The majority of the students are from Environmental Studies, which makes me feel especially cautious about which version of art history is presented. There are so many versions; where does one begin telling the story of art?

We're covering a lot of ground, so it's impossible to highlight everything. Cherry-picking artists and theorists is daunting because I don't want to misrepresent the discipline. At the same time, though, it's liberating. For example, the students were assigned a reading from Anthony Julius' Transgressions: The Offences of Art (2002, Chicago: University of Chicago Press) to contextualize environmental artist-activists. Why is it, I wonder, that none of my former art history studio professors devoted a chunk of time to discussing artists as troublemakers (that I can recall, at least)? I know that I am not alone in my impulse to cross the line. I know that I fit into a tradition of artists who test, break and rewrite the rules. It would be easy to just imply the transgressive nature of art, but pausing to acknowledge it is different. It is part of making the choice about the story being told.

Because the class is for academic credit, writing is a key component, with students writing critical analyses of works of art. Contextualizing this process is Sylvan Barnet's A Short Guide to Writing About Art (2008, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson). Having worked in arts publishing and having written my fair share of art history essays (the last one was worth a whopping 100 per cent of my grade), I didn't expect any big surprises from the book. However, I did run across something that shocked me: in describing the process of 'reception theory', Barnet explains that the uniqueness of the viewer's response to a work of art has really only been valued for a few years more than I've been alive. When I think of all the insights contributed by our students, it's hard to believe that individual responses were not always of interest.

I've been thinking about viewer response lately, because I'm considering applying to a summer arts festival at the end of the month. The reason is that I'm craving conversations with the general public. Will my new work shock them? Bore them? Offend them? Make them laugh? I want my work to affect the general public and make them more aware of the implications of gender socialization, but I also want my work to have a place in the contemporary art world. Can I have my (cup)cake and eat it too? Is it realistic to make work for both the general public and the gallery-going public? That brings me to another reading I want to discuss.

The students read a fascinating article about how people view artwork (C. F. Nodine, P. J. Locher, E. A. Krupinski. "The Role of Formal Art Training on Perception and Aesthetic Judgment of Art Compositions." LEONARDO vol. 26, no. 3, 1993: 219-227). It describes a study that revealed significant differences in visual perception and aesthetic appreciation of paintings, depending on the viewer's knowledge about art. Learning that viewers untrained in art history "spent significantly more time looking at central and foreground figures" (p. 226) made me think about how effective works could be that catered to that tendency. Coincidentally, the work that Professor Taylor selected for the class to examine in person showed a hummingbird--front AND center--in the palm of a hand with a neutral, non-distracting background, made by Purchase alumna, Sara Breznen. If artists were informed about the science of art viewing, would they (or should they) tailor their work accordingly? Which group would/should they choose--the group trained in art or the group not trained in art? Who would I choose?

Another article made me aware of the presumptions I make about the way viewers view. About a year and a half ago, I began making a series of sculptures in which an abstracted cocoon is represented at three points in time. I positioned the earliest/youngest cocoon on the left and the latest/oldest on the right, assuming that people would read them as they would Western language, from left to right. I was forced to rethink this assumption because of another class reading (Roger Cushing Aikin. "Paintings of Manifest Destiny: Mapping the Nation" American Art Fall 2000, 78-89). I know, it seems like a stretch to draw connections between an article on 19th Century landscapes and my own contemporary feminist sculpture, but as my undergraduate studies in a combined studio/art history program (Sheridan College and University of Toronto) taught me, the unlikeliest links can be forged between the disciplines. I digress... Aikin suggests that right-to-left movement in landscapes symbolized the nationalist concept of Manifest Destiny by literally moving towards the West. He raises the issue of whether viewers read paintings in the same way that they read maps or language, which I sincerely hadn't questioned (at least in relation to language; being severely directionally challenged, I don't give a lot of thought to maps).

I want to skip back to Nodine et al. Their scientific study of tracing patterns of eye movement served as a reminder of the interconnectivity of art and science. We could have named the course 'Environmental Art' but instead we called it 'Art and the Environment'. They inform one another, not unlike artist and viewer or teacher and student.

This week on the train

2010-01-23T12:33:00.000-08:00

“IT’S NOT PINK!”

I left the Metro North station today and looked down to discover a long brown thread clinging to my pale blue scarf. Drat. I knew I’d misplaced it while embroidering on the train. With less than six weeks to go until my show (details to follow), there is no time to do anything but sew in my spare time. When my arm gets sore, I am forced to take a break, but I feel bitter all the same.

Something amazing happened the other day on the train. A woman from my neighbourhood whom I have seen countless times sat down beside me, said hello, and asked me how I was. My theory is that embroidering makes me seem like a sweet young woman (and thus, approachable).

Here's my other train anecdote:

I’ve been toying with interspersing a series of images of woman eating cupcakes with stand-alone images of cupcakes. Then I was having doubts about using the same pink background. What does pink have to do with cupcakes, anyway? Today, though, I was reminded of the pervasiveness of the female preference for pink, even when it comes to sweets. To quote a young girl seated across the aisle from me: “I want a pink um, I want a pink um, I want a pink um, I want a pink um, I want a pink um, I want a pink um, I want a pink um, I want a pink um, I want a pink um, I want a pink um, pink lollipop. After she repeated this a second time, her father relented and she defiantly insisted, “IT’S NOT PINK!” I realize that this doesn’t really substantiate my use of pink backgrounds in the cupcake embroideries which I may or may not make (though I had better decide soon), but it made me smile nonetheless.

What colour bra are you wearing?

2010-01-08T06:44:00.000-08:00

"Is this campaign really increasing cancer awareness or is it just baiting male fantasy?"

If you use Facebook, you’ve probably noticed a rainbow of colours appearing under your friends’ status updates. The colours, as it turns out, correspond with the bras that the friends are wearing at the time they updated their status. Since my art is largely about gender, sexuality, fashion and colour (in fact, tonight I plan to take advantage of a sale at Victoria's Secret to buy lacy underwear in as many pastel shades as possible for a new series), I cannot resist blogging on the combination of undergarments and colour.

Facebook has been used for a lot of things, many of which make me cringe. One of its functions is reminiscent of chain letters. My least favourite posts are the ones that try to guilt recipients into reposting faith-based proclamations. Sorry, but I cannot picture God monitoring Facebook and keeping score. Anyway, back to the issue at hand, the recent colour status trend was made possible by a viral campaign exchanged between women which read, “Some fun is going on.... just write the colour of your bra in your status. Just the color, nothing else. And send this on to ONLY women, no men .... It will be neat to see if this will spread the wings of cancer awareness. It will be fun to see how long it takes before the men will wonder why all the girls have a color in their status...” The ladies are then supposed to write only a colour as their status.

Personally, I doubt the success of this venture. For one thing, I didn’t receive the expository email until late in the game, so I initially assumed that it was about racial empowerment when an African American friend’s status read ‘black’. Then a Caucasian high school acquaintance updated her status as white, and I found myself hoping it had nothing to do with race. Frankly, I’m not willing to disclose the colour of my undergarments, in part because I use Facebook in professional contexts, but also because it is not anyone’s business.

Is this campaign really increasing cancer awareness or is it just baiting male fantasy? Based on the reactions of male Facebook users that I’ve seen, the result is bewilderment (responses range from “?????????????” to “Hey Girls. What the heck's going on??”) and a lack of seriousness (one male friend updated his status to ‘orange’). I’m not a complete curmudgeon. I laughed out loud when I saw his ‘orange’ status.

I’m not saying there is no power in word-of-mouth advertising (in fact, in the past 24 hours, 16 of my friends have updated their status). That’s why I’m envisioning a campaign that goes something like this: “Re. the recent colour status campaign, ask yourself, does exposing the colour of our bras really help ‘spread the wings of cancer awareness’? Consider writing a number (just a number) as your next status indicating how many months it’s been since your last professional breast exam. And send this on to your lady friends.”

By the way, my answer is two. And that information I’m proud to share. Why? Because cancer runs rampant in my family, and breast cancer has affected the lives of too many people I love.

All I want for Christmas is...a variety of sexualized images of women eating cupcakes for my art?

2009-12-31T19:36:00.000-08:00

“… there are significantly fewer images of men eating cupcakes in Google Images than women, and only one with nudity I found, though my undertaking hardly constitutes a quantitative study.”

My artistic process is not very glamorous, as I get most of my inspiration from wandering around shopping malls while waiting for the next train. Suffice it to say, in the pre-holiday chaos, I steered clear of malls. Generally, though, they are a goldmine for me, because I can witness how gender construction is tied to consumerism. For example, while standing in line at Nordstrom Rack yesterday, I observed what I like to call colour-coded gender socialization: a young girl, about five years old, picked out a pink scrub for herself for the shower. Then her mother prompted her to pick out the blue one for her brother. It struck me that fashion is not the only way we cover our bodies with pink or blue–hygiene is another avenue. I know I tend to have a knee-jerk reaction with these things but it disturbed me that colour and nudity (and arguably by extension, sexuality) are associated so early on. If you think that the economy does not thrive on differentiating between boys and girls through colour, check out this New York Times article on the recent call for a consumer boycott in Britain by PinkStinks: http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/22/boycotting-pink-toys-for-girls/ (Motherlode: Boycotting Pink Toys for Girls by Lisa Belkin)

I have actually just started looking beyond shopping malls as inspiration for a new series of works. In making two-dimensional embroideries with pink felt as a base and sexualized images of women eating cupcakes as the subject, I decided to use Google Images as a source rather than something like Xtube, because I feel it offers a cross-section of popular culture. The search string ‘woman eating cupcake’ retrieved some suggestive images indeed. Being a librarian, I indexed the images, and I must say, I was rather alarmed that terms like ‘nude’ were applicable on more than one occasion. Incidentally, there are significantly fewer images of men eating cupcakes in Google Images than women, and only one with nudity I found, though my undertaking hardly constitutes a quantitative study. I could not find sexually suggestive images of girls eating cupcakes, even though many of the details are the same as in the photos of their adult counterparts, such as icing around the mouth, fingers in the mouth, mouths engulfing the entire cupcake, etc. The closest I could find was an image of two adolescent girls flirtatiously sharing a cupcake, which my roommate found particularly disturbing because of their age. Had I found no difference between the representations of girls and women eating cupcakes in Google Images, I would likely have embroidered both and juxtaposed them to emphasize their similarities, but apparently it is not meant to be. Frankly I am relieved that the Internet did not live up to my cynical expectations.

Unfortunately, I am ringing in the New Year with a cold. It remains to be seen if I will be awake at midnight, but I am hoping Home Alone and the sugar rush from the gluten-free cupcake I had for dessert will do the trick. The latter was for research, naturally. Happy New Year, and thanks for reading over the past year…

Controversy on campus

2009-12-07T17:35:00.000-08:00

“…as an advocate of unbridled artistic expression and as a supporter of the Neuberger, I am compelled to write about this situation.”

While passing through the train station the other night, I was surprised to see that Purchase College, my place of work, had made the front page of The Journal News. The article ("Hindus ask museum to remove painting" by Gary Stern, December 4, 2009) reports on the impassioned request of Rajan Zed and Bhavna Shinde of the Universal Society of Hinduism, to remove a work from the exhibition, British Subjects: Identity and Self-Fashioning 1967 - 2009. The piece in question, Sutapa Biswas’ Housewives With Steak-Knives (1985), is part of a major show curated by Louise Yelin, which closes on December 13 at the Neuberger Museum of Art.

Before I proceed, I would like to stress that the opinions in this post—unless otherwise stated—are entirely my own and should not be construed as representative of my institution.

As an art librarian, I am never embroiled in artistic controversy, but in my past jobs at galleries, I’ve had to make the difficult call about controversial work. Sometimes the stakes are lower—for example, deciding whether to make concessions like lowering the volume of sound-based art to appease neighbours who work night shifts. Sometimes the stakes are higher—for example, choosing whether edgy work should be removed because the police might be called in with allegations of pornography. It’s not an enviable position, and truthfully, I’m happy to be in the less contentious world of call numbers. However, as an advocate of unbridled artistic expression and as a supporter of the Neuberger, I am compelled to write about this situation.

I don’t see it as my place to comment on the representation of the Goddess Kali in this two-dimensional mixed media work, which is at the heart of the controversy. Whether she is or is not rendered in an appropriate manner is a question that others will debate. What I will say is that reading blasphemy into a contemporary work featuring a deity, let alone in a self-portrait, seems almost inevitable, for as Heather Elgood writes, “Among Hindus the act of sculpting or painting an image of the deity is sacred”.

Google the Neuberger controversy and undoubtedly you will read that Biswas has appropriated imagery from Artemisia Gentileschi’s oeuvre. While it is tempting to fixate on this element as a means to situate her work in feminism, I actually see it as a reminder of the incompatibility of seemingly compatible mindsets and the instability of presumably unshakable reactions to art. This is a lengthy tangent, but I promise that there is a point. Feminist art historians have traditionally seen Gentileschi’s paintings of Judith beheading Holofernes as a feminist response to being raped by her artistic mentor, Agostino Tassi, but recent discussions—most notably by Elizabeth Cohen—counter that we should not project modern-day psychological associations of rape onto a different time period nor identify feminism in a pre-feminist era. In essence, the tragedy was that non-consensual sex destroyed Gentileschi’s honour and ipso facto, her matrimonial eligibility. Rape as a psychological violation simply did not exist as a concept at the time. As contemporary viewers, we want to see Gentileschi’s paintings as a feminist pay-back but it does not jibe. Although impassioned interpretations can seem so logical that they ought to be unshakable, consider that Artemisia’s initial portrayal of Judith slaying Holofernes was at one point attributed to Caravaggio (Lapierre). In other words, reactions to artworks can swing like a pendulum. One group can be absolutely convinced that their interpretation is correct, while another group believes that they are in the right.To return to the point about anachronistic applications of the concept of rape, just as modern day society and Baroque society seem like they would have comparable mindsets about something as horrific as rape, the art world and the religious world seem like they ought to be compatible, especially considering their relationship through patronage. However, art and religion are uncomfortable bedfellows. Assuming interchangeability with their value systems and visual codes has great potential for disappointment and offense.

Ultimately, I feel that removing Biswas’ work would be problematic on several levels. First, it would imply that museums necessarily endorse the opinions and agendas of the artists whose work they exhibit. To remove it because it is deemed to be disrespectful would mean that museums must morally agree with the content of all work exhibited. Where is the line drawn, I wonder? The art world would be bereft of pivotal works like I Like America and America Likes Me by Joseph Beuys, because surely forcing a coyote to be inside a gallery is disrespectful, at least in the eyes of animal rights activists. Rather than being a moral compass, I see the role of a public gallery as being neutral—as providing a context for artwork to be considered and as encouraging dialogue. The dialogue would be cut short with the removal of Housewives With Steak-Knives. Moreover, Indian expatriate artists suffered from virtual invisibility for far too long in Britain, and their inclusion in this exhibition is critical in acknowledging the importance of Indian artists to contemporary art. Even if the Neuberger were to acquiesce, removing Housewives with Steak Knives won’t make it go away. The democratic nature of the Internet will ensure its continued visibility. The irony is that the attention which has been drawn to the work will inevitably expose more people to it than if no request for removal had ever been made. Anyone familiar with Andreas Serrano’s Piss Christ or George Heslops’ Jesus on the Cross? I thought so. Where Biswas’ work differs, from what I can tell, is that it isn’t intended as shock art.

Sources:

Elgood, Heather. Hinduism and the Religious Arts. London and New York: Cassell, 1999. Print.

Cohen, Elizabeth S. “The Trials of Artemisia Gentileschi: A Rape as History.” Sixteenth Century Journal, volume 31, no. 1, (Spring 2000): 47-75. Print.

Lapierre, Alexandra. Artemisia: A Novel, Endnotes. Transl. Heron, Liz. London, England: Chatto and Windus, 2000. Online. http://www.groveatlantic.com/grove/artemisia/endnotes.html

The Masturbators

2009-11-21T18:17:00.000-08:00

“After opening our library’s link to JSTOR, I searched for ‘masturbation AND art’. I came up empty-handed.”

PART 1

This morning I was surrounded by nine masturbating men. It’s not as strange as it sounds. It was at Foxy Productions gallery in Chelsea, the men were paid porn stars, and it was life-size projections that encircled me.

New Media Studies faculty member Shaka McGlotten joined me for the closing of Sterling Ruby’s The Masturbators. As we made our way through the space separately, I found myself wondering what opening night would have been like. For one thing, as a viewer passes by the projectors, the image becomes eclipsed, which means the visual experience could have been fractured dramatically. It would also be nearly impossible to hear the virtual circle jerk of audio—the circular arrangement of speakers emitting smacking noises, groans, grunts, and expressions of self-approval (then again, seeing a man give two thumbs up after ejaculating into his own mouth communicates self-approval just as effectively). One benefit of being there on opening night would have been escaping the sensation of being outnumbered, of being surrounded on all sides by pornographic performers.

Challenging the distinction between art and porn, turning the gallery visitor into an unwitting voyeur, and assuming the hybrid role of artist-capitalist by paying performers are all issues that have come up in my previous blog posts. So the question is, does the work bring something new to the discussion? Shaka argued that it could be seen as turning the gallery into a peep show, which he aptly saw as fitting for an area with an extensive history of public sex. I feel like the public private divide is actually the most intriguing element of the show. The recordings were taken in the artist’s studio, in a white cube that mimics the gallery space, disrupting the distinction between public and private. I have to say, I picture the gallery-going demographic as being more liberal than their non-gallery-going counterparts, which makes me curious about the impact this show would have if it were unavoidably public (say, as projections in storefronts).

PART 2

Before visiting the exhibition, I spent some time researching the place of masturbation and pornography in visual art. My intention was to situate the work in what I found, but I have decided instead to use the experience to explain research strategies.

Although it is tempting to begin every search on the Web, there are significant differences between academic sources and less regulated sources. You have to be aware of the kinds of sources you want to end up with. In this case, searching a database at your educational institution will turn up articles written by professionals but searching online would probably lead you to porn. Scholarly journals are more likely to use medical terms, whereas popular journals or lay press are more inclined to be crass. Always remember to select your search terms accordingly. Allow me to demonstrate.

After opening our library’s link to JSTOR, I searched for ‘masturbation AND art’. I came up empty-handed. ‘Masturbate AND art’? That’s the ticket: 16 results. Now that’s a great opportunity for truncation: a wildcard symbol, like * or ? accounts for variants in spelling at the end of a word—i.e., masturbation and masturbate. Truncation symbols vary from database to database. As to why ‘AND’ is recommended for databases when Google doesn’t require it, again, not all systems are alike.

In expanding my search to reflect the artist’s use of porn stars as subjects, I had a few options: I could search ‘masturbation AND art’ and do a separate search for ‘pornography AND art’. Alternatively, I could combine them: ‘masturbation AND pornography AND art’. However, the more detailed you are, the less results you’re likely to receive. I settled on the Boolean operator ‘OR’. Searching ‘masturbation OR pornography AND art’ would hypothetically bring up articles on art that address masturbation and articles on art that address pornography, but not necessarily both.

Half of the research battle is in articulating a topic. I had a feeling that visual art would have embraced masturbation well before society in general, so I was interested in learning the timeline of social acceptance. While it might seem logical for me to look at history databases, I wasn’t really looking for the history of masturbation per se. I am not actually interested in how our ancestors were passing their time. So really, this subtopic is the history of the perception of masturbation. In this case, databases that focus on psychology or sociology might be more suitable.

From there, I chose my search terms: soci? for the words ‘social', ‘societal’, and ‘society’; accept? for the words ‘acceptability’, ‘acceptance’, and ‘accept’ in combination with masturbat?. When my steps were repeated back to me, it excluded my ANDs, and I noticed that the search string looked vaguely like texting to my Generation X eyes: soci? accept? masturbat? Beyond considering synonyms, it’s also useful to brainstorm antonyms. For example, I could use ‘masturbat? AND stigma’. There’s no need for truncation with ‘stigma’, unless I have an interest in stigmata and masturbation. I don’t even want to envision the scenarios where those two concepts would intertwine.

Portraiture of the psyche

2009-11-08T15:39:00.000-08:00

“It’s so much more palatable to formulate an art historical response than a psychological response. Who wants to purposefully relate to turmoil and anguish?”

Even though I make sculpture about female sexuality, I was eager to see Antony Crossfield’s photographs of apparently asexual male nudes at Thursday’s opening of Foreign Body at Klompching Gallery in Brooklyn. Our work may have little in common on the surface, but we both address the relationship between the body and identity, although my focus is on the clothed body. Crossfield’s eerie portraits feature overlapping bodies thanks to the trickery of digital photography (for images, see www.antonycrossfield.com). Some are subtle juxtapositions with convincing transitions between forms, and others are obvious and jarring, but all of them appear inseparable in a tragic, Kafka-esque manner. They seem to allude to an alter ego or a beast within that is trying to escape, with neither figure necessarily dominant. Therein lies my fascination, as I use the cocoon metaphor repeatedly in my own work. In the cocoon sculptures, the sensation of escape is helped along by a transparent layer torn and gouged to allow portions of the underlying bodily form to poke through. The main reason I wanted to see Crossfield’s work was to take in his luscious transparency firsthand, to find inspiration for the see-through organza I’ve been using as a stand-in for skin. Seeing the works in person, I was also affected by the dilapidated setting for the figures. I felt an affinity with the grubby wallpaper and rusty radiators, since I aim to capture a sense of disrepair in the cocoons to offset their seeming perfection and prettiness.

Each of Crossfield’s interactions, if you can call them that, occurs in a domestic setting. Some are more intimate than others, like a bathtub or a bed with rumpled sheets, but all of the household interiors frame the figures as representations of the private self, as revelations of the psyche. The press release is clear about positioning the works as psychological statements about the lack of fixity of the self. In spite of having access to this background information, I found myself continually returning to art history to make sense of the works, with a secondary impulse to interpret them sexually. Perhaps simplistically, I saw the jigsaw-puzzle-like figural formations as modern-day riffs on cubism, and the promotional image of a limp, languished figure on the lap of a stern-looking man as a photographic version of Michelangelo’s Pièta. It’s so much more palatable to formulate an art historical response than a psychological response. Who wants to purposefully relate to turmoil and anguish? To bring this back to my own work, in approaching a controversial topic like gender identity, can I expect viewers to eagerly face the disturbing prospect that their identity is to some degree beyond their control or that they are unconsciously shaping the gender of others in a potentially damaging way? Do I want to make the kind of work that makes people so uncomfortable that they do not to want to engage with it at all?

While making my way through the exhibition, I was reminded of how difficult it is to avoid bringing your own thematic interests to bear when looking at someone else’s work. Although my mind did go to the concept of the Split Self, entertaining the psychological reading of Crossfield’s work, I was more inclined to see the animated, scrambling figures as engaged in the awkward throes of passion. Even the melded figures that appear perfectly still strike me as powerfully sexual. These figures, which have apparently resigned themselves to their fate as circus freaks, have limbs that overlap as if in an inevitable embrace. Sometimes I really wish that I could enter a gallery and leave my art history training and my studio art practice at the door.

What would mother say?

2009-10-30T12:09:00.000-07:00

"It reminds me of the Victorian-era books written for women that cautioned against being enthusiastic in the bedroom, lest their respectable marriages turn into incessant orgies."

Dotty Attie’s What Would Mother Say? opened last night at P•P•O•W Gallery in Chelsea. As the title implies, the painting series has a cautionary tone. In linear fashion, the detailed works depict figures engaged in apparently worrisome behaviour (smoking, overeating, being affectionate with the same sex, playing ‘doctor’ as children, etc.). Each debaucherous act is represented in a set wherein the subject is male and another in which the subject is female. The subjects are initially shown as children, and later as adult variations of themselves, with liberties intentionally taken with likeness. Each has the same rhythm, with the series of images interspersed with smaller painted canvases containing the text “Keep That Up Her/ His Mother Said” followed by “And Who Knows What You Could Become”.

The male figures always get the better deal. Take, for instance, the set about playing with toy guns (Shoot I and Shoot II, both 2009). The male figure becomes a soldier but the female figure becomes a killer who receives the death penalty. The implication is that the mother asks ‘Who Knows What You Could Become’ in an encouraging way to young boys, and in a threatening way to young girls. It would seem that no matter what a young girl does, her sexuality will ultimately define her. Aside from the death penalty image, I think every conclusion of the projected female future ends in nudity, and usually of the scandalous sort. It reminds me of the Victorian-era books written for women that cautioned against being enthusiastic in the bedroom, lest their respectable marriages turn into incessant orgies. The message is that girls and boys/women and men cannot enjoy the same things without the females becoming disgraced. In her artist statement, Attie explains that her definition of feminism involves no barriers to action and no expectations. This exhibition, then, points to the absence of feminism, by highlighting gendered barriers and behavioural expectations.

The artist is only a few years older than my mother, so I was curious to see her perspective. I was curious to know what behaviour could be considered worrisome. In every scenario, the mother holds her hands to her face, expressing concern. In the scenes that follow, which the viewer understands to be in the mother’s imagination, the appropriation of images like Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara embracing situate the artist in my mother’s generation, which brings me inexplicable comfort. The worries of yesteryear seem so much more manageable than the problems my friends and I face.

Another reason that I wanted to see the exhibition was because of potential overlap with my own work. Last year, I had a show called When I Was Just a Little Girl…Que Sera, Sera? which considered how much of female identity is fixed from an early age. Although my work is first and foremost about gender socialization (i.e., girls as passive recipients of gender expectations), the more I read gender theory, the more I think my work may come to address gendered behaviour (i.e., girls actively shaping their gender). I am very interested, for example, in seeing how many little girls are dressed as fairies, ballerinas and princesses for Hallowe’en tomorrow, and how many of their older counterparts choose costumes with as little coverage as possible. I was even thinking of making a tally or buying up discounted girls’ costumes for a series. Keep that up and who knows what I could become?

The incidental feminist

2009-10-24T17:01:00.000-07:00

“…an artist may actually be driven by something less weighty like focusing on the things they like, be they alligator purses or cakes.”

Laurie Simmons’ discussion with writer/curator Marvin Heiferman at the International Center of Photography took an interesting turn last night when the thorny question of feminist intent came up. She stated that she does not want to repudiate her reputation as a feminist artist, but that making feminist art is not her agenda. It is easy to see how her oeuvre has been cast in this light when you consider photographic works like Walking Cake I (1989), in which a fuchsia and white cake with precariously lit candles dwarfs porcelain legs, replacing the female torso and head entirely; Underneath (1998), a series of women’s widespread legs with miniature houses below; and Color Pictures (2007-09), a series that incorporates cut-out female porn stars with overlaid undergarments in dollhouse settings.

Simmons recalled that the very first review of her work cast her as a feminist. While it was not a reading that she intended, she was not indifferent to its impact. She rightly asked, “How much was I influenced by the first review of my work?” The dialogue that is established between artist and audience is bound to be influential, though not necessarily symbiotic. That first review has also coloured people’s subsequent expectations of her work. She sounded immune to reactions that her work has strayed from appropriately feminist subject matter, for she said, “I don’t think I was ever there in the first place.” Simmons considers herself to be a political person, but not a purposefully political artist.

She does not see her work as ardently feminist because there is no element of anger. Rather, she feels like an observer, which reminded me of photographer Susan Anderson, whom I recently blogged about. Simmons’ work has always been about women, but not about questioning their roles: “I make my work about women because that’s what I am and that’s what I know…the condition of being a woman is so interesting to me.” She has rarely made work about men. “I can’t. I try,” she explained. (I was nodding my head when she said this, having recently made my second piece in a decade that addresses male socialization. As to her comment about anger, I have to wonder if my feminist angst helps or hinders my work. Unlike Simmons, I am not an incidental feminist. I have to wonder, after writing blog post after blog post to contextualize my work in feminist art historical scholarship, will I be seen as an overbearing feminist?).

Although great importance can be attached to presumed artistic motivation, an artist may actually be driven by something less weighty like focusing on the things they like, be they alligator purses or cakes. Simmons loves fashion, so she has engaged in collaborations with designers like Thakoon Panichgul, who made a line of clothing from fabric featuring a rose on legs and Peter Jensen, who made paper dolls with tiny garments, which Simmons photographed in her characteristic style in dramatically lit interiors. Jensen’s model in a pink satin dress with juxtaposed massive overlaid pearls has the effect of wearing shackles, drawing attention to the blurred line between the quirky and the subversive in Simmons’ work. Even though her approach to work sounds lighthearted and playful when she describes it, this is not to say it is not consuming and powerful. When you really get into your work, Simmons said, “it knocks you off your feet. It destroys you.”

Working through gender

2009-10-15T20:39:00.001-07:00

“It was disappointing to learn that my ‘gender aptitude’, or what I think of as gender conformity, was precisely in the middle of the spectrum, under the category ‘gender novice’. Ouch.”

In spite of a car accident that foiled our Canadian Thanksgiving plans, my husband and I made it to Toronto in time to catch the public preview of the Textile Museum of Canada’s BMO Shadowbox Fundraiser, which includes a piece by me. Once we boarded the overnight bus on Tuesday, I asked for my passport back. My husband held both of them out and quipped, “Which one of us do you want to be?” To appreciate the joke, you need to know that in my post-grunge oversized knit sweater phase, and when he had long hair, we were mistaken for each other from behind on more than one occasion. The joke was also in response to my reading material, Kate Bornstein’s My Gender Workbook (1998, Routledge).

I found the book accidentally at Bluestockings while looking for theory to contextualize a bibliographic analysis of feminist erotica that I am planning with a colleague. For once, I had a commercial transaction related to my art that didn’t embarrass me. Maybe it’s because the prospect of being confused with the brave sort of person the book is geared towards is flattering. Written by a transgendered author, My Gender Workbook is intended for individuals who currently transgress gender or are flirting with the idea of it. Bornstein points out that even asking questions about gender is transgressive, so it could be argued that as an artist, I am marginally part of the target audience. However, while I regularly ask questions about gender in my work, it’s on a societal level, not an individual level. Even so, based on my latest blog post, I thought it might be prudent to see where more self-reflection could take my practice.

It was a treat not being the one asking questions about gender for once. From the many open-ended questions, I felt my most noteworthy answer was to the question, “What does simply being the gender you were assigned at birth give you?” (p. 68). My answer? “Consistency.” From the many multiple choice questionnaires, the answer that most resonated with me was the question about defining gender: “Gender is what happens to me when I get dressed in the morning” (p. 15). In my art, I argue that clothing is a means to construct gender from infancy onwards. Interestingly, when the author tries to liberate the reader, her advice is to engage in genderless behaviour that makes you feel “like a little kid” (p. 77) but I would argue that adopting that mindset does not entail escaping gendered constraints. I remember being a little girl who refused to wear pants, who thought it was impossible for women to have jobs like firefighter, police officer, doctor and principal. Maybe the two are related, maybe not, but the adult version of me cringes at the memory. It’s odd that clothing plays such a strong role in gender construction since Bornstein points out that gender and sexuality get confused, making genitals the qualifier of gender in society. Clothing just covers them up.

I don’t feel personally conflicted by the hierarchical dynamic the author exposes in which two socially privileged monogendered identities are the only options. Where my personal struggle exists is in fitting the bill for the feminine ideal (based on the author’s criteria, not my own arrogance) but also being a feminist. I was surprised that the author encouraged readers to look at visual art as a way of working through gender issues. She takes it to the next level, asking “Can your gender become a work of art? Can you become your own work of art?” I was bewildered because I can’t seem to reconcile the relationship between my personal and artistic leanings, between my inclination to strive for the feminine ideal while simultaneously critiquing it.

Overall, this book was a delight to read even though I have no aspirations to bend my gender. It was disappointing to learn that my ‘gender aptitude’, or what I think of as gender conformity, was precisely in the middle of the spectrum, under the category ‘gender novice’. Ouch. As someone who has been reading gender studies theory more lately, I had hoped I would do better. But maybe that’s right where I, the fickle feminist, belong. After all, I take liberties with my artistic presentation of gender but not my personal expression of it. I have no desire to live outside the system, but I do wish for a world where there is increased consciousness about gender assignment and reinforcement.

SOURCES:

Bornstein, Kate. My Gender Workbook: How to Become a Real Man, a Real Woman, the Real You, or Something Else Entirely. London: Routledge, 1998. Print.

The candour of Canucks

2009-10-12T21:13:00.000-07:00

“…when does the liberal, exhibitionist element of my art become alter ego, become fantasy, become reality?”

When my Canadian mail was hand-delivered to me this week in the US, I caught up on an issue of Macleans a month late. Lianne George’s article “You’re Teaching Our Kids WHAT?” about pleasure-centered sex education caught my eye because the introduction mentions the Toronto store, Good for Her.

I had a flashback to my visit to the store in the dead of winter to pick up a rush order for sequin pasties to use in my cupcake bra (something I need to arrange again for my exhibition, Titillate, this spring at Gallery 1313). The store offers a sex-positive environment that by all accounts should make anyone comfortable. In principle, I am an ardent supporter of the sex-positivity movement. But, as I have let on in past blog posts, I find that I can walk the walk academically, but not talk the talk personally. Blushing with embarrassment, I am sure that I was as red as the pasties when I went to pick them up, wanting to cry out to the non-judgmental staff, “They aren’t for me—they are for art! ” It didn’t help that I was feeling unlike myself already. Wearing extremely heavy makeup for the photo shoot, I felt the impulse to add, “I don’t normally wear this much makeup. I’m a feminist!” as if one precludes the other. Interestingly, this discomfort is notably absent when I am performing for the camera. Although I have always thought of this process as strictly documentary, it begs the question, when does the liberal, exhibitionist element of my art become alter ego, become fantasy, become reality? When does ambivalence become acceptance? Perhaps the existence of this blog post indicates that the moment has arrived.

Being linguistically oriented, I can pinpoint with conviction the first time I encountered the word ‘ambivalence’ (as I can with many other words). It was in high school while researching Pablo Picasso, who was as much a womanizer as an artistic genius. The interplay between his personal and artistic aspirations struck me, but I was especially affected by the ambivalence towards women prevalent in his work. The very concept of ambivalence, this irreconcilable tension, has become central to my artwork over time; an excerpt from my artist statement reads “Hopeful and hopeless, the cocooned forms appear to simultaneously break free and become further bound.”

Artwork, particularly of the conceptual vein, is a safe haven for avoidance, non-fiction writing less so. In contemporary art, ambiguity is a virtue, a sign of sophistication. The interplay between my personal and artistic aspirations has always been nebulous to me, but it was a comfortable situation because no artist wants to give away all of the answers. However, as I read George’s article about the information gap facing teens who want details about healthy sexual relationships, I realized that I have been struggling with my own information gap as an artist. Beyond the obvious feminist agenda, what drives my practice? Moreover, what is with the pervasive sexual ambivalence? The best I could do a year ago was to say that there was sexual ambivalence, let alone deconstruct it.

The Macleans article, which describes the progressive direction of sex education in Canadian high schools—Alberta notwithstanding, where students can be excused from class when sexuality and sexual orientation are being discussed—was clarifying because it made me reflect on my own experience as a student. The very year that my male elementary school teacher was arrested and charged with sexual abuse, the replacement teacher introduced the book, Where Did I Come From? by Peter Mayle (1973, Lyle Stuart Books) and our gym teacher introduced the all-powerful anonymous question box. No counseling took place after the teacher’s arrest, but it should have. I don’t doubt that we were all affected on some level, as victimization takes many forms and not all of them dovetail with the law. No wonder sexual ambivalence reared its ugly head in my artwork and I became wary of men. The disparity between sex-negativity and sex-positivity in a single year was too great to wrap my prepubescent mind around.

Through the process of immersing myself in sex-positive feminist writings, exhibitions and events as content for this blog, maybe I have subconsciously been trying to bridge the gap between sex-negativity and sex-positivity, between ambivalence and acceptance. Instead of finding clarity in these logical sources, I found it in the unlikeliest of places. It seems that the cocoon metaphor that I have been using in my sculptures is not just a safe haven for avoidance, but an apt metaphor for my life, a reminder of the importance of gestation. Patience is a virtue after all, not ambiguity.

Out of the (glossy) mouths of babes

2009-10-03T18:44:00.000-07:00

“While Doonan’s account of ‘tarted up tots’ vying for ‘the pink spotlight’ may have been tongue-in-blushed-cheek, he took an objective stance on pageants that bordered on defensive.”

Barbie may be 50 this year, but her youthful likeness thrives in today’s beauty pageant world. I thought so instantly when I saw Susan Anderson’s photographic portraits of child pageant contestants at a book launch and discussion held at Brooklyn’s Powerhouse Arena on Thursday night.

Viewing the homogeneous group of petite pretties featured in High Glitz (2009, powerhouse Books), I had two reactions in quick succession. Initially, I experienced shrill delight at seeing the prominence of feminine signifiers (it means that I have no shortage of inspiration for my artwork, which is about gender socialization through clothing, or simply put, why little girls like pink). Once this excitement subsided, I felt nauseated. Maybe if I watched the TLC show, Toddlers & Tiaras, I would have been prepared for the degree of artifice. I was aghast at the fake eyelashes, fake tans and fake dental veneers that replaced fresh-faced girls with tiny versions of over-processed women. Truthfully, I felt like the entire cohort of ‘popular girls’ from my high school was staring me down, reminding me of their supposed superiority. I felt freaked out for today’s generation of young girls, but I also felt freaked out for adolescent and adult women. The photo of a girl in a high-cut swimsuit that showed off her hairless body served as a scathing reminder that women in their natural state are incompatible with society’s notion of attractiveness.

I have spent more time and more money than I would like to admit sourcing out little girls’ pink formal wear from clothing stores to use in my artwork. At the checkout, there is the inevitable oohing and ahing from sales clerks and fellow customers, none of them realizing that my purchase is the first stage in a feminist critique. I felt a similar feeling of being the odd-one-out at this event, both when the audience cheered for the real-life pageant winner who graced us with her presence, and when Barney’s creative director Simon Doonan read his essay from High Glitz. Everyone laughed at all the right parts while I scribbled frantically in preparation for this blog post. While Doonan’s account of “tarted up tots” vying for “the pink spotlight” may have been tongue-in-blushed-cheek, he took an objective stance on pageants that bordered on defensive. He praised them for teaching skills like endurance, and cautioned against knee-jerk reactions, saying that it’s “easy to act disdainful and superior”. Slinking down in my seat, I felt like the feminist curmudgeon, a stereotype that I detest.

Anderson, a Los Angeles-based artist, also took a fairly neutral stance. Although she is “not a performer”, she said that if she had a daughter, she would not be opposed to her entering pageants. Anderson also emphasized the dedication of contestants’ mothers being on-call for their daughters during 14-hour days, doing things like sewing sequins and curling ringlets. Hearing Anderson speak about her series, I perceived the stellar portraits as having an anthropological bent, but it disturbs me that they could just as easily be used in a pin-up calendar.

I tried to follow their lead and be more objective in my reaction. Thinking about the fact that the subjects selected their own props and posed themselves, I conceded that they had a role in constructing their identity. But that made me think back to Grade One, when many of my classmates elected to dress as Madonna for Hallowe’en, oblivious to the fact that they looked like prostitutes. Looking at Anderson's photo of a little girl wearing Go-Go boots and a mini-skirt, or a backless, off-the-shoulder dress, I got shivers, thinking that the pageant contestants don’t even understand the implications of their attire. Doonan, however, defended the over-the-top nature of pageant aesthetics: it is “like Liberace, like Elvis, like Siegfried and Roy—it’s fabulous”. But is it fabulous to cast girls in sexy roles and to suggest that their worth hinges on their looks? Is feminist antithetical to fabulous?

Later, I ruminated on Doonan’s comment that it is “easy to act disdainful and superior,” asking myself, is making critical feminist art ‘easy’? I don’t think so. For one thing, I struggle with hypocrisy. I can ask scholarly questions about gendered preference, but I am not opposed to buying my niece a fancy pink dress for a Christmas gift because let’s face it, she’ll love it. And she is not alone. Looking at the portraits in High Glitz, the pageant winner remarked to the audience, ‘All the dresses look pretty and their hair’. Out of the mouths of babes…

For more information: click here

Reading art

2009-09-27T14:26:00.001-07:00

“...excerpts from novels like Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness set the tone at the gallery’s entrance.”

“I’m totally having a Hiroshi Sugimoto moment,” I mumbled in awe, standing in front of Dominique Gonzales-Foerster’s dioramas yesterday at Dia at the Hispanic Society in Washington Heights. My mind immediately went to the Japanese photographer’s luscious black and white photographs of museum displays that meld two-dimensionality and three-dimensionality, replacing artifice with realism. Sugimoto might lean towards realism and Gonzales-Foerster surrealism, but there is a magical quality that links them.

After culling her personal library collection and that of the Hispanic Society, Gonzales-Foerster has inserted weathered paperbacks into naturalistic settings that range from desert to rainforest. Intended to be imaginary landscapes, they are the outgrowth of listening to the Buena Vista Social Club, which makes me love the installation that much more. It’s simulacra punctuated by realia in the form of books. Are the books discarded arbitrarily or placed deliberately? My guess is the latter, since their selection was carefully curated: each was chosen for its geographical setting or the locale in which the author wrote the book. Frank Herbert’s Dune, for example, appears in the desert diorama. Either way, they feel like relics of civilization, like the Statue of Liberty in Planet of the Apes. The books are the only inhabitants of these scenes; there is no evidence of animal life. Single pages, curled up at the edges, evoke skin that has been shed or bones that have disintegrated into near-dust. Others appear more animated, such as an open book that is spot lit and suspended, like a bird in flight.

As a librarian, I was drawn in by the collecting impulse. Ultimately, I read the dioramas as a cautionary tale. Being immersed in a college setting where research generally begins online instead of with books, I saw these castoffs as symbols of the decline of knowledge, the side-effect of not evaluating information effectively. These are the survivors, but so what? That’s melodramatic, sure, but excerpts from novels like Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness set the tone at the gallery’s entrance.

As an artist, I was affected by the implication that creative output can be a person’s legacy. Artworks—traces of who an artist is—persevere for the next generation to ponder, dismiss, react against, build on, or appropriate. The obsession with lineage in art history has fallen out of favour, but it’s still a reality, and very much a seduction. Gonzales-Foerster is quoted in the New York Times* as saying “With a library,” she said, “you slowly build a biography for yourself” and I think the same is true of art making (or blogging, or any creative endeavour, for that matter). Biography becomes legacy somehow, whether intentionally or not.

Upon leaving, I had a very strong urge to reread Anna Banti’s fictional biography of Artemesia Gentileschi. In the heartbreaking introduction, the author mourns the loss of her initial transcript, an unlikely casualty of WWII bombings. I imagine that Gonzales-Foerster would be pleased that her installation made me want to crack open a book.

For more information: click here.

*Kennedy, Randy. “It’s only natural, this thing for books.” The New York Times. Sept. 18, 2009.

Yinka Shonibare MBE at the Brooklyn Museum

2009-09-21T19:03:00.000-07:00

“Although I am prone to look for the sexual element in art, I read this work more as revisionist art history…”

It was well worth the two hour trip on public transit to catch the closing of Yinka Shonibare MBE’s exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum this week-end. I know I am supposed to view Shonibare’s work through a political lens and use terms like deessentialism and deterritorialization, but can’t I just decline? Can’t I just say that I am fascinated by his use of fabric in sculptural installations?

Born in London to Nigerian parents, the artist explores fabric as an ethnic signifier (therein lies my personal fascination, since I am fixated on baby dresses as feminine signifiers in my own work). His signature style includes headless mannequins dressed in Victorian garments made from wax fabric associated with African fashion, even though it is produced in the Netherlands. These mannequins are posed in settings that disrupt our notions of the Dandy lifestyle and of the relationship between race and class. To get back to formal concerns, I wanted to see the exhibition because my cocoon sculptures are also headless forms where subtle folds in fabric differentiate figures from one another. I suppose I am more interested in identity creation than in identity politics.

The exhibition includes video and photography, but I am going to focus on two installations in particular. Images can be viewed at http://www.yinka-shonibare.co.uk/

Gallantry and Criminal Conversation (2002) shows figures fornicating on and amidst baggage that represents the Grand Tour, which was a rite of passage for well-off men for more than cultural edification. The one work I couldn’t get past was of a ménage à trois in which the buckled shoes of the topmost man barely graze the floor, placing his dead weight on the poor woman’s bosom. The erotic nature of the installation is fascinating, because there is so little skin exposed. This thought brings me back to my last post on underwear and the role of clothing in sexual behaviour.

The Swing (After Fragonard) (2001) recreates Jean-Honoré Fragonnard’s Rococo painting, The Swing (1766) of a woman flirtatiously swinging in a pastoral setting with her shoe cast off. As would be expected, her Victorian dress is rendered in Dutch wax fabric, which has been interpreted as emphasizing the universality of sex. Although I am prone to look for the sexual element in art, I read this work more as revisionist art history, as a reminder of the heavy bias towards the West in the discipline. Anyway, to get back to the sexual aspect of the work, the installation is cordoned off, so the view is controlled. This sounds irrelevant unless you know some of the history of the work. It was a controversial commission by the man who appears in the foreground of the painting. He is positioned in such a way that he has a full view of the woman’s genitals, which would be unobstructed because of the minimal selection of undergarments in this time period. Neither the viewer nor the priest pushing the woman on the swing have access to this peep show. In Shonibare’s installation, the audience is likewise denied a view up the woman’s skirts. Nonetheless, as with Gallantry and Criminal Conversation, the arrangement of the clothing alone is sexually suggestive. Interestingly, Shonibare has excluded both male figures in the installation, which causes me to see it as an endorsement of self-satisfaction. Uh-oh, following the logic of Michael Schwartz, the chief of staff for Senator Tom Coburn, could art turn a viewer’s sexuality inward, making them homosexual?

Skivvies and sexuality

2009-09-18T12:30:00.000-07:00

“…there was one subject who must have been ‘going Commando’ when the photographer approached him.”

Last night was the opening of Ana de la Cueva’s El Paquette, an installation of faux underwear packages featuring the artist’s male friends, relatives and past lovers as models. At JANE KIM/ Thrust Projects these cardboard boxes in plexiglass cases showcase men in contrived poses against neutral backgrounds with sexually suggestive text. The promotional image, for example, says ‘double support for maximum appeal’ on a package of twins modeling briefs.

Although not all of the subjects have a sexual history with the artist, their sexuality seems to be the intended focus, since the press release notes that the text on the packaging is gleaned from interviews about the subjects’ fetishes and favourite positions. There is a disturbing ambiguity in some; a reference to ‘papa’, for example, connotes paternal relations as well as who’s-your-daddy proclivities. With the figures cropped fairly consistently from nose to knees, keeping the focus front and center, they should seem sexy. After all, it references the art historical practice of objectification through truncation.

Nonetheless, there’s something about the subjects that doesn’t strike me as overtly sexual. Maybe it’s the lighting, or the spontaneity of the photo shoots, as the artist photographed the subjects wearing the undergarments they had on at the moment of confrontation. Most are utilitarian, though there was one subject who must have been ‘going Commando’ when the photographer approached him. I wonder if my failure to read the figures as sexualized is because the emphasis is on clothing. Men have a smaller range of undergarment options than women, and they aren’t faced with the same social pressures to incorporate sex-specific clothing into their erotic personas. How many men have excused themselves to go slip into something more comfortable? With the focus of El Paquette being on men in their underwear, the viewer cannot tell whether the figures actually felt sexy at the time of the shoot. Were they women, however, the presence or absence of lingerie would be a clue. (That causes me to wonder, would a male heterosexual artist get away with mounting a show like this? Would the female subjects oblige, or would they be stopped by insecurities about their bodies? Would representations of past lovers be interpreted as trophies? Since I can think of at least two female heterosexual artists who have made work about past lovers, does that suggest a double standard?)

I feel like I had to search a little too hard for meaning in the work. I can see merit in contrasting the idealism of advertising with realism and relative lack of objectification, but it might just work against the series. In typical advertising, the subliminal message would be “buy this underwear so you can have sex”. In these photographs, however, there is no sexual tension between artist and subject since all are former lovers, presumably platonic friends, and relatives, thus the message reads as “some of these figures had sex with the artist and they trust her enough to be photographed in their underwear”. That, to me, doesn't carry the same intrigue as was implied by the 'double your pleasure, double your fun' promotional image. Ultimately, the installation feels more like art, and less like advertising. That is to say, if these packages were snuck into a store, the difference would be obvious. Appropriating the advertising aesthetic is not an easy thing to accomplish in art but to be convincing, it has to be head-on. Pun intended.

T & A (Transgression & Art)

2009-09-12T19:21:00.000-07:00

If read as the three figures interacting, the work really pushes the viewer’s moral boundaries…

I am pleased to say that my blogging hiatus—the result of a nasty cold at the busiest time of year on campus—is officially over. And now for an exhibition review…

Because over 70 works comprise the 30-year survey of Genesis Breyer P-orridge’s notorious art career, they are hung in close proximity to one another at Chinatown’s Invisible-Exports. As a result, my head couldn’t have been farther than a foot away from that of a gentleman viewer when I took in the first ‘beaver shot’. Just then, I heard an authoritative-sounding “Very Dada” from behind. Actually, I would have gone with ‘very surreal’. “Oh wait,” I realized, “the gallerist is referring to the artworks, not my extraordinarily awkward viewing experience.”

I incorrectly assumed that I had become desensitized to pornographic images after compiling a binder of pornography photocopies for a colleague last week, which I procured from the Sexual Representation Collection at the University of Toronto. Alas, I was a tad squeamish viewing the array of collage, photomontage and photographic works that appropriate pornography. I waited until I was on the train home with the list of works to give G.P-O (as s/he is known) due consideration. Even then, I kept wondering if my seatmate was eyeing the images with curiosity, and me with judgment. Although my art alludes to erotica for shock value, it seems that I can dish it out but not take it.

In my embarrassed state, I initially found the most accessible works to be the humourous ones. Some read like one-liners, such as mail art featuring a banana poking out of a man's pants, and a collage that combines a label for cock-flavored soup with predictable pornography. This is not to say that a one-liner cannot be successful, and given the childish humour associated with sexuality, it is extremely appropriate.

Once I poured over the list of works, I was actually more impressed by the ones revealing the artist’s dark sense of humour. Allow me to preface my reactions with some theory. As strange as it sounds, collage is a sexualized medium. Of surrealist and Dadaist collage, Lydenberg (1988) writes, “everything that is juxtaposed in collage…can ‘make love’; the procreative possibilities, therefore, are staggering”(280). Meanwhile, Derrida (as paraphrased by Ulmer, 1983) believes, “If the clipping is associated with ‘castration’…the montage or dissemination of the fragments thus collected in the new frame is associated with ‘invagination’ (collage/montage is a bisexual writing)” (90). If these quotations seem far-fetched, consider the following works.

Untitled (mail art to Robert Delford Brown) (1977) superimposes a photograph of a woman performing felatio with a portrait of a man in a suit, conflating cropped penis and tie. What I love about this piece is the hint of a smile on his face, as if acknowledging the sexual act; the power reversal suggested by her dominance (both in size and because she is in colour while he is in black and white); and the contrast of his suit, a signifier of formality (read: public costume) with a private act that generally excludes clothing.

Similarly, Education Sentimentale (mail art to Jean-Pierre Turnell) (1978) shows a young child whose arm morphs seamlessly into an arm and hand spreading the buttocks of a woman to display her genitals. If you can get past the disturbing combination of children and pornography in the same image—a common pairing in h/er oeuvre—such works are captivating. For instance, a work of the same name and year as the Turnell piece juxtaposes a photograph of a woman masturbating in the foreground, with two children in the background. The children's downcast eyes mirror those of the woman, and hint at child sexuality, connoting the pleasure of looking at oneself during a sexual act but also implying sexual shame. If read as the three figures interacting, the work really pushes the viewer’s moral boundaries by establishing the children as voyeurs.

The transgressive nature of the works should come as no surprise to those familiar with the artist. G.P-O is infamous for being called a ‘wrecker of civilization’ by the British art minister in the 70s because of the controversial exhibition, Prostitution. In recent years, G.P.-O made headlines for undergoing a remarkable process of collaborative plastic surgery with performance artist and late lover Lady Jane Breyer, to resemble one another as much as possible.

SOURCES:

Lydenberg, Robin. “Engendering Collage: Collaboration and Desire in Dada and Surrealism”. In Katherine Hoffman, Collage: Critical Views, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1988, 271-286. Print.

Ulmer, Gregory L. “The Object of Post-criticism. In The Anti-aesthetic: Essays on Post-modern Culture”, Hal Foster, ed. Port Townsend, Washington: Bay Press, 1983, 83-110. Print.

Stripped, Uncensored

2009-08-20T06:03:00.000-07:00

“Between the disco balls and the purple crepe paper lining the walls as an unconventional backdrop for artwork, it felt like this was the prom these gay men never had.”

“Just half a glass,” I cautioned. Only a trickle came out.

I can’t remember when the bartender winked at me. Maybe it was immediately before he turned away from me and revealed his Speedo, bent over to pick up a new bottle of wine, and flexed his biceps while uncorking the bottle. Or it could have been after he saw me awkwardly try to look away.

No, you haven’t stumbled onto a romantic fiction site. This is my account of Tuesday night’s release for Bruno Gmuender Books' Stripped, Uncensored that I attended with our LGBTQ librarian, Sarah Van Gundy. When we arrived to the packed room at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center in Chelsea, we were the only women there.

I realize that I don’t represent the target audience for the evening, but for what it’s worth, these are my impressions of the exhibition and party that showcased artists from the book.

The tone for the evening was established when each guest received an editioned postcard-size reproduction of a couple having a very good time, courtesy of the Center and NEXT magazine. The x-rated portions of the beautifully rendered work were covered with a paper slip. The work in general was heavy on sex, treading the line between art and porn. Clearly, it appealed to the gay male crowd (case in point: I had to move out of the way so an admirer could photograph an artist in front of his work). I won’t lie—the work made me blush, even though I volunteered to do two days of research in Canada last week on gay pornography and art for a colleague (one day was spent looking at no-holds-barred gay artists at the library and archives of the National Gallery and the other was spent perusing pornography at the Sexual Representation Collection at the University of Toronto).

Interestingly, although all of the work in Stripped, Uncensored was figurative, not all of the work was homoerotic. There were also quite a few facial portraits of men, such as haunting paintings by Michail Tsakountakis. Being privy to the sexual orientation of the artists caused me to see these works as equalizing in some way, as if purposefully deemphasizing sexuality and proclaiming ‘we’re all people’. Or maybe they are more a celebration of pretty boys and I’ve missed the point. At any rate, it does raise the thorny issue of whether an artist’s sexual orientation (or biographical details in general) should be read into artwork.

All in all, the show didn’t take itself too seriously. Rather than coming off as thumbing its nose at the gallery world, it seemed to be about gay and artistic pride. Sales people wearing big ribbons made their way through the crowd, placing oversized red dots on the works that had sold. Bins of artwork were poured over by visitors in flea market fashion. Between the disco balls and the purple crepe paper lining the walls as an unconventional backdrop for artwork, it felt like this was the prom these gay men never had. (I am projecting because my prom date was Rick Telfer, who hadn’t yet come out. Although we had a grand time, I imagine he might have preferred to bring someone else. He went on to lobby for others to have that same right for high school prom: to read more about his activism, click here and for extensive background information, click here.)

Maternity and artistry

2009-08-15T13:08:00.000-07:00

"This blending of personal and professional selves underscores her argument against feminism and maternity being mutually exclusive."

Until I was on the Go bus from Mississauga to Toronto after visiting a friend from Europe the other night, I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to describe Andrea Liss’ Feminist Art and the Maternal (2009, University of Minnesota Press). My writer’s block was unblocked by the jocular expressions of my friend’s nine-month-old son and by feeling his tiny fingers clutching my toes. I figured the usefulness of the book for me would be in the examples of artwork, since my work centres around baby clothing and socialization, but Liss’s style of writing is what really stood out for me, as a model for academic/personal blog writing.

Liss’ unique writing style involves the interspersion of personal memories throughout the text. She recalls meeting an artist at a conference, for example, which segues to a memory of being away from her feverish infant son to attend the same conference. In a blog, this degree of self-disclosure would be unsurprising. In a scholarly book, it is surprising, and beyond that, it is refreshing. The separation of personal and professional selves in the academic world is possible, but it’s an illusion and not necessarily a helpful one. I realize that the notion of the personal being political is hardly novel, but I haven’t seen a book with this approach before so I was quite taken by it. Her assessment of artwork is still authoritative and well written, even if the reader is privy to details of her personal life. Especially in a book about mothering, why shouldn’t Liss include an entire chapter about the impact of her breast cancer on her relationship with her son? And why should a writer’s outlet for sentiment be restricted to a dedication page at the front of the book?

This blending of personal and professional selves underscores her argument against feminism and maternity being mutually exclusive. Also encouraging is the unstated point that maternity and artistry aren’t mutually exclusive. I remember watching an interview with gallery director Olga Korper in a gender studies class I took for pleasure at Nipissing University, in which she noted the challenges that motherhood places on studio output. Liss’ myriad examples of mothers making art provides a positive counterargument. Maybe the issue is quality and not quantity, because the work these women are making wouldn’t exist without their experience of being a parent. At any rate, Liss describes interesting examples of art from the 1970s onwards which range from documentary (women capturing the minutiae of their children’s development) to therapeutic (mothers working through the untimely death of their children). I like that she opens her book with an account of her student’s performance, evidence that she doesn’t restrict her roster of artists to the ‘usual suspects’. This inclusivity strikes me as suitably feminist, although I am left wondering, is anyone focusing on artworks by men about the joys of parenting, assuming they exist?

Boxing Gloves & Bustiers

2009-08-09T05:48:00.000-07:00

"...video has become a mirror to a lot of artists." --Kate Gilmore

On Wednesday, the dentist asked me if I wanted to stick around for a root canal or book a later appointment. "Hmm," I thought. "Should I get my first root canal spontaneously or catch the next train downtown to see an exhibition curated by a colleague?" The choice was simple: I was on the 3:58 to Grand Central. It seemed that the cosmos was chastising me though: the first scene I watched in one of 14 videos made by women in Soho20's Boxing Gloves and Bustiers featured a large tooth used as a key.

Curator Kate Gilmore, who works on the same campus as me, was kind enough to agree to an interview. Here's what she had to say about the show.

Q-The title Boxing Gloves & Bustiers prepares the viewer for a show that is both girly and grrrly, if you will. Do you see the title as referring to a spectrum that a single woman might inhabit, to alter egos, or to something else entirely?

A-I actually did not come up with this title. It was a title that was already picked and I juried the show from a large group of people who sent in videos. That said, my impression is that this was a show about women who were very comfortable being women--both in terms of reflecting a stereotype of female sexuality as well as reflecting a non-stereotypical assumption of female sexuality.

Q-Artists like Ronnie Cramer and Jody Wood redefine our notions of acceptable female behavior with with their physically aggressive female protagonists. Cramer profiles a very dedicated female wrestler and Wood attacks women in public spaces in what feels like a spoof. What has the reaction been to works like these in the exhibition?

A-I think all the works in the exhibition have received great reactions, but I haven't been around on a daily basis to give you the detailed responses. I do, however, feel that these pieces in particular reflect a strong aggressiveness in the female characters, allowing the audience to view an unexpected reality. Especially, the Ronnie Cramer piece because this is a documentary project where these actions are really taking place as opposed to planned and "acted".

Q-Anybody can be a star these days, with YouTube profiles and reality television shows. Do you think the performative element of video, where you feel as if the artist is performing for you alone, is more prominent now as a result? I'm thinking of works like the one in which Valerie Garlick sings 'I've got you under my skin' while scratching her sunburned arm until the flakes are thrust at the would-be viewer, and of Katarina Riesing's 'Duet', in which she lip synchs 'Don't go breakin' my heart' while remaining indifferent to the bloodbath she's participating in, with a the-show-must-go-on kind of perkiness.

A-I think video has become a mirror to a lot of artists. Artists are using video as a very self-reflective tool--an inexpensive, relatively easy, fast medium to get their messages across and to create new forms of self-portriature. Video and the simple means to put it out in the world allows artists to have a more immediate reaction to their work. Is this a result of YouTube or reality television, I'm not sure, but I think the moving image and the creation of that in a relatively simple and fast way is very attractive to a lot of contemporary artists.

Q-I found a number of the works difficult to stomach, like Yi Hsin Tzeng's in which buckets of paint are poured over a woman's head (it reminded me of waterboarding) and the one in which a naked woman is strapped to the underside of a table and awkwardly attempts to crawl around a room. Did you find the process of vetting the submissions to be taxing in this way? I imagine that it could have been overwhelming.

A-I really enjoyed jurying the show. Sure, there was a lot of work to look at--some good, some bad, some difficult, some easy, but, as an artist myself, it is great to see all these people working in interesting ways and trying to function withing this theme. I appreciate work that is "hard to stomach", if it makes sense, is well executed, and fully expresses the theme at hand.

Q-With so many artists making their videos available online, do you feel that the role of the curator has changed when putting together a show of video art?

A-Maybe. I am not a "curator" per se. I have done a couple of curatorial projects, but I, in no way feel that I can give you a full answer to this. That said, as an artist who works in video, watching videos online is a very different experience than seeing them in an exhibition--watching work on flatscreens, projected, in installations, etc. If a curator is just looking to the Internet to put together video exhibitions, we might have a serious problem on our hands!

Stopping to smell the roses

2009-08-06T06:43:00.000-07:00

“…I encountered a work in the A.I.R. exhibition that snapped me out of making snap judgements.”

The best time to traverse the Brooklyn Bridge is immediately after a thunderstorm. The temperature plummets and few people are out strolling, so you can cross in record time. On Sunday, I walked two-and-a-half hours from the lower east side to D.U.M.B.O. via the bridge and back again, to check out the new A.I.R. Gallery exhibition. Curated by gallery director (and Purchase College graduate!) Kat Griefen, tART @ A.I.R. features a diverse array of works from the tART collective, ranging from formalist to feminist. I was disappointed to learn that this group of artists is pronounced ‘tee-art’ rather than what I had mistakenly assumed: ‘tart’. The latter would be so cheeky (and I must admit, I have the convergence of feminism and baked goods on my mind because I’m about to make a shadow box of fibre cupcake sculptures for a Canadian fundraiser).

Just as I enjoy walking briskly in the city, I tend to breeze through galleries. It might be the result of having worked at a commercial gallery and observing gallerists and collectors make quick, intuitive decisions. During this time period, I visited the Art Gallery of Ontario with my friend Melanie and was amazed by the amount of time she spent with each piece, carefully considering all aspects. It made me aware of how ruthless I was. The problem is, my ‘speed viewing’ has made me somewhat resistant to media that demands a set amount of the viewer’s time, like video art and sound art. Interestingly, I encountered a work in the A.I.R. exhibition that snapped me out of making snap judgements. It made me realize that maybe art doesn’t demand time from the viewer so much as it rewards the viewer for investing an adequate amount of time. I am cognizant of the hypocrisy in my behaviour, as I sometimes include subtle contradictions in my work* and hope that viewers will take the time to notice. I want my own audience to work hard. Shouldn’t I be expected to do the same?

The work in question is Hvalreki (2009) by Rebecca Loyche. Allow me to describe the work as I encountered it: I put on the headphones and watched black and white footage of a woman signing in translation as an impassioned male voice, perhaps a politician, played in the background, dominating the sound of crowds. I made instantaneous assumptions about the woman being critical but not as critical as the man in power, about the woman as symbolic mediator, possibly more nurturing and connected to the masses. The silent woman juxtaposed against the booming male voice was very effective indeed. Not familiar with the language, I wasn’t inclined to keep the headphones on for long, but as I was about to disengage, the voice switched over to an impassioned female voice. Was it an opponent of the man? A colleague? Suddenly my assumptions had to make room for new possibilities. The work couldn’t necessarily be reduced to a male-female binary, at least not in the way I had imagined. I became curious about the work so I looked up Rebecca Loyche. She did a residency in Iceland where she joined the Women’s Emergency Government group and was inspired by protests, some of which are related to a shortage of information (which piqued my interest as a librarian). When I researched the Women’s Emergency Government group, I read about their use of a pink dress to drape a political statue. Lesson learned. Pink dresses are the mainstay of my artwork. Who knows what I’ve overlooked in the past that is not only interesting in its own right but that could contribute to my own development as an artist?

After I left A.I.R., I made it a personal goal to be more open-minded about art that takes time to view. So far so good: only three days later, I went to a show of video art curated by Kate Gilmore. Stay tuned for more about that exhibition.

*In my Aberration sculpture series, I depict an abstracted cocoon, made of baby clothing and fabric, at various points in time. They appear to grow from left to right as they increase in size. There are more elements of embroidery on the clothing replicated on the outer surface of fabric, so it’s like the babies are developing new features or at least their existing features are becoming enhanced. I like to include a few anachronisms for good measure…bits of embroidery that suggest a reversal of time from left to right. I’m not trying to be difficult. Rather, I am responding to the tension of not knowing whether the cocooned forms are breaking free or becoming further bound.

A stitch in time

2009-07-30T14:12:00.000-07:00

“I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed a panel discussion this much...”

This morning on the train, a woman complimented a friend on her blouse, which she explained had been custom made by a seamstress. “Oh!” her friend replied with delight. “I sew a lot of my own clothing!” It dawned on me that it has been years since I sewed my own clothing, even though I did it all the time in high school. Unlike my sister who followed patterns diligently and produced clothing that looked exactly like it should, I took liberties and reveled in the challenge of correcting my mistakes. There was something very satisfying about determining how all of the pieces fit together, and that’s probably where my interest in fibre sculpture really began. I made dresses with grommets, skirts with asymmetrical hems, and even a quilted skirt with a secret pouch to hide money in case I got pickpocketed at my first concert (Lollapalooza, if you’re wondering).

I learned to sew long before adolescence. My grandmother—or Grandma Saunders, as my sister and I called her—taught me to avoid sewing with a strand of thread longer than your arm, and my mother showed me how to sew on a steel machine attached to a clunky desk (from the era of televisions with wooden exteriors that resembled furniture). In high school, I befriended Joann Schelstraete, who is now a successful designer at Danier Leather but at the time she was still studying fashion design. Anyway, at some point shortly after she graduated, I think in my first year of university, we went to an exhibition about fashion at the Royal Ontario Museum, where there was a garment by a classmate of hers. It had lots of stitching, which I would call expressive rather than decorative. I can’t remember her name but I can tell you that a new world opened up to me when I saw it.

Wow, that turned out to be a longer reminiscence than I expected. Writing this has made me realize that I miss having different approaches to sewing, so I decided to sign up for a class (more on that in a moment). What I intended this blog post to focus on was last night’s panel discussion at Manhattan’s Center for Book Arts. Five artists discussed their work in the exhibition, Threads: Interweaving Textu[r]al Meaning, which was organized by Lois Morrison and Alex Campos.

After a dramatic introduction with thunder in the background, Iviva Olenick talked about her quirky journalistic embroideries which document her love life. I enjoyed her presentation so much that I signed up for her continuing education course this fall at Pratt, The Embroidered Art Journal: Embroidery as Narration and Illustration. (I have been meaning to take an embroidery class for several years so I am very excited, especially to find one with a focus on contemporary art). Next up was Jonathan Fetter-Vorm, whose lively discussion of the history of suturing—the focus of his screen printed book—was a real treat. Because I sew cocoon sculptures, I was pleased to learn that when an animal/organism ruptures from its constraints, it’s called a suture. And because my work is about clothing, the body and sewing, I also thought this observation was noteworthy: “[Through suturing,] we treat the fabric of our bodies with the same tools as we use to make the clothing we put on our bodies.” Following Jonathan’s talk was Meda and Veda Rives, twin sisters whose aptly named Mirror Image Press offers art that is as engaging as their identical twin-ness. Their largescale installations of handmade paper containing embedded thread evoke spiritual associations without being heavy-handed. Elise Wiener followed, captivating me with her realization that “Stitching in and of itself was beautiful”, which is evident in her undulating, colourful stitching on LPs from her youth. Her commitment to making a work of art each day for a year is inspiring. The night finished off with Tamar Stone, who stole my heart with her bed books. In these loose interpretations of books, each layer of the doll-sized bed sculptures—the blankets, sheets, pillows, and mattresses—contains embroidered stories about the lives of women based around beds, ranging from tales of midwifery to being locked in a bedroom for apparent insanity.

I’ve never had a conversation with anyone about the versatility of thread, although I did give an invited lecture on stitching as mark-making in a Sheridan College drawing class this past winter. If asked why I use thread and not another medium, here is what I’d talk about: its ability to bind two things together, to be camaflogued through tiny stitches, to form an image through repeated stitches (i.e., embroidery), to create an expressive line by pooling, to create unexpected knotted masses, and to fray. It is to me what paint is to painters.

The show runs until September 12, 2009 and there will be a second panel discussion (featuring Patricia Dahlman, Tanya Hartman, Yoko Inoue, Vandana Jain, Heather Johnson and China Marks). I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed a panel discussion this much, so I hope you will try to make it, especially since I’ll be out of town and won’t be able to see it myself.

To view images by the artists:
Iviva Olenick
Jonathan Fetter-Vorm
Meda and Veda Rives
Elise Wiener
Tamar Stone

Gallery 2.0

2009-07-25T16:21:00.000-07:00

“The work we probably should have seen coming, that was only a matter of time, is Colleen Asper’s seven-by-nine-foot painted replica of the Google search engine page.”

Internet art seems like it should be the ultimate authority on contemporary cyber culture as far as artistic commentary goes. This movement, which operates under a variety of names like net.art, uses the Internet as the intended venue for exhibition, as opposed to works of art that are represented through online documentation as more of an afterthought. Because it has been addressing issues of authenticity related to authorship and appropriation for a while now, I had not expected the non-Internet artworks in Image Search (on view until July 31 at Chelsea’s P·P·O·W Gallery) to strike me as particularly innovative. I was mistaken. The group exhibition, which is about life in the age of the Internet, is very smart. For example, two artists take up the issue of collaborative authorship (or more cynically put, contested authorship): Aids-3D paid an online service in China to produce a painting for the show, and Jason Lazarus similarly made arrangements online for a message to be spray painted on the Palestinian side of the West Bank, which has been documented with a photograph.

At the library, I am currently making lesson plans to encourage the responsible evaluation and use of online images, so the appropriation of images is of special interest to me. Two of my favourite works in Image Search relate to this topic. Christoph Draeger has taken an image from Google Images of the mushroom cloud in Nagasaki and made an enlarged version comprised of a puzzle with the pieces painted a suitably grim black. Its negative space is formed by removed pieces that fragment the image, alluding to pixelation and also to the destruction of nuclear war. Equally impressive is Conrad Ventur’s video of Dolly Parton singing, taken from an anonymous online space. Projected through a rotating crystal, it too is fragmented, resulting in an ethereal image that recalls the unfixed nature of the Internet. It is also reminiscent of the disco-derived aesthetic of photographic images morphing into one another that takes the viewer back to the 1980s era of the footage…that is, for those of us old enough to remember that aesthetic.

The work we probably should have seen coming, that was only a matter of time, is Colleen Asper’s seven-by-nine-foot painted replica of the Google search engine page. Even if it could be argued to be predictable, it nevertheless rings true by highlighting the veneration of Google as the preferred source of knowledge. With the artist’s name wittily entered in the search box, it also serves as a reminder that Google is the ultimate validation of the self, at least if the results are plentiful and favourable. This is an example of appropriation that I will definitely be showing students in library instruction sessions because it taps into our visual culture effectively and also raises contentious issues about copyright. In our library instruction sessions, we definitely don’t skirt around the existence of Google: we use it as a point of reference, as a means of comparison, and even as a complement to the library’s services which are available by subscription only. If I could curate any piece into our exhibition spaces, I think Asper’s painting would be my top choice, as a gesture towards today’s youth about the library being a place of co-existence. I think the student population would absolutely love the painting. To view it, double click on the image in the third row down here. By the way, don’t reset your screen, thinking that you have accidentally been redirected to Google.

Gearing up for my first performance

2009-07-20T12:31:00.000-07:00

“The performance will be informed by my new understanding of space as a precious commodity in Manhattan. I’ll be counting on people infringing on my personal space so they are close enough to become part of the performance…”

Last week, I took the overnight bus to Toronto and turned around immediately with my husband to renew my employment paperwork for the US and to add him to mine as a frequent visitor. Along the way, we saw graffiti that said “Read more!” repeatedly. The librarian in me smiled, while the rest of me ached for sleep. I’ve been too tired to heed the advice of the graffiti and get any reading done, but I have been plotting an unconventional way to encourage reading: weather permitting, I’ll be doing a performance this week that will prompt unwitting viewers to read my body. To inscribe words on my own body will surely prove as unsettling as being on the receiving end of a stranger's written comments about my body, but it needs to be done to address the injustice of the latter incident (the details of which I won’t dwell on here), plus it’ll relate to my previous cocoon sculptures that address the phenomenon of text-based socialization through baby clothing.

Too tired to read, I’ve indulged in watching my DVD set of the television show, Felicity. The main character, a college freshman played by Keri Russell (who is now a real-life New Yorker) describes Manhattan as a blizzard in which she is but a snowflake. That line makes me think about the difficulty of capturing someone’s attention in New York. It would be a lot easier to do a performance in my hometown where there is less visual stimulation, but I think I’ve found the perfect place to do the performance in New York. It’s actually the same place where I got the idea for the performance, after seeing a woman wearing the same kind of clothing on which I want to comment. I’ve never done a performance; the closest I’ve come is modeling wearable art for photographic documentation. I’m not quite sure how I will gear myself up for it, but I will admit that I’m making this post to ensure accountability. I’ve stated that it will happen, so now I have to go through with it.

As I’m used to thinking of sculpture with a frontal focus, it will be very strange for me to become the sculpture in a sense and to be moving through space. A quotation by Louise Bourgeois that I saw on the week-end at the Dia:Beacon keeps going through my mind even though I can’t remember the continuation of it: “Space is an illusion.” While walking around the top floor of the stunning gallery to view her work, I believed she was right. Moving towards the bench where my husband sat, I perceived a stationary sculpture to be animated as he went in and out of my field of vision. Likewise, from different vantage points, the security guard was eclipsed by a hanging Bourgeois. But I also had a knee-jerk reaction to the suggestion that space is an illusion. “Oh really?” I thought. Having ample space is the difference between hitting your head on the paper towel dispenser and the doorknob in a puny Manhattan restaurant bathroom and not; it’s the difference between getting a parking space at 2 am and having to go to a parking garage and take a taxi back because your neighbourhood is too rough. (I will recall memories like these when I look at the photograph I just purchased by James Prez of graffiti that says ‘New York Fucking City’). The performance will be informed by my new understanding of space as a precious commodity in Manhattan. I’ll be counting on people infringing on my personal space so they are close enough to become part of the performance, to act as the conceptual completion to the act of assemblage.

I’m off to Pearl Paint to procure some materials for the performance. Stay tuned for photographs this week-end.

P.S. I was in fact foiled by the rain. Now I am just waiting for a time that is convenient for both me and my photographer-husband.

Dear Sarah Jessica Parker...

2009-07-16T13:10:00.000-07:00

"Cherry-picking from a group of earnest artists also potentially reinforces the myth of the reclusive artist who waits to be discovered".

Dear Sarah Jessica Parker,

Bravo didn’t happen to pass on my request for an interview, did they? Alas, I figured it was a long shot. My hope was to talk to you about the reality television show that is in the works, to be produced by your company, Pretty Matches. Unfortunately, I’m ineligible to try out for the casting call for American Artist this coming week-end at New York’s White Columns Gallery because I don’t have a schedule that coincides with the projected dates of filming. It’s a shame, because I thought it would be fun to say I tried out. Mind you, had I actually made the cut, I probably would have felt conflicted. Here’s why:

I’m not a fan of reality television shows, What Not to Wear notwithstanding, and maybe it’s because they just aren’t realistic. American Artist does offer a semblance of reality by involving real-world art professionals, who will critique the work of artists undergoing art-related challenges, and select a winner who gets a cash award, an exhibition, and a sponsored national tour. However, I have to wonder if it’s wise to fast-forward through the stages of development of up-and-coming artists. Having just read Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers (Little, Brown and Co., 2008), in which he argues that 10,000 hours of practice leads to expertise (attributing the Beatles’ success in part to their grueling performance schedules in Hamburg), I feel like artists might be better served not having all eyes on them while they are still refining their style and technique. It will be interesting to see how the winner sustains his or her career.

Also veering away from reality is the prospect of having artists work outside their chosen media. I’m perplexed about what the value is in this, especially because I’m not convinced of its entertainment value. My husband works exclusively in photography, and I in fibre; if someone made us switch, I don’t think it would be the makings of a good show. It’s imperative for artists to push themselves, but that quality is generally innate for the ones who are likely to make it. Also, I fear that it sends out a damaging message about artists needing to be skilled in multiple media to be successful. Artists who fall into this category, like Michael Snow, are surely recognized for this, but there are plenty of artists who specialize in a single medium who aren’t valued any less because of it.

Cherry-picking from a group of earnest artists also potentially reinforces the myth of the reclusive artist who waits to be discovered. In reality, gallerists and curators have artists on their radar well before they become involved with them because the artists have put themselves out there and aren’t working in isolation. Maybe, ironically, that’s the one realistic element that will be offered up by the show: the artists who are brazen enough to respond to the casting call may have a good shot at getting ahead in the art world because they see the value of exposure. But the type of exposure could be critical. Will the winning artist be respected after the fact? Can a similar model work as, say, American Idol where artists have gone on to strike record deals?

Undoubtedly, American Artist will perpetuate the notion of the art star as well. The thing is, we already have art stars because of high profile art awards. The glamour that comes with those awards is called into question by Sarah Thornton’s Seven Days in the Art World (W.W. Norton, 2008) by revealing the mixture of melodrama and disappointment that surrounds Britain’s Turner Prize. Melodrama makes for good reality television, for sure, but it sounds like American Artist might be searching for art stars in a context where they already exist.

Naked! or Nude?

2009-07-10T14:36:00.000-07:00

“...the implication of Nair down there has made a comeback in contemporary portraiture...”

Naked!, the group exhibition that opened last night at Paul Kasmin Gallery in Chelsea, seems to have been curated by Adrian Dannatt to get a rise out of people. It’s all there in the phallic exclamation point.

The press release’s wording, “Women like to look at themselves, and they like to be looked at; they like to be looked at looking at themselves” invites a Bergerian analysis. By that I am referring to chapter 3 of John Berger’s Ways of Seeing (The Viking Press, 1972). In saying “...the classical nude often pretends to itself that it is not just plain naked,” the press release challenges the distinction between ‘naked’ and ‘nude’ as established by Berger. Feel free to disagree with my paraphrasing of Berger: to be naked is akin to visiting the gynecologist or getting dressed in the morning—it’s a lack of clothing for pragmatic reasons or in situations where there isn't a gendered power struggle; to be nude, on the other hand, involves objectification, either imposed or self-imposed, and it is associated with women. If the works in the exhibition are indeed naked(!) and not nude, it follows that idealism should be absent.

The exhibition purports to celebrate the physical beauty of “attractive naked females”. Here’s the bad news: beauty appears to be equated with slender, predominantly Caucasian women who have not yet experienced the onset of grey hair. On the topic of hair, which Berger noted is a symbol of sexual power, you won’t see a lot of it. The inclusion of historical portraits dating back to the Seventeenth Century—which is a curious curatorial choice—serves as a reminder that women were idealized in visual art, sans pubic hair, until the advent of photography, with ripple effects felt in paintings like Gustave Courbet’s L’Origine du Monde* from 1866. Interestingly, the implication of Nair down there has made a comeback in contemporary portraiture, as seen in Naked! with works like David LaChapelle’s Nature’s Naked Loveliness, Moscow (2003) and Mark Ryden’s Sophia’s Bubbles (2008), and to a lesser extent in Mel Ramos’ Rita Ritz (2008). My question is, can the show really be considered post-sexist, as suggested by the press release, when idealism abounds? At least there are representations of homosexuality, portraits of women by women, and portraits of men by men included for good measure. As to the latter, I’m not sure that the “male flesh...sully[ing] the haremic purity of this exhibition”** puts me at ease though, if only because of the choice of words.

I think Dannatt’s writing in general is intelligent and mindful of gender issues, so I fear I may have missed the punch line of the exhibition, that its irony eluded me. Perhaps I was distracted by surveying myself instead of surveying the artwork? At any rate, it got me thinking about the possibility of nakedness and nudity converging in the studio. Last week-end, I paired a baby dress of mine with a garter in a cocoon sculpture to emphasize the uncanny and disturbing similarity of their pink floral embroidery. At first I was thinking that the dress relates to nakedness, since self-consciousness is a non-issue for babies, but that the garter connotes nudity. Then I realized that the baby dress involves objectification, in the sense that we take pleasure from dressing baby girls a certain way, which means that the dress could be about nudity as well. Even though I don't work in the realm of the figurative, the same issues are still very much present, and not necessarily any easier to tackle. Maybe Dannatt is right about the blurred boundaries between naked and nude after all.

*to see image: http://www.musee-orsay.fr/index.php?id=851&L=0&tx_commentaire_pi1%5BshowUid%5D=125&no_cache=1
**http://www.paulkasmingallery.com/exhibitions/2009-07-09_naked/press-release/

Empowerment in the Empire State

2009-07-08T12:52:00.000-07:00

“…[Marcia Tucker] enforced affirmative action hiring policies, fought for equal pay for equal work, gave herself permission to be emotional in the workplace when it was warranted, and didn’t let the obligation to run a meeting interrupt her breastfeeding schedule.”

I’m new to New York and still getting a sense of who’s who, so I didn’t realize that Marcia Tucker was no longer alive when I began reading her heartwarming autobiography, A Short Life of Trouble: Forty Years in the New York Art World (University of California Press, 2008). I was standing on the platform of the White Plains train station when I turned the page to her epilogue and saw that it was written by someone else (that someone else is artist Liza Lou, who worked tirelessly to complete the book after Marcia’s death).

It felt like I had been sucker punched. A wave of nausea followed and persisted for at least half an hour. Surely it must have been a case of my body remembering the insatiable grip of cancer, of having my father—who, like Marcia, was afflicted by lymphoma—whisked away to the afterlife as fast as the express train that was hurtling through the station just then, leaving me reeling. The hardened part of my personality insists that this was the reason for my visceral response to the autobiography. I mean, it’s not possible to become that attached to a person you don’t know in 208 pages is it?

Language has transformative powers though, and learning about Marcia’s resilience in the New York art world was encouraging to me personally. Reading about her transition from a poverty-stricken, fearless young woman living in a cockroach-infested apartment to the founder and gallery director of the New Museum gave me hope that moving here was the right thing to do. It’s the kind of reassurance I’ve needed since I got trapped in my broken apartment elevator the first week I was in New York and had to call 911, causing me to fear it was somehow symbolic, that I was fated to be an artist in transit to nowhere, literally and figuratively. It’s the kind of reassurance I would normally seek from my father but can’t.

Enough about me. I want to devote some space to Marcia Tucker's feminism and related contributions to the art world. A Short Life of Trouble: Forty Years in the New York Art World follows this incredible woman from 1945 to 2004. It is a candid account of how personal life and professional life can be bound by a keen interest in and great respect for contemporary art. She brushed elbows with artist celebrities and made celebrities out of other artists. However, her greatest pride seemed to be in contributing to feminism from the then unusual position of female curator (first at the Whitney Museum of American Art and later at the New Museum).

A self-described “die-hard feminist” (p. 110), Marcia channeled her dissatisfaction with the treatment of women artists and her own treatment as a female professional (she was objectified by select individuals inside the institution on top of being seen as the enemy from some women outside the institution). She organized solo exhibitions for women artists and fought against the art apartheid that has traditionally segregated ethnic minorities from the rest of the art world. As an administrator, she enforced affirmative action hiring policies, fought for equal pay for equal work, gave herself permission to be emotional in the workplace when it was warranted, and didn’t let the obligation to run a meeting interrupt her breastfeeding schedule.

Her feminism extended beyond the workplace, although it was all related: in 1968, she helped develop Redstockings, a consciousness-raising group that still exists today, and two years later, she participated in the first Women’s March down Fifth Avenue. She was a risk-taker who really put herself out there. Her boldness came through not just in daring exhibitions but also in her ‘extracurricular activities’; she started an a cappella group of untrained singers called the Art Mob, and she embraced stand-up comedy classes which culminated in her quirky persona, the art-centric Miss Mannerist. Her tendency towards openness led her to unexpected and enriching relationships, from a husband seventeen years her junior to friends twice her age. All of these tales are delightful to read, but summarizing them doesn’t do them justice, so please check out the book yourself. You’ll find it on our new book shelf at the library, as soon as I return it, that is.

Putting the femme in femmage

2009-07-03T09:38:00.000-07:00

“Although I wondered about the ironic risk of essentializing feminist artists by singling them out in an exhibition, I tried to let my mind relax and think about what these artists could teach me.”

I should probably take the subway more often instead of being frugal. Walking from Grand Central Station to Chelsea last night proved to be doubly frustrating. First of all, I was stopped multiple times by a Democrat wanting to know if I was a registered voter, meaning that I had to endure the quizzical-bordering-on-annoyed expression I receive when I say, “I’m not American.” It gave me a strong urge to read Edward Said. Second of all, I got stuck in a downpour, so I had to squeeze out the bottom six inches of my trousers before entering Pavel Zoubok Gallery, which made me feel anything but glamorous. The effect of gravity on wet fabric in combination with flats made for a tripping hazard, and I found myself wondering if the Manhattanites in high heels were onto something good. (Note to self: stop being smug about sensible footwear).

The exhibition that opened last night, Daughters of the Revolution: Women & Collage, showcases the works of over 30 fantastic modern and contemporary artists. I decided to go because I had written a paper on Hannah Wilke’s collages, which are severely underrepresented in scholarship. The paper was for a course on collage taught by David Moos, the curator of contemporary art at the Art Gallery of Ontario. It was the most intense class I had in my art history masters. A small group of us sat in a windowless room one afternoon a week to debate the importance of ‘the cut’ and other collage-specific phenomena, and confided in each other about feeling invigorated but mentally drained afterwards.

I was curious to see Wilke’s work in relation to collages by other feminists because it represents the opposite approach to what I argued. Unfortunately, I couldn’t really get a sense of the context because of the crowds at Pavel Zoubok. However, I can say that the first image to confront me was a checkerboard pattern of breasts, so seeing Wilke’s work a few seconds later naturally made her collaged forms seem vulvic even though she herself resisted a singular interpretation. Allow me to explain how my approach was opposite: in my essay, I suggested that the best way to insert Wilke posthumously into the lineage of collage—read the old boy’s club—was to put her on equal footing with her male counterparts. Specifically, I called for a formal analysis over a feminist analysis (the latter is typically applied to her work). This was a difficult decision for me because there is nothing I would have loved more than to focus on the feminist nature of her work.

A formal analysis reveals Wilke’s contributions to the medium of collage, namely: her conceptually significant introduction of gum and erasers to the roster of collage artists’ media (her work in Daughters of the Revolution—Köbenhavn [1975]—features multiple eraser forms, a fascinating choice of material for an additive process); her blending of collage and assemblage through the addition of tiny sculptural forms on two-dimensional backgrounds; her playful enhancement of perspective through subtle changes in the scale of collaged forms; and her provocative merging of collage with performance. These developments warrant the attention of art historians, and not exclusively feminist art historians, for they represent a unique departure from collage while remaining firmly committed to its principles.

Although I wondered about the ironic risk of essentializing feminist artists by singling them out in an exhibition, I tried to let my mind relax and think about what these artists could teach me. Here’s what I learned: ever since Toronto artist Vladimir Spicanovic asked the participants in our seminar if any of us worked in collage, I have felt like a fool for piping up about the assemblage of 30 dresses I was in the middle of making (see image above and below; double click to enlarge). I questioned the validity of the labels ‘collage’ and ‘assemblage’ because the dress was neat and tidy, devoid of the violence that is associated with ‘the cut’.
However, last night, seeing Donna Sharrett’s symmetrical and carefully rendered work made me feel less foolish and as I write this, I realize that Wilke’s placement of forms in her postcard collages was equally deliberate and also considered collage. Additionally, discovering Ann Shostrum’s wonderful piece, Strawberries (2009), with its jagged edge and hand stitching, made me feel justified referring to my cocoon sculptures as assemblages in my artist statement—even though a member of the art world has already done so. If only we could live in a world without labels.

After the downpour came to a halt, I made my way back to Grand Central Station and picked up some gelato. The cashier said with a warm smile, “Enjoy your 4th of July.” Thank-you, I will enjoy my 4th of July, even though I am not American, even though I am not a daughter of the revolution. I’m thrilled to be here, to be living in a city where I couldn’t catch all the gallery shows if I tried. Funny, I no longer feel the need to read Edward Said.

Click here to view images from the exhibition.

Socially engaged art

2009-07-02T12:52:00.000-07:00

“When used to tell the truth,” she [Beverly Naidus] told the audience, “[beauty] can be really powerful.”

I missed my train at Grand Central Station by seven minutes last night, but it was worth it to stick around after a Bluestockings book reading. In that critical seven minutes, I got to meet the featured author, Beverly Naidus, and pick up her book, Arts for Change: Teaching Outside the Frame (New Village Press, 2009). Although I went to get ideas for an eco-art course that I’m developing in collaboration with an environmental studies instructor at Purchase College, I found her talk to be very helpful for contextualizing my own artwork and for mitigating some of my insecurities as an artist.

Naidus made and defended feminist art in its early days, so I value her opinion. While listening to her presentation, I realized something about the creative process: inclinations can become convictions in the moment that someone you respect not only echoes your sentiments but manages to articulate them in a way that you cannot because you’re too close to the issue. It’s validating, and I don’t mean that in an egotistical way. For me, there were two things that Beverly said that resonated with me.

Early in her presentation, she defended the role of beauty in contemporary art. “When used to tell the truth,” she told the audience, “[beauty] can be really powerful.” Sometimes I wonder if I should make my work grotesque (picture Cindy Sherman’s use of vomit or Jana Sterbak’s raw meat), but it’s just not my style. Frankly, I like the idea of seducing the viewer with silky fabric in pretty shades of pink because it’s a reminder of the power inherent in feminine signifiers. I too am seduced by them in spite of myself, and that tension drives the work. Hopefully, by drawing viewers in with beauty, I can capture their attention long enough to get them to contemplate the underlying message, which is that girls are socialized through clothing that reinforces seemingly innocuous stereotypes that are potentially damaging from a feminist perspective.

The other thing that clicked with me was Naidus’ use of the term ‘socially engaged art’ rather than ‘activism’ because it is more inclusive. Her definition of “art that intends to provoke social change” made me really happy. (I feel that I should write something more profound and scholarly but that is the truth—it made me happy). I once knew someone who delighted in his ‘quiet rebellions’, bucking convention by doing things like wearing mismatched socks. I’ve always felt my work was more of a quiet rebellion than activism. It is not community based, nor does it feed into a cause that would provoke a formal protest, and it is unlikely to get me arrested like some of the actions my artist friends have undertaken. Naidus’ use of the term ‘socially engaged art’ made me feel like there is a legitimate niche for me in the art world.

Art/work

2009-07-01T07:13:00.000-07:00

“[ART/WORK]... guides artists effectively in taming the beast that is the contemporary art world.”

For the past week or so on my commute, I have been reading ART/WORK by Heather Darcy Bhandari and Jonathan Melber (Free Press, 2009), which I learned about through Facebook from Toronto artist Barbara Gilbert. Having taken an excellent workshop with her a year-and-a-half ago through CARFAC (Canadian Artists' Representation/le Front des artistes canadiens) Ontario, I was anxious to follow up on the tip.

Because the book is dense with quotations from members of the art world, I chose to pace myself and ended up retaining more when I took a break after reading each chapter. Even though ART/WORK is nice and compact, I suggest approaching it like a box of good truffles: don't consume it all at once.

Starting with the title, there is an absence of sugar coating. The message is clear: being an artist is work. It is a job, not a hobby, at least if you want to build a career as an artist. Bhandari and Melber’s tendency to be straight with the reader persists throughout the entire book, which guides artists effectively in taming the beast that is the contemporary art world.

As practical as the book is, addressing topics like writing an artist statement and tracking inventory, the authors have a sense of humour. Cartoons by Kammy Roulner are featured throughout; my favourite shows a young girl who asks, “Mommy…can you explain post-colonial identity politics to me?” Also enjoyable for its tongue-in-cheek approach to the arts is the chapter called The Gallery Courtship, which uses the analogy of dating to discuss commercial gallery representation.

The authors’ complement of skills is noteworthy. Bhandari is a gallery director and Melber is an arts lawyer. Bhandari is on the inside, so she can draw the reader’s attention to the way galleries actually operate. Melber, meanwhile, instills confidence in the reader about tackling legal issues like copyright and contract negotiation because of his background in representing artists.

ART/WORK is presented as a book that picks up where art school leaves off. From talking to artists, I gather that some instructors are more inclined than others to talk about life after the safety net of art school. Some schools even have courses in managing a career as an artist, like the Professional Practice course in the Art and Art History program at Sheridan College/University of Toronto at Mississauga. When I was a student there, they had not yet introduced that course. A few years after graduation, I remember sitting down with a former classmate to answer the kinds of questions that are addressed in artist career guides, because I was lucky enough to land a series of jobs that allowed me to pick up on some of the intricacies of the art world. Now, as a librarian instead of an arts administrator, I look back at that conversation and I see an information need—or is ‘information gap’ the current lingo?

If you are a studio instructor reading this post, I urge you to promote artist career guides to your students, or send them to this blog post or my other posts about artist career guides here or here.

I realize that with good reason, the emphasis in the classroom is on ‘finding the artist’s voice’ and making quality work, but eventually students will stop focusing solely on artwork and will need to turn their attention to the combination of art/work. Please, mind the gap between 'art' and 'work'.

What happens in the studio stays in the studio

2009-06-29T13:53:00.001-07:00

"I was disappointed to see Emma escape the grasp of one male genius only to fall into bed with another."

After two long days spent packing and storing the contents of our Toronto apartment/my studio, I indulged in reading fiction on the road trip back to New York. With two sewing machines, a judy (body form), and boxes of fabric stowed safely, I was happy to lose myself in Samantha Peale’s The American Painter Emma Dial (W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., 2009).

New York-based Emma Dial used to be an avid swimmer, but now she struggles to keep her head above water, so to speak, as the studio assistant for Michael Freiburg. He hasn’t touched a canvas in years because Emma’s work is such a good match for his own, which makes him incredibly dependent on her. Michael is Manhattan personified: thrilling and fast-paced, with no desire to slow down. Emma, meanwhile, would like nothing better than a reprieve in her Brooklyn studio. Alas, she is entangled in a complex relationship with Michael, compounded by their illicit sexual relations (he is married). Clearly, chain smoking isn’t the only addiction that Emma and Michael share.

The female protagonist finds herself living a cliché that was once exhilarating but now feels suffocating. Emma is a talented artist in her own right who has been living in the shadow of Michael, but also of her scatterbrained and sensual filmmaker friend, Irene Duffy. Although she redefines her identity in relation to Michael and Irene, damaging her relationships with them along the way, it is her interactions with the peripheral characters that bring Emma the greatest clarity. For example, she confides in Michael’s collectors, the Breslauers, that she has a studio and subsequently daydreams about actually making work there. She inherited the studio lease from her former professor, Meredith Davies, whom she assumed to be a sell-out when she skipped town for love. However, she spots Meredith’s work in The Armory Show and realizing that she has maintained her artistic practice, is reminded of her own artistic goals. While walking through the lower east side, she encounters a former classmate, Chris Cagnasola, to whom she blatantly lies about her artistic pursuits, which reveals the heartbreaking discrepancy between the life she has and the life she craves. Overwhelmed with self-consciousness, Emma even avoids her mother over the holidays, because she can’t handle her judgment as an art historian about her daughter creating work for another artist instead of furthering her own career. Ultimately, Emma realizes that self-acceptance is more important than anyone else’s acceptance of her, prompting some major life changes that propel the book forward.

Here's my two cents' worth: I have a hard time buying the idea that Michael, being a landscape painter, is one of the three artists that changed the face of New York painting in the 1970s. I suppose they needed to be landscapes so that he could gender them and make annoying remarks (in front of his wife, no less) like suggesting that Emma hasn't made the water “sexy enough”. I can appreciate the fact that as landscapes, they remind the reader that Emma is trapped in a metropolis. Overall, I was disappointed to see Emma escape the grasp of one male genius only to fall into bed with another. Even though she has a moment of self-assertion with her new lover, it’s rather subdued. I wanted more for her, but the book leaves off just where there is a suggestion that she will begin to give herself more.

The artist’s guide

2009-06-25T05:57:00.000-07:00

“Battenfield shares her success stories but also discloses her professional foibles, which creates a sense of ‘we are all in this together’.”

Under normal circumstances, is The Artist’s Guide: How to Make a Living Doing What You Love (Jackie Battenfield, Da Capo Press, 2009) a book that I would stay up into the wee hours of the night reading? Most likely, yes. I read it cover to cover on the bus ride to Canada, finishing it while the sun rose over Burlington, Ontario this morning. Because of the organization of information, it functions like a reference book so readers could also easily skim it for an overview of the issues they may face during their careers and then revisit particular chapters on an as-needed basis. Another way that it acts as a reference source is by including annotations of recommended books at the end of each chapter.

I really like the tone of Battenfield’s writing, which is firm, but not heavy-handed, not to mention empathetic. Her voice has not been diluted to the extent that it sounds neutral; the advice sounds like it is coming from a mentor or teacher. Battenfield shares her success stories but also discloses her professional foibles, which creates a sense of ‘we are all in this together’. I think this tone is very appropriate, especially after leaving the author’s presentation at the NYPL the other night. I rode the elevator with a group of artists who sounded excited to take control of their careers, but there was definitely a collective hint of trepidation that made the enclosed space seem a bit suffocating. Her ability to establish trust and camaraderie with the reader, if such a thing is possible in a one-way exchange, is a strength of this book. Her presence is not overwhelming though; it is not as though the book reads as one woman’s journey through the art world. Even if it did, Battenfield has balanced her own perspectives by including side bars of quotations from arts professionals about topics as varied as proposal writing and tax preparation.

Unlike so many artist career guides, this one has pictures, and lots of them. Occasionally they are images of work by an artist who has been quoted in the book so their presence is not critical (though it is certainly welcome), but usually the images are of artworks that illustrate a specific point. Since artists are visually oriented and many of them are primarily visual learners, breaking up the text with images shows that Battenfield really knows her target audience.

Making a living as an artist

2009-06-23T08:58:00.000-07:00

“…the financial realities of being an artist are difficult to ignore. In today’s world, it is difficult to build a career on making art for art’s sake.”

As I rode the escalator of the NYPL Mid-Manhattan Branch last night, I gazed down in amazement at the number of people lined up to check out books. I thought to myself, “Printed matter is not going down without a fight.” I made my way to the sixth floor for Jackie Battenfield’s presentation, ‘Making an Artist’s Life Work’, which was followed by a book signing.

Battenfield is an accomplished artist, teacher, former gallery director and arguably a motivational speaker. “Success is not something that happens to you. Success is something you create,” she told the large audience. Because every artist has his or her own trajectory, it’s essential to identify what personal success would be and then “go after it in a dogged fashion”. This wasn’t mere lip-service. Battenfield pointed out that many career books aimed at artists specify the ‘what’ but not the ‘why’ or the ‘how’. She has a knack for addressing the ‘why’ and the ‘how’ in an engaging fashion. For example, she asked members of the audience to raise their hands if they could picture Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, and then asked them to raise their hands if they had seen the work in person. Her point in highlighting the discrepancy was that “the world will know you through some reproduction of your art” so it’s critical to have high quality documentation. This idea is not novel for me, especially since I’ve been looking at art reproductions regularly while filling in part-time at our library’s visual resources centre from the winter on, but I had never thought of it in quite that way. As to the ‘how’, she gave the audience ‘homework’, such as drawing a 50-mile radius around their place of residence on a map to target local exhibition opportunities through not-for-profit organizations.

On my way out, I did not join the line at the circulation desk but I did have a book in my hand: I decided to purchase Battenfield’s very reasonably priced The Artist’s Guide: How to Make a Living Doing What You Love (Da Capo Press, 2009). I knew it would make my tax preparator happy, based on a previous conversation (Q: That’s all you spent on art books? A: I’m an art librarian. I check out what I need and if our library doesn’t have it, then I try inter-library loan).

Before I wrap up this post, I want to make a pitch for artists’ career guides. Over the next week, I will post a review of Battenfield’s book as well as Art/Work by Heather Darcy Bhandari and Jonathan Melber (Free Press, 2009). Even though career guides like these have a commercial bent, they can still be very useful for artists who aren’t necessarily trying to make a living from their creative practice (i.e., students, emerging artists, etc). Take me, for instance: I have a day job so I don’t depend on income from my art. Why would I be interested in books like these? Because I recognize that the advice is really about organizing your time so you can be prolific and about increasing exposure to your art. For example, Battenfield urged the audience to add five former contacts to their mailing lists. That strategy could lead to sales, but it could also lead to a review from a critic or interest from a curator.

The more an artist progresses, he or she will encounter grants, artist fees and awards, making income accumulate where once there was none. As an artist begins to show outside of his or her region, there may be a desire or need to travel for exhibitions, making expenses add up. Thus, registering an art business seems inevitable, even for a career that is centered on exhibitions instead of sales. Once that business is registered, the artist needs to demonstrate an attempt to generate income. That said, the financial realities of being an artist are difficult to ignore. In today’s world, it is difficult to build a career on making art for art’s sake.

The one and only

2009-06-19T08:25:00.000-07:00

“Magnolis argues against the notion that there is but one correct interpretation of a work of art, and against the concession that multiple interpretations are possible only if they are compatible.”

I think I’ve found some answers to my questions from my last post, thanks to the chapter ‘One and Only One Correct Interpretation’ from Joseph Margolis’ The Arts and the Definition of the Human (Stanford University Press, 2009). My first attempt to read this philosophy book was compromised by the sound of teenage girls on the Metro North train snapping their gum and chattering so loudly that I can only assume their generation is near-deaf from overusing portable listening devices. Oh dear, I hope I’m not going to become one of those shushing librarians.

Magnolis argues against the notion that there is but one correct interpretation of a work of art, and against the concession that multiple interpretations are possible only if they are compatible. The essence of his argument is that art is not objective, exemplified by his question, “...is the meaning of a poem simply the meaning of its words?” In keeping with the poetry analogy, he could easily quote Yeats' exquisite line, “...how can we know the dancer from the dance?” because one of his many arguments centres around intentionality and the presumed inseparability of the artist from the artwork. I won’t get into the minutiae of his other arguments because I don’t have a background in philosophy, but I will touch on this one as a follow-up to my previous blog post.

He states that artworks contain intentional properties, unlike physical objects that occur naturally in the world. I think of this as ‘Rather than finding artworks in the world, we make them and share them with the world’. Of course, sometimes artists use 'found objects', most famously Marcel Duchamp who exhibited a urinal and turned art history on its head, but let’s disregard that complication for now, shall we? While Magnolis doesn’t entirely disagree with philosophers who insist that artists’ intentionality is of great import (Arthur Danto, for example, sees intention and interpretation as inextricably intertwined), he says that interpretation shouldn’t depend on awareness of the artist’s motivations.

To bring this idea out of the realm of philosophy and into the gallery setting, it would mean that viewers should be able to appreciate art without an artist’s statement. I suppose I agree with this in principle, but what does it mean when the artist consciously approaches art making differently to encourage appreciation in the absence of expository text?
I have no qualms about admitting that the inability to include an artist statement in many gallery submissions has prompted me to change my cocoon sculptures. My Aberration Series (above) is an outgrowth of this concern; I felt that having three works represent a cocoon at different points in time was a better surrogate for my artist statement than one-offs.

Another point that interests me is that we cannot separate the artist from human culture. Magnolis gives the example of Michelangelo Buonarotti’s Pièta, the marble sculpture of Mary holding her crucified son, which really is as beautiful in person as you would expect. He sees the act of chiseling the sculpture as the artist giving form to a mental image but also as the application of an age-old tool, which is a compelling way of merging philosophy, anthropology, and art. Without the development of tools, the Pièta could not exist in its present form. Likewise, my art is not just the product of one person’s inability to let a problem go; it’s the byproduct of human invention and it binds me to a lineage of people armed with needle and thread. There are two things I really like about Magnolis’ perspective: (1) it could be just the ticket for reuniting art and craft, which didn’t always occupy separate classes and (2) it could be extrapolated into a feminist take on art history because it minimizes the emphasis on great masters and by association, male genius.