Rethinking Professionalism

“Charlotte Schreiber…couldn’t attend [Royal Canadian Academy of Arts] meetings because it would have meant being alone with 39 men.”

Women. Art. Professionalism. Isolated concepts or a natural combination? I’ve been pondering this question for the past three weeks, ever since I started embroidering in the campus parking lot half an hour before starting work to take advantage of the natural light that has waned by the time I extract myself at the end of the day.

The convergence of women, art, and professionalism is also the subject of the book, Rethinking Professionalism: Women and Art in Canada, 1850-1970 (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2012). Full disclosure: I am a former Queen’s employee and my former place of work, the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, is mentioned on the opening page of the preface for its contribution to feminist art history.

An outgrowth of the inaugural Canadian Women Artists History Initiative conference, this multi-authored, hefty tome is a very useful addition to academic library collections supporting gender studies or Canadian art history.

While reading Kristina Huneault’s introductory chapter about the ill-fitting concept of professionalism for women artists, my mind kept flitting back to Eunice Lipton’s Alias Olympia: A Woman’s Search for Manet’s Notorious Model and Her Own Desire (1992, Charles Scribner’s Sons). Spurred on by Linda Nochlin, who famously asked why there have been no great women artists, Lipton traveled to Paris to restore dignity to Victorine Meurent, Edouard Manet’s model. Although Meurent was an exhibiting artist and a member of an esteemed professional art society who declared herself an artist twice in the French equivalent of the census, her contemporaries and later art historians dismissed her as an amateur and a prostitute. Huneault’s parallel examples from Canada are lower profile but no less gripping. She identifies discrepancies between a census count of female artists compared to the membership in the Ontario Society of artists. And then there’s the case of Charlotte Schreiber, the only female artist accepted into the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in its first 50 years, who couldn’t attend meetings because it would have meant being alone with 39 men.

If you read this book, the historical references may make you angry, whether it’s the virile description of the Group of Seven or the flipside, emphasis on the feminine stature and fashion of Canada’s first female architect. (Curiously, the impulse to emphasize the gender of artists continues today, as one of the female artists’ techniques in the book is described as loving). At the very least, you’ll probably find yourself annoyed by comments like Group of Seven member A.Y. Jackson calling the arts appreciation show hosted by his former lover Anne Savage “quite a little job” (p. 121).Yet, there’s inspiration to be found in women’s comments; consider Margaret Watkins’ retort about a critic who passionately disliked her photo of dirty dishes: “Evidently the poor duffer knows nothing of Modern art” (p. 170).

Lest you get the impression that art is unique in its gender bias, Jennifer Salahub reminds us that it affects other disciplines too. As a librarian, I found her comment disheartening: “…when I first began to research Canadian needlework in the 1980s, the Library of Congress Catalogue directed me not to needlework, sewing, or even embroidery but to the letter ‘w’—women’s work.” (p. 138). I tend to be angry rather than annoyed when I read such things, but this book helped me slow down and resist a knee-jerk response. Reading the rest of Salahub’s chapter about intriguing artist, Hannah Maynard, I learned that the Victorian artist included textiles in her photos to maintain a lady-like image while pursuing an unconventional career. From a contemporary perspective (read: privileged life—the kind where I am allowed to drive and work and vote), it’s so easy to overlook awesomely experimental work and harp on what’s traditional, like the artist marketing herself as Mrs. Richard Maynard.

The most poignant content for me was Sherry Farrell Racette’s roll call of names of Akwesane artists who practiced basketweaving. Seeing a photo by Mary Kawennatakie Adams, the first artist on the list—of a basket adorned with teeny decorative baskets the size of a thumbnail—had a tip-of-the iceberg effect and served as a strong argument that female Aboriginal artists have been grossly overlooked by the existing model of art history. Add to that other groups like nuns that have historically been heavily engaged in craft and the entire concept of professionalism starts to fall apart.

Image: reproduced in 2019 via fair use/dealing. Source: https://www.mqup.ca/rethinking-professionalism-products-9780773539662.php?page_id=73&#!prettyPhoto/1/

Denise Green: An Artist’s Odyssey

“…far from a tell-all memoir.”

The other night, I was in the biography section of The Strand in New York when I overheard a customer ask an employee how she had located a particular book. The employee explained that the bookstore’s system allows for multiple fields to be searched simultaneously and she had used publisher and author. The customer thanked her and said, “You’re so sweet.” If only all reference interviews were this pleasant! Interestingly, the new Denise Green biography I picked up for half price eludes bibliographic organization. In the introduction to Denise Green: An Artist’s Odyssey (2012, University of Minnesota Press), Ingrid Periz asks, “Where would it fit on a library shelf?” (p. 11).  She elaborates on how it blurs genres: it’s part autobiography (Green has written or co-written only a third of the content) and part multi-authored biography, mixed with advice and art criticism, in a tone that vacillates between scholarly and chatty.

Contributor Peter Timmins writes, “…words remain the subservient partner to images” (p. 169) in Green’s practice but they are what interest me most, as much as her simplified renditions of everyday objects and fluid use of line are engaging. She’s a good writer—a case in point is the description, “the uncontrollable spread of colour which was India itself.” It’s no wonder the New York-based artist became editor of the feminist journal, Heresies and the equally radical Semiotext(e). What fascinates me is that she began writing about art with the explicit goal of becoming respected as an intellectual, to fight the gender bias facing artists. Her secondary purpose was to weigh in on how paintings were critiqued during the postmodern era governed by Clement Greenberg’s writing; she fought for critics to consider the subjective experience rather than interpreting works in a vacuum.

It’s ironic, then, that the book doesn’t delve too deeply into Green’s personal life. The chapters she has written, however, are far from a tell-all memoir. In part, this discretion may be the result of thematically arranged chapters like ‘the Paris years,’ meaning there is some jumping around (though not to the extent of Bob Dylan’s Chronicles Volume One). For example, she mentions that her alcoholic father had a car accident and in another passage, she concedes that one of her painting series stems from latent grief for him, but the reader never learns whether said accident was fatal. Nor does she disclose any details about the courtship leading to her second marriage. The majority of self-revelation is concentrated on her childhood in Australia and the family dynamics that prompted her to leave the country as a teenager. Periz is accurate in observing, “…Green the woman stays somewhat hidden” (p. 15). In a sense, this strategy allows the reader to focus—intermittently at least—on Green’s art independent on her gender, which is refreshing. Not surprisingly, the chapters written by her colleagues—primarily art critics, curators and gallerists sprinkled around the globe—focus on her extensive artistic contributions over the past 40 years.

Better living through chemistry? Lise Melhorn-Boe's artist's books make you think twice

“... there’s  a mindset of, 'I don’t want to know this.'”

 Now that her show, Endangered, is over in North Bay (where, incidentally, I’m moving next month), Kingston artist Lise Melhorn-Boe was free to chat about her work. 

HS-Your show at the W. K. P. Kennedy Gallery focuses on intense subject matter, like the recent increase in deformed penises in babies attributed to chemical exposure and the positive correlation between homelessness and multiple chemical sensitivities. I swear my eyes started stinging right after reading your Toxic Face Book, which describes the toxins found in common cosmetics. What kinds of reactions have you received in relation to this body of work?

LMB- I have had a lot of positive feedback. Even people who thought they knew a great deal about our environment told me they had learned something. However, many people do think it’s depressing. I thought I was presenting the material in a lighthearted enough way that it would take the edge off the negativity. People are very interested but they’re not gaga over it like they have been for some of my other work, especially my work about women’s lives where they could really relate and wanted to share their own stories with me. With this body of work, there’s  a mindset of, “I don’t want to know this.” Some of the information is very scary. It’s maybe easier just not to know, so you don’t have to worry about it and you don’t have to make choices, but art (or some art) is about making people think and that’s what I’ve always tried to do.

HS- In your artist books, it often feels like you could keep turning the pages forever to read more and more dire statistics about the environment. Gypsy Moth was such a lovely read because the woman who almost died after being dosed with pesticide designed to kill gypsy moth caterpillars gets better at the end. How do you strike a balance between presenting dark subject matter and giving people hope that they can change their ways and make a difference?

LMB- As I said, I was coming at it [the subject matter] from a lighthearted angle. (Laughs). It’s an interesting question and hope is important. Because I was so overwhelmed by negative information, I wasn’t feeling hopeful myself so it was hard to put that in the work. To be honest, sometimes I am glad I am getting old. I’d be really depressed and angry if I were in my twenties, knowing what is ahead of us. At this point in my life, I’m more resigned and cynical.

HS-In terms of making a difference, you don’t just walk the walk. Not only do you make art about garbage, but you refuse to use plastic bags to line your own garbage can, you pick up litter if it can be recycled, and I remember at White Water Gallery, you would save up styrofoam that couldn’t be recycled locally so you could recycle it when you went “down south” as the people of North Bay say. Have you always been so environmentally conscious?

LMB- I made my first environmental project for a Man and Society class in high school when I was seventeen, I think. (What a sexist name! They later changed it to Society, Challenge and Change). It was a collaged book on pollution. So yes, I’ve always been concerned about the environment and involved in environmental groups. This is a timely question because it struck me today that I’ve been riding a bicycle for 50 years.

HS- Today’s protests in Ottawa by scientists angry about the federal government’s cuts to funding for environmental protection underscore the precarious state of the environment. If you could have the attention of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, what would you say to him?

LMB- There’s a term, “precautionary principle,” which posits that it’s better to be safe than sorry. At the moment, anyone can come up with a product and market it and later say, “Oops, that was dangerous.” As a nation, we should think strongly about what materials we’re introducing into our lives rather than trying to mop up disasters in retrospect... and I’d tell him to forget about the tar sands and to come up with a different plan.

HS- Text is very prominent in your work. Which tends to come first: text or image?

LMB- In the past I would have said the text, definitely. When I was working with women’s stories, the story birthed the form of the piece. I interviewed women and used questionnaires, but for this body of work, the responses I got from people were very negative and they weren’t good stories. People were overwhelmed by their health issues and I was not inspired visually by their stories. A story has to have a visual component to transform it into a visual piece. I ended up doing more research in the library than usual, so a lot of the text is factual as opposed to narrative. Maybe that’s why Gypsy Moth stands out. It has a beginning, middle and end, and she [the subject] told it well. Pain started with the text, and in Happy Memories, those are all stories from actual people.

Garbage [in which she collected garbage for seven weeks—save for organic waste—and displayed one week’s worth in each of the seven copies in the edition, each stored in a tiny, adorable garbage can] started with the heavy duty plastic mesh bags which came from the only organic produce that was available to me in North Bay. I thought it was so incongruous. Since the store refused to take them back, I decided I had to do something with them. 

With this whole body of work, I was thinking of the environment as a topic, so I was more aware than usual about my materials. I recycled materials and I recycled ideas. Toxic Face Book uses a leftover cast of a face from a feminist piece called Colour Me Dutiful that was too thin to use at the time. What's For Dinner? uses a similar format to two earlier books—I have often made work about food. And I've used clothing a lot too, in the past, so the baby clothes in Endangered Species and the paper doll clothes in Toxic Kids fit right into my oeuvre. Endangered Species uses PVC connectors I found while trying to find a sturdy way to construct a large tunnel book in the shape of an ice hut for Ice Follies, an art installation festival in North Bay where artists use ice huts on the lake for installations. I was initially planning a piece about the projection that Lake Nipissing [in North Bay] wouldn’t have ice in twenty years, which would be about sixteen years from now. Then the idea morphed because PVC is a really toxic material to create and it seemed perfect to talk about the effect of toxins on babies.

HS-You have an inventive approach to materials, like using a transparent overlay of fabric to represent cheese on a pizza in the book, What’s for Dinner? Do you have fun coming up with these visuals?

LMB- Oh, I have a lot of fun! For me, because it was so much fun making this work that it overshadowed the negative content, I was taken aback when people focused on the negative content over the visual presentation.

HS- You’ve made pop-up books for a long time before your work took an environmental turn. Do you find this format has a different resonance with this subject matter?

LMB- I’ve always used it for its playful character so it was deliberate to pair some of these painful topics with this format to affect the tone. Pop-ups are fun; I teach them to kids in classrooms. I was trying to add an element of playfulness [with pop-ups in this body of work].

HS- What’s it like to make explicitly personal work like Body Map, where you show the interplay between health problems and the environment, with text overlaying  a fairly sizeable photograph of your naked body?

LMB- Just recently, a woman I know who has had breast cancer told me I was very brave and I was surprised because I’d never really thought of it that way. I came up with the idea for Body Map when I did a residency at Queen’s University. I thought about approaching a student photographer but I chose to ask my husband to take the photos even though he’s not a photographer. I’ve been to nudist colonies but I wasn’t comfortable stripping in front of just anyone. Maybe there’s something different about being photographed than walking on the beach. I think I might have been hesitant to do something like that before I had cancer but having had a mastectomy, I don’t feel quite as sexual as I once did, so it’s less revealing personally. Besides, once the image is out there, I’m separated from it.

No Safe Levels also shows my naked body but I took artistic license with it. It’s a pop-up and technically, I needed the right breast to pop up because it was on the fold. That’s actually the one that was cut off, but I just switched them. It’s much more abstract [than Body Map] and not everyone realizes it’s my body.

HS- Can you comment on one of the final images in Breast Cancer Journal  in which a figure floats through the sky, separated from but seemingly drawn to, the earth?

LMB- It was the result of a meditation, something that came to me in a vision. I think it’s me but why I’m floating out there I can’t remember. (Turns the page). This one I had a vision of in a winter solstice ceremony. I saw my breasts on fire. (Turns the page). And this is me holding up my child self and coming back up to the light. (Turns the page). I’m holding myself and mothering myself. It [making this journal] was all very positive. I debated about using text in this piece but I decided I liked the mystery. It wasn’t actually intended to be an art piece. A few people I showed the images to found them powerful, so I thought, “Why not?” In a way, this is more revealing [than works like Body Map]: this is my naked psyche or naked soul rather than my naked body. 

HS- Your earlier work was very feminist. Is the relationship between our health and the environment a feminist issue in your opinion?

LMB- It pertains to everyone but because women have more body fat than men and toxins reside in body fat, in that sense, these toxins affect women more, so that makes it a feminist issue. Also, women carry the next generation and they say the best way to detox is to breastfeed, but that means passing the toxins on to your baby. It was something I worried about when I breastfed. (Looks at her son who coincidentally appeared in the stairwell at this moment). For those reasons, it’s a really important issue for women.

HS- Lastly, are there other environmental artists you admire?

LMB- This is going back a long time, but I was always very moved by Ana Mendieta’s work. The way she put her body in the environment—there was such a strong connection between her and the earth. I suppose that’s essentialist, stressing the connection between women and the earth, and it annoys some people, but if I had to choose a camp, that’s the one I’d fall into.

For images, see Transformer Press

This interview took place on July 11, 2012 at Lise’s home.

The legacy of Judy Chicago

“…the Feminist Art Program, an experiment that tested the limits of education.”

On my final bus ride between Toronto and Kingston, I finished reading Entering the Picture: Judy Chicago, The Fresno Feminist Art Program and the Collective Visions of Women Artists (Routledge, 2012). Just as I read about artist Sylvia Savala’s father dictating what she should be when she grew up (legal secretary), just as I was thinking, “We’ve come a long way, baby,” a young man behind me barked at his girlfriend to shut up. I rotated my torso with exaggeration and glared icily. When he asked, “Can’t you just leave me alone and send me a [expletive] text?” I considered inviting her to sit beside me. I decided against it, not only because it could make things worse for her later, but because I too was vulnerable: as a woman travelling alone at night, arriving to a closed bus station with no one to meet me, I wasn’t about to take him on*. With regret, I state the obvious: there’s still a lot of work to be done.

Judy Chicago is a woman who knows how to get a lot of work done. Through the California Institute of the Arts, she facilitated Womanhouse, the first feminist installation by 26 female students, which graced the cover of TIME Magazine. She also spearheaded The Dinner Party, the first massive installation reflecting the vision of a single woman, which ended up debated in Congress. But before all that, at a state university campus in rural Fresno, California in 1970, she launched the Feminist Art Program, an experiment that tested the limits of education.

Chicago’s teaching method was the outgrowth of experiments she’d made along the way while teaching art part-time beforehand, like silencing all the men in the classroom so the women could be heard. The fifteen young women under her tutelage in the Feminist Art Program wore work boots and learned to renovate a studio as well as any man. The intuitive curriculum she fashioned promoted self-analysis using Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. Through consciousness-raising sessions, the women made leaps and bounds in their artistic development.

If this all sounds too good to be true, a little too much like Mona Lisa Smile—the film in which Julia Roberts plays an unconventional art history teacher who introduces her students to modern art and (in the process) feminism—then I’m not delving deep enough. The collective opinion of Chicago’s students was that the being in the program was incredible, but it was also risky. They got themselves into dangerous situations like interviewing rape victims in seedy neighbourhoods in the middle of the night for an audio work. Their emotional states were also at risk. Former students recall Chicago prying into their personal lives, but also pushing them away by insisting, “I’m not your mother!” and throwing a bottle of wine at the wall in one of their many group dinners. They were intimidated by her: one student admitted feeling pressured to make so-called vulvic art, a staple of Chicago’s oeuvre. Others embraced this trendy subject matter with aplomb; witness the CUNT cheerleaders. Having Chicago as a matriarch may have been a tumultuous experience, but her alumnae also recall her devotion to teaching and her generosity, like slipping a twenty dollar bill to a needy student and never expecting it back.

One thing is certain: Judy Chicago has made a major impact on women artists. One says she’ll never forget the time she heard her give a presentation, and another admits she treated her advice as if it had come from God. There are accounts from many women in this book, which is a collection of conference presentations for a symposium celebrating the 40^thanniversary of the establishment of the program. Some of them knew Chicago very well, others interacted with her peripherally while engaged in parallel projects, and some were part of the next generation when Chicago moved the program to the California Institute of the Arts. We even hear from Chicago herself, who shares great anecdotes, like the San Francisco Museum of Art making so much money in the bookstore when The Dinner Party debuted that they bought a computerized cash registered and named it after her.

Reflective of conferences in general, some of the writing is superb, but some of the entries meander and trail off. All in all, though, it’s a good read.

*The following month, a similar situation arose and I did intervene by engaging the female and calling campus security. This time, the woman ignored me and the man told me to go (expletive) myself. It seems to be a losing battle.

Damsels in Distress

“He’s lying. I find that very attractive.” -- Violet Wistler

Sitting in the Westdale Theatre for Damsels in Distress (2011), as part of the Art Gallery of Hamilton’s I Heart Film series, I felt a twinge of irony because I wanted to be rescued. From this movie. Specifically from Violet Wistler (nee Emily Tweeter). Gerta Gerwig plays the self-righteous main character, Violet, whose outreach mission at Seven Oaks University on the east coast involves distributing soap to fraternities and donuts to suicidal students. Her vocabulary harks back to the days of Dawson’s Creek, when a professor friend of mind noticed particular terms seeping into students’ papers in unison, reflecting the improbable diction of Dawson, Joey, Pacey, and Jenn. The only way Violet’s doe-eyed roommate, Heather (Carrie MacLemore), would use the term ‘precocious’ is from hanging around her. Her other roommate, Rose (Megalyn Echikunwoke), is a childhood friend who backs her up consistently, always on the lookout for ‘playboy operators’ and non-suicidal students scamming free baked goods. While applying mascara, she muses, “If humility comes from within and you never had any, where are you supposed to find it? I gave up looking long ago.” Their new rommmate, Lily (Analeigh Tipton), a transfer student, enters their social circle and calls the group’s humility into question, provoking Violet to actually thank Lily for her chastising. She probably is grateful instead of embarrassed, because she would regard the opportunity for increased self-awareness as a gift.

The movie, directed by Wilt Stillman, starts out seeming like it might reverse the ‘damsels in distress’ stereotype. The young women attend a party with the intention of helping frat boys discover their potential under the tutelage of Violet. “There’s enough material here for a lifetime of work,” she remarks as one dude launches himself over a railing. Soon, though, the young women become swept away by young men who cause them to say such ridiculous things as, “He’s lying. I find that very attractive.” Heather dates a colour blind student who becomes panicked by rainbows, Lily falls for a friend whose supposed religion supposedly requires him to express his love physically “from the wrong side” and Violet considers—gasp—going to the library stacks on a date. The male-female dynamic isn’t really critiqued, because the only element that bears any resemblance to modern romance is the ethics of boyfriend stealing, from outright to seemingly unintentional. This female-female issue is not plumbed, as the secondary characters disappear as soon as the newer romance develops.  Strangely, aside from Violet, all the characters feel like secondary characters and I found myself not really caring about the fate of their relationships, be they friendships or romances.

It’s also difficult to care about an overbearing character like Violet. At the same time, it’s hard not to respect Violet for rescuing herself from her funk when she is spurned by her beau, a frat boy she chose because he is unrefined.  She walks in the rain alone, she sits in a diner alone, she checks into a motel alone (Motel 4 instead of Motel 6 because it’s cheaper and thrift is a virtue), and she dances alone before she dances with a new partner. An odd feminist, she implies that you can really only depend on yourself, even if your self is a fabrication, complete with an alias.

Pink Ribbons, Inc.

 “... outright war on breast cancer, with your dollars are the ammunition.”

As an artist, I’ve spent a lot of time contemplating the association between females and the colour pink, but these thoughts have never strayed into the rich (literally) connection in breast cancer marketing. Sure, I’d noticed some bizarre products like a pink plastic stapler resembling a high-heeled shoe, but not the extent of this marketing extravaganza. Enter Samantha King, associate professor of gender studies and kinesiology at Queen’s University, where she presented in today’s MiniU conference.

In the introduction to her book, Pink Ribbons, Inc. (University of Minnesota Press, 2006), King ponders what brought about the change in representations of breast cancer over time, by examining two New York Times Magazine covers. A 1993 cover with artist Matuschka revealing her mastectomy scar contains the caption—incidentally, known in the publishing world as a ‘slug’—“You Can’t Look Away Anymore. The Anguished Politics of Breast Cancer.” A 1996 cover, meanwhile, features supermodel Linda Evangelista covering her breasts with her arm and the caption, “This year’s hot charity.” Evangelista’s “hypernormal femininity” (p. x) and chic portrayal of the disease were a sign of things to come, but they weren’t the first in a series of marketing oddities.

Rewind to the early 1990s, when the pink ribbon originated. It wasn’t always a pink ribbon. It was peach and it was the brainchild of Charlette Hayley, who regarded it less as a brainchild and more as a sincere gesture to bring attention to federal funding shortages for breast cancer prevention in the US. When she declined an offer from Self magazine and Estée Lauder to partner with them in a magazine issue devoted to breast cancer awareness, they appropriated it anyway. Based on a lawyer’s advice, they changed the colour. “Colours are really important,” King stresses, and focus groups revealed that pink denotes qualities like lack of threat; certainly, it would be in corporations’ best interests to avoid acknowledging the threat posed by breast cancer. King thought at the time that “the pink ribbon would soon lose its lustre” but it seems to have perpetuated this “insidiously gendered…cause-related marketing” (p. xxiv). Pink is so closely linked with femininity (at least in the last 65 or so years) that we are stopped in our tracks by breast cancer awareness campaigns with slogans like, “Real men wear pink.” This particular slogan was used for a partnership between the NFL and the Komen Foundation, which has notoriously flip-flopped its funding of Planned Parenthood (disturbingly since PP offers breast cancer screening). Men are generally excluded from this pink marketing, which is problematic since they too are at risk of getting breast cancer. King highlights the bizarreness of women receiving gifts like pink bears when they are diagnosed, in contrast to men, who would not receive, say, Matchbox cars when diagnosed with prostate cancer. Even products that are associated with men can have a feminine version thanks to corporations cashing in on the breast cancer awareness trend, most notably a handgun with an interchangeable pink grip. If you still don't think pink products are ubiquitous, consider that the pink ribbon is featured on one of only two coloured Canadian coins in history, or that one of only two American stamps to be sold for higher than the letter rate was part of a breast cancer awareness campaign. Since the other Canadian coin commemorated war veterans and the other US stamp commemorated 9/11, an outright war appears to be being waged on breast cancer, with your dollars as the ammunition.

These marketing gimmicks wouldn’t be so perturbing if their wording weren’t frequently misleading (noting, for example, that an unspecified portion of proceeds goes to an unspecified charity); or if the same companies didn’t put a cap on the money they donate to said charity; or if the dollar amount donated per person weren’t so bleak. King gives the example of a yogurt campaign that would require consumers to consume three large containers of yogurt a day for four months to generate $36 in donations. Participating hardly seems worthwhile, but who in the general population bothers to do the math? 

It’s not just the products we buy that are pink. Coloured branding has spread to our environment, with corporations competing over who will light up the next major monument, be it a pyramid or the Eiffel Tower. Last year, I was part of an art show called PINK that involved local businesses in a small town outside Chicago creating pink window displays simultaneously. It’s no wonder King has observed breast cancer patients counting down the days on an online forum until the end of breast cancer month (October) so they can escape the constant presence of pink and the commoditization of their painful experience.

Adding insult to injury is the fact that the face of breast cancer tends to be “youthful, ultra-feminine, and radiant with health” as well as Caucasian. What, then, can we make of donut and fried chicken companies launching breast cancer campaigns or cosmetics companies doing the same while continuing to include known carcinogens in their products? They’ve been labeled ‘pink washers’ by a San Francisco-based activist group.

If you think that participating in a walk-a-thon or marathon is a better choice for helping in the fight against breast cancer, you’ll be disappointed to hear that many of them have declared bankruptcy for using phrasing trademarked by a major fundraising corporation. Or that in one of the most high profile fundraisers with well-meaning participants celebrating their own survival or honouring loved ones affected or killed by the disease, almost one-third of the money raised was used for administration and marketing costs as well as entertainment for the participants.

The film, Pink Ribbons, Inc. (2011, National Film Board of Canada) opens in the US on June 1^st. For a clip, click here.

*a quarter, which was only distributed at a drugstore chain

Nude PM portrait brings national media attention to library

“Here, the power dynamic is turned on its head.”

A week ago, it was only the locals who were talking about Margaret Sutherland’s nude portrait of Prime Minister Stephen Harper in the Kingston Frontenac Public Library, which is how I heard about it. By the week-end, Googling ‘Harper painting Kingston library’ produced ten-plus pages where every single result was about the controversy. On my lunch break today, I headed over to 130 Johnson Street to see the arguably iconic portrait in person.

The children’s librarian pointed me to the doorway where two viewers lingered hesitantly before heading in to see Stephen Harper reclining on a chaise lounge, without a stitch of clothing. I overheard one visitor say, “You know what’s great about showing controversial work? It gets people in to see the show.” A quick head count of fifteen people on a sunny Tuesday at lunchtime suggests that this is indeed true.

In the same way that Charles Pachter’s paintings of the Queen on a moose elicited hostile reactions 40 years ago, Sutherland’s portrait has provoked extreme feedback, ranging from hilarity to disgust. My husband and I debated when the last time was that a painting caused as much commotion in the Canadian media as Sutherland’s Emperor Haute Couture (2011). His suggestion was the National Gallery of Canada’s 1989 acquisition of Voice of Fire (1967) by American artist, Barnett Newman. In contrast to that scandal, it’s exciting that the present discussion has stemmed from a female Canadian artist, while also highlighting the role of libraries beyond collections of books.

Satirical artistic representations of politicians have a long history with caricatures, so what is it about this painting that is so startling? Is it its realism and his sheer nudity? Harper’s sex organs may be visible, but it’s not a sexualized painting. It brings to mind a comment by performance artist Stuart Ringholt in relation to his recent tour of the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia where guide and guests were required to be naked: “We are sexualized with our clothes on—with them off, we are not” (1).  Sutherland’s portrait is hardly titillating, with Harper’s patchy chest hair and slight paunch. The background composed of figures in neutral business suits creates a drab setting that runs counter to idealism. It’s telling that the portrait is covered in a different fashion than Gustave Courbet’s L’Origine du Monde (1866), a painting where female genitalia is the focus. It was screened for a private peepshow, whereas Sutherland’s portrait is draped during children’s programming. Here, the power dynamic is turned on its head: after centuries of women being painted nude by men, Sutherland disrupts the gaze that has been in the male domain for so long. Harper meets the viewer’s gaze, but curiously, his expression seems apathetic and less forceful than the gaze of the dog resting by his feet.

Andrew MacDougall, Harper’s new communications officer, tweeted disdain for the portrait, noting that Harper is a cat person (2). Since this is common public knowledge, Sutherland’s choice of dog seems purposeful. While symbolism isn’t reigning supreme these days, the fact that the artist has acknowledged Edouard Manet’s Olympia (1863) as a source of inspiration gives the green light to consider symbols in historical works like Jan van Eyck’s The Arnolfini Portrait (1434) and Albrecht Durer’s Melencolia (1514). In these works, the dog symbolizes fidelity, which is fitting considering that Sutherland cites among her frustrations with Harper cuts to arts funding, census-taking procedures, and prison closures.

The Tim Hortons cup passed to Harper on a china plate by the sole female in the background is also reportedly symbolic (representing the common folk of Canada). It also reinforces the Canadian-ness of the painting: Tim Hortons is so integral to our national identity that its Olympic advertising is unforgettable but American locations feel the need to specify that it is a coffee and bake shop. As product placement, it also serves as a reminder of political branding and last year's public outcry that followed the discreet switch in federal government communications from ‘the Government of Canada’ to ‘the Harper Government’. All seriousness aside, I had to laugh when I looked down at the Tim Hortons drink I picked up spontaneously on my way back to work and realized the probable cause of my detour.

The Kingston Arts Council's Juried Art Salon, of which the painting is part, runs until May 30. If you are in the area, be sure to cast your vote for best in show.

Works referenced:

http://www.edwarddaygallery.com/artist_Marg_Sutherland.htm

http://www.cpachter.com/?p=441

http://www.gallery.ca/en/see/collections/artwork.php?mkey=35828

http://www.musee-orsay.fr/index.php?id=851&L=1&tx_commentaire_pi1[showUid]=125&no_cache=1
http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/jan-van-eyck-the-arnolfini-portrait

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/43.106.1

http://www.musee-orsay.fr/index.php?id=851&L=1&tx_commentaire_pi1[showUid]=7087&no_cache=1

Sources:

(1)  As cited by Mark Whittaker, “New Tour at Museum Reveals All,” The New York Times, May 1, 2012.

(2) Andrew MacDougall ‏@PMO_MacDougall  On the Sutherland painting: we're not impressed. Everyone knows the PM is a cat person. [Twitter post]. May 18, 2012.

Art ? Craft

“...what about the need for art to come to craft?” -- Isidora Spielmann

Before heading to The Mansion in Kingston for a panel discussion entitled Art ? Craft yesterday, I happened to read an article on this very topic in the spring newsletter from MAWA (Mentoring Artists for Women’s Art, Winnipeg). In ‘No More Bins,’ a reference to Laurie Anderson’s eschewing of unnecessary categorization, author and craft-based artist Heidi Eigenkind says her “deep seated aversion to binary structures” (1) surfaces when someone makes a comment like ‘some potholders are just potholders.’ It’s interesting that some people can see the distinction between art and craft so simply while others—like last night’s panelists from the Organization of Kingston Women Artists, Diane Black, Margaret Hughes, and Isidora Spielmann—are struck by the complexity of their relationship.

Margaret Hughes observed that art and craft are starting to merge again, reminding us of their parallel status and professional integration in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. I have to agree; as I wrote in a post about a textiles show at Project Space last fall, “craft and art have become rather comfortable bedfellows.” What does it mean, though, when someone can’t admit who they’re sleeping with? What does it say about me that the first time I crossed the border with my textiles sculptures, I referred to them as ‘craft’ rather than ‘art’ even though I have always thought of them as the latter? On a subconscious level, I must have assumed the customs official would be more willing to approve their admission to the US. And I’m sure I’m not the only fibre artist who has hesitated about responding to a call for submissions for a craft show because of how it will affect the perception of my art long-term. These examples suggest that the art/craft question is not an inconsequential one.

Isidora Spielmann noted that it’s common to talk about the need for craft to come to art, but what about the need for art to come to craft? Damien Hurst was cited as an example of a conceptual artist who is relatively divorced from the process of making. It brings to mind Mira Schor writing in Wet (Duke University Press, 1997) that all artists can’t seriously go “back to scraping sheet gut every time you need a sheet of tracing paper.” (2) Yet there’s something inspiring about Margaret Hughes having built not one but two kilns by hand and Diane Black being a modern day blacksmith. Schor has a good point when she says it wouldn’t be a terrible fate if painting, long the golden child of the art world, were to become ‘relegated’ to the realm of craft.

All three artists have approached a variety of media with fervour, aiming to perfect their technique and to infuse their work with meaning. They’ve switched between art and craft over time, and they feel comfortable in both worlds. What can we make of hybrid examples like Spielmann’s couture garments on which she has painted by hand, or of Hughes’ inclusion of her own pots in her still lives? The waters are muddy indeed, which poses a challenge for art librarians like myself in terms of cataloguing images, but it’s exciting to see this cross-over. Clearly, these are artists to whom the dismissive statement, ‘some potholders are just potholders’ does not apply.


Sources:

(1) p. 5.
(2) p. 185.

Escapism in Paris

“Couldn’t it be Impressionist painter Mary Cassatt she fantasized about being instead of Monet?”

From the small selection of paperbacks at the Kingston train station, I purchased Secrets of Paris by Luanne Rice (2012, Bantam Books [1]) for my trip back to Toronto. As an information professional in the arts, I was sold by this description on the back cover in spite of it being a romance novel: painter-turned-photo stylist Lydie McBride leaves her native New York for a year in Paris while her husband, Michael designs an information centre for the Louvre. It seemed a better choice than tabloid magazines, plus I’d already read the Via Destinations magazine on my way to Kingston.

Instead of infusing Lydie and Michael’s relationship with romance, the city of love drives a wedge the size of the Eiffel Tower between them. Michael cavorts with Anne Dumas, an attractive historian who is obsessed to a fault with celebrated 17^th Century writer, Madame de Sevigné. Lydie, meanwhile, finds solace in friendships with foreigners that develop too quickly to be convincing. Patrice d’Origny is a happily married and well-to-do housewife who hails from the Boston gallery world and proclaims Lydie her best friend almost immediately after meeting in a café. Her maid, Kelly Merida, is from the Philippines and wants nothing more than to immigrate to America. While Patrice is on vacation for a month, Lydie goes from being served by Kelly as a guest to being her sponsor to feeling physically sick when her immigration petition is denied. If only we all made soul mates so speedily.

The pace at which the McBride’s marriage unravels, in contrast, is believable. The novel begins almost a year into Lydie’s grief for her father’s murder-suicide of his lover and himself, which understandably placed a strain on her own romantic life. It’s sad to see the warning signs of infidelity that they don’t address, and there is a nagging feeling that Michael’s infidelity could end in comparable tragedy. In the love triangle that ensues between Lydie, Michael, and Anne, it is inevitable to side with Lydie and Michael not because the dynamics of their marriage are written about in great detail or with gripping dialogue but because chapters are written from their points of view (as well as Patrice’s and Kelly’s) but never from Anne’s. Also, the only glimpse the reader gets into Anne’s marriage is of Lydie and Michael bumping into Anne and her husband, Jean, at a bistro and Anne confiding in Michael that she is contemplating not joining Jean for a vacation in August because they aren’t getting along. Whatever pain Anne feels is unknown to the reader.

Eventually, Michael ‘pulls a 180’ and decides he loves Lydie. Paris is romantic enough that their reconciliatory consummation needn’t be at an old hotel outside the city where Impressionism was reportedly born, where Eugene Boudin and Edouard Monet painted. It does, however, bring a reference full circle: consumed by grief at the beginning of the book, Lydie sits at a café across the Seine from the Louvre and imagines herself as Monet. (Couldn’t it be Impressionist painter Mary Cassatt she fantasized about being instead of Monet? Alas…)

Reading about Michael trying to secure a particular Poussin painting for his architectural project and striving to pay homage to the Louvre’s history in the wake of the controversy over the contemporary courtyard pyramids seemed a fitting way to unwind after my first week of training at a gallery with a rich historical collection housed in a designated heritage building. Given my new position, you’d think it would be stressful for me to read about Anne Dumas high jacking a decaying 300-year-old costume from the Louvre’s collection to wear to a ball so she could upstage Lydie and bring Madame de Sevigné to life, or to read about her trying to convince Michael to hide with her in the museum’s storerooms and spend the night illicitly, but it was fantastical enough to function as escapism. All in all, this is decent reading for passing time on the train but that’s the best endorsement I can give.

(1) Originally printed in hardcover in 1991 by Viking Penguin.

Let’s talk about sex, baby

“…this panel of three female authors at the Art Gallery of Ontario…considered what it’s like to write about sex.”

As an analogue TV owner without cable, I’m behind on contemporary programming. Because I have seen exactly one episode of 30 Rock while visiting relatives, I missed the reference in the title of last night’s panel discussion organized by Toronto artist, Margaux Williamson; I mistook ‘I’m a Very Sexy Baby’ for a discussion about the sexualization of baby girls in Western culture (a classic case of projection since that’s the focus of my own art). As it turned out, this panel of three female authors at the Art Gallery of Ontario moderated by Darren O’Donnell considered what it’s like to write about sex. That’s also a topic close to my heart: I’m very aware of what boundaries I don’t want to transgress in writing a blog containing words like ‘masturbation’, ‘labioplasty,’ and ‘sexting.’ To clarify, these entries in Artist in Transit are always written in the name of art, librarianship, or feminism. Still, it makes me nervous that a colleague at the academic institution where I started the blog described it to his class as an ‘erotica blog,’ though that may say more about the lens through which he views the world than it does about my writing. It’s a concern that is paramount for me today, writing this post and knowing that tomorrow I assume another academic position. I feel like a hybrid of the 30 Rock characters, Abby Flynn and Liz Lemon, shown in a clip at the AGO event. As Abby says, why is it any worse for Abby to use her sexuality than it is for Liz to wear glasses to look smart?

The passages read by the authors proved invariably that language and sex are intertwined. Tamara Faith Berger read a passage in which a female character defends her sexual choices to a friend while smoking a joint; Chris Kraus read a sex scene from the female point of view in which “words come out as they do,” but she is tongue-tied post-coitus; and Sheila Heti read about a woman distracted from playwriting because of a task assigned by her lover, to write a report on an elderly man’s voyeurism.

If this seems like an unlikely event for the AGO, allow me to share some details about the writers: Sheila Heti collaborates with Williamson, and she had artist Shary Boyle read a draft of her first erotic novel before it contained x-rated passages. Chris Kraus started reviewing art in the process of writing her cult classic, I Love Dick, because the object of her desire was an art critic (1). Berger, meanwhile, went to art school, and was always interested in sex as a subject but couldn’t find a way to address it visually. “Going to art school helped…with writing porn,” she said, eliciting laughter from the audience.

O’Donnell asked what was at stake for the authors in writing about sex. Although their initial responses indicated it was relatively risk-free, the comments they made later suggest otherwise. Kraus, who called the art world puritanical, felt that I Love Dick was written off as “exhibitionism and narcissism,” and that she was only respected as a writer when she took sex out of her books. Heti removed her email address from her website when her writing took an erotic turn because she was worried about receiving perverted comments, and Berger had someone walk out of her recent reading at a public library. Liz Lemon was right on the money when she said, “Society puts a lot of pressure on us [women].” The Madonna/whore complex is alive and well in writing, and kudos to these women for staring it down.

The prickly topic of feminism came up on multiple occasions. Williamson noted that she has watched a lot of television while doing her residency at the AGO, and she was intrigued that 30 Rock addressed “such insane feminist politics” (re. Liz trying to correct the behaviour of the threesome-loving, pigtail-wearing Abby, all the while indulging in reading a website “where women talk about how far we've come and which celebrities have the worst beach bodies” [2]) without fixing problems. The three authors are similarly unapologetic about the explicit passages in their published works. Even when the sex scenes are degrading in some way or are the outcome of obsession, as Berger says, “You can’t devalue the bond” or dismiss its role in paving the way for self-awareness. In the authors’ books, a single male character unlocks female desire, so even if that desire is not female-generated, as far as feminism is concerned, at least it’s not at the mercy of the entire male sex. “That’s what’s hot about it,” Heti says. An audible gasp went around the room when audience member Misha Glouberman raised the notion of male-generated desire. It was a reductive moment that reminded me of something I heard Moe Tkacik, co-founder of Jezebel (see Liz Lemon quotation above), say two years ago at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Centre for Feminist Art, which has been burned in my brain ever since: “Men. F*#! ‘em. They’re the problem.” As a feminist, I feel that attacking men for being thoughtful about female sexuality is counterproductive, and as a librarian, I have to say that making observations about fictional characters does not constitute agreement with their philosophies. There must be a better use of our collective energy.

Sources:

(1) Guthrie, Kayla. Performing is Storytelling: Q+A with Chris Kraus. Performing is Storytelling: Q+A with Chris Kraus.
(2) TGS Hates Women, season 5, episode 16, aired February 24, 2011

Babe Walker takes on art school

“The ironic conclusion to the socialite’s brief stint in the art world is that she finds it ‘silly and fake’, so she has her nanny perform a voodoo exorcism.”

If you’ve seen the 2011 remake of Arthur starring Russell Brand, you are familiar with Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Arthur careens through life without regard for anyone else, utterly dependent on his nanny (Helen Mirren) and spending money as recklessly as he drinks alcohol. If you replace Arthur with a young woman; his rich mother with an equally rich father; Helen Mirren with a Jamaican nanny; and Arthur’s collection of automobiles from famous movies with a designer wardrobe, you’ve got Babe Walker’s facetious new memoir. White Girl Problems (Hyperion, 2012) is the 140-characters-plus version of the Twitter account crafted by the Cohen brothers and Lara Schoenhals, which was voted one of TIME Magazine’s 140 best Twitter feeds.

Generally, I’m not one to read a book endorsed by Tori Spelling on the cover, but I had heard that the main character ends up in art school, and I was curious to see how this most improbable of choices transpired.

Babe doesn’t apply to college because she assumes she will become a famous actress without even trying and fall into the arms of Leonardo di Caprio. Her hard-working entertainment lawyer father convinces her to buckle down, and gets her into the University of Southern California for performing arts. Before long, she is suspended for parking wherever she wants. Next up is her flirtation with visual art at the Rhode Island School of Design, a school whose chicness she prefers to Brown, “some stupid school I’d never even heard of,” where she was registered but refused to live in a dorm with a roommate.

Until this point, her only awareness of art was noticing that a waiter at her Studio 54-themed Sweet 16 party was dressed like Andy Warhol and telling her father that her pre-labiaplasty genitals looked like Basquiat so she needed the surgery as a high school graduation gift.

At RISD, she majors in glass blowing. She never attends class but she attends seminars occasionally because of the hot teacher. In her world, it’s the whole experience that matters and not just what her transcript reflects. And she does make some work outside of class with an androgynous printmaking major she befriends because she calls her skinny. One night, high on mushrooms, they break the heels off of all of Babe’s shoes and toss her designer clothes out the window for a bonfire that gets her arrested. She passes out during the mug shot but ultimately makes it into Art Forum. (Editorial note: I know—it’s Artforum, not Art Forum. Disregarding details is key to Babe Walker’s identity. Case in point: when her father agreed that she could come work for him, she mistook an entry-level office assistant job for a junior partner position). Her “artist moment” comes to an end when her horse, who is named Mischa Barton, flips out during a photo shoot with her friends and she breaks her back. The ironic conclusion to the socialite’s brief stint in the art world is that she finds it “silly and fake” so she has her nanny perform a voodoo exorcism. From there, she writes poems, such as “A Babe Haiku” about couture, and eventually studies fashion, where she should have put her focus from the get-go.

This book will make you laugh, because it’s hard not to laugh at something like Jamie Oliver being double booked because of a birthday party for Jennifer Aniston’s cat’s cat. It will also make you glad you are the kind of person who doesn’t send 93 texts to an ex in one night or drop $246,893.50 at Barney’s in an afternoon...which I'm assuming you aren't if you are a repeat reader of my blog. The Barney’s incident is what finally landed Babe in rehab and gave her the time and space to craft her memoir, which she considered calling Babe Walker: The Babe Walker Story but whose title, White Girl Problems, came instead from the jabs of her rehab peers.

At the end of the book, there’s a hint that Babe Walker has some substance after all. She meets her biological mother, Donna, who is a former runway model and coincidentally the lesbian partner of her rehab roommate. Just when this emotional turn threatens to counteract the horrendous superficiality of the rest of the book, a therapy session with Donna ends with Babe elated at receiving the oddest of heirlooms: a Chanel bikini with emblazoned crotch from spring 1994.

For more on the infamous Babe Walker, check out @whitegrlproblem on Twitter and www.babewalker.com.

Keeing it reel [sic]

“Let’s hope that artists who are featured in documentaries don’t feel like hostages.”

Yesterday’s panel discussion at the TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto posed the question, should—or how should—documentarians incorporate an artist’s life into a film without detracting from his or her art? In films like The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins: Vanessa Beecroft's Controversial Art, the interplay between personal and artistic life can be overwhelming. In this case, her marriage becomes jeopardized by her ongoing attempt to adopt twins from Darfur whom she met while doing research for an art installation at the 2004 Venice Biennale. The panel discussion was about similarly gripping characters—some equally outlandish and others more reserved. Panel moderator and film critic Marc Glassman commented, “The biographical question intrigues me…you have to somehow create a balance” between who an artist is and their practice.

The panel was co-hosted by Point of View magazine and Reel Artists, the Canadian Art Foundation Film Festival (and the only one of its kind in North America). It featured filmmakers Larry Weinstein, Matthew Akers, and Roz Owen. Weinstein, whose films portray music composers, feels that some biographical details are more pertinent than others. For instance, he believes that it is useful to know about Toulouse-Lautrec’s dwarfism to appreciate the low angles of his paintings, but that it is less critical to know that an elderly Renoir attached brushes to his wrists because of a debilitating illness. He’s qualified to make this judgment, having depicted an incredible end-of-life story already. In the film Ravel’s Brain, the composer struggles to write music after he develops aphasia, agrees to undergo risky brain surgery, and dies.

Perhaps relevance hinges on the extent to which the boundaries between art and life are blurred. Of artist Marina Abramović, Akers says, “Her art in a way is her.” As Abramović told Leah Sandals in a recent interview, in long-term performances, “You're doing life.” (1) This is an artist who has invited viewers into her personal space so much that she has been referenced on Sex in the City as the woman who is fasting at 3 am in a gallery loft for all to see. The performance on which that fictionalized account is based pales in comparison to her longest performance to date in terms of blending art and life. In The Artist is Present (which is also the name of Akers’ film), she is shown seated on a wooden chair across from interchangeable viewers, one at a time, six days a week during the MoMA’s hours of operation. I saw this piece performed three times during its three-month run, but I didn’t appreciate its duration until I saw a film clip showing her tallying yet another week on the wall only half way through its run. Witness the skill of filmmakers to help us see what we do not.

On the other end of the spectrum of spectacle is the artist-activist couple, Carole Condé and Karl Beveridge. Roz Owen’s film, Portrait of Resistance, revisits, among other projects, their 1976 exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario, which revealed the realities of artist life while insisting on artists’ political responsibility. Even though they have exposed this element, they remain private. Condé, for example, did not want personal details about her in the film. Owen noted that this worked out because she is such a present person that it came through in the film. Beveridge was more open to including details. The fact that his parents were communists certainly sheds light on their community-based social justice work. Ultimately, though, they wanted the film to be about the many people they have worked with and resisted the idea of it being about them lest it glorify them. That contrasts Abramović, for whom Akers says there is a lot of reverence. Her willingness to allow 700 hours of footage to be shot for the documentary doesn't exactly fight against this reverence.

Just as the boundaries between life and art entered the discussion, so did the boundaries between filmmaker and subject. Weinstein tends to represent dead composers in his films, but when they are alive he pretends otherwise to gain focus. He keeps his own voice out of the film whereas Owen, a friend of Condé and Beveridge, asks questions of her subjects openly because it feels honest and natural. Akers did not include his voice and he maintained a distance during Abramović’s performance. He feels that because the public completes the piece, he too represented the public, but he admits that there is no such thing as being the fly on the wall. The term ‘Stockholm syndrome’ was tossed around between the panel and the audience but more than mimicking hostages who empathize with their kidnappers, this filmic phenomenon seems closer related to the Hawthorne effect (in which the very act of being studied affects the behaviour of a subject). Let’s hope that artists who are featured in documentaries don’t feel like hostages. Akers said that the trick is to tell as a story as you see it, not as the subject wants it to be told. In speaking about artists he's worked with like John Cage, who are masters of constructing their identity, Weinstein says that the more you look at their art, the more you see its worth. Akers went to great lengths for answers. For instance, he flew to Naples to interview a gallerist to determine if photographs from Abramović’s Rhythm 0, in which she provided the audience with objects that caused pleasure or pain, were staged or real (as the legend goes, one audience member held a loaded gun to her head.) His question, “Where does the truth lie?” functions as a double entendre in this situation.

Akers states, “Every artist has a myth they create or that has been created for them.” The challenge, aside from paying tribute to an artist’s work and making an entertaining film, is to cut through that myth and portray them honestly. By including footage that makes Abramović seem superficial or, as Weinstein says, banal, he makes her seem normal and thus relatable. Such is the case with a scene in which Condé and Beveridge restage a photograph taken 34 years prior. He makes a joke about the couch they’re sitting on holding up better than themselves, and his wife retorts with an expletive.

Sources:
Sandals, Leah. Marina Abramović: The Gifts of the Present. February 23, 2012, ¶14.

Starting the Year with an Oedipal Tragedy

"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.

Reading the book, I found myself reflecting on the caption within 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.” It would be difficult to interpret Diane and Ed’s encounter as anything but ‘bad sex,’ and not just because of its phrasing, which is rife with euphemisms. 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” of Diane, 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 (Walter 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 bad sex in fiction award, given 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

“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 Krasner’s 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 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 of her style to Pollock’s 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 dearth 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

Jennifer Dalton at Winkleman Gallery

“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). Even though I lived in a rural area during the pre-Internet era, I 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 gratuitousness of 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 I encountered 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 succinctly, “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!” In this work, Dalton moves from observation to unabashed judgment. Personally, I tend to extend back to politicians the courtesy of Pierre Trudeau’s statement, “There’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation” (4). Maybe it’s because I take for granted that lotharios like JFK have long slipped under the radar and preserved their reputation as—what were those qualities Dalton identified? Impressive, fascinating, and intelligent. Another work, Only in America (or, I Can’t Trust Myself), is arguably more sympathetic to the confusion of life's crossroads. It is a set of two vending 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 this piece, the burgeoning Occupy Wall Street protests not so far away provide a serious context of dissatisfaction with the government.

Dalton also exposes 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. Examples 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, like Walton, is 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, well beyond my teen years, coolness eludes me. And yet, had I been successful, I would have found that coolness of the packaged kind is fleeting.

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