Lynda Benglis at the New Museum

"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 from SUNY Purchase, 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 [her] 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 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 the viewer’s 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 divided 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

"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 the author 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 female figure 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. Full disclosure: he is one of my inlaws.
(4) Dermot Wilson, Embracing the Foe, May 2-25, 2011, Art on Main, North Bay, ON.

Erin Finley at Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center

"...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 maxipad wings exposed.

What I recall most vividly from visiting Finley’s 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

“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 in Toronto, this was a strategy she referenced repeatedly.

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 does that reading stem 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 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

“…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 apparent 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 containing incriminating 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 didn’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 have 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 in that manner makes Masik look like she is audaciously aligning herself with the victims, or that she is 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

“…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 Abramović’s thorough archive in When Marina Abramović 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 greater convention would be expected. 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, demonstrating her worth beyond awards bestowed from the top-down.

Schneemann’s letters to lovers are engaging, especially their poetic language. 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.e., a third party). 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 os 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 she accepts 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

“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. 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’s Art History 101 is stellar. 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 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. She 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 time returning to New York since I moved in September, and it would have been the perfect complement since the book is set in Midtown, Uptown, and Chelsea. Alas, 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 face 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.

Let them make cake

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

Cupcake magnate Magnolia Bakery recently opened up shop in Grand Central Terminal, 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 of Manhattan. 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 or revived romance 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 verbal 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 writing 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.

Wanting more of Schor

“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 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, Schor 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 of the child 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 art 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 modelling 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 at Gallery 1313 (Toronto), 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 Art Libraries Society of North America 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.

Book cover added 2020 via fair use/dealing. Source: https://www.dukeupress.edu/a-decade-of-negative-thinking

Doing Away with Penis Envy

“The Visible Vagina...reminds us of 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 in New York at Francis M. Naumann Fine Art and David Nolan Gallery, on the same day that I saw the new MoMA retrospective for Marina Abramović’s 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 Abramović 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 Abramović 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 the exact words I whispered 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 (i.e., 98 works x 1000 words) 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 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 already paved the way for public acceptance of the pudenda some 40 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 catalogue, which includes Anna C. Chave’s valuable essay, “Is this Good for Vulva? Female Genitalia in Contemporary Art.”

Lick it

“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. 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 would be 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?

"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.

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 works could cater to that tendency. Coincidentally, the work that Professor Taylor selected for the class to examine in person the day the reading was discussed 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, countless links can be forged between seemingly disparate media. 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.

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

“… 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 loofah 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 females 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 explicit 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 paired 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

“…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 past jobs at galleries, occasionally, 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 through a reproduction in a flag held by one of the four hands of the goddess. While it is tempting to fixate on this element as a means to situate her work in feminism, it is a tenuous connection. 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? Well, then. 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

“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 Production 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 from my workplace, Purchase College, 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. As a viewer passes by the projectors, the image becomes eclipsed, which means the visual experience could have been fractured frequently with a big crowd. It would probably have been nearly impossible to hear the speakers emitting smacking noises, groans, and grunts; then again, seeing a man give two thumbs up after ejaculating into his own mouth arguably communicates as effectively as sound. 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 The Masturbators 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

“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 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 staged scenes are 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 with limbs that overlap as if embracing. 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?

"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 by Attie comprising the show 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 versions of them. 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, every conclusion of Attie’s projected female future ends in nudity, and usually of the scandalous sort. It reminds me of the Victorian-era books written for women that warned 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 perils of feminism being absent, by highlighting gendered barriers and behavioural expectations.

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

“…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 in Manhattan 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, about whom I recently blogged. 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 wearing 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--and, I would argue, the same is true of the viewer’s engagement with your work--Simmons said, “[I]t knocks you off your feet. It destroys you.”