Reading art

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

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

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

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

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

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

For more information: click here.

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

Yinka Shonibare MBE at the Brooklyn Museum

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

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

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

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

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

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

Skivvies and sexuality

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

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

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

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

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

T & A (Transgression & Art)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOURCES:

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

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

Stripped, Uncensored

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maternity and artistry

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

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

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

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

Book cover added in 2020 via fair use/dealing. Source: https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/feminist-art-and-the-maternal

Boxing Gloves & Bustiers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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