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.”

Working through gender

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOURCES:

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

Book cover added in 2020 via fair use/dealing. Source: GoogleBooks

The candour of Canucks

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Out of the (glossy) mouths of babes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Book cover added in 2020 via fair use/dealing. Source: https://www.powerhousebooks.com/books/high-glitz-the-extravagant-world-of-child-beauty-pageants/

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.

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