What colour bra are you wearing?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“… 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.”