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.”

Social media and the sexes

“I definitely don’t relate to the aggressive, impulsive, chest-thumping male blogger that Wente bemoans.”

After making a studio visit north of Toronto on Monday, I only got half way back to New York before exhaustion set in. That suited me just fine, as I was happy to enjoy the historic architecture and waterfront of Kingston before heading out the next day. On my way out, I ran a few errands, such as banking in my homeland.

Of the many brochures at the bank, the one for mutual funds/ comfort portfolios caught my attention. The image (cropped version: http://www.tdcanadatrust.com/mutualfunds/tdcomfort/index.jsp) shows a little girl playing dress-up in a wedding gown while her mother looks on, smiling. The veil grazes the floor and the neckline practically comes to her navel, revealing her actual clothing underneath. Her pink top shows two frolicking animals (bears, I believe). They are surrounded by hearts (the classic symbol of love and romance) and flowers (often overlooked signifiers of sexuality). It makes me think of Michael Wolff’s recent assertion that women are popular Tweeters because of their fixation on relationships and fashion. Back to the brochure, the dominant text—presumably in the mother’s voice—reads, “I’ve got a lot of reasons to invest for the future.” How much would I love that brochure to feature the same girl in a judge’s robes or a surgeon’s scrubs instead of a wedding gown?

Before writing a blog, I’m certain that I would have overlooked this brochure. I would have found artistic inspiration in a pink shirt with bears and hearts and flowers, but it would be in the context of looking for clothing in a store to use in soft sculpture. It would not happen incidentally. Now, though, I feel more attuned to my environment. I’m constantly looking and listening for content that relates to my work. It is one of many benefits I’ve discovered in blogging.

Michael Wolff’s article, “Maybe Twitter is for girls” appeared on Newser (http://www.newser.com/off-the-grid/post/420/maybe-twitter-is-for-girls.html) this past Tuesday, followed by Margaret Wente’s article, “Why are bloggers male?”
(http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/why-are-bloggers-male/article1503780/) in The Globe and Mail on Wednesday. Both have provoked controversy. I don’t use Twitter, so I am reluctant to comment on Wolff’s article. As to Wente’s article, I want to resist the urge to point out female blogging accomplishments, such as the sold-out BlogHer conference. The reason for my post is to consider whether social media is a gendered practice in my personal experience (and yes, I realize that this kind of self-involvement is exactly what dissuades a number of people from reading blogs).

Aside from the obvious fact that the majority of my blog content is feminist, does gender affect my experience of blogging? I think it does. I definitely don’t relate to the aggressive, impulsive, chest-thumping male blogger that Wente bemoans. Far from aggressive and impulsive, I am an occasional and careful blogger. This post, for example, is only my second this month, and it has gone through three drafts. The length of my posts (averaging 600+ words) reflects the conversational tone that Wolff attributes to women, although I believe bloggers can be conversational and scholarly in the same breath. This makes me think of Wente, who compares the act of blogging to ‘mental jousting’ with the public. I agree with the jousting metaphor, but for me, the competition is entirely internal. The challenge is to determine if I can still construct an argument like I could when I was in graduate school (important for working in academia) and if I can continually relate my art to popular culture (important for not losing myself in academia).

Wente connects the shortage of female bloggers to gendered behaviour (namely shyness), but I actually see this trait as a reason for women to be drawn to the medium. Like the younger version of herself that Wente describes, I am a better listener than a speaker. It could be a combination of my Canadian heritage, my gender, and my editorial experience (i.e., learn to ask the right questions and then write frantically when the interviewee responds). Without people interrupting, I find I can really work through ideas in a blog in a way that I cannot in an academic seminar, for example. Similarly, when I attended a session on blogging at the Teaching and Technology Conference at Baruch College last spring, I learned that ESL students tend to be stronger participants in course blogs than face-to-face because the pressures of responding quickly are removed. Wolff writes about the hermetic nature of men and the gregarious nature of women playing into Twitter/ female associations. I think there’s a hermetic quality involved in blogging as well—especially if, like me, you’re more focused on the post being made than on the comments it may generate. For me, the 2.0 concept of content flowing in both directions is exciting but difficult to reconcile with traditional publishing in which the delivery of content is top-down.

In the ten months that I’ve been blogging at Artist in Transit, the payoff has been wonderful and unexpected. Besides establishing a dialogue outside of my own headspace and becoming more engaged in my subject matter, I have experienced professional perks. Next month, I’ll be presenting ‘Blogging as an Artist/ Librarian Hybrid’ at the Art Libraries Society of North America conference. I will also be exhibiting an excerpt from my blog along with related artwork in Twitter/Art + Social Media at Diane Farris Gallery in Vancouver.

If the blogosphere is the old boys’ club, that's all the more reason for this feminist to retain her membership.

Shiloh: Parsing out celebrity fashion

“…Shiloh reportedly selects boys’ clothing from stores and insists on being called ‘John’.”

I decided to buy a magazine at Union Station on Tuesday to help pass time during the 13 hour train ride from Toronto to New York. The Economist caught my eye with an image of pink formal girls’ shoes (http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15606229) containing all the cues of femininity I critique in my art. The cover said ‘GENDERCIDE: What happened to 100 million baby girls?’ Economics prevailed, as I realized I could get a hot chocolate and a less intellectually demanding publication for the same price. I settled on Life & Style Weekly but as I waded through my whipped cream, I thought back to the term, gendercide. I knew that parsed linguistically, it literally means ‘to murder gender’ (as opposed to infanticide, which is what the article is actually about). Later, I looked up the root ‘cide’ and learned that it can also mean ‘to cut down.’ Being a concept, gender cannot be annihilated per se, and if you want to get technical, culturally driven infanticide may reduce the numbers of the female gender, but it actually reinforces the gender dichotomy. And, if the cover of Life & Style is any indication, gender is alive and well–more on that in a moment.

Generally, I don’t buy celebrity magazines. They aren’t a guilty pleasure that I will read at a hair salon or over a passenger’s shoulder on a flight if I’ve exhausted my own reading material. I couldn’t resist this issue of Life & Style though, because the cover practically screamed, “Why is Angelina turning Shiloh into A BOY?” As a blogger and artist concerned about gender socialization, I was anxious to read the contents.

Let’s not forget that Shiloh has two parents, so fixating on Angelina Jolie alone is ridiculous. If Shiloh were playing into social norms, would Brad Pitt be singled out as the hero? Let’s also not disregard the existence of agency. Androgyny could be Shiloh’s preference. If the article is to be believed, that seems to be the case, as Shiloh reportedly selects boys’ clothing from stores and insists on being called John.

The juxtaposition of images on the magazine cover contrasts Shiloh’s apparent comfort with the transition to a tomboy version of herself. We see a happy looking Shiloh with sparkling eyes and clothing deemed “trendy but still feminine” (according to a caption alongside a second printing of the photo in the article, p. 26). Beside it on the cover, we also see a boyish portrait. Poorer in quality, the presumably digital photo has a yellow cast (read: sallow skin) and Shiloh has downcast eyes. Her cropped ‘do confirms a statement from an ‘eyewitness’ that her hair was formerly longer and blonder. Is the implication of this comment that the free-spirited celebrity couple has dyed their three-year-old daughter’s hair? Might we not assume instead that her hair is changing colour naturally in sync with toddlers all over the world?

What disturbs me is not the notion of gender bending, but the gender norms being imposed on Shiloh against her will. A case in point is a promise allegedly made by her nanny: “If you get your nails done, then I’ll give you a prize later” (p. 28). This anecdote strikes me as representative of the pressures of femininity in general: abide by the code, and you’ll get a prize. And what is the prize? Prince Charming? Have I jinxed myself by not painting my fingernails, even for my own wedding?

The first image of Shiloh in the story shows her wearing a pale pink dress. Although it is a casual dress, the caption says, “Girlie in a Gown” (italics mine, p. 27). The caption goes on to compare her to a princess. In closing, I ask, why is it worse for Shiloh to be dressed as a boy (which she is not) than as a princess (which she also is not)? Fantasy and fashion go hand-in-hand and who is to say if her alignment with boys is more or less appropriate than little girls pretending to be royalty?

The heart of the issue is hinted at in an expression appearing in the subsequent article about Shiloh’s parents. In it, a quotation from Jenny Paul’s book released yesterday, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie: The True Story, reads, “Angelina wore the pants at first, but now Brad’s wearing them” (p. 32). Watch out: Shiloh could be a going concern like her mother. She’s wearing pants, and not just in the literal sense.

SOURCES:

-----, "Shiloh's Shocking Transformation", Life & Style, March 15, 2010, pp. 26-29. Print.

-----, "Bombshell Tell-all!", Life & Style, March 15, 2010, pp. 30-33. Print.

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.

This week on the train

“IT’S NOT PINK!”

I left the Metro North station today and looked down to discover a long brown thread clinging to my pale blue scarf. Drat. I knew I’d misplaced it while embroidering on the train. With less than six weeks to go until my show (details to follow), there is no time to do anything but sew outside of work. When my arm gets sore, I am forced to take a break, but I feel bitter all the same.

Something amazing happened the other day on the train. A woman from my neighbourhood whom I have seen countless times sat down beside me, said hello, and asked me how I was. My theory is that embroidering makes me seem like a sweet young woman (and thus, approachable).

Here's my other train anecdote:

I’ve been toying with interspersing a series of images of woman eating cupcakes with stand-alone images of cupcakes. Then I was having doubts about using the same pink background. What does pink have to do with cupcakes, anyway? Today, though, I was reminded of the pervasiveness of the female preference for pink, even when it comes to sweets. To quote a young girl seated across the aisle from me: “I want a pink um, I want a pink um, I want a pink um, I want a pink um, I want a pink um, I want a pink um, I want a pink um, I want a pink um, I want a pink um, I want a pink um, pink lollipop.” After she repeated this a second time, her father relented and she defiantly insisted, “IT’S NOT PINK!” I realize that this doesn’t really substantiate my use of pink backgrounds in the cupcake embroideries which I may or may not make (though I had better decide soon), but it made me smile nonetheless.

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.