The California Gurl & the Canadian Girl

“Am I envious that Perry’s video is all the rage and that the cupcake bra has been called genius…?”

Friends have been writing from as far away as Korea to give me the head’s up about Katy Perry’s California Gurls video, which was released mid-June. The reason? Among the many sweet treat brassieres worn by the singer and her entourage is a cupcake bra that bears a striking similarity to my wearable art piece, Sugar & Spice (to see Perry’s in action, see 2:10+ here and for still photos click here).

(PHOTO: Heather Saunders in Sugar & Spice, 2009; click to enlarge)

Without friends, I would be oblivious to the video’s existence. I’ll admit to once thinking Snoop Dogg—who is featured in California Gurls—was called Snoopy Doopy Dog until a more culturally informed friend clued me in; I wish I were kidding. I may not know music, but I do know art: after seeing only a few frames of the video set in a candyland, I thought with admiration, “It looks like an animated Will Cotton painting.” Sure enough, he is the artistic director.

I’m relatively up-to-date on the ins and outs of copyright, having co-presented a workshop on the topic two weeks ago. Thus, I am aware that an artist cannot copyright an idea, including something as specific as a cupcake bra. Even if Will Cotton knew my work (a notion I’m only indulging for the sake of argument) or if Katy Perry herself had seen Sugar & Spice, I doubt I could make a reasonable case for copyright infringement. Sure, I could say with a childish tone that I made mine first, and that I have three public presentations to prove it, dating back as far as April 2009. However, I can picture the counterargument unfolding like an absurdist play.

Perry’s representatives could actually argue for transformative use, which is one of the conditions allowing the reuse of content in US copyright law. Whereas my piece has an explicitly feminist intent (see my artist statement alongside the detail photo here), Perry seems to be objectifying women. At least this is the conclusion I come to based on context—in light of her shooting two cans of whipped cream from another bra, and in light of her lounging naked on a cotton candy cloud. We may be polar opposites in this regard, but we’re more alike than it may seem on the surface. In a behind-the-scenes clip of the filming of California Gurls, Perry refers to her breasts as her assets. When I stepped out of the Green Room in a wearable art show last month in Boston, provoking bold and instantaneous responses with my own cupcake bra, I was well aware of the implications of selling sex.

(PHOTO: Heather Saunders at Artrages Surrealestate Wearable Art Runway Show, hosted by Mobius in Boston, May 2010, photo by Anthony Tremblay; click to enlarge)

Am I envious that Perry’s video is all the rage and that the cupcake bra has been called genius (Trendhunter Magazine) while my piece, which took a week of non-stop sewing to make, lies on the fringes of art world obscurity? Not really. If anything, it gives me the illusion of having my finger on the pulse of popular culture (which, for my Snoop Dogg-confusing self, is admittedly flattering). No, if there are any sour grapes (or cherries?) it’s harmless envy about Perry’s personal association with Russell Brand and her professional affiliation with Will Cotton. In my opinion, much of the bad feelings related to copyright lie in people’s insecurities about one work being confused for another, which seems to be bound up in identity and ego. Frankly, I don’t think there’s any risk of me being confused with a singer who straddled a microphone onstage the other day. I’m happy to let the focus stay on similarities between Perry’s ejaculating bra and Lady Gaga’s gun holster bra from the Alejandro video.

Besides, at the end of the day, can I really harbour bad feelings for someone who says she ‘lurve[s]’ my homeland?

SOURCES:

*----. “Naughty Cupcake Bras: Katy Perry ‘California Gurls’ Video Teaser is Sinfully Tasty,” Trendhunter Magazine, July 2010. Online. http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/katy-perry-california-gurls-video.

The Heretics

“[We] fell in love with each others’ minds”—Marty Pottenger

New York is a funny place. It feels so big that it could swallow you whole, but sometimes it seems as small as the rural village where I was raised in Canada. For instance, I had no idea that the friendly woman I was chatting with in the bathroom Thursday night at 92YTribeca was Joan Braderman, director of The Heretics, whose screening I was about to see. What would I have done differently had I known it was her—offered her my lipstick? Opted against using lipstick in front a more seasoned feminist than myself? I’ll say this: it was a fitting way to start an evening celebrating the camaraderie between women, and a reminder that the gap between Second Wave feminists and Third Wave feminists—insurmountable though it sometimes seems—can close in an instant.

The documentary, made by a three-person crew in multiple locations, traces the development of Heresies, a significant feminist art publication that ran from 1977 to 1992 out of New York. A goldmine for feminist art historians, it is replete with archival footage and contemporary interviews with 28 of Heresies’ key figures. Any reservations about the value of this film fall quickly by the wayside: we are reminded of the importance of institutional memory by a montage of contributors’ conflicting or nonexistent answers about where the first meeting was held. The film is effectively a piecing together of history, a kind of collaborative storytelling that establishes credence through repetition.

Watching The Heretics, we are captivated by the inception of the publication—by the list of some 300 titles considered, by the ability to mobilize without the power of the Internet, by the founders’ earnest attempts at organizational equity. We are stunned by Heresies’ perseverance in spite of resistance to a business plan, to male advertisers, and to so many conventions that keep publications afloat. And, I can’t speak for everyone, but for those of us who have lost countless nights of sleep to the publishing world (I even bumped the date of my wedding to accommodate a production schedule) in the pre-digital era, we are weirdly nostalgic for the smell of wax. Mostly, though, we are enraptured by the stories of the talented women who came together to change the world, who—as Marty Pottenger phrased it—“fell in love with each others’ minds” and capitalized on synergy.

Inspiring though the documentary may be, the content is gravely serious. A case in point is Lucy Lippard’s retelling of men and women bringing the same slides to galleries and the women being turned away while their male counterparts generated great interest. Stories like these give insight into the impetus for creating and sustaining Heresies. The serious subject matter carries over into the history of the publication itself. For example, Harmony Hammond recalls the tension of restricting the editorial team to lesbians for the lesbian issue, and Su Friedrich tells the story of how she got fired preparing the sex issue late at night in her workplace. Interestingly, despite the sobering content, the film doesn’t take itself too seriously. A saxophone plays in the background when the aforementioned sex issue is discussed and the dramatic sound of thunder accompanies the first mention of the so-called Heretics; there are many such examples. A cut-and-paste aesthetic lends a quirky sensibility to the film, which might come across as amateur if it didn’t reflect the general look of the publication.

On the surface, The Heretics is about the project that tied these women together but it functions as biography in equal measure. The interviews conducted three decades later emphasize that creating the publication was not an isolated act, but rather part of a trajectory in each woman’s life. The Heretics reveals Heresies to be natural outgrowth of the contributors’ existing commitment to feminism, but also as a catalyst for personal change.

For more on The Heretics, see http://www.wmm.com/filmcatalog/pages/c780.shtml

The female fixation on marriage

“That’s good [said the teenager to her friend]. You have something to look forward to.”

Last night the train out of Grand Central was packed, so I was crammed in beside two young women, who had the following conversation:

“When do you want to get married?”

“Well, I always thought 27 because my birthday is on the 27th and I like the number 27. Are you thinking of marriage?”

“Definitely.”

“Really? With your current boyfriend?”

“Yeah, I know it seems crazy, but I’ve known him for sooo long.”

“That’s good. You have something to look forward to.”

“Some people think teenagers are irrational, but I realize that marriage is, like, a commitment, you know? Don’t go telling everyone in my high school.”

At first, I was fighting the urge to laugh, but then I remembered something pertinent that happened earlier in the day. It was not the conversation I had with a friend about the complexites of marriage, nor was it going to the MoMA and watching the gut-wrenching performance of Marina Abramović and her collaborator/lover Ulay as they met in the middle of the Great Wall of China after each walking one half of the distance, to say good-bye permanently. What I remembered was a short-lived and embarrassing idea that I had in my studio. When I say studio, I refer to the portion of my bedroom that is overtaken by multiple boxes of fabric, a work table, and a sewing machine in need of repair.

I hadn’t picked up a needle for two months, because I wanted to give my body a rest from the intense sewing I did in February. However, there is no time to waste, as I have to sew a pink crinoline underskirt (by hand, no less) in the next week for the ArtRages Surrealestate Wearable Art Runway Show hosted by the Boston artist-run centre, Mobius. I ended up pleating too much netting and was trying to decide what to do with the excess material. Since it’s gathered at one end and about two feet long, it resembles a wedding veil, aside from its pink colour. When I realized this, I felt a surge of excitement. Why not wear it as part of my costume? I had just booked an appointment with a salon called Shag, and surely they could incorporate the makeshift veil into my up-do. Then I stopped myself, admitting that the concept of my outfit had nothing to do with weddings, so I couldn’t justify adding a veil. I was merely reacting to a hard-wired impulse to enact (or in my case, reenact) the role of the bride.

I touched on this female tendency in a recent post (http://artistintransit.blogspot.com/2010/03/social-media-and-sexes.html) where I wrote about a brochure featuring a little girl trying on a wedding dress. A year and a half ago, I made a cocoon sculpture using a pink wedding gown in combination with underwear that said ‘sexy little bride,’ whose wording struck me as eerily reminiscent of the messages written on girls’ clothing. And in 2007, I made a cocoon sculpture with a veil that was based on a t-shirt with hearts on it and embroidered text that said, “Falling for You.” I was reminded of this piece last week-end after visiting a friend who was with me when I bought it in a post-Valentine’s Day sale in Kansas City. I couldn’t believe the shirt when I saw it. My initial reaction, since it was for a two-year-old, was, ‘what is society doing, promoting romance to someone so young’? Interestingly, I showed an image of this work to a new media studies class last semester, and one of the students took a different stance entirely. She felt that the original garment was exposing young girls to a positive view of romantic relationships. My lingering question is, why the double standard? Why don’t we see little boys’ clothing teeming with hearts? Do I believe that the association of romance with females but not males, as established through clothing, contributes to the likelihood that I will never, ever overhear a conversation between two high school boys daydreaming about what age they will marry? On some level, I do.

Redress through dress

“I question the effectiveness of the collective gesture of wearing denim in ‘protest against erroneous and destructive attitudes about sexual assault’.”

Today is Denim Day in the US. For some reason, I was thinking it was tomorrow, probably because SUNY Purchase, where I work, is acknowledging the campaign over a two-day period. At any rate, I am coincidentally wearing denim because I am helping install a show of student work at the library, which is bound to make for a messier day than usual.

Organized by Peace Over Violence, the 11-year-old campaign was sparked by outrage about an Italian Supreme Court decision to overturn a rape conviction, based on the reasoning that the victim was wearing “too tight jeans and she must have helped her attacker remove them.”

Let me publicly admit that on occasion I find myself falling prey to the messages women are told by society, including self-blame for harassment. About a week ago, I was riding the train to the Bronx in the evening. A young man asked if he could sit across from me. I said yes, and when he slid into the seat, he brushed his leg against mine and said, “Oh, sorry, I touched your leg” as if to emphasize what might have otherwise seemed like an honest mistake. His friend hopped into the seat beside me, told me I was cool, and held out his fist. I reciprocated with a tap, thinking this was the best strategy in an odd situation, and then he grabbed my hand and kissed it. When I got my hand back, I busied myself with making notes on a printout of a call for submissions. It was for a show about female sexuality, which made me feel self-conscious. Then he told me that if anyone tried anything with me, he’d stand up for me. I got up earlier than necessary for my stop and he said, “Ooh, she scared.” I hate to say it, but I immediately wondered if I had brought on the incident by wearing a dress. This is the kind of skewed thinking that Denim Day attempts to redress, and that is commendable.

Much of my art is about female sexuality and the perception of females based on clothing, so this issue is close to my heart. However, I question the effectiveness of the collective gesture of wearing denim in “protest against erroneous and destructive attitudes about sexual assault.” I am all for consciousness-raising and solidarity, but a number of questions come to mind. With the widespread popularity of denim, will participants blend in with denim-wearing people who aren’t even aware of the campaign, making Denim Day appear more supported than it really is? Does the campaign run the ironic risk of implying that clothing is a factor in assault by using clothing as the solution? Does the campaign fall into the same category as the recent viral campaign on Facebook wherein women posted the colour of their bras to supposedly promote awareness of breast cancer? That is, by taking a small action, will participants sleep better at night believing they have made a difference?

SOURCES:

Peace Over Violence Summer Newsletter, 2008. Online. http://peaceoverviolence.org/media/downloadables/POV_newsletter_summer.pdf

Let them make cake

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

Cupcake magnate Magnolia Bakery recently opened up shop in Grand Central Terminal, the news of which excited me so much I actually clapped my hands and squealed. My roommate and I enjoyed a piece of cake there today, setting the tone for the exhibition I headed to afterwards in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Cake Mixx by Dustin Wayne Harris at Heist Gallery, which closes this week, features nine close-up colour photographs of cakes and one sculpture.

I take issue with work that depends on expository text. I appreciate the supplemental role that text can play, but I feel that if a viewer cannot ‘get it’ without text in the form of a press release or artist statement, the work might be better presented in the form of a book so that the two are integrated. Cake Mixx is an example.

The cakes were made upon request and without direction by women Harris has dated. They run the gamut, with no two looking alike. According to him, they are reflections of their makers, a notion that makes me nostalgic for the television show Just Like Mom in which parents had to guess which culinary creation their child made after a disgusting taste test. Although Harris sees the photographs as psychological portraits, without the back-story of his approach, they simply read as cakes. The artist says, “Cakes tell it all” but I would argue that it is the press release that tells it all. Furthermore, the viewer is not privy to the details of the makers’ personalities or the nuances of each relationship (as in, say, Sophie Calle’s work) so it becomes an inside joke for the artist and the female participants. Even with the ‘portraits’ being named for the women who made them, it doesn’t function in a biographical way or more broadly in an anthropological way, nor does it function as mere entertainment. The press release says, “The viewer’s head is whizzing” but without the inside story, viewer engagement seems impeded. Unlike the artist—who had the opportunity for continued or revived romance with the bakers and a vested interest in the symbolism of cake decoration as an indicator of relationship potential—the viewer has nothing at stake, no motivation to probe deeply.

The press release encourages extrapolated meaning: “Is Saran Wrap code for safe sex or daddy issues? Because the frosting is messy, she’s probably wild in bed”. Really? Let me say that again. Really?! I can relate to the impulse to cast baked goods in a sexy light, having recently finished fabric cupcake sculptures with lingerie ‘icing’ (see image below) but ultimately, I fail to see these photographs as sexy...and I’ve read Erin Bolger’s The Happy Baker, which is geared to single women wanting to send messages to their lovers or would-be lovers. At most, I can see the heart-shaped cakes as gendered because they seem like too sappy of a choice for men.


The press release verges on melodramatic by stating, “The cakes cease to be merely relics invested with all the intense beauty and suffering of memory and longing, and instead become infused with a heightened sense of uniqueness, of introspection and of self.” This contrasts the artist’s flippant attitude: “So many cakes. So many girls.” His comment strikes me as the verbal equivalent of making notches on a bedpost. What introspection might occur is interrupted by the perplexing sculpture, Glitter Butt. I actually asked, “Is this by the same artist?” What to make of the disco-ball-like buttocks of a man with a very prominent anus? Is the message that all the concoctions come out the other end looking pretty much the same?

p.s. After writing this post, I found Perry Sanatanachote’s “Baked With(out) Love” (DNAInfo, April 2,2010), which states, “Harris admits he liked the idea of forcing domesticity and femininity on these women who weren't any good at traditional female roles.” As you can well imagine, this comment made me want to toss my cookies—er, cake.

Explaining, not complaining

“Yesterday, I overheard the train conductor say something wonderful…”

Further to reading Mira Schor’s A Decade of Negative Thinking (Duke University Press, 2009), I’ve been ruminating on the fine line between critical thinking and critical thinking—that is, critical thinking in the scholarly sense versus negative thinking. It seems that there is a perception of feminists being bitter and focusing on the negative. Chloe Angyal’s article in yesterday’s Guardian, “You’re not a feminist, but…” talks about young women avoiding calling themselves feminists as a way of “play[ing] nice.” Nice and bitter definitely do not go together.

At the risk of sounding obnoxiously self-referential, some of my own insecurities about sounding like a bitter feminist include a summary of a Laurie Simmons talk, in which I wrote, “…after writing blog post after blog post to contextualize my work in feminist art historical scholarship, will I be seen as an overbearing feminist?” And, after attending a book launch for Susan Anderson, I wrote, “Slinking down in my seat, I felt like the feminist curmudgeon, a stereotype that I detest.” Reviewing Erin Bolger's The Happy Baker, I wrote, "Make no mistake: I am not passing negative judgment" and after reading Jeanette Winterson's Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery (Vintage International, 1997), I wondered, "Does advocating for change (say, of gender stereotypes) smack of effrontery?"

Yesterday, I overheard the train conductor say something wonderful that eased my insecurities. He was telling a passenger about his grandmother who was whining about having run out of milk. When he made a gentle comment about her complaining, she said, “Honey, Grandma’s not complaining. She’s just explaining.” Everyone howled. Here’s hoping that is what this blog is accomplishing.

Wanting more of Schor

“For any cynic who has survived art school or served on a gallery programming committee, 'Trite Tropes' is a ‘must read’.”

Even though it would mean being exhausted on my birthday, I booked the overnight bus last week so I could attend an artist talk by Lynda Benglis before heading home to Canada. I’m embarrassed to admit that when I learned her talk at the New York Studio School had been cancelled, I did not act my age: I sulked for the better part of the day. And what does a librarian do to cheer herself up? She goes book shopping, naturally. I chose Mira Schor’s A Decade of Negative Thinking (2009, Duke University Press) because I felt the dark title would be a good match for my mood.

My own negative thinking was quickly abated. The only criticism I can make is that Schor’s writing is so luscious that I wanted to relish and reread each sentence before moving on, which slowed the entire experience. Her series of essays on contemporary art is so compelling that I forgot all about the overwhelming stench of urine as I began reading in the bus lineup outside Penn Station. Since Schor is a native New Yorker, I trust that she’ll perceive that as the highest form of compliment should she ever read this post.

It’s much easier to write a post about a book that makes me want to bang my head against the wall than a book that makes me want to nod my head, and Schor’s falls into the latter category. Unfortunately, head nodding contributes little to academic discourse, unless it’s to emphasize the continued relevance of a classic. Nonetheless, it’s worth mentioning that Schor’s observations and opinions rang true for me repeatedly. The book begins with ‘She Said, She Said: Feminist Debates, 1971-2009.’ When reading the first essay from this section, ‘The ism that dare not speak its name’ in which Schor identifies a troubling trend of women artists not associating themselves overtly with feminism, I found myself thinking, “Yes! Elizabeth Sackler spoke about that very problem at Invisibility to Visibility: Are the Major Museums Opening Up to Women Artists?” (Brooklyn Museum, March 27, 2010). In the same essay, Schor writes about the importance of the feminist perspective to media literacy and includes excerpts from disturbing news stories as proof. The following morning, I read the free Metro newspaper on the Go Train to stay awake after losing a night’s sleep. Rather than falling mercy to fatigued head bobbing, I engaged in deliberate head nodding with Schor in mind as I read two shocking stories: one about a seven-year-old New Jersey girl whose step-sister allegedly facilitated sexual abuse of the child by multiple men in exchange for cash (no author, Associated Press); and the other about a convicted 27-year-old rapist from Ontario who said one of his victims should now “know to keep her doors locked” (Mattos). These are just two examples that I found myself heartily agreeing with Schor about.

The middle section is on painting. As a non-painter, I’m going to take the liberty of skipping over it in my discussion even though I did enjoy reading it. The final section, ‘Trite Tropes,‘ prompted me to vacillate between head nodding and defensive head shaking. For any cynic who has survived art school or served on a gallery programming committee, ‘Trite Tropes‘ is a ‘must read.‘ Schor considers what makes art predictable. I was laughing along as she rhymed off clichéd elements to which contemporary art is prone: “On one jury in which I participated, we decided that a moratorium should be declared on family photos, cartoons, waifs…” (221). Then, as if a slide of my work had been inserted into the carousel, “underwear, childhood, dresses…” Hmm, it would seem that using dresses and underwear (or ‘intimate apparel’ as I delicately referred to it in a recent grant report) to critique childhood socialization puts me in dangerous territory. I’m too invested to change now, though.

In this same section, in a priceless essay called ‘Recipe art,’ Schor facetiously establishes a formula for art world success, which basically involves combining tropes to create one-liners. Although my artistic preferences lean toward the cerebral (but not at the expense of accessibility), I was reminded of the value in one-liners from a current call for submissions for a wearable art competition taking place next month. The instructions underscore the importance of being able to ‘read’ the work from at least six feet away. If accepted, I’ll probably have between 30 seconds and a minute on the runway, so modelling a one-liner is arguably the only viable option. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for Sugar & Spice, my cupcake bra, or a variation of it. That brings me to another element of Schor's book that provoked me.

Schor subscribes to the tenet that women are still seen primarily as sexual commodities in spite of major advances. Reading this, I nodded my head once again, acknowledging its regrettable relevance even to a seven year old. Reflecting on my own work, I immediately thought of the cupcake bra and the title of my recent show at Gallery 1313 (Toronto), Titillate. I’m not confident that complicity and self-righteousness (i.e., my belief that I’m creating titillating work for a higher feminist purpose) can co-exist. Someday, someone may call me on it, so in the meantime, I’m trying to sort it out.

Truthfully, I didn’t buy Schor’s book because of the dark title, but rather because of its coverage of feminist art blogs, as I’m preparing a presentation on my blog for the Art Libraries Society of North America conference later this month. As much as her coverage of the 2.0 world is exciting, it’s intimidating for me to respond to it from a 2.0 platform. The reason is that Schor critiques the inconsistencies and confusion about feminism that characterize many art blogs. I fear that mine is shaping up to be a combination of head nodding and head shaking, with a fair bit of knee jerking thrown into the mix. If Schor has focused on a decade of negative thinking in her book, in my blog I have chronicled a year of conflicted thinking. For those of you who know me well, you know I’m not referring exclusively to my art, and I appreciate your support. Thankfully, art offers much needed respite.

SOURCES:

---- (Associated Press), “Teen, 15, charged for selling 7-year-old stepsister for sex”, Metro News, April 1-14, 2010. Print.

Melinda Mattos, “Rewriting cultural norms is the answer,” Metro News, April 1-14, 2010. Print.

Mira Schor, A Decade of Negative Thinking. Durham: Duke University Press, 2009. Print.

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