case study: Claude Cahun

from Wikipedia: “Where most Surrealist artists were men, and their primary images were of women as isolated symbols of eroticism, Cahun epitomized the chameleonic and multiple possibilities of the female identity. Her photographs, writings, and general life as an artistic and political revolutionary continue to influence countless artists, namely Cindy Sherman and Nan Goldin.”

“Under this mask another mask. I shall never finish stripping away all these faces. And underneath all these masks, there is no ‘real’ identity.” – Cahun

http://www.queerty.com/queer/the-power-issue/the-power-issue-claude-cahun-20061115.php

Claude Cahun “used performance and manipulation of gender identity to dismantle popular notions of patriarchal society.”

“By showing the ethereal nature of gender, Cahun highlighted the interchangeability of gendered identities, thus reducing their importance in society to mere roles, rather than dominant truths. In some pictures Cahun appears androgynous, while in others she accentuates feminine characteristics, exploiting the gendered spectrum as a means of discrediting its validity. As for sexuality, Cahun certainly didn’t adhere to popular notions of sexual classification.”

Born 1894 as Lucy Schwob. Died 1954.

Used photography (and writing) to try to topple conventional thought and assumption about gender. I admire her work for two reasons: one because of her command of visual language and the skill she had in producing powerful photographs that stick in your mind, secondly because of how she unapologetically dared to disregard feminine expectations, at a time when this wasn’t a common thing to be doing.

Explored mask and mirror. Androgyny and ambivalent, chameleonic nature of feminine identity.

http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/surrealism/room3.htm – Tate exhibition, surrealism, 2001-2

See self-portraits in Inverted Odysseys.

Also front-pieces in Aveux non avenus.

planning photo shoot

Zoo analogy. “Exhibit”. Women exist to be looked at, and because they are looked at.

Model - I am using one model, as this will emphasize the point that female identity is (apparently) dependent on outfit. Having various models will only add a distracting element which will weaken the point of the work. Using one model will make the point that one identity can change when costume does….(or can it?)….ie,who you are at a particular moment is defined by what you are wearing.

Location – Studio. No distracting elements. Backdrop. Like fashion shoot. I’m hiring a photographic studio in the Media Factory at the uni in Preston. Plus I need to hire a lighting rig, preferably continuous so I can control reflections/glare before I shoot.

Props – Sheet of clear perspex. Thought about a box, but a sheet is more like a window, and implies a sense of two-way viewing. The woman can always look back…    Clothes, make-up, shoes… Also need to take usual photo-shoot kit….pegs, torch etc etc.

Kit – Polarizing filter, depending on how reflective the perspex is. Tripod, cameras – 5D for shoot, polaroid for tests?, lenses – 135mm f2 plus 24-105mm f4, memory cards, batteries and charger, laptop, cables, remote switch, spare reflectors.

I’m going to be exploring adjectives that could be assigned to women according to their outfits…

eg. trashy? classy? respectable? trust-worthy? ordinary? attractive? intelligent? important? proud? comfortable? courageous? friendly? jealous? lonely? naughty? thoughtful?

I will probably add these as captions either onto the images in the style of Kruger or as separate text. I also am toying with ways of having them so they aren’t assigned to specific images… if it were an installation I’d like to have the words projected so they could move around and land on different images at different times. This will all come after I have the images to work with.

I will definitely work the photo shoot based around the adjectives, as these will provide direction for each image.

genesis of creative idea

How my creative ideas have developed and changed through the research process…how I have adapted basic ideas, expanding on some, scrapping others, in order to arrive at my final project:

Labelling – post-it notes as labels stuck on body, labelling identity. ‘Bound-up’ by labels – bandage with words on? Self-portrait. Other women?

‘Fruit machine’ type installation…various pictures of head/torso/legs of female bodies in various outfits/make-up etc. Moving round to sit in combinations. But, constraints of space, also software availability if done digitally… And not really acting as a parody to existing imagery of women.

Holding boards: ‘I am….’ and ‘I am not…’ Photographed, merged as a clone image… Again, not enough parody, no real subversion of existing codes. Too literal.

Idea of masks…Make one mask and photograph various women wearing it. Doesn’t really link in with ideas of being ‘more than meets the eye’. Simply looks at the idea that “women wear masks” without really critiquing it or expanding on it in any productive way. Not enough could be read from these images.

A composite woman – large scale. Made up of words, narratives….images…. But this would look more at women as a collective identity, exploring women’s feelings about being female….Again, not really hitting the idea of women as objects of visual representations.

Wardrobe diaries – photographing women wearing the clothes that they feel best sum up their identities. With explanations, narrative excerpts, looking at when they wear certain things, don’t wear other things, why, how they feel about it. Moved from this idea because it is more a study of individual women, rather than looking at a general discourse of visual representation of women. The women’s faces would make it too individual and personal to them, rather than a much wider social comment.

Puppets – mannequins dressed in various outfits and strung up. Loved this idea, but too ambitious given space (un)available and context of project.

Plaster/papier-mache casts of mannequins, covered/dressed in ‘appearance’ but empty, hollow inside. Same limitiations as above.

X-ray images…of women wearing clothing and jewellery…so just certain items of the appearance show up. Bones plus earrings, necklace, belt buckle etc…. Far too ambitious! Where do I get an X-ray machine?!

Film – full-face framed, applying make-up, talking….camera lens as mirror…voice just repeating “woman” over and over.

Photographs of outfits…photographed on a woman, and then skin, ‘evidence’ of body removed. Just the ‘identity kit’.

Series to illustrate S.dB’s quotation “One is not born, but rather becomes a woman” – like series of evolution of ‘man’, growing from naked hunched over ‘ape’ towards full human.

Through this process of idea-brainstorming (which still included other off-shoots of thought) I realised that many of the ideas, although they would be interesting takes on the subject, wouldn’t adequately portray what I want them to. Not enough would be able to be read from the images, and even if there was much meaning imbued within the work, it may not be relevant to my exploration of women as more than appearance. The ideas that kept standing out were those that used as their basis existing ways of representing women. For example, fashion photographs of women in an outfit that inevitably tries to say something about her personality. Or what you too can become if you buy the same bikini she is modelling. It was the idea of various outfits that seemed the most important, because if it is through appearance that femininity is apparently constructed, then it is important to work with what that appearance entails – clothes, make-up and so on. Combined with the idea of labels, and how women are ‘read’ and assigned identities, this seemed the path to follow.

So I’m photographing in what could be deemed a sort of fashion/editorial way, using one model and making the difference between the photographs based on clothing/appearance alone. In order to add an element of ‘reversal’/challenge to norms, I am using a piece of perspex to act as a bubble, box, WINDOW…through which the model is seen. My thoughts were of a sort of zoo exhibit, there to be looked at and usually jibed at, unable to escape from the cage. I don’t want to use a literal cage, as I think the use of bars will only act as a code of entrapment. A piece of perspex, however, will act in this way, but also appear as a window…which way are you looking through it?…and because it is clear, it will more accurately convey the idea that women are looked at through a lens, even if the viewer is unaware of it being there.

thoughts, titles

Women always been visible as objects in culture.

How can women become subjects? Is a photograph of a woman still making her an object, even if the photographer was also female?

Women should claim the right to their own creative voice.

Just because you see me, doesn’t mean that’s who I am.

Don’t believe what you see.

We are more than meets the eye…..

- research into the construction of femininity based on appearance

- how femininity is constructed through visual language

- women as objects of the gaze

More than meets the eye? A study into the construction of femininity through visual language. ***

- a study into how the female identity is constructed under the gaze

- a study into how female identity is constructed through visual language 

- a study into how female identity is shaped according to the visual

More than what you see

Look beyond what you can see…

Leaving the mirror. Looking through the mirror. Through the looking glass. Beyond the looking glass…

Beyond the/a patriarchal looking glass…

Let me be, without being seen

*** I am seen, therefore I am (latin translation? to see=video, vidi, visum….look up passive grammar! [...., ergo sum])

“I exist”

*** Smashing mirrors and shattering illusions . [A study into female identity beyond the 'seen'. ??]

Ways in which women can use visual language in a feminist way: celebratin symbol and myth, deconstructing dominant codes that oppress women in visual culture – through parody, reversal (of symbols, also of roles)…taking apart traditional ways that women have appeared in visual culture under ‘the gaze’, subverting those and playing with them, or finding new ways and new codes to explore female identity. I like the approach of subversion, of using existing codes and traditions…because they are recognisable, but playing with them, jarring expectations, juxtaposing new elements with expected elements….abstracting ‘the norm’, bringing in the incongruous…

Female Genesis – Nicole Ward Jouve

Nicole Ward Jouve. (1998) Female Genesis: Creativity, Self and Gender. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Blurb:

“Is creation male, as the Bible seems to suggest? Does creativity always belong to the male element? Is there no female genesis?”

NWJ argues against fashionable trends in contemporary feminism that wish to abandon ‘woman’ as a flawed and oppressive term, regarding masculinity and femininity as unwanted binaries that attempt to subvert gender as oppression.

Need to revalue feminine origins, to make room for the feminine elements in creation and explore the predicament of the female actor”

Similar to how I am thinking as I begin to conclude…abolishing ‘woman’ as a term isn’t going to solve problems. It would just erase one way of framing the issues, but the issues would still exist. Better to give women the power to express difficulties of being female, so eventually women can live their sex/gender. If femininity is solely a ‘performance’, resigning ourselves to that and staying in a bubble is not going to advance anything. Creativity is a way of expressing – fighting – accepting – we should embrace it.

Pg 1    re: Genesis 1:27

“It is the sixth day, the crowning day of creation. God blesses ‘them’, tells ‘them’ to ‘be fruitful and multiply’, gives ‘them’ dominion ‘over every living thing’. ‘Them’?                   Male and FEMALE? “

Should everything be seen as being made under a ‘him’?

Pg 4 “[Feminisms] shake the obstacles that lie in the path of women’s full access to humanity.”

“Movements build up, have an impact. They are angry, hostile, as well as positive, reactions.”

Pg 5 Binaries – one above the other. “Man above woman, form above matter…”     S. de Beauvoir: “Subject (male) above (the sexual, female) object”

Like NWJ, I am not sure I am really ‘with’ the popular thinking amongst feminist circles. If I were to be classified, I would be a third-wave feminist, but although I find the debates around female performativity very interesting, I find myself navigating my thinking away from a simple acceptance of this as ‘the way it is’. I understand the thoughts of, say, Butler, about femininity being a non-identity, but whilst I agree with female identity coming from appearance and representation in imagery and from ‘being looked at’, I don’t agree with her (otherwise popular) approach: making “gender trouble”. As I have explored, Butler suggests we provoke a destabilization of the terms ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ in order to provide a better framework for equality. However, I like NJW’s idea of “making more room for the female alongside the male genesis”. I see no reason why ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’ can’t co-exist, and as I wrote in my last post, I believe that moving away from this is simply trying to reframe something without really looking to get to the bottom of why the problem exists in the first place. Women can create, women DO create, and my study has been an exploration of that process and how our creations can advance a movement in what I believe is a more forward-thinking way. It’s interesting to come to this conclusion as I have supported my research and thoughts with an exploration of women fighting back against a ‘non-identity behind a mask’ – I feel I can put my conclusion in similar terms. Being ‘just a mask/performance’ is like giving in to the way women are wanted to behave. Masking a problem is what a patriarchal society would really want to do to avoid having to face it. Face. If we show our true faces, true identities, perhaps we can get somewhere to facing the underlying roots of inequality?

I’m sure there’s some sort of proverb. There has to be. If there are cracks in your house, you can’t paint over them and expect everything to be as good as new. If women don’t feel they have an honest identity, painting one on, or stepping into a costume, isn’t really going to help.

There’s one proverb that does come to mind however, and that’s about not being able to see the wood for the trees. I’m happy to say I’m finally starting to see the wood!

Griselda Pollock – quite dystopic!

Griselda Pollock, ‘What’s wrong with images of women?’ Essay, in Betterton, pp 40-48

Explores the gap she feels exists in the feminist movement, between awareness of how ideology in representations of women is linked with oppression of women, and the critical analysis of it.

‘Images of Women’ – problematic:

confusion created by the phrase

ie, is it women as an actual social group, or representations of women? A real entity, or a distorted, male view of women? ‘Bad’ images of women versus ‘good’ images of women? (Fashion ads versus ‘realist’ documentary photographs?) Need to define what it is I am talking about. Is it better/easier/more appropriate to look at women as a signifier? Ie, be more general, and compare ‘images of women’ to ‘images of men’? Rather than getting lost in the complexities and inevitable differences in the discourse itself. How would work be different if it was men in the same photographs? He instead of she?

BUT Pollock argues “the absolute insufficiency of the notion current in the women’s movement which suggests that women artists can create an alternative imagery outside existing ideological forms” (p45) – cites Lucy Lippard, a feminist critic who talks of the ‘danger’ in exposing issues in ideological representations: “It is a subtle abyss that separates men’s use of women for sexual titillation from women’s use of women to expose that insult” (in Lippard’s book From The Centre). I disagree with Pollock. I think it is important for women to expose insults. Even if it never changes situations (hopefully not the case), it is a vital part of women having power, having a voice. I believe we can use language of visual representation to reverse ideologies, and expose issues, although Pollock seems to think that an effective reversal is impossible.

n.paradoxa

http://web.ukonline.co.uk/n.paradoxa/index.htm

I’ve just come across this online resource – access to articles from the international feminist art journal called N.Paradoxa. Seems like there’ll be some interesting material to explore here as I’m writing both an exploration of ‘feminist art’ and women in art, and also as I’m reflecting on my own work.

Femininity and representation

 

“Representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their own point of view, which they confuse with the absolute truth.” Simone de Beauvoir – The Second Sex, 1972:175.

Rosemary Betterton (ed.) (1987) Looking On: Images of Femininity in the Visual Arts and Media. London: Pandora Press.

Pg 1

“The ways in which women are represented in advertising, the news media, fine art and pornography have become the subject of attack, debate and analysis. Given the omnipresence of the female image in modern capitalist culture, this is hardly surprising.”

Impossible to avoid being faced with images of femininity. They tell us how to behave, look, how we should expect to be seen and treated. Can we change the way that visual images of femininity work? Can we change how these images are constructed?

Pg 2

Need to pay attention to how these images “produce meaning and circulate ideologies”.

Pg 3

Various feminist critical perspectives – sometimes conflicting. But shared aims – eg. giving space to women’s own expression in cinema, art, writing, peformance. Claiming a voice in the cultural sphere.

“But femininism has also recognised that women are already ’spoken’ and made visible within mainstream culture: women are the ever-recurring subject of novels, films, poems, paintings and advertisements.” – what is necessary is balancing a deconstruction of these with a construction of new forms of representation.

How can women produce and take possession of their own images?

Pg 7 – Constructing femininity

“‘[B]eing a woman’ always means more than simple biological existence.”

Femininity is closely tied to how the body is perceived and represented.

“There is a long history of imagery in religion, in literature and in art, which links feminine qualities and characteristics with what was supposed to be the frailty and capriciousness of women’s bodies. Whereas men are more frequently judged by their social status, intellect or material success, women are commonly defined in terms of their appearance and relationship to men, as a glance through any current newspaper still shows.”

“The visual is particularly important in the definition of femininity, both because of the significance attached to the images in modern culture and because a woman’s character and status are frequently judged by her appearance.”

(“To cite an extreme example, in rape trials, the clothes worn by the victim have been used as evidence of her complicity with the attack”)

“On a more daily basis, all women are familiar with the way in which they are judged by appearance: virgin or whore, ’slag’ or ‘drag’ are signified in clothes of dress…”

Stereotypes constructed according to appearance. Bound up with ensuing identity.

Pg 8

Visual images are one way in which our understandings of gender relations are organised.

Eg photographs represent the world in a way that becomes a social reality. Don’t just reflect existing realities, but shape reality. Therefore images of women in fine art photography, fashion photography, editorial photography and so on, have a large influence on how we see the female body and what meaning we derive from it. Visual codes.

Pg 9

“An understanding of femininity as contradictory, shifting and subject to conflict is important if we want to change systems of representation as well as to explain them.”

Pg 10

Important to also look for what may be hidden/suppressed within a discourse, as well as what is clearly visible. “Femininity is not necessarily constructed in the same way for all women, not are they addressed equally by systems of representation.”

Pg 11

Pictures, photographs, films etc not just about organising social reality, also for entertainment. Who takes pleasure from them? How?

Often been pointed out that “dominant visual culture…addresses a heterosexual male spectator”.

(See also John Berger: 1972:54 “In the average European oil painting of the nude the principal protagonist is never painted. He is the spectator in front of the picture and he is presumed to be a man. Everything is addressed to him. Everything must appear to be the result of his being there. It is for him that the figures have assumed their nudity. But he, by definition, is a stranger – with his clothes still on.”)

Not just erotic spectating…also about control and power. Women placed in a frame, posed, but the male spectator is hidden. “Looking without being seen” Voyeurism?

Pg 12 “The dominant modes of looking in capitalist and patriarchal culture have been linked to surveillance and control over those perceived as inferior: children, servants, workers and women” (re Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison 1977 pg 170-171)

Case study: Alice Neel Self-portrait 1980

http://www.bluffton.edu/~Sullivanm/forum/neelsp.jpg

Self Portrait (1980) by Alice Neel, painted when she was eighty years old; she presents herself as object just about as unerotic as you can get. So much for the female nude body as the site of male obsession! Like the men and women in Sanford’s photographs that we saw at the beginning, she has taken control of her own image. She has defined what it means to be a woman and herself.

From

OH WHAT A DIFFERENCE A DIFFERENCE MAKES:
GENDER IN THE VISUAL ARTS–page 6

http://www.bluffton.edu/~Sullivanm/forum/gender6.html  © 2002 Mary Ann Sullivan.

Case study: Laura Knight ‘Self Portrait’ 1913

Painting by Laura Knight, 1913. National Portrait Gallery, London.

http://www.csupomona.edu/~plin/women2/images/knight_big.jpg

Illustrates the problem of defining a woman’s viewpoint. The picture shows the artist herself (clothed), painting a female nude, and her model stands on a dais. Three images of women in the picture – each one a representation. The two figures – artist and model – are totally separated, by state of (un)dress, and by space, emphasized by the tonal contrast between the two uses of red.

It’s easy to misread the image: at first sight you may not see the paintbrush in the artist’s hand, and presume she has taken a glance in, say, a shop window. Perhaps subconscious conditioning? This would be more legitimate, and perhaps is part of the point the artist is making in her work. This was painted in 1913. The artist includes herself in the image, perhaps also to make the point that women can also look at women in an artistic way and make work that reflects their own representations. At this time culture traditionally totally ignored women’s point of view. Here, we have a representation (painting of a female nude) of a representation (painted female model) being painted by a representation of a female artist painted by a female artist. Questions abound! Although the artist’s gaze is at something seemingly outside of the frame: it is the viewer of the canvas who gets a ‘priveleged’ view of the nude female, not the woman. But the illusion that the nude is posing for the viewer’s benefit, is contradicted by the doubling of her image (we realise by the canvas within the painting, that she is posing for the artist, not us), and the image of the artist herself, cuts across and interrupts the audience’s view. I would say that this painting does not have a definitive meaning or way of analysis. It does not subvert issues in an easily recognisable way. There is no direct understanding that the artist was making a point about the male gaze in culture. However, the painting does ask questions and in being problematic to understand, raises awareness of the problematic nature of the representation of women in culture (here, art). I still find this painting worth discussing, since it is evidently an early attempt at expressing a feeling about representation of women, which in 1913 was not a popular trend. Certainly, there would have been a lot less cultural resources to draw upon to express the ideas in the work. I’m producing my own work close to a century later, and so it’s fascinating to reflect on the contextual differences.