Janine Antoni

Janine Antoni

Antoni uses her own body as a primary tool- sometimes the whole body, and sometimes parts of it, such as her mouth, hair, and head. Through her body the artist explores issues like process, materiality and cultural perceptions of the body. She uses diverse materials to produce her work like chocolate, soap, etc. Performance is an important medium for the artist, however she didn’t intend to do it, she was focused on the process of making, and the process of production. In the performance Loving Care (1992) Antoni uses her own hair as a paintbrush, and in the performance the artist mops the gallery floor with her heir pushing the public out of the gallery. And with this she is trying to explore concepts of the body and power.


http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/antoni/index.html

Shigeko Kubota

Shigeko Kubota
Fluxus is an international group of artists, created in 1960. In this group were a mix of different artists using different media, as well as diverse disciplines. One artist who was an important part of this group since the beginning is Shigeko Kubota; born in Japan 1n 1937. Kubota stated her participation in Fluxus in 1964. During this time Kubota discoverd and started working with video.f Kubota is known as an important artist for elevating video as an art form. In 1965 she presented, during the Fluxus movement public festival in New York, Vagina Painting a really controversial performance. She painted over a horizontal paper using a brush that extended from her vaginal position. This work was referred to as a “subversion” of the Jackson Pollock technique of painting, or dripping paint over a canvas. The artist was creating a parody of the work of Yves Klein, who in his Happening of the 1950, used naked women as paint brushes. According to Peggy Phelan in Art and Feminism, “using her vagina as a source of inscription. Kubota questioned the western cultural designation of female genitalia.”(p.65)

http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/community/blogosphere/feministbloggers/2007/10/page/2/

Phelan, Peggy. Art and Feminism, Paidos

Whitney Chadwick. Women, Art, and Society

Women, Art, and Society
Whitney Chadwick

In Chapter 10, “Modernist Representation: Female Body”, the author points out that the gradual development of different forms of expression about the “self-consciousness” which defines modern art, conceded with the materialization of the first group of women artists. The artist refers to the “avant-garde” as the “dominant ideology of artistic production”(p.279) which was used to relegate women artists as has happened before in different times in art history. The author states that there never existed a female Bohemia or artistic myth of the woman artist. She argues that women don’t have a history of art, therefore, it is difficult to place, or name, or mythologize women’s art. The author argues that if expressionism and feminism are in conflict, then the relationship of some artists like Modersohn-Becker and Kathe Kollwitz to Expressionism is difficult to state clearly. “Stylistic innovation and monumental size”(p.279) leave the production of many artists like Georgia O’Keeffe and Frida Kahlo in an position in which art and femininity are opposites. The author points out that artists like Monet, Gauguin, Renoir and Picasso merge “the artistic creation with male sexual energy, presenting women as powerless” (p.279) and as sexual objects.

The author refers to Carol Duncan’s article, “Domination and Virility in Vanguard Paintings” in which Duncan makes clear the equalization of creativity and the male’s sex desire in the work of several artists who formed part of the Fauves, the Cubists, and the German Expressionists. She claims that “the vanguard myth of individual artistic freedom is built on sexual and social inequalities” (p.280). The subject of the female is diminished to “flesh”, defenseless to the artist and viewer. The female form is transformed based on the “sexual” desire of the artist. Whitney points out the importance of Duncan’s essay to argue about the representation of the female body. Duncan brings up the concept of the female nude as a form for male pleasure. Contemporary feminist art historians should further investigate the issues around sexualized looking, other forms of looking and female subjectivity.

In the modern art movement, while women were pushed out of the political and aesthetic discussion, many women focused on the female body as a principal subject. The author points out that many critics are split between essentialism and constructivism of femininity, as well as a “psychoanalytic construction of sexual differences”(p.282). The author states that in order for us to understand and get access to conceptualization about the female body, we need to access it through medical, art, and legal discourses. The work of female artists about gender, representation of female body, and esthetic conventions, represent important “precedents”(p.282).

Valadon and Modersohn-Becker were two important female painters whose work about the female nude form challenged the way the female form was represented - figures connected to nature, and controlled by emotions and biology. Critics couldn’t find Valadon’s nudes a “signifier for male creativity” (p.282), and for this the artist was relegated for her “femininity”. The author describes Valadon’s nudes as figures in control of their surroundings and of their own movements.

The author describes a change from the seductive femininity created by Symbolist painters and the idea of ‘natural-womanhood’ (p.286). The idea of the natural female body was developed extensively by Gauguin. Between the artist related to the German Expressionism there are Paula Modersohn-Becker and Kathe Kollwitz, which exposed a clear conflict between the modernist beliefs and the “social reality” (p.286). Modersohn-Becker had trouble trying to create images merging both experiences. Kathe Kollwitz focused on the production of social images. Modersohn-Becker focused on the term of “earth mother”, and through her models she developed an interest in embodying the “elemental nature” (p.286).

The author points out that critic Karl Scheffler states the incapacity of women to be part of the production of culture due to her connection to nature, and of course “her lack of spiritual insight” (p.289). Modersohn-Becker made this ambivalence clear through a poem and defined her ambitions as masculine. The author continues to analyze the work of Gauguin and points out the contrasting relationship between native women and the white artist in a “colonized society” (p.290).

The author refers again to Modersohn-Becker and Kathe Kollwitz. About the first the author points out the death of the artist after giving birth, and questions the disparity between the idea of motherhood and “the biological reality of fecundity”(p.290). In the case of Kathe Kollwitz she addressed the concept of motherhood in a “perspective of class and history”. Kollwitz through her work stood for the social purpose of art and in this way she broke with “the modernist cultivation of individual artistic freedom”(p.292).

Finally, the author refers to the surrealism in which the segmented and re-created female body became the “Surrealist signifier” (p.310). Many female artists felt attracted to surrealism for its anti-academic character, as well as its emphasis on personal expression. However, female artists were confronted with the idea that the creative role was only played by a male role, as well as the metaphorical destruction of the “object and subject with the violent assault on the female image” (p.310). Even though women made important contributions to surrealism, in many cases their interest in the movement was develop not for their political or theoretical similarities, rather for their personal relationships with male artist. However, women artists changed “the erotic violence of male artist for a magical fantasy” (p.311) and their images of the body were claimed as “Self”. Different images of the female body, in surrealism, were identified with a “creative nature” (p.311), and artists like Remedios Varo, Leonora Carrington, and Dorothea Tanning developed fantastic themes in their work. Eliminated from Surrealism theory, women artists focused on their own reality. Surrealism recreated women as a “magic object and sites on which to project male erotic desire” (p.313). The work of artists like Frida Kahlo, Maria Izquierdo and Leonora Carrington shows how the work of females artist is important and “the use of mirror to assert the duality of being, the self as observer and observed.”

Hannah Wilke

Hannah Wilke was an American feminist artist working with the body as major theme, more specifically her own body. As many feminist artists during the 70’s, Wilke used the performance as a central medium to develop her concepts, however she used different techniques like sculpture, photography, drawings, mixed media, and assemblage. The artist used her body or only an abstraction of it to develop her work. In many works, she used her own beauty to play with the concept of the “ model” and being able of the deconstruction stereotypes of femininity. In many pieces the artist used ceramic, latex or chewing gum to resemble vaginal forms. She used photography, drawings or other materials with these organic shapes. Wilke worked with different concepts like female identity, sexuality, stereotypes of femininity, pain, feelings and pleasure. In the last part of her life she documented and worked on a series of photographs “Intra-Venus” in which she recollected all the process of her disease, and her deterioration after treatment.

Carolee Schneemann

Carolee Schneemann

Carolee Schneemann
Schneemann was a controversial, and multidisciplinary feminist artist, who used her own body, through performance, to play with concepts like eroticism, desire, sex-“heterosexual”, and the female body’s representation. She works in different medium like painting, photography, installations, as well as performance. However, before she started her involvement in performance, she was a painter. The continued use of painting references in her performance gives a sense of the importance of this technique for Schneemann. Through her work Schneemann has been trying to re-shape the definition of eroticism, as well as female sexuality. I am not sure if she was challenging, or using the traditional and repressive way of seeing female’s body and sexuality. However, the intension of the artist was to establish different ways of seeing female desire. There was a controversy in the way this artist was using the representation of her body.

Haraway, Donna. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women

Simians, Cyborgs, and Women

Donna Haraway

In Chapter 4, “In the Beginning Was the Word: The Genesis of Biological Theory”, Haraway opens the chapter by bringing up several questions about the existence and objective of feminist inquiry about natural science. She wonders if feminists should focus only on critiquing science and its production, or if they should create a new theory of scientific knowledge. She wonders if the feminist theory of knowledge should be similar to existing theories of representation. She asks if feminist epistemology would do away with the separation between object and subject, or between “non-invasive knowing and prediction and control?” (p.71). She also brings up the question about whether or not feminism is going to be able to master science and offer a new understanding between science and humanism. She declares that she would like to bring up these questions through the analysis of four books, which direct the attention to contemporary natural science.

Haraway points out the debate about the interpretation of men from a strictly biological perspective and human nature. She declares that feminism has developed a “story in a patriarchal voice” and that feminists have received knowledge from a paternal line.

The author refers to Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar’s study of nineteenth-century women writers, in which the authors describe the painful process women went through to create and establish creative presence as writers. They describe the role of the author as somebody who has the power to create. In addition to authors producing natural knowledge, they should decode biological theory that was created by men. Haraway references Gilbert and Gubar in The Madwomen in the Attic as they describe the techniques used by women writers in the nineteenth century to impose authority; they made a reinterpretation of the original text and made it right, or they created a new history. In correspondence, Haraway declares that feminists working in biology should recreate poor science about evolution, brains and hormones to show a biology “without conflict between reason and authority” (p.72). Feminists should impose the terms of speech.

The author refers to the David Baresh’s book, The Whisperings Within (1979) that tries to reveal the central knowledge of biology in a cultural framework in order to teach people about themselves and achieve their potential. Barash makes use of parts of Genesis, and his first quote is from Pius XII on natural law and reproductive sex in marriage. According to Haraway, his central concern and strategy is about lineage. He supports his statements in the authority of the father - patrolineage is his technique to produce facts. In conclusion, Barash establishes necessary biological determination, which is used for male dominance.

Haraway analyzes an essay included in Gregory et al.’s collection, Sociobiology and Human Nature (1978). This book was published based on a symposium created to explore humanistic involvement in socio-biological research. Haraway points out that Marjorie Greene, the only woman invited, was assigned to discuss socio biological implications for a philosophy of the mind. The author describes this book as a well reasoned one, however, she points out the limitations of analysis imposed to maintain it out of feminist scientific discourse. Haraway argues the authority of some people invited to symposium like David Barash, or Pierre L. van den Berghe, who declares that only a return “to the pastures of biology will we root the human science in the soil of truth”(p.75). For all, and each of the participants, Haraway points out their tendency to support patriarchal points of view and to not support the truth of scientific theories.

The author wonders about the room feminists have to recreate and reshape the production of science, and she addresses this question through the analysis of Hubbard and Lowe’s book Gene and Gender (1979). Haraway analyzes the tendency of Hubbard and Lowe to reinterpret stories and she is, as well, concerned about lineages like David Barash. Haraway points out that the authors mention the ubiquity of “bad science” with relation to sex differences, for a historical need of feminists to begin with “the heritage of names in a patriarchal voice”(p.77). Hubbard and Lowe declare that bad science is not an accident, that it is constant, and in the case of sex and gender is almost impossible to analyze because is not possible to disconnect, or step away from daily life, and this creates a contradiction when feminists want to tell new stories about sex and gender with authority. According to Haraway, the critique of bad science, which leads to the principle that all scientific statements are historical fictions, creates a problem when feminist “want to talk about producing feminist science which is more true” (p.78).

Haraway refers to Hubbard’s essay, Have Only Men Evolved, by critiquing theories of representation, and different ideologies of objectivity in science. Hubbard declares that language plays an important role in creating reality, however she continues, “all acts of naming happen against a stage of what is socially accepted as real”(p.78). To this Haraway declares as well that language generates reality in the context of power, but that this does not stand for or point to a knowable world hiding somewhere outside the ever-receding boundaries of particular social-historical enquiries. Haraway states, “that feminists want a theory of representation to avoid epistemological anarchism. An epistemology that justifies not taking a stand on the nature of things is of little use to women trying to build a shared politics”(p.79). However the author recognizes that feminists know the importance of naming a thing, the power of objectifying.

Haraway refers to Nancy Hartsock and Sandra Harding as they point out that these two authors have argued that for women’s historical position it is possible to have a theory of objectivity, and a possible end of dominating by naming - that “subject and object can cohabit without the master-slave domination” (p.80).

Finally, and referring to Hartsock and Harding, Haraway declares that feminists have finally entered in the debate about the nature and power of scientific knowledge with authority.

The Second Sex. "The Data of Biology", Simone De Beauvoir

The Second Sex: Part One, Chapter One
Simone de Beauvoir
In Part One, Chapter One, “The Data of Biology”, Simone De Beauvoir inquires about the definition of women and responds with a classic male definition: “. . . she is a womb, an ovary: she is a female” (p.3). The author points out that from a male point of view, the word “female” is an insult, and she shows that this reaction limits a woman to a purely sexual definition. A man tends to look at biology for a justification for this definition. The author exemplifies these sentiments showing us that the world “female” refers to images of a monstrous ovum castrating a spermatozoon, a queen bee in which the male are killed or, like in the case of praying mantis, swallow by the female.

The author analyzes two questions: “What does the female denote in the animal kingdom?” And “what particular kind of female is manifest in woman?”(p.4). She states that the division of a species in two sexes, with the objective of reproduction, is not really clear, and points out that in nature many other animals use different systems of reproduction, such as multiplication (cellular division, and subdivision) as a way to reproduce. Other animals reproduce themselves by schizogenesis, which is the union or segmentation of an individual that creates a new one or by blastogenesis, which is the creation of a new organism base on a section of the parental body. In the case of the parthogenesis the female doesn’t need the male fertilization. The author points out that some scientists proposed that even in these species male fertilization was necessary to fortify the species, but the author shows that this hypothesis was disclosed as incorrect by recent research which shows that this asexual reproductive system can perform for ever without any degeneration of the spices showing the non necessity of the male.

The author points out that the existence of two gametes- like the sperm and the egg – don’t necessarily indicate the existence of two sexes. These two gametes can be produced by the same being like in a hermaphroditic species. However, some biologists defined the existence of the two sexes as a response of evolution, others debate about the superiority of the other system. The author states the importance of both systems to fulfill the survival concerns of the different species.
De Beavoir uses Hegel’s definition of woman as “an incidental being, suggesting with this the incidental nature of sexuality” (p.6), and continues referring to Hegel to define sexuality as a way for an individual to find a signification of herself in other individuals. According to Hegel, for this to happen, there must be sexual differentiation. Then the author analyzes Hegel’s discourse, implying that the problem with Hegel is comparing significance with necessity. She then points out that men give importance to sexual activity just as he gives importance to other functions.

The author refers to Merleau-Ponty, and points out that “human existence requires us to revise our ideas of necessity and contingence.” Existence, he says, “has no casual, fortuitous qualities, no content that does not contribute to the formation of its aspect; it does not admit the notion of sheer fact, for it is only through existence that the facts are manifested”(p.7). Then de Beauvoir states that we can consider the reproduction as something implicit to the nature of being, However, she says that the perpetuation of the species doesn’t need sexual differentiation.

The author refers to different myths about reproduction, and she describes Hippocrates and Aristotle’s theories in which reproduction is materialized as a male accomplishment, between a weak and a strong “seed”. The author presents theories from after the seventeenth century, in which the role of women was limited only as a receptor and sustenance of the new embryo. Not until the use of the microscope was the ovule defined, and cellular division and the union of gametes was observed.

De Beauvoir refers again to Hegel and his idea about the necessity of two different sexes, one passive and one active, and his emphasis on the tendency of man to allude to the “lively movements of the sperm”. Here the author refers to different experiments about parthogenesis, which shows the sperm as a simple reactant to initiate the development of the embryo, and she inquires, that in this case the sperm is not necessary for reproduction. However, she states that parthenogenesis is not more essential than sexual reproduction. Finally, she states that the only way we can grasp the meaning of sexuality is by “studying it in its concrete manifestation; and then perhaps the meaning of the word female will stand revealed” (p.9).

The definition of male and females depends on the gametes each of the individuals produce, and these two gametes develop from equivalent cells. It develops into sperm or ovule, and each of these contains a similar number of chromosomes. The sperm contains x and y chromosomes, meanwhile the ovule contains x and x chromosomes. During fertilization the egg contains two sets of chromosomes, which will determine the sex of the new individual - the 48 chromosomes in humans form later. The author shows that the female and male play identical roles in the hereditary context, so neither sperm nor ovule are superior to the other. The author describes the difference in size between the sperm and the egg, and describes the union of these two showing how the sperm lose its tail and is being absorbed and unified into the nucleus of the ovule. In response of the relevance of one gamete to the other, the author describes the active role of the sperm in fertilization, provoking new life in contrast the passivity of the egg as representing all the factors to maintain and develop life. The author states that both, in different ways, have the same rolls in procreation, and that this differences has been a source of theories about women and men rolls in society, and declares that these analogies are more the result of the philosophy of nature from the Middle Ages.

De Beavoir states that the determination of sex during fertilization can be affected by the environment, and gives as an example of the bees and ants. These species are affected by nutrition, which determine if a larva is going to be an asexual worker or a fertile queen. In contrast, in vertebrates the hormones produced by the testicle and the ovaries (gonad) are important regulators - any alteration in the endocrine system can cause serious disorder.

The author analyses the central importance of reproduction in different species and gives as an example in the parasitic crab, which in the case of the female is physically a sac full of eggs, In the case “Edriolydnus” the male is attached to the female’s shell and lacks a digestive intestine; he depends on her to survive and his only function is reproduction. In the case of insects, the egg is the most important thing. In many insect species, both male and female die after sexual intercourse. Female insects have a special role since they care and protect the eggs’ development. The author cites several insect species in which the male’s role is purely reproductive and, as a consequence, is killed after fulfilling his mission. De Beauvoir points out that in reality both female and male are, in different ways, destroyed by the process of reproduction. In the case of the female, life is longer but without independence, her life is focused completely on the protection and development of the egg. For this reason, males are physically evolved and the female presents physical deficiencies as a product of her role.

Two more important phases, or roles, in reproduction are: “maintenance of the specie and creation of new individuals” (p.19). These are distributed between the two sexes. However in some species, there is some independence between the parents and the egg. In the majority of fish, as well as in some frogs, copulation doesn’t exist. Fertilization is through stimulation, and in these cases, the eggs are left to develop by themselves.

Reproduction in mammals is more complicated. De Beauvoir explains that the division of these two roles, “maintenance and creation”, determines the role of the different sexes, female being the victim “under regulation of a sexual cycle”. The male’s roll is minor and consists in fertilization, and he recuperates his individuality almost instantly. The female is subordinated, first of all to menstruation, then to the “penetration and internal fertilization.” Here, the author writes that the female is “alienated - she becomes, in part, another than herself” (p.22). Then she carries the embryo for its development (the time depends of the species). After birth, the female needs to feed it; and then finally menopause arrives. For the female, in contrast to the male, her individuality is restricted in the name of the species.

The author describes the physical characteristics of the male and female. The males develop greater strength in relation to the female’s body. On the contrary, the female body, possesses all the processes and changes that the body goes through in different stages, for example the development of the breast, the processes of ovarian secretion and its endocrine manifestation involving different glands like pituitary, the thyroid, and the adrenals. “Woman, like men, is her body; but her body is something other than herself.” Menopause represents the end of the servitude established by her own biology. The female develops physical characteristics, which are determined by hormonal activity, such as less muscular strength, respiratory capacity, and the instability of metabolism. These characteristics have been a source of subordination. She writes, “Woman is of all mammalian females at once the one who is most profoundly alienated. . . the one who most violently resists this alienation; in no other is enslavement of the organism to reproduction more imperious or more unwillingly accepted”(p.32).

Biological characteristics are important in analyzing women’s condition, but these characteristics are not sufficient to define her destiny, she writes. She mentions several attempts, using “psycho physiological parallelism” to make a comparative analysis between male and female body to demonstrate male superiority, but she rejects these theories, and declares them absurd to analyze man and woman based on an “evolutionary hierarchy”(p.33).

De Beauvoir writes about Merleau-Ponty’s definition of the status of women as something in process - “. . . man is not a natural species: he is an historical idea. Woman is not a completed reality” (p.34). She agrees that women are half of the human species, and they haven’t developed all their capabilities; they are in the process of developing. Analyzing the body purely in term of biology is inherently limiting – if man wants to measure everything from a biological point of view, then the issues of actual human existence are ignored.

In conclusion, while nature is always “present”, social practice between humans can’t be based on biology. The practice of society reflects its other nature, thus the body is not only a biological organism, rather a body subject to taboos, laws and social values that define it.