Feminist Theory and the Body
Lynda Birke
In Linda Birke’s article “Bodies and Biology” she analyses the central point in theorizing about the body: the difference between sex (biology difference) and gender (social difference). However, some feminist disagree with the analysis of this differences. Birke states that the biological body is a problem in feminist theorizing.
Biology is a synonym for living organisms and its processes, in this way human biology resembles dualism, and this is s problem for feminist theory. Biological discourse tends to provoke gender division, as well as the definition of the social roles of women and men, and as a logical response, feminism has been against biological determinism. They stand for some kind of “social constructivism of gender”(p.43).
The body has become a main point of interest for feminists and non-feminists alike. Some theorists tend to emphasize sex-gender dualism, emphasizing the living body, and “transcend the mine/body dichotomy”(p.43). The body is the “signifying and signified”----- In this way the body is defined as something through which you can have social discourse.
The body is important for feminist theory, however the focus on the interior and its processes have been limited, as well as ‘the body development” (p.43). Feminist theorists have been deconstructing texts and images, although the analysis of inside the female body’s images had been ignored. The author exposes that the analysis of images in biology texts are important. The representation of the female body’s interior is evident in the work of two authors, Donna Haraway (1991), and Emily Martin (1994), who presented a work about images of the immune system, and how this is culturally defined. The author points out two aspects of these two texts, one is about the analysis of the “cultural understanding” (p.44), how through the images and the discourses the immune system is going to be understood. The second one is “the permeability of the body,” (P.44) according to Haraway, “the postmodern immune system” is part of a network of bodies, and these bodies, through its permeability, is harassed by the “discourses of science”(p.44).
The author describes how, even with great interest about the body, there is a lack of interest about the inside of the body, and these areas are out of the reach of philosophers of biology. The author considers that the body’s interiors need to be exposed to cultural criticism and be considered as something which is moving, changing, and not only as a medium to analyze cultural meaning. However, the experience or the perception of the inside of the body is affected by culture.
The author points out that although we can highlight “human development in terms of transformability” (p.46), fixity concepts of “the gene” is gaining attention. These kind of concepts reinforce the conservative ideas of “family, gender and race”(p.46). Contrary to feminist intention, these concepts are expanding into the culture through the discourse of “genes”.
The author refers to the permeability of the body, and she points out the work of Elizabeth Grosz, who talks about gender and the organism as something fluid and transformative; the author refers, as well to Haraway’s work “visions of the cyborg,” in which she also talks about fluidity. She talks about polymorphous information systems, and highlighting fluidity across boundaries. While these two authors argued for female fluidity, Birke agrees with the two authors, however argues that organisms have an entity itself. Haraway uses this metaphor of fluidity to argue about this western idea that organisms are determined by genetics.
Referring to this idea of transformation is the social idea that female bodies are devaluated, and this conversation about self determining or transformation is a way to get out of this simple self vs. the body. This section examines several scholars’ views about the self, using biology theory in different degrees to talk about the self.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
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
Sunday, October 18, 2009
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.”
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.”
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