She Wore Gold

Nadja and Pola; How Artists Represented The Shifting Roles Of Single Women In The Early Twentieth Century

An essay by Jennifer Lorraine Fraser. 2012

‘Love is the natural occupation of the man of leisure.’‘ Charles Baudelaire[1]

This paper will explore Andre Breton and Rene Clair’s representations of women as signifiers of rapid social change in Paris during the early part of the twentieth century.  The status of women and their place in the public sphere shifted significantly following the First World War with its subsequent loss of life of so many men in France. Middle class women were suddenly obliged to make their own way in the world by working and creating public lives. This new status challenged the social structure of French society. And most importantly, as Mary Louise Roberts describes, through the rise of mass media in film, literature and through the art of the period, it threatened the integrity of the domestic sphere.[2] Men created projects (as we see in Sous Les Toits de Paris) that confirmed an autonomous subjectivity to women in the city’s landscape. This is where we see Breton and Clair differ. Breton prescribes to Nadja a “profane illumination,”[3] she is not loved as a beloved but is only an object of his surrealist desire. Clair, on the other hand presents Pola with a subjectivity; a true illumination in the form of a loved subject. Today, French films depict women with more inherent subjectivity. However, they continue to rely upon a male figure to move through the public spaces of the city and work.

 Both Clair and Breton deal with an autoeroticism of women.  Without consideration of the single woman’s needs and desires, they created female protagonists that succumb to the male world of desire, seemingly living only for such men. Clair and Breton differ however in form from the automatism of the surrealists and the poetic realism of French film techniques of the period. In Nadja, Breton uses the tropes of surrealism to depict men navigating the confusion of this new landscape to reinvent or rediscover what is hidden below the surface of society. Similarly, Rene Clair, in Sous Les Toits de Paris, uses the story of Pola beginning by the objectification of women in a society strained by petty criminal behavior but differs in the depiction of the conclusion by offering subjecthood to Pola through the choice of who to love.  Breton cements Nadja as an obscure thought object, one to overlook when a real objective love enters his life.

To begin, an exploration of the foundations of this new place in society for women is useful.  In the late nineteenth century, Jean-Martin Charcot created an asylum in Salpêtrière to treat women diagnosed with hysteria; a disease of woman with “its symptoms were delirium, paralysis, rigidity and contraction of muscles, blindness, inability to speak, loss of feeling, vomiting, hemorrhaging, seizures, joint deformity and distended abdomens.”[4] Charcot created a theatre of sorts where people could observe a hysteric woman suffering from the symptoms. Charcot, the teacher of Freud and many others studying psychiatry of the time [5] was highly contested especially regarding the live demonstrations. Feminists have since revealed that these women were mainly poor of unfortunate circumstances placed in a setting which displayed them in a manner men interpreted and understood as not adhering to society’s norms. [6] And from a feminist perspective, they were in the position to act out from the subordination faced in a male dominated society.[7] Furthermore sexuality was significant and is considered the initial insight Freud used to create his theory of psychoanalysis. His theory of the unconscious was “a deep rooted conflict between the desires of the unconscious and the need to live in a socialized world.”[8]

Around this time and still pre First World War the new woman was also beginning to develop in European thought with the rise of the middle class where women were taking a political stance and entering into the public sphere of men.[9] Women began to depict themselves as being a part of the everyday urban landscape instead of only being held up in the home. At this time in Paris, Baudelaire called for a modern art depicting the city and all of its hidden corners, emphasizing the fleeting and transitory moments’ modern life has to offer.[10]  By the end of the First World War, we see the emergence of the single woman in French society. In Civilization No Longer Has Sexes, Mary Louise Roberts describes the madness also developing in French society when so many of their men were killed during the war. [11] The single woman had either lost her husband or had been too young to marry before the war and found herself with a lack of prospects. She was the answer to the constructed ideas of women found in male dominated social situations, that of the mother and the modern woman.[12] The modern woman dominated her own sexuality and life, the wife kept house for her husband and the single woman was the middle class woman who because of the war, began to enter the work force and make a life for herself outside social conventions at the time.[13] As the single women emerged, frenzy in politics and life emerged where for example polygamous marriages, single mother’s taxes and bringing marriageable men from California were all debated and considered to promote regeneration of the general public. Nonetheless, the single woman was confined to the “eccentric fringes of society”[14] not properly integrated into the male dominated sphere. The single woman did however bring the issue of women’s autonomy and status as citizens to the forefront. She was the synthesis between the old and the new society.[15]

Breton Surrealism and The Single Woman

Before the war Breton was studying medicine specializing in mental disorders, he studied under one of Charcot’s assistants and had an in-depth understanding of the history of medicine respecting hysteria and women. Freud also learned psychiatry with Charcot as did Breton’s mentor. Freud’s studies of the unconscious fueled Breton’s surrealism. These disclosed “the deep rooted conflict between the desires of the unconscious and the need to live in a socialized world.”[16] Throughout Breton’s life, he seemed to objectify women especially those with poor mental health. Before the war, Breton worked in a psychiatric hospital that housed hysterics. During the war Breton’s psychiatric work consisted of soldiers suffering shell shock. I believe this was when men were seen to be diagnosed with the similar symptoms of hysteria, and the disease no longer took on the form of being solely a women’s disease. In the 1920’s Breton aligned himself with the artists of Paris, particularly Dadaism and by 1924 he claimed that Dada was finished and he declared a new movement. Surrealism named in homage after a piece of writing by Apollinaire whom he met earlier while working with psychiatric patients. [17]“Surrealism as a pure psychic automatism to enter into the world of imagination and dream.”[18]

Nadja, a surrealist love story that follows Breton for many months consists of his own depiction of an affair he had with a woman Nadja and is written in accordance with other surrealist texts of the time incorporating a revolt against the traditional framework of literature. Nadja juxtaposes imagery with language in order to develop something intangible; a thought or idea of something that attempts to be immaterial. Nadja is a coincidental depiction of a man re-entering his city after a war torn experience. Robert J Belton wrote in The Beribboned Bomb:

“the image of woman in male surrealist art Surrealism was not about the real experiences of women in the interwar period. Instead, it was about the relationship of real men to the interwar period. Instead, it was about the relationship of real men to the hegemonic masculinity of that time. That masculinity deformed their experience of the Real by insisting they accommodate themselves to an ideological construct. They resisted the construct by harbouring themselves within the Imaginary, but their defiance of the construct simply affirmed its existence. They remained anchored to it, though they seemed to be floating freely. Their images of Woman were caught up in the undertow.” [19]

In Nadja, Breton lives the life of the Flaneur, wandering the streets of Paris and encountering all that comes his way either from chance or from coincidence. The streets of Paris are his playground. We see the theme mentioned before, of women constructed into the space of man. Nadja is regarded as an account of Breton wandering the streets where he encounters objects in their place, yet he is free to glide in and out of shops, streets and conversation with ease. Women exist for his own purpose, to either guide him on his journey or to offer insight into why he is partaking on such a journey, they remain in their place without his same freedom to interact with their surroundings. They and their accessories like we see in Max Ernst’s depiction of a glove (Figure 1) are placed strategically for Breton, for men to encounter, reflect upon and objectify and then move along to the next encounter.

Nadja refers to herself as the soul in limbo; this depicts how the surrealists considered the work of the unconscious. It is somewhere between a waking and subjective state and the dreaming and objective state of a person. As is with the street of the city, the heart of woman is yet another place for men to enter into and exit. This is revealed with the description of a woman, “oddly a pretty one singing the following:

 La Maison de mon Coeur est prete

Et ne s’ouvre qu’a l’avenir

Puisqu’il n’est rein que je regrette,

Mon bel epoux, tu peux venir:”[20]

I understand this verse as; the house of my heart is ready and it will not open until the future, as long as there is nothing I will regret, my darling husband you can come. I may not be translating the words as they should be recited although one senses the theme of the woman’s heart only open for her husband so long as she does not do anything to regret before she meets him. Later in the book on page 42 Breton describes his journey “as a confrontation of eternity,”[21] I question that if man could confront eternity would he not have to worry about the future at all? For if things were eternal the past, present, and future would not be as significant, for there would not be a defining time frame. For women looking out to the future, the confrontation of eternity is real. She is put in a definite place in time. Breton consciously anchors the woman to her place within the unconscious of his surrealist tendencies.

Rene Clair Poetic Realism and The Single Woman:

Rene Clair was part of the avant-garde artists after WW1. During the war he worked as an ambulance driver/attendant and after the war returned to Paris and began to create films. His achievements are many, notably his use of sound in Sous Les Toits De Paris. Through the soundscape of the film, “Clair is exposing his view of art. Art is the creation of illusion, but the illusion is never complete.”[22] Another exceptional technique of Clair is the concept of Poetic Realism.[23]

Poetic realism was a tendency in French film making of the 1930’s. Filmmakers created films that spoke to and about the working classes of society. Rene Clair determined that film was a new art able to appropriately display poetic tendencies because it was a living art. The medium of the film itself was a living medium; the celluloid reacted physically to its surroundings.[24] Film to Clair was “an art without experience without a museum will be unusually alive, supple and attached to humanity.”[25]

In Sous Les Toits de Paris the poetic is in the movement of men through the city’s streets and cafes.  We see the Flaneurs in all their glory, the working class song seller and the petty criminals. There is a definite showing of men taking to the streets as in their own playground. They wander and participate in the underground through criminal activities while at the same time searching for love.  Flaneurs could be considered predators to the safety of the single woman. Although the single woman is also on the cusp of society, she delves into the fancy of the flaneusse; attempting to glide in and out of social situations. Unfortunately, the flaneur is closer in proximity.  In the beginning shot, Albert and his group of city dwellers are singing a love song on the street; the women are either with a male companion or close to home except Pola, who is standing in the door frame acting as a voyeur. As soon as Pola enters the scene Albert immediately takes a fancy to her offering her a song sheet without accepting her money. We then observe the thief wandering around to her side, after stealing another woman’s coin purse. Albert desperately tries to unsuccessfully signal Pola what is happening. In this scene we are witness to the flaneur and their actions towards women in the public sphere. There, a poetic line emerges; women are not meant to be flaneusses, they cannot navigate their way through the deceit by which the male flaneur lives.

One night Pola is out with Fred who with the worst intentions steals her key. Fred’s other love interest enters the scene and Pola leaves the café. We see Albert as predator, or voyeur standing outside the cafe (Figure 2). He follows Pola and she becomes re-acquainted with Albert. Pola stays with Albert and he decides that she will be the object of her love. The best example of objectification of Pola is the scene after she agrees to marry Albert.  The difference between the pairs of slippers (Figure 3 & 4), manifest how Pola perceives herself and how Albert objectifies her as a sexual object. By purchasing fancy slippers for Pola, and rearranging them in the way he wishes for her to enter into them, he is actually fetishizing his desires for Pola. For Albert Pola is the sexualized bedroom object.

Both Nadja and Pola (Figure 5) have learned to live with the constant harassment from men.[26] Harassment, that constitutes man’s place in society, the public sphere. Each art work could be seen as a lesson for single women entering into this space. That is, if they enter the space they should expect to play with something dark and dangerous if they remain. For Nadja she retreats into the psychiatric hospital, perhaps a signifier that she could not handle the freedom of the city streets. For Freud, love was the threat of the dissolution of the boundary between the ego and the object. Breton reiterates the romantic ideal of the woman by reducing Nadja to a source of inspiration, as a found object without a poetic agency of her own.[27] Nadja does not find love in the exterior world, and is far more delicate then first depicted. Breton decides not to visit her and leaves her on her own in the dark of his imagination.

Pola attains her own autonomy on a very restrained level.  Nearing the end of the film we see that Pola retains her subjectivity of the first scene. Pola herself chooses her own love interest. In spite of the fact that Albert won the coin toss to date Pola, Pola is not in love with Albert and decides to choose Louis instead. It is a small feat of claiming one’s own subjectivity. I believe her choice signifies the constructed place of women in French society.

Today’s Woman as Subjective Creator of Their own Destiny: The Artist and Amelie

In Amelie the French film from 2001 we are introduced to Amelie Poulain (Figure 6), a young single woman in Paris completely inserted into her own subjectivity. She wanders around Paris, not unlike Breton in Nadja, and finds coincidental objects through coincidental encounters. The difference is that she is the single woman, no longer an object for a man to mold, and use for his own ends. She creates a world that exists to aid others not just for her surrealist playground. She is of her own subjectivity and continuously explores this throughout the film. In as much as when she realizes others do not have the same sense of subjectivity or identity with themselves and their surroundings she, with the psychic powers of chance and divination aids the other people she encounters. Amelie is a love story that allows two people to come together as separate individuals creating their own destiny.

In the 2011 film The Artist, Bérénice Bejo plays Peppy Miller (Figure 7), a woman and an actress who has risen to the top of the talkies, a new form of film entertainment in the twenties.  Miller remains loyal to the man who introduced her to the world of the moving image even though he as George Valentin refuses to speak in the film and loses control of his life. Throughout the film Miller rises to the top attaining all of Valentin’s objectivity. His possessions become hers while she attempts to keep him afloat in his stubbornness and despair. Instead of being an object for the male protagonist she is her own subject, she projects a love for Valentin and he does not abuse his perceived social seniority to Miller. Miller is make her own way in the world while retaining her own subjectivity, something not prevalent in the depiction of women in films of the twenties and thirties.  As evident with Pola in Sous les Toits de Paris, in choosing her own fate by choice of a male companion, this subjectivity is surpassed in our new era; Miller not only choses her way of life, she excels at it.  Even though she is haunted by the perceived love of Valentin, Miller does not allow herself to be objectified by him.  He playfully pretends to objectify her but on another level he is respecting the women in his life by not pursuing a love affair at a time when men in Paris were encouraged at this time to pursue multiple women in order to continue the population growth.

To conclude, as the city was inhabited by men, their counterparts, the women and their bodies were too considered the actual playgrounds for men. This resulted in women living their own lives according to the whims of the men. The roles of women have changed dramatically over the course of nearly a hundred years, yet their subjectivity within the cityscape remains secondary to that of men. Male artists have created a diverse exploration of the place women inhabit within society. Their constant theme attains that women are the other to their objectivity. Men distance themselves from the other by means of following their own heart’s desire. French films seem to highlight the differences men and women experience when being inserted into an urbanized setting. I’m not sure what needs to happen to meld the two genders into one public, or if this is the necessary step society needs to take in offering women a parallel path. What does need to continue to happen are strong theoretical inquiries into the nature and reasons for the dramatic split between men and women? Unfortunately, I have come to an understanding that for all of the tremendous work feminists have accomplished over the years, the majority of women still feel the need to remain objectified within their own place in society. Popular culture attests to this, and portrays women succumbing to the whims of a male dominated situation. Hopefully, we will not regress back to the period of the sexualized hysteria over women’s bodies. However, with the directions in which contemporary politicians and cultural image makers seem to be steering are in the attempt to project ideals on the body of women, they are leading us back to those times. The age old saying still has relevance today, “A women’s work is never done,” and we need to work harder than before, to keep the autonomy of women in our fast paced society. To not allow the great strides taken by the women before, be swept away by the seas of ignorance and societal dominance over our individual bodies.

 List of Figures:

Figure 1: Max Ernst Gant (in Nadja), c.1927  http://etaton.com/chroniques/IMAGES/ernst/gant_nadja.jpg

Figures 2, 3, 4 a, b: Screen shots of Sous Les Toits de Paris taken from youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAss8gP1v6k&feature=related

(See Above) Figure 5: Andre Breton, Cover of Nadja, 1928 http://www.baibarsbooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/9782070360734.jpg And Screen shot of Sous Les Toits de Paris taken from youtube

Figure 6: Photographer unknown,  image of Amelie Poulain, http://futurosamores.blogspot.ca/2010/06/indagacoes-iconograficas.html Accessed March 30, 2012

Figure 7: Director: Michel Hazanavicius,  Peppy Miller Screen shot c.2011 http://metrosource.com.s123317.gridserver.com/2011/11/04/the-artist/ accessed March 30 2012

Bibliography:

Benjamin, Walter. Surrealism: The Last Snapshot of the European Intelligentsia, http://courses.ucsd.edu/nbryson/Vis128csp10/BenjaminSurrealismEssay.pdf accessed February 26, 2012 

Breton, Andre. “Crisis of the Object” in Surrealists on Art edited by Lucy R. Lippard, Prentice Hall, Inc, New Jersey. 1970

Breton, Andre. Nadja translated by Richard Howard, Grove Press, Inc, New York Evergreen Books Ltd, London 1960 originally published in French 1928

Breton, Andre. Excerpts from “The First Surrealist Manifesto” in Surrealists on Art edited by Lucy R. Lippard, Prentice Hall, Inc, New Jersey. 1970

Baudelaire, Charles http://www.columbia.edu/itc/architecture/ockman/pdfs/dossier_4/Baudelaire.pdf

Cardinal, Roger. Breton Nadja, Grant and Cutler LTD, London 1986

Clair, Rene. Cinema Yesterday and Today, Trans. Stanley Appelbaum, ed. RC Dale, Dover Publications, Inc. New York, 1972

Chadwick, Whitney. “Women Art and Society” fourth edition, Thames and Hudson, London 2007

Chilvers, Ian and John Glaves-Smith. Oxford Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Art, second edition. Oxford University Press, Inc, New York. 2009 

Duffin, Jacalyn. “History of Medicine: A Scandalously Short Introduction,” second edition, University of Toronto Press Toronto 2010

Ertuna, Irmak, The Mystery of the Object and Anthropological Materialism: Orhan Pamuk’s Museum of Innocence and Andre Breton’s Nadja, Journal of Modern Literature, Vol. 33, No. 3 (Spring 2010), pp. 99-111 http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/JML.2010.33.3.99 accessed February 26, 2012

Halpern, Sonia. Class Notes from Lectures on “The New Woman” and “The Single Woman”, Winter semester 2010; Unconventional Images of Women in Art

Abstract on Jean-Martin Charcot, Human Intelligence http://www.indiana.edu/~intell/charcot.shtml accessed February 26, 2012

Johnson, Kendall. Haunting Transcendence: The Strategy of Ghosts in Bataille and Breton, Twentieth Century Literature; Fall 1999; 45, 3 http://www.jstor.org/stable/44192  accessed February 26, 2012

Kramer, Steven Philip. 1984. René clair: Situation and sensibility in A nous la liberté. Literature/Film Quarterly 12, (2): 142-144, https://www.lib.uwo.ca/cgi-bin/ezpauthn.cgi/docview/226990153?accountid=15115 (accessed March 24, 2012).

Lusty, Natalya. “Surrealism’s banging door.” Textual Practice 17, no. 2 (Summer2003 2003): 335. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed March 24, 2012). Accessed February 26, 2012

Roberts, Mary Louise. Civilization without sexes: reconstructing gender in postwar France, 1917-1927 University of Chicago Press, c1994.

  http://quod.lib.umich.edu.proxy2.lib.uwo.ca:2048/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=acls;cc=acls;q1=andre%20breton;q2=ACLS%20Humanities%20E-Book;op2=and;rgn=works;rgn1=full%20text;rgn2=series;idno=heb00495.0001.001;didno=heb00495.0001.001;view=image;seq=11;page=root;size=100 accessed February 26, 2012 

Audrey Flack: Archetype For Change

 Audrey Flack, Marilyn; Vanitas, 1977 http://www.audreyflack.com/af/index.php?name=photorealism&directory=.&currentPic=6 

        Audrey Flack:

 Archetype of change

November 18, 2010

In the spring of 2007 I made a solo trip to New York to view the feminist exhibition: Wack! Art and the feminist revolution.  I experienced thoughts and emotions that I had not fully understood.  Most profoundly I contemplated how I as a woman fit into the feminist tradition.  While wandering around, taking in all of the sights and sounds, trying to make sense of what I was experiencing, I came upon a painting that affected me on a visceral level and made me stop dead in my tracks. I was excited and very calm at the same time.  The painting was Marilyn, (Vanitas), 1977 by Audrey Flack (fig. 1). 

As a lover of all things Marilyn Monroe, I was amazed she appeared in an exhibition representing feminist thought. I expected feminists to dismiss the feminine cultural icon and was delighted to see her achievements considered as  pushing  conventional boundaries of what constitutes being female in modern society. Marilyn Monroe was a genius in her time, and this genius has transcended all time. I was so glad to see a tribute to Marilyn, before she invented Marilyn, a homage paid to Norma Jeane Baker. I finally felt included within the discourse of feminism. It has not been until now that I have studied this painting that I feel as though I can put into words the feelings and thoughts I have on the subject.

In the 1970s, American artist Audrey Flack (1931) reinforced the notion that female artists could fit into a newly-generated and binding theory of feminism in art. A theory which challenged notions of art practice established within the male-dominated art world of the 1950s and 1960s.  It is this period  referenced in  Marilyn (Vanitas) (1977) (fig.1), where Audrey Flack depicts the young Norma Jeane Baker before her self-initiated transformation as silver-screen icon Marilyn Monroe. In this seminal work, Flack acknowledges parallels between herself and Norma Jeane Baker. Through an examination of this and other work, this paper will explore how Flack remained true to aspects of the study and practice of traditional art history while creating her own brand of feminist art, and, as she has stated, “For me art is a continuous discovery into reality, an exploration of visual data which has been going on for centuries, each artist contributing to the next generation’s advancement.[i]”

Audrey Flack was born in 1931, in New York City to a middle class family where like most women of her generation and culture she was expected to follow the rules placed upon women in such a household.[ii] In addition to having her own family, Audrey Flack was determined to be a great artist.   She studied art theory and practice at Cooper Union, Yale and the New York Society of Art.  Teaching all across the United States, Flack has also lectured and exhibited internationally.

During the 1930’s and 40’s American artists were financially subsidized by the federal government and promoted by the federal art project.   By the post war boom of the 1950s, artists no longer wanted to operate within an art- for-arts sake doctrine.[iii] Artists whose careers began through government sponsorship schemes became leaders of the abstract expressionism movement with the notable exclusion of most female artists.  Female artists were pushed back to the home and male artists stood at the forefront of art.[iv]

The New York School of Art with its “modernist premises, - of the supremacy of abstraction, the ‘non-objective’ use of color and line, the derogation of the narrative and naturalistic modes”[v] was the focus of the new economic structure associated with private galleries and with art.  Artists such as de Kooning, Krasner and Pollock broke free from the constraints of a government fueled art practice to one that allowed for and involved more inner speculation.  With a strong need to remain faithful to the abstract, Pollock, as viewed by Greenberg, became the leader of the movement where “inspiration, vision, intuitive decision, is what counts essentially in the creation aesthetic quality.”[vi]

The abstract expressionist idea of strong use of colour, vision and intuitive decision is a leading aspect of Audrey Flack’s constant attention.  To the dismay and silent acceptance of her teacher, Josef Albers, Flack began her transformation from creating the purely abstract to include figurative works.[vii] Shifting focus from her contemporaries, Flack studied the great masters such as Rembrandt, and primarily two female artists, Louisa Roldan and Maria van Oosterwyck, and moved to the execution of monumental self-reflective works.  She challenged contemporary masculine theories of art and art education. Until the mid-1950’s, the abstract expressionism movement among men was the focus.  Observed by Flack as an elitist attitude towards art, “…modernist training that mushrooms into elitism, radical chic, irony, cynicism, a ‘camp’ attitude – disregard for past masters.” this attitude was used to further constrain women professors in the most sought after institutions and presented a serious difficulty to overcome. “Art schools at the time did not particularly support women artists. It was almost impossible for me to get a job teaching after graduating Yale….hardly any women were on art school faculties, I got a job at Pratt and NYU with the worst hours and lowest salary which I needed to support my family.”[viii][ix]   As a female artist, Flack refused to participate in this form of art making.  Many of these male artists had expectations of women that they should be either “one of the boys or their sexual plaything”[x] or even their own personal saviors.[xi]  However, with a high regard of the work created by the men of this period, Ms. Flack was soon to move into a more self-reflective form of expression.

With use of tools borrowed from Dutch ‘vanitas’ still life’s of the 17^th century, Spanish baroque sculpture, 19^th century portraiture, abstract expressionism, pop art, photography, philosophical concepts on the nature of life and death, and psychoanalytical constructs, Audrey Flack created a new form of realism, that of super realism.[xii]  While many of her male contemporaries were creating photographic realist works that focused on the nostalgia of the masculine American; chrome plated trucks, first date diners, the textures of light and drastic contrasts of a cool somber palate,[xiii] Audrey Flack was creating large monumental works infused with colour, spirituality, transcendence, political realities and the archetype of the goddess.[xiv]  “Flack has always understood the importance of instilling the representation of objects with emotive power in order to infuse them with topical meaning and symbolic references, often in relation to political issues.”[xv]

Audrey Flack’s first photorealist work, as first coined by long time champion of her work, Louis K Meisel[xvi], was created in 1964, “Kennedy Motorcade” (fig.2). Here she used a photograph from a magazine depicting the time just moments before the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

With the decision to invoke individual and social convictions as an artist, daughter, mother and woman and by sticking to these convictions Audrey Flack began to create work that transcends time. This auto-biographical, coming of age theme to invoke transcendence is expressed fully in her trio of works entitled Vanitas.  

After attending “the survey show ‘Women Artists 1550 – 1950’ a revision of art history demonstrating the presence of women artists in European and North American art since Sofonisba Anguissola and hence by implication the reality of women’s art”[xvii],  Audrey Flack was further compelled to paint for social communication. In this show, she saw Vanitas, 1668 by Maria van Oosterwyck, an intense theme and still life work invoking the challenge individuals endure in the reality of death. 

The first of Audrey Flack’s Vanitas works, World War II calls to mind the time when the artist herself was a young child and exposed to the realities of war and, at the same time, to the reassurance of the individual’s faith and the collective relationship to a higher love.  This contrasts the hate filled horror of the powerful Nazi regime. ‘You can take everything from me – the pillow from under my head, my house – but you cannot take God from my heart (within the image itself)’. This painting evokes reflection upon the absolute devastation war has on the psyche of a young child, even when removed geographically from the warzone. The actual spiritual and religious connotations of this war was imbedded in the hearts of  citizens everywhere. Through the use of the symbols like the wax from the lit red candle melting down Flack invokes the devastating presence of blood against the Star of David and the butterfly connoting hope and peace.

 A similar transcendence of time and humanity exists in the second of the vanitas works, Marilyn (Vanitas) 1977.  While still relating her self-transformation within the context of a global collective consciousness, Flack investigates further what Jung describes as the collective unconscious of the archetype. “The most important of all is the Self, which is the archetype of the Center of the psychic person, his/her totality or wholeness. The Center is made of the unity of conscious and unconscious reached through the individuation process.”[xviii] This is presented in the composition of the painting, included within the symbolic still life is an image of Flack and her brother near the center.  The image is embedded between the photorealist image of Norma Jeane Baker and its mirrored reflection.  To highlight the vanitas theme of death Flack includes many symbolic images, the calendar and the position of the paint brush to cover the actual date of Marilyn’s death, and on the pocket watch the actual time the public began to find out that Marilyn Monroe had died. The challenge of the work is the intersection between these two female artists who transcended their social constraints and escaped the 1950s social constructs which attempted to force them back to the private sphere. How difficult is was for female artists to overcome male rejection of their right to participate in the public sphere. Creative women were expected to respond in their own work by infusing it with masculine ideals in order to gain societal recognition. This expectation is depicted in the transcription within the painting in the text of a Marilyn Monroe biography. Here she is reminded of her first experience of women gaining recognition in a male-dominated world.  “Paint yourself into an ‘instrument of your will”[xix] and is the antithesis of this work.

In the painting Audrey Flack included accessories used by both women to complete their transformation.  For Flack it is the paint dripping off the paintbrush and for Norma the many jars of make-up used to reinvent her physical features and transform her into Marilyn Monroe.

Wheel of Fortune, the third of this series is the most personal of all of her Vanitas works.   With its large image of the skull, double mirrors, in which one reflects a rainbow onto the other, this work is spoken and written about the least.  It speaks of a duality in one’s own fate and of the concept of free will; that we are the master of our fate and the captain of our own soul.  Audrey Flack described Wheel of Fortune as the strongest of her protest Vanitas works.  They are saying: Resist! Fight Back!” [xx]

Audrey Flack co-founded a new school of art practice through determination, constant study, growth and self-invention.  She reinforced the notion that artists are able to create a theory of communication in art that includes everyone from male art world critics, feminist scholars to the citizens of communities for whom the public art world is created[xxi] to the artists themselves.

Audrey Flack changed her focus from painting in the early 1980’s because she realized that she had achieved her goals in that medium, she had finally realized her goal “to create healing energy.”[xxii]  For the past 20 years, Flack has been focused upon creating large sculptural works, infused within the archetype of the goddess and the idea of a positive role model. Working from the ground up, literally and figuratively, Flack has seen her work progress from sculpture that one can hold in the hand to large monumental works commissioned by different cities in the United States. An artist not bound by conventional stereotypes of women, yet by use of combining long held theories on art making, the traditional views on women’s role in society and the use of the female body to invoke allegories of universal concepts such as strength, peace and love, Flack has created a vast work of genius to mirror her own great achievements.  Audrey Flack has created a universally connective theory of art. To remind, each one of us, that we hold our fate in our own hands. This reminds me of Marilyn, when she said, “there must be thousands of girls sitting alone like me, dreaming of becoming a movie star? But I’m not going to worry about them. I’m dreaming the hardest.[xxiii]”

Communicating with Yoko Ono’s Object based work

LIST OF FIGURES

1.      Yoko Ono, Ceiling Painting, 1966 http://www.flickr.com/photos/yokoonoofficial/2891959833/ Accessed March 28, 2011

2.      Yoko Ono, John Lennon, Bed In, 1969. Queen Elizabeth Hotel, Montreal, Quebec. http://inspiredhouseofwright.blogspot.com/2010/10/great-muse.html Accessed March 28, 2011

3.      Yoko Ono, Object In Three Parts, 1966 condom, diaphragm, birth control, each placed on a pedestal, each pedestal: (99 x 28.7 x 28.7 cm) original lost 1966. Yes Yoko Ono, 115 

4.      Yoko Ono, Selection from Whisper Piece, 2010 Museum Of Modern Art (MOMA). New York, NY. Author took photograph February 24 2011

5.      Yoko Ono, Instruction for Wish Tree, (1961) 2010 MOMA New York, NY. http://www.flickr.com/photos/yokoonoofficial/4817338651/ Accessed March 28 2011

6.      Yoko Ono, Wish Tree, 2010 MOMA New York, NY. http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_EGgWCh-K_3E/TI5hdIJH15I/AAAAAAAACk8/erKUKwH6_K0/s1600/moma_wish_tree_yoko_ono2.png Accessed March 28 2011

7.      Yoko Ono, Wishes, 2010 MOMA New York, NY. Author took photograph February 24 2011

8.      Yoko Ono, Painting To Be Slept On, 1962 & 2008, Metal bed, framed text, living ivy, Bible, hospital linen, wood, glass, metal door and window, pigment, dimensions variable. http://www.flickr.com/photos/yokoonoofficial/3586799645/

9.       Yoko Ono, Forget It, 1966, stainless steel needle on plexi glass pedestal, engraved on plexi glass needle: 3.25” (8.2cm) (147.6 x 26.6 x 25.4 cm) A) Yes Yoko Ono, p. 119, B) http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3396/3242863039_79ed2f04f9.jpg

10.  Yoko Ono, Imagine Peace Tower, Videy Island, Reykjavik, Iceland, 2008 & 2010 http://www.flickr.com/photos/yokoonoofficial/2967381922/ Accessed January 16 2011

“The practicality of changing society derives from the possibility of changing the mind.” John Cage[i]

Yoko Ono (February 13 1933), a woman with over four decades of positive and imaginative art creation through many different art forms:  music, painting, minimalist sculpture, performance, public living, and private struggle have challenged large scale concepts of warfare through a phenomenological understanding of what makes art art. This project has the purpose of outlining the main theoretical concepts, such as poetry, imagination, the feminist movement and anti-war peace activism that are present in Ono’s sculptural/object based work.  Following Ono’s transformation from philosophy student to celebrity icon during the decade of the swinging sixties is the focus of this paper. This paper will disclose the socio-political youth activism that began in the 1960’s, which is referenced within every “message is the medium”[ii] style of art Ono has created and still creates today. Ono shows how art can be used to instill a sense of communal discourse as a basis for everyday life while communicating that transcendence and powerful positive change are necessary and possible. Instead of incorporating meanings of many specific images within the text, this paper will outline the concepts and then leave the images for the reader to view in terms of how Ono herself displays her work. It is not the place of the author to attach meaning to the images chosen to follow up this paper.

Dear Jennifer
One has to find one’s own meaning in the work.
Forget It is no exception.
lots of love, yoko (2009)[iii]

In the late fifties, Ono left Japan after a year of philosophical study to return to New York. Once settled in New York City, she enrolled in the Sarah Lawrence College for visual and artistic studies, married Japanese experimental composer Toshi Ichiyanagi (February 1933) and became part of a group of artists, intellectuals and musicians who began to follow the work of John Cage (1912-1992).

Before one can begin to have a serious understanding about Ono’s living “mind-world”[iv] work there needs to be framework created of past historical and intellectual thought practices.  Ono brings together concepts taken from Japanese poetry traditions, Christian dogma, Zen Buddhist reflections, Western art world historical practice, musical theory and philosophical musings and then incorporates much of the mind work of each of these avenues of thought into a contemporary stream of consciousness that is accessed primarily through the media and the youth culture of each passing decade. Prior to Ono’s creation of her style of conceptual art, there had been a great movement begun by Marcel Duchamp at the start of the twentieth century to release the Western object as the underlining focus of art and to replace it with the idea, an idea concerning the absurdities of war. The only way that this practice made any sense was to convince the spectator that their participation was crucial to the creation and discussion of art, since “the creative act could only be completed by the spectator.”[v] Duchamp’s approach to art can be understood as a way in which to practice Zen Buddhism, or in other words as how to incorporate Zen consciousness into the western consciousness, and the ideology of “creativity in every moment,”[vi] which is also relevant in the art of Yoko Ono.

In 1938, historian and philosopher of metaphysics R.G Collingwood (1889-1943) gave a lecture on the principles of art. Stemming from the work of Cezanne and Beethoven, perhaps based on the concept of spectatorship introduced by Duchamp, he focused his lecture on the nature of the imagination and how art is the work of an imaginary object. All great art began as an idea held within the imagination of the artist, and with this the artist created an object. What Collingwood wanted to disclose is that the actual work of art is the idea and not necessarily the tangible object which we can feel, sense, hear or touch. His thesis was simple, “A work of art need not be what we should call a real thing. It may be what we call an imaginary thing. A disturbance, or a nuisance, or a navy or the like, is not created at all until it is created as a thing having its place in the real world. But a work of art may be completely created when it has been created as a thing whose only place is in the artist’s mind.”[vii] When an artist creates a disturbance, it is left as a disturbance in the mind of the spectator. To understand Ono’s use of the imagination is to go back to Collingwood’s theory and how it outlines the way in which the spectator is affected by experiencing an art object. Two types of experiences are felt, on the first hand a sensual experience dealing with touch and the second, the ability to transcend the senses and recreate a concept in the mind on what the emotion, meaning or feeling of the piece felt like. The ability to imagine the work of art as the way in which the artist first imagined it is the job of the viewer. With Ono’s instruction paintings and objects she is approaching the imagination of the spectator from the opposite direction. She instructs the spectator to remember how to imagine. Ono reinstates that common understanding on who makes an artist, “everyone is an artist.”[viii]  It is not to experience the object as it was in the artists mind but rather by creating a new imaginary object that follows the heart’s desire of the viewer or listener.  Another aspect of Ono’s work is her use of text as one would use Japanese poetry, particularly the Haiku. In Cage’s book he describes the use of the Haiku; “A Haiku in Japanese has no fixed meaning. Its words are not defined syntactically. Each is either a noun, verb, adjective, or adverb. A group of Japanese of an evening can therefore entertain themselves by discovering new meanings for old haiku’s.”[ix] In every text and instruction within the works by Ono, there is a return to the idea of the haiku, the concept that there is no fixed meaning to the words used and they are only there to enable the spectator to imagine what they are saying in order to invoke a conversation.

Until recently Yoko Ono’s contribution to art history was seemingly obscured due to the fact that her work could not fit into an easily definable category. The difficulty the art world has had in describing Ono’s significance is also the underlining theme in her practice. Ono’s primary motivation in her work is one of complete dissolve of the binaries that shape society. Ono’s work “functions best in constant motion between worlds of matter and idea.”[x]  Binaries such as artist/spectator, tangible/imaginary, insider/outsider, man/woman, “manmade/natural, the sublime/the absurd,”[xi] are constantly collapsed in every encounter to Ono’s art objects. “The problem is not to become different or unique but how to share an experience, how to be the same almost, how to communicate.”[xii] They are reshaped in the process of communication with other people who encounter the work. Binaries are dissolved because when the focus of what is negatively different within such said encounter is no longer the purpose, and the real work of trying to collectively understand the meaning of the piece is the goal. This can only happen when the playing field is leveled, and individuals have confidence in their own say. This device of communication is a way in which to bring people together. “When someone creates his own inner reality a little, my art becomes real. If one person has a dream, it is just a dream, but when two people dream it together, then it is real.”[xiii]  

 In 1966, Ono found this reality of a dream shared with another when John Lennon (1940-1980) attended her art opening in London, England. As the cultural myth goes, Lennon climbed upon the ladder to view her Ceiling Painting. The small yes inscribed on a ceiling which was only clearly visible through a magnifying glass. (figure 1) The positivity of the piece attracted Lennon to Ono and they began the love affair which overnight catapulted Ono to celebrity status. It was also the beginning of a lifelong collaboration between the two. Even though Lennon has been deceased for over 30 years, Ono still carries his spirit with her in every creative project she undertakes.

On March 20^th, 1969 Ono and Lennon were married. To follow in the footsteps of the massive student protests that were felt around the world, especially in The United States, Europe and Japan, Ono and Lennon decided to use their high profile celebrity wedding as a gift for the peace movement. Their message was in the same spirit as much of Ono’s earlier work. As a positive affirmation to the use of imagination in order to connect individuals around the world peacefully to challenge and refuse war. Together they orchestrated the Bed In for peace (figure 2), which meant that Yoko and John invited the press into their hotel room, to sit around their matrimonial bed and talk of peace and the devastating effects of the war in Vietnam.  This is the most revealing example of the point above, of how Ono uses the media and youth culture to influence collective imagination. Ono and Lennon’s use of mass media was a way to demonstrate a non-violent approach of protesting for peace.

Another important aspect of Ono and Lennon’s collaboration was the desire to make transparent women’s issues of oppression in a patriarchal society. By 1971, Ono proposed a new form of communication as being a call for the “Feminization Of Society” in her essay of the same title, which leads us into the other uprising that occurred in the period of focus for this paper. The second wave of feminism was taking hold in America and Ono experienced the dramatic shift of consciousness. In the art world the peak of this reveal was with the essay of the same year by Linda Nochlin, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?”What followed that essay was a great artist as feminist movement. The decade leading up to this feminist movement saw Ono fully conceptualize artworks with the feminine wisdom she attests to in her paper. Primarily shown in her performance and film works, we can also see examples of a feminine awareness based in her object works. Especially her work “Object In Three Parts,” 1966, (figure 3) where the emphasis is on the woman’s right to choose birth control. The masculine/feminine binary is one that Ono seems not to want to dissolve, but to switch the positions of each sign. “What we can do is take the current society, which contains both masculine and feminine characteristics, and bring out its feminine nature rather than its masculine force which is now at work.”[xiv]

Through individual and collective imagination we can realistically achieve, live and breathe peace, which the author of this paper thinks is the underlining message of all of Ono’s work, whether it is a call for peace on a global scale or peace within the community, witnessed in the life of the individual. Ono has always created work that helps the spectator to understand what is needed from each person in society to achieve and live a peaceful life. Simple instructions used in an everyday ritualistic state enable the lines of communication to open. Take for example a very recent twitter instruction Ono posted last month, “Stretch your imagination & understand where your enemy is coming from. It will make you feel better - which is good for your health.” Yoko Ono (March 14, 2011) through this simple instruction one can imagine how simply one can reflect upon what makes war a reality. What is needed in the face of oppressors is to understand that war itself is a conceptual framework far before it is realized. To use the imagination in an attempt to begin a dialogue with the perpetrators of oppression in order to separate out solely an emotional response to devastation and instill a need for understanding in a very unsteady situation. Before peace can be achieved one needs to be able to clearly distinguish between the lines of discourse that have developed a state of war and be able to think and communicate in new terms, within an enlightened sense of consciousness.

---

[i] John Cage, Composition in Retrospect, (Cambridge, MA: Exact change, 1993.)

[ii] Alexandra Munroe, “Spirit Of Yes: The Art And Life Of Yoko Ono.” In Yes Yoko Ono, ed. by Alexandra Munroe, Bruce Altshuler. Jon Hendricks, and Yoko Ono, 11-67 (New York, NY: Japan Society, 2000.) 31

 

[iii] Yoko Ono, email to author via myspace.com, January 25 2009

[iv] Munroe, ”Spirit of Yes: The Art And Life Of Yoko Ono,” 20

[v] IBID, 14

[vi] IBID, 13

[vii] Cage, “Composition in Retrospect,” 63

[viii] RG. Collingwood, “The Principles of Art.” In Aesthetics: The Classic Readings, ed. by Dan  E. Cooper, 244-265. (Oxford UK: Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 1997.) 294

[ix] Joan Ruthfuss, ”Somewhere For The Dust To Cling: Yoko Ono’s Paintings And Early Objects,” Yes Yoko Ono, ed. by Alexandra Munroe, Bruce Altshuler. Jon Hendricks, and Yoko Ono, 93-99. (New York, NY: Japan Society, 2000.) 96

[x] IBID, 99

[xi] IBID, 96

[xii] University Of Wolverhampton. “Yoko Ono, Tony Elliot Interview from 1968 Time Out magazine.” Accessed March 15 2011 http://pers-www.wlv.ac.uk/~fa1871/yoko.html.

[xiii] Ruthfuss, “Somewhere for the Dust To Cling: Yoko Ono’s Paintings And Early Objects,” 96

[xiv] Yoko Ono, “The Feminization Of Society,” Yes Yoko Ono, ed. by Alexandra Munroe, Bruce Altshuler. Jon Hendricks, and Yoko Ono, 93-99. (New York, NY: Japan Society, 2000.) 300

 

 

                                         Bibliography:

 

Cage, John. Composition in Retrospect. Cambridge, MA: Exact change, 1993.

 

Collingwood, RG. “The Principles of Art.” In Aesthetics: The Classic Readings, edited by Dan  E. Cooper, 244-265. Oxford UK: Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 1997.

          

 

Munroe, Alexandra. “Spirit Of Yes: The Art And Life Of Yoko Ono.” In Yes Yoko Ono, edited by Alexandra Munroe, Bruce Altshuler. Jon Hendricks, and Yoko Ono, 11-67 New York, NY: Japan Society, 2000.

 

 

Ono, Yoko. “To The Wesleyan People.” In Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art A Sourcebook Of Artists Writings, edited by Kristine Stiles and Peter Selz, 736-739. Berkeley and Los Angeles, California: University Of California Press, 1996.

 

Ono, Yoko. “The Feminization Of Society, 1971.” In Yes Yoko Ono, edited by Alexandra Munroe, Bruce Altshuler. Jon Hendricks, and Yoko Ono, 11-67 New York, NY: Japan Society, 2000.

 

Ross, David A. “Not Here,” In Yes Yoko Ono, edited by Alexandra Munroe, Bruce Altshuler. Jon Hendricks, and Yoko Ono, 55-57 New York, NY: Japan Society, 2000.

 

Ruthfuss, Joan. ”Somewhere For The Dust To Cling: Yoko Ono’s Paintings And Early Objects.” Yes Yoko Ono, edited by Alexandra Munroe, Bruce Altshuler. Jon Hendricks, and Yoko Ono, 93-99. New York, NY: Japan Society, 2000.

 

University Of Wolverhampton. “Yoko Ono, Tony Elliot Interview from 1968 Time Out magazine.” Accessed March 15 2011 http://pers-www.wlv.ac.uk/~fa1871/yoko.html.

 

For Further Reading:

 

  Barton, Laura. “Age Becomes Her.” The Guardian UK, June 13, 2005.Accessed March 15, 2011. http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2005/jun/13/art.gender.   

 

Kimmelman, Michael, “Art Review; Yoko Ono: Painter, Sculptor, Musician, Muse.” New York Times, October 27 2000. Accessed January 23, 2011.http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0DE0DF1131F934A15753C1A9669C8B63&ref=yokoono.

 

Lippard, Lucy. The Dematerialization of the Art Object. New York, NY: Praeger Publishers, Inc,  1976.

 

Nochlin, Linda. “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists.” In The Feminism And Visual Culture Reader, edited by Amelia Jones, second edition 261-267 London And New York: Routledge Taylor and Francis Group, 2010.

 

 O’Dell, Kathy. “Fluxus Feminus.” TDR 41.1 (1997): 43-60. Accessed January 23, 2011. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/1146571>.   

                                                  

Rosenberg, Karen. “Commentary That Is Both Visual And Vocal.” New York Times, July 1, 2010. Accessed March 15, 2011. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/02/arts/design/02contemporary.html.

 

Sayle, Murray. ”The making of Yoko Ono, Prophet of the 1960’s.” In Yes Yoko Ono, edited by Alexandra Munroe, Bruce Altshuler. Jon Hendricks, and Yoko Ono, 51-54. New York, NY: Japan Society, 2000.

The Library Re-Visit

A little something I wrote for school : )

The Library Re-Visit

Exhibition Review of Jason McLean’s Hugh Display Case at the Landon Public Library; London Ontario

“there are no barriers in art” bpNichol[1][1]

The public library is a gem in any community. It is a place of thought, reading and reflection. It is a place of calm and quiet. The library is a place that builds community and accepts those from all walks of life. We seem to have forgotten about the library in our information crazed world. To find information on any subject is as easy as a click of the mousepad. Which is why I believe the curatorial project The Hugh Display Case, (Fig. 1) by London Ontario Artist Jason McLean is extremely important as a reconnection to London’s cultural heritage and to the sense of learning the library offers. The Hugh Display Case, (Fig. 2)deals primarily with how the artistic community of London praises the artists that have been involved in creating the diverse and interesting framework of art practice in the city. McLean has also shown works by international artists and the like, regardless of his large network, he continues to return to the community in London.

The Hugh Display Case is named after McLean’s childhood librarian and original bass player for The Nihilist Spasm Band Hugh McIntyre.[2][2]McLean recently moved back to London, Ontario after a very productive time away, in Toronto, New York and Vancouver. Upon his return McLean came to see that the great arts community is still vibrant in London, and wanted to up the ante and hopefully inspire others to do the same. Living in the community of Wortley Village McLean decided to create an exhibition space within the community that honours the great art practice from the past and the space of which those artists lived. The significance of the London Public Library on his own practice he credits to the gentle bear of a librarian, Hugh McIntyre (1936-2004)[3][3]. As a child McLean did not realize the contributions to the arts McIntyre involved himself with, he considered him only to be his dear librarian. It wasn’t until McLean was a teenager and attended a Nihilist Spasm Band concert that he saw McIntyre on stage with the other very prominent artists from London Ontario, such as Murray Favro and Greg Curnoe, amongst others. This is when he realized that his dear librarian would be too, his mentor. Perhaps, McIntyre was always McLean’s mentor, through his visits to the library as a child I wonder if McIntyre saw his artistic spirit and guided him in learning and shaping this spirit. After reading the numerous memorials to Hugh, I believe that this indeed is the case.

The current exhibition features two components, the first, is the ephemeral poetic practice by bpNichol (1944-1988) and bits of works on display as a reminder when he had come to visit London and his connection with Greg Curnoe.

Barrie Philip Nichol was born in Vancouver in 1944.[4][4] His art practice was extremely ephemeral and dealt primarily with blending and collapsing boundaries of what language and words signify. bpNichol’s practice was what he described as “borderblur.”[5][5] Throughout his lifetime he used words in many different formations from children’s novels to concrete and sound poetry. His sense of narration was how the actual letters and words sounded when attached to others. His concrete poetry first took on pictorial shapes created by the typewriter (fig.4) and when computers first came into popular use he was excited to see how they could define his art practice in more graphically sound ways. bpNichol visited London in the 1970’s and was a dear friend to Greg and Sheila Curnoe, with a friendship that lasted up to his death in 1988. bpNichol and Curnoe would trade artworks constantly throughout the years of their interactions. The works on display in the Hugh Display case have been donated to Jason McLean by Sheila Curnoe. Curnoe and Nichol were also involved in group art projects such as The Cosmic Chef [6][6]of 1970, a boxed set of concrete poetry.

The second component to the exhibit is the display of The 20cents magazine.(Fig. 2)This magazine was the primary artist publication in the 1960’s and early 1970’s, created by influential artists from the area of London. 20cents offered a forum for other artists to discuss the arts community through exhibition reviews, artist and musician interviews, as well as printed artworks by various Canadian artists. As a publication of the 20/20 art gallery, which later was to take shape as the current Forest City Gallery, the magazine was an important aspect in the success of the artists involved. Unfortunately after a long extensive search in databases and online I am unable to find anything substantial that describes the 20cents magazine, and how it relates to the success London and Canadian artists achieved by being showcased in their pages. If you do an online search you can find numerous artists cv’s that reference the magazine, yet specific description on its influence is seemingly unavailable. This discovery further highlights the need for McLean’s exhibition of the magazine itself. It also highlights the need for scholarship surrounding the publication. Entering into the library and seeing the old publications with their stained and rusted bindings, shows how the materiality of such an item can be a conservators nightmare. Before issues of the magazine become something completely ephemeral, and disappeared because of deterioration, the magazine should definitely be catalogued in an online format. More importantly, I would love to see students in Library studies or the like take on its depth in scholarship, and write very informative essays on its influence. Perhaps, this has been done, yet it is a difficult task to find.

To conclude I wish to state that I believe that Jason McLean is an extremely important artist. He returns to his childhood home town and revisits its cultural heritage. So as not to allow for London to lose its significance in the art world, McLean has made sure, through curatorial projects and international exhibitions that London is still on the map. His work is tough, and we as a community of London need to see his effort and match it. London, Ontario is creatively great and through a revisit to the library system and in recognizing the spirit of Hugh McIntyre, we can show that the spark of the 1970’s, London’s golden years, can be reignited.

Bibliography:

McLean, Jason. Interview with Jennifer Lorrain Fraser, January 31 2012

Nichol, Ellie. And artmob, Collective of students from York University; on line archive for bpNichol http://bpnichol.ca/ accessed January 31 2012

Nihilist Spasm Band. http://www3.sympatico.ca/pratten/NSB/ accessed February 7 2012

For More Information:

http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/The-HUGH-display-case/109353129154124

http://artistsbooksandmultiples.blogspot.com/2012/01/bpnichol-at-hugh-gallery.html

http://bpnichol.ca/about

To watch Ron Mann’s footage of The Four Horsemen( bp nichol’s sound poetry collective), from his documentary Poetry In Motion. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahUdQd_YtwM

http://www.metronews.ca/london/comment/article/1106500—art-taking-over-the-library

On Display

My photo book dealing with the neo-baroque:

Innocenza

will be on display at the Forest City Gallery February 24- March 2 2012 http://www.forestcitygallery.com/event/call-submissions-not-sale

Innocenza — Jennifer Lorraine Fraser — 2011

Innocenza

Jennifer Lorraine Fraser

Baroque Sightings in Modern and Contemporary Art

Dr. John Hatch

The poet – Jonathan Brooks[1]

He probed life’s surface for the core,

And polished phrases till they bore

The tears of women paid to moan

The feel of coolest marble stone

Song shivered through his chilly soul

Like winds across the icy pole

And the cool truth was ecstasy,

But fancy was as leprosy

The love of truth froze up his heart;

A cold, bare fact to him was art.

He made both soul and body ache

To know how hard the hearts that break;

How high the morning sun must rise

Before the dew on roses dries;

And was so painfully precise

He often doubted his own eyes.

His song was merely fact and tone,

Wither neither soul nor flesh – just bone.

Innocenza is a photographic project that directly references the neo-baroque. The project relates to a dream I had in 2009. Initially I wanted my project to be an analysis of my dream. I was going to use Jung’s dream interpretations as described by Marie-Louise von Franz. During the reflective process I realized that I needed to create something that was less subjective. The subject matter of Innocenza is layered with an important dialectic on gender and racial issues. I focused my research to understand the more objective nature of such imagery and how it can be perceived. I was interested in trying to find a white woman artist who has dealt with the complex issues of race and gender. Through my quest, I stumbled upon a large book in the Weldon library. “The Book of Negroes” compiled by Nancy Cunard in 1934 was my bible. To support my findings, I decided to utilize the Surrealist Manifesto as written by Andre Breton in order to understand the nature of using dream imagery in art. This project is the start of a life changing inquiry into the nature of the world in which I live and how I immerse myself in it. In true neo-baroque hybrid fashion[2], “the baroque is abundant and inclusive, as it must be, to express the cultural diversity of the new world,”[3]I hope my project will invoke further investigations on the ever changing discourse in the ways in which we participate in the world.

The dream consisted of an installation in a gallery setting, a bed clothed in black, three chairs, many Barbies, and a black board on which the audience was to hang the Barbies upon. Individuals would walk through the space and pick up a Barbie from the bed and return to the board and find some way in which to hang the doll, while other participants awaited their turn sitting on the three chairs off to the side. The last image was of an African Canadian man holding a doll and turning to face me along with reaction from three people on the chairs.[4] I remember the gazes of the black male and white spectators, as though it was a very real material occurrence that merely happened moments ago. It is a haunting image in my mind that I am constantly trying to decipher. This project has not manifested itself to be of the same caliber as my dream image. It is not the exact same imagery. I have created images that have come to me through my own intuition, firstly after questioning why I felt the need to recreate my dream, and secondly through the physical realities of my subjects and the restraint of the space and props I had on hand to utilize. The main protagonist, the black male, Mitchell, I asked to be involve with this project has a chronic condition with his ankle. Without a painful twist of his damaged ankle, he could not physically recreate the pose that my dream-protagonist held. This resulted in having to position him in front of my painting in a way that did not hurt him. I did not have access to a large white gallery space, so I had to come up with a way to frame the work within our living room at home. This changed the layout of the image I could take. Instead of black, I decided to also use the stark white duvet which allowed for emphasis on the textural aspects of the fold and the great contrast of white light and the colours of the Barbie dolls.

With the influence of the neo-baroque theories we have been investigating over the past few months, the images I have made for this project are in some ways more extreme than my original dream image, for they are real. One cannot speak of the neo-baroque without inferring the baroque of the 17^th century. I attempted to infer this period of art history in my images by the use of light and the emphasis upon the expressions of the subjects involved, as well as to the direct involvement of the viewer.[5] The most dramatic of this is the neo-baroque technique of hybridity, by combining all three into one. The work asks for your full involvement on many levels, it asks for an intimate exploration by physically turning the pages. By using acetate for the projection of the image, I am encouraging a more phenomenological visual experience.[6] The spacial depth of the work involves more movement and it draws the spectator in more deeply. Light is used in a very dramatic way it affects the expression of the people in the image. I removed the ray of light that one would experience in a true baroque work, and replaced it with the squinting of the eyes, to infer a strong light source coming from outside the frame directly into the eyes of the male figures. The female figures are incorporating a stance and expression of confrontation to the spectator. To highlight the need for women to confront the history of racial discrimination and to challenge passive spectatorship in regards to difficult subject matter. I wanted the facial features to denote sanity. For sanity is a true way in which to confront insane histories. In 1927 Edward Franklin Frazier, described race prejudice “as having the same characteristics as those ascribed to insanity.”[7] I wanted my image to show a mastery of emotion and passion, not the opposite, which can result when attempting to highlight “the passions of the soul” in a work of art. I wanted to bring the viewer closer, by the integration of real and fixative space,[8]which would not have happened if I asked for the subjects of my work to look threatening or insane. They are projecting strength and a necessary confrontation with a question. I included the old camera into the image, to describe the historical time period I am investigating as well as in how black men continue to be looked at in our society. The dolls speak to the concept of “passing” in society, for a black man or woman it was to pass as white so as to participate in the society,[9] not to be shunned or excluded. White women have done the same throughout history, in order to pass as men. The doll Mitchell is holding has red hair, it is my attempt of inserting myself into the image, the dolls are passing as real women, to speak of their desires as well as their fears of what would of happened if they didn’t follow a white male controlled group. “If the treatment of all women could be universally known to all, it would help the progress of mankind. Men won’t admit it, but women have set the standard of living that has developed the culture in the world today.”[10]

I took as Breton described an interior reality[11] and connected it to an external reality – In doing so I have come to realize a very important action of love. This is a project based on love; real true unconditional and sublime. This type of love wishes to replace the chill of hatred to the bone with the warmth of love to the heart. An action I need to own as being a white woman. An action I need to own by the fact that I have a young brother, pictured in the work, who is finding his own way in the world. A world of multiplicity in gender and racial conflicts of which exist on numerous levels today. I want to own the history of false accusations white women have implied, incarcerated and murdered black men with. I want that history that unfolds daily, to stop here with my project. To paraphrase bell hooks white women cannot speak for black men nor can we hide the fact that there is a division between us, a division that is founded upon the white patriarchal system of which we live.[12] What white women can do is acknowledge and accept the horrific past, and embrace change. Offer an apology to those who have been damaged by our fear and desires for the other through our own ignorance and inability to challenge systems of abuse and power. This project is an apology for our involvement in constant discrimination and loss of life and selfhood. “There is no solution outside love.”[13]

Bibliography:

Breton, Andre. What is Surrealism. Translated by David Cascoyne. New York: Haskell House Publishers Ltd. 1974

Brooks, Jonathan. The Poet in Negro Anthology: 1931-1932. edited by Nancy Cunard New York: Negro University Press. 1934 

Cunnard, Nancy, compiled: Negro Anthology: 1931-1932. New York: Negro University Press. 1934

Gordon, Taylor. Malicious Lies Magnifying the truth, in Negro Anthology: 1931-1932. edited by Nancy Cunard New York: Negro University Press. 1934 

Hatch, Dr. John, Class Lecture notes from September 9 2011

hooks, bell. We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity. New York and London: Routledge. 2004

Hurston, Zora Neale. Characteristics of Negro Expression, in Negro Anthology: 1931-1932. edited by Nancy Cunard New York: Negro University Press. 1934 

Martin, John Rupert. Baroque. New York : Harper & Row, 1977. 1^st edition US.

Ndalianis, Angela. Architectures of the senses: Neo-Baroque Entertainment Spectacles in Rethinking media change: the aesthetics of transition edited by David Thorburn and Henry Jenkins MIT Press 2003

Zamora, Lois Parkinson. Magical Ruins, Magical Realism: Alejo Carpentier, Francois de Nome and the new world baroque, in Poetics of the Americas: Race, Founding and Textuality, Edited by Bainard Cowan and Jefferson Humphries. Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge and London. 1997 p. 63-103