Subjecthood vs. Objecthood cont'd.

To go along with our dicussion about the subject/object paradox...I stumbled on this video of Andrea Fraser in a performance art piece called "Official Welcome" during my research for the future presentation. She directly addresses the subject/object relationship at the end of this section of the video. This is Part 2 of 4. You can find the rest of the video on youtube under Andrea Fraser "Official Welcome."

Struggling with feminism...

After reading selections from Maria Buszek's Pin-Up Girls it seems to me that a great deal of the controversy between second and third wave feminism has to do with the subject/object paradox. While second wave feminists fought to control the patriarchal trend to portray women as objects, anticensorship and prosex "third wavers" have appropriated the use of the sexualized female body, and in some cases the male gaze, to repudiate oppression. This begs the question, can the oppressed stand up against the patriarchal hierarchy by using tactics that signify, somehow subversively, patriarchal superiority? Do these images, such as pin-up girls, liberate women or reinforce patriarchal notions of sexuality? This appropriation of the "male gaze" also made me wonder...what signifies a female gaze?

The pin-up girl is hyper-feminine and hyper-sexualized. I think that the pin-up girl can be used as a mascot for feminist art if it draws attention to the falsehood and artifice of and overtly sexual identity. I enjoyed Annie Sprinkle's "Anatomy of a Pin-Up Photo" and the way that she draws attention to the false nature of "beauty" in the pin-up model with phrases like, "Hair dyed to cover gray" and "Corset makes waist 4.5" smaller but I can't breathe."



It seems that much of second wave feminism was concerned with becoming more masculine in order to show equality, while third wave feminism is more concerned with retaining feminine identity and using it as a power source. The tension between the "mothers" and "daughters" of feminism that Buszek mentions seems to only be hurting their cause.

Third wave feminists are also embracing commercial or "kitsch" culture with the pin-up. The "sex sells" attitude of the media could be seen as detrimental to the feminist cause, yet third wave feminists are using the commercialization of the female body as a form of satire against stereotypical views of women in the media. However, I believe that there is a fine line between using commercialization as a tool and buying into the stereotyped views of women. This is also the fine line between portraying a woman as an object and portraying her as a subject.

For me, this subject/object paradox is heavily reliant on audience interpretation. I feel that the woman portrayed has no control over whether or not she is viewed as an object or a subject. Joanna Frueh's statement, "As long as I am an erotic subject, I am not averse to being an erotic object," solidifies my view on this paradox. She has accepted the notion that in portraying herself in a sexualized manner, she may be objectified. She explains more about her feelings toward erotica on her site Her work is an example of women assimilating to a visual language created by man, but expanding it to fit their own purposes. However, I believe the danger still exists of having the subject objectified. There is also the danger of playing into the commodity culture that objectifies women. This is where the older feminists mistrust of third wave tactics seems particularly credible. I think that if the work is done in a self-aware manner, it can still incorporate sexual imagery, but it is difficult to critique a social issue from within. This made me think of Erwin Olaf's fashion work pictured below.

He has done a fashion spread that is intended to sell products based on the "sex sells" phenomenon, yet at the same time he is poking fun at the fashion world buy over-exaggerating the sexualization of the imagery. Is this technique effective? It seems to be the same technique prosex feminists use to critique the sexualization of the female body.

One of the women mentioned in the excerpts reminisces about being fascinated by pin-ups as a younger girl. She compared her lesbian gaze on the pin-up woman as one of caring, while the man's gaze was objectifying and "dirty." This seems like a double standard that she would assume that the male gaze is objectifying while her own is not. As a lesbian woman, would she not see the woman as an object of sexual desire? Is her gaze not tied to notions of scopophilia? I feel that the lesbian woman's gaze and the straight man's gaze would both be looking at the woman as a sexual object. This made me think of Robert Mapplethorpe's work. He has admitted that much of his work has to do with his own fetishes and desires. I believe he sees his subjects as both objects and subjects. Just because he is a man photographing other men does not eliminate him from the hierarchal viewer/subject relationship, and in fact, he admits that this is part of his work.



The pluralistic nature of postmodernism also poses a problem for feminism and the incorporation of evergrowing individualistic views on feminism. How are all these overwhelming views incorporated into one cohesive movement? Can a cohesive movement even exist?

Why have there been no great women artists?

Nochlin starts with a statement that may, at first, cause an uproar among female artists...there HAS NOT been any great female artists. The real question is why. First of all, she points out the failure of the institution to expand the definition of "great." A great artist was believed to have the inherent characteristic of genius. Although the idea of artistic genius has largely been dispelled as myth in relation to contemporary work, the definition of great was applied in defining the art historical cannon which was constructed based on a Western male perspective. Therefore, the assessment of what defined "greatness" was biased from the start. In addition, the texts that summarize the history of art were largely written by white men.

I believe that the absence of great women artists is also linked to a failure in the art education system. Nochlin asks why there are no female equivalents to Michaelangelo or Rembrandt. The ultimate art subject of the Renaissance seems to be the human figure. However, women were prohibited from the study of the nude form and therefore, their artistic education was lacking in the area associated with artistic "greatness." We can also link the failure of education to what was discussed last week...what artist's are "supposed" to express through their art (ex. African-American artists "should" express something about the experience of being black and women "should" express something about being female.) By these limitations, the only artist with full artistic freedom is the western white male (preferably middle to upper class). Although I believe that these limitations are disappearing in terms of contemporary artists, it highly influenced the art of the 60s and 70s.

The limiting definition of "greatness" seems to be the cause of the absence of great women artists, since "greatness" seems to be entirely subjective and linked to the perspective of the western white male.

"Post-Feminism"
Amelia Jones sees post-feminism as a backlash against feminist ideals or the "death" of feminism that counters the Women's Liberation movement. However, there is a split between the definition of postfeminism in media culture and in scholarly culture. In media culture, postfeminism signals the end of feminism. Women become passive consumerists concerned solely with their position as a mother and homemaker. The scholarly perspective entails a new perspective of feminist issues. Jones believes photography and feminism are connected because photographs often serves a heterosexist and patriarchal commercial purpose. These advertising images reinforce "norms" associated with patriarchal culture. Women are the "purchasers" for the home, and are then passive recipients of advertising. Post-feminism associates feminism with the disruption of traditional family values. However, I wonder about the differences in 3rd wave feminism and post-feminism. I am under the impression that 3rd wave feminism supports the woman's choice to take on "traditional" female roles (mother, position in the domestic sphere) although she would retain her independence. 3rd wave feminism also supports the expression of "femaleness" (wearing dresses, pink, etc).

Question: Is the scholarly perspective of postfeminism the same as third wave feminism? Is it a generational difference?

Question: What does the scholarly view of postfeminism mean for artistic practice? According to Jones, feminism was seen as anti-modernist, since modernism was linked to the patriarchal structure of the art world and modernist art was often seen as masculine.

Wegman

I used to love Wegman's dogs on Sesame Street. Since we just saw a video with him on Art 21, I thought I would share this video of Wegman's dogs performing the "identity" of the artist and the model.

Postethnic, post-identity, post-gender

Last week in class we discussed what it means to be labeled a certain types of artist (i.e. black artist, woman artist, latino artist, etc etc etc.) and part of our discussion made me think about what this race/gender/class-specific labelling (which I believe still exists today) means in a postethnic society. Another classmate discussed her frustration with the pressure to express something about her African-American identity in her work. It seems that any ethnic/social/gender group that has a history of oppression is "supposed" to express something about their previously oppressed identity as some sort of compensation for the past. I sometimes wonder if I've given into that pressure since I only photograph women. However, those of us that fit into the category of middle to upper class caucasians are under pressure to be inclusive and pluralistic. While my classmate is questioned when she chooses not to express something about being an African-American woman, I have experience criticism about not including women of other ethnic backgrounds (since the majority of the women I have photographed have been caucasian). Another friend and I were recently discussing the fact that not as many people in the graduate photography program at Columbia are photographing people as there was when we started this program. Is this because of all the questions surrounding identity that an artist must deal with in depicting people? Are we, as artists, fed up with the "identity discussion" and avoiding it all together? It seems that we have become incredibly self-concious about offending particular groups of people (myself included) that we avoiding visual depictions of identity. This is opposed to Paul Cadmus's quote in Richard Meyer's article that artists have more freedom to break rules and get away with more than the general public. It seems that we are taking less advantage of our societal position that "allows" us to break the rules and potentially offend others.

Judith Roof discusses the idea of post-identity in her article "Thinking Post Identity." She suggests that the "post" doesn't necessarily mean a break with the past, but a change with the past still in mind. I think this is important because obviously from the discussion we are still having about racial/gender/class specific artists, we have not left the past identity "problems" behind.

Richard Meyer discusses the issue with interpreting artworks in relation to their creators. From an art historical standpoint, a work is rarely interpreted in the same context in which it was made. He uses Paul Cadmus as an example. He was creating works with homoerotic tones in the 1930s and he has been heroicized as one of the most influential gay artists, yet he refuses to discuss his identity as a gay man. He identifies himself soley as an artist. This brings me to the idea of "communities of consent" as opposed to "communities of descent." While we are allowed to join any particular community that we desire, political definitions of identity still often pigeonhole people in the five general categories (Asian American, African American, Hispanic, Caucasian, Native American/Indigenous). This idea of communities of consent made me think of my aunts personal identity or affiliation. She's a native born Korean, adopted at age 7 by my grandparents, raised Lutheran and in a traditional Norwegian family. She carries out the Norwegian traditions passed down by my grandmother, such as cooking lefsa and krumkaka, yet she checks the box "Asian-American" on official documentation. She's consented to be part of the Norwegian community, yet is still restricted by her physical appearance and geographical origins.

One artist that deals with the idea of communities of consent and integration is Nikki S Lee. I find it ironic that she is breaking social/racial/cultural boundaries, yet her biography identifies her as a Korean-American artist. I've always viewed her work more as performance than photography, although the documentation of the alteration of her identity is done through photographs. I feel that the most important part of her work is her attempt at seamless assimilation into another culture, which she often studies and participates in for a week or more. There is much more to participating in a community than physical appearance and this also suggest that an individual's physical appearance must match that of their chosen community.

Lee's work also emphasizes the idea of performativity instead of expression in relation to identity, which Judith Butler explores in her article. Lee has proven that she is able to perform other cultures and she is not expression an innate, internal identity. However, I feel that the snapshot photograph doesn't do justice to the effort in assimilating into another "foreign" culture. It makes her work seem as thought the alteration of appearance is sufficient in entering a community, when in reality, Lee learns the "lingo" and specific, nuanced gestures of the communities.

QUESTION: Although I feel that I have a concrete understanding of the difference between biological sex and socially constructed ideas of gender, however Butler identifies the idea of the body as an "historical idea" and not a "natural fact." First, I am wondering if she is talking about the physical body (made up of sex-specific parts) or the preconcieved notion of what the sexed body is. It seems that the physical body has an identifiable sex, determined by the genetalia, but the body can be "gendered" either male or female. I understand that gender is no longer viewed as a set of binary oppositions, and that sex is no longer seen as quite as oppositional, but there seems to be distinct physical differences in the actual body (i.e. the woman's uterus allows her to bear children).

I am also interested in Butler's argument that heterosexuality is a "condition" reinforced or even created by a social pressure to reproduce, and not inherently natural to the human condition. This suggests that if we were not concerned about populating the earth, we would not be as inclined to choose a partner based on sex.

With all these concerns regarding postethnicity, post-identity and post-gender, it seems that there are still a lot of issues from the past that need to be sorted out before we declare ourselves in any kind of "post" condition.