Canvas Journal XX - Spring 2022 by Canvas Journal

canv Canvas is the undergraduate journal of Art History and Communications Studies at McGill University. Each spring, we publish a collection of student essays with the aim to showcase the diverse and outstanding scholarship produced by undergraduate students within the department. Funding for the journal was generously provided by the Fine Arts Commission, the Art History and Communications Studies Student Association, and the AUS Journal Fund.

vas Editorial board

Editor in chief

Jacob Anthony Maya Ibbitson Thierry Jasmin Sam Lirette Nicolas Poblete Kennedy Randall Alena Russell Paige Suhl

Madeleine Mitchell

Graphic design Alice Finta

Cover art Marianne Chenouellet

Contents Editor’s Notes

p. 7

Beyond Propaganda: Analyzing Cultural Signiﬁcance and Artistic Individuality in Central Asian Soviet Mosaics Alena Russell

p. 8

Aldo Rossi: Echoing Life in the Architecture of Death Lilian Bamdadian

p. 18

Henry Scott Tuke’s Nudes and the Politics of Masculinity Nicolas Poblete

p. 28

Aestheticization of Chinatown: A sociopolitical account of Montreal’s Paifangs Leighetta Kim

p. 40

Universality & Malleability: Icons of the Virgin at Saint Catherine’s Monastery Sam Lirette

p. 50

Le Grand Escalier de la Nouvelle Opéra Robert Pelletier

p. 60

Painting as Devotion and Ritual Embodiment in Jin Liying’s Guanyin, 1803 Chloe Gordon Chow

p. 70

Is This What You Want to See?: New Visibility Strategies in Post-Soviet Queer Art Thierry Jasmin

p. 82

3 1

8 7

Editor’s Notes The editorial board is proud to present the twentieth edition of Canvas. The eight essays included in the volume showcase work on politics, gender, sexuality, and religion within Art History and Communications Studies. “Beyond Propaganda,” by Alena Russell explores the little-known mosaics from Central Asia that rejected Soviet artistic hegemony through local tradition. Liliane Bamdadian’s work on architect Aldo Rossi looks at anthropomorphic and egalitarian cemetery design. “Henry Scott Tuke’s Nudes and the Politics of Masculinity” by Nicolas Poblete enters an oeuvre that redeﬁnes eroticism and masculinity while provoking ongoing discourse around representing sexuality. In Leighetta Kim’s “Aestheticization of Chinatown,” the author situates Montreal’s paifangs within the history of and battle for Chinatown. “Universality and Malleability” by Sam Lirette ﬁnds a unique story of iconoclasm as told by the Marian icons of in the Monastery of Saint Catherine. Robert Pelletier’s “Le Grand Escalier” delves into gendered gaze and social mobility within the architecture of the Nouvelle Opéra in Paris. Chloe Gordon Chow tells the story of artist Jin Liying using art to foster connection with the boddhisatva Guanyin in “Painting as Devotion.” Finally, Thierry Jasmin’s “Is This What You Want to See?” looks at queer artists working for resistance and visibility against oppressive governments and cultures. The team is grateful to the authors who shared their outstanding work in this journal and online. Canvas exists to give a voice to the creative, evocative, and diverse work of McGill students, and this edition marks the return of that mission. We greatly appreciate the support from the Fine Arts Commission, AHCSSA, AUS Journal Fund, and AUS Special Projects Fund. Thank you to our professors, lecturers, and mentors for inspiring and guiding us through our studies. As Editor-in-Chief, thank you to the editorial board for your hard-work and passion throughout the year, to Alice Finta for creating all of our graphic design, and to all past, present, and future readers of Canvas for your continued support. Madeleine Mitchell

Beyond Propaganda: Analyzing Cultural Signiﬁcance and Artistic Individuality in Central Asian Soviet Mosaics Written by Alena Russell Edited by Thierry Jasmin and Jacob Anthony

Art belongs to the people. It must grow deep roots in the very midst of the broad mass of workers. It must be understood and loved by them. It must unite the feelings, thoughts, and will of the masses and inspire them. - V. I. Lenin

Public art created in the Soviet Union is frequently overlooked by art historians and omitted from discussions surrounding muralism, primarily due to the fact that much of Soviet art has been written oﬀ as propaganda. Art historian Clement Greenberg stated that these pieces could only be seen as “low art,” with no real purpose outside of promoting the socialist ideology.² In reality, much of the art produced in the Soviet peripheries, particularly in Central Asia, provides insights to the complex and nuanced way the Soviet Union embedded itself in local society. This paper will analyze three Soviet-era mosaics created in Central Asia and explore how they function beyond a source of propaganda. These murals illustrate the artistic capacity of Soviet art and demonstrate how artists used mosaics to celebrate local traditions, explore stylistic choices, and meld the socialist ideology with regional culture. In order to fully understand the mosaic art produced in Central Asia during the Soviet era, we must ﬁrst consider the historical context. The Soviet Union persisted from 1922-1991, and the creation of mosaic

murals spanned from the 1930s-1950s, halting while Kruschev was in power, and then continued from the 1960s until the fall of the USSR. Mosaics became the official public art of the regime in 1918, chosen over painted murals due to their longevity and resistance against the harsh Russian winters.³ ⁴ These artworks were integrated into the majority of new building projects, which typically had 5% of their budget allotted for “decoration.”⁵ The building projects occurred as a result of a nationwide push to rebuild cities as socialist utopias, free from older, traditional elements. This development was especially prominent in Muslim-majority regions, where mosques and single-family homes were replaced with socialist architectural designs.⁶ Soviet officials prioritized public artwork, believing that architecture was a form of social, political, and aesthetic education, and served as “an inspiration, a symbol of finer culture and a promise of a happier and more abundant life to come.”⁷ This attitude explains why considerable funds were directed towards artistic endeavours, despite poverty persisting throughout the country. In 1934, Stalin’s government declared Socialist Realism to be the national art style, primarily as a reaction to the growing avant garde movement.⁸ Stalin believed in the “visual manifestation of communist policies,” and Socialist Realist art consisted of communist symbols including those of labour, gender equality, and technological advancement.⁹ All art produced in the Soviet Union had to follow the guidelines of Socialist Realism, which was designed to construct a utopic image of a unified nation, omitting the darker sides of life in the USSR like nuclear sites and labour camps. One such example is Sergey Luchishkin’s An Athletes’ Parade at the Dynamo Stadium, which exemplifies the nationalist sentiment characteristic of the art style (fig. 1). After the death of Stalin in 1953, restrictions on art were eased, but Socialist Realism was still prevalent. With the arrival of Gorbachev and perestroika in the 1980s, artistic policies were relaxed further, eventually resulting in the end of Socialist Realism in 1988.¹⁰ Although the Central Asian region constituted a significant part of the Soviet Union in terms of area, its social and geographical distance from Moscow led to variance in the implementation of socialist art and policies. Central Asia was subjected to accelerated industrialization, which resulted in reduced development that created a heavy reliance on Moscow for economic support.¹¹ The

low levels of development, in addition to the predominantly Muslim heritage of the region, caused Russians to view Central Asia as separate from the West and therefore backwards, creating a center-periphery dynamic within the Soviet Figure 1: Luchishkin, Sergey. An Athletes’ Union. This “othering” of Parade at the Dynamo Stadium. Oil on Canvas. 1936-76. Moscow, Russia. Central Asia was further enforced by the fact that Russians were only exposed to the region through Socialist Realist art, which typically featured orientalist depictions of labourers and little else.¹² The distance between Moscow and Central Asia unsurprisingly resulted in less surveillance of the area and allowed for more experimentation with artistic expression; Kazakh art historian Abykayeva-Tiesenhausen describes the region as “a greenhouse for variants in art.”¹³ It is productive to highlight these nuances in order to demonstrate how Central Asian Soviet art went beyond propaganda to challenge artistic and sociopolitical boundaries. The body of literature engaging with the topic of mosaic murals produced in Central Asia is extremely sparse. Abykayeva-Tiesenhausen discusses this scarcity in her book, Central Asia in Art (2016). She notes that the lack of resources dealing with Soviet art is due to the fact that art criticism concerned with Socialist Realism did not gain academic status until after the Cold War.¹⁴ However, art produced during the Soviet Union is still regularly excluded from artistic discourse due to the taboos that write it oﬀ as propaganda. Academic sources are lacking, and the few authors who venture into the region are primarily interested in oil painting. However, there has been a recent surge of literature that raises awareness about post-Soviet mosaics and advocates for their historical signiﬁcance and need for restoration, notably the works by scholars Nini Palavandishvili,¹⁵ Joes Segal,¹⁶ and Karolina Kluczewska.¹⁷ The community of scholars who have published works related to the mosaics in the region note how quickly the artworks are vanishing, from a combination of widespread communist iconoclasm and a lack of maintenance and restoration. Schröder discusses

one of the leading groups campaigning for mosaic restoration: STAB (School of Theory and Activism), based in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.¹⁸ Kluczewska further underlines the gravity of mosaic restoration in her article concerning murals in Tajikistan, in addition to Figure 2: Kenbaev, Moldakhmet emphasizing the historical Sydykovich and Nikolai Vladimirovich Tsivchinskiy. Enlik-Kebek Mosaic. 1965. Mosaic exclusion of Soviet Central tile. Hotel Almaty, Kazakhstan. Asian art from contemporary discourse.¹⁹ She also discusses the lack of mosaic research conducted locally, due to a lack of interest primarily caused by a common sense of disconnect from the Soviet past. Another factor contributing to the absence of local interest is the fact that public art can often blend in with the community landscape and go unnoticed by passerby, especially if it has been there for decades like the mosaics.²⁰ The research and discussion of Soviet mosaics is crucial for preservation advocacy, and it is paramount that the body of literature discussing Central Asian mosaics be widened to preserve the endangered art form. The Enlik-Kebek mosaic on the outside of the Hotel Almaty in Kazakhstan (fig. 2) was created in 1965 by Moldakhmet Syzdykovich Kenbaev and Nikolai Vladimirovich Tsivchinskiy.²¹ Both artists were trained at Soviet art institutions, but Kenbaev was ethnically Kazakh and Tsivchinskiy was born in Saint Petersburg. The two artists worked on many monumental mosaics together around Kazakhstan and were considered pioneers in the region. Kenbaev is survived by his son, who works in Almaty restoring his father’s remaining artworks.²² Typically, the authorship of Soviet mosaics is unknown, and it is rare to have a biographical account of the artist. However, the majority of artists followed similar education trajectories as Kenbaev and Tsivchinskiy, receiving formal training at one of the Soviet Union’s primary art institutes. The mosaic depicts a traditional Kazakh tale of two lovers, reminiscent of Romeo and Juliet.²³ The piece has remarkable detail and is made with a color palette of dark blue, soft pastels, and bright oranges and pinks. The work depicts five different scenes

from the story: a warrior and princess on horseback, three mysterious looking men, a battle between the warrior and one of the men with the princess fearfully observing, an old man playing an instrument, several men cowering behind a shield, and the warrior defending the princess. The scenes are separated by swirling blue and gold designs, and all of the figures have Eastern features and are wearing traditional Kazakh clothes. There are no ties to the Socialist ideology in this image, which is evident in the hyper-feminine and fragile depiction of the princess, who is saved and then protected by the warrior. This representation stands in sharp contrast to women commonly seen in Socialist Realist art, who are primarily depicted as strong workers equal to men, as shown in Mashkov’s Girl in the Tobacco Plantation (fig. 3). Additionally, the traditional cultural dress of the figures would have been viewed as backwards and anti-modern through the Socialist lens. Finally, there is a lack of the color red and other iconic Soviet symbols, a tell-tale feature of Socialist Realist art. This mural illustrates the range of Soviet mosaic art, and the forms it can take beyond state propaganda. The Enlik-Kebek mosaic celebrates Kazakhstan’s unique history and culture, and works to preserve and strengthen national identity. Artworks like this are evidence of the artistic freedoms that can be found within the era of Socialist Realism and underline the significance of further study into this genre of art. Not only does this piece immortalize Kazakh traditions, but it actively defies socialist policies by demonstrating artistic autonomy in the region. The Path of Enlightenment was created in what is now Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan by Satar Aitiev in 1978 (fig. 4) and was at the time considered shocking and controversial due to its complete deviation from the Socialist Realist style. Indeed, The Path of Enlightenment is completely void of Soviet ideology and shows clear experimentation in regards to artistic style. The mosaic is made from smalt, a type of cobalt glass made in Ukraine,²⁴ and uses primarily blue, yellow, and white, with accents of red and green. In the center of the mosaic, a large, ghost-like entity commands the attention of smaller surrounding figures, who are crowded into two groups on either side of the central form. Many are dressed in nondescript clothing, but some are depicted wearing traditional Kyrgz hats. Upon closer inspection, more figures can be observed blending faintly into the background, which takes up the majority of the space. Vivid, swirling washes of color engulf the figures like a thick mist, creating a

Figure 3: Mashkov, Ilya. Girl on the Tobacco Plantations. 1930. Oil on Canvas. Moscow, Russia.

Figure 4: Aitiev, Satar. The Path of Enlightenment. 1978. Mosaic tile. Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.

dreamlike and painterly effect, full of movement and reminiscent of Impressionist styles. Kyrgyz local Shailoo Djekshenbaev recalls the initial reaction to the work: “It was a great event, a shocking event. It was bold, beautiful, new and entirely different from everything else. We all asked each other the question - how was he allowed to do that? How did the Artists’ Union accept it?”²⁵ Within the parameters of Socialist Realism, artistic experimentation as found in Aitiev’s work would have been unacceptable. Not only does the mural lack socialist themes, but the hazy, brushstroke-like quality of the piece aligns it with styles and techniques conceived outside of the Soviet Union. This mosaic was likely able to go undetected due to the lack of oversight by officials. Artists were occasionally visited by delegates and given feedback and instructions based on the adherence to Socialist Realism, but this typically did not have much of an effect.²⁶ The Path of Enlightenment is clear evidence of a growing artistic culture in the Central Asian region that was not intrinsically tied to propaganda. Mosaics like these illustrate autonomy and creativity among artists– a quality in Central Asian art that is often overlooked due to its Soviet context. The Printing House Mosaic in Dushanbe, Tajikistan (fig. 5) was created in 1983 by Anvarsho Sayfudinov and Jalil Rasulov, two

local artists both educated at Soviet art institutions.²⁷ This mural exemplifies the meshing of Tajik and Soviet culture and demonstrates how artists were able to adhere to the Socialist Realist policies while simultaneously integrating their own artistic choices. Typically, artists would create a blueprint of their mosaic and submit it to be approved, which gave them flexibility to make alterations and small changes to their designs. This mural is especially interesting, however, because the officials who approved the design were all individuals from Tajikistan who knew the artists personally²⁸ and would have likely been lenient about the level of Socialist content. Figure 5: Sayfudinov, Anvarsho and Jalil Rasulov. Printing House Mosaic. 1983. Mosaic tile. Dushanbe, Tajikistan.

The Printing House Mosaic has several outwardly socialist elements, but closer inspection reveals integration of Tajik cultural components. The director of the printing house ordered this artwork, requesting the inclusion of a female ﬁgure and for the mosaic to show the building’s function through the power of knowledge. It was common for Central Asian artists to include a woman in their pieces to please the Soviet oﬃcials and divert attention from the lack of prominent socialist ideological content²⁹ The mosaic was created in three panels consisting of red, brown, green, and blue colored tiles, each panel celebrating Soviet achievements related to publishing and knowledge. The left panel depicts the process of bookmaking; it depicts two men working at the machine and a woman holding a pile of papers. The panel on the right further illustrates the importance of education and literacy; there is a man solving an equation, a professor giving a lecture, and two men and a woman engaging with books. In the center panel, a man and woman stand in the foreground as equals, representing an equal access

to knowledge. Above them, a banner of text reads, “A book is your friend in loneliness, a book is the source of knowledge.”³⁰ Additionally, there are trees weaving throughout the work, further symbolizing both knowledge and growth as well as a subtle nod to the life cycle of paper that goes into printing production. While the overall content of the piece seemingly aligns with the ideologies of Socialist Realism, there are clear Tajik cultural elements, primarily evident in the depiction of women. Tajik society is predominantly Muslim, and women are typically placed in gendered roles tied to the domestic sphere, which does not align with Soviet ideology. Although there are female figures present, they are not doing equal work, instead shown sitting at a table and holding pamphlets. The attire of the figures further underlines the differences between Soviet and Muslim culture as it pertains to gender. The men are depicted in modern Soviet clothing, while the women are clad in longer dresses and white headscarves, signaling their Muslim faith. The artists made the choice to show a modern socialist man, but a wise, traditional woman, illustrating the convergence of Tajik and Soviet societies.³¹ Intriguingly, Moscow officials did not object to the Muslim references in the mosaic, which exhibits the complex manifestations of the Soviet Union in local Central Asian culture and demonstrates how the two societies were able to coexist with little pushback. The three mosaics discussed above illustrate the impacts of the cultural and geographic distance between Moscow and the Central Asian region, and act as evidence to support the claim that art produced during the Soviet Union stretches far beyond the classification of propaganda. The Enlik-Kebek mosaic celebrates Kazakh tradition and allows the culture to exist outside of the Soviet context. Path of Enlightenment exemplifies the artistic experimentation that was able to flourish due to the decreased surveillance in the region and points to a growing artistic culture. Finally, the Printing House Mosaic highlights the confluence of Soviet and Tajik culture and demonstrates the nuances and complex manifestations of the socialist ideology in Muslim Central Asian cultures. These murals represent only a small sample of the mosaic art created during the Soviet Union, but provide an insight to the multi-faceted identities of Central Asian nations and their complex contributions to public art.

Endnotes 1.

Arthur Voyce, “Soviet Art and Architecture: Recent Developments,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 303 (1956): 113, accessed April 14, 2021, http://www.jstor. org/stable/1032295. 2. Aliya Abykayeva-Tiesenhausen, Central Asia in Art: From Soviet Orientalism to the New Republics (United Kingdom: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016), 8. 3. Amos Chapple, “Don’t Decommunize This!,” Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty, 2018, accessed April 2021 4. Nini Palavandishvili, “Introduction,” in Art for Architecture: Georgia Soviet Modernist Mosaics from 1960-1990 (Berlin: DOM Publishing, 2019), 7. 5. Shaun Walker, “Missing murals: the lost Soviet art of the Stans,” The Guardian, The Guardian News & Media, October 2017, https:// www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/ oct/20/missing-murals-disappearing-soviet-art-stans 6. Paul Stronski, Tashkent: Forging a Soviet City, 1930-1966 (United States: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010), 3. 7. Arthur Voyce, “Soviet Art and Architecture: Recent Developments,” 113. 8. Karolina Kluczewska, “Socialist in Form, ‘National’ in Content? Art and Ideology in Soviet Tajikistan,” Nationalities Papers, (2020): 20, Accessed April 2021, doi:10.1017/ nps.2020.67. 9. Abykayeva-Tiesenhausen, 3. 10. Kluczewska, “Socialist in Form, ‘National’ in Content?,” 5-6. 11. Alexei Vassiliev, Central Asia: Political and Economic Challenges in the Post-Soviet Era (United Kingdom: Saqi, 2013), chapter 1. 12. Abykayeva-Tiesenhausen, chapter 5.

13. Abykayeva-Tiesenhausen, chapter 5. 14. Abykayeva-Tiesenhausen, 8. 15. Palavandishvili, “Introduction.” 16. Joes Segal, Art and Politics: Between Purity and Propaganda (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2016). 17. Kluczewska, “Socialist in Form, ‘National’ in Content?” 18. Philipp Schröder, “Re/Claiming Bishkek: Contestation and Activism in the City of Two Revolutions,” Central Asian Aﬀairs, (2017): 26, accessed April 2021, https://doi.org/10.5167/uzh149785. 19. Kluczewska, “Socialist in Form, ‘National’ in Content?” 20. Segal, Art and Politics: Between Purity and Propaganda, 111. 21. Dennis Keen, “Hotel Almaty Mosaic,” Monumental Almaty, accessed April 2021, http://www. monumentalalmaty.com/hotel-almaty-mosaic.html. 22. Dennis Keen, “Kenbaev, Moldakhmet Syzdykyovich,” Monumental Almaty, accessed April 2021, http://www.monumentalalmaty. com/kenbaev.html. 23. Walker, “Missing murals: the lost Soviet art of the Stans.” 24. Bruno Mülethaler, “Smalt,” Studies in Conservation, (1969): 47, accessed April 2021, doi: 10.1179/ sic.1969.005. 25. Penelope Price, “Bishkek’s Mosaics: Fragmented Dream Project,” Uzbek Journeys, Nov 2014, http:// www.uzbekjourneys.com/2014/11/ bishkeks-mosaics-fragmented-dream.html. 26. Palavandishvili, “Introduction,” 1. 27. Kluczewska, “Socialist in Form, ‘National’ in Content?,” 13. 28. Kluczewska, “Socialist in Form, ‘National’ in Content?,” 13. 29. Kluczewska, “Socialist in Form, ‘National’ in Content?,” 13.

30. Kluczewska, “Socialist in Form, ‘National’ in Content?,” 13. 31. Kluczewska, “Socialist in Form, ‘National’ in Content?,” 14.

2 Aldo Rossi: Echoing Life in the Architecture of Death Written by Liliane Bamdadian

Edited by Madeleine Mitchell

Preface: The Modena Cemetery of San Cataldo and a Perfectly Timed Collision In 1979, Jesse Reiser, a third-year architecture student at Cooper Union met Italian architect Aldo Rossi. Rossi was in New York at the time aiming to establish his own school of architecture, and visited Cooper Union to teach there temporarily.¹ Reiser was captivated by World War II airplane models and had himself produced miniature versions of the aircrafts, carefully painted to a machined precision.² As Rossi entered the third-years’ studio, he was astonished by the models laying on the Reiser’s desk, showcasing the talent behind the punctiliously applied colours on the metal.³ Impressed by Reiser’s meticulous painting technique, Rossi decided to bring the student along with him to Italy to make one of his greatest works to transcend the national barrier.⁴ He commissioned Reiser to reproduce one of his drawings of the Modena Cemetery in San Cataldo, Italy, using carefully selected gouache tones reminiscent of pop art, which contrasted the architect’s conventional palette of terracotta-like colours.⁵ Despite Reiser’s skepticism towards Rossi’s verdict, in regards to the intentions of the architect, the reproduced drawing had a successful rendition (Fig. 1)⁶ and introduced an Americanised Rossi to the architectural world, transporting his renowned project past the borders of Italy.⁷ Despite the pop art tones in Reiser’s version of the plan, the Modena Cemetery features blue steel and deep red terracotta (Fig. 2)⁸, which would be utterly rejected by orthodox modernism’s preference for less ﬂamboyant colour. In fact, the cemetery is classiﬁed as postmodern for its choice of eccentric colour, bold form and historical allusions.⁹ Also, the cemetery is not entirely designed by Rossi. A national competition was announced in 1971 and Rossi’s contribution was an addition to the already-existing neoclassical cemetery by Cesare Costa and the Jewish cemetery.¹⁰ It appears visually uncomplicated, a typical characteristic of Rossi’s works. From a young age, Rossi drew domestic objects regularly (Fig. 3)¹¹

left to right Figure 1: Painting of Modena Cemetery in Plan. Medium: Gouache. Signed “School of Aldo Rossi, drawn by Jesse Reiser." Figure 2: Modena Cemetery, San Cataldo, Italy.

and developed the skill of visualizing buildings as independent forms, much like objects. This ability served as the foundation of his instinctive simplicity in design which can be described as an “abstraction in pure forms.”¹² In other words, his works are not rich in visual detail, but in meaning and content. Needless to say, his Modena Cemetery design is highly reflective of this philosophy. First, the cemetery is built on a terrain in the shape of two adjacent squares (Fig. 4)¹³, where their contacting edge forms a path and serves as an axis for the plan.¹⁴ On each end of this axis stands a straightforward geometric shape; a cube is erected at the base while a truncated cone stands at the tip of a triangular arrangement of horizontal rows of tombs, where the height of the triangle is voided for the path.¹⁵ The last horizontal row is extended at the base to enclose the rows of burial chambers, forming a triangle in plan but also in section (Fig. 5).¹⁶ ¹⁷ Moreover, the old perimeter wall was extended to allow the connection between the old cemetery and Rossi’s addition.¹⁸ Inside and beneath the cone is a mass grave. The colossal hollow cube serves as an ossuary, a room dedicated to storing the bones of the dead, and memorial to the war dead.¹⁹ By merely looking, one might protest that Rossi’s architecture is unsatisfyingly elementary, like an assortment of simple toys on a flat surface, but the most captivating quality of his work is masked within the layers of its meaning. As the Pritzker Prize jury described, it is “ at once bold and ordinary, original without being novel, refreshingly simple in appearance but extremely complex in content and meaning.”²⁰ Thus, his art is read, not only with eyes, but with thought, knowledge and reflection.

left to right Figure 3: Archittetura domestica, Aldo Rossi. Ink, ballpoint and felt pen, varnished Figure 4: Floor plan of the whole, divided in two Figure 5: Perspective and section displaying the perimeter wall, the ossuary, the truncated cone and the rows of tombs.

Intro: The Architecture of Death It is instinctive to associate architecture with daily life, for it is an environment that is physically occupied everyday. And so, architecture constitutes attributed meanings that enable comfort such as safety, familiarity, intimacy, etc. Architecture also accommodates human forms in the afterlife through cemeteries. Its aim is thus not only to design spaces for living, but also spaces for the dead. This dimension of architecture may seem dubious, mainly because one does not consider the experience of a corpse inside a tomb. Since experience is associated with living, and living with experience, why imagine oneself in a position where architecture cannot even be experienced, if one cannot imagine not living? Living is commonly understood as an action, but, although there may be a lapse between one’s last breath and the ﬁnal instant of life, “dying” is not an action, really, at least not a constant one when compared to living, which is an important distinction in rhythm. It is as if life were a song made of an unceasing series of notes in a particular rhythm, and then death an abrupt rest. If more notes follow, that can only be answered by faith. Many questions may arise from this reﬂection. For instance, what knowledge allows a living human to design architecture for the non-living? Is the architecture of cemeteries based on the experience of the living visiting the dead?

Indeed, much reflection is brought to mind, which highlights only a foretaste of the challenges that architects who design such spaces confront. The Modena Cemetery, for instance, is renowned as one of Rossi’s greatest works, as it acknowledges many requirements that he deemed worthy of meeting.²¹ Considering the obvious fact that, in order to design, one must have knowledge, and cemeteries are thus designed based on accumulated wisdom, then cemeteries are inevitably related to life. Italian funerary architecture, specifically Rossi’s cemetery, is a well-suited example of this claim. Thus, one can assert that Rossi’s Modena Cemetery is a reflection of the living. In fact, many of Rossi’s considerations for its design rely on the knowledge of the living: memory, hierarchy, etc. He himself referred to his creation as “The City of the Dead”²² where “city” evidently relates to life once more, because without the living, cities could not physically exist—they would look abandoned, like ruins. Thus, the city has a soul created through the energy brought by its citizens. Architecture of Death Mirroring Social Status and Urban Living Following the secularization of funerary traditions and the era of hierarchical demarcation under modernist values, Western, as well as Italian cemeteries began to adopt egalitarian morals, especially under postmodernism’s influence.²³ Instead of ostentatious tombstones that communicate power and superiority through scale, material and spatial arrangement (Fig. 6),²⁴ the philosophy of equality regardless of social class, gender, religion, etc., became the guiding awareness that led to a funeral architecture of equality.²⁵ In Italy, Modena was the first to apply these egalitarian principles in funerary practices, where the Cemetery of the Three Hundred and Sixty-Six Graves by Ferdinando Fuga was entirely devoted to house the corpses of the poor.²⁶ Similarly, Rossi’s Modena Figure 6: Example of upper-class Cemetery also displays egalitariantombstone in Stone Mountain ism in its architecture. In the spatial Cemetery during the industrial period. arrangement of the ossuary, for ex-

Figure 7: Close up view of the square openings in the ossuary.

Figure 8: Storage area of a warehouse, similar to that of the ossuary (ﬁg.7).

Figure 9: View of the ossuary as a grand open space.

Figure 10: Storage area of a warehouse, similar to that of the ossuary (Fig. 9).

ample, any distinction between class is prevented by organising corpses into a massive cube, where openings punctuating the simple structure, similar to warehouse storage, serve as spaces for the dead, which negates hierarchy through an objective approach (Fig. 7²⁷, Fig. 8²⁸, Fig. 9²⁹, Fig. 10³⁰). His design thus utterly rejects the modernist dogma enacted by Louis Sullivan “form follows function”, as the function of the cemetery is completely unrelated to its industrial, factory-like visual impression. In fact, Rossi was opposed to modernist architecture for its monotony³¹ and association with the recent trauma of fascism.³² Instead, he adopts a historicist approach by grounding the function of his design on nostalgia: he aims to evoke the feeling one has in the urban fabric of Modena through an abstract reduction of forms to forge a city for the dead inspired by urban space for the living.³³ In Aldo Rossi and the Spirit of Architecture, Diane Ghirardo explains how the cemetery’s design is founded on urban life in Modena, but also how it is reformed to be implemented as a memory in the funerary architecture:

Crowds throng the piazzas and public buildings of an Italian city such as Modena most of the day, crisscrossing the city in cars, buses, motorcycles, and bicycles. They are noisy, bustling, chaotic and full of life. Rossi’s Modena Cemetery is everything that the city is not: hushed, it has no crowds, there are no vehicles of any sort… The cemetery buildings may resemble others found in the city, but only on the level of form, digniﬁed, even grand. Absence, then, is the most salient characteristic of Rossi’s cemetery.³⁴

As the above quote substantiates, absence relates to the aforementioned metaphor, concerning rhythm and silence, where the abrupt rest, or emptiness rather, subsequent to the city’s lively rhythm, symbolizes death. Thus, the use of the features that characterize the memory of an empty space designed for living, the city, as an inspiration to an architecture designated for the dead establishes a feeling of nostalgia and evidences the association of the living, and the architecture of the living, with Rossi’s funerary architecture. Likewise, the eradication of hierarchy privileging the dead through egalitarian architecture reinforces the assertion of cemeteries inﬂuenced by the living, as their transitioning ideologies consequently shaped Rossi’s housing of the dead. Anthropomorphic Poetry in Rossian Design Interestingly, the renowned Modena Cemetery by Rossi is a metaphor of the human itself. The language in the shapes of the structures erected in the “City of the Dead” exhales a lexicon related to the human bone structure: spines, ribs, bare bones, etc. But why bones? Perhaps because after death, what remains in the living world are one’s bones. Analogously, after the experience of reality, what remains of what was experienced through the senses is the memory of it. Hence, bones symbolize the memory of reality prior to death, that is, life. Ironically, at the time when Rossi was designing the Modena Cemetery, he was in a hospital bed in Croatia with fatal injuries following a car accident and visualized the cemetery through his body’s wounds.³⁵ In other words, he was near death while inventing an architecture for the dead, and thus sought inspiration from himself. Despite the pain, Rossi seemed to oddly, but creatively, beneﬁt from the experience: “I saw the skeletal structure of the body as a series of fractured parts to be reassembled.”³⁶ This statement suits the description of his cemetery in plan, which con-

sists of simple solids, or fragments, that are distanced on the same central axis, intersected by paths and courtyards perpendicularly, in the same way bones are axes arranged around a central spine. Another interesting study of the cemetery’s plan is portrayed in a sketch by Rossi (Fig.11),³⁷ where the design is claimed to be reminiscent of a fish skeleton.³⁸ Rossi also pictured the human body, as a whole in his creation, saying that his design resembled “an inert body sprawled on the ground, like the Deposition of Christ from the cross.” As the distinction between human and architecture lessened, the meaning of architecture increased.³⁹ Hence, his ideas radiate an appreciation of the function of the architecture, but the function is expressed in the meaning and not the form, which confirms the prior assertion on his rejection of modernism’s function-derived Figure 11: Sketch of the plan juxtaposed with skeleton of a fish.

strategy in architectural design. Lastly, the ossuary stands as a metaphorical house with no floor or ceiling, thus a house on its bare bones,⁴⁰ the walls, since they are the only structural element still holding the house as a piece. The “City of the Dead” is again portrayed using a skeletal language in its meaning to connect the architecture with its function. In spite of the factory-looking architecture, the analysis of the structures he designed proves that his ideas emerged from an anthropomorphic perspective, as he was himself an inspiration to his imaginative mind. Thus, Rossi envisioned an architecture of the dead through bones, the physical element that is everlastingly shared between both dead and living which also recall the theme of memory, not only of the urban life, but also of the anatomy of the living: Rossi’s architecture of the dead is once more interrelated with the living. Conclusion To conclude, Rossi’s funerary architecture mirrors the living in many ways, namely by disallowing the discrimination of the dead in funerary architecture based on their living social status, which substantiates a denial of the modernist approach and an acceptance of the postmodern ideals which prevailed at the time. Thus, his architecture for the dead is conscious of the fluctuation of social values established by the living. Also, by rooting his intention for the design of the cemetery in the memories of the experience of Modena’s urban fabric, Rossi reminds the living of their own city, but implements a feeling of emptiness and cessation to create nostalgia. Unoccupied courtyards and large inhabited spaces imitating the Italian city’s shapes embody a deserted city in which an end has already been reached: a metaphor of death itself. Finally, Rossi also expresses the human anatomy and its bone structure in significant architectural shapes to enhance the very meaning of his architecture for the dead. By imaging the sensations of his fractured body in the plan of the cemetery and reducing all forms to the simplest constituents, the “bare bones,” he communicates life and death. The connections he establishes between his architecture for the dead and the living are not discernible if one does not take the time to analyze it in depth. Like poetry, Rossi’s architecture is crowded with allusions and rhythm. If one only reads the words and not the meaning, then it becomes a one-dimensional, distant and opaque conception. Once consciousness and wisdom penetrate the layers of his creation, the beauty within it will bloom.

Endnotes 1.

2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

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CCAchannel.YouTube. January 17, 2019. Accessed March 25, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=MopecAeYSXc. CCAchannel. CCAchannel. CCAchannel. CCAchannel. Reiser, Jesse. "The Story Behind a Drawing: Jesse Reiser on Aldo Rossi." Architectural Record RSS. February 26, 2019. Accessed March 26, 2019. https:// www.architecturalrecord.com/ articles/13936-the-story-behind-a-drawing-jesse-reiser-on-aldo-rossi. Reiser, Jesse. "The Story Behind a Drawing” Ferlenga, Alberto, and Aldo Rossi. Aldo Rossi: The Life and Works of an Architect. Cologne: Könemann, 2001. Mairs, Jessica. “Postmodernism in Architecture: San Cataldo Cemetery by Aldo Rossi.” Dezeen. Dezeen, August 10, 2015. https:// www.dezeen.com/2015/07/30/ san-cataldo-cemetery-modena-italy-aldo-rossi-postmodernism/. Ghirardo, Diane. Aldo Rossi and the Spirit of Architecture (Yale University Press, 2019), 170. Klotz, Heinrich. Postmodern Visions: Drawings, Paintings, and Models by Contemporary Architects. (New York: Abbeville Press, 1985), 233. Klotz, 9. Klotz, 234. Klotz, 234. Klotz, 234. Ferlenga, Alberto. Aldo Rossi, Architecture, 1959-1987. (Milan: Electa Moniteur, 1988), 60. Klotz, 234. Klotz, 234. Klotz, 234. Goldberger, Paul. "Architecture View; Aldo Rossi: Sentiment For

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The Unsentimental." New York Times, Apr 22, 1990, Late Edition (East Coast). Lopez, T. M. (2017). The future city. Southwest Review, 102(1), 101,151. Retrieved from https:// proxy.library.mcgill.ca/login?url=https://search.proquest. com/docview/1890523429?accountid=12339 Mairs, Jessica. Malone, Hannah. Architecture, Death And Nationhood: Monumental Cemeteries of Nineteenth-century Italy. (Routledge, 2018), 14. Collier, C. D. Abby. "Tradition, Modernity, and Postmodernity in Symbolism of Death." The Sociological Quarterly 44, no. 4 (2003): 735. doi:10.1111/j.1533-8525.2003. tb00533.x. Collier, C. D. Abby. "Tradition, Modernity, and Postmodernity in Symbolism of Death." The Sociological Quarterly 44, no. 4 (2003): 738. doi:10.1111/j.1533-8525.2003. tb00533.x. Malone, Architecture, Death And Nationhood, 15. "San Cataldo Cemetery in Modena, Italy." Act of Traveling. Accessed March 30, 2019. https:// www.actoftraveling.com/portfolio/san-cataldo-cemetery-modena-italy/. Storeganizer. "Solutions for Warehouse Storage." Storeganizer. Accessed March 30, 2019. https:// www.storeganizer.com/us/solutions/. "San Cataldo Cemetery in Modena, Italy." Act of Traveling. Accessed March 30, 2019. https:// www.actoftraveling.com/portfolio/san-cataldo-cemetery-modena-italy/. "Warehousing & Storage." Warehousing and Storage | Crown International Pack and Move.

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Accessed March 30, 2019. http:// crownintpackers.com/warehousing-storage.html. Ghirardo, Diane. Aldo Rossi and the Spirit of Architecture. (Yale University Press, 2019), 4. Malone, Hannah. "Legacies of Fascism: Architecture, Heritage and Memory in Contemporary Italy." Modern Italy22, no. 04 (2017): 448. doi:10.1017/mit.2017.51. Ghirardo, 172. Ghirardo, 172. Lopez, T. M. (2017). The future city. Southwest Review, 102(1), 101,151. Retrieved from https:// proxy.library.mcgill.ca/login?url=https://search.proquest. com/docview/1890523429?accountid=12339 Lopez, 101. Klotz, , 236. Klotz, Heinrich. Postmodern Visions: Drawings, Paintings, and Models by Contemporary Architects. (New York: Abbeville Press, 1985), 234. Ghirardo, Aldo Rossi and the Spirit, 170. Klotz, Postmodern Visions, 234.

Henry Scott Tuke’s Nudes and the Politics of Masculinity

Written by Nicolas Poblete Edited by Madeleine Mitchell The nude as a form of visual art carries inherent political power that is expressed differently and consistently across all cultures. From the Ancient Greek sculptures of Praxiteles to the French nudes of Renoir, this form of depiction has always been uniquely subversive both for the general public and art critics. Despite the recent normalization of female nudes emanating from art’s historic bias towards male viewership, representations of the nude male body remain upsetting to many. Consequently, the politics of masculinity have blurred the discourse regarding any representations of the nude male body. English painter Henry Scott Tuke (1858-1929) dedicated most of his life to the creation of such works; focusing on adolescent subjects, Tuke’s work has been endlessly politicized either as abusive or as a statement on masculinity predating the LGBTQ+ movement. However, based on the visual evidence and some key aspects of his life, I would argue that Tuke was purposefully trying to distance himself from politics in his work. In fact, it is his shift away from provocation which made his male nudes so distressing in normalizing a new flexible form of masculinity and a renewed model of male beauty that defies traditional masculinity. By observing his aesthetic philosophy, his queer identity, and his legacy, I will explore what Tuke’s nude paintings imply about masculinity and homoeroticism. Preliminarily, an appreciation of Tuke’s brilliance requires a historical contextualization of the nude as an art form. Art historian Kenneth Clark defines the nude as a depiction of the “body re-formed”: one that is “balanced, prosperous, and confident.”¹ Hellenistic works like the Barberini Faun (Fig. 1) that date back to 200 BCE corroborate this perception of the nude. With a desire for sensual pleasures, Bacchus is portrayed as a manly figure of beauty mythologized by his godly stature.² Despite his dominant allure, Bacchus is carelessly exposed and vulnerable in his positioning.

The male nude revival of the Renaissance came with depictions that lacked any such sense of vulnerability.³ The humanist Christian male nude seems to equate naturalistic beauty with vulnerability; “in its striving after hardness, […] the stereotyped male body strives to eliminate the possibility of desire for it” in an effort to reinforce his dominance and avoid sexual objectification.⁴ In the case of Michelangelo’s David (Fig. 2), the young, victorious, and proud shepherd exudes a “rock-like strength and poignant beauty.”⁵ While this is the figure of a man, his anatomical perfection deifies him. Such Renaissance sculptures often centred on mythological subjects giving a socio-political justification to their creation.⁶ It seems that unjustified depictions of the ordinary man would not be accepted. This led to a cultural idolization of the absurdly virile male form where beauty was contingent on masculine dominance. Consequently, there is an ongoing cultural view of “unjustified” nudity as deviant.⁷ By the 19th century, the nude had changed. Its usual subject became, modest, defenceless, innocent, and huddled: the nude became naked and strictly female.⁸ This internalized standard meant that any deviant work was seen as dangerous. This peculiar artistic context predates Tuke’s innovative approach to the nude. The exploration of Tuke’s art requires the study of his personal life. Born into a loving English Quaker family of means, Henry Scott Tuke was raised in Falmouth, Cornwall.⁹ From early childhood, his father encouraged him to paint; at the age of 17, Tuke was enrolled in London’s Slade School of Art where he got a scholarship to resume his education in Italy.¹⁰ Thus, Tuke’s familial environment was one of approval, privilege, and love. The young painter trained in Italy for three years where his love for naturalism originated. He regarded this time as some of his most artistically formative; in a letter, he defines the tender coloration of the Italian twilight as “unlike anything [he] ever saw in England.”¹¹ The “blue and festive Mediterranean” village of Pietra Santra also ignited his passion for boats and the coastal lifestyle as well as his interest in the male body as he recalls observing “men loading ships.”¹² In 1881, Tuke painted his first nude: Italian Boy on the Beach near Forte del Marmi (Fig. 3).¹³ In this prototype of Tuke’s later works, the scene is dripping in light, giving a pastel hue to the grass and titular subject’s skin. The lack of facial features shows Tuke’s focus on texture and colour while the sketchy brushwork indicates a strong impressionist influence. The Italian boy leans on the wall be-

hind him; his arched right leg makes him limper and puts emphasis on his bum which separates him from the typical erect male body. By centering this work on a nameless boy who is visually deprived of any sense of individuality in a position that opposes the traditional erected male, Tuke reimagines masculinity as it is portrayed in the male nude. However, when talking about this work, Tuke did not emphasize its subversive aspect; this was an “exercise” of naturalism aiming to authentically show the male body in its purest form.¹⁴ His preoccupation was one of truthfulness rather than one of provocation; in this sense, the upset that this work might have generated serves as a testament to the inaccuracy of the canonical male nude. When he moved to Paris to continue his education, Tuke fell in love with plein air painting which he discovered through fellow painter John Singer Sargent.¹⁵ Both were infatuated with the idea of male nudes in harmony with purely natural spaces. They wanted “gamins” models as they were not yet too corrupted by the gender norms of adulthood to reflect nature’s untainted beauty.¹⁶ Always justifying his art through beauty, Tuke writes to his sister: “I have found a very beautiful spot, a boy sits asleep in an apple tree, in shadow, relieved by the village and sea in bright sunlight seen through the branches.”¹⁷ This illustrates Tuke’s aesthetic philosophy of art that punctuates the visual and sensual qualities of art in complete “devotion to beauty in whatever is attractive in the world around us” over practical, moral or narrative considerations.¹⁸ This art-for-art’s-sake approach would quickly become part of his identity as it acquainted him to artists like Oscar Wilde as he went back to London; the Aesthetic movement and the Uranian circle, a group of artists who considered themselves queer, quickly became synonymous making homoeroticism a major part of their art.¹⁹ Consequently, any artist associated with this movement was perceived as a threat to Victorian Moralism in their conception of masculinity. The Uranian circle wanted to “contemporize what was considered to be a lost Hellenic tradition of man-manly love.”²⁰ However, whereas Wilde’s work was radically reactionary to Victorian politics, Tuke’s is more ambiguous in terms of its message; his passion for the Hellenic pre-Christian conception of beauty became his sole artistic justification.²¹ ²² His effort was not one of critique but one of revitalization not unlike fellow Uranian writer E. M. Foster; while this appears to mark a separation from politics, I would

argue that it has rendered his art even more politically upsetting in the long run. Indeed, the Aesthetic philosophy might not look threatening but one must not omit that it is fundamentally a reactionary movement in “challenge to more traditional and conventional [cultural] ideas.”²³ While Aesthetic art might not be intended as provocative by the artist, it is fundamental to read it through the ways it challenges the status quo in order to understand it; in the case of Tuke, his gentle intent certainly does not mirror the oppressive nature of his art in the Victorian context. In 1883, Tuke moved back to Cornwall where he found the same coastal life he embraced in Italy.²⁴ This period came with several depictions of labour centering on young male subjects on boats.²⁵ He made several friends during this decade who would become subjects for his paintings.²⁶ This ten-year period culminates in Tuke’s most towering work yet: August Blue (Fig. 4, 1893). August Blue embodies everything Tuke was building up to in terms of visual style and artistic philosophy. This elementary work observes four boys playing on a modest wooden boat; a clothed boy is in the water while the other three stand on the boat gazing at each other and completely nude. Formally speaking, the delicate colour palette is warmly soothing. The pastel hues of gold and blue, the minimal contrast, and the intimately distant perspective are all characteristics that become vital to Tuke’s visual presentation. The luminous qualities of oil paint in combination with the ﬂuid brushwork make the scene feel lively, but the precise attention to detail still manages to give it a photographic realism that contrasts with Tuke’s early works. Each formal element of the painting reinforces the envisioned tenderness of its scene. August Blue’s pleasing triangular placement of the subjects gives the tableau an impression of harmony which reﬂects this time of leisure. The gamins have ample space in the composition, giving them literal freedom of movement. Tuke’s perspective is close enough to make the viewer feel connected but distant enough to make his subjects seem unrestrained and intimate in their space. He adopts the gaze of an observer who exerts no power over his subject. In parallel, it is crucial to note that the boys are in the middle of an activity and, thus, they are not posing nor are they acknowledging the viewer. Tuke’s approach detaches itself from the nude which exists only around its main subject’s nudity; he opts for a non-provocative contemplative gaze where the sexual element is only implied.²⁷ This observation style does not

exert any form of power or dominance over the subjects, implying that its purpose is not political; similarly, it is distant enough so as to invite the viewer to consider the work passively.. Tuke would have been aware of the menacing quality of his paintings, but it is through these visual stylistic choices that he avoids direct affront. In line with Aestheticism, the work presents the beauty of the moment as its main substance. The quiet Cornish seaside was a perfect space for the art he intended as it allowed his models to be truly undisturbed.²⁸ Rather than creating the impression of the fleeting moment as many other Impressionists did, Tuke captured it authentically in the vein of the photographer. His local models were painted in the comfort of their actual daily activities.²⁹ The most notable actor in the scene is the clothed boy who tries to help his friend in the water to get on the boat; this fundamentally makes this work a depiction of caretaking and companionship. The removal of clothes is framed as liberating, evoking the Hellenistic male nude. Tuke paints the traditionally emasculated male subject with an alluring insouciance that rivals Bacchus himself. The Ancient Greek influence is glaring when observing the lyrical gestures of the subjects; “They are all curved, sometimes impossibly curved, and so nonchalant, hence their ageless ambiguity. As if they're daring you to desire them.”³⁰ This demonstrates both his rejection of the historical conception of male beauty as strictly virile as well as an idolization of the nude male body consistent with Hellenic tradition. Thus, with his contemplative perspective and a Hellenistic influence, Tuke’s nude merges sensationalism and objectivity. This work is very different from overtly political works like Caillebotte’s Man at His Bath (Fig.5) which simultaneously objectifies and emancipates his titular subject using every formal and stylistic means.³¹ In this work, the subject is enclosed, powerless, and assertively naked.³² Indeed, this work by Caillebotte is strictly political in purpose as it is reactionary to the historic misconception about gender norms; Caillebotte’s aim is not to create a more truthful male nude, it serves as a critical deconstruction of the male nude.³³ Man at his Bath and many works by Tuke assert a similar truth about the fragility of “masculinity”, but Tuke’s passive approach complicates his message.³⁴ While Caillebotte destroys the traditional notion of masculinity, Tuke shows a more truthful and nuanced form of it. Finally, a rare aspect of Tuke’s nudes is the fact that they almost exclusively contain multiple subjects. This creates

Figure 1: Artist Unknown, Barberini Faun, 200 BCE. Marble Statue, Glyptothek, Munich. Figure 2: Michelangelo, David, 1501-1504. Marble Statue, Accademia Gallery, Florence. Figure 3: Henry Scott Tuke, Italian Boy on the Beach near Forte del Marmi, 1881. Oil Paint. Collection Michael Colloway and David Falconer. Figure 4: Henry Scott Tuke, August Blue, 1893. Oil Paint, Tate Gallery, London. Figure 5: Gustave Caillebotte, Man at is Bath, 1884. Oil Paint, Private Collection Figure 6: Henry Scott Tuke, The Coming of Day, 1901. Oil Paint, Present Whereabouts Unknown.

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12 Figure 7: Henry Scott Tuke, Cupid and Sea Nyphs, 1898-1899. Oil Paint, George Beldam Collection. Figure 8: Henry Scott Tuke, Ruby, Gold, and Malachite, 1901. Oil Paint, Guildhall Art Gallery, London. Figure 9: Henry Scott Tuke, A Bathing Group, 1914. Oil Paint, Royal Academy of Arts. Figure 10: Henry Scott Tuke, After

the Bathe, circa 1921. Oil Paint, Private Collection Figure 11: Henry Scott Tuke, Under the Western Sun, 1917. Oil Paint, Private Collection. Figure 12: Henry Scott Tuke, Noonday Heat, 1902. Oil Paint, Tuke Collection, Falmouth. Figure 13: Henry Scott Tuke, The Critics, 1927. Oil Paint, Leamington Spa Art Gallery & Museum, London.

a unique relationship between the painter and his subjects; while painters like Renoir produced intimate nudes that prioritized the relationship between the viewer and the subject, Tuke emphasizes the relationship between the subjects within his works.³⁵ This particularity makes it hard to perceive Tuke’s gaze as one that glorifies objectification, abuse, or certainly pedophilia, as some of his most adamant critics have argued. The theme of masculinity is the most prominent in Tuke’s oeuvre; however, the meaning it holds for Tuke is quite enigmatic. The innovations of his masculine depictions emanate from his fusion of several primordial influences. Indeed, Tuke pursues the authenticity of the Realist movement, the transient world of the Impressionists, and the erotic freedom of the Greeks. This artistic blend led to art that sought to revitalize Greek ideals of beauty in ordinary settings and ordinary people.³⁶ Dinn writes that “Tuke believed in a form of deism, a worship of the beauty and perfection of youthful nakedness, drenched in sunlight in the glory of its natural setting.”³⁷ The Coming of Day (Fig. 6) is one of Tuke’s most dreamlike representations of male beauty. A young nude boy outstretches his arms with his eyes closed as the rising sun forms a halo around his head; this is a quasi-spiritual depiction of natural worship.³⁸ Four boys are still sleeping on the ground as their flesh embraces the environment. The five subjects resemble flowers through their blossoming bodies: the more nude, the more open. This notably theatrical work serves to the mythologizing of the ‘ordinary’ subject which is rendered threatening through its natural realism. Indeed, Tuke’s style is one that always remains realistic enough for his work to feel concrete and possibly more upsetting as a result. Several of these patterns also appear in Cupid and Sea Nymphs (Fig. 7); through the title, Tuke directly links his nude subjects with Greek Mythology. Again, he creates a fabled view of reality as the subjects seem to live in a space where nudity is trivial and pure. However, this painting breaks the boundary between reality and the dreamlike Hellenic world. In the same vein, Ruby, Gold, and Malachite (Fig. 8) achieves a similarly ambiguous sense of reality. As in August Blue, there is compositional care to the staging of the subjects but the main emphasis seems to be on the moment as a worthy subject in itself. The title of the work presents its three predominant colours while simultaneously referring to its subjects as luxurious jewels.³⁹ Along

with August Blue, this is his second of many works titled after its predominant colours; I perceive this to be Tuke’s way of rejecting an intellectual reading of his works in line with the Aesthetic movement.⁴⁰ Finally, Ruby, Gold, and Malachite has often been cited as Tuke’s most strikingly homoerotic work.⁴¹ The six boys gaze at each other with unadulterated intimacy in a scene of pure hedonism. They are uncompromisingly nude and exposed to each other with grace and openness; the saturated red shirt of the central clothed grinning boy exudes eroticism. However, despite Tuke’s identity as a queer artist and these striking visual elements, I believe this work can be also be interpreted as a representation of intimacy in companionship. By avoiding the depiction of homosexual acts in his art, Tuke seems to explore the masculine experience more than he does homosexuality; this makes his work even more powerful and ultimately threatening. The cultural association between male intimacy and homosexuality is the result of a problematic notion of masculinity. By remaining ambiguous, Tuke seems to imply that male attraction is not limited to the homosexual male and that intimacy should be part of the heterosexual male experience. In this case, it seems more truthful to read this work as a representation of male affection that extends beyond sexual orientation rather than what Jongwoo Kim simplifies as Tuke’s homosexual “romantic fantasy.”⁴² I believe it is significant not to interpret Tuke’s art only through his queer identity as I see his most unique prowess in his truthful conception of masculinity: one that embraces dependency, openness, and homoerotic attraction. As he dedicated his whole life to the reimagination of the erotic male and the notion of masculinity itself, it is no wonder why Henry Scott Tuke was erased from art history until quite recently. There are inherent politics in the discourse on the male nude as it always emblematizes a discussion of masculinity itself.⁴³ This emanates from the fact that masculinity is continuously redefined and argued over as to what it is and what it should be; thus, works of art that imply any moral, sexual, or cultural truth about masculinity are highly scrutinized. This seems to be the main reason as to why Tuke’s art is still debated today despite its “apolitical” presentation. Further, any work that might be more appealing to the female or homosexual male viewer has been heavily suppressed in every form of art.⁴⁴ This can only be explained as a way for the heterosexual white male to keep control of the making and the viewership

art; this attitude was similar in literature as in the notable case of Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Gray which was censored for decades due to its homoerotic undertones and its critiques of Victorian moralism.⁴⁵ In fact, late 19th-century Victorian England displayed a serious aversion towards homosexuality and an oppressive disdain for works that challenged its cultural norms in response to the Aesthetic movement and the rise of openly queer artists.⁴⁶ There was a conscious demonization of homosexuality even among educated thinkers who saw homosexuality as a form of narcissism.⁴⁷ This context makes it unsurprising that Tuke’s works like A Bathing Group (Fig. 9), After the Bathe (Fig. 10), Under the Western Sun (Fig. 11), Noonday Heat (Fig. 12) and The Critics (Fig. 13) were seen as deeply problematic despite his apolitical attitude; by rejecting a provocative presentation of his art, Tuke normalizes it as though it could not even be conceived as provocative. These works center on the intimate relationship between men after bathing. These incandescent later works are ravishingly sensual and perfectly encapsulate the Hellenistic view of “man-manly love.” The figures are not presented as objects of beauty for the viewer but for the eyes of one another. Yet, Tuke never makes homoeroticism explicit and ensures it remains an undertone. His sexually ambiguous depiction of male intimacy defies the comfortable notion of categorization and refutes the false historical binary conception of sexual orientation.⁴⁸ It also places masculinity as something that is not separate from homoeroticism. In a strange sense, it is Tuke’s ambiguous passivity and avoidance of essentialization which makes him so delightfully troublesome to the status quo.⁴⁹ When observing his work in this manner, it is logical that the Aesthetic movement became anxiety-inducing as it is in its avoidance of practical purpose that it gains political force. However, while most Aesthetic artists are much better appreciated today, it is interesting to observe that Henry Scott Tuke is still abhorred by so many. In 2009, the Cornwall LGBTQ+ resource group Intercom Trust created an event centred on queer artists where they made a point of not supporting Henry Scott Tuke or any art depicting the male nude. Stating “abuse and exploitation” as their issue with the male nude and Tuke’s art, their now-deleted statement led to strong resentment from several LGBTQ+ activists and human rights experts. In parallel, largely influenced by Tuke’s art, the 2017 film Call Me By Your Name which centers on the blossoming relationship

between 17-year-old Elio and 24-year-old Oliver was met with identical disdain; the ﬁlm has a liberating Aesthetic logic to it and similarly denies a binary conception of sexuality but it has been painted as “abusive and dangerous” by several conservative media outlets. A particular review by journalist Cheyenne Montgomery that I can only describe as a thinly veiled form of homophobia serves as a reminder that popular media can be reminiscent of Victorian Moralism.⁵⁰ It seems that this reaction coming from both sides of the political spectrum is exclusive to representations of male beauty that evade traditional gender norms and sexual orientation.⁵¹ In opposition, Renaissance and Ancient Greek depictions of the nude male are comparatively much better accepted by Western culture as they more closely mirror the historical conception of masculinity.⁵² While critiques of Henry Scott Tuke or Call me by your Name often state pedophilia as their main issue, it seems obvious that this disdain stems from what seems like an endless cultural misunderstanding of masculinity and an ongoing pejorative perception of homosexuality. Ultimately, Tuke reinvents the male nude by creating a more truthful sense of masculinity and manages to be provocative through his ambiguous passivity. In his quest for a more authentic form of male beauty, past and current views of his work demonstrate the eternal political discourse that is intrinsic to discussions of the male nude. By embodying the Aesthetic philosophy, Tuke interestingly became politicized both by his supporters and his opposition. His particular case manifests a critical truth about the toxic relationship between art and culture in how both come to deﬁne each other. Conclusively, the work of Henry Scott Tuke displays art’s capacity to be timelessly meaningful despite its context, its age, or its intent.

Endnotes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

20.

21. 22.

K. Clark, The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form. (Michigan: Pantheon Books, 1956), 3. R. Westheimer, Les Érotiques de L’Art. (Paris: Éditions Abbeville, 1993), 11. K. MacKinnon, Uneasy pleasures: The male as erotic object. (London: Cygnus Arts, 1988), 56. MacKinnon, Uneasy pleasures: The male as erotic object. 56. A. Paolucci, & A. Amendola, David: Michelangelo. (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2006), 17. C. Seymour, Michelangelo's David: A search for identity. (New York: Norton, 1974), 84. MacKinnon, 66. Clark, K. The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form, 3 D. Wainwright, & C. Dinn, Henry Scott Tuke, 1858-1929, under canvas. (London: Sarema Press, 1991), 11. Wainwright, & Dinn, Henry Scott Tuke, 1858-1929, under canvas. 13. Wainwright, & Dinn, 17. Wainwright, & Dinn, 17. Wainwright, & Dinn, 20. Wainwright, & Dinn, 20. Wainwright, & Dinn, 24. Wainwright, & Dinn, 25. Wainwright, & Dinn, 25. R. V. Johnson, Aestheticism. (London: Methuen, 1973), 11. M. Hatt, “Space, Surface, Self: Homosexuality and the Aesthetic Interior.” In Visual Culture in Britain v. 8, n. 1: 105-128. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), 1. J.J. Kim, “Naturalism, labour and homoerotic desire: Henry Scott Tuke.” British queer history: New approaches and perspectives. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017), 39. Hatt, “Space, Surface, Self: Homosexuality and the Aesthetic Interior,” 13. Kim, “Naturalism, labour and homoerotic desire: Henry Scott Tuke,” 40.

23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48.

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Johnson, Aestheticism, 11. Wainwright, & Dinn, 52. Wainwright, & Dinn, 41. Wainwright, & Dinn, 45-61 Kim, 41. Kim, 39. Kim, 40. J. Ivory, Call Me By Your Name: Screenplay. (Paris: La Cinéfacture, 2017), 53. T. Garb, “Gustave Caillebotte’s Male Figures: Masculinity, Muscularity and Modernity.” Bodies of Modernity: Figure and Flesh in Fin-de-Siècle France. (London: Thames & Hudson,1998), 26. Garb, “Gustave Caillebotte’s Male Figures: Masculinity, Muscularity and Modernity,” 25. Garb, 26. Garb, 26. I. Cahn, Les Nus de Renoir. (Paris: Éditions Assouline, 1996), 10. Kim, 39. Wainwright, & Dinn, 80. Wainwright, & Dinn, 77. Wainwright, & Dinn, 81. Wainwright, & Dinn, 56, 81. Kim, 41. Kim, 41. MacKinnon, 56. MacKinnon, 196. M. P. Gillespie, Branding Oscar Wilde. (London: Routledge, Taylor et Francis Group, 2019), 104. Hatt, 108. Hatt, 109. Katz, J. “Naked Politics: The Art of Eros 1955–1975.” In Queer diﬃculty in art and poetry: Rethinking the sexed body in verse and visual culture: 74-86. (London: Routledge, 2017), 75. Katz, “Naked Politics: The Art of Eros 1955–1975,” 75. Montgomery, C. “Call Me by Your Name Is a Dishonest, Dangerous Film - The Boston Globe.” (BostonGlobe.com, 2018). MacKinnon, 24. MacKinnon, 47.

Aestheticization of Chinatown: A socio-political account of Montreal’s Paifangs 4 Written by Leighetta Kim Edited by Thierry Jasmin and Maya Ibbitson Chinatowns are one of the few ethnic districts that have survived into the twenty-first century. Having transitioned from ethnic ghettos to tourist destinations, the modern-day Chinatown rests on a long history of navigating discrimination. Despite the diversity of Chinatown occupants worldwide, including the different Chinese and Pan-Asian ethnic groups among other non-Asians, the same orientalizing images spur the distinction of Chinatowns from dominant societies. Chinatown authenticity is "made possible by the reification of historical goods or architecture" borrowed from Chinese tourist sites,¹ particularly those which point to ancient Chinese iconography, rather than the environments most frequented by locals.² Among these imported signifiers of Chinatowns are paifangs – decorative arches that distinguish districts and attract tourists by promising visitors an “authentic Chinese'' experience.³ Montreal’s Chinatown is home to the most paifangs in the country, with four in total;⁴ the North (René Lévesque Boulevard Est and St-Laurent Boulevard), South (St-Laurent Boulevard and Avenue Viger), West (Rue De La Gauchetière Ouest) and East facing arch (Rue de la Gauchetière Est and St-Laurent Boulevard). These landmarks were erected approximately a century after the first Chinese people settled in the area as part of an urban development strategy to distinguish the neighbourhood's Chinese-ness.⁵ They have since developed as the face of the iconic

district – the first and last thing you see as you enter and leave. I will argue that Montreal’s paifangs exist as part of a greater aim to aestheticize Chinatowns, with this aim seamlessly translating into the Canadian notion of multiculturalism. Firstly, I will begin with a brief history of Chinatown’s beginning. Secondly, I will dive into the aesthetics of Montreal’s Chinatown, including its landmarks. Lastly, I will contextualize Chinatown’s paifangs within the discourse on Canadian multiculturalism. The history of Montreal’s Chinatown is rooted in railroad-induced migration. Prior to major Asian migration waves on the Canadian West Coast, the first Chinese residents arrived in Montreal between 1825 and 1865 as servants.⁶ ⁷ With the establishment of the Canadian Pacific Rail project, an endeavour rooted in the colonial desire to link Turtle Island’s British colonials to China, Chinese laborers were recruited from the United States and directly from China.⁸ As a result, 17,000 Chinese laborers were exposed to hazardous conditions as they worked on a 350km stretch of tracks while being paid half as much as their white counterparts.⁹ Sadly, 700 Chinese workers lost their lives due to these conditions.¹⁰ Extreme racism also impacted the lives of these workers as municipalities across the nation either enacted formal policies or informal restrictions to segregate Chinese access to urban space.¹¹ As soon as the railroad was finished and Canada's dependency on Chinese labourers shifted, the Chinese Head tax was introduced in 1885 at $50, increasing to $100 in 1900 and $500 in 1903.¹² ¹³ In 1923, the Chinese Immigration Act was passed, completely excluding the entry of Chinese people to Canada until its repeal in 1947.¹⁴ Many Chinese workers returned to China after the railroad's completion. However, most found themselves stranded after the Canadian Pacific Railroad contractor, Andrew Onderdonk, broke his promise of sending them home.¹⁵ As a result, Chinese migrants traveled from BC to Montreal in hopes of finding new opportunities and escaping systemic discrimination.¹⁶ Upon arrival, they were united with the already growing population of Chinese settlers from the United States.¹⁷ Thousands of Chinese laundries began to pop up around the city, and in the early 1900s, Chinese businesses began to concentrate in the Dufferin District. This neighbourhood, now recognised as Chinatown, was once known as a rundown residential area on the edge of the business district.¹⁸ Many property owners housed

lodgers and rented out rooms, while the area also hosted a variety of warehouses and machine shops.¹⁹ Overall, Dufferin District hosted a large number of male residents working in the area or passing by in the lodging rooms. Consequently, there was a demand for services such as laundry and restaurants -- which Chinese immigrants filled.²⁰ However, the development of Montreal’s Chinatown was not without its hardships. Chinese shop owners faced high levels of discrimination regarding licensing fees on top of their daily experiences with racism.²¹ In the insurance plan map below (fig. 1), we can see the makeup of the western side of Chinatown in 1909, which by this time already had a dominant Chinese presence in the area. By 1921, Chinatown was bound by Dorchester (now René Lévesque), Elgin (now Cark), de la Gauchetiere, and Chennevile streets. Chinatown continued to grow over the next thirty years, but considering the immigration restrictions, the pace significantly slowed down. By 1941 there was an extremely disproportionate gender ratio with approximately ten Chinese men to every Chinese woman. Many Chinese men had wives and children back in China, but with the immigration restrictions, most families remained separated. During this period, heightened anti-Asian racism perFigure 1: Dalton, Melinda and Holly Cabera. 2021. “Saving Chinatown.” CBC, October 26, 2021. https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/saving-chinatown/

severed, influencing a number of segregating and discriminatory policies to be implemented across Turtle Island. While Quebec did not formally enact segregation laws, neighbouring provinces to the west prohibited Chinese men from employing, managing, or supervising white women.²² Rooted in the notions of yellow peril, Chinese men were seen as diseased deviant bachelors ready to leech on the sources of white men; steal jobs, land, and "their women." To quell these anxieties, Chinese men were conversely feminized and emasculated by mainstream society for their prevalence in running traditionally feminine services. While there were few Chinese women in Quebec during the beginning of the twentieth century, racist and sexist stereotypes still prevailed. Chinese women were stereotyped as hypersexual temptresses and often assumed to be diseased prostitutes.²³ Accordingly, Chinese men and women were seen as undesirable citizens during a critical point in Canadian history, wherein demographic engineering was prioritized by both Prime Ministers and politicians alike.²⁴ A combination between forced exclusion and a consequent desire for escape and solace within a community fostered the beginnings of Montreal’s Chinatown. In the following era, Chinatown was consistently going through changes. A mix of forced relocation, gentrification, and community development began to occur as the city of Montreal was looking to modernize. With the arrival of Expo 67, the city invested in a couple of infrastructure projects in Chinatown with the anticipation of thousands of tourists entering the neighbourhood.²⁵ The City’s goal was for outsiders to be able to identify the neighbourhood as Chinese.²⁶ This is where we see the beginning of Chinatown infrastructure as we know it today; the first to be built was Pagoda Park and large billboards with Chinese characters.²⁷ The first two paifangs were built in Montreal's Chinatown, by the municipal government, during the 80s and originally framed the heart of De La Gauchetiere Street (fig.3). When the larger main paifangs were erected on St-Laurent Boulevard in 1999 (fig.4), the other two were moved back towards St. Dominique and Jeanne Mance.²⁸ The first paifangs were made of two grey concrete columns (unlike traditional variations which usually have four), light blue tile accents, ornamental engravings, and Chinese characters. The roof of the arch is composed of traditional rounded Chinese tiles of a golden hue, with four chickens sitting atop the highest points. The second paifangs are much larger in size, with double eaves and

Figure 2: This image captures only a portion again, only two supportof the land demolished for the Guy Favreau ing columns. The roof is Complex.“VM94-B259-028,” Montreal Archives. https://archivesdemontreal.ica-atom.org/ composed of the same rounded tiles but with the vm94-b259-028 edges curving upwards in a classic sweeping style and dragons sitting atop each eave. The arch is painted a deep red, with decorative red, blue, and golden ceramic tiles. While these paifangs are not nearly as embellished with decorative elements as the traditional ones they aim to mimic, the authenticity they intend to signal does not necessarily derive from architectural accuracy, but rather a general aesthetic of ethnic diﬀerence. While landmarks such as the paifangs were beginning to pop up around the neighbourhood, Chinatown residents were being pushed out to make way for government buildings. The ﬁrst round of demolition began with two large-scale provincial buildings on Dorchester (now Renelevesque), essentially blocking the area from expanding north.²⁹ In 1981, the city planned to demolish a Chinese family association’s building and Pagoda Park to widen St. Urbain, which neighbourhood advocates petitioned against, resulting in only the demolition of Pagoda Park.³⁰ The second round of government development occurred when the Guy Favreau Complex cleared six acres of land, including the demolition of nine buildings to widen Jeanne Mance.³¹ Two Chinese churches, a school, multiple Chinese grocery stores, arts and crafts stores, a Chinese food processing plant, and approximately twenty residential buildings were destroyed.³² (Fig. 2) Chinatown residents were furious and claimed that they were not properly consulted – a trend that has repeated itself over the course of history. As Margaret Kohn explains, cities “have adopted indirect measures in order to restrict residence and access.”³³ The construction of the Guy Favreau Complex aimed to do just that – restrict residence and access – through the high prices of rent, ultimately pushing Chinese tenants out of their historic dwelling.

Figure 3: One of the ﬁrst two paifangs in Montreal’s Chinatown, as seen in 1991 on De La Gauchiere street before it was moved in 1999. “VM94-A1025-006.” Montreal Archives. https:// archivesdemontreal.ica-atom.org/m94-a1025-006

Figure 4: The North and South Paifangs after their restoration in 2016 “CHINATOWN ARCHES AND PAGODA.” St-Denis Thompson. https://stdenisthompson.com/en/our-work/chinatown-arches-and-pagoda

The completion of the Guy Favreau Complex in 1984 started a trend for public and private developers. The district attracted the eyes of developers for its prime location, situated on the edge of downtown, Old Montreal and Place des Arts. To make matters worse, in 1985, a municipal zoning bylaw was passed restricting commercial development on Rue De La Gauchetiere from expanding east of St. Laurent Boulevard.³⁴ The chain effects of such development have led to increased property values, taxes, and rents – which has ultimately laid the foundation for many more waves of gentrification to come.³⁵ Since this initial spike in property development during the 1980s, as Chinese properties were being chipped away, more and more Chinese families have been leaving the neighbourhood. Occurring simultaneously to this first wave of gentrification, the construction of the paifangs speak to the beginning of the aestheticization of Montreal's Chinatown. While the neighbourhood became increasingly less-Chinese in terms of its demographics, landmarks like paifangs, which played a trivial role in the daily lives of residences, were being built. Yon Hsu explains that Chinatowns were "made to facilitate an economic strategy for post-industrial, service-oriented urban developments," which in turn created "an image of political multicultural diversity and urban cosmo-

politanism constituted by pockets of 'authentic' differences."³⁶ The paifangs of Montreal's Chinatown are the first signs of aesthetic difference that frame the neighbourhood's borders. As the most iconic landmarks distinguishing Montreal’s Chinatown, their existence nestles perfectly within Canada’s notion of multiculturalism. Multiculturalism became official policy in 1971 with the aim to “‘help minority groups preserve and share their language and culture, and to remove the cultural barriers they face.’"³⁷ This policy has been highly critiqued for the ways in which it centers white-anglophone culture as the universal standard. Multiculturalism fosters this dynamic by attributing a greater level of power to whiteness through its naturalization as a synonym to “Canadian”. Meanwhile, under multiculturalism, minority cultures exist – only in relation to said whiteness – as signs of difference from the “Canadian” standard. Multiculturalism positions ethnic minorities as stagnant cultures only composed of easily digestible factions, such as cuisine and folklore.³⁸ Ethnic groups are then mobilized as the nation's side characters, helping to build the Canadian image through their institutionalized participation.³⁹ This in turn grants the state the ability to assert control over minority groups while utilizing them for their own cultural image.⁴⁰ As Chinatowns are constructed through the exaggeration of cultural goods, Montreal’s paifangs exist as this first taste of the tokenized minority – signaling to outsiders that Canada welcomes and values minority cultures while simultaneously employing orientalism. Multiculturalism, gentrification in Chinatown, and the erection of the first two paifangs were all simultaneously occurring during the 1980s. As mentioned earlier, Chinatown itself grew out of the extreme anti-Asian racism in Canada and the need for the Chinese community to find solace within each other. Yet now, despite the ethnic minority being celebrated as part of the benevolent Canadian image, they are being denied agency over the very lands they were cornered into. Under multiculturalism, ethnic groups are reduced to a position where they can only request changes rather than authorize them.⁴¹ The general lack of political and economic legitimacy granted to Chinatown over the years, as seen through earlier examples of gentrification, speaks to the ways in which it has come to symbolize a marker of diversity to the state. As mentioned earlier, landmarks like the paifangs grew out of a desire to sell the “Chinese-ness” of Chinatown to outsiders, namely tourists.

They were not constructed during the height of the neighbourhood, prior to gentrification, but rather in a moment wherein Chinese families were being pushed out to make way for upper-middle-class interests. Ultimately, the paifangs functioned to signal a certain level of “authenticity” that outsiders found desirable. Underneath this façade is a community that has been consistently fighting for its survival since its inception. Attacks against Chinatown did not stop once Canada decided to brand itself with benevolence. With the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic at the beginning of 2020, Chinese people (and other Asians) faced racist blame for the virus, resulting in the north-facing paifang in Montreal being vandalized.⁴² Many other landmarks in the neighbourhood were damaged, Asian-owned stores faced a spike in break-ins and individuals were victims of violent hate crimes.⁴³ In 2021, there has been a new wave of gentrification threatening the survival of Montreal’s Chinatown yet again.⁴⁴ Walter Tom, a member of Montreal's Chinatown Working Group and an advocate against the neighbourhood’s continued gentrification, echoed statements expressed by the early generations of Chinatown occupants. He explains that Chinatown “is where [Chinese people] can seek relief from xenophobia and other racism.… This is where we grew up. This is really chez nous.”⁴⁵ It is clear that Montreal’s Chinatown continues to occupy a space of solace for its community, despite the years of threats to its survival. Chinese Canadians have repeatedly been told that they do not belong and are not valued within Canadian society. Chinatowns exist because of this history; they "have been paradoxical because both the nonplace of exotic universalism and the lived space of everyday experiences have been mutually articulated.”⁴⁶ The paifangs play with this tension through their transgressive nature, marking the difference between minority and dominant culture as well as between aestheticization and lived experience.

Endnotes 1.

2. 3. 4.

5. 6.

10. 11. 12.

13. 14. 15.

16.

Yon Hsu, “Feeling at Home in Chinatown—Voices and Narratives of Chinese Monolingual Seniors in Montreal,” International Migration & Integration 15 (2014): 331. Ien Ang, “Chinatowns and the Rise of China,” Modern Asian Studies 54, no. 4 (July 2020): 1378. Ang, “Chinatowns and the Rise of China,” 1378. Paul Yee, Chinatown: An Illustrated History of the Chinese Communities of Victoria, Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, Toronto, Montreal and Halifax (Toronto: J. Lorimer, 2005), 99. Ang, 1378. Yee, Chinatown: An Illustrated History of the Chinese Communities of Victoria, Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, Toronto, Montreal and Halifax, 100; Chan Kwok, “Ethnic Urban Space, Urban Displacement and Forced Relocation: The Case of Chinatown in Montreal,” Canadian Ethnic Studies 18, vol. 02: 65. Deborah Cowen, “Following the infrastructures of empire: notes on cities, settler colonialism, and method,” Urban Geography 41, no. 04 (2020): 477. Cowen, “Following the infrastructures of empire: notes on cities, settler colonialism, and method,” 477. Cowen, 477. Cowen, 477. Kwok, “Ethnic Urban Space, Urban Displacement and Forced Relocation: The Case of Chinatown in Montreal,” 69. Cowen, 477. Kwok, 69. Isabel Sarah Wallace, “Racial Segregation of Asian Canadians,” The Canadian Encyclopedia, October 18, 2018, Wallace, “Racial Segregation of Asian Canadians,” 2018.

17. Cowen, 477. 18. David Chuenyan Lai and Timothy Chiu Man Chan, “Montreal Chinatown 1893-2014,” Simon Fraser University, 2015. 19. David Chuenyan Lai and Timothy Chiu Man Chan, “Montreal Chinatown 1893-2014”. 20. David Chuenyan Lai and Timothy Chiu Man Chan, “Montreal Chinatown 1893-2014”. 21. Wallace, “Racial Segregation of Asian Canadians,” 2018. 22. Wallace, 2018. 23. Maria Hwang and Rhacel Salzar Parrenas. “The Gendered Racialization of Asian Women as Villainous Temptress,” Gender and Society 35, no.4 (August 2021): 571. 24. Jean Bruce, The Last Best West. Montreal: Fitzhenry & Whiteside Limited, 1976. 25. Diane Sabourin and Maude-Emmanuelle Lambert, “Montreal’s Chinatown,” The Canadian Encyclopedia, March 24, 2013. 26. Sabourin and Lambert, “Montreal’s Chinatown”. 27. Sabourin and Lambert, “Montreal’s Chinatown”. 28. Sabourin and Lambert, “Montreal’s Chinatown”; Jesse Feith, “Chinatown renovations frustrate local businesses,” Montreal Gazette, July 7th, 2016. 29. Kwok, 70. 30. Domenic Vitiello and Zoe Blickenderfer, “The planned destruction of Chinatowns in the United States and Canada since c.1900,” Planning Perspectives 35, no.01 (2020): 98. 31. Kwok, 70. 32. Kwok, 70. 33. Margaret Kohn, “Dispossession and the right to the city” Place, Space and Mediated Communication, edited by Carolyn Marvin and Hong Sun-ha (London: Rout-

ledge, 2017), 70. 34. Kwok, 71. 35. Kwok, 71. 36. Yon Hsu, “Feeling at Home in Chinatown—Voices and Narratives of Chinese Monolingual Seniors in Montreal,” International Migration & Integration 15 (2014): 332. 37. Eva Mackey, “Managing the house of difference: official multiculturalism” House of Difference: Cultural Politics and National Identity in Canada, (London: Routledge, 1998), 77. 38. Mackey, “Managing the house of difference: official multiculturalism,” 79. 39. Mackey, 79. 40. Mackey, 79. 41. Mackey, 79. 42. Anne Leclair, “Montreal’s Chinatown faces second wave of vandalism, break-ins,” Global News, October 26, 2020. 43. Leclair, “Montreal’s Chinatown faces second wave of vandalism, break-ins,” 2020. 44. Melinda Dalton and Holly Cabera, “Saving Chinatown,” CBC, October 26, 2021. 45. Melinda Dalton and Holly Cabera, “Saving Chinatown,” 2021. 46. Hsu, “Feeling at Home in Chinatown—Voices and Narratives of Chinese Monolingual Seniors in Montreal,” 333.

Universality & Malleability: Icons of the Virgin at Saint Catherine’s Monastery 5 Written by Sam Lirette Edited by Jacob Anthony The Monastery of Saint Catherine at Mount Sinai in Egypt houses the largest collection of preserved Byzantine icons in the world.¹ Specifically, I wish to examine three distinct types of icons held here (the Virgin Enthroned, the Hodegetria, and the Virgin of the Burning Bush), aiming to shed light on the evolution of Marian iconography by analyzing both pre-and post-Iconoclasm works, as well as site-specific icons. Additionally, the paper will lay out a brief history of the monastery, the iconographical origins of the Virgin, and the impact of the Iconoclasm. This will serve to contextualize the monastery’s icons, which, although relatively isolated, demonstrate the overall change in iconographic trends in the Byzantine Empire. However, this demonstration of general trends present within the Empire did not impede upon the creation of the monastery’s own local idioms and site-specific themes. Although Saint Catherine houses a plethora of similar icons, I have chosen to examine the icons of the Virgin (Theotokos) and Child between Saints Theodore and George (fig. 1), the Virgin Hodegetria Dexiokratousa (fig. 2), and that of Saint Catherine with the Virgin of the Burning Bush (fig. 3). These by no means cover the intricacies of the site’s icons, but for clarity and simplicity were chosen as larger representatives of these themes The History of the Monastery and its Icons Saint Catherine’s Monastery, built between 548 and 565 with support from Byzantine Emperor Justinian, is the oldest running Eastern Orthodox monastery in the world.² It houses approximately three thousand icons, which are thought to have been preserved due to the monastery’s remote location, fortified nature and the area’s dry climate.³ Notably, the majority of these icons were created on the Byzantine mainland, such as in Constantinople, approximate-

ly 1500 km away.⁴ This proves crucial to my thesis, as these icons demonstrate the overall stylistic developments which occurred in the mainland; in other words, due to the monastery’s isolated nature, the works do not exhibit features expected to surface in these Eastern provinces controlled by Arab rule.⁵ In fact, many of these icons were donations from pilgrims, as the monastery—which is thought to be the site of the Burning Bush—is located on a route to the Holy Land.⁶ This aspect will prove important concerning both the creation of site-specific icons and the impact of pilgrimage. Interestingly, it is only through the association of the site with Saint Catherine of Alexandria by pilgrims in the 13th century that the site took on its current name. Documents show that it was not until the 16th century that it officially became known as Saint Catherine’s Monastery.⁷ In fact, the monastery was originally dedicated to the Virgin Mary, also known as the Theotokos in the Byzantine East. Therefore, it is no surprise that Marian icons—specifically those of the Virgin and Child—far outnumber depictions of any other figure at the site.⁸ Iconographic Origins As Marian iconography is both the focus behind my paper and arguably the monastery itself, it is crucial to analyze the origins of such iconography and the cult of the Virgin. In terms of icons that predate Iconoclasm, only about 36 survive.⁹ These are essential in understanding the development of themes. Thomas F. Mathews explores the roots of such motifs, noting the influence of Pagan and Egyptian goddesses. He notes the impact of ancient Egyptian icons, namely those of Isis, on the stylistic development of Marian iconography, ranging from their non-narrative frontal poses to the depiction of symbols of power.¹⁰ The collection at Mount Sinai, he argues, provides important evidence for the phenomenon of icons as a whole, and the early icons are in no way indicative of a new emerging genre.¹¹ However, as illustrated by my diverse choice of icons of analysis, Mathews acknowledges the wide array of techniques employed by artists, which demonstrates a mastery of tempera, encaustic and gold leaf inlay.¹² Most significantly, as Mary takes on the attributes of Isis, the site of the monastery proves important. It was in Egypt, after all, that the former received the title of Theotokos (God-bearer)—a title that originally belonged to the latter.¹³ Furthermore, Mathews argues that the Hodegetria

may be understood as a conflation of Isis offering her breast to her child.¹⁴ Meanwhile, icons of the Virgin Enthroned are reminiscent of symbols associated with Isis: her hieroglyph was a throne, she protected the pharaoh’s throne, and her name originally meant “throne” as well—all of which point to a conflation between the two figures and Isis’ replacement by the Virgin Mary.¹⁵ The Cult of the Virgin and Iconoclasm It is not surprising, considering the aforementioned evidence, that the Virgin eventually took on the role of holy protector. In his ground-breaking text on the history of images, Hans Belting explores how the Virgin took on this very role for the Byzantine Empire, providing divine aid in wars against Islamic powers, while simultaneously becoming a symbol of unity for the widely dispersed Figure 1: Virgin (Theotokos) and Child population of the empire.¹⁶ In between Saints Theodore and George, 6th this sense, she became an imcentury, encaustic on wood, St. Catherine's Monastery, Sinai, Egypt. portant uniting force after the death of Justinian. However, by the 8th century, Iconoclastic views grew in popularity and the Virgin’s status was deemed as oppressive.¹⁷ Icon production ceased and pre-existing ones were destroyed, though many at the monastery survived centuries of turmoil. It is in fact only after these periods of Iconoclasm (726-787, 814-842) that the Virgin took on the title of “Mother of God.”¹⁸ Here, she takes on a more present and distinct role, often taking center stage in apse mosaics in newly standardized iconographic programs.¹⁹ As Belting makes evident, this period of Iconoclasm, although widely discussed, is filled with uncertainties and controversy which do not allow for simple conclusions concerning deeper conflicts between church and state.²⁰ What is certain, however, is that the period resulted in a great loss of ma-

terial in the Byzantine mainland; not a single work appears to have survived in Constantinople. Yet, the relative isolation and fortified nature of Saint Catherine’s Monastery allowed for the preservation of pre-Iconoclastic icons. The Virgin Enthroned: The Pre-Icoloclastic The 6th-century encaustic icon of the Virgin (Theotokos) and Child between Saints Theodore and George (fig. 1) has been thoroughly studied and is referred to by several names. Due to its depicted theme, it will from here on out be referred to as the Virgin Enthroned. An analysis of this work will provide a key starting point for understanding the early icons at the monastery—and consequently throughout the Byzantine Empire—and serve to demonstrate later iconographic changes and preferences, which are far more standardized. The icon depicts the Virgin Mary seated on a throne and holding the Christ Child. She is flanked by two saints, Theodore on her right and George on her left. All are dressed in their traditional regalia and are adorned with halos. Additionally, two archangels inhabit the background, gazing towards the hand of God which emerges from the top of the image. The icon is often studied for its simultaneous use of different stylistic techniques, such as by Ernst Kitzinger who compares the dimensionality of the angels to the illusionistic frescoes found in Pompeii.²¹ Kurt Weitzmann, the leading art historian behind the discoveries at Mount Sinai, examines the impasto techniques used on the angels and relates it to their heavenly status, while the “sunburnt face of Theodore and the pallor of George” connote a more earthly presence and put the figures in contrast to Mary’s “supernatural appearance.”²² Belting, however, reminds readers that this is open to controversy and instead focuses on form: the angels represent “open forms and movement in space,” the saints indicate a “closed surface with linear and neatly circumscribed forms,” the Virgin employs both of these, and the Christ Child leans more towards that of the angels.²³ Although these formal analyses diverge in some areas, they both point to the fact that stylistic choices may be used to indicate distinctions between heavenly and earthly bodies. What is most interesting, perhaps, is the way the Virgin takes on an intermediary role; she is both of the heavens and of the earth, both spiritual and physical. Belting further states that these differences imply a hierarchy, which is further

emphasized by the Virgin’s raised position on the throne.²⁴ These aspects not only illuminate Mary’s intermediary role but most significantly her intercessory role. This is where the importance of the gaze—of both figures and viewers—comes into play. Firstly, the painting is rather large for an icon (68.5 × 49.7 cm) and is thicker at the top than at the bottom, perhaps indicating that it was meant to be hung from a considerable height and be viewed from below as an image of devotion.²⁵ Indeed, icons, sometimes referred to as votive paintings, play an important role in prayer and devotion. Robin Cormack analyzes the gaze of such figures to understand the use of early Byzantine images. The frontal gazes of the saints, he argues, indicate their position as intercessory figures; viewers may direct their prayers to these earthly—although sanctified—individuals, which may then be directed through the more heavenly figures, and eventually to God.²⁶ These roles, again, as emphasized by stylistic means, delineate sacredness and were most likely developed between the rule of Justinian and Iconoclasm.²⁷ Furthermore, Mary’s gaze is not directed at the viewer but rather echoes that of the angels, indicating a certain holiness and intangibility; they gaze towards “an unseen vision.”²⁸ This balance between linear and organic forms, between differing gazes, reinforces the purpose of the icon as a devotional image. In so doing, this relationship demonstrates how icons before Iconoclasm became an important part of everyday life and private devotion, offering access to God himself through the intercessory figures of the Virgin and saints.²⁹ Therefore, during the Pre-Iconoclastic period, as made evident by her enthroned position, the Virgin took on the role of protector for the entirety of the Empire, yet she simultaneously became an important figure concerning private devotion. The work consequently indicates that “there is no reason to think that the environment of the Sinai monastery was anything but representative of the Byzantine mentality.”³⁰ The Hodegetria & Mary As Mother of God: The Post-Iconoclastic After the fall of Byzantine Iconoclasm, the role of the Virgin became progressively more important as artists and theologians developed new ways of understanding the figure and her maternal qualities, which further amplified her role as intercessor by increasing her accessibility.³¹ I shall examine the 13th-century icon of the

Virgin Hodegetria Dexiokratousa (ﬁg. 2) in order to shed light on these changes in iconography and Mary’s new role as Mother of God. Firstly, it is relevant to note that the icon is a mosaic set in wax on wood, which demonstrates exceptional technical skill indicative of metropolitan painters.³² This emphasizes, regardless of the monastery’s seclusion, a clear connection to the mainland. Here, the Virgin is depicted at half-length and holds the Christ Child. The latter raises his hand in blessing while the former points to him, hence the term Hodegetria, “She Who Leads the Way.” This iconographic depiction gained popularity after Iconoclasm, though it existed pre-Iconoclasm. In fact, the Hodegetria has a rich history of processions, especially in Constantinople, which harkens back to the legend of the original Hodegetria—a painting of the Virgin thought to be painted by Luke the apostle during her lifetime.³³ However, in pre-Iconoclastic icons of the Virgin, the ﬁgure was simply referred to by her name or by the term Theotokos, “the One Who Bore God,” which neither relays any information about her specifically nor does it imply any further relationship between her and the Christ Child.³⁴ Here, on the other hand, we see the Greek inscription MHP OY, an abbreviation of MHTHP OEOY, “Mother of God,” which clearly outlines this relationship.³⁵ This maternal depiction of the Virgin positioned her as an “ordinary woman who understood humankind” and such intimate portrayals slowly took over the more formal, static illustrations of the Virgin as previously examined.³⁶ Her intercessory role is present in Figure 2: Icon with the Virgin Hodegetria the Virgin Enthroned, though Dexiokratousa, 13th century, mosaic set in wax on wood, St. Catherine's Monastery, symmetry and hierarchy suSinai, Egypt.

persede the motherly touch found in these later icons of the Hodegetria, rendering them, as Ioli Kalavrezou states, “unemotional and distant.”³⁷ The increase in popularity of the Hodegetria emphasizes its importance in relation to the end of Iconoclasm; after all, the legend of St. Luke was created during Iconoclasm and played a key role in the approval of images.³⁸ Furthermore, the icon’s rich processional history speaks to this. The Theotokos was often deliberately paired with scenes of the Crucifixion on pectoral crosses, which served to emphasize the words spoken by Christ before his death; he exclaims to Mary, “behold, this is your son” and to John, “behold, this is your mother” (John 19:26-27).³⁹ This choice performed by Iconophiles deliberately outlines the role of Mary as not only mother of Christ, but of all his disciples, and by extension as a mother to all, shaping her as an incredibly approachable intercessor.⁴⁰ In fact, her gesturing is interpreted as an intercessory prayer, which the Christ Child answers through his own gesture of blessing; the Hodegetria presents a dialogue of prayer which may be subsequently extended outside the picture plane and involve the worshipper.⁴¹ Therefore, the Hodegetria illuminates the Virgin’s continued role as an intermediary figure, yet she becomes progressively more accessible through an emphasis on her motherly qualities. Unlike the Virgin Enthroned, the picture—and the relationship between viewer and figures—is far less hierarchical and formal. Furthermore, these qualities are indicative of broader thematic tendencies, as made evident by the historical significance of the Hodegetria in the capital. This ranges from the legends associated with the original icon to the processions which derived from it. The icons of the Monastery of Saint-Catherine, once again, demonstrate larger iconographic changes present within the entire Byzantine Empire. However, that is not to say that the monastery did not develop its own iconography. Virgin of the Burning Bush: the Site-Specific I wish to examine in brief the local idioms developed at Saint Catherine’s in order to emphasize its site-specific qualities. Although the monastery may be understood as a microcosm for the entirety of the Byzantine Empire—which may be understood in-depth due to preservation—it would be improper to disregard the fact that, such as is the case for any sacred site, the Monastery

at Mount Sinai developed its own exclusive imagery which speaks to its location on the supposed site of the Burning Bush. The flux of iconographic themes between the secluded monastery and the mainland may be understood through the act of pilgrimage. As mentioned, many icons were brought to the site as offerings by pilgrims. These individuals were interested in the Monastery’s location—the site of the Burning Bush and Moses’ theophanic vision. It is therefore not a surprise that the icon of the Virgin Figure 3: Saint Catherine with the Virgin of the Burning Bush, 13th century, tempera and metal of the Burning Bush was leaf with pigmented varnish on panel, St. developed in this location. Catherine's Monastery, Sinai, Egypt. The icon of Saint Catherine with the Virgin of the Burning Bush (fig. 3) depicts the Virgin, seemingly enveloped by the Burning Bush, holding the Christ Child and flanked by the titular saint. This scene presents a clear connection to the monastery’s site, and as made evident by the intertwining of flames with the figure of the Virgin, offers a definite association between the two and emphasizes the loca sancta of Sinai.⁴² These points consequently demonstrate the larger role she played specifically in relation to the site of the Monastery; her pairing—and literal fusing—with the site of the Burning Bush proved an unequivocal magnet for pilgrims. Conclusion The icons examined, from the Virgin Enthroned to the Hodegetria, demonstrate how the undisturbed collection of icons at the Monastery of Saint Catherine stands in for broader conceptualizations of iconography across the Byzantine Empire. Significantly,

these works outline the impact of Iconoclasm on iconography and the changes in thematic preferences which occurred after the end of this period. However, the Monastery at Mount Sinai also developed local idioms; the two are not mutually exclusive, as Kristine Marie Larison perfectly summarizes: The prominence of Marian imagery at Sinai should be understood in relation to her religious and cultural signiﬁcance in Byzantium and the Orthodox East more broadly, as well as more speciﬁcally in relation to her theological and typological importance for the holy places of the pilgrimage site and monastery.⁴³

The Virgin, therefore, may be understood as the quintessential ﬁgure of both iconographic universality and malleability—allowing for the simultaneous creation of a shared identity across the Byzantine Empire and of unique particularities relevant to speciﬁc sacred sites.

Endnotes 1.

4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

Gerhard Wolf, “Icons and Sites. Cult Images of the Virgin in Mediaeval Rome,” in Images of the Mother of God: Perceptions of the Theotokos in Byzantium, ed. Maria Vassilaki (Florence: Taylor & Francis Group, 2005), 25. Kristine Marie Larison, “Mount Sinai and the Monastery of St. Catherine: Place and Space in Pilgrimage Art” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 2016), 95. Hans Belting, Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image Before the Era of Art, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 25. Belting, Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image Before the Era of Art, 35. Belting, 35. Belting, 35. Larison, “Mount Sinai and the Monastery of St. Catherine: Place and Space in Pilgrimage Art,” 182. Larison, 182. Thomas F. Mathews, “Early Icons of the Holy Monastery of Saint Catherine at Sinai,” in Holy Image, Hallowed Ground: Icons from Sinai, ed. Robert S. Nelson and Kristen M. Collins (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2006), 39. Mathews, “Early Icons of the Holy Monastery of Saint Catherine at Sinai,” 39. Mathews, 41. Mathews, 42. Mathews, 47. Mathews, 47. Mathews, 49. Belting, 35. Belting, 35. Belting, 35. Larison, “Mount Sinai and the Monastery of St. Catherine: Place and Space in Pilgrimage Art,” 212. Belting, 146. Belting, 131. Belting, 131.

23. Belting, 131. 24. Belting, 131. 25. Robin Cormack, “The Eyes of the Mother of God,” in Images of the Mother of God: Perceptions of the Theotokos in Byzantium, ed. Maria Vassilaki (Florence: Taylor & Francis Group, 2005), 168. 26. Robin Cormack, “The Eyes of the Mother of God,” 170. 27. Cormack, 170. 28. Cormack, 168. 29. Cormack, 168-71 30. Cormack, 169. 31. Ioli Kalavrezou, “Images of the Mother: When the Virgin Mary Became Meter Theou,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 44 (1990): 165. 32. Nano Chatzidakis, “A Byzantine Icon of the Dexiokratousa Hodegetria from Crete at the Benaki Museum,” in Images of the Mother of God: Perceptions of the Theotokos in Byzantium, ed. Maria Vassilaki (Florence: Taylor & Francis Group, 2005), 338. 33. Bissera Pentcheva, Icons and Power: The Mother of God in Byzantium (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006), 109. 34. Kalavrezou, “Images of the Mother: When the Virgin Mary Became Meter Theou,” 167. 35. Kalavrezou, 171. 36. Kalavrezou, 165. 37. Kalavrezou, 168. 38. Pentcheva, Icons and Power: The Mother of God in Byzantium, 124. 39. Kalavrezou, 168-9. 40. Kalavrezou, 168-9. 41. Pentcheva, 110. 42. Larison, 215. 43. Larison, 183.

Le Grand Escalier du Nouvel Opéra: A Feminist Approach Written by Robert Pelletier Edited by Jacob Anthony and Sam Lirette I: Introduction Massive and hulking yet sumptuous and elegant, the Nouvel Opéra de Paris stands at the end of a long boulevard, not calling attention to itself, but demanding it. Like the nearby Arc de Triomphe, Louvre, and Hôtel des Invalides, Charles Garnier’s Nouvel Opéra acts as an urban node around which the city is organised.¹ This is no accident; Baron Haussmann’s Reconstruction of Paris from 1853 to 1870 dramatically altered the city’s urban fabric, transforming it into an essay on hierarchy, clarity, and the supposed rationality that guided design following the populist revolutions of the nineteenth century amid the waning Enlightenment era. Designed by Charles Garnier and finished in 1875, the Opéra is a massive, sumptuous building that terminates the Avenue de l’Opéra, bookended on the other side by the Louvre. Functioning as an urban centerpiece, the square in front of the Opéra sees the intersection of seven boulevards aboveground. Underground, three separate metro lines converge at the Opera, demonstrating the site’s continued significance into the twenty-first century. The high level of importance ascribed to the building is intentional; as a center of Parisian life, the Opéra was a symbol of modernity in the days of its conception, functioning as a space for spectacle and spectatorship.² Its architecture combines the supposed rationality of the Beaux-Arts tradition with the sumptuous touch of the Baroque and Rococo,

like a Versailles in the center of Paris, framing itself as a palace of the people. A palace it certainly is: its massive auditorium, multiple levels of entry halls, and sprawling backstage with dizzyingly high spaces for technical theatre equipment, the Nouvel Opéra is a mass that both breaks and accentuates the architectural rhythm of the rest of Paris. The Opéra’s main staircase, the Grand Escalier, is a particularly notable space located centrally within the building, drenched in ornament and positioned so that every visitor would pass through it (Fig. 1). In its ornamentation and architecture, the monumental staircase crystallizes not just the essence of the Nouvel Opéra, but of Paris itself. The Grand Escalier sites the contradictions of Second Empire society that existed in post-Haussmann Paris; acting as a microcosm of newly modernised Paris, the space privileges the ﬂâneur, veils the Parisienne, and erases the existence of those who do not perform social respectability. II: Context: The Modern Paris Baron Haussmann’s reconstruction of Paris was commissioned by Napoleon III in an attempt to surpass London and solidify Paris as the world capital of modernity, industry, and luxury.³ From 1853 to 1870, Paris was enveloped in dust from the demolition of “slum” housing and the construction of new uniform architectural façades, limited in height to six storeys and centered around urban nodes like the Nouvel Opéra. The extensive demolition throughout

Figure 1: Jean Béraud, L'escalier de l'opéra Garnier, 1877. Oil on canvas. Musée Carnavalet, Paris.

the city displaced many Parisians, affecting the lower and working classes most intensely;⁴ it also resulted in a perceived increase of sex workers in Paris who now, unhoused, were forced onto the streets.⁵ Wide, broad boulevards like the Champs-Élysées were used to promote light and ventilation through the previously narrow city streets as well as to expedite the quelling of rebellion.⁶ The 1848 Revolution depended heavily on the ability to barricade the narrow Parisian alleys, and Haussmann’s decision to clear these medieval historic alleys in favour of wide boulevards was, as many scholars have already suggested, highly politically motivated.⁷ The introduction of wide boulevards privileged the act of looking reserved for the flâneur, a character described by Charles Baudelaire as “the passionate spectator,”⁸ necessarily male, who can stroll around the city unchaperoned and unnoticed, watching and visually possessing all that he sees without necessarily being a part of it. The style officially adopted by the city of Paris and Haussmann was what is now referred to as the Beaux-Arts style, named after the École des Beaux-Arts. The École is the foundation of academicism in French architecture,⁹ sometimes referred to as the first dedicated school of architecture. They centered their pedagogy on historical precedent,¹⁰ particularly Greco-Roman antiquity, and the supposed rationality of the neoclassical style. Masculinity, hierarchy, classical ornament, and visual clarity were central in their theory,¹¹ evident throughout its bureaucratic organization, pedagogy, and student life. It was the Union des Femmes Peintres et Sculpteurs, an all-female arts group founded in 1881, who advocated for the admittance of women artists into the École, which they accomplished in 1903.¹² Nevertheless, the École embodies a style and pedagogy of architecture that prioritizes the flâneur’s presence in the city, and the new uniform Beaux-Arts façades of Paris served as the backdrop against which women, sex workers, and other marginalized groups were written out of public life. Charles Garnier, a student of the École, transcended the rational neoclassical style and moved toward the Baroque in his sumptuous, decorative design for the Nouvel Opéra. This was partly an attempt at democratizing the space, adopting the ornament and decoration typically associated with the aristocratic architecture of the Baroque and Rococo movements to a public establishment, framing itself as a palace of the people. While theoretically progressive, in practice the Opéra served not only as a backdrop for, but actively enforced, the doc-

trine of separate spheres and centering of the male experience. Concerned entirely with the public sphere, the process of Haussmannization was eﬀectively a process of masculinization. The doctrine of separate spheres gendered public space masculine, and private space feminine, resulting in women’s inability to experience the city alone and unchaperoned at the risk of being perceived as a sex worker or a woman of ill social standing.¹³ Of course, this is a generalisation; women did frequent public space alone, but in so doing, were forced to accept the risks involved. Modernized and freshly renovated, late nineteenth century Paris was saturated with rigid social expectations that dictated the performance of social respectability to uphold masculine myths. In her writing, Marni Kessler outlines three types of urban maskings introduced with Haussmannization: the uniform building façades, the layer of dust from demolition and construction, and the popular women’s fashion accessory of the time, the veil.¹⁴ The uniform Beaux-Arts façades imposed by Haussmann set the stage for interactions of various social identities informed by gender, class, sexuality and profession (contributing to the formation of caricatured archetypes like the ﬂâneur, the sex worker, the Amazone, the Parisienne, etc.) in a spectacle of modernity. III: Power in Looking The act of looking, especially on behalf of women, was a source of anxiety among men in Second Empire Paris; like the public sphere, looking was an act reserved for men. During Haussmann’s reconstruction, the veil, a face-covering fashion accessory, rose in popularity as a bourgeois accessory in response to the dust and soot that polluted the city air as buildings were demolished and constructed.¹⁵ Its popularity among upper-middle class Parisiennes was enabled by the new process of mass-production and the rise of the department store.¹⁶ However, the veil’s ability to screen out dust was limited; the real intent of the veil was the diminishment of the female gaze. Add this to women’s inability to experience the city unchaperoned¹⁷ and the role of the veil in subjugating women becomes clearer. In her reading of Mary Cassatt’s painting In the Loge (1878), Griselda Pollock argues that “social spaces are policed by men’s watching women,”¹⁸ which becomes all the more evident when Garnier reveals his intentions are in line with that. Garnier was

well aware of the charged social attitudes around the act of looking in nineteenth-century Paris and capitalized on these attitudes to men’s advantage. In his writings on the Opéra from 1878-81, he wrote: Oui mesdames; oui, j’ai pensé à vous en installant à droite et à gauche ces grandes glaces sans cadre qui remplissent toute la surface des fausses baies. Il est bon qu’avant de monter cette suite de marches sur lesquelles vous serez vues de tous vos admirateurs, vous puissiez donner un peu plus d'élégance à votre costume, abaisser votre capuchon et bien relever les plis de vos jupes… C’est bien le moins que vous, qui êtes à la fois le modèle et le tableau motivant, vous étudiez aussi votre costume et votre maintien.¹⁹

Garnier directly acknowledges his design intentions in prioritizing the male gaze and objectifying the female body while limiting the scope of the female gaze to her own body and garments. By provoking female self-consciousness, he intentionally provokes female self-critique. The architecture of the Grand Escalier, as Garnier directly notes, actively enforces this through strategic placement of mirrors. Considering the contemporary social context before delving into a feminist analysis of the Grand Escalier is critical because the building is a piece of social architecture, functioning not to host events as much as providing a space for social interaction to take place—for men to see and for women to be seen. Central in Second Empire society was the doctrine of separate spheres, a binary system where public space is gendered masculine and private and domestic spaces are gendered feminine. The Nouvel Opéra constitutes, I argue, a space that presents itself as public but in practice straddles the public and private. While concerned entirely with the phenomenon of looking and being looked at, the space is limited to the bourgeoisie and aristocracy of Paris, and relatively inaccessible to the lower-middle class, sex workers, and numerous other maginalized identities. Furthermore, its sumptuous and excessive ornamentation may be gendered feminine when considered from the perspective of the École des Beaux-Arts ideology. The Nouvel Opéra, usually referred to as the Palais Garnier, is an example of the myth of the “Great Artist”²⁰ discussed by Linda Nochlin in her seminal 1971 paper, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” Since the construction of the Nouvel Opéra, Charles Garnier has been

treated in many scholarly writings as an architectural genius,²¹ or “prototype of the Romantic artist,”²² an attitude Christopher Mead upholds in Charles Garnier’s Paris Opéra (1991). Mead’s narrative has fed into the development of the canon of architectural history which all too often privileges the contributions of male architects while not just ignoring but actively erasing those of women. It is partly for this reason that I use the term Nouvel Opéra (which was used by Garnier and his contemporaries) in place of Palais Garnier. IV: Critical Femininst Analysis of The Grand Escalier The Nouvel Opéra’s Grand Escalier actively enforces the centering of the flâneur and masculine social myths through its architecture and treatment of space, emphasizing hierarchy and ostentatious ornamentation to provoke superficial self-reflection and an acute awareness of being seen. This centrally-located foyer was designed following principles of the architecture of department stores,²³ with a vast atrium, palatial scale, and the prioritization of clear lines of sight across the space. However, the architecture of the department store and the Grand Escalier differ on two levels: firstly, Garnier did not flaunt his modern building technologies but rather chose to cover them up with masonry and ornament to emphasize luxury and extravagance. Secondly, instead of selling merchandise, the Grand Escalier sold social mobility—or rather, framed itself as such. Here, I build off a line of argument introduced by Kathleen James-Chakraborty, in which she argues that “the monumental staircase… replaced the imperial court as the center of socially ambitious Paris.”²⁴ When considered as a center of social capital, the Opéra becomes sooner comparable to the Palace of Versailles. Both are iconic Parisian palaces: one presented as public, one inherently private. The Opéra’s adoption of Versaille-esque Baroque detailing demonstrates the movement from rigid class-based hierarchy to gender- and social-based hierarchy in Second Empire Paris. Situated centrally within the Nouvel Opéra, the Grand Escalier is the major circulation space that provides access to the loges, the general admission seating, the entry and exit, and numerous lounges and foyers. It is the heart of the building, architecturally and symbolically. Saturated in rich marbles of green, white, red, bronze, and pink, with accents of gold spattered throughout, the Grand Escalier is fundamentally hierarchical in its structure and

Figure 2: Pierre André Leclercq, Paris l'Opéra Garnier: Le Grand Escalier, 2015. Photography.

ornament (although not in the way earlier Rationalist architects expressed these same ideas: see the work of Étienne-Louis Boullée and other Enlightenment-era Rationalists, who may sooner be branded Neoclassicists). Tiers of arches supported by stylized double columns of the Ionic order give rise to an inward-sloping ceiling painted in the style of baroque Roman and Genovese palaces and crowned by a square skylight.²⁵ A double flight of steps rise from the Members’ Rotunda below the foyer before doubling back on themselves, guiding the visitor up to the doors of the auditorium in a widening ascent, then forking into two narrower flights that lead up to the loges (Fig. 2).²⁶ This narrowing of the staircase accompanying the ascent to aristocratic space points toward the privilege of visibility given to the upper class but glosses over the masculine orientation of this privilege. The Grand Escalier’s centering of the flâneur goes hand-inhand with the veiling of the Parisienne. As James-Chakraborty suggests, “a major function of the Opéra was to display young women'' who were frequently veiled, treated as the objects and indicators of status for the men who accompanied them.²⁷ Just as in the streets of

Paris, the Grand Escalier acts as a space of exhibition and enforcement of gender roles. These gender roles are rigid not just in their enforcement of who is allowed to experience public space, but what constitutes male or female in the first place. Throughout this paper, I have discussed gender and sexuality in terms aligned with a gender binary, assuming “men'' and “women'' are entirely definitive and mutually exclusive identities. Of course, nonbinary and queer individuals existed in Second Empire Paris, but their historical erasure as well as their contemporary enforcement of the gender binary renders their existence nearly obsolete, largely limited to the imagination of scholars. On a symbolic level, the Grand Escalier functions as a metaphor for social mobility. Reading stairs in this way may be low-hanging fruit, but in the case of the Nouvel Opéra, where class distinctions are so central to the architecture, the Grand Escalier’s symbolism cannot be ignored. Considering class as well as gender, the Grand Escalier as a symbol of social mobility describes the privileging of the male experience and the subjugation of the female; while both men and women can ascend the steps, it is only men who may do so alone. The woman is effectively a possession of the man, dependent on his social and class ranking; her own social power is limited to her ability to uphold or reject her social responsibility, which in the end only affects herself. On a physical level, the Parisienne may well ascend the steps alone—the Amazone signals the possibility of this—but her duty of social responsibility prevents this level of autonomy. The notion of publicity is central to the Escalier, the main portion of which exposes those passing through it to numerous levels and a 360 degree radius. Like the streets of Paris, social responsibility is imposed on all and regulated by all. In a formal sense, the Escalier is self-conscious, turning in on itself between the basement and ground floor, inspiring this same awareness of the self within its visitors. In this way, it acts similarly to Jeremy Bentham’s eighteenth century Panopticon prison design. V: Conclusion The Nouvel Opéra, and specifically the Grand Escalier, remains a milestone in the “living”²⁸ canon of architectural history. Certainly, the building is remarkable in its massive size, sumptuous ornamentation, and monumental siting within the city of Paris. Moreover, it was subtly radical for its time, adapting the aristocrat-

ic architectural language of the Baroque and Rococo movements (historically reserved for monumental spaces of aristocracy, wealth, and political/cultural power) to a public monument intended for a variety of classes. However, its progressive character is limited to class, and even at that, it was far from a democratizing space. It does serve, however, as a valuable example from which the general social and cultural climate of Second Empire Paris can be evaluated, consolidating Parisian social culture within one specific site, evaluable as a microcosm of wider Paris. As a primary source, the Grand Escalier is saturated with meaning derived from its context; Haussmann’s reconstruction, the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, the doctrine of separate spheres, and contemporary gendered attitudes around the act of looking inform an art historical reading of the architecture as a urban centerpiece firmly solidified in the canon.

Endnotes 1.

Kathleen James-Chakraborty, “Chapter 14: Paris in the Nineteenth Century,” in Architecture Since 1400, 273-289. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014), 285. 2. Van Zanten, Building Paris: Architectural Institutions and the Transformation of the French Capital, 1830-70. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 43. 3. James-Chakraborty, “Paris in the Nineteenth Century,” 278. 4. James-Chakraborty, 281. 5. Marni Kessler,“Dusting the surface, or the bourgeoise, the veil, and Haussmann’s Paris,” in The Invisible Flaneuse? Gender, Public Space, and Visual Culture in Nineteenth-Century Paris. Eds. Aruna D’Souza and Tom McDonough, 46-64. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), 51. 6. Du Montcel, “Opera de Paris,” 7; Skelly, Realism and the Social History of Art, September 16, 2021. 7. James-Chakraborty, “Paris in the Nineteenth Century,” 280. 8. Charles Baudelaire, “The Painter of Modern Life,” In The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays. Trans. and ed. Jonathan Mayne. (Oxford: Phaidon Press, 1964), 5. 9. Paul P. Cret, “The École Des Beaux-Arts and Architectural Education,” Journal of the American Society of Architectural Historians 1, no. 2 (1941): 3. 10. Stephane Kirkland, Paris Reborn: Napoleon III, Baron Haussmann, and the Quest to Build a Modern City. (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2013), 249. 11. James-Chakraborty, “Paris in the Nineteenth Century,” 274. 12. Paula J. Birnbaum, Women Artists in Interwar France: Framing Femininities. (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), 4.

13. Kessler, “Dusting the Surface, or the bourgeoise, the veil, and Haussmann’s Paris,” 51. 14. Kessler, 50. 15. Kessler, 51. 16. Kessler, 51. 17. Kessler,50. 18. Griselda Pollock, Vision and Diﬀerence: Femininity, Feminism, and Histories of Art. (London and New York: Routledge, 1988), 76. 19. Charles Garnier, Le Nouvel Opéra. Nouv. éded. Librairie de l'Architecture et de la Ville. (Paris: Linteau, 2001), 295. 20. Linda Nochlin, Women, Art, and Power and Other Essays. (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1988),153. 21. Christopher C. Mead, Charles Garnier’s Paris Opéra: Architectural Empathy and the Renaissance of French Classicism. (New York: Architectural History Foundation, 1991), 113. 22. Kirkland, “Paris Reborn,” 193. 23. James-Chakraborty, “Paris in the Nineteenth Century,” 285. 24. James-Chakraborty, “Paris in the Nineteenth Century,” 286. 25. Du Montcel, “Opera de Paris,” 16. 26. Du Montcel,15. 27. James-Chakraborty, “Paris in the Nineteenth Century,” 287. 28. Martin Bressani, and Peter Sealy. “The Opéra Disseminated: Charles Garnier’s Le Nouvel Opéra de Paris (1875-1881).” In Studies in the History of Art 77, 195-219. National Gallery of Art, (2011): 212.

7 Painting as Devotion and Ritual Embodiment in Jin Liying’s Guanyin, 1803 Written by Chloe Gordon Chow Edited by Yonger Xie Introduction In late imperial China, the cult of Guanyin reached its zenith and the presence of the deity was enacted through a wide range of visual forms. Laywomen participated in the cult of Guanyin by reproducing her image as a way to salvation and a form of devotion.¹ During this time, women were excluded from religious spaces for fear of desecrating the sacred and causing ritual impurity. With the ascendancy of Neo-Confucian Orthodoxy and the strengthening of the lineage ideal, there was increased emphasis on the ritualized family and a heightened focus on female chastity and purity.² Public religious space remained privileged for male use while private domestic space became the locus of female religious and ritual life.³ In addition to chanting sutras, practicing meditation, and observing a vegetarian diet, women also created religious icons as part of their devotional practice.⁴ During the Ming and Qing periods, the bodhisattva Guanyin was the most popular subject for gentry women painters.⁵ These images took on a variety of forms, including painting, embroidery, calligraphy, and even bodily portrayal.⁶ It is important to examine material practice to observe how learned women used their brushes as “technologies of the self,”⁷ externalizing deeply personal, religious, and intimate experiences through the medium of brush and paper. Where gentry women’s worship was largely conﬁned to the home, female

practitioners in the cult of Guanyin developed a new mode of worship by reproducing Guanyin’s image. In my essay, I examine Jin Liying’s painting of Guanyin completed in 1803, on the day of Guanyin’s Enlightenment (lunar June 19th). Prior to examining this work of art, I provide a brief overview of the bodhisattva Guanyin and detail some of the popular manifestations and iconography associated with the deity. Further, I provide socio-cultural and historical context on the role of women in late imperial China, in order to situate Jin Liying’s artistic practice. Finally, I examine Jin Liying’s Guanyin, as one such example of how the act of painting could forge an intimate relationship between the worshipped and the worshipper. I argue that through the reproduction of the deity’s image, painting served as a form of discipline, commemoration, and self-embodiment for the female artist. Examined within this context, Jin’s painting could function as both a devotional object, ritual practice, and as a projected image of the virtuous self.

Figure 1: Jin Liying, Guanyin. 1803. Hanging scroll, color and ink on paper. 116.6 x 44.2 cm. Collection of Zhejiang Provincial Museum, Hangzhou, China.

Boddhisattva Guanyin When Buddhism was introduced to China in the first century CE, it arrived in Mahayana Buddhist form and introduced a large pantheon of buddhas and bodhisattvas to China.⁸ One of the most popular bodhisattvas was Avalokiteśvara (he who sees sound), whose name was translated and indigenized as Guanyin (he who contemplates sounds).⁹ From the moment Avalokiteśvara was introduced to China, he enjoyed wide and fervent veneration. The most influential literary portrait of Avalokiteśvara was written in the early centuries of the first millennium in the Lotus Sutra. An entire chapter entitled Pumen Jing (sutra on the gate of universal salvation) was devoted to Avalokiteśvara, who was praised by the Buddha for his salvific powers and unlimited compassion.¹⁰ He was framed as a universal saviour, willing to aid anyone who appealed to him, regardless of the nature of his or her distress.¹¹ The identity of Guanyin was most thoroughly indigenised via visual representations.¹² Thus, art was one of the most powerful and effective mediums through which Chinese people came to know and accept Guanyin. Throughout history, iconography associated with Guanyin has varied. Guanyin was credited with the ability to manifest himself in a variety of shapes (male or female, poor or rich, human or non-human) depending on the miracles he needed to perform. Openness and self-transformation became important hallmarks of the bodhisattva, which were reflected in the variety of manifestations enriching the vast canon of Guanyin imagery.¹³ When first introduced to China, the bodhisattva was depicted as a richly arrayed Indian Prince – his male sex was indicated by a thin moustache.¹⁴ During the Tang dynasty, Guanyin was depicted with numerous heads and hands, indicative of his omnipresent readiness to aid his devotees.¹⁵ This manifestation of Guanyin was known as Thousand-Headed and Thousand-Handed Guanyin. From the tenth century onward, Guanyin was increasingly depicted in female form and it was in this female manifestation that the bodhisattva gained the greatest popularity.¹⁶ Feminized representations of Guanyin stemmed from miracle stories and pilgrimage traditions; they were tied to specific locations, biographical stories and depicted specific iconographies.¹⁷ These localized legends helped to indigenise Guanyin by providing the bodhisattva with a uniquely Chinese upbringing, characteristics of a human

life, and a designated pilgrimage site.¹⁸ Female representations of Guanyin were circulating as early as the Tang and Song dynasties, but the bodhisattva was not firmly feminized until the early Ming dynasty.¹⁹ Guanyin gradually became the Chinese Goddess of Compassion and Mercy and was worshipped in times of peril – for health, wealth, and as a provider of children.²⁰ Common female iconographic representations of Guanyin include Princess Miao-shan, White-Robed Guanyin, Guanyin of the South Sea, and Fish-Basket Guanyin. These different manifestations were gradually developed throughout time and had their own cult following, attracting different audiences and devotees. The bodhisattva’s most acclaimed power is compassion, a distinctly feminine and material quality in a Chinese context.²¹ Thus, Guanyin gradually metamorphosed into a universal mother figure, embodying the characteristics of purity, unity, compassion, and mercy.²² The Chinese indigenisation of the bodhisattva and her distinctly feminine characteristics explains the sexual transformation of the deity, linking Guanyin’s inherent religious qualities to her outward physical appearance. She was venerated by men and women alike and worshiped by all classes. Guanyin was praised for her universal compassion and unlimited power: she was precious to all and did not discriminate in her love and aid. Gender, religion, and Material Practice in Late Imperial China Jin Liying was born in 1772 during the Qing dynasty. During this time, gender distinctions were marked and women were subject to Confucian principles of filial piety, chastity, and patrilocality. Domestic space was the central site where women practiced filial piety, participated in the cult of purity, and pursued religious and ritual practices. Confucian moral authorities envisioned a spiritual life for women within their homes and radically rejected their religious participation within the community.²³ This was formalized with repeated proclamations and other official documents issued by late imperial officers to prohibit women from visiting temples.²⁴ Restricting female religious participation in public functioned trifold: to maintain female chastity, to uphold the gendered segregation of spaces, and to preserve the sanctity of the temples. Female participation in public religious life was seen as treasonous against a woman’s duties towards the family and the home. Female Chinese Buddhist practice was informed by long standing Confucian tradi-

tion, which limited female religious participation.²⁵ Thus, during late imperial China, gentry women’s religious activity was primarily confined to the home,limited to ancestral worship and secluded Buddhist cultivation.²⁶ One way in which women negotiated their social roles and religious beliefs was through material practice and the production of Buddhist images at home. From the Ming dynasty onward, there was a marked increase in female literacy and arts education. Gentrywomen were encouraged to cultivate art forms, such as painting, music, poetry, and calligraphy.²⁷ Women also had greater access to printed models and painting manuals created by male artists as a result of a booming publishing culture.²⁸ During the Ming and Qing periods, women became prominent painters of Buddhist imagery, with Guanyin as the most popular subject matter.²⁹ Thus, despite the inability to enter temples and to outwardly practice Buddhism, women forged an intimate relationship with Guanyin through the reproduction of her image within their homes. Jin Liying (1772-1807): Guanyin, 1803 Jin Liying was one of the most accomplished female painters at the end of the High Qing era.³⁰ Jin grew up in a gentry family in Kuaiji and studied both Confucian and Buddhist classical texts. She married at the age of twenty-two and was the second wife to Wang Tan (1760-1817). As an artist, Jin mastered a wide range of subject matter, including different types of religious painting. Her spiritual life was materialized by painting Guanyin. On June 19th, 1803 Jin created the painting of Guanyin (fig.1) to commemorate her completion of the rite of Bodhisattva Vows.³¹ In the painting, white-robed Guanyin is depicted sitting atop a lion, with her legs folded in the royal ease position and her hands clasped in her lap. Guanyin is wrapped in a simple white robe, barefoot, adorned with a green plaque on her chest, and a small Amitabha Buddha in her hair. Guanyin’s face is directed away from the viewer and her gaze is turned towards a little boy. She is positioned on the right-hand side of the painting, high up in the composition. A boy, Guanyin’s disciple Shancai, is positioned in the bottom left of the frame. Shancai appears to be crawling towards Guanyin. His knees are braced on the ground and his arms are half raised, as if in the process of moving closer and reaching out to the bodhisattva. His face is half turned away from the viewer and he is

gazing upwards at Guanyin. A wooden hangar is situated to the left of the child and a white parrot is chained to the post. Shancai, the lion, and the white parrot are all common companions to whiterobed Guanyin. They are established as part of her iconography and have a scriptural basis in the Lotus Sutra.³² Moral judgement, ritual significance, and symbolic meaning are embedded within Jin’s painting of Guanyin. The painting serves as a reflective device by which Jin asserts her own virtuous qualities, committed religious identity, and intimate connection with the bodhisattva Guanyin. In the sections that follow, I will analyse the virtuous qualities associated with the baimiao style, discuss painting as a ritual act, and explore the intimate relationship depicted between Guanyin and Shancai in the artwork. My approach is distinctly feminist in nature and is grounded in the understanding that the act of painting can be a commemorative, devotional, and deeply intimate practice. Brushwork Techniques as Virtue Signaling Jin Liying’s skill as an artist is evident in her painting of Guanyin, specifically with regard to her application of ink and pigment. She combines baimiao plain painting and gongbi colour techniques in her rendering of Guanyin, crafting a work that is both highly detailed yet simply rendered and lightly coloured.³³ This should be read not only as an aesthetic choice but also as an assertion of moral qualities on behalf of the artist. Jin used the monotonous baimiao style to draw Guanyin’s iconic white robes, applying delicate brushwork to craft the gentle folds in the bodhisattva’s white garment (fig. 2). Jin expertly manipulates the brush to create incredibly thin controlled lines, which convey a sense of both airiness and dynamism and functions to showcase Jin’s steady hand and precise skill. The use of baimiao for Guanyin’s robes is juxtaposed against the soft orange colour of the lion and Guanyin’s trailing dark black hair (fig. 3). Colour is delicately and carefully applied in gongbi style to embellish Guanyin’s accessories, the beak of the parrot, the wooden hangar, and the little boy’s clothing, jewellery, and hair. Jin expertly applied pigment to create a soft colour palette and warm atmosphere, contributing to the intimacy of the scene. The contrast of baimiao and gongbi styles adds to the artistic sophistication of Jin’s Guanyin. It showcases the artist’s impressive

Figure 2: Close up of Guanyin’s robes in baimiao style.

Figure 3: Detail of Guanyin’s robes and hair.

technique, innovative aesthetic sensibility, and time intensive practice. Morality and virtuosity can also be read in her brush handling through an examination of the symbolic meaning associated with the style of baimiao. This style of painting is linked to qualities of elegance, reclusion, austerity, and simplicity – all of which might be adopted by gentry women as an eﬀective gender-appropriate artistic expression.³⁴ Here, the use of the baimiao style alludes to Jin’s own moral qualities of chastity, purity, and restraint. Through depicting feminized Guanyin in baimiao style, Jin asserts a projected image of the virtuous self through her impressive skill set and mastery of style. Painting as Devotion As aforementioned, women’s religious practice was conﬁned to the domestic sphere in late imperial China. Jin would have primarily worshipped Guanyin at home by chanting sutras, practicing mediation, observing a vegetarian diet, and by reproducing Guanyin’s image. In this section, I focus on painting as a ritual practice, establishing how Jin Liying invested her material body and labour into this artistic work as a method of religious devotion.³⁵ Ritual may be understood as a physical performance and was intimately connected with religious and spiritual life.³⁶ Bodily control was a necessary part of ritual worship. The body was approached as a measure of value, perfection, order, and ritual. Mastery of the physical body implied control and tranquility of the mind. The

Figure 4: Close up of the facial expression of Guanyin.

Figure 5: Close up of the facial expression of hancai

physical act of painting Guanyin was conceived as a bodily form of worship, whereby the artist invested time and repetitive labour in recreating the bodhisattva’s image. Jin’s delicate and detailed application of ink showcases her dedicated practice and laborious efforts. Her controlled brushstrokes and meticulous lines imply meditative focus and unwavering concentration. The painting can be read as physical evidence of Jin’s devotion to Guanyin: a manifestation of her veneration in a material form and proof of hours of tireless work. Instead of worshipping the deity from afar, Jin and potentially many other gentry women like her developed a new mode of worshipping the deity, by investing bodily labour in recreating Guanyin’s image at home. The finished product is a reflection of Jin’s devotional practice and labour-intensive worship. Drawing Paralles and Forcing Connections: Finally, Jin incorporated personal elements into her painting of Guanyin to forge an intimate connection with the deity in the work. The main visual focus of the painting is an intimate interaction between Guanyin and Shancai. The figures do not acknowledge the viewer but are mutually attentive to each other instead. They share eye contact and are both depicted with smiling facial expressions and open body language. It could be said that the relationship between the deity and the boy appears to be maternal. Guanyin looks down fondly at the boy and her facial expression is kind and compassionate (fig. 4). Her eyebrows are slightly raised, and she ap-

pears to be amused. The edges of her lips are upturned, and she is directing a small smile towards the infant. Her head is tilted downward, emphasising her elevated position in the scene. In turn, the young boy is looking up and reaching out towards the bodhisattva. His knees are braced on the ground and his arms are open and outstretched. His facial expression is delighted, his mouth is curved, and his eyes are crinkled as a result of his smile (fig. 5). While the boy in the painting can easily be identified as Guanyin’s male disciple, Shancai, he also serves as a representation of Jin Liying’s own stepson, also named Shancai.³⁶ With this understanding in mind, the painting is a dual representation of Guanyin and Shancai and Jin Liying and her stepson. Learned women externalized their personal experiences through the medium of art, reflecting their own personal voice and a deeper narrative in their works.³⁸ By depicting an intimate and maternal interaction between Guanyin and Shancai, Jin might have been drawing a parallel between herself and her stepson. In the painting, the woman is smiling down at the boy with warmth and fondness, while the boy looks as though he is about to crawl into the woman’s arms. Thus, Jin might have established a deep connection with Guanyin by drawing significant parallels between the bodhisattva and herself, embedding herself and her stepson in the devotional painting as represented by the maternal interaction between Guanyin and her disciple, Shancai. By drawing comparisons with Guanyin in her own personal life, Jin establishes a personal bond with the deity, and she externalized these similarities in her artwork. Conclusion In conclusion, Jin Liying’s Guanyin (1803) illuminates how painting served as a reflective device by which laywomen expressed their devotion, religiosity, and established a connection with Guanyin. Through art, women developed unique and meaningful ways to connect with and worship the bodhisattva, despite being unable to practice religion in public. Women negotiated their social roles and religious beliefs in their material practices. In Jin’s painting of Guanyin, moral judgement, ritual significance, and personal narratives are embedded within the work of art. Through the choice of baimiao style brushwork, Jin asserts her refined artistic skills and moral austerity. Through the act of painting Guanyin, Jin forged an intimate relationship with the deity by investing hours of time,

eﬀort, and labour into the reproduction of her image. Finally, Jin expressed her closeness with the deity by embedding herself and her stepson into the painting. Overall, painting served as a form of discipline, commemoration, and self-embodiment for the female artist, empowering women to forge an intimate connection with Guanyin through art. Ultimately Jin’s painting showcases how women overcome religious restrictions to cultivate their own meaningful and intimate ritual practices in art.

Endnotes 1.

Yuhang Li, “Gendered Materialization: An Investigation of Women's Artistic and Literary Reproductions of Guanyin in Late Imperial China,” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2013), 1. 2. Yiqun Zhou, “The Hearth and the Temple: Mapping Female Religiosity in Late Imperial China, 15501900,” Late Imperial China 24, no. 2 (2003): 113. 3. Vincent Goossaert, “Irrepressible Female Piety: Late Imperial Bans on Women Visiting Temples,” Nan Nü 10, no. 2 (2008): 215. 4. Yuhang Li, "Introduction," in Becoming Guanyin: Artistic Devotion of Buddhist Women in Late Imperial China. (New York: Columbia University press, 2020), 20. 5. Yuhang Li, "Painting Guanyin with Brush and Ink: Negotiating Confucianism and Buddhism," in Becoming Guanyin: Artistic Devotion of Buddhist Women in Late Imperial China. (New York: Columbia University press, 2020), 62. 6. Li, “Gendered Materialization,” 17. 7. Susan Mann, "Learned Women in the Eighteenth Century," in Engendering China: Women, Culture, and the State, ed. Christina K. Gilmartin (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994), 41. 8. Wilt L. Idema, "Introduction," in Personal Salvation and Filial Piety : Two Precious Scroll Narratives of Guanyin and Her Acolytes (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2008), 5. 9. Idema, "Introduction," 3. 10. Chün-Fang Yü, "Guanyin: The Chinese Transformation of Avalokiteshvara," in Latter Days of the Law : Images of Chinese Buddhism, 850-1850, ed. Patricia Ann

11. 12.

13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

32.

Berger, Marsha Smith Weidner, Helen Foresman Spencer Museum of Art, and Asian Art Museum of San Francisco (KS: Spencer Museum of Art, Unviversity of Kansas, 1994), 152. Idema, “Introduction,”7. Chün-fang Yü, "Indigenous Iconographies and the Domestication of Kuan-yin," in Kuan-yin : The Chinese Transformation of Avalokiteśvara (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 223. Li, "Gendered Materialization," 4. Idema, “Introduction,” 7. Idema, “Introduction,” 6. Idema, “Introduction,” 7. Yü, "Feminine Forms of Kuan-Yin in Late Imperial China," 447. Paul Hedges, “The Identity of Guanyin: Religion, Convention and Subversion,” Culture and Religion 13, no. 1 (2012): 95. Li, “Gendered Materializations,” 4. Hedges, “The Identity of Guanyin,” 98. Yü, "Feminine Forms of Kuan-Yin in Late Imperial China," 414. Hedges, “The Identity of Guanyin,” 100. Goossaert, “Irrepressible Female Piety,” 215. Goossaert, “Irrepressible Female Piety,” 212. Goossaert, "Irrepressible Female Piety,” 215. Zhou, "The Hearth and the Temple," 124. Li, "Gendered Materialization," 26. Li, "Painting Guanyin," 63. Li, "Painting Guanyin," 62. Li, "Painting Guanyin," 64. The bodhisattva vows are a set of moral codes which help Mahayana Buddhist practitioners discipline themselves along their path to becoming a bodhisattva. Yü, "Feminine Forms of Kuan-Yin in Late Imperial China," 447.

33. 34. 35. 36.

Li, "Painting Guanyin," 64. Li, “Painting Guanyin,” 67. Li, “Painting Guanyin,” 62. Mark Edward Lewis, "Introduction," in The Construction of Space in Early China (New York: State University of New York Press, 2006), 30. 37. Li, “Painting Guanyin,” 66. 38. Mann, "Learned Women in the Eighteenth Century," 41.

Is This What You Want to See?: New Visibility Strategies in Post-Soviet Queer Art

Written by Thierry Jasmin Edited by Alena Russell In a 2014 interview, Vladimir Putin announced that Russia must cleanse itself of gay people.¹ Similarly, in the past two years, Poland’s government and religious leaders have qualified numerous municipalities as “LGBT-free” zones, supporting right-wing publishers who distributed stickers with the slogan in 2019.² Since queer people living in these countries have been rendered invisible, visibility is of great importance for them: “unlike the Soviet period, [...] in post-Soviet Russia the problem of homosexuality is one of visibility.”³ Indeed, after the fall of communism, new visibility did not translate into political agency for the gays, who were often associated with foreign influence and spreading their “disease.”⁴ This essay explores how contemporary artists in Russia and Poland are currently trying to reclaim the problem of visibility through subversive strategies. It suggests that post-Soviet queer artists are not only trying to make themselves visible, they are embodying the homophobic rhetoric that made visibility impossible in the first place. Indeed, they embrace their culture and queerness simultaneously, undermining the "Western threat" etiquette that was given to their sexuality. To begin, Russian artist Angel Ulyanov’s Let’s Stir Things Up (2019) (fig. 1) is a bold music video that shines light on the performative na-

ture of masculinity and Russianness. Indeed, the main character is dressed in stereotypical gopnik clothing, typically associated with working-class delinquents, and is accompanied by a group of masculine men. Surprisingly, he confronts a man dressed in bright green and red, but a homophobic attack does not occur. Instead, the protagonist starts voguing, a dance style with roots in the 1960s Harlem ballroom scene, so intensely that he starts bleeding and faints. At the end of the video, he resuscitates covered in glitter as the people around him die. This shift from stereotypically masculine to more feminine and “deadly” movements in the video demonstrates how gay men might pass as straight, highlighting a post-Soviet anxiety about threats to national masculinity. Since the 1990s, LGBTQ+ people have been targeted in Russia as symptoms of a “crisis of masculinity,” because they were seen as embodying the soul of the “opposite sex.”⁵ In many post-Soviet states, being the breadwinner of the family is a primary characteristic of masculinity, a gender norm seen as undermined by the economy of the post-communist era.⁶ After the collapse of the USSR, fertility rates had plummeted. Thereafter, the norm needed to be reinforced, and the lines between the masculine and its enemies were constructed to avoid de-masculinization and assure a rise in fertility rates.⁷ By blurring the lines between masculinity and queerness, the video

Figure 1: Ulyanov, Angel. (Let’s Stir Things Up), 2019, performance video, 2 minutes 53 seconds, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NetBsW8hIok.

successfully makes the contradictions of queer erasure evident. Moreover, the erasure of homosexuality in Russia makes for a performative aspect of Russian identity that rejects Western notions of individuality.⁸ Thus, the video subverts the idea that queer visibility is somehow criminal and not Russian, calling for a political movement that is unique to Russia: as Ulyanov explains, “we didn’t have Stonewall, we have no Pride—but in these circumstances something new, political, and ﬁerce is born.”⁹ Similarly, Victoria Guyvik’s photograph (2020) (ﬁg. 2) illustrates how contemporary post-Soviet artists have not only merged traditional culture and queerness, but have in fact embodied the “Western ideology” label that attaches egotistical, materialistic and vulgar sentiments to their sexual orientation.¹⁰ Capturing an instant of queer love, the two lovers in Guyvik’s photograph do not seem engaged in their surroundings. By positioning two women freely kissing in front of the two towers of Saint Basil’s Cathedral, a quintessential symbol of Russian culture, Guyvik juxtaposes them and subverts the expected invisibility of LGBTQ+ people. Part of a series of works by Russian Queer Revolution, a platform for the promotion of LGBTQ+ art founded by Anastasia Fedorava, the photograph counters Russia’s “gay propaganda law” put in place in 2013.¹¹ Like Ulyanov’s video, it makes the bold claim that queerness can exist in public post-Soviet spaces, making fun of the sexual contract that came with the decriminalization of homosexuality, a law contingent on the fact that homosexuals would remain out of public view.¹² Moreover, both are wearing multicolour balaclavas, highlighting the associations between queer people and criminality. The photoFigure 2. Lipiec, Krystian. Untitled, Between Us Series, 2012, photograph, unknown dimensions.

graph plays with the idea that homosexuals are a hidden threat capable of disguising themselves as straight and committing crimes, a distortion vehiculated through the post-Soviet tabloid press.¹³ It challenges the viewer’s assumptions about queerness by showing that LGBTQ+ people can ironically embody how their country sees them, not really committing crime but merely expressing love for each other. Unrepresented in the West, the photograph shows that queer Russians are not only suffering, but that there is also beauty, joy, pleasure, pride, creativity and talent in being queer in Russia.¹⁴ Links between Western society and post-Soviet queerness can also be seen in the eighth issue of Karol Radziszewski’s DIK Fagazine (2011) (fig. 3). It was once shown alongside Filo magazine (1990) (fig. 4), which was founded by Ryszard Kisiel in reaction to Operation Hyacinth, a secret registration of 11,000 queer people from 1985 to 1987.¹⁵ Filo’s founder, Ryszard Kisiel, was inspired by Western magazines as well as the Stonewall Riots, which “were granted the strongest symbolic power in [...] magazines.”¹⁶ DIK Fagazine, however, takes queer visibility and its link to Western threats to another level with its vulgar title and the graphic

top to bottom Figure 3. Guyvik, Victoria. Untitled, Russian Queer Revolution installation, 2020, photograph, unknown dimensions. Figure 4. Radziszewski, Karol. DIK Fagazine Issue No 8, 2011, magazine, unknown dimensions. Figure 5. Kisiel, Ryszard. Filo zin no. 1. Front Page, 1990, magazine, unknown dimensions.

typography spelling of “AIDS” on its front page. The zine’s queerness, vulgarity, and irony are characteristic of Radziszewski’s style. The magazine was founded by the artist in 2005 and particularly focuses on masculinity. The AIDS cover is a direct reference to the wallpaper by Canadian art collective General Idea, but Radziszewski renders the serious topic ironic by depicting Donald Duck affected by the disease. À la Robert Mapplethorpe, the inside of the magazine features nude men in black and white, criticizing post-Soviet sexual taboos. As shown in the previously mentioned music video, links between queerness and death are emphasized. This is not what the Polish public wants to see, but paradoxically, Radziszewski exclusively depicts and subverts ideas that the state itself has spread about homosexuality. He not only investigates the present condition of queer people in Poland, but also establishes the medium of the magazine as something that has been an important part of queer subcultures throughout history. By founding the Queer Archives Institute in 2015 and including archival material in his zine, the artist is voluntarily rewriting the past: “everything that contemporary queer artists are doing is becoming a queer archive in the same way. [...] The history of queer Central Eastern Europe is so undeveloped, so hidden. You have to introduce it with a lot of context, which is a challenge.”¹⁷ To better understand how Radziszewski’s strategy is new, it is interesting to further compare it to Filo magazine, which remained underground from 1986 to 1990. It was important in queer life, as its content was triggered by Operation Hyacinth: “especially because the operation was illegal, even according to the communist law then in power [...], I realized we [homosexuals] needed more information; not just pornography but information.”¹⁸ Kisiel’s interest in Western culture recalls the influence of voguing in Angel Ulyanov’s Let’s Stir Things Up. The magazine was produced on a typewriter and photocopied by Kisiel at a copy shop, to then be published in Poland and abroad.¹⁹ It was self-financed, but was eventually commercialized in the second half of 1990. During the height of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, it provided regional and international statistics and information on medical developments and safer sex. This content provided Kisiel with a legal protection against possible statist restrictions.²⁰ This copy of Filo is particularly interesting because it is one of the last underground editions of Filo before it was published in colour. Kisiel’s work prefigures what Radziszewski will

do with the DIK Fagazine, but without the irony of the latter’s AIDS wallpaper. The Western influence is present in both magazines, but here it seems the focus is more on trying to make the LGBTQ+ community visible, making it reminiscent of an active gay and lesbian community after the fall of communism in Poland in 1989, a year in which the first Polish LGBTQ+ association was legalized. Radziszewski’s magazine is rather focused on the new contemporary strategy of commenting on the impossibility of this visibility. Lastly, like Guyvik, Polish artist Krystian Lipiec captures a peaceful moment of queer love (fig. 5). Here, the artist elects not to comment on any stereotype or conservative view of what constitutes Polishness. Lipiec instead invites the viewer into a private space, a place where queer people living in the post-Soviet world are expected to stay. However, the intimacy in this photograph is profoundly subversive; it asks the question: why shouldn’t this be public? Naked, the two men are free from any stereotype. They are not associated with disease, communism, masculinity, femininity, or even culture: they simply w. Is this what you want to see? The conservative Polish citizen will answer “no,” but this photograph is neither “too visible” nor “invisible.” It is only once artists like those previously mentioned reclaim queer stereotypes and desensitize the viewer that this picture will appear as nothing more than love to the post-Soviet eye. Ultimately, as the artist puts it, “being young, Polish, and queer doesn’t mean much…”²¹ In sum, this essay prompts important questions in the context of queer activism. By showing that post-Soviet culture and queerness are not mutually exclusive, and by playing with the idea of a queer Western ideology, artists have exposed the contradictions surrounding the invisibility-visibility dichotomy imposed by the state. Krystian Lipiec’s tender photograph, freed from stereotypes, culture, and ideology altogether, reminds the viewer to let go of their heteronormative gaze and accept to see queerness as unthreatening, loving, and free.

Endnotes 1.

4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

12.

13. 14. 15.

Richard C.M. Mole, “Constructing Soviet and post-Soviet sexualities,” in Soviet and Post-Soviet Sexualities, ed. Richard C.M. Mole (London, Routledge, 2019), 10. Elzbieta Korolczuk, “The fight against ‘gender’ and ‘LGBT ideology’: new developments in Poland,” European Journal of Politics and Gender 3, no. 1 (2020), https://doi.org/10.1332/25151081 9X15744244471843. Brian James Baer, “Now You See It: Gay (In)Visibility and the Performance of Post-Soviet Identity,” in Queer Visibility in Post-Socialist Cultures, ed. Nárcisz Fejes and Andrea P. Balogh (Bristol, Intellect Books Ltd, 2013), 39. Baer, “Now You See It,” 38. Baer, 40. Mole, “Constructing Soviet and post-Soviet sexualities,” 10. Mole, 7. Baer, “Now You See it,” 50. Baer, 41. Baer, 41. Lukasz Szulc, Transnational homosexuals in Poland: Cross-Border Flows in Gay and Lesbian Magazines (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 190, Springer Complete eBooks. “In the face of official censure, Russia’s LGBTQ artists prove that their country has always been queer,” The Calvert Journal, Anastasiia Fedorava, 2 June 2019, https://www.calvertjournal.com/ features/show/11300/in-the-faceof- official-censure-russias-lgbtqartists-prove-that-their-countryhas-always-been-queer. Mole, “Constructing Soviet and post-Soviet sexualities,” 5. Szulc, Transnational homosexuals in Poland, 144. “This installation celebrates the faces of the Russian queer underground,” Dazed, Emi-

16. 17.

18. 19. 20.

ly Dinsdale, 31 August 2020, https://www.dazeddigital.com/ art-photography/article/50240/1/ russian-queer-revolution-celebrates-lgbtq- underground-installation-vfd-gallery. “This installation celebrates the faces of the Russian queer underground,” Dazed. “Queer zines: making art from eastern Europe’s secret LGBTQ archives,” The Calvert Journal, Hannah Zaﬁropoulos, 24 January 2018, https://www.calvertjournal.com/features/show/9560/ being-lgbtq-queer-archives- institute-karol-radziszewski. Lukasz Szulc, Transnational homosexuals in Poland, 144. Szulc, 146. Szulc, 146.

21. “Candid photos that celebrate what it means to be young, polish, and queer,” i-D, Ryan White, 22 May 2018, https://i- d.vice.com/ en_us/article/xwmdmz/photosthat-celebrate-what-it-means-tobe-polish-and-queer.