PIPE: UFV's Visual Arts Journal | Volume 1 |

PIPE: UFV’s Visual Arts Journal 2014 – 2015 Volume 1

4 PIPE: UFV’s Visual Arts Journal

PIPE: UFV’s Visual Arts Journal 2014 – 2015 Volume 1 University of the Fraser Valley Editor-in-Chief, Co-Founder David Seymour Managing Editor, Co-Founder Terrill Smith Marketing & Design Director, Visual Arts Editor, Co-Founder Julie Epp Layout Editor Diana Hiebert Faculty Advisors Dr. Geoffrey Carr Jill Bain Vicki Bolan PIPE: UFV’s Visual Arts Journal accepts art historical essays, representations of visual artwork (painting, photography, sculpture, installation, etc.) and artists statements predominantly from current students and alumni from the University of the Fraser Valley. For submission guidelines, refer to www.pipejournalufv. wordpress.com/submissions/. All submissions are subject to a blind reading from a vetting panel, except the work of featured guests. PIPE does not return manuscripts. For more information, contact us at pipe@ufv.ca.

Copyright remains with the writer or artists who grants PIPE permission to publish his or her work. No part of this journal may be reproduced except without the explicit consent of the editors and writer(s) or artist(s).

Any opinions expressed in PIPE are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or the views of the University of the Fraser Valley, the editors or the vetting panel.

Cover work and layout designs by Julie A. Epp and Diana Hiebert.

All rights reserved 2015.

Introduction 5

Letter from the Editor “Art evokes the mystery without which the world would not exist.”

—René Magritte

T

his is not an academic journal—or at least, any ordinary one. When I first wanted to produce a peer-edited, academic student journal at UFV, I wanted something that was accessible, yet academic; informative, yet inclusive. In many respects, PIPE is different. It is meant to be fresh and vibrant. Included within these pages are not only words, but also pictures.

PIPE is, after all, a visual arts journal. It is the lovechild of two academic disciplines: art history and visual arts.

Duchamp and Pablo Picasso. For instance, in English, when we read ‘pipe’ we pronounce it as “pahyp”. In Magritte’s painting, the French pronunciation of ‘pipe’ sounds more like peep to us. Yet with regards to the journal, this is no coincidence. We want our reader to revel in and peep at the artwork inside.

If you have a foundation in art history, perhaps you are aware of Belgian surrealist René Magritte’s La trahison des images (‘The Treachery of Images’) from 1928-29.

Though Magritte’s painting has undeniable panache and visual appeal, it is also a sardonic critique on the production of image-making itself. Indeed, our journal endeavors to produce the same effect: not only to be a visually delectable publication, but also one which is intellectually stimulating and engaging.

I would like to extend a tremendous gesture of gratitude to every single individual (students and professors alike) who contributed in helping PIPE come to fruition. This could never have been realised without your persistent support and cooperation.

Lastly, as clichéd as it may seem, the visual image of a pipe is strongly associated with pensive, scholarly pursuits. Would Sherlock Holmes be himself without his The first half of the journal is dedicated to essays trademark deerstalker and pipe? This journal seeks to pertaining to various subjects in art history. The second embody the pipe’s legacy as an established symbol for half of the journal is reserved for visual arts students, intellectualism and enlightenment. working in a variety of mediums, and their artwork. By creating a journal which coalesces the written word with Though it took a year of unremitting dedication and visual accompaniment, we hope that our publication collaboration on the part of many people, we have inspires, intrigues and educates. successfully managed to piece together our final, polished product. From us to you, I hope you derive as Upon first glance, you may ask, “Why is it called PIPE?” much enjoyment and satisfaction from PIPE as we did in Let me elucidate. creating it.

PIPE is layered with meaning. When naming the journal, I was inspired by the art historical tradition of doubleentendre, running along the same vein as Marchel

Now by all means, have a peep inside.

David Seymour, Editor-in-Chief PIPE, Volume 1

6 PIPE: UFV’s Visual Arts Journal

TABLE OF CONTENTS ART HISTORY

10 Debating Ornament’s Value in

Architectural Modernity

Sean Ball 16 Jenny Saville, Obscenity and Western

Notions of Beauty

Alisha Deddens

54 Fauna Crowned IX

Lorena Krause 56 Scopophilia

Shuang Liu & Maria VanEwyk

22 Behind the Borders: Picasso’s Studio and

the Parameters of Colonialism

Rishma Johal

28 The “Black” Dandy Was Here: Yinka

Shonibare’s Re-Imagined History of British Art in the Diary of a Victorian Dandy Candice Okada

36 blood, body, ritual, memory Joy Xiang

VISUAL ARTS

44 Human Landscape

Mallory Donen

46 Curvaceous Radiance Dream

48 Accent

Janelle Fitz

50 Would go well on a coffee table Dan Hurst

52 Reflections Rishma Johal

58 Summer Girl Maurice Motut 60 Adopt Jessica Niven

62 Water: Volume I

Candace Okada

64 Roadside Constellations Shannon Pahladsingh

66 Alcohol: the good, the bad, and the ugly Stewart Seymour

68 Rising Ocean tides coming to a city near you!

Stewart Seymour

70 Buy This.

Kendra Schellenberg 72 Mother

Laura Vis CREDITS

75 Editorial Staff

77 Thanks

8 PIPE: UFV’s Visual Arts Journal

JENNY SAVILLE, Branded, detail, 1992. © Jenny Saville.

Art History 9

ART HISTORY Sean Ball Alisha Deddens Rishma Johal Candice Okada Joy Xiang

Art History 11 > 1 Champs-Élysées, Paris.

Debating Ornament’s Value in Architectural Modernity Shaun Ball

W

hen looking to the origins of modern architecture, it can be seen that the struggle to define and create the ideal structure is directly related to building materials. I argue that it is ornament which obscures this struggle through clouding both the form and function of buildings. While it is unnecessary to completely remove ornament to expose this struggle, it is important to recognize philosophical approaches and practical advancements made

by Modernist architects in their attempt to reinterpret the role ornament plays in architecture. However, before exploring the debates surrounding ornament, its origins must first be acknowledged.

Ornament branched outward from ancient societies, evolving in both meaning and complexity with each culture that it encountered. Born as decoration using simple building materials by the societies of Ancient Egypt and Assyria, ornament has been employed a means of decorating buildings through manipulating materials to render an image or pattern, typically evoking a symmetrical or naturalistic theme. What this decoration acts upon is the desire to obscure and disguise the materials used for buildings from their natural properties, instead causing them the materials to represent some other representational function of society often relating to history, genealogy or class. This is what ornament encompassed up to the latter half of the 19th century, when architects began reacting against the effects of the Industrial Revolution, during which highly skilled workmen were replaced with machines across Europe from around 1760 to 1830. These workmen had been responsible for decorating buildings, and the shift to ornament being made through machine processes and mass production caused modern architects to begin reinterpreting many fundamental aspects of ornament.

It was during the latter half of the 19th century that the controversy surrounding the interpretation of ornament reached its height. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, ornamental patterns had been traditionally connected to the upper, ruling classes. However, as the downfall of many autocratic societies began to occur through events associated with the Industrial

Revolution, the rise of new egalitarian philosophies pertaining to class began to emerge with increasing regularity. With ornament having been conventionally understood as an extension of the aristocratic reach, it understandably faced harsh criticism, such as from the British architect Matthew Digby Wyatt. Upon viewing the faux-wood and faux-bronze ornament on many of the buildings on the ornate ChampsÉlysées (fig. 1) in Paris in 1849, he exclaimed: Both internally and externally there is a good deal of tasteless and unprofitable ornament... If each simple material had been allowed to tell its own tale, and the lines of the construction so arranged as to conduce to a sentiment of grandeur, the qualities of “power” and “truth,” which its enormous extent must have necessarily ensured, could have scarcely fail to excite admiration, and that at a very considerable saving of expense.1 Wyatt’s sentiments may be understood as echoing ideas previously stated by German architect Gottfried Semper, who in 1834 championed for building materials to be presented in accordance with their own natural properties.

In doing so, Semper called for wood to appear as wood and brick as brick. He believed each material needed to be transcribed in architecture in accordance with its own ‘statical law.’ In other words, the material should speak for itself, stepping forth undisguised.2 This idea from Semper, with help from Austrian architect Adolf Loos, would eventually evolve into the concept of ‘concrete materiality.’ Loos took Wyatt’s distaste for “unprofitable ornament” and Semper’s ‘statical law’ and advanced them toward a “penchant for the surface of the material,” something that would become central to the tenets of Modernist architecture in the 20th century.

Through demonstrating a mastery of utilizing natural stone as a design element, Loos was able to most effectively convey his concept of the paramount important of “the surface of the

12 PIPE: UFV’s Visual Arts Journal material.” Specific to the utilization of natural stone was Loos’ understanding of this element as containing both an inner and outer ‘concreteness,’ with this understanding being derived from Semper’s belief in an ‘accurate material representation.’3 From this concept emerged the Modernist idea of the ornament of a building residing within the materials chosen for its construction. Loos unpacked his sentiments regarding ornament and materials when he wrote in 1898: The artist, the architect, first senses the effect that he intends to realize and sees the rooms he wants to create in his mind’s eye.

He senses the effect that he wishes to exert upon the spectator: fear and horror if it’s a dungeon, reverence if a church, respect for the power of the state if a government palace, piety if a tomb, homeyness if a residence, gayety if a tavern. These effects are produced by both the material and the form of the space.4

trickery.

The concepts Loos brought forth regarding ornament and its usefulness would have direct implications on the sense of decorum in the urban space, specifically within the dislocations brought on by industrialization. The Looshaus (fig. 2), constructed in Vienna in 1910, was an architectural attack on the bourgeois apartment blocks that lined Vienna’s Ringstrasse, or Ring Road, which used false façades designed to look like the palazzis built by wealthy families of the

Loos is explaining his belief that every material possesses its own individual language that allows it to interact with the volume of space it plays a role in creating. The architect is he or she who is able to recognize this language and consequently use it to convey the intended message to the inhabitants of a particular space. In adhering to this belief, no longer are the didactic or narrative traits of ornament necessary in conveying these messages to the observer, because the message is contained in the materials of the building and the volumes they create. Through this, ornament in architecture becomes devalued.

Rather than relegating ornament to its traditional appearance of symmetrical or naturalistic patterns, shapes, and figures, Loos looked to utilize ornament so that it still existed purposefully in the architecture of modernity. This utilization became what he would refer to as ‘cladding,’ directly connected to his concept of the inner and outer concreteness of a material. The cladding was thought to be the aesthetic associated with a material’s outer concreteness, but it must only be used in what Loos believed was a truthful manner to the material itself. The designs of such popular art movements as Art Nouveau, which Loos viewed as overtly superficial in their representation of ornament,5 failed to adhere to this truth of the material that Loos had developed from Semper’s original concepts. Loos believed that a law regarding cladding was needed at this time to minimize confusion surrounding its purpose: The law goes like this: we must work in such a way that a confusion of the material clad with its cladding is impossible. That means, for example, that wood may be painted any colour except one – the colour of wood.6 By cladding a building material in an aesthetic that appeared similar to the building material itself, Loos charged the builders with creating a counterfeit and causing the ornateness of the material to be lost in common visual

2 ADOLF LOOS, The Looshaus, Vienna, 1910.

3 LE CORBUSIER, Pavilion de L’Espirit Nouveau, Paris, 1925. © Fondation Le Corbusier.

Italian Renaissance.7 The street level floors of the Looshaus contained a high-end gentlemen’s outfitter, Goldman & Salatsch, while the upper floors contained apartments. In his design, Loos utilized the Italian inspiration of a Tuscan order faced in marble for the public street level floors, all the while stripping the private upper level floors of all ornamentation.

In doing so, Loos treated each part of the building in an independent manner from the other part in direct response to its function.8 In the creation of the disjunctive forms of the building, Loos was commenting on the disjunctive nature of modern capitalism, expedited by mass industrialization. This would not be the last time architectural modernity would be political in nature, as French architect Le Corbusier was about to push the concept of ornament in to an entirely new, sparse realm of modernity.

Art History 13 Le Corbusier’s origins in Cubism provided the foundation for his later architectural work, as well as his sentiments on ornament. By the 1920s, Le Corbusier had written several articles applauding the Cubist dissolution of the narrative and their selection of certain objects, or ‘objet-type,’ as emblems of modern life.9 These objet-types would become the stuff of everyday living such as chairs, replicable in their ultimate banality. To create on object that possesses such banality, it must be completely stripped of all ornamentation. Le Corbusier believed that because of the shift in the production

collection of objects, seemingly unrelated to one another, except for their origins in industrial mass production. In explaining his choices, Le Corbusier wrote: [The objects] were instantaneously readable, recognizable, avoiding the dispersal of attention brought about by particular things not well understood.10 Le Corbusier had been strongly influenced by the work of Loos, which showed in the pavilion’s representation of interior furniture that existed as both fixed and mobile. However, it was Le Corbusier who proceeded to merge this concept in to a new form representing the aesthetically unified expression of the industrial age, as opposed to Loos, who viewed creative expression as a series of dichotomies.

Le Corbusier’s first major foray in to architecture and interior design at the Pavilion de L’Espirit Nouveau allowed him to develop his ideas surrounding ornament’s relation to city design and planning. In his works relating to the city, Le Corbusier argued for a return to rationality, with the geometrical righteousness of the right angle serving to provide a means of employing rationality on to the irrational urban design which would later draw his ire.11 This quest for rational urban design had roots in the writings of Loos, who provided an apology for that which was banal, indifferent, and devoid of artistic intentions, in the hopes of bringing about the beginnings of a new architectural idiom.12 For Le Corbusier, the banal, industrially produced object usurps the artistic, skillfully crafted one, and rational scientific design overpowers any sort of historically relevant precedent in urban design and ornament. With this belief, the ornament in its traditional sense is anachronistic and ultimately replaced by a rational geometry which Le Corbusier believed to be almost entirely ahistorical. Politically, Le Corbusier possessed radically socialist ideals in regards to his urban design philosophy. His beliefs that his urban planning would result in the reformation of governments in to a socialist utopia was a driving force behind his design of Ville Radieuse (fig. 4), or Radiant City, of 1924. With this design, Le Corbusier attempted to remove the social structures of a capitalist society with a design hierarchy placing geometry as paramount. Geometry itself would prove to be the peak of Le Corbusier’s epistemological hierarchy, in spite of his attempts at the removal of all hierarchical structures, keeping in line with his views on socialist egalitarianism.13 It is this sort of view that runs throughout the course of Le Corbusier’s career and, as some may argue, actually exists at its core.

4 LE CORBUSIER, Ville Radieuse, 1924. © Fondation Le Corbusier.

5 LOUIS SULLIVAN, Schlesinger & Meyer Store, Chicago, 1898.

of household items from the hands of skilled craftsmen to the industrial realm of cheap manufactured goods, any artistic development of everyday objects had become anachronistic.

The strongest early example of this belief was found in Le Corbusier’s 1925 exhibit of the Pavilion de L’Espirit Nouveau (fig. 3) in Paris. Inside of Le Corbusier’s pavilion was a

Examining the work of American architect Louis Sullivan, who has been credited with creating the modern skyscraper, ultimately exposes the troubling relationship between ornament’s value and architectural modernity. Looking to the façade of the former Schlesinger & Mayer Store (fig. 5) in Chicago, designed by Sullivan and built in 1898, it would appear to fit the mold of the classic Modernist building of the 1930s. Yet, upon further examination, ornament heavily adorns the first two stories, claiming every square inch which is not glass. It is a complex, dynamic, and original ornamental

14 PIPE: UFV’s Visual Arts Journal ensemble, yet it contradicts Sullivan’s own principles for the relationship between structure and ornament.14 In his own words, a structure such as the Schlesinger & Meyer Store still only exacerbates further analysis, with Sullivan writing: It must be manifest that an ornamental design will be more beautiful if it seems a part of the surface or substance that receives it than if it looks “stuck on.”15 In reading Sullivan’s words, a strangely symbiotic relationship must exist between structure and ornament on the grounds of a purely aesthetically pleasing basis. For Sullivan’s thinking, each enhances the other, and this must serve as the basis for his ‘organic’ ornament. The ornament, as a matter of fact, is applied in the sense of it being cut in or cut on. Yet it should appear, when completed, as if it had come forth from the very substance of the material and was there by the same right that a flower appears amid the leaves of its parent plant.16 Although separate from the concepts of ornament from Semper and Loos, Sullivan still retains components of their beliefs in that material should take precedent over ornament, whose only function is to heighten the aesthetics of the material without overtly violating Semper’s view on concrete materiality. However, upon comparing the Schlesinger & Mayer Store building to the Looshaus, one can see that Sullivan and Loos perhaps fell victim to the pressures of the urban environment when coupled with the disjunctive nature of modern capitalism.

Architectural modernity placed its own austere palette in high regard. The philosophical ideas of Semper acted as the basis for the Modernist rejection of historical ornament. Loos and Le Corbusier carried Semper’s beliefs and the torch of architectural modernity through industrial mass production, while shifting the emphasis of ornament being made by skilled builders toward its residence within the very building materials themselves. As architectural modernity reached America, it took on new aesthetic principles that although may have differed from the original austere vision of the European Modernists, nevertheless managed to continue the troubled tradition of pairing ornament with organic principles.

1 Nikolaus Pevsner. Matthew Digby Wyatt: The First Cambridge Slade Professor of Fine Arts (Cambridge, UK: n.p., 1950), 95.

2 Ute Poerschke. “On Concrete Materiality in Architecture.”

Architectural Research Quarterly 17.02 (2013), 153.

3 Gottfried Semper. “Preliminary Remarks on Polychrome Architecture and Sculpture in Antiquity (1834)”, in The Four Elements of Architecture and Other Writings, trans. by Harry Francis Mallgrave and Wolfgang Herrmann (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 48.

4 Adolf Loos. Spoken into the Void: Collected Essays, 1897-1900 (Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1982), 67.

5 Ibid, 68.

6 Ibid, 67.

7 Alan Colquhoun. Modern Architecture (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002), 76.

8 Ibid, 78.

9 Ibid, 79.

10 Ozenfant and Jeanneret, ‘Purisme’, L’Espirit Nouveau, no. 4, October 1920, 369.

11 Catharine Ingraham. “The Burdens of Linearity: Donkey Urbanism.” Strategies in Architectural Thinking (1988), 30.

12 Henrik Reeh. Ornaments of the Metropolis: Siegfried Kracauer and Modern Urban Culture (Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2004), 68.

13 D. Crow. “Le Corbusier’s Postmodern Plan.” Theory, Culture & Society 6.2 (1989), 251.

14 James Trilling. “Reversal of Fortune: Sorting out Contradictions in the Work of Louis Sullivan, Father of the Skyscraper and Innovator of Beautiful Ornament.” American Scholar 81.1 (2012), 103.

15 Ibid, 105.

16 Ibid, 104.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Colquhoun, Alan. Modern Architecture. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002.

Crow, D. “Le Corbusier’s Postmodern Plan.” Theory, Culture & Society 6.2 (1989): 241-261.

Ingraham, Catharine. “The Burdens of Linearity: Donkey Urbanism.”

Strategies in Architectural Thinking (1988): 24-37.

Loos, Adolf. Spoken into the Void: Collected Essays, 1897-1900.

Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1982. 66-69.

Ozenfant and Jeanneret, ‘Purisme’, L’Espirit Nouveau, no. 4, October 1920, 369.

Pevsner, Nikolaus. Matthew Digby Wyatt: The First Cambridge Slade Professor of Fine Arts. Cambridge, UK: n.p., 1950.

Poerschke, Ute. “On Concrete Materiality in Architecture.” Architectural Research Quarterly 17.02 (2013): 149-156.

Reeh, Henrik. Ornaments of the Metropolis: Siegfried Kracauer and Modern Urban Culture. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2004.

Semper, Gottfried. “Preliminary Remarks on Polychrome Architecture and Sculpture in Antiquity (1834)”, in The Four Elements of Architecture and Other Writings, trans. by Harry Francis Mallgrave and Wolfgang Herrmann (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989): 48.

Trilling, James. “Reversal of Fortune: Sorting out Contradictions in the Work of Louis Sullivan, Father of the Skyscraper and Innovator of Beautiful Ornament.” American Scholar 81.1 (2012): 103-107.

Art History 15

Art History 17 > 2 JENNY SAVILLE, Branded, 1992. © Jenny Saville.

Jenny Saville, Obscenity, and Western Notions of Beauty Alisha Deddens

A

s visual imagery becomes increasingly pervasive via the Internet and social media, the act of censorship likewise increases, falling in to the hands of those in charge of relevant websites. Renowned art institutions such as the Pompidou Center and Saatchi Gallery have had photographs of artworks containing nudity removed from their Facebook pages by administrators, and have been threatened with having their accounts disabled if they continue posting “offensive” imagery. Why would social media sites censor art and what might be their reasoning? In many instances, censorship is deemed necessary to combat the vulgarity, or perceived vulgarity, that could be present in particular artworks. Unfortunately, this premise for censorship has resulted in the censoring of artworks that contain not only nudity, but also scenes of abjection and the obscene, despite their potential importance to art history. I argue that abject and obscene art has been regarded as vulgar and viewed with disgust because of the way in which Western society has been trained to look at beauty. In particular, I will show how

1 JENNY SAVILLE, Propped, 1992. © Jenny Saville.

3 PRAXITELES, Aphrodite of Knidos, Roman marble copy, ca. 350-340 BCE.

contemporary British artist Jenny Saville’s paintings Propped (fig. 1) and Branded (fig. 2) challenge this aesthetic norm which continues to dominate Western society today.

The discourse surrounding aesthetics and beauty can be dated back to the Greco-Roman world, demonstrating its deep-seated roots in Western society. Kenneth Clark, a British art historian and aesthetician of the 20th century, wrote on the discourse surrounding the idealized nudes of ancient Greek and Roman sculptors. In his book The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form, Clark highlighted how these ideal figures were based on a combination of mathematics, proportion and harmony. This is evident in sculptures such as Praxiteles’ Aphrodite of Knidos (fig. 3) and Polykleitos’ Doryphoros, both exemplifications of the perfect nude figure.1 Clark’s dialogue on aesthetics ultimately helped to further the discourse surrounding the nude female body and its representation throughout history. Moreover, art historian Lynda Nead addresses obscenity and Western notions of beauty by stating that “Art is being defined in terms of the containing of form within limits; obscenity on the other hand, is defined in terms of excess, as form beyond limit, beyond the frame and representation.”2 In other words, the female body is separated in to two distinct entities: the interior and the exterior. The interior represents the sexual power and potential obscenity of a woman, while the exterior represents her cleanliness and purity. Therefore, this clean and pure exterior was the only aspect of the female body which was represented in art. Artists who depicted the interior were considered to be representing the obscene, which is defined as something that offends or outrages because it defies the accepted standards of decency or modesty. Obscenity is often connected to feelings of disgust and repulsion, and while the term can actually be used in a broader sense to define unacceptable horrors of everyday life,3 I will be utilizing the first definition and how it specifically relates to the representation of the female nude.

18 PIPE: UFV’s Visual Arts Journal Norms of aesthetics and beauty began to be challenged by modern artists during the 19th century. One of the most striking examples of this challenge is Édouard Manet’s 1863 painting Olympia (fig. 4). Like many reactions to Saville’s work, Manet’s work was regarded as repulsive and shocking, which was because of the nude woman’s confrontational gaze

4 ÉDOUARD MANET, Olympia, 1863.

and her identification as a prostitute. Olympia was ultimately a subversive take on the historical female nude – exemplified by the coy goddess in Praxiteles’ Aphrodite of Knidos – thus beginning the questioning of cultural notions of beauty. This questioning shifted with postmodern art during the 1980s, when artists and art historians began challenging modern traditions and trends. Postmodern artists began focusing even more on questioning the idealized nude body, and how it had been defined in connection with the patriarchal society in which it originated. At the same time, a ‘culture war’ was occurring in the United States, referring to the conflict between conservative and liberal values during the 1980s, eventually leading to the censoring of art. As art historian Jonathan D. Katz states: The culture wars has become a shorthand for describing that particular constellation of forces introduced: the Christian right political agenda, more moderate Republican appeasement, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the cultural avant-garde, the gay and lesbian rights movement and AIDS activism – which resulted in a policing of the visual arts not dissimilar from the policing of the popular arts under McCarthyism.4 Much of this policing was done against ‘Abject art,’ with art historian Kerstin Mey writing that “The term ‘Abject art’ came to signify a specific area of body art and identity art.”5 Specifically, Abject art is used to describe artworks that transgress and threaten our sense of cleanliness and propriety, particularly referencing the female body and bodily functions. It is within this context of the culture wars and its policing of Abject art that Jenny Saville’s work should be viewed.

Jenny Saville’s work challenges social norms of aesthetics and beauty by depicting nude female bodies that are not beautiful

in any traditional sense of the word.6 Saville consistently paints women’s bodies on larger-than-life-size canvases to emphasize the full female figure in comparison to the viewer.

Exemplifying this are her 1992 paintings Propped and Branded, with these works further embodying the definition of the obscene as excess and beyond the frame. Propped depicts a nude woman who is much larger than the unstable stool beneath her and who is literally ‘propped’ up by it, while still being able to maintain her balance. What makes this painting particularly disconcerting is the irregular proportions of the woman’s figure, with Maria Castaneda writing that the figure “grabs at her flesh, crossing her legs while wearing nothing but white pointed shoes.”7 The woman’s knees and thighs dominate the image, as they are comparatively her largest body parts. This irregular perspective of the female nude pushes Propped far beyond the thinner bodies and more idealized proportions of the female figure that Western artists like Praxiteles had depicted throughout history.

One of the most significant aspects of Propped is the mirrored text inscribed across the painting. The text reads as follows: “If we continue to speak in this sameness – speak as men have spoken for centuries – we will fail each other again.” This text is a translation of a passage in the feminist philosopher Luce Irigaray’s book This Sex Which is Not One, and serves as a warning and challenge to regard the female nude in a sense other than what has been traditionally perceived as beautiful. As Casteneda notes regarding females being viewed as beautiful objects through history: “Both figure and text blend together forming one portrait of the female depicted in a visual body language conjoined with a written language.”8 Moreover, art critic Catherine Milner writes that Propped “conjures up every woman’s worst nightmare of how she might look with no clothes on: huge expanses of quivering milky blubber filled with water blue veins and scored by stretch-marks bore down on spectators like some life sucking blancmange.”9 Here, Saville’s female figure is being compared to the extraterrestrial being in the Monty Python sketch “Science Fiction,” in which a large white blubbering blancmange walks around consuming the human population.

Like Saville’s nudes, this particular extraterrestrial being is meaty and voluminous. What becomes apparent through Milner’s critique is that Saville is disrupting the traditionally beautiful female nude, such as the Aphrodite of Knidos, by depicting ‘obscene’ figures that embody disgust.

Saville challenges the way in which Western audiences have been trained to look at the female nude. In her article “The Looking Glass from the Other Side,” author and art historian Isabelle Wallace explores how Saville makes the viewer play a role in Propped, arguing that within the painting there are three “personae” present: the artist (characterized by Saville), the philosopher (represented by Irigaray) and the spectator (you and I).10 By placing the viewer in the perspective of the voyeur, Saville’s questioning of the traditional male gaze becomes solidified. Wallace further explores the experience of viewing Propped in the way it was first displayed, across from a full-length mirror the same size as the painting.

When viewing the painting in the mirror, the event becomes theatrical because the viewer has been confronted with a

Art History 19 “trisected experience.” Wallace writes: 11

Imagine yourself standing between the two versions of Saville’s painting. The image in front of you is Saville’s painting in the flesh.

The image behind you, directly across from Saville’s painting, is Saville’s painting as reflected in the surface of a mirror. To look at the work’s reflection is to turn your back on the painting and the woman with who it is conflated, but it is also to be read, as loosely paraphrased and faintly inscribed

by Saville, the words of Luce Irigaray 12 Not only does the viewer see the reflection of the painting in the mirror, the viewer sees oneself reflected in the mirror (fig.

5), with Wallace pointing out that when we look at ourselves in the mirror, we ultimately discover an “Other” reflected

5 JENNY SAVILLE, Propped, reflection in mirror, 1992. © Jenny Saville.

back at us. What we find in the mirror is not the truth of sexual difference, but its avid disavowal. We see that our body takes the place of the phallus, which then becomes the rejection of the nude’s sex and a potential rejection of our own sex because “we are all male in the mirror.”13 By portraying the female nude as fleshy and voluminous, Saville’s figures both serve as a metaphor for excess and help to upset the gaze established by the phallocentric system that has been present in art throughout history.14 Saville’s paintings work against traditional conventions of beauty by embracing their own excesses. Stepping away from the ‘body-bashing’ of other critics, Wallace makes the

6 JENNY SAVILLE, Branded, detail, 1992. © Jenny Saville.

compelling statement, “… for however much we want to say that Saville’s paintings laugh… they can under duress be subjected to the very logic they seem to disrupt.”15 In the use of the word ‘disrupt,’ Wallace states that not only do Saville’s works confront conventional concepts of beauty, but they also push beyond the frame, resisting the traditional size of human form.16 Therefore, our previous definition of the obscene as excess and pushing beyond the frame is integrated in to the work along with the confrontation of ‘beauty.’ Saville’s Branded likewise challenges traditional notions of beauty. In this painting, Saville depicts a heavyset woman similar to the one portrayed in Propped, and “Once again, the figure seems distorted; her body appears to progressively increase in size as it moves southward away from the small head, projecting awkwardly beyond her neck.”17 In other words, once again, Saville paints an alternative perspective of the female nude– one that questions traditional, Western notions of beauty.

Branded questions notions of beauty through the utilization of contradictory text. Unlike in Propped, the text in Branded is not written in mirrored writing across the canvas, but rather scratched or carved directly in to the body of the figure.18 Here, the woman’s body is literally ‘branded’ with words that seem contradictory to her voluminous body shape. The word ‘delicate’ is scratched across the large stomach and above the word ‘petite,’ the word ‘decorative’ is inscribed just below the neck, and carved along the breasts read the words ‘support’ and ‘irrational’ (fig. 6). Regarding these words, art historian Michelle Meagher writes that “These are all words that arouse ideals of femininity with which the body fails, or perhaps refuses to comply.”19 Along with being “ideals of femininity,” these words also represent the labels that Western diet culture holds up as standards of beauty.20 Interestingly, Saville states that her work “was never about empowering fat women, it was never that simplistic.”21 This is something that Nead clarifies, stating: [Saville’s work] expresses a deep ambivalence towards the body which is both fascination and disturbing. On the one hand, there is the undeniable physical presence and power of these bodies; but on the other hand, this flesh, with its passages of green

20 PIPE: UFV’s Visual Arts Journal purple and yellow pigment, often seem to be putrefying, rotting – a process which invites admiration and disgust.22 Therefore, Branded becomes a work that is full of ambivalence and contradictions. This is something that Saville wants, so that the viewer will be able to challenge their own perceptions of what is ‘beautiful.’

Saville’s painted figures are comparable to the Venus of Willendorf. The Venus of Willendorf, or Women of Willendorf, is a small statuette of a female figure from between about 28,000 to 25,000 BCE. It is believed to be the first representation of a woman in the history of art, with it frequently being interpreted as a ‘fertility goddess’ or an example of a desirable woman during prehistoric times. The latter interpretation explains that more buxom, voluminous women were desirable because of their greater likelihood of surviving childbirth and being able to care for their young.

As Castaneda points out, “Living in a harsh environment, the ability of prehistoric people to survive was measured by the ability to store fat.”23 The largeness of Saville’s figures are considered to follow the buxom representation of the Venus. This contrasts to our contemporary Western society, which views large bodies as examples of obesity and the least likely to survive, as obesity is linked to heart disease, diabetes and other ailments.24 When first discovered, the Venus of Willendorf was named “Venus” not because she was beautiful like the ancient Roman goddess, but because of her pronounced pubic area, labia and breasts. This demonstrates that throughout history, more emphasis has been placed upon the physical, childbearing qualities of a woman rather than her personality and emotional characteristics.25 Castaneda further expounds that “Such an observation carries forward in the reviews of Saville’s work exemplifying that our current society still remains body obsessed – whether fat or thin.”26 Our society has ultimately continued to judge women according to their physical features.

The shock and disgust in which the critics and public regard Saville’s work confirms this notion of body obsession. By blowing up her figures to large-than-life-size, Saville brings attention to the type of obese women our current society refuses to acknowledge. New York magazine writer Mark Stevens summarizes how Saville’s work not only overturns, but also corresponds with the way in which the female body is depicted in our visual culture: Saville’s art is the dark reflection of contemporary fashion. In the mind of many people, the power of the mass media creates a lying tyranny of perfected form.

What is left for art, then, but to disturb the shiny abstractions of advertising with a gutty touch? To remember that not all bodies are beautiful and to declare, rudely, that in our culture the body is treated as meat? … These are not just bodies – they are our body politic.

As Stevens notes, Saville challenges the tradition of our culture looking at the female body as a piece of “meat,” while stressing that Saville paints not only body, but “body politic.”

This means that Saville paints women as a collective unit, the political whole, framed within our culture. Saville questions social norms of viewing the female body through highlighting the hypocrisy in our body politic. On the one hand, our society can disseminate soft pornography and airbrushed halfnaked women in mass media and regard it as normal, but on the other hand, as soon as an artist represents the female body from a different perspective, it is regarded as vulgar and obscene.

Therefore, Saville’s work needs to be regarded as not only a continuation of the figurative tradition in art history, but also a turning away from that tradition in the way she represents the nude female body.27 In particular, Saville challenges the dichotomy of the interior and exterior of the female nude as seen throughout Western history, by depicting the obscene ‘other’ in works such as Propped and Branded. Henceforth, the way in which Saville represents the female nude forces Western audiences to look beyond the frame. Ultimately, through her criticisms of our notions of beauty, Saville expresses that we are all “branded.”

1 Lynda Nead, The Female Nude: Art, Obscenity and Sexuality, (London: Routledge, 1992), 17.

2 Ibid., 20.

3 Kerstin Mey, Art and Obscenity, (London: I.B. Taurus, 2007), 33.

4 Jonathan D. Katz, “’The Senators Were Revolted:’ Homophobia and the Culture Wars,” in A Companion to Contemporary Art since 1945, ed. Amelia Jones, Malden: Blackwell, 2006, 235.

5 Ibid.

6 Michelle Meagher, “Jenny Saville and a Feminist Aesthetics of Disgust,” Hypatia, 18, no. 4 (Fall 2003): 23 -41.

7 Maria Castaneda, “’So Terribly, Terribly, Terrifically Fat:’ Rethinking Jenny Saville’s Grotesque Female Bodies.” (PhD diss. California State University, 2009).

8 Ibid, 16.

9 Catherine Milner, “Bring on the Blubbernauts,” The Sunday Telegraph (September 14, 1997): 9.

10 Isabelle Wallace, “The Looking Glass from the Other Side: Reflections on Jenny Saville’s Propped,” Visual Culture in Britain 5, iss. 2 (Winter 2004): 77.

11 Castaneda, 19.

12 Wallace, 82.

13 Ibid, 83.

14 Ibid, 22.

15 Wallace, 88.

16 Castaneda, 22.

17 Ibid, 23.

18 Sidonie Smith, “Bodies of Evidence: Jenny Saville, Faith Ringgold, and Janine Antoni Weigh In,” in Interfaces: Women, Autobiography, Image, Performance edited by Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson (Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 2002), 136.

19 Meagher, 27.

20 Castaneda, 25.

21 Jenny Saville quoted in Pernilla Holmes, “The Body Unbeautiful.” ARTnews, (November 01, 2003), 145.

22 Lynda Nead, “Caught in the Act of Staring: Lynda Nead on Body Politics for the 1990s,” Women Artists Slide Library Journal 39 (1994): 18.

23 Castaneda, 30.

Art History 21 24 25 26 27

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Castaneda, 34.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Castaneda, Maria. “’So Terribly, Terribly, Terrifically Fat:’ Rethinking Jenny Saville’s Grotesque Female Bodies.” PhD diss. California State University, 2009.

Gayford, Martin. Jenny Saville: Territories. New York: Gagosian Gallery, 1999.

Holmes, Pernilla. “The Body Unbeautiful.” ARTnews, November 01, 2003, 146.

Katz, Jonathan D. “’The Senators Were Revolted:’ Homophobia and the Culture Wars,” in A Companion to Contemporary Art Since 1945, ed. Amelia Jones, Malden: Blackwell, 2006, 231-248.

Meagher, Michelle. “Jenny Saville and a Feminist Aesthetics of Disgust.”

Hypatia 18, no. 4 (Fall 2003): 23-41.

Mey, Kerstin. Art and Obscenity. London: I.B. Taurus, 2007.

Milner, Catherine. “Bring on the Blubbernauts.” The Sunday Telegraph, sec.

Arts and Culture, September 14, 1997.

Nead, Lynda. “Caught in the Act of Staring: Lynda Nead on Body Politics for the 1990s.” Women Artists Slide Library Journal 39, 1994.

Nead, Lydia. The Female Nude Art, Obscenity, and Sexuality. London: Routledge, 1992.

Smith, Sidonie. Bodies of Evidence: Jenny Saville, Faith Ringgold, and Janine Antoni Weigh In. Interfaces: Women, Autobiography, Image, Performance. Edited by Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson. Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 2002.

Stevens, Mark. “Fresh Meat.” New York Magazine, December 13, 1999.

Wallace, Isabelle. “The Looking Glass from the Other Side: Reflections on Jenny Saville’s “Propped.” Visual Culture in Britain 5, no. 2 (Winter 2004): 77-91.

Art History 23 > 1 PABLO PICASSO, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907. © Museum of Modern Art

BEHIND THE BORDERS Picasso’s Studio and the Parameters of Colonialism Rishma Johal “In mystical terms, with this painting we bid farewell to all the paintings of the past.”

—André Breton on Les Demoiselles d’Avignon

B

reton’s words encapsulate the revolutionary element of Pablo Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon and the sensation that it created in 1907 [Fig. 1]. It was highly controversial in its time, challenging the tastes of the elite art critics. Picasso’s original painting featured ‘white’ women wearing African masks, representing the prostitutes at the brothel of Avignon. This piece became one of the most famous works of art from Europe and one of Picasso’s most noteworthy paintings.

When artist Faith Ringgold recreated Demoiselles in 1991, she provoked conversation around sexism and racism by focusing on this well-known work of art. In Picasso’s Studio [Fig. 2], Ringgold portrays Picasso as a marginal figure while shifting the painting’s focus towards a black model named Willia Marie Simone. Ringgold commented on the apparent racism and sexism of the latter image by representing Simone as the primary figure in her painting. Moreover, the way that she portrayed this woman is quite different from the way that Picasso had represented women in Demoiselles.

Ringgold’s usage of quilting as the canvas says as much about racial and gender bias as much as the painting itself. When Ringgold was a young girl during the Great Depression, the government was reluctant to provide many African American artists with commissions, particularly women, because their work did not fit their artistic vision. Thus, by using a racialized and feminized medium, Ringgold problematized traditional methods of categorizing art. I argue that the use of the quilt to portray Willia’s narrative in Picasso’s Studio is a subversive gesture against traditional Western art by challenging its exclusive systems of artistic categorization, especially with regards to African art. This particularly affected women’s artwork and coincided with colonial theory.

Studio is a component of the “French Collection,” a series

of quilts created by Ringgold which addresses issues such as racism and sexism.1 Employing acrylic paint on quilted fabric as her medium, the work features Simone as an assertive black model who poses nude in front of Picasso. The painting is surrounded by text narrating Simone’s story and a conversation with her aunt Melissa. Surrounding the narrative and the painting is a fabric border. There are African drawings on the sides of the central image and African masks on the left above Picasso who is painting in the bottom lefthand corner. There are four bodies of white women painted behind Simone who represent the main subjects of Picasso’s original work. Ringgold revisits Demoiselles by portraying him painting a blank sheet within her depiction.

It is imperative to discuss the African influence in Desmoiselles in order to understand Ringgold’s Studio. Although some people interpret Picasso’s use of African art as a positive recognition of African culture, some scholars regard it as cultural objectification. This is primarily because Picasso failed to question colonial understandings of African people by incorporating their art within the purview of existing discourses.2 Simon Gikandi argues that Picasso’s fascination with Africa was solely associated with objects, while remaining distant from the actual people and their bodies.3 In fact, Picasso had never seen real Africans when he first began portraying them and adopting aspects of their artwork without any cultural understanding.4 A problem with Western colonial discourse was that it grouped all Africans together, failing to recognize the heterogeneity of these peoples.

Picasso’s use of ‘African’ artwork was a clear replica of this naïve ignorance even though he was sympathetic towards anti-colonial movements.5 While Picasso’s inability to look past the biases of the time is explicable, these have to be weighed into account when analyzing Ringgold’s Studio. European art was racially exclusive before Picasso’s time. It also overlooked women who did not share many of the same rights and privileges as men.6 Consequently, Demoiselles is a problematic image. The prostitutes in the painting are subjected to what has been

24 PIPE: UFV’s Visual Arts Journal peoples formed the crux of the argument for colonialism.11 Gikandi explains how this process actually coincided with the colonial project, explaining that, “Picasso adopted African forms as a way of thinking through the limitations of the forms of representation favoured by the art academy, namely a sense of order, proportionality, and idealization. The African body formed the embodiment of disorder.”12 Thus, Picasso was using these negative colonial portrayals of African people to undermine the academy’s tastes. Taking this into consideration, Ringgold recreates his work by inserting the empowered Willia into the narrative and situating Picasso on the margins.13 In doing so, Ringgold reclaims what was denied through her quilt reconstruction: African women claiming ownership over their own bodies and culture. At the same time, she also challenges a colonial system of labels that disadvantaged them on an array of platforms.

2 FAITH RINGGOLD, Picasso’s Studio, 1991. © Faith Ringgold.

referred by scholars as the “male gaze.”7 Feminist theorist Laura Mulvey introduced the term to refer to the way in which art, film, etc, is presented from an eroticized male perspective, thus producing an imbalance in power. More importantly, none of the women are African but two are shown wearing African masks, conflating sexism with other negative racial stereotypes.

Colonial elites often associated ‘deviant’ sexuality (or exoticism) with colonized peoples, especially Africans, in order to justify their actions.89 In this case, the prostitutes represent a form of sexuality considered ‘deviant,’ despite the fact that they are white women in African masks. In particular, black feminist scholars have widely discussed how colonial discourses perpetuated the idea that colonized peoples were inferior and animalistic. This was enhanced by the fact that they labeled non-white women as sexually ‘deviant’ in contrast to the ‘respectable’ white women. By painting African masks on women considered by many to be dissolute and corruptible, this stigma, by extension, became attributed to African women. Hence, this work attached negative connotations with African women, even though they were absent from the picture, by coalescing African symbolism with exoticism and sexuality.

Themes of race and gender in Studio become salient when compared with Desmoiselles—a painting which launched the Primitivism movement. Academics regard Picasso’s work as momentous for challenging the French academy’s hierarchical structure and incorporating Primitivism—a style which borrowed artistic elements from various cultures outside of Europe.10 The term has become stigmatized due to the fact that was used to justify colonial intervention in other countries. The idea that the colonizers would civilize primitive

Ringgold grew up in an era when African Americans and feminists were fighting for their civil liberties. As a young girl in the 1930s, she witnessed the New Deal Relief Employment Program and its unfair assessment of what constituted art based on racialized and gendered parameters.14 The program’s definition of art largely excluded African American artworks, and particularly, art produced by women of colour.15 More importantly, quilt making was not recognized as a fine art until quite recently.16 Quilts were associated with ‘women’s work’ and excluded from hierarchical definitions of art—often constructed by ‘white’ men.17 Furthermore, the art academy only considered men as having the ability to become artists and Ringgold witnessed the effects of this segregation firsthand. She wanted to attend the School of Liberal Arts, New York, but she could not because women were excluded. Consequently, she went to the School of Education and began working as an art teacher.18 Despite encountering many obstacles, she presented her artwork at galleries and became a well-established artist. The narrative that Ringgold conveys in Studio expresses some of these emotions and adverse assumptions about what constitutes art.

Ringgold’s adoption of the quilt to construct Picasso’s Studio accentuates the importance of ‘women’s work’ by adding a gendered dimension and recognizing women as producers of art. For Ringgold, there are strong family ties associated with quilt making; it was a tradition passed on from one generation of women to the next in Ringgold’s family. Her great grandmother had taught her mother who then taught her how to make quilts in the tradition of the Kuba people of West Africa.19 Quilt making is an important cultural activity for many African American women; it serves as a signifier of the female bond. Furthermore, Ringgold’s practice connects her to her family’s past and her great grandparents’ coercion into slavery.20 Quilt making served as one of the links that African Americans had with their heritage and histories/herstories.

Ringgold’s quilts are about storytelling. They are concerned as much with literature as they are with art, imparting narratives that critically comment on the circumstances of African American women.21 Consequently, quilting embodied a form of cultural resonance and preservation, while at the same time, protested women’s gendered and racialized

Art History 25 exclusion from hierarchical definitions of art.

In the contextual discussion of Picasso’s Studio it is important to ask: can Ringgold’s work be considered entirely subversive?

Some scholars may argue against this because much of Ringgold’s work was inspired by Picasso.22 She adopted a Cubist style in her paintings and continued to include ‘African’ influences in her artwork. Joyce Millman suggests that Ringgold included Picasso in her quilt to convey his influence on her work.23 Nevertheless, a simple analysis of the image conveys that she transforms Picasso into a diminutive figure. His canvas is blank and he is represented as ostensibly marginalized.24 In addition, she is reclaims Cubism as a part of African heritage, as evinced from the narrative that accompanies the visual image.25 Academics who regard Ringgold as Picasso’s follower overlook how her work opposes the colonial imposition of categories and the negative connotations that colonial discourses associated with African women.26 Anna C. Chave opines that although these individuals may understand Ringgold’s critique of racial and gender bias, they fail to comprehend the complexity of colonial history that defined the parameters of art to subordinate African American women.

While some scholars may censure Ringgold’s approach, this is problematic because many ‘crafts’ such as quilt making have been dismissed as “women’s work,” Interestingly, these women are paid much less in comparison to men.27 Feminists have argued at length about the manner in which these types of categories have been manipulated by men to subordinate their work in many societies, including in the history of Western art.2829 Outside of the African American community, quilt making was not always considered art and was seen as insignificant craftwork until the late 1970s.30 Anne Gibson explains that Ringgold’s quilts obscured definition between art and craft.31 More importantly, Ringgold was familiar with the way Primitivism perpetuated racism, despite adopting it. Hence, she extensively critiqued these categories in her work while incorporating these styles and reclaiming them as part of her heritage.32 In many ways, Ringgold reclaims African art, protesting racism and sexism in multiple ways.

First, she depicts Willia as an confident woman, opposed to standardized European depictions of beauty, by boldly posing as the primary figure. Secondly, she uses quilting, a material maligned due to its associations with non-white female handiwork, as her choice of canvas. Therefore, the manner in which she completely altered the significance of Picasso’s work is intricately complex.

In the past, European academic elites defined censored art that digressed from their narrow definition of art.33 Nevertheless, these interpretations slowly changed with time as avant-garde artists such as Picasso contested them.

Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon was controversial because it first introduced African art to an unwelcoming academy.34 He is renowned for depicting distorted images that deviated from traditional methods of visual representation in the history of Western art, therefore making a direct challenge to the status quo.35 Ringgold extended this process by shifting

the meaning of art. She used Picasso’s method to chastise the ignorance embedded within Cubist art techniques that overlooked Africans as people by placing African masks on Picasso and the white models. Moreover, she painted all of this on a quilt—a medium considered as ‘non-traditional.’

As a well-established artist, she leveraged her influence to push the boundaries of elitist art.36 More importantly, she was able to elevate the status of quilt making by selling them at competitive prices with other forms of art.37 Her work protested the privilege of the colonizers and their control over categories that defined art. She challenged the pattern of how the academy eventually accepted Cubism as an art style when a white male adopted components of African art, but when many African American women constructed traditional quilts, they were dismissed as mere craftwork.

Ringgold shows that categories were used by the status quo to maintain their position and exclude others, predominantly ‘white’ men over racialized groups and women of colour.

Faith Ringgold’s Picasso’s Studio expresses how the elitist art academies’ rigid definitions of art excluded specific groups of people, especially racialized women. Cubist artists adopted African tropes, yet remained distant from the actual peoples. Africans were denied these benefits and the art form continued to perpetuate their subordination by colonial elites.

In fact, it coincided with the colonial project of subjugating these peoples and became known as ‘Primitivism’.38 This

rhetoric persisted after most of the colonial empires dispersed. In fact, these negative discourses continued to grow and ensured that particular groups remained marginalized such as African American women who were unable to receive assistance from the New Deal welfare programs. Hence, the quilt successfully became a symbol of protest against these various forms of categorization as a piece that is difficult to distinguish as an art or a craft; it accredited racialized women’s work, while superseding the boundaries that art academies imposed on diverse forms of art.

1 Joyce Millman, “Faith Ringgold’s Quilts and Picturebooks: Comparisons and Contributions,” Children’s Literature in Education 36, No. 4 (2005): p. 383.

2 Simon Gikandi, “Picasso, Africa, and a Schemata of Difference,” Modernity/modernism 10, No. 3 (2003): p. 460.

3 Ibid., 462.

4 Ibid.

5 Ann Gibson, Faith Ringgold’s Picasso’s Studio (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), p. 70.

6 Lisa E. Farrington, “Reinventing Herself: The Black Female Nude,” Women’s Art Journal 24, No. 2 (2003): p. 15.

7 Anna C. Chave, “New Encounters with Les Demoiselles d’Avignon: Gender, Race, and the Origins of Cubism,” The Art Bulletin 76, No. 4 (1994): p. 598.

8 Lisa E. Farrington, “Reinventing Herself: The Black Female Nude,” Woman’s Art Journal, Vol. 24, No. 2 (Autumn 2003 – Winter 2004), p. 16, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1358782.

9 Magdalena Barrera, “Hottentot 2000: Jennifer Lopez and her Butt,” in Sexualities in History: A Reader, edited by Kim M. Phillips and Barry Reay (New York: Routledge, 2001), p. 410.

10 Chave, op. cit., p. 596.

11 Barrera, Hottentot 2000, 415; Jane Errington, “Pioneers and

26 PIPE: UFV’s Visual Arts Journal Suffragists,” in Changing Patterns: Women in Canada, edited by Sandra D. Burt, Lorraine Code, & Lindsay Dorney (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1993), 60-61.

12 Gikandi, op. cit., p. 462.

13 Gibson, op. cit., p.70.

14 Meaghan Duffy, “Framing Faith: An Exploration of the Frame in the Work of Faith Ringgold,” Interdisciplinary.net. September 2013. http:// www.inter-disciplinary.net/critical-issues/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/ duffyglpaper.pdf, p. 2.

15 Ibid.

16 Joyce Millman, “Faith Ringgold’s Quilts and Picturebooks: Comparisons and Contributions,” Children’s Literature in Education 36, No. 4 (2005): p. 392.

17 Duffy, op. cit., 3.

18 Ibid., 2.

19 Millman, op. cit., p. 383.

20 Ibid.

21 Farrington, op. cit., p. 21 22 Gibson, op. cit., p. 69.

23 Millman, op. cit., p. 387.

24 Gibson, op. cit., p. 65.

25 Ibid., 70.

26 Chave, op. cit., p. 596.

27 Gibson, Picasso’s Studio, 71-72.

28 Roberta Hamilton, Gendering the Vertical Mosaic: Feminist Perspectives on Canadian Society (Toronto: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2005), pp. 63-90 29 Marlene LeGates, In Their Time: A History of Feminism in Western Society (New York: Routledge, 2001), p. 17.

30 Millman, op. cit., p. 390.

31 Gibson, op. cit., p. 68.

32 Duffy, op. cit., p. 2.

33 Margaret Lazzari and Dona Schlesier, Exploring Art: A Global, Thematic Approach (Boston: Wadsworth, 2011), p. 12.

34 Chave, op. cit., p. 596.

35 Gikandi, op. cit. p. 456.

36 Duffy, op. cit., p. 6.

37 Gibson, op. cit., p. 72.

38 Jane Errington, “Pioneers and Suffragists,” in Changing Patterns: Women in Canada, edited by Sandra D. Burt, Lorraine Code, & Lindsay Dorney (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1993), p. 60-61.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Barrera, Magdalena. “Hottentot 2000: Jennifer Lopez and her Butt.” In Sexualities in History: A Reader. Edited by Kim M. Phillips and Barry Reay, pp. 407-416. New York : Routledge, 2001.

Chave, Anna C. “New Encounters with Les Demoiselles d’Avignon: Gender, Race, and the Origins of Cubism.” The Art Bulletin. Vol. 76, No. 4 (1994): pp. 596-611.

Daix, P., and Haus O Emmet. Picasso: Life and Art. New York: Icon Editions, 1993.

Duffy, Meaghan. “Framing Faith: An Exploration of the Frame in the Work of Faith Ringgold.” Interdisciplinary.net. September 2013. http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/critical-issues/wp-content/ uploads/2013/07/duffyglpaper.pdf: pp. 1-11.

Errington, Jane. “Pioneers and Suffragists.” In Changing Patterns: Women in Canada. Edited by Sandra D. Burt, Lorraine Code, & Lindsay Dorney, pp. 51-79. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1993.

Farrington, Lisa E. “Reinventing Herself: The Black Female Nude.” Women’s Art Journal. Vol. 24, No. 2 (2003): pp. 15-23.

Gibson, Ann. Faith Ringgold’s Picasso’s Studio. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.

Gikandi, Simon. “Picasso, Africa, and a Schemata of Difference.”

Modernity/modernism. Vol. 10, No. 3 (2003): pp. 455-480.

Hamilton, Roberta. “Gendering the Vertical Mosaic: Feminist Perspectives on Canadian Society.” Toronto: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2005.

Lazzari, Margaret, and Dona Schlesier. Exploring Art: A Global, Thematic Approach. Boston: Wadsworth, 2011.

Millman, Joyce. “Faith Ringgold’s Quilts and Picturebooks: Comparisons and Contributions.” Children’s Literature in Education. Vol. 36, No. 4 (2005): pp. 381-393.

Ringgold, Faith. “Picasso’s Studio.” Last Modified 2002. http://www. faithringgold.com/ringgold/d18.htm.

Art History 27

Art History 29 > YINKA SHONIBARE, Diary of a Victorian Dandy: 14:00 Hours, detail, 1998. © Yinka Shonibare MBE.

TY heS “Black ” D andy Was Here: ’ R -I H B A inka honibare s

the

e magined

istory of ritish rt in

Dairy of A Victorian Dandy

Candice Okada

A

cross the pond in London, England, some 14 years earlier, artist Yinka Shonibare investigated a similar subject. While he did not address the history of slavery in Britain directly, Shonibare sought out to explore, through an artistic lens, the stereotypical and objectifying representation of Africans in Britain’s art history—a consequence of colonialism and slavery. In order to fully understand the complexity and transgressiveness of Shonibare’s work, I argue that it must be placed at an intersection of postcolonial theory, masquerade and photography.

Like Tarantino’s Django Unchained, Yinka Shonibare’s Diary of a Victorian Dandy [Fig. 1] utilizes the filmic-type narrative as a space to negotiate race and identity through which different interpretations and meanings vie for a place in history. Working from within the third space of hybridity, and embracing both his British and African roots, he productively reimagines the representation of the African diaspora in British art. Shonibare employs photography and masquerade to introduce the “black” dandy into the master narratives of Victorian England from which he was (mostly) previously absent. By reinscribing the dandy as a black male, Shonibare is able to destabilize hegemonic notions of racial hierarchies and identity and problematize the history of British art, therein offering viewers a powerful alternative to traditional representations of the African diaspora.

Into the “Black” Imagination In October 1998, photographic works by Shonibare circulated 80 to 100 stations in London’s Underground. Seen by thousands (the London Underground has an annual passenger count of 1.265 billion)1, the featured image from Diary was the first stage in a sequence of new work. This photographic series, which was site-specific to London’s Underground, consists of five prints portraying the day-to-day events in the life of a Victorian dandy. The photograph, which captures the dandy’s activities at 2pm (14:00hrs), features a young black man holding a book in the library of a grand Victorian country house adorned with 19th century paraphernalia. As the center

of attention, he is surrounded by a group of men who wait upon him while a cluster of maids look on in admiration.

While these scenes are reminiscent of many Victorian depictions of English dandies, what distinguishes these representations from the plentitude of dandy imagery is the dandy’s “blackness”. In Shonibare’s reinterpretation of an otherwise familiar scenario, this particular dandy is unlike any representation previously presented in contemporary art. By casting himself, a black male, as the hero and protagonist in Diary, Shonibare works to destabilize typical notions of African representation in art. With his fawning white servants and admiring onlookers, Shonibare’s “black” dandy is represented as an idolized, privileged individual, as if he were a member of the white British aristocracy. This body of work attempts to invert stereotypical representations of race and “otherness” in historical British art. In particular, Shonibare’s ambitious photographic suite has frequently been compared to William Hogarth’s satirical work A Rake’s Progress from the 18th century [Fig. 2 & 3].2 William Hogarth, who is best known for his sardonic commentary on the mid-eighteenth century British aristocracy, was interested in the aristocracy’s excessive preoccupation with consumption and objectification of human beings.3 Specifically, A Rake’s Progress speaks to the corrupting effects of eighteenth century consumerism. Although not alluded to in A Rake’s Progress, Hogarth avoided objectifying Africans.4 Typically represented as objects rather than as human beings, the Africans in Hogarth’s work were often situated amongst other luxurious accoutrements including small dogs, monkeys, imported teakettles, china cups and curios.5 While Hogarth was wary of the fact that Africans were regarded as status symbols, his decision to include Africans in his paintings performed an important though ambiguous role. They served as silent witnesses to the behavior of British aristocratic society.6 Africans were portrayed staring wide-eyed at the shenanigans of white society, perplexed and dumbfounded by the excess and exuberance in eighteenth century England.7 Hogarth’s rendition of Africans serves as the inspiration for Shonibare’s

30 PIPE: UFV’s Visual Arts Journal preconceived stereotypes, then re-representing these stereotypes (even by the artists themselves) would only serve to reinforce the “other.”14 According to Homi Bhabha, the ability to productively transgress this paradoxical situation arises from the position of a third space that he calls “hybridity.”15 In the space between negating stereotypes and embracing them, artists can take on a partial assumption of stereotypes as a way of challenging the fixity and purity of agency and identity.16 More simply, although somewhat problematic, hybridity has been used to describe the creation of new transcultural forms within the contact zone produced by colonization.17 These notions of hybridity are of singular importance in postcolonial studies because they allow artists to maintain a focus on the “other” without it becoming weighed down by historical baggage.18.

1 YINKA SHONIBARE, Diary of a Victorian Dandy: 14:00 Hours, 1998. © Yinka Shonibare MBE.

work since it offers an entry point into the imagination of African diaspora. In reframing the Victorian dandy as “black”, Shonibare reverses the traditional order of African representation in art in an attempt to visualize and critique Britishness from an African/nonwhite perspective.

Permission to (Re)Narrate, Again and Again In 2009, Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie gave a TED Talk lecture entitled “The Danger of the Single Story.” She asserted that the human condition consists of many overlapping and interconnected narratives. She cautioned, however, that if we subject ourselves to a select number of narratives, we risk a critical and cultural misunderstanding. This single narrative engenders stereotypes. The problem with stereotypes is not that they are entirely untrue, but that they offer an incomplete perspective. They make one story become the only story.8 The African narrative of dispossession and displacement has, until quite recently, been voiced through a Western perspective, negating the voice of Africans themselves. Their right to recount the experience of diaspora has been a site of concerted and systematic suppression of a collective experience.9 For example, the literature produced by early European explorers and colonists focused on constructing and disseminating a colonial ideology. This ideology was founded on racial stereotypes of African peoples and was utilized as a means of asserting hegemonic power.10 Until postmodernism, postcolonialism, which helped to decentralize historical experience, it was Eurocentric literature that served the predominant narrative of the African diaspora.

Although European countries withdrew from Africa geographically following the aftermath of the Second World War, colonialism—in terms of cultural, economic, and political domination—persisted.11 From this in-dependent space emerged a realization amongst former colonial African states: that complete decolonization was inevitably impossible. Scholars such as Frantz Fanon began to address how cultural forms and practices could resist colonial and postcolonial ideology by challenging essentializing differences between people on the grounds of race.12 It was from this postcolonial literature in which predominant Western ways of thinking became contested.13 In redirecting attention to the under/misrepresentation of the African diaspora however, artists and writers alike ran the risk of recycling negative stereotypes. For if the colonialist way of dealing with cultural “otherness” was to contain it within the boundaries of

While the concept of hybridity has been contested since its inception, Shonibare’s self-proclaimed hybridity permits us to work from within this theoretical structure. 19 British-born and Nigerianraised, Shonibare uses his dual upbringing as a source of inspiration.

Returning to Britain as an adult, Shonibare began to draw upon

his transcultural experience, questioning the complex and extensive history of colonial exploitation beyond the slave trade.20 By inserting subtly contentious subject matter into Diary, Shonibare literally exhibits the potential of hybridity to reverse “the structures of domination in the colonial situation.”21 In making the “black” dandy the central subject in his narratives, Shonibare explores the position of the cultural “other” while simultaneously exploring Britishness from an African/black perspective. In doing so, he attempts to destabilize the occidental/oriental binary (i.e. the West and Africa).22 By weaving them together as singular text/image, he exposes their relational and codependent identities.23 From the space between Britishness and Africanness and the hybrid that emerges within it, Shonibare’s work successfully assumes the stereotypes of both his heritages, namely the contrast between the Victorian aristocracy and his own black body.

In doing such, he collapses the cultural barrier between both worlds, revealing their interconnected relationship. It is from this space that Shonibare is able to productively explore the representation of Africans in British art without perpetuating the negative stigmas associated with “otherness”. While Shonibare’s Diary works from the third space of hybridity, what is also of critical importance is that it resists representing the African diaspora as a singular experience or a particular cultural identity.

At the intersection of postcolonial theory and artistic practice in the 1980s, “black art” offered an alternative critique of the way non-white Europeans were positioned as the unspoken and invisible “other” from a predominantly Eurocentric cultural discourse.24 As a consequence, and means in which to escape this repressive position, African artists took up the position of the hyper-visible normalization.25 While this type of art literally brought visibility to the African diaspora, it also created a need to acknowledge that “we all speak from a particular place, out of a particular history, out of a particular experience, a particular culture.”26 While this sentiment appears favorable, it lent to a universalizing experience that diminished the individuality and subjectivity of such art so that by the 1990s “black art” faced a crisis of being perceived as needing to “speak for [the totality of] its culture.”27

Art History 31 Indebted with the burden of needing to “speak for” the totality of African culture in the wake of postcolonial thought and criticism, Shonibare resists this blanket notion by situating himself within his photographic works. No longer does his work speak to generalizations of African diaspora history and experience, but now it only voices the narratives of a single individual; an experience on the fringe of master narratives, denied recognition by those who wrote history. Working in that third space between Britishness and Africaness, Shonibare utilizes a combination of photography and masquerade in an attempt to characterize one man’s imagined alternative view of history, adding another story to the repertoire of African diaspora and resisting the danger of the single story.

Almost the Same, but not White*28 Post-colonialism’s relationship to the history of British art, and the other forms of master narratives in which certain peoples were excluded, is a paradoxical one. Not only does post-colonialism not deny its inevitable implication in them,

but it also wants to use that insider position to problematize the “givens” that “go without saying” in these grand systems.29 Specifically, the combination of masquerade and photography opens up, what Linda Hutcheon termed “fringe interference”, the aesthetic equivalent of different waveforms encountering each other. This complex overlapping of artistic genres opens up space that interrogates and problematizes master historical narratives.30 This is the space in which Diary needs to be understood. As a combination of photography and masquerade, Shonibare attempts to subvert established representations of Africans in British art by visualizing an imagined alternative to history.

Masquerade is particularly important within the post-colonial work of Shonibare because it provides the perfect vehicle with which to interrogate identity and power. The very act of performing as another race challenges the idea of a stable, authentic society by suggesting the possibility of becoming.31 In the process, masking belies the negation of one single master identity, permitting mobility and fluidity within an individual’s (re)presentation of themselves. Although the (re)presentation of the self is of central importance most individuals, it is typically accomplished within a very narrow and stereotypical range of how a person thinks they should appear.32 However, there are some people for whom a disguise is central to their lives. For individuals who are uncertain of their identity, or possess a negative stigma that excludes them from mainstream culture, masquerade offers unique performance that is both liberating and transgressive.33 Within the realm of post-colonial art, the mask offers a means of dealing with the negative stigma imbued in “otherness” that has been inscribed onto non-white bodies. It provides black artists, like Shonibare, with the space to explore and redefine themselves as well as challenge the ways in which their identities’ have been commonly represented and understood.34 The master narrative that Shonibare challenges through Diary is just this: the traditional representation of Africans filtered through the lens of Britishness.

Shonibare’s decision to depict the Victorian dandy as black is an attempt to reimagine an alternative history, one in which African subjectivity is front and centre. This particular dandy is a character of Shonibare’s imagination and his way of addressing the interconnectedness between Britain and Africa via colonialism and slavery. In adopting the attire and mannerisms associated with the Victorian dandy, but leaving visible his “blackness”, the new persona defies traditional hierarchies of race and introduces ambiguity into an unlikely narrative. This ambiguity, the lack of decisiveness regarding the structures in the image, upsets the notion of “otherness” serving to dismantle the definitive distinctions between essence and appearance.35

2 YINKA SHONIBARE, Diary of a Victorian Dandy: 03:00 Hours, 1998. © Yinka Shonibare MBE. 3 WILLIAM HOGARTH, A Rake’s Progress: The Orgy, 1733.

Dandyism was a strategic performance for many black individuals in Britain, part of a way to negotiate the oppressive ideologies and degrading images of “blackness.”36 The very presence of the “black” dandy represented what Bhabha called “partial presence.” In this process, the “other” became a subject of a difference that is almost the same, but not quite the same.37 The black dandy’s “partial presence”, which

32 PIPE: UFV’s Visual Arts Journal is constructed through the combination of an aristocratic Victorian lifestyle and the “blackness” of the individual, articulates disturbances of cultural and racial differences that menace the demand of imperialist authority, undermining its power.38 While the “black” dandy dressed and acted according to white, imperialist standards, his “blackness” was a clear difference. It was this dual nature of dandy, his white presence and black semblance, which problematized his subjection in Victorian England.39 As such, dandyism became part of a process of imagining and imaging the black body and conceptions of blackness beyond their limited representations in eighteenth century Britain.40 Within art production from this era, the “black” dandy’s representational exclusion speaks to the established and appropriate ways in which Africans were imaged, as acquired objects, not individualized subjects.

Dandyism enabled Africans to imagine themselves as new people by confronting the essentializing characteristics of “blackness” through a self-spectacularization that complicated their commodification and therefore, their roles as “objects in the midst of other objects.”41 Shonibare also leverages masquerade as a means to explore the complex ways in which non-white bodies are continually subject to stereotypical representations in the Western imagination. He draws our attention to the racialized gaze to which Africans in Britain have been and continue to be subject.

The exaggeration of the racialized gaze that the dandy experiences in Shonibare’s images can be read as a critique of racial fetishism. Since black people have often been “looked at” historically in stereotypical terms, Shonibare reverses the racialized gaze. His play on “looking” is accomplished through the theatricality constructed nature of his photographs. In Diary, the photography studio is the equivalent to stage.

Shonibare’s images recall theatre sets where the artist becomes the actor, slipping in and out of characters.42 The stagecraft in his work, save for himself as the dandy, appears contrived and artificial, thus, encouraging the view to “look”.

Additionally, throughout his day, the black dandy is being looked at by the other characters and the viewers of the work. He is the centre of attention and the object of desire, admired for his extravagant dress, his elegance, manners, etiquette and social skills. Shonibare works to de-familiarize the gaze, to make explicit what is often hidden, which is the anxiety surrounding the “other”.43 As Fanon argued, racial fetishism is a perverse relation to “otherness”, of which the fetish acts as a defense against more intolerable forms of anxiety, while allowing subjects to enjoy this fear more or less secretly.44 In this sense, the “blackness” that remains part the dandy and Shonibare himself, is both tantalizing and frightening.45 In over-exaggerating the racialized gaze and drawing on the notion of racial fetishism, Shonibare implores his viewer to recognize, question, and transcend any preconceived intolerance and prejudice against persons who may “look” visibly different.

Yinka Shonibare’s Diary of a Victorian Dandy successfully manages to navigate the sensitive topic of “blackness” without adding to the negative stigma associated with “otherness” with which non-white bodies have been burdened. For Shonibare, working from the third place of hybridity, that

position, which assumes partial stereotypes of both Britishness and Africanness, enables him to productively explore their interconnectedness by disrupting the traditional representation of Africans in British art. Similarly, it is within this contested space that alternative narratives and experiences relating to the African diaspora can be realized. Shonibare’s Diary is an actualization of the experience of the “black dandy” and an attempt to reinsert his presence/narrative back into the knowledge of Western structures. In visualizing a narrative that counteracts traditional representation of Africans in Victorian England, Diary dismantles hegemonic assumptions of race and identity, and works against oppressive ideologies and degrading images of blackness, both historically and presently.

1 Transport of London, “Facts and Figures,” https://www.tfl.gov. uk/corporate/about-tfl/what-we-do/london-underground/facts-andfigures (accessed Nov. 24, 2014).

2 Smithsonian National Museum for African Art, “Yinka Shonibare,” http://africa.si.edu/exhibits/shonibare/dandy.html (accessed Nov. 24, 2014).

3 Sara D. Schotland, “Africans as Objects: Hogarth’s Complex Portrayal of Exploitation,” Journal of African American Studies, Vol. 13, No. 2 (2009): p. 147 (accessed Oct. 30, 2014).

4

Ibid, p. 149.

5

Ibid.

6

Ibid, p. 155.

7

Ibid, p. 156.

8 Chimamanda Mgozi Adichie, “The Danger of a Single Story,” at TED Talks. Filmed July, 2009. http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_ adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story?language=en (accessed Oct. 15, 2014).

9 Moustafa Bayoumi and Andrew Rubin, headnotes for “Permission to Narrate,” by Edward Said, in The Edward Said Reader, ed. Moustafa Bayoumi and Andrew Rubin (New York: Vintage Books, 2000), p. 244.

10 Florence Ayisi and Catalin Brylla, “The Politics of Representation and Audience Reception: Alternative Visions of Africa,” Research in African Literatures, Vol. 44, No.2 (2013): p. 126. http://muse.jhu.edu.proxy.ufv. ca:2048/journals/research_in_african_literatures/v044/44.2.ayisi.html (accessed Oct. 30, 2014).

11 Mark Crinson, “‘Fragments of Collapsing Space’: Postcolonial Theory and Contemporary Art,” in A Companion to Contemporary art Since 1945, ed. Amelia Jones (London: Blackwell, 2006). p. 451.

12 Ibid.

13 Robert J.C. Young, Postcolonialism: A Very Short Introduction, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 4.

14 Simone Drichel, “The Time of Hybridity,” Philosophy & Social Criticism, Vol. 34 (2008): p. 588 (accessed November 5, 2014).

15 Ibid.

16 Crinson, op. cit., p. 456.

17 Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin, eds. “Hybridity” in Post-Colonial Studies: The Key Concepts 2nd Edition (New York: Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2007), p. 108.

18 Drichel, op. cit., p. 588.

19 Yinka Shonibare, “Biography,” http://www.yinkashonibarembe. com/biography/ (accessed Dec. 2, 2014).

20 Divya P. Tolia-Kelly and Andy Morris, “Disruptive Aesthetics?

Revisiting the Burden of Representation in the Art of Chris Ofili and Yinka Shonibare,” Third Text, Vol. 18, No. 2 (2006): p. 155 (accessed Oct. 25, 2014)

Art History 33 21 Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin, op. cit., p. 108.

22 Tolia-Kelly and Morris, op. cit., p. 155.

23 Ibid, p. 166.

24 Ibid, p. 158.

25 Ibid, p. 154.

26 Ibid, p. 158.

27 Ibid, p. 153.

28 Homi Bhabha, “Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence on Colonial Discourse,” October, Vol. 28, (1984): p. 132, http://www.jstor. org/stable/778467 (accessed on Dec. 2, 2014).

29 Linda Hutcheon, “Fringe Interference: Postmodern Border Tensions.”

(1988): p.101, https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/ bitstream/1807/18220/1/TSpace0014.pdf (accessed Nov. 24, 2014).

30

Ibid, p. 102.

31 Susan B. Kaiser, “Forward,” in Masquerade and Identities: Essays on Gender, Sexuality and Marginality, ed. Efrat Tseelon (New York: Taylor & Frances e-Library, 2003), p. xi, http://proxy.ufv.ca:2048/login?url=http:// www.myilibrary.com.proxy.ufv.ca:2048?id=10557 (accessed Nov. 24, 2014).

32 Christie Davies, “Stigma, Uncertain Identity and Skill in Disguise,” in Masquerade and Identities: Essays on Gender, Sexuality and Marginality, ed. Efrat Tseelon (New York: Taylor & Frances e-Library, 2003), p. 38, http://proxy.ufv.ca:2048/login?url=http://www.myilibrary.com.proxy.ufv. ca:2048?id=10557 (accessed Nov. 24, 2014) 33 Susan Bright, Auto Focus: The Self-Portrait in Contemporary Photography (New York: The Monacelli Press, 2010), p. 100.

34 Ibid, p. 99.

35 Efrat Tseelon, “Introduction,” in Masquerade and Identities: Essays on Gender, Sexuality and Marginality, ed. Efrat Tseelon (New York: Taylor & Frances e-Library, 2003), p. 3, http://proxy.ufv.ca:2048/login?url=http:// www.myilibrary.com.proxy.ufv.ca:2048?id=10557 (accessed Nov. 24, 2014).

36 Monica L. Miller, Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diaspora Identity (e-Duke Books Scholarly Collection, 2009), p. 221, http://reader.dukeupress.edu.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/ slaves-to-fashion/238 (accessed Dec. 1, 2014).

37 Bhabha, op. cit., p. 126.

38 Ibid, p. 129.

39 Ibid, p. 131.

40 Miller, op. cit., p. 221.

41 Ibid.

42 Bright, op. cit. p. 99.

43 Tolia-Kelly and Morris, op. cit., p. 157.

44 Marriott, David, “On Racial Fetishism,” Qui Parle: Critical Humanities and Social Sciences, Vol. 18, No.2 (2010): p. 216 (accessed Nov. 30, 2014).

45 Ibid, p. 218.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi .“The Danger of a Single Story.” TED Talks.

Filmed July, 2009.http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_ adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story?language=en. (Accessed on October 15, 2014).

Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin, eds. “Hybridity” in PostColonial Studies: The Key Concepts 2nd Edition. New York: Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2007.

Ayisi, Florence and Catalin Brylla. “The Politics of Representation and Audience Reception: Alternative Visions of Africa.” Research in African Literatures. Vol. 44, No. 2 (2013):pp. 124-141. http:// muse.jhu.edu.proxy.ufv.ca:2048/journals/research_in_african_ literatures/v044/44.2.ayisi.html. (Accessed October 30, 2014).

Bayoumi, Moustafa and Andrew Rubin, headnotes for “Permission to Narrate,” by Edward Said. The Edward Said Reader. Edited by Moustafa Bayoumi and Andrew Rubin. New York: Vintage Books, 2000.

Bhabha, Homi. “Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence on Colonial Discourse.” October, Vol 28, (1984): pp. 125-133. http://www. jstor.org/stable/778467. (Accessed on December 2, 2014).

Bright, Susan. Auto Focus: The Self-Portrait in Contemporary Photography.

New York: The Monacelli Press, 2010.

Crinson. Mark. “‘Fragments of Collapsing Space’: Postcolonial Theory and Contemporary Art.” in A Companion to Contemporary Art Since 1945. Edited by, Amelia Jones, London: Blackwell, 2006.

Davies, Christie. “Stigma, Uncertain Identity and Skill in Disguise.”

In Masquerade and Identities: Essays on Gender, Sexuality and Marginality. Edited by Efrat Tseelon, pp. 38-53. New York: Taylor & Frances e-Library, 2003. http://proxy.ufv. ca:2048/login?url=http://www.myilibrary.com.proxy.ufv. ca:2048?id=10557. (Accessed November 24, 2014).

Drichel, Simone. “The Time of Hybridity.” Philosophy & Social Criticism. Vol. 34 (2008): pp. 587-615. (Accessed November 5, 2014).

Gilroy, Paul, “The Art of Darkness: Black Art and the Problems of Belonging to England.” Third Text. Vol. 4, No. 10 (1990): pp. 45-52.

Hooks, Bell. “Representing Whiteness in the Black Imagination.” In Cultural Studies. Edited by Lawrence Grossberg et al. New York: Routledge, 1992.

Hughey, Matthew W. “Slavery, Emancipation, and the Great White Benefactor: A Review of Lincoln and Django Unchained.” Review of Django Unchained by Quentin Tarantino. Humanity & Society Vol. 37 (2013): pp. 351-353. Accessed November 24, 2014.

Hutcheon, Linda. “Fringe Interference: Postmodern Border Tensions.”

(1988): pp. 101-133. https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/ bitstream/1807/18220/1/TSpace0014.pdf.

Accessed November 24, 2014.

Kaiser, Susan B. “Forward.” In Masquerade and Identities: Essays on Gender, Sexuality and Marginality. Edited by Efrat Tseelon, pp. xiii-xvi.

New York: Taylor & Frances e-Library, 2003. http://proxy. ufv.ca:2048/login?url=http://www.myilibrary.com.proxy.ufv. ca:2048?id=10557. Accessed November 24, 2014.

Marriott, David. “On Racial Fetishism.” Qui Parle: Critical Humanities and Social Sciences. Vol. 18, No.2 (2010): pp. 2115-148. Accessed November 30, 2014.

McCarthy Cameron and Greg Dimitriadis. “The Work of Art on the Postcolonial Imagination.” Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education. Vol. 21, No.1 (2000): pp. 59-74. Accessed November 17, 2014.

Miller, Monica L. Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diaspora Identity. e-Duke Books Scholarly Collection, 2009. http://reader.dukeupress.edu.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/slaves-tofashion/238. Accessed December 1, 2014.

Mizutani, Satoshi. “Hybridity and History: A Critical Reflection on Homi K. Bhabha’s Post-Historical Thoughts.” Ab Imperio. Vol. 4 (2013): pp.

27-48. Accessed November 28, 2014.

Schotland, Sara D. “Africans as Objects: Hogarth’s Complex Portrayal of Exploitation.” Journal of African American Studies. Vol. 13, No.2 (2009): pp. 147-163. Accessed October 30, 2014.

34 PIPE: UFV’s Visual Arts Journal Tolia-Kelly, Divya P. and Andy Morris. “Disruptive Aesthetics? Revisiting the Burden of Representation in the Art of Chris Ofili and Yinka Shonibare.” Third Text. Vol. 18, No. 2 (2006): pp.153-167.

Accessed October 25, 2014.

Tseelon, Efrat. “Introduction.” In Masquerade and Identities: Essays on Gender, Sexuality and Marginality. Edited by Efrat Tseelon. New York: Taylor & Frances e-Library, 2003, pp. 1-17 http://proxy. ufv.ca:2048/login?url=http://www.myilibrary.com.proxy.ufv. ca:2048?id=10557. Accessed November 24, 2014.

Young, Robert J.C., Postcolonialism: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Art History 35

Art History 37 > 3 ANA MENDIETA, Untitled (Siluetas Series, Mexico), 1980. © The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection

blood, body, ritual, memory

Joy Xiang

I

f, as Peggy Phelan believes, performance art is essentially of the present in its moments of direct experience, how do references to the past crystallize in works which allude to memory or history? What is the significance of this contradiction of time and representation? I will focus on Ana Mendieta’s Siluetas of the 1970s, Marina Abramovic’s Balkan Baroque (1997), and Stuart Brisley’s And for today... nothing (1972) as case studies involving not only references to the past, but also an engagement of the body in ritual in relation to those histories. These works especially involve the body in visceral acts, and what is visceral feels more present, shocking, and living because of its affective impact—sometimes bodily felt—on potential audiences. It is in this sense that I use the term “blood” in the paper’s title to denote the power of bodily acts—or the colour of blood, red—as physical substance in our veins, to transmit a sensation of immediacy to the viewer, to jolt and impress upon using what is tangible and physically felt. The visceral performance mode lends itself well to Phelan’s conception of the medium’s essential characteristic: its presence. The three performance pieces, however, also involve the body in ritualistic, repetitive acts which can be considered a continuous repetition of time and which become almost meditative in their durational characteristics. By considering how these works comment on memory, I argue that performance, by making the past present, more directly engages with history than, for example, a photograph which Roland Barthes has deemed innately of the dead or “having-been.” This is not to say that the performance works necessarily reactivate or re-live a particular past, or make the past a central focus of the action, but that they carve out the possibility of memory finding its place in present actions.

In the performative gesture, remembering and living become simultaneous.

In Paul Ricœur’s extensive study on theories of memory, he examines the work of Henri Bergson who makes a distinction between two kinds of memory: habit memory and memory as recollection. Habit memory describes behaviour that is acquired through time and continuously evoked, such as a lesson learned or a daily routine. Habit memory is therefore “incorporated into the living present” and not associated with

any one event or instance in time.1 Memory as recollection is the familiar act of remembering and is associated with one moment in time. Bergson states that what we remember are images, such as smells or sights or similar information, which are only representations of the lost past.2 Bergson and Ricœur maintain a clear opposition: habit memory describes action while memory as recollection is representation. The medium of performance art offers the unique possibility of combining action and representation and can function as a special type of recollection. While memory is, after all, only experienced from the present, performance offers memory a chance to escape the internal world where the past is built as images and allows it to seep into living reality. A photograph, for instance, is representation only, a flat surface that is non-living and offers no further possibility for life. Bergson’s distinction of two memories provides a basis for exploring where the roles of body and ritual are located in a performance work’s reference to the past. What Ricœur refers to as “the more extensive problem of action and representation” in memory also relates to the problem of a body/mind split, which the works of Mendieta, Abramovic, and Brisley begin to dismantle.

In the Siluetas series, made between 1973 and 1980, Mendieta displays a concern with origins, where the act of returning again and again to the earth may stem from the displacement from her own Cuban origins as a young girl as well as from her interest in ancient civilizations and our collective human origins. At age eleven, as part of “Operation Pedro Pan,” Mendieta and her sister were among the thousands of unaccompanied Cuban children sent to America by their families in response to a fear of Fidel Castro’s government and rumours that the government planned to deport youth to labour in the countryside. Mendieta and her sister eventually settled in Iowa in a residential institution and the subsequent feelings of isolation, abandonment, and exile lingered with the artist into her adult life. Siluetas takes place in both Iowa and Mexico, places of personal significance to Mendieta. Imagen de Yagul (Image from Yagul) from 1973 (Fig. 1), what the artist considered to be the first of the series, was executed in a pre-Hispanic tomb in Mexico during one

38 PIPE: UFV’s Visual Arts Journal of her first visits to the country. She found, in her search for origins, a surrogate homeland in Mexico whose history of conquest and colonialism had similarities to Cuba and her own displacement of identity.3 With Siluetas, Mendieta variously uses earth, ice, snow, gunpowder, red paint, dirt, and other symbolic materials to denote or fill in the shape of a human figure (Fig. 2). For the artist, the body becomes a communicative vehicle and a mediator of gaps: between art and life, nature and culture, artist and audience, external and internal worlds. The Siluetas are not quite human bodies and not quite elements of nature, but reside somewhere in between. Mendieta has said that her work is “...not in an attempt to redeem the past, but rather in confrontation with the void, the orphanhood, and the unbaptized earth of the beginning...”4 She repeatedly restages the act of our ancestors “leaving the earth” and becoming disconnected from their physical surroundings through enhanced culture. A Silueta from 1980 (Fig. 3), Mexico, effectively depicts the void and the absence implied by many images of the series. Julia Herzberg has referred to Mendieta’s bodily outlines as afterimages and this word is especially fitting in describing the work’s relation to time.

The figural absences imply a body once having been there and, in this way, also function as ghostly presences. The untitled Silueta from 1980 appears especially grave-like, simultaneously denoting departure while offering a place for the body to return to. It is this tension of absence/return that Mendieta continuously and ritualistically acts out. In early works of the series, she uses her own body to physically mark into the earth, before realizing that her particular body was not essential. In her later Siluetas, Mendieta adds to and works with the malleable earth to create a negative space, but this space comes to embody a fullness, as evidence of a process of creation, and of the possibility of the viewer inserting their own body into the fissure like a return to the womb, our collective origins in the earth.

The tension of absence/return is also connected to Mendieta’s personal history of loss and recuperation. She has expressed that, “In any work, I am in a sense reliving my heritage. My sources are memories, images, experiences, and beliefs that have left their mark on me.”5 Her return to nature, as symbol for the universal origin of human beings, parallels what Olga M. Viso describes as the artist’s own “overriding desire to ground herself in place, time, history.”6 Mendieta’s multiple visits to Mexico and repeated Silueta images, in a continual return to the earth, are signs that she is actively creating her own origin as she searches for one. The ritualistic performance mode becomes an effort to turn memory into habit, in Bergson’s sense, for habit is naturalized memory and integrated into the active reality of an individual. Repetition and ritual are efforts to naturalize the desired identity or action being performed. Mendieta’s Siluetas function

1 ANA MENDIETA, Imagen de Yagul (Image from Yagul), 1973. © The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection.

2 ANA MENDIETA, Untitled (Siluetas Series, Iowa), 1977. © The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection.

Art History 39 complexly in this dialogue of performance and memory because of their simple yet effective evocation of several contradictions at once. While they are a reinforcement of the return “home,” to the maternal source, they also invoke “disappearance, movement, and indeterminacy,” widely accepted hallmarks of performance art.7 The disappearance of the works remains central to their meaning. They dissolve back into the earth or are lit on fire, turned to ash.

Personal and political history also manifest in Marina Abramovic’s Balkan Baroque (1997), a performance and video installation staged in the basement of the Italian pavilion at the Venice Biennale (Figs. 4 & 5). For six hours each day, over four days, Abramovic sat atop a pile of bloody cattle bones and scrubbed them in a repetitive, obsessive act of cleansing while singing half-remembered folksongs and incantations to herself, in symbolic reference to the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s. Meanwhile, three screens of video projections depicted the artist, performing a disturbing “erotic” dance, in the centre between her mother and father, silently gesturing to Abramovic’s onscreen movements.

Visitors to the exhibition entered a dark and dank room where they were greeted by the foul stench emanating from the animal remains. Roselee Goldberg has observed that after hours of futile scrubbing, Abramovic’s exhaustion was obvious and felt by the audience. Her fatigue recalls, on a much smaller scale, the horrors of war. In her oeuvre, Abramovic has repeatedly subjected her body to intense and ritual-like performances, but in her Balkan works of the 1990s, her actions become connected to a specific past. Steven Madoff observes that the Balkans become an incantation in Abramovic’s mind, summoned and touched by nostalgia, but always with an irreconcilable distance.8

or routine divorced from purpose despite its reinforcement through repetition. In this sense, Abramovic’s performance cannot be labelled as an attempt to relive or keep alive a memory. Rather, the work acknowledges the impossibility and “pastness of memory and time as one element in the picturing of loss.”9 The folk songs, video screens, pile of bones, and copper sinks within the installation, as well as Abramovic herself, are made into memory images, representations, of the lost Balkan home. Yet, the living nature of memory “images” like Abramovic and the physically existing cow bones problematize recollection because they can still act and be

Indeed, as Abramovic recites and sings in Balkan Baroque during the course of her increasing exhaustion, her repeated words lose meaning. Her remembrance becomes gibberish, scrambled, a habit 4 MARINA ABRAMOVIĆ, Balkan Baroque, installation view, 1997. © Marina Abramović.

5 MARINA ABRAMOVIĆ, Balkan Baroque, singing folksongs and weeping on top of cattle bones, 1997. © Marina Abramović.

40 PIPE: UFV’s Visual Arts Journal acted upon. To the extent that Balkan Baroque functions as a memory object,10 the memory is not activated by remembering in the mind through images, but through action, performance, and the involvement of the physical body.

David Elliott has stated that “[t]hroughout her work, Abramovic has constructed a mythology in order to confront the past.”11 This is especially pertinent to her Balkan works, including the large-scale Balkan Erotic Epic constructed out of invented myths and cultural traditions. In Balkan Baroque, there is a discord when Abramovic, a grown woman, sings folk songs and childhood rhymes while sitting atop a heap of blood and bones. Abramovic’s voice carries throughout the basement...

“Hey Kato, hey my treasure, come with me to pick sage...I can’t, master, I can’t. There is no bright moon...”12 and envelopes the space with a dream-like quality. She is located in time, yet timeless and somewhere far away, with her voice becoming ever mantra-like as she grows weary.13 Like Mendieta, Abramovic’s use of the body and references to simple rituals demonstrates the nostalgia for a softer space of the past and a desire to revert back to origins, whether they be collective or individual. Jane Blocker, in speaking of Mendieta, examines Mircea Eliade’s division of the “primitive” and the modern in terms of two different time systems. The primitive society is associated with ritual and the eternal—ideas which are repeatable through time—while time in the modern society progresses linearly in endlessly unique and irretrievable acts.14 Only the modern has a history or, more accurately, the need for one. In an interview from 2005, Abramovic expressed that “the performance is a process” which needs time and that “to have time is to create time in performance.”15 Significantly, her statement suggests the construction of a timeless space in performance, where memory can be perpetually present precisely because of the performative act’s removal from linear time.

The performance work exists in a constructed mythological space, but this space is physically indiscernible from the locus of our daily lives. What is eternal or ephemeral, habit or recollection, is conflated by the performance medium, which may not be considered a medium at all since its “material” is time and space. In this way, performance art—as it has been expressed—complicates the boundary of art and life and, like Mendieta’s sand Siluetas dissolving into sea, allows oppositional notions to bleed into and transfigure each other.

Brisley, in And for today... nothing (1972) and much of his other works, also subjects his body to visceral acts in symbolic evocation of historical (or present) trauma. In And for today... nothing, performed at Gallery House Goethe Institute in London, Brisley submerged himself in a bathtub of blackened water filled with rotting meat and ensuing flies and larvae for two hours each day over the course of two weeks (Fig. 6).

The scene, as described by Brisley, was a dim bathroom with

6 STUART BRISLEY, And for today... nothing, 1972. © Stuart Brisley.

7 STUART BRISLEY, Arbeit Macht Frei, 1972-73. © Stuart Brisley.

the door left slightly ajar so that the viewer, from outside, could only see the rise and fall of a body and experience the awful smell of decaying meat and feeding insects.16 His later film based on this performance is titled Arbeit Macht Frei or “Work Makes You Free,” a phrase emblazoned in many Nazi concentration camps (Fig. 7). Brisley does not reference the specifics of the Holocaust’s history, nor does he have any personal ties to that memory, but alludes to it as a symbol of human decay, both morally and politically. His film represents a “total rejection of what lies behind the title” and “an indescribable humanity” not adequately expressed with words.17 Brisley’s reference to memory is different from that of Mendieta’s and Abramovic’s in that he is not interested in a specific or personal event. Instead, he explores the power of such a collectively traumatic human memory as the Holocaust to gain symbolic meaning. Brisley’s repeated immersion of himself into the black water represents the degradation of war and genocide on a visual and gutturally felt level. In effect, he appropriates history and invents new memory images to refer to what cannot be directly represented, the immense void of trauma, while attempting to enact both in himself and the viewer an empathetic response appropriate to that past.

Art History 41 The moment of performance art is ephemeral. The medium is based on acts and actions of the body, but to isolate it to a romantic notion of transiency is to ignore its other capabilities.

Through the works of Mendieta, Abramovic, and Brisley, I have aimed to show the unique ability of the performance medium to open up possibilities of remembering. The discussion of memory in performance art will inevitably encounter contradictions: that of the present and the past, action and representation, the body and ritual, art and life, all of which ultimately conflate in the performative gesture. Ricœur has identified “the problem of memory” to be “the conquest of temporal distance.”18 It is this distance, between now

Brisley, Stuart. “And for today... nothing, 1972.” The official site of Stuart Brisley. Accessed April 14, 2013. http://www.stuartbrisley.com/ pages/27/70s/Works/And_for_today____nothing/page:7.

and whatever past that attracts us, that performance is especially suited to closing. Memory is what has been lived; performance lives. There is a phenomenological tie between the two which exists stronger than with any other artistic medium. To act in the name of the past is to let memory seep into real experience again, in time and space, rather than remain an image in the mind, and this offers the possibility of closing the distance between memory and the present.

Pejic, Bojana. “Balkan Baroque: Balkan Mind.” In von Furstenberg, Balkin Epic, p. 28.

1 Paul Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, trans. Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), p. 24.

2 Ibid., p. 25.

3 Olga M. Viso, Ana Mendieta: Earth Body, Sculpture and Performance 1972-1985 (Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 2004), p.

49.

4 Ibid., p. 32.

5 Viso, Ana Mendieta, p. 36.

6 Ibid., p. 56.

7 Jane Blocker, Where is Ana Mendieta? (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999), p. 24.

8 Steven Henry Madoff, “The Balkans Unbound,” in Balkan Epic: Marina Abramovic, ed. Adelina von Furstenberg (Milan: Skira Editore S.p.A., 2006), p. 21.

9 Ibid.

10 Madoff, “The Balkans Unbound,” p. 21.

11 David Elliot, “Balkan Baroque” in Marina Abramovic: objects performance video sound, ed. Chrissie Iles (Oxford: The Museum of Modern Art Oxford, 1995), p. 58.

12 Madoff, “The Balkans Unbound,” p. 39.

13 Bojana Pejic, “Balkan Baroque: Balkan Mind,” in Balkan Epic: Marina Abramovic, p. 28.

14 Blocker, Where is Ana Mendieta?, p. 36.

15 Marina Abramovic, Chris Thompson, and Katarina Weslien, “Pure Raw: Performance, Pedagogy, and (Re)presentation,” PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art 28, no. 1 (January 2008): 34, accessed February 26, 2013, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4139995.

16 Stuart Brisley, “And for today... nothing, 1972,” The official site of Stuart Brisley, accessed April 14, 2013, http://www.stuartbrisley.com/ pages/27/70s/Works/And_for_today____nothing/page:7.

17 Ibid.

18 Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, p. 25.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Abramovic, Marina, Chris Thompson, and Katarina Weslien. “Pure Raw: Performance, Pedagogy, and (Re)presentation.” PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art 28, no. 1 (January 2008): 29-50. Accessed February 26, 2013. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4139995.

Blocker, Jane. Where is Ana Mendieta? Durham: Duke University Press, 1999.

Elliot, David. “Balkan Baroque.” In Marina Abramovic: objects performance video sound, edited by Chrissie Iles, 55-73. Oxford: The Museum of Modern Art Oxford, 1995. Published in conjunction with an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, April 9 through July 2, 1995.

Madoff, Steven Henry. “The Balkans Unbound.” In von Furstenberg, Balkin Epic, pp. 18-24.

Ricoeur, Paul. Memory, History, Forgetting. Translated by Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2004.

Viso, Olga M. Ana Mendieta: Earth Body, Sculpture and Performance 19721985. Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 2004. von Furstenberg, Adelina, ed. Balkan Epic: Marina Abramovic. Milan: Skira Editore S.p.A., 2006.

42 PIPE: UFV’s Visual Arts Journal

KENDRA SCHELLENGERG, Buy This., detail, 2013. © Kendra Schellenberg.

Art History 43

VISUAL ARTS Mallory Donen Radiance Dream Janelle Fitz Dan Hurst Rishma Johal Lorena Krause Shuang Liu & Maria VanEwyk Maurice Motut Jessica Niven Candice Okada Shannon Pahladsingh Stewart Seymour Kendra Schellenberg Laura Vis

Visual Arts 45

Human Landscape Mallory Donen

Smooth fine art print 24” x 30” This photograph was an exploration of the lines and forms found in the human figure in order to create a landscape. The first stage of this process begins with photographing fragmented sections of the human body with a large format camera. Next, the 4” x 5” negatives are scanned in order to allow them to be digitally manipulated in Photoshop. By stitching and collaging various sections of the original negative, I am able to produce a smooth, simplified landscape made up of the human form. The photograph allows the viewer to appreciate forms that are both familiar as parts of the human body and, at the same time, are recognizable as something completely new. The unique landscape can create a discomfort in the viewer due to the bizarre and unsettling forms which can be seen as both abject and beautiful. However, it is the unusual quality of the form that is intended to intrigue the viewer’s curiosity.

Visual Arts 47

Curvaceous

Radiance Dream Acrylic on canvas 12” x 17” I’ve been painting for over twenty years and for that entire time, one of my favorite subjects has been the pear. I’ve created pears in collage, watercolor and acrylics. I painted pears for my UFV entrance portfolio.

For this piece, I started with a series of small pears but was unhappy with the result. I then decided to leave the small pears on the canvas, but paint one giant pear incorporating the smaller pears as part of the design.

I have been experimenting for some time with various mark making techniques: combs and scrapers of different sizes, brushes and palette knives. With these, I used a number of acrylic media that allowed me to create glossy transparent layers and see the texture more clearly.

I love vibrant colors with bold design, which will not come as a surprise to people viewing this work. I think art should excite the viewer’s imagination.

Visual Arts 49

Accent

Janelle Fitz Acrylic on canvas 36” x 48” My paintings are inspired by music, but more specifically, the piano.

Music has played a significant part in my life since a young age.

Most of my family was involved with music and it was a common interest that bonded us. I want my paintings to be visually and emotionally appealing, similar to the way music can stimulate an audience. The purpose of my work is to replicate the energy, movement, and beauty that music can evoke.

These paintings served as a chance for me to experiment with abstraction. As a form of artistic expression, abstraction permitted me to emulate feelings of movement, vibrancy, and energy— qualities I emphasized through the use of different textures and layers. I chose a minimal color palette of black, white, and silver.

While the black/white combination provides the simplicity I was trying to achieve, it also allows for a dynamic contrast. The shimmering effect of the metallic silver further accentuates the painting’s vibrancy.

Visual Arts 51

Would go well on a coffee table Dan Hurst

Feathers, glue, and hemp 30 cm x 30 cm x 12 cm I am intrigued by the influence consumerism has on the artist. As an artist, it is tempting to sacrifice authentic expression for something to pay the bills. Creating art with the sole intent of selling it to consumers who envision it on the wall of their living room or think it would go well on their coffee table in order to pay the bills rarely brings out the best work in an artist. I created my sculpture to spark dialogue rather than to become dÊcor in someone’s home.

Visual Arts 53

Reflections

Rishma Johal Digital photograph 86” x 57” All of us embark on different journeys throughout our lives.

Sometimes it’s a journey we always knew we would complete and sometimes it’s not. However, if we stop on this path and take a look at ourselves, we may see a lot more in the mirror than our own reflection. We may encounter multiple aspects of our personality than we ever thought plausible. This image portrays what I see as my reflections. My baby photo is reflected behind one of the mirrors. My mother is included in the photo because she has had a large influence on many of the decisions that I have made in my life, though I have often wandered afield from the paths she wished me to take.

The image is inspired by Ilse Bing’s famous self-portrait from 1931 in which she showed both the technical elements of taking a photograph while depicting herself. Despite some apparent similarities, my work diverges away from Bing’s in terms of its theme and context, conveying a multitude of feelings. The photo portrays the complex relationship that an individual has with one’s self.

Visual Arts 55

Fauna Crowned IX Lorena Krause

Mixed meida 36 cm x 52.5 cm This image is an oil painting with mixed media elements which combines a resolved figuration with surrealistic imagery. Looking at colonial historical precedents for inspiration, I have combined archaeological figures with European influences. I have resynthesized this visual legacy through the aesthetic of altered proportions, incorporating aesthetic elements that invoke European classics and Pre-Columbian archeology, sculpture, design, crafts, techniques and legends.

By combining the ornamental with the symbolic, the human with fauna and the observed with the imagined, Fauna Crowned IX explores the intrinsic relation with the ecological world on female portraiture. I propose a coexistence and interdependence with nature where fauna becomes our most cherished and appreciated living jewel.

Visual Arts 57

Scopophilia

Shuang Liu & Maria VanEwyk Digital print 24� x 36�

Scopophilia, the love of looking, is a natural quality that humans possess. The uncontrollable fascination with beauty and uniqueness that we have attracts our gaze and attention. This is especially relevant in regards to women. Scopophilia becomes the erotic basis for pleasure in looking at another person as an object. Throughout centuries, men in society, especially in the advertisement and film industry, have transformed women into sexualized objects. This male gaze takes away the identity of women, putting them into passive and inferior positions. This work aims to convey a woman’s sense of empowerment and shine light to the fact that women are more equal to men and in control then they think.

Visual Arts 59

Summer Girl Maurice Motut Pencil on paper 18” x 24” Sometimes inspiration comes in a rush, like a broken water pipe, unrelenting and overwhelming. But more often inspiration trickles in drip by drip with large dry spells in between. Then there are other times when inspiration smiles and walks right by on a hot summer sidewalk. I had been having a conversation with a friend about the subject of my next drawing, and how I had no idea what that would be. I was feeling particularly uninspired. Shortly after our conversation, while standing on a street corner, a woman came from the crosswalk, smiled as she passed and continued on down the sidewalk. As my friend watched the woman walking away from us she pointed and said, “Well, there goes your next drawing.” I turned and snapped a quick picture before the woman disappeared around the building on the corner. Of all my drawings, this has become one of my favourites because when I look at it I am reminded of the fleeting nature of inspiration.

Visual Arts 61

Adopt

Jessica Niven Silver gelatin print 8� x 10�

Animal adoption is something that many people consider, but that very few choose to pursue. As a result, many worthy pets go unwanted and are euthanized. I have chosen to photograph these heartbroken animals in hopes to inspire people to consider adoption as a viable option. These animals deserve a happy ending and, even if people are not able to adopt, there are still many ways one can contribute to the welfare of these animals such as volunteering at shelters. They cry, meow and bark whenever someone walks in, but only because they want a loving owner to take them home. The sorrow in their eyes says everything.

Visual Arts 63

Water: Volume I Candice Okada 25 photos 8” x 16” Bottled water is a booming business. Multinational companies are making profitable returns on extracting water from the ground, slapping a label on it and selling it at competitive prices. This “bottled water culture” is very dominant within our society as it represents capitalism and consumption. Water: Volume I is a series of photographs designed to make the audience think about the consumerization of the world’s largest and most valuable natural resource. In North America, bottled water is the second most popular beverage with canned soft drinks placing first. Billions of dollars are profited from water; a product that some people argue should be free to all.

Each bottle of water was photographed from the front (where the primary label is placed) and from the side or back (wherever the barcode was placed). Showing the bottle from two different viewpoints is important as it resembles a “mug shot”. The barcode emphasizes how all the water is labeled and accounted for differently, even though it is essentially the same product. The “mug shot” also serves to reinforce the fact that water is an imprisoned resource. Water: Volume I engages viewers in a dialogue on consumption, marketing and capitalism.

Visual Arts 65

Roadside Constellations Shannon Pahladsingh Digital photography 12” x 11” Light pollution, a relatively modern type of pollution, began in the 19th century with the advent of electric lighting. It occurs when city lights shine upwards and bounce off dust and air particulates, making the sky the sum total of all the light around you and causing the very sky to glow. This “sky glow” becomes almost like an illuminated dome or bubble of light that conceals our view of a true night sky. Ironically, however, many of the city’s lights that cause sky glow resemble exactly what they are blocking out: the stars and constellations.

Constellations in the night sky have historically been very important to humans. They have been used to tell stories, for timekeeping, and navigation. But constellations simply aren’t needed for these reasons today. We have other lights at night for these reasons, such as streetlights. While it may seem that the night sky has no “practical” use today, it in fact does. The night sky continually reminds us of the sublime vastness of our universe, thus humbling us in our fast-paced, modern world. Light pollution is a growing issue today and one that I feel should be addressed before it escalates.

Visual Arts 67

Alcohol: the good, the bad, and the ugly Stewart Seymour Film photography 4� x 5�

Every one of us is touched in some way by alcohol, sometimes by what we have seen or who we know. Alcohol is highly visible in our society. Its presence is often felt at social functions or gatherings, serving its purpose as a social lubricant. Many of us have no issues with simply enjoying a drink. Other times, however, alcohol is a destructive menace which ruins lives, families, and communities.

This piece tries to communicate how ingrained alcohol can be in peoples’ lives. The image is gritty and dirty, to remind us that for some, alcohol is a dependency. I purposely inserted images inside to represent those who are trapped; perhaps it is something they will live with for the rest of their lives.

Visual Arts 69

Rising Ocean tides coming to a city near you!

Stewart Seymour Film photography 4” x 5” This work is as much about my love of film as it is of my concern of one of our greatest challenges facing human kind: climate change.

The Schüfftan process, named after Eugen Schüfftan, was an incamera optical effect used to place actors into miniature sets. A most notable example of this effect was in the film Metropolis (1927) but it is still used to this day. The Schüfftan process consisted of placing a mirror that was partially transparent at an angle to reflect a miniature set into a camera, while the actor was placed on the other side of that mirror. The result is an image that is composited in-camera.

I used this technique to create a photo about a possible future in which oceans may one day flood coastal cities. Due to rising global temperatures, there are already instances of flooding due to a rise in sea levels which has been happening at a rate of 3.2mm per year. Coastal cities such as Miami and Venice have already been dealing with rising ocean tides. Will we be able to make significant changes to our habits in time to combat climate change or will it be too late? How will we adapt when flooded cities are a reality?

Visual Arts 71

Buy This.

Kendra Schellenberg Digital composite 10� x 8�

I am the product of a consumer culture invested in making me hate myself. The media is a driving force in our world and relies on advertising to sustain itself. Advertisers rely on girls such as myself to purchase products like mascara, clothing and diet pills to sustain billion dollar corporations. These companies have a vested interest in generating a cultural concept of beauty that is unreal and unattainable for the average person. Girls with healthy selfesteem do not buy enough beauty products and procedures to keep these multi-million dollar companies in business.

In this series, I chose to use images of models taken from magazines, photos I took of my own surroundings, and old negatives. The models, when inserted into genuine living spaces, seem out of place. Beside them is a pile of beauty products, a reflection on all the stuff that goes with the ideal of beauty they represent. Both the models and the products are presented to us for consumption: we must buy into the ideal of beauty they promise.

Visual Arts 73

Mother

Laura Vis Photograph 16� x 20�

Mother is from a series of five photographs entitled Home. Using a large format camera, I used the double exposure technique as a means to explore and understand the medium of photography. This series of silhouettes represent members of my family such as my mom, sister, boyfriend and myself. The texture within the silhouettes are images of nature taken in Stanley Park and my backyard.

I combined these two objects because my family means a lot to me and it is where I feel at home. I grew up in British Columbia and I will always see this place as my home. I have always loved the outdoors and nature and with this project I was able to bring together a few of my loves.

Within my latest works, I have dealt with the topic of my adoption as a baby and where I feel at home now as a grown up. A few years ago, I visited my birth country of China and I never felt a sense of belonging while I was there. I still felt like an outsider. It became clear to me that Canada, more specifically British Columbia, is where I feel at home and is where I belong.

74 PIPE: UFV’s Visual Arts Journal

Credits 75

Editorial Staff

76 PIPE: UFV’s Visual Arts Journal

David Seymour received his Bachelor of Arts degree in History and Art History from the University of the Fraser Valley in 2015. His commitment to arts and culture is evinced through his active involvement at The Reach Gallery Museum Abbotsford, where he has both worked and served as student representative on the Board of Directors. As Chief Curator of Emerge at The Reach he curated a group exhibition entitled Buy One, Get None: Conformity, Consumer and the Collective Voice, featuring the work of emerging Fraser Valley artists. His academic interests include, but are not limited to: gender and identity politics, class divisions and globalization.

Terrill Smith is a Bachelor of Arts student with a major in Sociology/ Anthropology and an extended minor in Art History. He plans on attending graduate school for Art History, so that he can eventually teach the subject at the post-secondary level. His art historical interests include early 20th century modernist art and architecture, particularly Futurism and the utopian avant-garde movements of Russia and Germany.

Julie Epp is a recent graduate of the UFV Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree.

Her involvement in the arts has been mainly through The Reach Gallery Museum Abbotsford, UFV’s Visual Arts Department, and the Abbotsford Arts Council. She won an Arty Award for Outstanding Post-Secondary Artist in the 2015 Arty Awards, and is a practicing artist, graphic designer, and arts facilitator. Her disciplines include sculpture, illustration, graphics, and photography.

Diana Hiebert earned an Honours Bachelor of Arts degree in Art + Design and minor in English at Trinity Western University in 2015. Diana is curious about many aspects of the arts and is an enthusiastic supporter of culture and community in the Fraser Valley. She is a practicing artist and illustrator with significant experience in exhibition-making from her roles at The Reach Gallery Museum Abbotsford, Metzger Collection, and Langley Centennial Museum.

Credits 77

Would like to extend special thanks to Vicki Bolan, UFV Visual Arts Department Assistant Shaun Carrigg, Marketing & Design Coordinator at The Reach Gallery Museum Abbotsford Dan Hurst, Guest Contributor, Trinity Western University (2013, BA Psychology and Art + Design) Joy Xiang, Guest Contributor, York University (2014, BA Art History)