article

Jasper Johns and His Ordinary Things

Bilge Aydoğan

As a painter, sculptor and printmaker, Jasper Johns (1930 - ) is one of the best-known American’s post-abstract expressionist. His familiar iconic symbols were hailed as essential progenitors of Pop Art and Minimalism. He had his first one-man exhibition in 1958 at the Leo Castelli Gallery and during the year 1961, his picture named “Gray Numbers” won the International Prize at the Pittsburg Biennale. He became famous in the art world almost overnight.

Ballantine

With the description of Kirk Varnedoe: “He is given a grand moment in he sun as the man who comes on the stage in order to slay the demon of Pollock and Kline and De Kooning and open up space for Don Judd and Andy Warhol and Frank Stella, and follows.” (1)

In the middle of 1950’s, Jasper Johns became distant to Abstract Expressionism with a radical decision. He had thought that Abstract Expressionism has macho, aggressive and mannish energy. (2) So he became closer to the less show off feelings and ideas. Using American flag, letters and numbers he constituted an iconography including popular meanings. He described ordinary things, which can easily be obtained.

He started to stick real life objects on his canvas. With this experimental interference, his art seemed to be coded by those objects. It had been over 30 years, when Duchamp’s fountain first appeared. So it means that the spectators had already used to come across the daily life objects.

In this short writing we are going to take one of Johns’ sculpture called “Painted Bronze” and try to look through its iconographic meaning.


Johns’ Cans as a “Couple”
At the end of 1950’s and at the beginning of 1960’s. Jasper Johns started to make sculptures. These sculptures are well known objects like images in his paints. But the difference is, these objects present themselves in more emotional way. Buried melancholy inherent in these works has become much more apparent with it’s symbols.

Target

“To me they seem to parody the macho, beer-drinking, first-fighting culture shared by abstract expressionist at the Cedar Bar, a culture from which Johns’s temperament presumably left him excluded. In a work entitled High School Days, he sculpts a lace-up Oxford shoe and places a circular mirror in the toe, just as 1950s teenage American boys fitted a silver of mirror into the their penny loafers, supposedly to enable them to look up girls skirts.” (3)

No doubt, his one of the most important influence was Marcel Duchamp. Duchamp inspired him in the 1960’s even more than the other artists of his generation. Johns was using daily life objects like Duchamp too, but in a different way. Duchamp’s ready mades represents their selves in the original way of look. Their philosophical background is clear and also conceptual aspect is heavier than Johns’ sculptures.

“That son of a bitch Castelli, You could give him two beer cans and he could sell them.”
Willem de Kooning

According to an often-told story, Jasper Johns heard that the abstract expressionist painter Willem de Kooning, had complained to dealer Leo Castelli. Jasper Johns’ career is unimaginable without the partnership of Leo Castelli, the preeminent gallerist of the era and the artist’s exclusive commercial representative for nearly forty years. It is possible to think that Johns could take De Koonings’ behavior as provocation. He had already been thinking and making sculptures of common objects.

Beer cans appear us on a low high base. They are settled in the same way and their similarity makes us to think that they are industry products. But at first look, it seems like; there are series of brush strokes on the cans. But it is easy to see that, there is illegible writings saying that “American largest selling Ale.” Actually; those beer cans are painted bronze. Jasper Johns gave them a shape first and afterwards, he painted them.

The beer cans label is Ballentine Ale. It is one of the American’s best-known labels. They are also the first breweries to sell canned beer in six packs for home consumption. In the 1940’s and 1950’s Ballantine sponsored the New York Yankees. They later owned the Boston Celtics basketball team for a time. During this time Ballantine Ale was a favorite of many famous American writers. Author John Steinbeck was featured in an ad for Ballantine Ale in 1953 and Ernest Hemingway did the only commercial endorsement of his life for Ballantine Ale. Other famous Ballantine fans included Marilyn Monroe, Joe DiMaggio, Olympian Jim Thorpe, boxer Rocky Marciano, and Frank Sinatra.

Whenever these beer cans are discussed, most of the people like to talk about the play between what is real and what is fiction, or where reality ends and art begins. This is the conceptual way of look. But is it possible to figure out a private meaning as well? Could it be only based on a joke or can we find another explanation for these two beer cans. Outwardly, John’s ordinary objects are placed between dada and pop images, and there is no need to say that they have a narrative expression.

Flag (1955)

Those objects are also carrying symbolic and iconographic senses. We can say that; they are related to human and human relations. The objects’ sizes are strengthening their way of look. But on the other hand the pictorial expression is still catching one’s eyes...




We can easily give a meaning to these objects. It is related to American kind of life style and also consign to abstract expressionism’s macho attitude. But there is a small detail; one beer can is opened and the other one is closed. The one, which is closed, represents virginity or with another saying virgin (not touched) and by this evaluation the other beer can represents exactly the opposite meaning. But this diversity doesn’t make any sense to the spectators at the first sight. Maybe the three rings could be a clue for us. Three rings symbolize "Purity, Body, and Flavor", it was inspired from the wet rings left on a table by Peter Ballantine (brewer).
These small differences on the cans make a sense. We can evaluate this sign as referring relationship between individuals. Depending on their similarity, we can say that they have same status. In other words, this sameness could represent the same sexuality. If we make it related to Jasper Johns life, this conclusion could appear easily:

During his first years in New York, Jasper Johns was working in a bookstore and thinking about being a poet. In 1953 he met Robert Rauschenberg and decided to focus on painting. He started to live with Rauschenberg at the same building. They saw and discussed each other’s work on daily basis. They lived as a “couple” over eight years before they got separated.

“Pollock and de Kooning had the Cedar Bar; Johns and Rauschenberg had each other. In a sense, Johns and Rauschenberg were almost a world unto themselves during the first year of their relationship” (4)






Bibliography

Art in Theory 1900-2000,”Jasper Johns Interview with David Sylvester”, ed.Charler Harrison&Paul Wood, Blacwell Publ., 2002.
Cooper, Emanuel, “Jasper Johns: Ordenary Things”, Contemporary Art Magazine, issue:4 Londra, 1996
Dorment, Richard, www.theartnewspaper.com/artcritic/level1/riviewarchive/1996/may_15_1996_main.html
Kaufman, Jason Edward, Interview: Kirk Varnedoe of MoMA, “Jasper Johns: More than the Slayer of Abstract Expressionist Giants”, The Art Newspaper, Oct. 1996.
Katz Jonathan D., “Jasper Johns’ Alley Oop: On Comic Strips and Camouflage www.yale.edu/lesbiangay/pages/academic
www.falstaffbrewing.com/ballantine_ale.htm



Dipnotlar

(1)The Art Newspaper, Interview: Kirk Varnedoe of MoMA, “Jasper Johns: More than the Slayer of Abstract Expressionist Giants”, Oct. 1996, p16-17.


(2) Emmanual Cooper, Contemporary Art Magazine, issue: 4, London, 1996, p: 53-57.


(3)Richard Dorment, www.theartnewspaper.com/artcritic/level1/riviewarchive/1996/may_15_1996_main.html


(4) Jonathan D. Katz, “Jasper Johns’ Alley Oop: On Comic Strips and Camouflage www.yale.edu/lesbiangay/pages/academic

article

Barcelona and Its Contemporary Art Struggle

Maria del Carmen Chirinos

With different results, the Loop and Swab art fairs tried to give an identity to the contemporary art market of a city characterized by the permanent visual confrontation between bourgeois tradition and striking modernity.

Despite the constant flow of artistic initiatives in Barcelona, one does not have the feeling that something big is just about to happen, but the certainty that too many ideas converge at the same time without having an accurate vortex.  In fact, after taking a look at Barcelona’s architecture, art galleries and street art, visitors get the strong impression that the city’s contemporary art personality remains in some stage close to adolescence. In an attempt to change such view, the Loop and Swab contemporary art fairs, both private and young initiatives, intended to promote the evolution of the contemporary art market in Barcelona. Even though these fairs were not able to strike Barcelona’s art setting, they were certainly ambitious projects that promise to accomplish such goal in the future through the development of better strategies.

In its 5th edition, Loop 2007 has demonstrated to be the art event that best identifies with the artistic expression in Barcelona. Specialized in video art, Loop does not only improves and develops new strategies each year in regards to the selection of the works exhibited, but also in what is definitely its main and most demanding mission: To promote video art among art collectors.

The selection of the works exhibited was in charge of the fair’s committee formed by recognized gallery owner Anita Beckers, and private collectors Rolf Hoff and Jean-Conrad Lemaître.  More than 180,000 visitors, who attended the 146 spaces displayed around Barcelona, as well as significant profits from art sales, showed that there is indeed a growing interest for a specific kind of art, which format still causes skepticism in gallery owners in need of commercial securities. Certainly, this represents a remarkable accomplishment, since the art collection practice in Spain cannot yet be compared to the one in Germany or Switzerland –not to mention the United States.

Of all the art presentations, it is important to highlight the poetic, visual material of Chinese artist Chen Chieh-Jen (Chi Wen Gallery, Taipei), and the installation of impeccable technological quality presented by Sandy White and Ivan Örkény (Senda Gallery, Barcelona).  The magical, spatial exploration of Wang Ya-Hui´s piece, Sunshine on Tranquility (Grand Siécle Gallery, Taipei), and the weight of The room of my Negativity, by Cuban artist Carlos Garaicoa (Habana Gallery), were among the fair’s prize winners.

Introduced as a fresh and innovative project by architects Emilio Diez-Gascón, Marina Diez-Gascón and Fernando Trías, the first edition of the Swab art fair aspired to be at the same level of the Frieze fair in London and Pulse in New York.  Less crowded and animated than Loop, Swab took the risk of supporting young and innovative production (most of the galleries invited were in an international art fair for the first time), while trying to keep high quality standards. However, Swab will have to assure a stronger presence of art collectors in its future editions, in order to guarantee the fair’s economic success.

As Marina Diez-Gascón mentioned, “Swab’s purpose is to merge the new generation of Spanish collectors with the mentality of other countries. I am referring to the importance of searching for an individual taste in art, instead of having someone suggesting what art piece to buy.”  It is certainly a slippery objective in a city like Barcelona, where idiosyncrasy constantly debates between the fickleness of European massive tourism and the power of creativity born from diversity. A conflict that will probably only find its way of expression in the continuity of projects like Loop or Swab.  

article

The Mortal Photographs at The Divine Altar

Dr. Kubilay Akman

American photographer Joel-Peter Witkin (Brooklyn, New York, 1938) provides tiring images with the lightest expression. We are coming face to face with the complicated problematic clew on life, death, art history, religions, body, pain and pleasure while watching his works of art.

As my Spanish colleague Joan Fontcuberta stated (the editor of Photovision magazine) in this quarter century the world transformed from the “absurd” age into the “horror” age.** Certainly the contagion of American style extremenesses through mass media has a big role about this transformation. We do not surprise to the new perversions, extreme socialities anymore. We hear new examples of perversion and extreme social situations everyday and almost we came to the position that never shocked by them. TVs and newspapers are full of the horror pictures.

Maybe the art of Witkin is basically fed by the transformation of social/cultural atmosphere from “absurd” into “horror”. Behind the unreal halos a mirror is directed to the strange, uncanny and dark sides of the world we live in, with a very stylized form.

I suppose Witkin who composes dead people, extraordinary bodies, transvestites, different fetishistic objects and animals in his photographs is influenced by being a member of American society as well as his individual experiences about his orientation on the extreme, radical and mortal things. He witnessed a traffic accident near home while he was a little boy still. He saw the head of a girl sundered and rolled. It was a scene, which appalled the photographer of the future. Again in these years his father showed him some photographs from Life and Look magazines, Daily Mirror and News. There is a communication between them that is performed through glances without words. His father who is a glazier never can take photos like them. He wished his son would get into this field one day for his place. And the kid responded his father as said “yes, I will do” with his glances.

Later, his experiences in several states of America and European Countries during his military service (in the first half of 60s) as a photo-technician and documentary photographer would affect on determining his artistic way. Witkin took the photos of soldiers who died in traffic accidents and suicides in this period. The deaths he witnessed did not disturb him. According to the artist not death, the human capacity to institutionalize violence is disturbing in reality.

Witkin who first studied sculpture at the Union School of Art (New York), later studied photography and art history at the New Mexico University (Albuquerque), researched on poem at the Columbia University with a scholarship, succeeded combining his strong academic background with a mystic sensitivity. The artist traveled in India in his youth years to learn Yoga nad he has saved his interest to the Eastern religions always. Witkin thinks it is sorrow that in our age “we are separated from the wonder, mystery and fate sensation a little more every day.” Because of this reason in the works of Witkin who satirizes the Western masterworks there is a religious/mystic part always. He considers his art as a vehicle for his individual purification and entreaties will be offered to God on the divine altar when he will die. At the same time, These works also may be considered as critical elements that take their power from a religious argumentation as well as deconstruction of all the art history against the hypocrisy of modern societies that emphasizes continuously through the advertisement culture what is beautiful, excellent and smooth. Also his works are humorous in their fictionalness. According to Witkin “humor is the main human feature that make possible to survive. “If people cannot see a humorous part in the things, the great part of their approach to reality may diminish.”

Witkin thinks that while living “every minute is a decision moment. There is a moral code in the heart of each of us, this is a question to find the fate and the destination of the fate. Life is an examination place. It should be a great examination area.” The artist carries the conscious of this examination in his mind always. His works are the projections of this inner accounting, spiritual voyages and investigation. A technical investigation companies to the spiritual investigation of Witkin. He makes consciously deformations in the chemical structure of the films (he still continues to use the traditional techniques in the photography field which is digitalized more and more) and on the prints. The aesthetic values of the photographs he created not emanated from the compositions they include. His technical preferences are permanent parts of his style. For example, we can take the paintings of Mustafa Horasan to see how the compositions of Witkin become different things when they are separated from their technical specialties or from photography as a genre. As it is known, Horasan took some photographs of Witkin as models and made a series of painting based on them. In my opinion, these works have an independent artistic value certainly apart from their models. But they are totally different things now, before everything they are pictures and have a pictorial value. I believe that the emotion they make audience felt is completely different although to measure that kind of thing is impossible.

***

When Witkin takes a transvestite and locate in the position of Venus or makes a dwarf Daphne as turn back and struggle with the art, mitology and thought tradition of Western Europe and especially Ancient Greek maybe he is inspired by the anger feeling against this tradition that has a social and philosophical background as well as by personal sexual obsessions. I do not know how it is true but as I heard Joel-Peter Witkin had his first sexual experience with a hermaphrodite. Absolutely the psychiatrists and psychoanalysts would accept the trauma of the first experience in the mind of the young man. This one and similar experiences might cause his preference to tell persons with “abnormal” sexualities and their practices often. The work of none of artists is disconnected from the social contexts of artists and their experiences. This process works even for the most sophisticated and indirectly artistic productions. I suppose in the example of Witkin the connection situation between artistic expression ways and social practices is very apparent.

A life time full of investigation of strange, irrational, pervert, extraordinary individuals to include in the photographic compositions; conversion of morgues into studios; construction of images where the extreme become an ordinary and daily subject... Why? This is not a proper question. Can not be Witkin orientated to produce that kind of works with the same reason why authors construct the same images in the literary level, directors make horror and night mare movies, these extraordinary pictures are illustrated in holly scriptures, official documents, newspaper pages and TVs, or, why we examine the photographs of Witkin with the slightest detail and open his albums page to page with enthusiasm? Consequently, if we continues to look at the same display, the elements that have seduced Witkin and us are the same. So the question of “why” loses its ontological background.

*Look Photovision, Madrid, issue:19

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One Among Several – The Traditional Gaze Seduced:

Toward A More Complex Understanding of Eros in Modernism

Dr. Gerry Coulter

I. Introduction
I would like to see feminist art historians, critics, and theorists become more sensitive to the philosophical difficulties of attempting to break down authoritative modes of analysis (the 1970’ and 1980’s models of feminist critical practice), while retaining a political thrust in our practice. That is, we want to argue for certain "ways of seeing" (as John Berger would have it) but without legislating these ways as the only ways. We want to be forceful, passionate, and politicized without sliding into prescriptions... We might be more flexible, acknowledging when our models no longer work, rather than trying to hang on to them at the cost of blinding ourselves to new kinds of visual culture and critical practice (Amelia Jones). [1]

1. Renoir Elongated Nude, 1902

The exhibition Eros in Modern Art [2] can be read in a number of ways. A straight-forward content analysis would reveal that the vast majority of art works on display (around 93%) were made by men. Among these works one could also make a strong case that the presence of works such as Renoir’s Elongated Nude, Renoir’s Flying figure or Van Dongen’s Young Girl are classic examples of the traditional male/patriarchal gaze of Western art as it exerted its influence on modern artists. It might even be possible to make a feminist inspired case that a significant number of the works on display are products of that gaze.

Indeed, an endless debate could be invested in the wisdom behind the selection and exclusion of works in this show. For example the curious exclusion of Sylvia Sleigh’s The Turkish Bath or Prudence Heward’s self portrait Girl Under a Tree [3] ).

I am supportive of gender sensitive readings of this show as long as these are also aware of one of the “new directions in critical practice” present in this show, of the kind Amelia Jones refers to (above).

2. Rodin Flying Figure, 1891

3. Kees Van Dongen. Fille Nue, 1907.

Specifically, I wish to draw attention to the Eros exhibition as a show which containing multiple narratives on modern and postmodern art. The curators of this show seek to deepen the complexity of understanding eros in modern art by placing non-traditional narratives alongside of the traditional heterosexual male centered one. This means that the telling both old and new stories is important to Eros. One of the ironic outcomes of this effort, and it is one striking success of Eros, is that when the old male centered view is reduced to but one of many narratives, it can be appreciated as just one “way of seeing” eros. Such a show is both the product of, and a further challenge to, feminized understandings. Foucault’s question: “What matter who’s speaking”/painting? is unavoidable because – as this show illustrates – it also matters greatly who is listening/viewing.

4. Sylvia Sleigh The Turkish Bath, 1973

I begin by discussing works from the show which are easily understood as representatives of the traditional male centered view of art and the male gaze (Renoir, Rodin, van Dongen). I move from these to less certain works by other male artists of the day which can be understood as both part of that same limited narrative, and at the same time, as part of a challenge to that traditional view. Following this I examine works in the show which come from more contemporary sources and bring a level of complexity to thinking about eros in modernism. Finally, I look at works in the show which challenge feminism to embrace a multiplicity of views of eros, including the traditional one as but one among several.

II. The Despised Works of Modernism?

The world no longer looks the way it did before feminism. [4] Contemporary curatorial practice can no longer take place outside of feminist thought or audiences unaware of gender sensitive perspectives. One of the most interesting conclusions I have taken from Eros is that the show’s curators are convinced that visitors to the show are feminized subjects. This is something that the curators were willing to engage at Basel by the ordering of works in the exhibit.

As one entered the Eros in Modernism show two of the first works that were encountered were arch exemplars used by feminist critics of the male gaze of modernism: Renoir’s Elongated Nude and Rodin’s Flying Figure. Both works fit into a tradition of presenting the female body for the (assumed) male spectator and as such have long been targets of feminist art criticism. Before long, one is greeted by other works that can be fitted neatly into a more traditional feminist criticism of the male gaze (such as Van Dongen’s Nude Girl), which are also presented without any of the problematizing didactic text one might have expected from less confident curators.

5. Isoda Korjusai Schunga c 1765-88

6. Emile Nolde Point of Madness, 1919

Passing through the first four rooms of the exhibition we are challenged to recall recent art history as a question is silently posed by the presentation of the works: “do the curators expect us to accept such works unproblematically given everything that has been said and written about the male gaze in Western art in recent times?” Of course not – and the very fact you are thinking this is the first step in the very subtle engagement the curators of this show wish to make. Thirty years ago the curators, not expecting as much of their audience, could easily have been expected to play a greater role by way of didactic text. [5] Today’s feminized consumer of art and art history coming to vital sites in the art world (such as the Beyeler Foundation), are treated with greater respect. Questions such as: “do they expect us to accept Rodin and Renoir or Van Dongen (and I have long loved Van Dongen’s expressionist eroticism) as unproblematic representations of Eros?” come readily to mind. As I slowly made my way through the first few rooms burdened with my question, I met other works which only deepened my dis-ease with the possible goals of the curators. The curators had me where they wanted me when I passed beyond Renoir, Rodin and van Dongen, into rooms with representations of traditional male dominance in sexuality such as Isoda Korjusai’s Schunga, or Emile Nolde’s Point of Madness (which follows a Toulouse-Laurtrecian re-presentation of women for male consumers, in this case in a night club). Prudence Heward was certainly on this Canadian’s mind as was the German expressionist Paula Modersohn-Becker’s Self Portrait, as she was a European contemporary of Nolde. Surely if the curators were seeking to fully problematize the traditional narrative works like this which are well known to the international artistic community would have been included. [6]

7. Paula Modersohn-Becker Self Portrait, 1906

8. Prudence Heward. Girl Under A Tree (1927)

Passing beyond the works of Korjudsai, Nolde, (and others like them) I began to form two possible responses to the exhibition: 1) A kind of disappointed anger at the curators if the dominance of traditional understandings of eros continued, and 2) a growing awareness that a trap had been set by curators in an attempt to evoke anger – only to allow the works to assuage that anger as the visitor passed further into the exhibition. It would not be didactic texts that would be used to problematize these works – it would be the entire show, the art works themselves taken as a relational whole, that would problematize not merely a few works, but rather, the entire traditional narrative of modernism.

Modern art contains many expressions of eros several of which were valued by the curators of this exhibition. As it turns out, the feminized subject, in the opinion of the curators (and myself after seeing the show), is perfectly able to accept such works as expressions of eros when they are set in the context of a more complex and diverse set of narratives than the traditional modernist understanding of itself would allow. By stacking a large number of traditional works in the early rooms of the show, the curators succeeded in raising an awareness of diversity, multiplicity, and complexity, by their very absence. This is why I say the curators were assuming a feminized gallery going visitor who would ask precisely these questions. In the next section I examine some of the works in this exhibition that add many layers of complexity to the modernist narrative on itself by doing precisely this.

III. A Layer of Complexity
As long as women’s art is treated as an ‘exotic other’ it will continue to be marginalized. Also, it is high time that men’s images, which have been one of the primary ways through which both men and women have formulated their ideas about the female, start to be reexamined in relation to the ever increasing body of art by women which challenges male perception (Judy Chicago, 1998). [7]

9. Franz von Stuck. The Kiss, 1895

10. Felicien Rops The Visit, 1878

The old patriarchal modernist narrative embraced and constructed the view of eros we find in the works of Renoir, Rodin, Van Dongen or Nolde (above) – works in which we can argue that a relatively straight-forward understanding of eros is represented. Other artists present however, such as Rops, von Stuck, Klimt, Scheile, and Foujita served to add a layer of complexity to the stories being told. I would add that I would not be disturbed by someone arguing that these very works actually deepened the showing of the traditional gaze. It is for this reason why I would have liked to see works such as the Heward and the Modersohn-Becker included as these works add impressive female representations of eros to the dialogue. Such works allow us to go beyond the traditional male dominant modernist narrative which, as it turns out, was never so certain or unproblematic. Indeed, to not look for complexity within this very narrative is to be seduced a view of its simplicity –
always a dangerous position to occupy in a thoughtful forum of the arts today such as Beyeler.

11. Gustav Klimt. Sitting Woman With Thighs Spread, 1917

12. Alphonse Mucha. La Trappistine

In these less certain works by Rops, von Stuck, Klimt, Scheile or Foujita we discover works that can be fit into one of at least two narratives. If we want to settle for a less demanding reading, one much more in line with modernism’s long held self understanding (and ironically akin to some 1970s and 1980s feminist readings), one finds five works very close to the Renoir, Rodin and van Dongen (above). Such a view could see these works as exemplars of the male gaze – a classic scene of women masturbating for the male pornographic gaze (Rops and Klimt); a sphinx devouring an unwitting man (von Stuck); and young
female lovers presented for a presumed male viewer (Scheile and Foujita) although in the later two cases this is a much more difficult case to make. Indeed, if one were out to make the more simple case as a curator why not bring in works such as Mucha’s La Trappistine (the classic view of woman as evil temptress – see illustration 12 above) not included in this show?

13. Egon Scheile Women Embracing, 1911

14. Leonard Tsugouharu Foujita The Two, Friends, 1926

At a more challenging level, we can see the presence of the works by Rops, von Stuck, Klimt, Scheile and Foujita, as evidence of a curatorial awareness of the need to problematize the traditional patriarchal views from deep within the history of modernism. Whatever else may be present in these works, and all works of art can be read from perspectives other than the traditional, we can also see sensitive explorations of women loving women and woman in the dominant role in the one of the five works in which a male is present at all. In the other four works, women – although painted in each case by a man – speak also to the non-necessity of the male in the experience of eros. Indeed, the presence of Klimt’s masturbating young woman makes a nice parenthesis to a work by David Hockney (Mo Nude, see illustration 15) which appears later in the show. Both are artistic rendering of perfectly natural expressions of the auto-erotic. Further, the presence of the Hockney forces us to return to simplistic readings of the Klimt while asking the question “what matter who is speaking/ painting?” It would matter very much I think if the Klimt appeared in this show without the Hockney (or a similar rendering of male autoeroticism) and this is precisely how the curators of this show allow the works to deepen, complexify, and problematize our perspective on them. The Beyeler Foundation shows works at a level beyond simple readings as the internal dialogue between the works demands.

15. David Hockney. Mo Nude, 1968

The later rooms in the show continue to introduce significant complexity in the multiple views of eros present. This is, I think, an indication that the curators of this show understand seduction a form of challenge to power. Seduction is present in the Eros show as non traditional perspectives challenge and eventually overturn the dominance of the masculine. Seduction is not a place where women are to be located in relation to men as evil temptresses (as in the Mucha which was excluded from this exhibition) precisely because such a work has nothing to do with eros. Indeed, a Baudrillard-inspired reading of von Stuck ‘s The Kiss brings to the fore the power of the feminine over the masculine (in a reading where men and women each possess the masculine and the feminine). This links seduction to an understanding of reversibility where women have long held a privileged position in confronting and reversing male power and dominance. While some feminists may remain uncomfortable with this reading , [8] feminism itself can be seen as the most seductive of contemporary theories – and therefore, not surprisingly, as the most successful of contemporary theories. Von Stuck’s painting can be read in this light as a feminine reversal of the masculine dominant role in modernist art (whatever his own intentions might have been as an artist). Likewise, Gustav Klimt’s Sitting Woman With Thighs Spread, Egon Scheile’s Women Embracing, and Leonard Tsugouharu Foujita’s The Two Friends can be read as sensitive and powerful reversals of the male as he is thrust outside of the frame and made redundant by the woman’s ability to give pleasure to other women and herself. Of course a traditionally-minded male spectator would enjoy Klimt’s young woman in an objectifying manner (as might a lesbian viewer – for we all objectify, at least to some extent, people to whom we are attracted), but the Scheile and Foujita deeply problematize the traditional gaze. If the Klimt were seen as a work akin to pornography, as some might argue – the Scheile and Foujita pose the women’s subjectivity in a way that works to compromise an objectifying gaze. Such is the power of reversibility and seduction on works such as these in art history. [9] I think this is the kind of re-reading of male works in light of feminist practice and art historical analysis that Judy Chicago is desirous of in the quotation which opens this section.

Before moving on I should refer to another curious omission from the show – the work of Tamara Limpicka. Limpicka’s lesbian-erotic figures have long made a powerful challenge to traditional male dominated notions of eros. In any event, the works of Klimt, Scheile, and Foujita which do make it into the exhibition, work to deepen the problematization of the limited version of the modernist narrative beyond the earlier efforts of Rops and von Stuck although they do not excuse the paucity of women artists in the overall exhibition. This of course brings us to the question: What is the place of women in the Eros exhibition?

16. Tamara Limpicka The Two Friends, 1923

17. Tamara Limpicka Kizette, 1926

IV. Women Artists in Eros in Modernism
While Eros in Modernism works to encourage alternative readings of modernism (including feminist perspectives), it fails to present a sufficient
number of women artists. Among those included are Merit Oppenheim who
appears twice: once as a subject of Man Ray’s Untitled photograph of 1930 [10] ,
and a second time as an artist in her work Mona Lisa’s Eye of 1967. Stunningly
absent however is Oppenheim’s delicious surrealist-lesbian icon, Object, Breakfast in Fur, which was so adored by Andre Breton. Several works of Louise Bourgeois find their way into this exhibition as does a photograph of her by Mapplethorpe in which she is holding Fillette. There is also work on display from Valerie Export (above), Cindy Sherman, Marlene Dumas, Rosemarie Trockel, Rebecca Horn, and Pipilotti Rist.

18. Valerie Export Still photograph from the action: Genital Panic, 1969

19. Robert Mapplethorpe Christopher Holly,1981

20. Louise Bourgeois Fillette, Sweeter Version, 1968/1999

21. Man Ray Erotique Violée, 1933

22. Meret Oppenheim Object: Breakfast in Fur, 1936

We should recognize that some part of the explanation for the under representation of women artists rests with a lack of works to show. It was simply too risky for women artists of early modernism to represent eros in their work. It was the 1920s before two women occupy a table in a Parisian café without a male chaperone and not be considered prostitutes. Still, many great works of eros by women artists do not appear in this show. Along with the works of

Lempicka and Oppenheim already mentioned, where is the work of
Heward, Modersohn-Becker, Alison Watt, or Kay Sage to name a few (not to
mention many contemporary women photographers). In a show that does challenge the traditional masculinist narrative so well, and a show that includes the work of seven women artists, these works still represent only 6 percent of works in the show which are reproduced in the catalogue: (10 of 170 by my count), and just under 7 percent of artists whose works were included in the show (7 of 97 by my count). So how does Eros in Modernism challenge traditional views of eros in modern art?

23. Marlene Dumas Porno Blues, 1993

V. Challenging the Traditional View of Eros

Despite the exclusion of several women artists who have dealt with eros in their work, I must also acknowledge the success of this exhibition in challenging the traditional modernist narrative in important ways. The works of Robert Mapplethorpe and David Hockney (above) play no small role in this challenge. Here is the male as object of the male gaze (at minimum) and the inclusion of the traditionally excluded gay face of modernism. Lucy Lippard has pointed out that it matters very much who is being represented by whom and then looked upon by whom. This has been one of the more significant contributions of feminist scholarship in which writers such as Lippard and Griselda Pollock have participated. Why then would we not include the traditional despised works of the male gaze such as Renoir, Rodin and van Dongen alongside those of Mapplethorpe, Hockney, Valerie Export and Louise Bourgeois? Indeed, the traditional works in the show allow us to see the diversity of modern art through the diversity of the gazes present in this show. Given the success of feminism and women artists in forcing a revision in art history, we can no longer make assumptions about the “way of seeing” of the person viewing an art work. If we cannot accept the Renoir or the Rodin on gendered grounds, then what are we to do with the Mapplethorpe or the Hockney? (assuming that the viewer is not Jessie Helms). The irony of inclusivity in the contemporary is that Renoir’s view or Rodin’s is not longer so easily despised as in 1970s or 1980s feminist criticism, but is reduced to being one of many views of eros. Renoir and Rodin’s understanding of eros, challenged as it is by Mapplethorpe or Export, is neither superior nor inferior than its challengers. Further, if Rodin’s Flying Figure is to be despised because it objectifies the female figure’s sexual organs, what are we to do with Louise Bourgeois Fillette (Sweeter Version)? The works of Renoir, Bourgeois, Rodin, van Dongen, Mapplethorpe, Klimt, Hockney are in this show because such diverse works should be in a show called Eros in Modernism. If we are to object to the van Dongen or the Klimt shown above, then what are we to do with Hockney’s Mo Nude? The strength of this show is that it is as diverse as it is and the dominant perspective is pushed to the margins where all perspectives rest in postmodern discourse.

Works such as the Renoir or Rodin that a majority of feminists have understood to be sexist may well be understood in a different manner by a lesbian subjectivity. The next lesbian or bisexual viewer may have a reaction much more in line with that of the majority of earlier feminist critics. Eros then goes some distance as a show that includes feminist critique of art history and curatorial practice although it does need to show more women artists. Eros, while presenting the traditional narrative as just one narrative among many, including sensitivity to gender and sexual diversity, challenges tradition by showing it to be but one view. While doing this Eros asks some interesting questions which also challenge feminism today in serious manner. To do this we also need to look at other works on display: Richter’s Student, Bonnard’s L’Eau de Cologne, Picabia’s Upright Nude Model, and Newton’s photograph for Playboy.

VI. Further Complexity
The feeling that I was to be subjected to a thoroughly traditional understanding of eros in modernism began to dissipate before I was half way through the show. To end my assessment of this exhibition I wish to look at four works which were on display viewing them as a challenge to feminism to embrace the kind of diversity accomplished by the curators of this show.

24. Pierre Bonnard L’Eau de Cologne, 1908

25. Francis Picabia Upright Nude Model, 1941

Over the past two decades one of the strongest areas of growth for feminist approaches has been an embrace of sexual diversity. Someone interested in pursuing a gender or sex-based criticism of modern art is typically prepared to accept the work of gay and lesbian artists such as Mapplethorpe or Meret Oppenheim. I do not anticipate many feminists objecting to my criticism of Eros for its exclusion of Oppenheim’s work or my endorsement of the exhibition for including Foujita’s rendering of the female to female experience of eros. “But just how far are we expected to go” some feminists might ask “in embracing multiple narratives given the specific history of art in the west?”. According to this show, and I do not think it a bad thing, we must be prepared to go all the way. I found myself adopting a position in support of this show after having seen it all that would have surprised me after passing through only the first four rooms where my feminist sensitivities were aroused.

26. Gerhard Richter Student, 1967

27. Helmut Newton American Playboy, 1989

The challenge to feminism, and it is one that 21st century feminism is well prepared to embrace, is for a show like Eros to appeal to multiple understandings and representations of Eros. The deep irony of this is that works that would have been unacceptable twenty-five years ago can now see the light of day in such exhibitions. If we are to embrace Mapplethorpe as bringing a certain equality of the image to Eros, how can we exclude Richter’s Student? Similarly the work of an artist from an earlier time such as Bonnard or Picabia may be seen as one more expression of eros. Finally, the Helmut Newton photograph extends the tradition of von Stuck to a place where the female may be presented as dominant in an contemporary context and be taken as just one more view of Eros. By the time I had reached Picabia’s upright model I had come to understand that something very different was happening at Eros – such a work could be appreciated simply as an expression of eros. What made my experience of the Picabia truly interesting was the presence of two young women standing in front of it who had been there when I entered this room. As I approached them one of the young women said “Isn’t she sexy?” The other young woman replied: “she’s perfect”. I hope everyone who had the privilege to be in the presence of all of these works (many of which are hidden away in private collections and rarely seen), had the same feeling in front of the Picabia, the Man Ray photograph of Oppenheim, the Hockney, the Mapplethorpes and so on. I also understand that given the particular histories which have shaped certain individual subjectivities that my view may not be shared.

VII. Conclusion
For me, the Eros exhibition is wrapped in a series of complex and evolving challenges in the art world at the present time. [11] It is far from a perfect show as I have pointed out, but it does contain both an affirming response to the challenge of feminist art scholarship and at the same time, not surprisingly, returns a certain challenge to feminism – one that this feminist accepts as fair although other feminist critics may not. The effect of Eros for me is that it makes an important contribution to the decentering of the traditional male gaze in such a manner that this gaze is reduced to simply one more point of view. Ironically this places us in a position where some of the most despised works (by earlier feminist critics) of traditional male artists come to occupy a new place of value alongside expressions of eros from formerly excluded groups. To state this empirically by way of three examples from the show itself, if we are to view Robert Maplethorpe’s photograph of Christopher Holly (1981) as a non offensive work, then we must look anew at Renoir’s Elongated Nude of 1902. Similarly, if we are to positively value Louise Bourgeois Fillette (Sweeter Version) or David Hockney’s Mo Nude as exemplars of contemporary visions of eros, then we will have to look again at Rodin’s Flying Figure (1891) and Kees Van Dongen’s Nude Girl (1907) as not the story of Eros in modernism, but as simply one story in the multiple stories that shape Eros in modern art. This is perhaps the greatest achievement of the Eros in Modernism exhibition at Basel this past winter and it is a striking outcome of the success of feminism in its engagement with art and art history that could not have been foreseen in the 1970s. Eros in Modernism is a show that is the product of the success of feminist thought in art scholarship and curatorial practice and it is also a challenge to the continued evolution of feminist thought.

All men and women have a gaze just as all of us have desire. I sincerely hope we can move quickly to a place where the multiplicity of eros may be better appreciated inside and outside of the exhibition halls of the art world. Eros in Modern Art, for all of its warts, can be read as having helped us to take one more step in that direction and it is here that it thoroughly seduces the traditional narrative.

Endnotes [add one for each work from other sources] [1] [1] Amelia Jones (Pilkington Chair Professor in the History of Art, University of Manchester, England) in “Feminism and Art, Nine views: A Panel Discussion, in Art Forum, October, 2003: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_2_42/ai_109023344

[2] The Exhibition Eros In Der Kunst Der Moderne took place at the Beyeler Foundation in (Riehendorf) Basel, Switzerland from October 8, 2006 through February 18, 2007. The exhibition contained over 200 works by modern and postmodern artists including: Araki, Arp, Attersee, Bacon, Balthus, Beckmann, Belmer, Blumenfeld, Bonnard, Bourgeois, Brassai, Brauner, Breton, Cezanne, Clemente, Cocteau, Corinth, Dali, Degas, Delvaux, Djurberg, Dongen, Drtikol, Dubuffet, Duchamp, Dumas, Eisen, Ernst, Fischl, Foujita, Freud, Giacometti, Groz, Hasenböhler, Herzmanovsky-Orlando, Hockney, Hodler, Holzer, Horn, Indiana, Khnopff, Kiefer, Kirchner, Klee, Klein, Klimt, Koons, Korjusai, Kubin, Lebel, Leger, Lehmbruck, Lictenstein, Manet, Mapplethorpe, Masson, Matisse, Miro, Modigliani, Morris, Moser, Mucha, Mueller, munch, Nolde, Oppenheim, Pascin, Picabia, Picasso, Raetz, Rainer, Ray, Renoir, Richter, Rist, Rodin, Rops, Rühm, Scheile, Schuntscho, Sherman, von Stuck, Toulouse-Lautrec, Trockel, Unglee, Unbekanner Künstler, Export, Vallotton, Vaszary, Wesselmann, and Weston. 170 of the works on display are available in a full colour catalogue: Eros in Der Kunst Der Moderne, Ostfildern, Germany: Hatje-Cantz, 2006 (ISBN:978-3-7757-1857-8). On 1 March 2007 this show opens at the Kunstforum in Vienna where it will remain on display until 22 July, 2007.

[3] Works excluded from an art exhibition can tell us as much about a show as the works selected for display. The works they attempt to protect us from can exact a terrible revenge on the curatorial profession.

[4] See also Peggy Phelan in “Feminism and Art, Nine views: A Panel Discussion, in Art Forum, October, 2003: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_2_42/ai_109023344

[5] Thirty years ago the audience might have expected less of curators as well.

[6] It should of course be noted that it is not always possible for curators to obtain specific works for an exhibition for a variety of reasons, the least of which is sometimes curatorial preference.

[7] Judy Chicago, “Introduction” in Judy Chicago and Edward Lucie-Smith, Contested Territory: Women and Art, Vancouver: Raincoast Books, 1999:14.

[8] Seduction and desire are among the underappreciated concepts of much of feminist discourse and important areas for new developments in this discourse in the coming years.

[9] See also Jean Baudrillard. Passwords. New York: Verso, 2003:21-24.

[10] Given the importance of Oppenheim’s input into this and other of Man Ray’s photographs of the time, I think it fair that we refer to this photograph as a joint work of Merit Oppenheim and Man Ray.

[11] Perhaps we are even ready to see an exhibition called Women and Eros in Modernism?