University of Wollongong Thesis Collections University of Wollongong Thesis Collection University of Wollongong Year Wildflowers and White porcelain Jules C. McCue University of Wollongong McCue, Jules C., Wildflowers and White porcelain, M.C.A. thesis, Faculty of Creative Arts, University of Wollongong, 1994. http://ro.uow.edu.au/theses/706 This paper is posted at Research Online. http://ro.uow.edu.au/theses/706 CIRCLES and SEEDS Jules Mc Cue 1993 UNIVERSITY OF WOLLONGONG 1 Part Two: CIRCLES AND SEEDS INTRODUCTION From Tarantella and Ennui to Composure in the Light of the Moon. CHAPTER SIX The Table-top: An Aesthetic Laboratory for Modernist Application.. CHAPTER SEVEN: The Luderum: Still Life as Theatre. CHAPTER EIGHT: Enclosed Space: The Spiritual: The Inside World and The Curved Aesthetic CHAPTER NINE: Desire: Feminine Objectivity and Poetic Form. CHAPTER TEN: Aureole: Strong and Simple: Singular Form: The Silent Motto. CONCLUSION: The Golden Hair and The Red Shoes: Aloneness, Greatness, The Future. 2 INTRODUCTION: From Tarantella and Ennui to Composure in the Light of The Moon. You who were darkness warmed my flesh where out of darkness rose the seed. Then all a world I made in me: all the world you hear and see hung upon my dreaming blood.[1] The following discourse will eventually continue the discussion about woman in art and specifically still life painting. Circles and Seeds will follow on from Chapter Five in Part One, Wildflowers and White Porcelain.. I say eventually because the first chapter, Chapter Six does not deal with the art of woman exclusively. Thus so far, a short history if you like, of still life painting in the western world has been mapped out. This was intended to set the scene in which still life painting had originated and hence developed. Having established the tone of the scene of the incubation period of still life painting, it became blatantly obvious, that it was through this usually overlooked category of art, that women were 'permitted' to take their part in the history of painting. The present discourse, Circles and Seeds, will deal primarily with the evolvement of Australian women painters in the Modernist and post-Modernist eras of the twentieth century through still life and related forms in art. It is therefore essential that Chapter Six spells out the development of Modernism at large, which it seems takes off from the experimentation that surrounded still life objects on the table-top, in European painting. It is at this point in time that women artists in Australia, began to assert themselves in the quest for recognition as serious artists and indeed, to pursue their passion for the craft. In fact their contributions and professionalism were as strong as, and equal to those of the men. Indeed, Margaret Preston's contribution to Australian twentieth century art and design is arguably one of the most important contributions to the constructing of an Australian identity in art and design in the history of white Australia. Whilst some very determined women take off into the chauvinest world of art, employing the forms that grow out of formal modernist ideas, other more traditionally based forms of still life painting persist and continue to evolve into what seems to be a new vocabulary of forms in art. A fine example of this is the work of Susan Norrie which has already been discussed and will be again in the following chapters. The search for very specific, female forms that contain a 3 psychological ambiguity, will be dealt with in Chapters Seven to Ten and the Conclusion of Circles and Seeds, under the notion, that gender specific form or a feminine aesthetic has developed as a result of the woman artist who is working in still life forms. Through this investigation, the unearthing of many archetypal forms from within what seems to be the unconscious of 'woman', will underline pre-existing knowledge that these forms have always lurked there and, have always existed in her art. In fact, the forms are mere adhumbrations of the universal forms that have appeared in still life painting since its advent: the stuff of all material cultures. Historical survey will show that the majority of women who painted up until early this century, have painted still life. The content of still life painting is about the domestic setting of the house: the place and objects that are about woman. As Norman Bryson the author of the four essays on still life painting, Looking at the Overlooked, will have it, still life is all about 'creatural habit' and 'bodily acts of survival'. As is noted in Wildflowers and Wild Porcelain, it has always been women and for that matter, women of the lower echelons who were the keepers of the soul and the body; the emblematic detail of which is dealt with in the religious, genre paintings of such 'great masters' as Diego Valasquez and Jan Vermeer. So, women painted not only what was available but, what was important to the maintenance of life and, what they knew and understood. Looking at this art and what has developed out of it, leads us to believe that there lies within, a profound depth and secret. There lies the mystery of life and the rhythms inherent in the biology of woman. Keeping in mind that there are relatively few known woman artists and that most of those we do know have painted still life, then it is through still life and the content of female labour and love that this category of painting and related art, deserves a newly appointed status. Therefore, we must rethink and revalue what is thought to be the 'ordinary' and 'everyday'. If this is to happen then we need to give praise to the art and life of woman, and understand how this position of suboordination grew out of the patriarchal systems that have governed society and general environments in the past. Norman Bryson decided that the reason for the 'great female artist' problem and the 'lowly appointed status' problem of still life and therefore much of the art of woman, lies in the fact that this art and the objects pertaining to it, are about the traditional feminine space and hence, the social status of woman who was 'tied to the apron strings'. So much for the enslaved, working class woman. Women of the upper echelons were also enslaved and were expected to uphold their social roles in the 'dabbling' of 'fine crafts' and being good wives, unless they were fortunate 4 enough to be sold off for religious favour and then and only then, could they perhaps pursue there craft. But what of her biology? Bryson has failed to perceive that woman's body is the source of her confinement. This is surely the reason why woman has been held down and held back; she has been physically oppressed by various aspects of nature and therefore occupied with her duty as lifegiver and keeper for all creatures on earth. What becomes obviously problematic in this discourse about women artists, is that the essence of the situation today is really no different, except that after a long battle for so-called 'equality', women seemingly have a choice. This is the very dilemma that is still faced head on or 'body on' by many women who desire to pursue their craft and who may also wish to pursue their inherent biology. In her feminist critique Nothing Ma[t]ters, Somer Brodribb analyses with somewhat acrimonious tone, a host of twentieth century theoretical frameworks which she believes to be anti-life, pro- Immaterialist and therefore anti the inherent nature of woman. Brodribb therefore spells out the dangers of what she believes to be a type of philosophical trap for feminism and women in what she deems to be the Late Patriarchy which sails under the flag of post - Modernism. Consequently, Brodribb fears that post-Modernism is a misleading term and that we are not moving forward as a society or culture at all. She says this about the gender dispute with regard to prominent theorists of our century with whom she lays much of the blame for continuing female oppression: Structuralism and psychoanalysis also seem attractive to Rubin because they allow an escape from biology: . .The 'exchange of women' is a seductive and powerful concept. It is attractive in that it replaces the oppression of women within social systems, rather than in biology.[2] Bryson believes in a feminine space and places her there, she belongs to it, it is integral to her social role: the matter of flesh is ignored, hence the title of Brodribb's book. Brodribb perceives that the tools and theories of Levi-Strauss and Freud are 'profoundly phallic', as the former would have woman exchanged through the systems of the mind and the will of man, and the latter would cut off her body from nature through the science of the mind. She stresses that this is part of a fear of life which results in the cognitive organizing of those things that can't be understood and controlled into this set of systems: Levi-Strauss and Freud provide conceptual tools for describing the sex/gender system: - The theories of Claude Levi-Strauss and Sigmund Freud were important to Gayle Rubin because, 'In a fear of life and a 5 disembodied approach to nature is an important characteristic of male history and scientific patriarchy' . reading through these works one begins to have a sense of a systematic social apparatus which takes up females as raw material and fashions them as domesticated products.[3] So, it could be seen that it is the biological phenomenon, the mystery of the inherent nature of woman, that Brodribb fears that Late Patriarchy under the guise of post-Modernism, persists in annihilating.