Who Was That Woman?

30 WHO WAS THAT WOMAN? by Helena Reckitt C104 Winter 2009 31 32 Who Was That Woman? C104 Winter 2009 recise, sculptural and strikingly hand-pleated, Le Klint lamp- barring a monthly stipend worth 100 Euros. Eventually, though, Pshades are classics of mid-century modernism. But a perverse she countered her family’s attempts to erase her from history by plan meant that, until recently, these furnishings were far more returning to making lamps, publishing her designs in a diy craft famous than the woman whose name they bear. In 1938, at the magazine, and writing her memoirs, Erindringstrade (Memory age of 18, Klint signed a contract drawn up by her lamp-manufac- Threads). The 1998 book’s account of identity crises and the pri- turing family that forced her to stop making or advertising lamps vatization of the artist’s name caught the attention of the young under her own name. However, her family continued to market Danish artist Pia Rönicke who, in 2004, devised an exhibition the successful Le Klint line while Klint lost contact with them, about Klint called Without a Name. Presenting a fragmented portrait of the borrows crime writing’s depiction of intrigue now elderly designer, this show incorporat- shared between detective and detected, it also ed videos, slide projections, printed ephem- introduces a spirit of mutual affirmation be- era and lamps in the Le Klint style. The latter tween the women not usually found in de- were fabricated by Rönicke following Klint’s tective fiction. Just as the life of this creative published directions, their folded paper con- survivor fascinates Rönicke, the artist becomes struction echoing the loops and folds in Klint’s a mirror for Klint’s questions about female cre- story and introducing a surprisingly domes- ative autonomy. Describing her exchanges with tic note to the otherwise spare installation. Klint, Rönicke recalls in her slide projected Rönicke’s decision to make the lamps by hand texts: “she was very curious about my life./If it stages a gesture of empathy with the older de- was possible for me to do the things I was/ signer, suggesting a desire to understand her Interested in, and if anyone was interested in/ creative processes on an intimate, tactile level. What I was doing.” “The physical act of copying is a phenomeno- Without a Name exemplifies a biographical logical process,” comments the American artist turn in contemporary art that, in important Andrea Bowers about the hand-written letters ways, has a precursor in theatre director Neil she transcribed for her 2005 show Letters to an Bartlett’s 1988 book Who Was That Man? A Army of Three. “It’s a way of learning and un- Present for Mr. Oscar Wilde. Seeking traces derstanding that goes beyond just reading or of the Victorian writer and convicted peder- listening, and I think it is very powerful.”1 This ast a century after his death, Bartlett presents 1 Eungie Joo, “diy school: Andrea embodied homage also links to other key art his hunt in sexual terms that draw out biogra- Bowers and Eungie Joo in Conversation,” projects by feminists, including Judy Chicago’s phy’s erotic undercurrents. Bartlett experienc- in Nothing is Neutral: Andrea Bowers (Los Angeles: RedCat, 2006), 55. channelling of Georgia O’Keeffe in her flower- es Wilde as a tangible presence who haunts inspired paintings and drawings and her Wom- his everyday activities in London and perme- 2 Neil Bartlett, Who Was That Man? A anhouse cohort Miriam Schapiro’s practice of ates his manuscript-in-progress. “His words Present for Mr. Oscar Wilde (London: Serpent’s Tail, 1988), 26. collaging reproductions of Mary Cassatt paint- began to ghost my writing.”2 This understand- ings into works she called “collaborations.” ing of how one writer’s work influences anoth- 3 Isla Leaver-Yap, “Paulina Olowska: Evoking the flow of conversation and mem- er’s—and the play between Bartlett and Wilde And It Is Time,” Map Magazine 16 (Winter 2008). ory, Klint’s story emerges phrase-by-phrase in their shifting roles as seeker and sought, in slide-projected images of white plastic possessor and possessed—counters the idea of letters—fittingly, the kind that announce homo sexuality as non-reproductive. Instead, the residents in old-fashioned apartment the sense of a shared history that Wilde repre- buildings—against a dark background. “A real sents influences Bartlett and his contemporar- fiction—a story about Klint and the lamp,” ies productively as they struggle against aids as one slide terms it, the narrative darts from and homophobia. Klint’s family business to her relationship with Just as Bartlett drew from Wilde, Polish art- the writer Peter Weiss, and evokes the trou- ist Paulina Olowska looks to earlier female bled sense of self that prompted Klint’s various artists as enabling presences and kindred spir- abrupt changes of residence and occupation its. Claiming that “it is always sweeter to work and a seven-year psychoanalytic consultation with a friend, or a ghost,”3 Olowska summons to help her reconstruct her identity. Folding up female figures in her paintings, collages, in- pages 31 & 32 back on itself, and punctuated with blank stallations and performances—from iconoclas- Manon de Boer, Sylvia slides that allow the viewer to pause and take tic artists and designers to unnamed models Kristel, Paris, 2003, stock of Klint’s dramatic biography, the story and dancers. Drawn especially to women who super-8 film transferred to betacam chronicles Rönicke’s first meeting with Klint made the presentation and performance of image courtesy of as well as the women’s trip to Paris for the self central to their artistic practice, her work jan mot, brussels opening of Without a Name. While the project stages a fascination with the creative possibili- 33 34 Who Was That Woman? ties of striking a pose and making a scene. The ticipates Barbara Kruger’s protest “We won’t gesture of giving space to other artists in her play nature to your culture.” Completed a year works is both generously self-effacing and un- before Boty died, the piece contrasts her light- apologetically narcissistic, as Olowska’s bob- er, earlier efforts and shows her clear-eyed haired, stylishly clad subjects often resemble understanding of the gap between political her. As such, they function both as individuals and sexual representation. with distinct biographies and as stand-ins for Olowska tries to settle historical scores on the artist. Olowska’s appropriation of images Boty’s behalf. Alongside a reproduction of the of glamorous women might not seem obvious- notorious newspaper article for which Boty ly feminist, but it has been pivotal to femi- posed naked with her artworks, she depicts the nism’s development, as Maria Elena Buszek smiling artist pulling her shirt above her head. shows in her 2006 book Pin-up Grrrls: Femi- Another female figure—a bob-haired paint- nism, Sexuality, Popular Culture. Linking the er in a snazzy zebra-print dress, leopard-print female pin-up and the women’s movement to shoes and a painter’s apron—stands at an ea- their mid-19th-century origins, Buszek inves- sel, brush in hand. While resembling Olows- tigates how Victorian actresses’ and burlesque ka, this second woman in fact comes from an performers’ presentation of themselves as lib- issue of Art in America from the 80s. This was, erated—on and off the stage—provided valu- of course, a time of unprecedented prominence able symbols of women’s emancipation that for feminist artists in New York’s art world, a later boosted the women’s suffrage movement. reference that the pasted-in backdrop of the Not only did suffragettes use pictures of fa- Manhattan nocturnal skyline reinforces. Yet mous stage performers in their campaigns, but where the discourse of 80s feminists tried to they also took on “the self-consciously stylish deconstruct women’s place in the patriarchal image and performative feminism of the ac- order, ignoring or denying the pleasurable as- tress as tools through which suffrage protests pects of female self-display, Olowska makes 4 Maria Elena Buszek, might be turned into persuasive ‘parades.’”4 room for both. By isolating Boty’s prescient, Pin-Up Grrrls: Feminism, This strain of what Buszek terms “theatri- exhibitionist gestures, and imagining her view- Sexuality, Popular Culture (Durham: Duke cal feminism”—prevalent in the early 20th er not as a sleazy tabloid reader but as another University Press, 2006), 23. century and between the world wars—took a female artist, Olowska implies that the abili- knock during the 50s’ backlash against femi- ty for women to delight both in painting and nism, only to return with a vengeance in the posing, and in seeing and being seen, is one of 60s. Her mixed-media canvas Pauline Boty feminism’s hard-won goals. Acts Out One of Her Paintings For a Popular Pauline Boty Acts Out One of Her Paint- Newspaper (2006) explores a key, though ings For a Popular Newspaper and the other largely overlooked, figure from this era: art- eight large works in Olowska’s 2006 exhibi- ist Pauline Boty. The only prominent woman tion, Hello to You Too, share the same size and in the British Pop Art movement, Boty died vertical orientation, each centring on a female from leukemia at age 28 and her work, which figure that Olowska copied or collaged from examined mass-media depictions of celebri- magazines and other printed media. Tightly ty, has only recently received scholarly atten- grouped, with one painting doubling as an ex- tion. This neglect stems partly from Boty’s hibition announcement (including the dates, habit of modelling nude beside her paint- “8th February – until International Women’s ings and “acting out” the poses of her female Day,” and the opening reception dress code, subjects—a prescient postmodern gesture “Avant-garde Costumes necessary”), the works of hyperbolic mi micry that was viewed at had the feel of weathered billboards.

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