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Figurative Art and Feminism

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Figurative Art and Feminism Re-presenting melancholy: Figurative art and feminism Christina Reading A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of Brighton for the degree of Doctorate in Fine Art April 2015 The University of Brighton in collaboration with the University for the Creative Arts Re-presenting melancholy: Figurative art and feminism Re-presentations of women’s melancholic subjectivity by women figurative artists from different historical moments, canonical images of melancholy and theoretical accounts of melancholy are brought together to address the question: ‘What aspects of women’s experience of melancholy have women figurative artists chosen to represent historically and contemporaneously, and further what is the importance of these artworks for understanding the nature of women’s melancholic subjectivity today?’ The question is examined through an original juxtaposition of women’s figurative art history, theories of melancholy and the author’s own studio practice. Adopting and refining Griselda Pollock’s method of the Virtual Feminist Museum, the thesis elaborates a new critical and creative space to gather, re-read and make artwork to address the theme of women’s experiences of melancholy (Pollock, 2007). The author curates a ‘virtual feminist museum’ of women’s figurative art dealing with melancholy, past and present. Using Pollock’s model as a trigger, the research project sets up a space for interrogating what new meanings are revealed in relation to notions of melancholy by examining the overlaps, collisions and juxtapositions between the works the author has selected and the works the author has made. The artworks are theorised and interpreted by their relationship to the following discourses: the history of figurative art practice, melancholy and feminism; Freud’s foundational text ‘Mourning and melancholia’ (1917); and the examination of the author’s own representational multimedia studio practice. This studio practice contributes works that interrogate still and moving images, and creatively explores the interface between practice, theory and history. The thesis makes an original contribution to feminist fine art discourse by proposing a previously unexposed history of women’s figurative art about melancholy, and creating a Virtual Feminist Museum of Women’s Figurative Art and Melancholy which informs our understanding of women’s melancholic subjectivity and its representation in the contemporary situation. 1 Contents Acknowledgements ............................................................................ 3 Declaration ......................................................................................... 4 Introduction ........................................................................................ 5 Chapter One: Methods ....................................................................... 11 Chapter Two: Figurative art history, melancholy and feminism .................................................................................... 46 Chapter Three: Freud, feminism and melancholy.............................. 94 Chapter Four: The Virtual Feminist Museum of Women’s Figurative Art and Melancholy.......................................................... 134 Room One: Shadows of the Self: Women’s Melancholic Subjectivity....................................................................................... 138 Room Two: Of Love: Women and Melancholy........................................ 169 Room Three: Allegories of Sorrow: Religious Melancholy .................….. 199 Room Four: In the Wake of Loss: Mothers, Mourning and Melancholy........................................................................................ 231 Chapter Five: Conclusion .................................................................. 263 List of Illustrations ............................................................................. 280 Bibliography....................................................................................... 288 Insert One: Documentation of Studio work: A Chronology, 2007–2014 ………………………………………………… Back cover Insert Two: Melancholia and the Female Figure (2012).…. Back cover 2 Acknowledgments This thesis would not have been possible without the help and encouragement of friends, family and colleagues. I am especially grateful for the encouragement and generous support I received from my supervisor Dr Alicia Foster. I would also like to thank Dr Kerstin Mey, Frances Edmondson and Dr Philippa Lyon for their invaluable comments on the drafts of the text and my studio work. 3 Declaration I declare that the research contained in this thesis, unless otherwise formally indicated within the text, is the original work of the author. The thesis has not been previously submitted to this or any other university for a degree, and does not incorporate any material already submitted for a degree. Signed: Dated: 4 Introduction ‘Given that the focus of the history of art’s labours is always towards recovering what is lost, one of these primal desires must be labelled melancholic’ (Holly, 2007: 8). Aims This thesis uses an interdisciplinary methodology to address the research question: ‘What aspects of women’s experience of melancholy have women figurative artists chosen to represent historically and contemporaneously, and, further, what is the importance of these artworks for understanding the nature of women’s melancholic subjectivity today?’ Works of art by women figurative artists from different historical moments, canonical images of melancholy, and theoretical accounts of melancholy are explored here, informing and testing the development of my own studio practice. Art’s histories and my own work as an artist are brought together explicitly through the adoption of a feminist approach developed by art historian Griselda Pollock (b. 1949) known as ‘encounters in the virtual feminist museum’ (vfm) (2007). The inquiries as a whole, therefore, attempt to create and elaborate a new critical and creative space in which to gather, re-read and make artwork to address the theme of women’s melancholic subjectivity. The thesis makes the argument that the history of women’s figurative art and melancholy has been overlooked but can be recuperated and evaluated for the contribution it makes to answer the research question. The investigation examines the visual strategies used by women figurative artists for dealing with melancholy as read against the history of the use of the female figure within the canon of the art history of melancholy. Defending this thesis and addressing the research question is not without risk, as it is based on my conjecture, and the fragmentary evidence revealed through practice that there is such a history to discover. 5 My project has been motivated by the portrayal of feeling in Sandro Botticelli’s La Derelitta (c.1495) (Figure 1), where the female figure is thought to signify the exclusion of the soul, from ‘the place of beatitude’ and Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio’s Penitent (Mary) Magdalene (1597) (Figure 2) where the sleeping figure rests, bringing together body and soul in the moments after her spiritual conversion (Piccoli (1930) cited in Argen, 1957: 21). I want to discover if it is possible to find a language in contemporary art practice that both acknowledges and recuperates this iconographic history but which also has the capacity to perhaps escape these conventions, to arrive at an idea of women’s interiority reflective of twenty-first century experience. Figure 1. La Derelitta, (c.1495) Sandro Botticelli Tempera on panel 47 x 41cm Figure 2. Penitent (Mary) Magdalene (1596) Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio Oil on canvas 122.5 x 98.5cm 6 I notice how the figurative language is used to both represent an aspect of a woman’s emotional life and to transmit an ontological feeling, a feeling I describe as melancholy.1 I use the term melancholy to refer to a mood that I notice in myself and in others, internal feelings or states of mind which may be passing or prolonged, although ‘melancholy’, I recognise, is also an external label imposed by society and culture on others, and linked to art historical and theoretical ideas about the condition. I have ruminated on the contemporary significance of this historical figurative language in my photographs My Daughter Katherine 1 and 2 (2007) (Figures 3 & 4) and have then considered them alongside the historical paintings. Figure 3. My Daughter Katherine 1 (2007) Christina Reading Digital print on aluminium 100 x 100cm 1 Ontological is generally understood as an investigation into the question of the phenomenology of being or ‘being there’ (Dasein) as elaborated in Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time (1927). For Heidegger the phenomenology of being there is the ‘the theme of ontology’ (Heidegger, 1927: 60). 7 Figure 4. My Daughter Katherine 2 (2007) Christina Reading Digital print on aluminium 100 x 100cm The four images presented here seem to offer a starting point for an exploration of the use of the female figure and melancholy in fine art practice. They appear to provide incidents of a perhaps forgotten or unrepresented history of the female figure and melancholy that has fallen out of use, whose history I want to explore, recuperate and preserve in my own art practice. The basis for the project is therefore the emotional turmoil of melancholy for women and whether this is capable of being given form and expression through the female figure. By addressing the issue from my perspective as a woman artist I
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