Romance and the Erotic Exploited and Subverted Lucienne Fontannaz A thesis in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Art (MFA) College of Fine Arts UNSW March 2014 Abstract This studio research project explores and establishes a framework for the interplay of inner feelings and outer appearances that inform the construction of the female person. A present day crisis is identified, in which pressure is placed upon girls and women by the media, fashion and sex industries to replicate in appearance, values and behaviour, a stereotypical construction of what it is to be female. It is argued that this fabricated, male desire-driven image has negative effects on women, as it implies an artificial type-casting that is limiting to an individual’s expressiveness; degrading by performative association; the source of strong expectations in terms of physical body type; manipulative, incurring unnecessary expenditure and ultimately damaging to the well- being of women. Love, intimacy, power relations and violence are examined through four historical texts, as an introduction to the present context of violent pornography widely available on the Internet and permeating the lives of children, teenagers and adults. This phenomenon is having an unprecedented impact on ‘mainstream’ media images of women, leading to physical and psychological difficulties in relationships. The challenge for the intimate Self is to find a stable place within, that can be sufficiently powerful so as to enter into dialogue with the often calamitous, sensationalized and commercially exploitative world of the outer body. In this context of identity formulation, the research investigates the chasm between our everyday experience of the private and public self and the enormity of the expanding Universe, as currently understood by physicists. Seeing the self is so prescribed by the body, it is therefore speculated that any significant change in body consciousness requires reciprocation in the new awareness of the cosmos, recognising that each of us is literally made up of stardust. These issues were explored in the studio through collage, using contemporary print media imagery that facilitated direct physical, visual and conceptual response to the subject. As well, collage enabled extensive reworking for alternative representations. However, images of the body are inherently seductive. Consequently, the task was to create informed original works that avoided replication of the titillating images and the negative messages being critiqued. Table of Contents Acknowledgement i List of Figures iii Introduction 1 Chapter 1: The Self 1.1 Inner Feelings Versus Outer Appearances 3 1.2 Collage as Preferred Medium 6 1.3 Dossier: Narrative and Artworks 11 Chapter 2: The Self in Relationships 2.1 The Self and Relationships in History 40 2.2 The Self and Relationships in the Present 45 2.3 Dossier: Narrative and Artworks 49 Chapter 3: The Self and the Universe 3.1 Time and Space: Then and Now 78 3.2 New Understandings of Self and the Universe 80 3.3 Dossier: Narrative and Artworks 85 Conclusion 112 Bibliography 115 Acknowledgement I would like to acknowledge the generous and insightful guidance provided by my supervisor Gary Carsley. ii List of figures 1.3 Dossier Fig. 1.1 Memory 12-13 Fig. 1.2 The Rose 14-15 Fig. 1.3 The Un-dressing 16-17 Fig. 1.4 Twin Self 18-19 Fig. 1.5 Porned 20-21 Fig. 1.6 A Mask for O 22-23 Fig. 1.7 Possession 24-25 Fig. 1.8 Fleeting Invasion 26-27 Fig. 1.9 Trespass 28-29 Fig. 1.10 Devilish 30-31 Fig. 1.11 Double-Vice 32-33 Fig. 1.12 Shield and Weapons 34-35 Fig. 1.13 Generator 36-37 Fig. 1.14 False Expectations 38-39 2.3 Dossier Fig. 2.1 Prescience 50-51 Fig. 2.2 Reflect(ion) 52-53 Fig. 2.3 Eros and Psyche 54-55 Fig. 2.4 Dark Light 56-57 Fig. 2.5 Sade’s Libertines 58-59 Fig. 2.6 Indiscretions 60-61 Fig. 2.7 Encounters 62-63 Fig. 2.8 Frankenstein 64-65 Fig. 2.9 Egos and Wills 66-67 Fig. 2.10 Promiscuous Patterns 68-69 Fig. 2.11 Deeds 70-71 Fig. 2.12 Exit 72-73 iii Fig. 2.13 The Tear 74-75 Fig. 2.14 Blindspot 76-77 3.1 Dossier Fig. 3.1 Eva 86-87 Fig. 3.2 Alchemic Self 88-89 Fig. 3.3 Catherine’s Wheel 90-91 Fig. 3.4 Celeste 92-93 Fig. 3.5 Zodiac Bodies 94-95 Fig. 3.6 The Quest 96-97 Fig. 3.7 Mid-heaven 98-99 Fig. 3.8 Contract 100-101 Fig. 3.9 The Power of Knowing 102-103 Fig. 3.10 Seeing Time 104-105 Fig. 3.11 Masculine-Feminine 106-107 Fig. 3.12 Island Universe 108-109 Fig. 3.13 Light years 110-111 iv Introduction My Research for the Master of Fine Art program (MFA) addresses the romantic, the erotic and the exploitative experience of body relationships played out under the flickering candle lights of history and in the bright spotlight of current popular media. Further, it explores how this intimate theatre of most personal human experience co-exists within the context of the grandest stage of all - our understanding and rendering of the Universe. This research is structured in the following way - Chapter 1, The Self, Chapter 2, The Self and Relationships and Chapter 3, The Self and the Universe. Each chapter also contains a dossier, presenting a series of artworks and a narrative. The narrative is based on an analysis of the created images and responds to writings in the field, including for example Cesare Ripa’s Baroque and Rococo Pictorial Imagery and the Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols by James Hall. In Chapter 1, The Self, I explore and establish a framework for the interplay of inner feelings and outer appearances that inform the construction of women. I describe my preference for using in this exploration the collage technique and the inclusion of contemporary media imagery. The first series of collages and the corresponding written narrative describe how the Self endeavours to find a context, place and meaning through addressing and responding to outward appearance, as if identity was created directly via her reflexion in a mirror. In Chapter 2, The Self in Relationships, I address issues of gender, power relations and peer group pressure in history and the present day Western cultural context. First I investigate the early representation of couples in myth, stories and illustration. Then I examine the present proliferation of 1 eroticised images on billboards and in magazines. Furthermore, I refer to violence against women in easily accessible pornographic internet sites and point to a growing body of critical writing on these issues. Hence, my choice for the title of the overall project: Romance and the Erotic – exploited and subverted. The second series of collages and narrative tells of the Self privy to historic and present experiences of the relationships between couples – from intimacy to violence, unfolding beyond multiple closed, as well as wide open doors. In Chapter 3, The Self and the Universe, I consider the relationship, the chasm between our everyday perceptions of the private and social self and of the expanding Universe as it is currently understood by physicists. I explore the experience of the mind and body within the non-linear notions of time and space in current physics and in the early Middle Ages. The third series of collages and narratives reveals that the Self now inhabits a limitless expanse, a universe in which drifting door-like stages offer glimpses of ever changing fields of universal being and corresponding understanding. 2 Chapter 1: The Self 1.1 Inner Feelings Versus outer Appearance I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions. What ever you see I swallow immediately Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike. I am not cruel, only truthful… The eye of a little god, four-cornered. The Mirror, Sylvia Plath (extract, 1961). In this chapter, I set out to examine the relationship between a woman's inner feelings and her appearance, projected out to the world predominantly through her body shape and what she wears. I question how the coexisting potentialities of self-impression and public image-perception may empower or disempower women of any age. The degree of reconciliation or conflict between these twin portraits of the self, could be described as the body made whole or the body fractured. In my images and narrative, I refer to historic and contemporary mirrors as ‘real’ devices through which we learn about ourselves physically and mentally. I also see the mirror as a metaphor, alluding to other people through whom we discover more of our own traits. There is a history of body images powerfully dictating the expectations and behaviour of the individuals represented. In her book Body Culture, Isabel Crombie examines how photography was used in the period between WW1 and WW2 “to illustrate and endorse ‘body culture’… to promote ideas about utopian and dystopian bodies” (Crombie 2004, p. 9). Although ranging across eras, most agree that visual images of bodies are powerful conditioners of the way people think, feel and behave. 3 Oscar Wilde addressed this in The Picture of Dorian Gray, a remarkable story that accurately reflected Victorian attitudes to self-image and sexuality. Men became silent… when Dorian Gray entered the room… His mere presence seemed to recall to them the innocence that they had tarnished… He, himself, on returning home… would creep upstairs to the locked room… and stand, with a mirror, in front of the portrait that Basil Hallward had painted of him, looking now at the evil and aging face on the canvas, and now at the fair young face that laughed back at him from the polished glass (Wilde 2011, p.