The Feminine in Art
When I first learned from Shirley Kaneda that she was considering some formulations on the notion of the feminine in painting I was encouraged, thinking that particular and individual aspects of myself which are in my painting might become explicitly articulated by such an inquiry. Yet, as I've thought, read, and discussed this difficult topic I've become less sanguine.
The Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas hearings showed, if I ever needed to be shown, that women in this culture are punished for combined qualities of independence, strength, determination, fortitude, self-interest and reserve; not a typically feminine amalgam. It is the person who is excluded from social power, not the feminine.
Why have perspicuity, receptivity and the intuitive, often considered attributes of a feminine sensibility, been portrayed throughout history as typical characteristics of the great male artist?
I think it is possible that the entire notion of labeling parts of the world, or what we have made, as feminine or masculine is an indefensible activity — very similar to the way that in Latin or other languages the world is given this dualist perspective, that such ordering of ontology was within the priority of patriarchal domination. In fact, I will go further than that to say that the whole endeavor of naming, of categorizing the world or society is an objectification of the will to establish Kingdom or domain.
It is dominance, not difference which determines operations in the real life arena. Gender itself might not even code as difference were it not for its consequences for social power, as Catherine MacKinnon has pointed out. What is known as difference might otherwise be construed as variety.
Painterly vs. linear; flat vs. illusionistic; academic vs. Avant garde; Romantic/Classical; Modernist/Post-modernist — at best these are descriptions of formal qualities in painting, at worst historicist symptom pictures. I don't know that I've ever had my understanding of paintings expanded through categorization.
Those of us who are painters, as a matter of course, know of meaning that does not coincide with linguistic communication. Yet logocentric thinking determines much of the current dialogue around art.
Instead of accepting that paintings have anything to do with signs, why don't we ask what the motive for having paintings act like signs is about. When someone says that paintings are signs it presumes that there are symbolic indicators which are interchangeable, like a kind of visual Morse code. If that were true, then paintings would be interchangeable products, neatly fitting into a materialist regime. Flags might work like this and ships' flags in particular are clearly defined by their use, by a relatively small set of assigned indicators.
Complex paintings require longer duration for apprehension and are far more animated than signs; they touch on the endless variability of the visible and in that resonance are of a thoroughly different order from signs and sign making.
A symbolic structure is independent of its origins yet it evokes what it symbolizes. Specifically articulating the feminine in painting maps the reality of the patriarchy. It is not an approach to challenge or change. It is reminiscent of Clement Greenberg's mishugass that some kinds of paintings, with Greenberg it was those on a large scale, the least Cubist, which aspired to flatness, have an advantage over other kinds. That advantage was called "quality", and guess who decides? The advantage is now called "feminine". Who decides now?
In addition to discussing the topic at hand it may be necessary to deconstruct the political methods of the art world's bullying patriarchy.
I speak to you this evening as a practitioner. I would like to allow myself as much freedom as possible in the making of my painting with the