WHO IS INSPECTING WHO, AND WHY?

An evaluation of academic feminist and its influence,
as reflected in two paintings by a recent graduate Barbara Courtille,
is made from a under-graduate perspective. By Graham Hay 1993

"In Greek, originally symbolos and related words referred
literally to the putting together of that which had been
divided." (Firth, 1973, p. 46)

"Critics must guard against the risk of blindly
accepting the illusions created by the last critical
fashion." (Harari, 1979, p. 9)

INTRODUCTION

A critical evaluation, of academic feminist criticism and feminist attitudes towards the figurative nude, will be made in conjunction with a cultural reading of two paintings by artist Barbara Courtille, a recent graduate of Edith Cowan University School of Visual Arts.

It is acknowledged here that "all criticism is strategic... In the game of knowledge, method has become a strategy"(Harari, 1979, p. 72) and the ideological coding of transfered information is a powerful device in shaping perception of both self and society.

The selection of contemporary issues, artists and an institution within which this writer is an undergraduate, was deliberate. For art education is not only an exploration of a medium and the self, but also the immediate institutional environment. For while we are taught to be critical of other artists' work, how often does one critically analysis the framework within which these ideas are presented?

The exploration of the human body as a metaphor for society, within this paper on feminism, was also deliberate, for it highlights the issue of incorporating more than one mind and gender within one body. This issue of creating plurality has implications both on the individual and collective level which will be briefly discussed within this paper.

Definitions

Because of the distance this paper covers in such a short space, the following definitions of important words need to be spelt out.

Feminism is a "doctrine or movement that advocates equal rights for women" (Collins English Dictionary, 1979), which has more recently been expanded to include"...development of female characteristics in males" (Concise Oxford Dictionary, 1982) with the perceived potential objective of making society a matriarchy. It is, by nature, pro-women, and sometimes perceived, by implication, as anti-male. A collective rather than exact group of beliefs.

Politics is not only "the art or science of government...guided more by interest rather than principal" (Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary), but the art of negotiating compromise between competing individual and collective interests. This paper is by its contemporary nature political.

Pluralism is a political process whereby groups seek and maintain an equal voice within society. It is not a static equilibrium state.

Society is "the system or mode of life adopted by a body of individuals for the purpose of harmonious co-existence or mutual benefit" (The Oxford English Dictionary, 1989).

Body is the main material frame of an individual's body, but also the collective majority of an aggregate of individuals.

Eros is, in Freudian theory, the collection of instincts, especially sexual, that governs acts of self preservation, in pursuit of uninhibited enjoyment of life" (Colins Dictionary of the English Language).

Fantasy is a "map of degree, mastery, escape and obscuration, a work of consciousness in response to unconscious desires." (Friday, 1980, p. 11)

Culture is the activities and accessories associated with the improvement of individuals and society by art and science (Collins Dictionary of the English Language). Universities are institutions immediately involved in the cultural process, and the development of an awareness of aesthetic taste. Political judgements as to what is acceptable taste, are often ideologically driven.

FEMINISM AND THE FIGURATIVE

Showalter (1987), sees three distinct developmental phases of any sub-cultural art [in this case] feminine, feminist and female stages. In the feminine, "women wrote in an effort to equal the intellectual achievements of the male culture, and internalised its assumptions about female nature." In the feminist phase (1880-1920) women rejected "the accommodating postures of femininity... dramatise[d] the ordeals of wronged womanhood". While in the female stage (post 1920), "women reject both imitation and protest - two forms of dependency - and turn instead to female experience as the source of an autonomous art... redefining and sexualising external and internal experience" (Showalter, 1987, pp. 243-244).

The last two developmental phases of this sub-cultural art are critical to the arguments presented in this paper.

In all three phases, elements of which still exist today, the art form of immediate appeal to feminists was the figurative. This had already been used by the Antipodean painters and many others, for it was "born of past experience and refers back to past experience - and it communicates...experiences that the artist shares with his audience". (Antipodean Manifesto in Smith, 1991, p. 329) It is this ability to convey personal experience and emotions, at the same time as speak of universal issues, that makes the figurative image such a powerful device for feminists.

A sub-genre of the figurative image, the female nude, has become a negative icon in sexual politics. This is because it is read as a comment about "the status of women as a social, sexual agent and ... the nature and terms of man's relation to and control of the feminine" (Shaw, 1991, pp. 540-570).

Male artists are discouraged by feminists from using the female nude; for "the sex of the artist is an essential element in the reception of an image and the audience's ability to identify with it or its author" (Kent and Morrean, 1985, P. 61). Female nude images by male artists, are seen as perpetuating the traditional power inequality between the sexes. An example of this restricting attitude was demonstrated at Edith Cowan University, during review of a male student's work, where strong criticism was made by staff of his use of a female nude to suggest attraction (Personal observation, 1992).

Women artists using the female nude have become more careful too, not to create opportunities for the objectification of women (Pollock,1977, pp. 45-6) and are now encouraged to depict them in a positive and empowering manner. Barbara Courtille's "Inspection" painting appears to do this by the evenhanded treatment of both sexes. It is an image of a male and female nude facing each other, in what appears an equal situation. However Courtille states that they are not equal, because the woman's hands are behind her back and her naked chest would be viewed differently to the naked male who has his arms crossed across his chest. (Courtille, personal communication, 11th May 1993)

This image of an unequal inspection of the woman by the man appears to follow feminist arguements, that in society "the women is the known, whereas the man is the knower" (Griffin, 1988,p.3).

My subjective reading of the image is different. The man appears defensive or unsure (folded arms) while the women appears more open, with her hands on her hips or behind her back. Their nakedness suggests an intimate and/or sexual relationship. They acknowledge each other and the question, who is inspecting who?

We now turn to a brief examination of the male nude sub-genre.

Feminists maintain that:"Men's bodies have never stood simply for sex, rather they have represented a wide spectrum of emotion and experience, from defeat to victory, from suffering to strength... So when we use men's bodies to reveal our perspective on society there is a greater chance that we will be heard - and understood" (Kent and Morrean, 1985, p. 56). Barbara Courtille's painting "Regret", appears to use this idea. It has a small naked male (front on) with hands on hips looking down at his penis and a large clothed pregnant female (side on to viewer) with crossed arms.

Courtille states that this narrative work shows the vulnerable male attempting to detach himself from his penis. This is the idea of men blaming their bodies/passions for what they do to women (Courtille, 1993, Personal Communication, 11th May 1993).

This idea is explained in more detail by Griffin(1988): "He must give up the illusion that his mind controls his body, or that culture controls nature. Rather, inside the experience of sexual knowledge, he learns that culture and nature, meaning and love, spirit and matter, are one. And in this he loses the illusion that culture has given him against the knowledge of the vulnerability of his own flesh" (p. 30).

There appears to be a strong similarity between Courtille's intent and feminist thought on the male who, through sex, discovers the illusion of his control over the world and his body.

Alternatively "Regret"could be criticised as committing the same crimes feminists accuse male artists of committing. The male is small, naked and by implication powerless (contrast this with the female). The submissive/shame head position and aggressive hands on hips stance suggests repressed rage/passion. That the male's face is obscured while the female faces the viewer, emphasises the female's character and objectifies the male body. This also could suggest female ownership of the male body. The visual device of tilting, or removing the male nude's head, are devices borrowed from male painters to create erotic images. Examples of such increasingly common images from the media, are presented above. (This may not be Courtille's intent in this painting, rather the exercise was undertaken to illustrate the point.)

It would appear that Courtille has been sensitised to feminist issues in art, and the social power of images. The power of images exists because "man(sic) does not live by symbols alone, but orders and interprets his(sic) reality by his symbols, and even reconstructs it" (Firth, 1973, p. 20).

ACADEMIC FEMINIST CRITICISM

Feminism was initially a criticism, a breaking of womens' silence in a male dominated society, for "when what was at first not expressed in words is expressed...that expression should contradict the words that were spoken first" (Doi, 1985, p. 33).

Some may claim that criticism is a self-justified and perpetuating activity in which the "the ultimate role and function of criticism is to provide a politics of textual decolonisation in the sociopolitical realm, and in the domain of [visual image] production, to contribute new aesthetic values" (Harari, 1979, p. 47). In this case the new aesthetics are feminist tastes and preferences (or a rejection of established mascalinist tastes and preferences).

The problem with decolonisation is that it is usually only achieved by the replacement of old ideas, with new ones, within the same framework. While artists created and critics criticised "this critical activity also had an ideological function, seldom overtly acknowledged, namely, the maintenance of a canon ... Without a common body of texts [or images] to refer to and compare, the subject would become impossible to teach." Thus "teachers who set out to subvert the idea of the literary [and visual] canon are obliged to provide an alternative one" (Lodge, 1990, pp. 11-12).

For academic criticism is essentially combative, seeking mastery over the image, the artist, other critics and other critical theory (Hillis Miller cited in Lodge, 1990, p. 184). But in this war of ideas, feminist theory plants the seeds for its own death, for by implying a lack in the original it implies a lack in itself, thus the need for a "supplement to the supplement" (Harari, 1979, pp. 34-35).

Early feminists, as deconstructionists, are being superseded by humanists, who maintain that the source of meaning is the unique individual (Lodge, 1990, p. 21). "Bakhtin ... made a timely reaffirmative of the [artists]'s creative and communicative power. This is an idea that structuralism (implicitly), and post structuralism(explicitly), have sought to discredit and replace with theories about autonomous production of texts and their readers" (Lodge, 1988, p. 7).

These themes will be brought together in the conclusion of this paper.

FEMINISM AND INDIVIDUALISM

In order to examine the issue of the peaceful transfer of power between individuals, but within society, I researched the history of ideas of individual and society.

The useful idea that people could be simultaneously "drawn as detailed individuals and as purely social phenomena" (De Beauvoir, 1962, p. 137), originated in the middle ages which had a "much greater emphasis than today upon social relationships of a personalised character" (Firth, 1973, p. 40). The specific concept of the body metaphor for society promised much, for central to it was individual sacrifice in return for the benefits of commensalism (Firth, 1973, p. 116).

Back in 1651, Hobbes developed a hypothesis that individuals have varying levels of desires or "appetites" (resulting from circumstances, education and personality), which change over time, for power (knowledge, wealth, respect, love and so on). An individual aversion to discomfort and death would necessitate the peaceful negotiation of power between them via a third party. By the voluntary transfer of some individual power to the State, the continual development and maintenance of commonly agreed laws and mutually beneficial activity could occur (Hobbes, 1968).

Underlying Hobbes's theory comes was the belief that one should look into oneself, for from self knowledge comes knowledge of humanity and "he that is to govern a whole Nation, must read in himself, not this, or that particular man; but Man-kind" (Hobbes, 1968, pp. 82-83). This belief found expression in the idea that the structure, upon which personality is built, comes from taking over the institutions of society into one's own conduct, "for one has to be a member of a community to be a self" (Mead, 1962, p. 142).

Recent theories of personality are more pluralist, claiming that "we divide ourselves up in all sort of different selves with reference to our acquaintances" (Mead, 1962, p. 142), so that "the voices of the self...debate and dispute among themselves the moral basis of the hierarchical social order in which they find themselves positioned" (Gregg, 1991, p. xiv).

Yet, from these theories, it can be seen that perception of the identity of self and society are interlinked. Not surprisingly feminism attempts to change society via both the state, institutions and peoples' perceptions of themselves and society. This paper will now examine how feminists have attempted to change females self perceptions.

In the late seventies feminists sought to redefine femininity by "extracting women from male culture long enough to discover what feminine experience might be without that omnipresent patriarchal frame of reference" (Kent and Morrean, 1985, p. 16). The "Women's images of Men" exhibition, as analysed by Kent and Morrean (1985), was useful in this redefinition, because it opened up the debate to such topics as "the erotic potential for women of the male nude" (p. 1).

This exploration of erotic potential was important because sexuality was no longer personal, it had been codified and externalised.(Hawthorne and Pansacker, 1989, p. 104) Therefore, critical to feminism was the deinstitutionalisation of the self, via the exploration of personal experience and desire. One feminist attempting to redefine women via their subjective perspective was Nancy Friday (1973) (1975). But it was not until she compiled a similar book on males' fantasies, that she gained a coherent and consistent picture of the personality - the unconscious - of gender specific minds (1980).

Friday (1980) found "rape or force may be the most popular theme in female fantasy ... but men's fantasies of overpowering women against their will are the exception."[her emphasis] (p. 16) These sex specific fantasies don't coincide and are in conflict with the old generalised stereotypes and public preferences of males and females. Where does that leave us in the examination of feminisms call for greater equality of power between the sexes within society and the role of art?

SUMMARY AND CONCLUDING COMMENTS

Feminism has evolved through, and still contains elements of, imitation and reaction to a perception of a subordinated female position within society, in addition to an exploration and celebration of being female.

The importance of the figurative, and its nude sub-genre, to feminism was examined along with the work of a contemporary female artist exploring feminist concerns. Problems of the potential objectification of the male nude in the pursuit of a visual criticism of a male dominated society occurred. This is a sensitive issue because feminism criticises traditional male painters for doing the same thing to the female nude.

Academic feminist criticism was show to be dependent upon a similar canon of images to traditional criticism, in order to present its arguments. As a supplement to traditional criticism, feminist criticism has already opened the way for its own supplement, with the humanists rightly returning the emphasis to the individual artist and viewer as the source of meaning.

This paper criticised the emphasis at Edith Cowan University School of Visual Arts on the early, dependent forms of feminism, imitation and criticism of male visual artists. No alternative role models, except for perhaps a gender reversal in the images, appear to be provided for female students, to suggest directions of exploration, as has occurred in contemporary feminist literature, which explore and celebrate the female.

For there are areas of common concern for the contemporary male and female. Theories for the peaceful resolution of differences of power between individuals go back to the middle ages. The body metaphor for society was useful, not so much in its operation but for its emphasis upon the assumptions of similarity between perceptions of self and society. From the resulting awareness of self and social parallels, comes an awareness of the change, over time, from singularity towards a multitude of contributing voices.

Feminism has focused on clarifying and expressing the female mind. In art, one area of exploration has been the exploration of the erotic potential of the male nude by and for females. (One would hope that this will bring a greater tolerance of the use of the female nude for and by males.) At the same time there has been an exploration of written female, and later male, sexual fantasies. As a result of this work it was discovered that males face similar, but not complimentary, conflicts between current personal desire and socialised roles and expectations of the opposite sex.

It appears that a self-obsession by many feminists, with criticising and depicting the perceived inequalities of their own social role, has meant that there is little social awareness of the inherent difficulty for males of giving up roles and positions, that according to feminists, are to males' advantage.

Moreover, feminists, concerned with breaking their own silence and telling the way it was, often forget to check where and what males are now. For an excessive desire to right old wrongs can mean that feminism will commit similar crimes against contemporary males.

Courtille's work offers some possibilities, with "Inspection" being sufficiently balanced that pluralist readings are possible.

The body metaphor for society is, therefore, useful for highlighting all these ideas. Through the nude image artists and audiences should be able to explore the personal and public issues of erotica, fantasy and self concept of our individual and collective body.

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