Emanating in the counterculture of the liberated 60s, the phenomenon of body art marked a dramatic upheaval of the portrayal of the self. The movement was a key turning point in both the artistic and the political, and shows us how humanity reacts to changing perceptions of identity through the tool of the body. The 60s saw an outcry against the stuffy, male dominated conventions of the art world: women retaliated against these widely accepted idealisations and depictions of the female form, using their own bodies to dismantle preconceptions of female identity. As Mgcineni best puts it ‘The body is a rich and interesting ‘object’ of social use and political history’. While artists such as Antoni, Mendieta and Scheemen have done much to address these male-oriented, sexualised depictions of female identity in art, how far did body art shift this portrayal? If it really was so radical, then why do we still see these preconceptions so deeply rooted within the art world – and most prominently the media – today?
Janine Antoni’s performance art Loving Care (1993) epitomizes the subversion of female stereotypes through her body art. In dipping her hair in black dye, she effectively renders her body as the very object so many women are confined to: the domestic mop. Looking at Antoni’s art, it is hard to ignore the links it bears to the construction of female identity. It is as if she has channeled all of the ‘get back in the kitchen’ jokes women are forced to laugh along to and taken them on the chin; her body becomes the punchline. Yet this time, no one’s laughing. Antoni laboriously worked her way across the blank space, slowly pushing out observers: no one is welcome in this kitchen. Rather than cleaning the stark white floor, she leaves dark sweeps of defiance lathered all over it. Her domestic role does not seek to accomodate anyone’s oppressive views, and her tenuous actions do not seek to serve the man. Instead, ‘For the spectator and the artist, the artist’s body is the Other upon which one projects in the formation of self.’
In Silueta Series (1973-78), Ana Mendieta fuses the female form with nature to access an “omnipresent female force”. For Mendieta, nature was inherently linked to her Afro-Cuban roots, along with the Taíno practises of the home country from which she was torn as a child. The series acted as a way for her to reconnect with the land she was cast out from, returning to the ‘maternal source’. These ephemeral pieces confirm the complexity of identity: not quite self portraits, but instead an exploration of the body as a medium. The notion of presence and absence flourishes within the series: the forces of nature are enabled to work and tear away within these pictures, only captured in photography. Erosion, water and fire ensure that these pieces stay rooted in the moment of their existence, each embodying a different feeling. For me, the series takes on different emotions, and much in the same way that emotions are caught up within a moment, the siluetas ebb away with time. The construction of the self does not have to be permanent; it can change in an instant, with the passing of a new law or in parallel with the dynamism and fluidity of the modern world. These silhouettes are beyond categorisation – they could be of anyone. It is their anonymity which makes them so resonant – the female identity does not have to be wrapped up in the surface level, nor does it have to accommodate to the male gaze or the typical sexualisation of the female form. Mendieta’s raw connection with the forces of nature displays an alternate relationship with female identity, stressing the mutability of emotion, and doing so unequivocally.
Although such depictions of female identity may have somewhat revolutionised art, the media has played a large role in diminishing the impact and progress made thus far. With social media and magazines largely contributing to the archetypal female image, it seems we have jumped back to the renaissance. The archetypal, ideal female form that the male artist strove to depict has resurfaced in the form of photoshopped, artificially augmented female forms legally tailored to this male surveyor. This is not to say that the ideal female has not been imposed on women throughout most of modern history: the corsets of the victorians, the ‘blonde bombshell’ of hollywood and the glorification of twiggy’s thin form all speak for themselves. In today’s modern world, are seeing a wider range of body types, skin tones and genders represented, yet we are simultaneously exposed (through the influx of social media and technology) to more images of what an ideal female body should be than ever before. This identity is still bound up in beauty standards, something that I have compared myself to in the safety of my room. Scrutinising flesh and bone until it becomes a foreign object, something distorted and twisted, the personal body becomes a means to compare to the countless images of others, devoid of any real sense of female identity – identity has yet again become surface level. However, artists continue to fight against such standards in this seemingly never-ending battle: I think Cindy Sherman best scraped below this veneer, exposing how superficial this imposition of identity can be. Untitled #216 (1989) infuses both Renaissance and modern elements, allowing us to draw parallels between the conventional Virgin Mary of the quattrocento and the artificiality of modern day identity construction. The peeling prosthetics and splotchy makeup respond to the climate of mass media through reconstructing gender stereotypes in an almost comical yet horrific way. We are forced to simultaneously reconsider how we view classical depictions of Mary, at the same time as being struck by a blatant exposure of the superficial elements of female identity.
Evidently, the growingly humanistic depictions of women in the art world show that depictions of female selfhood have changed greatly. Art serves to act as a lens through which the artist can capture their world, so surely the changing political and social attitudes to women will have impacted such portrayals. On a smaller scale, this is true; we see commentary on stereotypes perpetuated by the media from Sherman, subversions of women’s role in society from Antoni and a deeper, more raw depiction of the fleeting nature of emotion from Mendieta. But it is important to notice the pattern here. These are all female artists having to rebel against a male dominated trajectory. The problem is, depicting a woman simply existing acts as a political statement. In contrast, male artists or male depictions doing the same will simply confine to normalcy – this only goes to show that there are still barriers that need to be crossed in dismantling these preconceptions of female identity. In institutions like the MoMa in New York and the Tate Modern in London, female artists on view are still greatly outnumbered by their male counterparts, scoring in at just under 30% in both galleries. In Do Women Have to Be Naked to Get into the Met Museum (1989), the Guerrilla Girls point out that ‘less than 5% of the artists in the Modern Art sections are women, but 85% of the nudes are female’. This not only goes to show that society’s fascination with the objectification and sexualisation of the female form is still in continuation, but also emphasises a severe problem: women are struggling to get their foot in the door of such galleries, prohibiting their expression of female identity and further encouraging art constructed by the male gaze. In order for a true revolution to occur, the world of art, as well as society, must open its doors to encompass the multitude of responses to what it truly means to be a woman, in whatever format that is.
Edited by Holly McGlue
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