Linda Nochlin
John Haber
into paper. A ways back now, she'd done so much to stimulate feminist
art history with a wonderful book, Why Are There No Great Women
Artists? So I wasn't surprised by how good this one looks.
Because of the current retrospective, I dived first into a chapter on
Cassatt. Nochlin notes that one first sees how the images of mother
and child represent the sensuality of motherhood, the flesh of mother
and child, a sensuality not subordinate to male desire. However, the
paintings are even more remarkable, because they show the woman as
more than wrapped up in the experience as most typical of the genre
from Dutch painting, but rather directing it. The women look up and
away; they treat mothering as work; they are shown making decisions on
how to do it.
By granting women all this, Nochlin argues, a woman gets to have all
the power of thought and desire of a man -- what other writers have
called the logos. (I'll not inflict on you the French psychology
since Jacques Lacan that muddles up for us that bit of Freud,
structuralism, and Christianity, but it's not so awful as it sounds.)
She contrasts a woman's authority and space in Cassatt with other
images of women in French pomo, such as the writer Julia Kristeva, who
take motherhood as emblematic of experience before words and thought.
Since I'm a little biases toward the convergence between French and
American philosophy, away from opposing the all-wise touch-feely stuff
to us dumb, logical Americans, I'm obviously happy! But I promise
it's a good book anyway, even if Ariane isn't here to grumble at me
for it.
John (www.haberarts.com)
Dik F Liu
paintings, and then wrote something that took an hour to read.
Cassett would have agreed.
Dik
Kay Kane
John Haber wrote in message <371382a7...@news.cc.columbia.edu>...
Hi John,
Ariane sent me (and she's not happy!). I haven't read the Nochlin book but
from your post here it sounds like women artists are confined to woman/child
painting. That's stereotyping of the worse sort and I run from those types
of exhibitions. As a woman/child (at various stages) myself, I can attest
to the fact that women have a much more diversified visual vocabulary (and
we don't all paint vaginas either...)
Kay
To reach me, remove 'rcd' from my e-mail address.
Marilyn
Ariane doesn't know I'm here (yet) and she is very happy,
she's an artist/poet/writer after all, how could she be otherwise.
John you have got me curious about the book you mention even
though, I don't agree with the writer from the snippet you provided.
Mary Cassatt was a modernist and she did not purposely produce
narrative paintings. The viewer/critic however, is free to
interpret whatever they want.
M.
John Haber
think, if not of narrative, then of gender roles -- and of real people
as well -- in Degas's ballets or Cassatt's child care. Hey, it's one
place where I definitely want to say that the mass public, which goes
right for those scenes, is on the money. They're trying to be like
Dik here, and forego thinking, but at least they recognize a subject
matter when they see one.
There's nothing anti-Modernist in thinking of women as independent
creatures in a male world that imagines them as at best some primitive
emotional mush. I don't think "Les Demoiselles" (or some Matisse)
makes any sense otherwise. And come on, Dik. Nochlin doesn't add
millions of words to no purpose. She asks what's on everyone's mind
these days: is Cassatt a modernist or a sell-out to gooey images of
women? Kay's asking the same thing, with the same urgency, just
mistaking my answer owing to my bad writing.
In that regard, I clearly don't agree with Kay either. I wrote
hastily and no doubt badly, to report on an already well-written book
I hardly examined. But the point isn't to reduce women to motherhood.
Rather, Nochlin's relating Cassatt to the idea that motherhood
deserves some dignity as an adult activity, not as part of a
traditional reduction of motherhood to that primitive, essential thing
women do.
Let me use a remote analogy, with apologies. You're on the right
track in terms of politics (or at least you share mine), but along the
way you're inadvertantly confusing two things. One is like cries that
one get some better parental leave (without losing career potential);
the other is like cries that women belong in the home. The first,
which is feminist, isn't necessarily a mask for the second. Does that
make any sense?
While I'm free associating, have you guys seen T. J. Clarke's "The
Painting of Modern Life"? It was a big step in pomo art criticism
whenever it turned up, and it looks very much at Impressionism and
Post-Impressionism as connected to reality. Even later on, I feel the
smell and raking light of a bar at two a.m. in Juan Gris's work.
John
John Haber
thinking about it while jogging a long way. I think the discussion,
owing entirely to my own stupidity, started to mix four separate
questions. It could be wise to separate them again.
I. One was whether interpretation has any value, especially when it
gets to big words and heavy issues as far from tradition as feminism.
Sorry, Dik, but I won't bite. I think it's a stupid question, and
you're timing is bad: we talked it out by the time you got here, and
I'm sick of it.
II. A second was whether a woman's dignity could benefit from
something other than French feminism. Here's another I really ought
to drop. I was rude as can be, slyly raising questions behind the
back of someone as caring, thoughtful, well read, and intelligent as
Ariane. So chastise me and then let's leave it.
All I'll say in explanation is that I wanted men and women to be able
to engage fully both in the emotional realm and in activities
traditionally left to men -- such as free action and analysis. I
worried that French feminism denigrates this in favor of elevating
roles to which women were long reduced. At least I hope this seems to
Kay and Marilyn on their side this time!
III. A third was whether one can discuss the "subject matter," as
traditionally conceived, without reducing the work that gave birth
(oops, female metaphor) to Modernism. That's a really good question,
worth a lot of time. I'll say that I feel myself kind of
old-fashioned, basically a formalist myself. I'd never want to
substitute "content" for a painting, especially a modern painting.
It'd never tell me alone why I like Cassatt so much more than
Morrisot, say, much less greeting cards.
Still, I can't not see what's there, what she's painting. It doesn't
end the interpretation, but it could be a way to start, basic data too
long ignored in formalism, a way in, a way to communicate with a
public that inescapably sees it. But the artist too can't escape it.
One paints a rectangle now, and it's not just an element in a
composition. It's full of choices, just as representation was in the
past. Is it going to emulate Rothko or Neo-Geo or ...? Exactly how
will it find its own space, its own voice, its own art?
I'll go further. I think one achieves the absence of narrative -- the
stillness of Vermeer, the excitement of Modernism -- not just by
dropping it or pretending it isn't there. Vermeer took the old genres
and made them a woman's own, seeking their emotional resonance -- and
only then was he able to turn on them, to empty out the old stories of
male conquest, lost love, or family happiness, to leave a quiet space
within.
The same thing happened in Modernism. Modernists raised expectations
and then refused them. That's why everyone looked at the first
Modernist of all, Manet, and saw outrageous parody. You make a
revolution by confronting the past.
IV. Last, is a focus on images of child care a reduction of women to
mothers and nothing else? That's a serious and fair question, too.
It reminds me that we had a lively defense here of Gentilleschi, who
definitely did not see women that way. Now, she's a greater artist
for me than Cassatt, but that's not the whole story. I'll take an
argument in steps.
First, of course it's not the entirety of Cassatt's work. One has to
see the images as part of a long concern with how to find a flattened
composition with color long put down as decoration or Oriental. She
thus long loved the outsider to the Western public world, the "frill,"
and the interior space of the home. Picasso too will play with a
fabric, decoration, and representation, in cafe settings far from
grand narrative painting.
Second, she's painting woman as they are, and that's to take them
seriously. What should she have shown them as? Investment bankers?
Third, this means NOT painting investment bankers, none of Degas's
businessmen. Child-rearing was long the unseen, the thing best kept
out of the way, in private. Painting was, by "definition," public and
serious, from battles and portraits of great men to lanscapes. By
making the private public, she places women in a man's world -- so
that in Modernism it can no longer BE a man's world.
Fourth, she's showing women as sexual, physical beings, but not as
objects of male desire. That was almost a paradox at the time!
Last, this only takes me to the start of Nochlin's chapter, since it's
ground she just recaps from a critical consensus. I had best stop
before I get rude again, as in Point II. I'll therefore leave the
rest of my summary of her -- of mothers not just in stereotyped poses
but in a range of planned activities -- to my earlier post.
With apologies for the length of this, but I enjoyed it!
John (on Vermeer's women, btw, www.haberarts.com/vermeer.htm)
Marilyn
I don't have a feminist axe to grind.
What I see when I look at Cassatt's modernist paintings
is superb painting, evoking a response from the me to
the relationships, something not articulated. It is
pointed to - look at these people, and how they are
responding to one another. In that sense they are not
anecdotal or sentimental.
M.
Dik F Liu
Haber) writes:
>Sorry, Dik, but I won't bite.<
What in God's name are you talking about? I was only pointing out that from
your description, Nochlin might be reading too much into very simple things,
like "The women look up and
away; they treat mothering as work; they are shown making decisions on
how to do it."
It is not unlike you reading too much in my simple message.
Dik
Kay Kane
When it comes to art, I don't blindly follow the feminists but, then again,
do we consider Cassett as one? She was (as Marilyn stated) a superb
painter, however, her subject matter is repulsive to me personally. I much
prefer the anger and angst of Kathe Kollwitz. I just objected to Casset's
subjects being presented as a representation of the kind of art "women"
do... Then again, I probably misinterpreted your presentation of the topic.
That's happened before to both of us.
--
Kay
To reach me remove 'rcd' from my e-mail address
Marilyn wrote in message <3713EB...@bc.ca>...
John Haber
I understand fully. It's more like I do! <grin>
John
Ariane
On Tue, 13 Apr 1999, John Haber wrote:
(snip)
> All I'll say in explanation is that I wanted men and women to be able
> to engage fully both in the emotional realm and in activities
> traditionally left to men -- such as free action and analysis. I
> worried that French feminism denigrates this in favor of elevating
> roles to which women were long reduced. At least I hope this seems to
> Kay and Marilyn on their side this time!
Hi again John,
=== Unfortunately, the roles traditionally assigned to women, and those
traditionally designated as male roles (in our Western Euro-American
culture) possess different statuses. If both men and women crossed
gender-role boundaries (at will) without a loss/gain of social status,
then I would say that we've reached a point of gender equality.
Certainly then, the first step in this process is to elevate women's
traditional roles to be (at least) on par with high status roles such as
accountants, lawyers, CEO's, etc. Women may be `free' now to become
high-status players in society, but woman's desires are being left out of
that equation. Emasculation is not the final solution, although I realize
that you're not explicitly suggesting that it is.
> III. A third was whether one can discuss the "subject matter," as
> traditionally conceived, without reducing the work that gave birth
> (oops, female metaphor) to Modernism. That's a really good question,
> worth a lot of time. I'll say that I feel myself kind of
> old-fashioned, basically a formalist myself. I'd never want to
> substitute "content" for a painting, especially a modern painting.
> It'd never tell me alone why I like Cassatt so much more than
> Morrisot, say, much less greeting cards.
>
> Still, I can't not see what's there, what she's painting. It doesn't
> end the interpretation, but it could be a way to start, basic data too
> long ignored in formalism, a way in, a way to communicate with a
> public that inescapably sees it. But the artist too can't escape it.
> One paints a rectangle now, and it's not just an element in a
> composition. It's full of choices, just as representation was in the
> past. Is it going to emulate Rothko or Neo-Geo or ...? Exactly how
> will it find its own space, its own voice, its own art?
>
> I'll go further. I think one achieves the absence of narrative -- the
> stillness of Vermeer, the excitement of Modernism -- not just by
> dropping it or pretending it isn't there. Vermeer took the old genres
> and made them a woman's own, seeking their emotional resonance -- and
> only then was he able to turn on them, to empty out the old stories of
> male conquest, lost love, or family happiness, to leave a quiet space
> within.
=== I wouldn't essentialize with such reckless abandon. Gaston Bachelard
too talks of emotional resonance, but nonetheless, back to your point, we
can `read in' political, ideological, social content into a painting, or,
conversely, we can `empty' the same painting of all content and search for
the `etre-en-soi' (being in itself) of the same work....of ourselves
vis-a-vis the work. All are legitimate `hermeneutic' projects, are they
not? That is, if the painting can in fact accomodate both, or perhaps
even more. Is this not why criticism and interpretation are necessarily
at bottom, creative acts in themselves?
> > The same thing happened in Modernism. Modernists raised expectations
> and then refused them. That's why everyone looked at the first
> Modernist of all, Manet, and saw outrageous parody. You make a
> revolution by confronting the past.
>
> IV. Last, is a focus on images of child care a reduction of women to
> mothers and nothing else?
=== No, not necessarily. Again, I see modernist paintings as being able
to communicate in many voices, depending on the viewer. Open-ended art.
The opposite of any form of reductionism....Or at least it reduces
reductionism to one possibility among many....
(...)
> Third, this means NOT painting investment bankers, none of Degas's
> businessmen. Child-rearing was long the unseen, the thing best kept
> out of the way, in private. Painting was, by "definition," public and
> serious, from battles and portraits of great men to lanscapes. By
> making the private public, she places women in a man's world -- so
> that in Modernism it can no longer BE a man's world.
=== Yes, well said here. Now all we need to do is to place man in a
`woman's world' so that equality can include autonomy for women.
> Fourth, she's showing women as sexual, physical beings, but not as
> objects of male desire. That was almost a paradox at the time!
>
> Last, this only takes me to the start of Nochlin's chapter, since it's
> ground she just recaps from a critical consensus. I had best stop
> before I get rude again, as in Point II. I'll therefore leave the
> rest of my summary of her -- of mothers not just in stereotyped poses
> but in a range of planned activities -- to my earlier post.
>
> With apologies for the length of this, but I enjoyed it!
=== Me too, and thanx for not getting rude John!
> John (on Vermeer's women, btw, www.haberarts.com/vermeer.htm)
a la prochaine,
A.