Great and Not So Great Female Artists
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My Blog: http://thepanicartist.livejournal.com/
In the last month I have seen two important exhibitions of art by
women in Dublin. Usually I would not even bother going to these - but
my girlfriend as an art student naturally loves female artists. Apart
from a few greats like Kahlo, O'Keeffe, Bourgeois, Rego, Emin and
Gallagher - I have no real interest in women's art. Their concerns are
not my concerns, their styles are not my favorites and their over-
hyped political promotion makes me sick. However I don't hate their
work any more than that of 99% of all male artists I know.
I am also reluctant to write about these shows because I either feel
fatigued at the prospect - or I am worried about the knee-jerk emails
from women in response to my personal opinions and jokes. In my
experience my readers would listen to be berate male artists work for
pages - but if I say boo to a female artist - I must be a meat eating,
war mongering, racist and misogynist. Its all so juvenile, humorless
and the product of self-interest - for me ever to respond to these
attacks.
If there is a theme running through my whole writing on art it is that
- yes there is such a thing as great art, usually because of history
that means male artists - but every year - more and more genuinely
great female artists are emerging. On the Internet on sites like
deviantart and myspace - I have found far more talented up and coming
female artists than men - in fact it's an eight to two ratio. Moreover
I adore that fact that my girlfriend is such a talented and passionate
graphic designer and now fine art student - and I love being able to
give her advice and support her art. There is no sex war in our house
we think its all a joke.
But the fact remains that truly great art - the art I anchor my soul
to in moments of crisis - is very rare. Only painters know just how
hard it is to try and achieve a painting like Rembrandt or Beckman or
Picasso or Freud, only artists know how hard it is to come up with a
great idea like Duchamp, Manzoni, Kline, Koons, Hirst or Banksy, only
artists know how hard it is to then come up with another one just as
good, only artists know the feeling that no matter how hard you try -
you will never be good enough. In fact it is a miracle that so much
great stuff is made at all.
Every hour of everyday I am bombarded by what are essentially adverts,
fluff interviews and propaganda for; the lies of government, the
devils accountancy of the military, the two faced moral thoughts of
the churches, the exhibitions of incompetent painters and smart-arsed
concept artists, middle of the road pop music, airport novels, the
poetry of crass adolescents, brain-dead Hollywood movies, smiling
actors and god know what else. It's a miracle that any of us - can
keep any kind of perspective amidst all this brain-washing. It all
leaves me highly irritated.
So I don't want to join the happy, smiling, back-slapping operators
and dilettantes of the art world or media world - I see past their
masks of respectability. I don't want to be in the cool gang - I could
not give a shit about the art world - it's a pure swindle. However I
live my life for art. Yes I am an egotistical and narcissistic man -
but I know of few artists who have spent so much of their time
studying other artists work and then writing about it endlessly.
So anyway on the first weekend of October - I went with my girlfriend
to The National Gallery of Ireland - were we saw a wonderful
exhibition of portrait drawings. Gems by Antonio Pollaiuolo, Francesco
Bonsignori, Jean-Dominique Ingres, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Adolf
Menzel, Augustus John and William Orpen and Paul Klee delighted us
both. This was real drawing, real art and real skill and imagination
at work. But I could not say the same for the Alice Maher's exhibition
of charcoal and pencil drawings at the RHA.
The Night Garden - by Maher at the RHA in Dublin - was an exhibition
inspired by Bosch's painting The Garden of Earthly Delights. Maher has
been exhibiting in Ireland and abroad since the 1990's - to some minor
success.
This is A Link To The Royal Hibernian Academy;
www.royalhibernianacademy.com/
Putting aside the smug hubris of this woman to think herself an
interpreter of Bosch - the show was poster and wallpaper art of the
most boring and contrived kind. It was a tedious show with no sparkle.
I am sure she is a lovely woman, I am sure she is sincere, I am sure
she is very clever - but a true artist born to create? I think not. I
think art is merely an easy social option for her. She has talent -
but no real originality or passion. Its all too similar to the art
made by countless female professors of fine art in art schools across
the Western World - dry, derivative, smug, and myopic.
As usual her work was well made, well meaning, diligent but utterly
lacking even a flicker of the sacred fire. Her black and white
drawings in charcoal and the various works inspired by them seemed far
too similar to the greater and more original drawings of Francesco
Clemente who had practically reinvented the symbolic figure in Western
art in the late 1970's (after a prolonged silencing of the language of
the body by abstract art and conceptualism). However Maher's work had
none of the beauty or enigma of the Italian. Once again Maher's work
struck me as academic, contrived and riddled with a rag-bag of
Feminist art clichés (long female hair, animals, breasts, breast
feeding, menstruation, the moon, the sun, plant forms and so on)
derived from more original and heartfelt artists like Frida Kahlo,
Georgia O'Keeffe, Eva Hesse, Nancy Spero and Louise Bourgeois. It was
looking at works like these that made me quite happy not to write for
a newspaper - and be forced to write about artists like Maher.
You know I saw the original Bosch painting in the Prado in 2004 - it
is big (its about eight feet high and seven and a half feet wide when
it is side panels are closed over) and it burned into my very soul and
set my pulse racing. It is quite simply one of the greatest paintings
I have ever seen. His depiction of male and female nudes is skillful
and delightful, his painting of animals entrancing, his musical
instruments and grotesque but stylish monsters enigmatic, his colours
are so strong and evocative, and the whole panel teems with minute
details and beasts conjured from his imagination. A man or woman could
sit and look at this painting for an hour a day till he died and still
find new mysteries, details and insights. It took me a brisk walk
around of ten minutes to drain Maher's work of all its aesthetic
interest. The Bosch painting is an Atom-Bomb of a painting - in
contrast Maher's vast charcoal work (taking up practically the whole
of the RHA) is an unexploded dud! There is no mystery or originality
in Mahers work - just cliche.
On the bank holiday weekend at the tail end of October - we went to
The Hugh Lane museum to see 'Coral Cities' - an exhibition of
paintings, collages and craved paper by Ellen Gallagher. Carol was a
huge fan of Gallagher's work since it had so many elements of collage
in it - for it is my girlfriends first love.
This is a link to the Hugh Lane
http://www.hughlane.ie/exhibitions/exhibc.asp
But I went with my critical dagger drawn ready to cut her down to
size. I suspected that Ellen Gallagher - a beautiful mixed race
American (her mother Irish American her absent father an African
American) was nothing more than a mascot for a politically correct art
world - more concerned with identity than artistic quality. Add to
that the growing tendency of Irish museums to rope in any major artist
abroad with the vaguest link to Ireland - and you might understand my
skepticism.
When I had seen her work in reproduction it had looked like timid,
boring, art-school stuff. But I had never had a chance to see her work
in reality - and that I was soon to learn - was crucial to judging
Gallagher's art.
As we entered the first room my heart sank as I looked around and saw
large apparently blank white sheets of watercolour paper. But as I got
up close to them my heart jumped for joy. She had cut and carved into
the paper - creating highly detailed and well-drawn (or well-carved)
images of fish, octopuses and African women's heads with wild flowing
hair. In my experience there are few artists whose work reproduces so
badly in print. That is no reflection on the skills of her
photographers - merely an indication of how subtle her effects are.
These works were quite simply some of the most beautiful, gentle,
inventive and skilled contemporary work on paper I have seen in years.
I had such a compelling desire to gently run my fingers over her
carved, cut, water-coloured and collaged works on high quality
watercolour paper. I wanted to share a drink with her - and just
listen to her talk. Like a great flirt - Gallagher knows how to say
just enough to gain your interest - and has the control to leave you
waiting in baited breath - for more.
If you want me to get heavy handed I can say that her work deals with
themes of African American women's desire to look white or the subtle
forms of self-racism the oppressed sometimes inflict upon themselves.
But that would make her work sound too rhetorical and aggressive.
Looking at her work I was reminded of the wise and softly spoken
poetry of Mya Angelo - not the aggressive heroics of Jean-Michel
Basquiat or the Feminist screaming of The Guerrilla Girls.
Some art works shout at you - Gallagher's whisper to you: "Come here I
want to tell you a secret." Her work reminded me of Georgian flower
and plant watercolours, Outsider art, Marlene Dumas watercolour nudes,
Chris Ofili's intricately patterned and collaged paintings and many
other female artists interested in natural forms and female identity
like Nancy Spero. But at no time did I feel she was pastishing or
plagiarizing others - her own vision was consistent throughout. Yes
her art is identity art - but she has so much more to say about life
than just what colour her skin is. I quickly sheathed my weapon and
bowed in homage.
Gallagher's work has a wonderfully obsessive and secretive quality.
There is none of the tedious narcissism of Tracey Emin, none of the
boring repetition of Rachel Whiteread, none of the bogus Feminist rant
of Barbara Kruger or Jenny Holzer and none of the attention seeking of
well - take your pick of exhibitionist female artists today. Although
Gallagher has had private schooling and a fairly easy road to the top
of the New York art world (in 1995 she was shown in the Whitney
Biennial - aged only thirty - and two years later she was a Gagosian
artist) I feel her art is truly self-driven and not reliant on the
world around her - I know that success or failure will not stop her
need to create.
After we had gone around the show once - my girlfriend pleaded: "Do
you want to go around again?" "Yes sure!" I replied. So we looked over
the work again - still enthralled by this wonderful woman's discrete
and highly skilled works. Is she a great artist up there with the best
of the past twenty years - I think so - but then that doesn't really
doesn't say much. These are truly awful times for contemporary art.
However I look forward to watching her understated and very
intelligent and compassionate art develop.
My Website: www.thepanicartist.com
My Blog: http://thepanicartist.livejournal.com/