Le Canon Qui Fait Chier
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Transcript of Le Canon Qui Fait Chier
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Severine Breton Thursday, March the 4th
2010
Unit 8essay #3 Tutors: Alison Green/Mark Irving
Word count: 2230
Compared to Egypts snail-pace stylistic changes, spreading over three
thousand years, the past five centuries of Western art appear as one dizzy
kaleidoscope, a MTV of art history where changes prevail over stasis. It is clear
that the quickening of socio-political, economic and technological changes that
occurred in the modern era favoured a similar acceleration within the art. In the
light of the present, the past century, flooded with the waltz of isms fostered by
the avant-garde, can be seen as a history of ruptures 1 with regard to the canon.
According to Francoise Cachin, History has endowed certain paintings with the
signal status of inaugurating a new chapter in art. There is a before and an after.
This is the case for Picassos Demoiselles dAvignon in the 20th and in the second
half of the 19th, rightly or wrongly, the same role was fulfilled by Manets
Dejeuner sur lherbe.2 Thus, by provoking a before and an after, rupture implies
the possibility of change and breach opening. But changes might not be a rupture
per se, for the latter - when confronting the canon - entails more than stylistic
shifts. The term canon, from the greek kanon, the rule or standard, stands as an
expression of universalized or universal standard of quality.3
Traditionally, the
canon is the most significant body of works, thus the most worthy of study. Its
process of selection in terms of artists, art events and debates, the art historical canon
relies on sexual politics and power relations of sexual difference.4
For instance, the
concept of father of art5
itself emphasizes that Western history is governed by
1The word rupture comes from the Latin ruptura, ruptus (break, destroy) from which
derives rupes rocky wall-rupestrian. It is interesting to note that the premise of art,cave/rupestrian art has an etymological link with the rupture.2Cachin, Francoise. Manet: the influence of the modern. p.483 Pollock, Griselda. Differencing the canon. p.34I am referring here to Griselda Pollocks definition of the canon as both a discursive
structure and a structure of masculine narcissism within the exercise of cultural
hegemony. Preface xiv5 Western art history designates father figures to benchmark artistic creativity. In otherwords, the father figures within art history are representative of high art ideals and
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patriarchal power that excludes women.The content of the canon - both historically
and culturally specific, depends on certain authorities, philosophies and patriarchal
biases in control ofthe canons production and maintenance. As stated by Simone de
Beauvoir: Representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they
describe it from their own point of view, which they confuse with the absolute truth 6.
Rupturing the canon would imply a reconfiguration of its social structure, hence a
complete modification of the epistemological basis of representation.
Along with feminism, one of the great influences upon the practice of art history
in the 1970s and 1980s has been the advent and the application of post-modern
theory. This new way of thinking has sustained a profound questioning of some
basic, evaluative absolutes, among them the concept of quality in art, artistic
genius and the canon of great art and artists.
When Lynda Nochlin wonders Why has art history focused so exclusively on certain
individuals and not on others, why on individuals and not on groups, why on artworks
in the foreground and something called social conditions in the background rather
than seeing them as mutually interactive?7
she asks for Western art canon to be
discussed as an ideological discourse whereby its representation of art is seen as
constructed. Since women have been excluded from the legitimating backbone of
cultural and political identity8, the art historical canons rupture would aim at
constructing them new identities, whether it might involve destroying the old
ones first.
In this essay, I will explore the pluralism and complexities of feminism as an
epistemological rupture of the art historical canon understood as a gendered
and en-gendering discourse9. Within the wave of postmodernism, female
practitioners like Judy Chicago, Sherrie Levine, Cindy Sherman and Barabara Kruger
were acknowledged for their direct critique of the homogenous constructs of
modernism, particularly patriarchy. Common among these artists was an
understanding that a critique of high art institutions simultaneously led to the
constitutes the canon. Such a view illustrates the exclusion of women and the patrilineage
embedded within Western art history.6 De Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sexp.1757
Nochlin, L. Women, Art and Power. p.218-2198 Pollock, Griselda. Differencing the canon p.39 Pollock, Griselda. Differencing the canon. p.26
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subversion of the exclusive power given to men within Western art. Foucaults
analysis of the role of power in the construction of knowledge and his identification
of the body as a site of the operation of power will be of use for considering these
artistic practices as illustrating a rupture greater than a mere change in style; feminist
interventions reveal a profound attempt to rupture the canon, to subvert the very bases
of our thought and knowledge systems, toward a deep recognition of the Eurocentric
and phallocentric power politics in which anyone other than white male is an other.
Women have always been visible as objects within culture, but only rarely
have they been acknowledge as subjects of cultural production in their own
right. The identification of the feminine with the biological nature of the body
has been a powerful argument for assigning women a negative role in the
production of culture.10 According to this view, women conduct their creative
role naturally by having children while men create art.11 It is against this
context that feminist artists have claimed the right to speak about, to see
womens experience differently, setting their practice as a natural outgrowth of
the womens movement. Reclaiming womens histories and their inclusion in the
art historical canon brought with it an inevitable need to evaluate the existence
of a possible female aesthetic and the influence of gender on artistic endeavours.
Since women artists did not have access to the same art world as men, they
inevitably used materials from their immediate surroundings. By re-valuing and
re-integrating into the fine art domain the historically devalued and often female-
dominated ceramic and textile arts, Judy Chicagos installation The Dinner Party
10In light of this patriarchal power, Griselda Pollock argues that the criterion for creativitywithin art history is gender (male) specific.That is, within Western art history, the male has
taken the position of the creator and the female role has been represented in terms of the art
object, the model, or as the muse (due to a romantic association with the artist).
11 Pollock, p.21, notes that there is also a biological basis for creativity being genderspecific. She states that patriarchal discourse within art history has depicted the male as the
creatorof art while the female is the procreator. Here, women are undermined not only in
terms of their power as procreators but also by being associated with the body, while men are
associated with the mind. As the mind (intellect) is valued more than the body within Westernculture, male creativity is held to exceed female artistic abilities.
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subverts the hierarchies that exist between art and craft12.
Judy Chicago (American, b. 1939). The Dinner Party Mixed media: ceramic, porcelain,
textile. Brooklyn Museum, Gift of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation, 2002.10. Judy
Chicago. Photograph by Jook Leung Photography
On the one hand, the piece stands as a female response to Leonardo da VincisLast
Supper; it honours 999 illustrious women who -no matter their significant cultural
contributions- have been written out of history as it was generally recorded and taught
in the mid-twentieth century. Every excavation of a forgotten woman changes not
just the historical record but also expends the definition of history. 13 Chicago
raised fundamental questions on art history as a humanistic discipline and those
questions that are now affecting its functioning at all levels may eventually lead
to its redefinition. Her artistic commitment is genealogical in its design and
archaeological in its method: it reminds Foucaultsgenealogical methodology in
the sense that it attempts a diagnosis of the present time, and of what we are, in
this very moment in order to questionwhat is postulated as self-evidentto
dissipate what is familiar and accepted.14 On the other hand, The Dinner Party
12 This point is properly developed by Rozsika Parker in The subversive stitch:
Embroidery and the making of the feminine.13Helene Cixous from Pollock, p.97: If women set themselves to transform History, it
can safely be said that every aspect of history would be completely altered. Instead ofbeing made by men, Historys task would be to make woman, to produce her. This
quote echoes nicely Simone de Beauvoir statement One is not born, but rather becomea woman.14 Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish p.265
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uses womens domestic lives, symbolized by the diner table, to celebrate
womens history and creativity. Chicago worked with 200 traditional
craftspeople15 to create the separate elements, from china painting to
embroidery, that went into the 39 place settings: each consists of a unique ceramic
plate and accompanying linens that bear the name and identifying symbols of
illustrious women.
Judy Chicago (American, b. 1939). The Dinner Party (Mary Wollstonecraft and Sojourner
Truth place settings), 197479. Mixed media: ceramic, porcelain, textile. Brooklyn Museum,Gift of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation, 2002.10. Judy Chicago. Photograph by Jook
Leung Photography
Her piece is a social and critical ontology of the present, for it involves an
analysis of the historical limits imposed on us in order to create the space for an
experiment with the possibility of going beyond them.16 In that sense, Chicago
tackles the Eurocentric myth within the Western art canon and grants its official
or dominant history with profound knowledge about womens condition and
situation.17 This, coupled with advent of psychoanalysis, affects the art historical
canon by questioning the assumptions of patriarchal law.
16Foucault, M. On the genealogy of ethics: an overview of work in progress in The
Foucault reader, p.5017
Chicagos installation answers positively the question asked by PollockIs Feminism tointervene to create a maternal genealogy to compete with the paternal lineage and to invokethe voice of the Mother to counter the text of the Father enshrined by existing canons? p.6.
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Feminists art practice gives prominence to the myriad of forms sexist
ideologies can assume within cultural artifacts; their work pinpoints how culture
contributes actively to the production of those same ideologies. A piece like You
Invest in the Divinity of the Masterpiece by Barbara Kruger the 1st
contemporary
woman artist to be part of Jansons History of Art- matters for its denunciation of
modernist myths persistence with their economic and mental structures. Indeed,
those words appear over a enlarged detail of the creation scene from the Sistine
Chapel ceiling. Not only her piece parodies our appreciation for work of art, but also
1982. Photostat, 71 3/4 x 45 5/8" (182.2 x 115.8 cm). Acquired through an Anonymous Fund.
2010 Barbara Kruger
reflects on artistic production viewed as a contract between fathers and sons.
As a postmodern female photographer, Levine also subverts father figures
within the Western art canon by challenging the gender specific notion of originality
within modernism. Thus, she critiques the phallocentrism inherent in the art canon
and the way in which Western art history perpetuates the concept of patriarchy as the
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universal norm. Through her photographic appropriations of existing reproductions of
canonized masters of photographic modernism such as Edward Westons nude studies
of his son Neil posing as a classical Greek torso, Levine points out the interweaving
occurring between the politic of sexual discrimination and other forms of politics. By
changing the title of the selected art selected artwork, she also subverts the art canons
ideal of authenticity and authorship.
Sherrie Levine, Photograph After Edward Weston, photograph, 1980.
In that sense, the linguistic adjacency of author and authority, of propriety and
appropriation, undermined by her subversive feminist action, remind us that the
work of arts status as a transportable good- and the male artists status as a god,
author of his creation- are indeed manifestation of both patriarchy and system ofpropriety. Her photographdisqualifies herself from artistic acclaim or the possibilityof her work being a masterpiece -in the traditional sense
18. This is an important
strategy: in order to challenge the dominant position of the father, the critique itself
cannot be done from a position of dominance. Additionally, by renouncing the notion
of originality, Levines statement subverts the art canon traditional measures of value
or merit: a copy may hold greater value than an original because it may embody
18Weintraub, L.Art on the Edge and Over: Searching For Arts Meaning in ContemporarySociety 1970s-1990s, p.251
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possibly a more profound artistic concept19
. Also, as Levine makes reproductions of
preexisting reproductions, rather than of originals, she questions the discourse of
appropriation itself. According to Weintraub, Levines practice is both within art and
without. To that extend, Levine ruptures with the parameters of modern art; she
positions herself beyond the art canon by deconstructing the patriarchal power that
governs it.
As a matter of fact, another ambition leaded by feminism is a project of
destruction of the representation. If Michele Montrelay is right when stating that
women are at the root of the ruin of representation20, it might be then the time for
women artists to take this statement literally. In this connection, Cindy Sherman s
practice based on impersonating scores of female stereotypes - exemplifies the
feminist shakeout of the art historical canon. In Untitled History Painting #205,
Sherman photographs herself in a way that mimics the considered canonical master
paintingLa Fornarina by Raphael.
right: Cindy Sherman. Untitled. 1989.Color photograph, 51 4. Courtesy MetroPictures, New York.
19Weintraub, LArt on the Edge and Over: Searching For Arts Meaning in
Contemporary Society 1970s-1990s, p.252
20Montrelay, Michele. Inquiry into feminity in The Gender Conundrum: contemporary
psychoanalytic perspective on feminity and masculinity, p.152
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Sherman takes the pose of Raphaels painting of Fornarina while making prominent
the artificiality of her undertaken character. Indeed, her appropriation of the Fornarina
image by wearing a plastic model of large female breasts suggests the idea of kitsch.
As Sherman photographs herself, she subverts the gender hierarchy and compulsory
heterosexuality by changing the gender of authorship and disrupting the traditional
distinction between the male artist as subject and the female model as object21
. She
has succeeded in linking photography to its prehistory in painting, while exploring the
role of an artist -when this meant almost without exception being male and a
genius. The juxtaposition of the real and hyper-real grants her work with a rather
strange feeling, echoing that inhabiting anothers body, space and time might be as
strange as inhabiting ones own.
Insofar as feminist artists like Sherman denature, de-sublimate and therefore de-
legitimate conventions and protocols that have determined for centuries authoritative
forms of ideal representation of feminity, we can consider feminist artistic activity as
both a critical and a deconstructive practice. Since the conventional history of art is
implicitly or explicitly- a glorificating discourse, feminist art history and its practice
can be seen as a praxis that makes discernable the repressions and exclusions
supporting cultural production with a discourse that we call history of art.
To conclude, if we admit that artistic production -despite its utopian or
transcendental aspirations, despite its specious assumption of a universal subject- has
a hand in those systems of power and domination that subdue women and the other
Others, then feminist artists and theorists, by challenging the validity and
supremacy of the art historical canon, create an epistemological rupture with the
latter. These few examples clearly do not exhaust the possibilities of feminist visual
practice, but they do illustrate some important ways in which feminism has attempted
to rupture not only the visual codes of art, but also the context in which
representations of women are seen and used. The issue of representation they call into
question has resonance for all aspect of representation, not just the representation of
women. The artists I referred to, by inserting themselves within the high art structure,
21Mizeroff, N.Bodyscape, Art, Modernity and the Ideal Figure, p. 132-133
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subverted the patriarchal system, hence a radically politicization of the field of
cultural production. By persistently inviting us to consider cultural artifacts from the
role they play in the assertion and upholding of gender inequality, feminist art
contribute to the trivialization of sexist oppressive ideologies. The world has never
been gender-neutral, but we no longer live in a fully gender-determined one.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Primary Sources:
De Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex. Penguin London (1972)
Foucault, Michel.Discipline and Punish (1977) and The Foucault Reader, edited by
Paul Rabinow ed. NY: Pantheon, (1984)
Secondary Sources:
Cachin, Francoise. The influence of the Modern. Ed. Harry N. Abrams (1995)
Carson, Fiona and Pajaczkowska, Claire. Feminist Visual Culture. Routledge New
York (2001)
Nochlin, Linda. Why have there been no great women artists in Women, Art and
Power and Other Essay, Harper and Row (1988)
Mizeroff, N.Bodyscape, Art, Modernity and the Ideal Figure, Routledge, London
(1995)Montrelay, Michele. Inquiry into feminity in The Gender Conundrum:
contemporary psychoanalytic perspective on feminity and masculinity, Routledge
London (1993).
Parker, Rozsika. The subversive stitch: Embroidery and the making of the feminine,Womens Press, London (1984)
Pollock, Griselda.Differencing the Canon, Routledge, London (1999)
Weintraub, L.Art on the Edge and Over: Searching For Arts Meaning in
Contemporary Society 1970s-1990s, Arts Institute, New York (1996)
Internet Sources:
Moma websitewww.moma.org[last accessed 1/03/10]
Brooklyn Museum websitewww.brooklynmuseum.org[last accessed 1/03/10]
Jstor websitewww.jstor.org[last accessed 1/03/10]
http://www.moma.org/http://www.moma.org/http://www.moma.org/http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/http://www.jstor.org/http://www.jstor.org/http://www.jstor.org/http://www.jstor.org/http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/http://www.moma.org/ -
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Wack! Art and the feminist revolution website http://www.moca.org/wack/ [last
accessed 1/03/10]
http://www.moca.org/wack/http://www.moca.org/wack/http://www.moca.org/wack/