peter nesteruk (home page: contents and index)
On images of
women…
(Xing Danwen, Gao Bo, Jiang Zhi, Marcus
Harvey)
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A
comparison of four images of women: a photographic portrait of a tearful female
star of recent Chinese art history, ‘Biaotai’ by
Jiang Zhi (in ‘Biaotai’)
with an image from British art and cultural history, ‘Myra’, by Marcus Harvey
(in ‘Sensation’) based upon a found image, a documentary photo-portrait, which
is then contrasted to a similarly altered photo-portrait by Gaobo
(‘Parle’), and to Xing Danwen’s, photographic diptych
of a woman (or two women), front and back… 你的痛就射我的痛 (readily available
online).
(These images taken together constitute a kind
of ‘little anthropology’, suggesting a comparative cultural installation,
together showing a piece of cultural history… gender history…).
A recent image of
a woman in tears, with its particular, and very public, past, reminds one of a
past event, of another image with ‘a background’… and then with other, more
recent, images designed, perhaps, in part, to counter the assumptions of these
backgrounds, in turn…?
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The
first picture, is a photo-portrait of Ah Jiao, by Jiang Zhi,
called ‘Biaotai’ (from Biaotai, China Minorities Art
Photography Press, 2013).
One of China’s
leading conceptual artists, Jiang Zhi is well-known
for his thought-provoking installations as for his subtle photography – so it
comes as some surprise to see the appropriation he has made of this particular
image…
No
innocent viewing. We see through layers… layers of memory; layers of relevant
context… Layers; at the most general level; the relation of image and thing;
their difference, and the history of this relation, its dependence on prior
history (tradition), the history of representation and thing… or person. What
we might call the politics of the image… More cogent in the history of women
and representation; the history of received images (for example, note the
history of woman as representation, as pretending… as ‘made-up’ versus male as
sign of reality, authenticity… as ‘Truth’, so male as Nature to woman’s
Culture… except that the opposite cliché, equally historical and insistent,
equally hierarchicised, also obtains, not least in Romanitic influenced thought: male as reason, as Culture,
woman as emotion, as Nature… losing both ways is a sure mark of received
hierarchy).
Again on the relation of image and thing. The
(knowledge of the) image as posed, as a made-thing; the degrees of awareness of
this basic fact (art photography, conceptual-art photography and documentary;
mimesis and recording; icon and index). Especially in the case of images of
women; in this case, this woman, an actress, acting emphasized… ‘image’ in both
senses… a double pose?
And
tears. A woman in tears, a cultural and interpersonal cliché… calling up the
history of women in tears, as ‘sexy’ or ‘sad’, or both. Or perhaps we should
add, sad for whom… Two senses: the audience (an implied male or otherwise
sexually curious audience?) and the actor, or, in this particular case, ‘actress’:
she is feeling sad for whom: for a male lover – as the usual assumption; of
cause, the cause could equally be female or some other cause… (but then nothing
is equal when it comes to traditional representations of men and women…). But
usually (default) read as a sign of male power over women. Conversely, we may
read the tears as fake (which of course they are, it is after all a posed
photograph), as a ‘act’ as female power over men, a rhetoric of strategy… Empowerment
through the reversal of a given cliché. So much for the general level…
Reading
this image would partake of, indeed rely upon, these general layers, or
allusions, a first frame: an actress, acts for, poses for, portrait, with the
advertising cliché of ‘wind-blown’ hair to add to the cliché of ‘a woman’s
tears’, with the addition of make-up, a sexy face with tears… Making the image
a conceptual investigation of a cultural cliché… Part of the politics of the
image.
The
particular, is, this image, with this particular actress, with her particular
history… a sexual scandal and then a stolen image (paparazzi and the nudity of
the famous… currency of gossip and the media), with (public) tears as a response…
This history we know (part of the recent history of popular culture in China and
so difficult to avoid) and so find it impossible to see this image without
being reminded of it – without activating this filter, this primer, this
preparation for the making of meaning… No innocent vision, the past as
irreversible, we notice and remember; all that we bring with us is a part of
the process of interpretation, of meaning making… this, after all is how traditional
prejudices survive…
This
present acting in the image, its posed-ness, and artificiality, is what gives
it its critical ironic edge, as through it we are reminded of the making of images
as the making of all such images, as of a culture and a history (the cultural
history of the making of images of women, a sequence of repetitions or making
apparent of cultural memory) this all is in the background of our perception.
And this then meets the particular history of the person, this person. Her
history too then is appropriated - the artist could hardly be unaware of the background,
the connections and so the results… even if the actress might have been unaware
(or complicit; ‘no such thing as bad publicity’ as one possible attitude?).
However, this very role (sic) of the actress is perhaps also the under-cutting
of the role of critique, of irony, as we look at representation and culture, that
was set in motion on the general level… In fact, that is, in practice, the
clever, ‘knowing’ or cynical use of an individual’s history and the use of a
woman in this conceptual critical interrogation, perhaps just a little, offsets,
outweighs, drowns out, the original task or critical insight (an awareness and
critique of media stereotypes)? The layers of question and reference work well
on an anthropological or cultural conceptual level, but perhaps are more than a
little spoilt by the particular choice of image content and its popular
pre-history? By the apparent lack of regard for the individual. The unfeeling
use of individual history, only abets the media as home of clichés (gender and
sex scandal), as the clichés and obsessions of popular culture become those of
‘high’ or art culture even in its most high-brow form, conceptual art (and we
might add the fact that the actress is from Hong Kong, not the mainland, so
perhaps enabling another fraught set of clichés with a history…).
Test: without this
notoriety, this background, what is left of the image? (Back to the clichés
listed at the beginning…)
This affair of a
background, this memory, calls forth another background, another memory…
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Marcus Harvey was
associated with the ’80s YBA movement in Britain and their particular form of
‘shock-jock’ post-conceptualism…
Marcus
Harvey's painting of the ‘Moors Murderess’, Myra Hindley,
'Myra' (1995), is taken from a photograph taken from a past context - a part of
popular gothic culture, the culture of ‘folk-devils’, or an icon representing a
mass taboo, which was constructed around this person arising out of the torture
and murder of children. (Marcus Harvey, 'Myra' (1995), acrylic on canvas, 396 x
Two
effects with definite temporal significance may already be noted. First, in the
artwork under question, the past is re-used for present shock: no future
pay-off is found (unless it be the simple confirmation of the viewer's
superiority to the person represented). Second, this relation is not only an effect
of borrowing from the past, but also a result of the mimicking of, as well as
borrowing from, the discourse of reportage, where, despite the artistic
techniques employed, the relation to time remains the same. The process of
putting-into-art has not given the work a future value, or moral lesson, nor
has it begun the work of mourning, nor working through, nor even does it
constitute a memorial to the victims; it simply engineers a shock effect by
juxtaposing genres or mixing discourses. Simply blowing-up the picture would
have been sufficient to achieve this effect (however this had already been done
with other atrocities dating back to the era of the Vietnam war). Like the Hindley picture, the Jamie Bulger picture also was aestheticised by the additional use of colour
(change of tone or tinting) and texture. However, these manipulations are
usually associated with visual pleasure, which is felt to sit uncomfortably
with the subject matter of the Hindley picture and
its origins (as also with the Bulger picture). The artist has also included a temporalising effect through the techniques he has employed
to render the Hindley photo-portrait into an art
work.
The
chief technique used to render the photographic image into a painterly image is
the use of the repeated form of child-sized hands. The Hindley
image is made-up out of the imprints of children's hands. The very construction
of her image refers to her crime. However, the reminder is surely superfluous.
The very infamy that made the image use-worthy means that no-one capable of
responding to the painting would not also know of the history of the person
represented. The hands do refer back to the past crime in a kind of cause and
effect relation (the effect of the hands points back to the cause which was the
crime; a kind of metalepsis, in rhetorical terms). The crime is figured by the
presence of the hands in the picture; but what kind of reference back is this?
The present shock of the image is, by these means, only reaffirmed; it is a
matter of reinforcement of affect, and not the (always partial) release of
remembrance and learning that leads to futural
precaution. Furthermore, as the semi-present element in the picture, the hands
also refer to the past on a formal or experiential level: the image of Hindley is present, and the, harder to discern, images of
the hands are less present, are 'behind' the image, are its background, its
past. Again, reinforcement of affect (the picture's effect) seems to be the
only result of this presence of a past horror. If there is, perhaps, a moment
of memory, it exists only to refresh the impact of the picture as the breaking
of a taboo. Myra Hindley's image is now juxtaposed to
its own means of rendition. Might not the semi-presence of the hands have a futural figural deixis? Formally this is certainly
possible. Yet the effect of this temporalisation is
only to suggest more of the same, more of the same tragedy, more of the same
kind of crime, given the absence of a purifying temporal frame that would re-contextualise the events alluded to by the picture. (But
such a frame would precisely rob the picture of its shock value, and so of its
notoriety).
The
effect of recontexualisation away from YBA, and
'Sensation', and a recontextualisation in a
collection or exhibition where moral justice was the major theme, could, in
theory, result in a reading of the work as one promoting the remembrance of the
child victims and not the production of shock effects. Whilst this reversal is
theoretically conceivable, the absence of any features which work through the
picture itself would appear to deny this option. Indeed, when the picture was
shown in New York, to an audience unaware of any of the relevant contexualising background, the picture appeared to have no
impact what so ever…
It
is precisely through the reference to children's, that is the victims', hands,
then, that the picture's shock-value -also its financial value- is constructed.
The past is used to bring horror to the present. The future exists in no recuperable rhetorical form except as repetition; we are
returned to horror. If the painting's message and its temporal implications end
in the eternal now of the outraged present, this is also a part of its shock
value (as of its exchange value). Whatever might be said about the tabloid
press and their (ab)-use of this image and the attendant moral outrage for
purposes of circulation (and much could be said on this issue), it is important
to note that the outrage the art-work provokes has to do, precisely not with
the person, Myra Hindley, nor with the original
event, nor with the suffering associated with it (continuing in the persons of
the relatives left behind), but with its blunt use to gain notoriety. The
public protested against the collapse of the complex moral temporality of loss
into the simple now of shock. The market has not yet entirely sundered the
memory of pain into a pure commodity. Even by means of the transmission belt of
art.
If
the Hindley picture contains the germ of an
interesting idea, it stops short at pure shock, is satisfied with pure novelty.
No further re-positioning is attempted. In fact the picture mirrors precisely the use of the image made by the tabloids; it
differs only in its aestheticisation and its
art-institutional position. At best, then, one might argue that the picture
highlights the tabloid, or popular cultural, appropriation of the Myra Hindley photograph (one in which, in contradistinction to
other photographic images of her, she looks particularly frightful) as populist
folk-devil (or, that difficult formulation to resist, the deserving, or already
guilty, scapegoat), and that the artwork only highlights this appropriation.
However, this highlighting is achieved at the cost of blindly repeating the
tabloid operation - its complicity must therefore be regarded as total.
These in turn
evoking the memory of recent exhibitions…
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In China, by
comparison, the artist Gao Bo also uses the black and white photographic image
as the starting point for further painterly or plastic development; however,
the meaning that results serves to accentuate the
commemorative or interrogative function of the original image and its referents
– and addresses cultural memory in a respectful and responsible way.
Gao Bo is both one
of China’s leading photographer-artists, noted for his installations, and also
one of China’s leading performance artists…
In
contradistinction to many other ethnographically inspired photographs and
offering the form of the image as a question, an image framed as the asking of
a question, we have a powerful example of the interrogative voice in black and
white photography, in a photographic portrait by Gao Bo, ‘Sketch Portrait’,
(1996) in ‘Convection’, (Three Shadows, Winter 2007-8, photographs from the
permanent collection). This image incorporates smearing and handwriting – as if
incorporating graffiti or a written note as a form of commentary, which then
de-presences the image, re-presenting it as a source of difficulty (it is
important that the ‘deformation’ occurs on the level of the image, as if
between us and the image, and not in the world of the image, for these
temporal-rhetorical effects to come into play). ‘Parle’ in French, the
imperative, asks someone to speak, the addressee of the imperative, is it her or
us, her viewers. ‘Speak!’ The imperative awaits its response, its intended,
demanded, effect. But the image does not speak -it is an image- its ‘speech’
lies in our interpretation. The future of the image. An interpretation that
turns on the deformation of the image.
Indeed the use of such
deformation can have the effect of combining the tenses (past, present and
future) as we perceive a pre-existing problem, its presence in the here and now
and the possibility of a solution (or if there is no suggestion of a solution,
then as the continuation of the problematic state into future…). Oracular.
Deformation here has the status of a question posed; a future deixis that
throws us into a realm as yet undecided. A question addressed to the future (as
every question awaits an answer). Problematising not
only the status of the life of the depicted object, person, or event, but also
posing a question on the very nature of the black and white photograph, indeed
of photography itself as the right medium, or action of recording, of
representation, as suitable for what purpose? Calling representation itself
into question (the ethics of representation, posing the question: is it right
to show certain things, and how should they be shown and when, in what context,
the question of the responsibility of the arts and processes of
representation). So asking the question: what is it
for, what does it do, for whom… when? Portraying Others.
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Xing
Danwen ‘Your pain is my pain’/你的痛就是我的痛
(2015).
Xing Danwen is China’s leading feminist photographer; women,
urbanism and modernity are her chosen themes…
(The
title already, as titles do, and must, carries quite a lot… The English
translation does not quite carry the insistence or forceful assertion of the
Chinese sentence/title, where the effect is rather of emphatic assertion. If
the sentence asserts a simple predicate relation, ‘is’ , the intensification by
就 then
reinforces it: or ironises it (which, is a matter for
context; the image). As ‘title’ the function is precisely to interact with the
image, guiding and collecting meanings… suggesting questions. Much hangs upon
the identification of the ‘you/your/你’ in the title;
the ‘you’ of sympathy/identification, the recipient of a problem or problems,
the ‘you’ and ‘I’ of a shared or comparable problem – a case of solidarity or,
if incommensurable, of irony).
A
Diptych to the others’ single framed images, this form already offers a new way
of framing information, a different genre of presentation; traditionally of
religious use in painting (the division of the image as its magnification) it
has passed into photography as an indicator of importance, the division here
being of two persons of the same gender, or perhaps two moments, two facets,
front and back, of the same person. The artwork consists of an image of a woman
(the artist) first from the front, then, in the second part of the diptych, a
back view, of a woman in different clothes with a different hair style, but
similar build – probably (but not exclusively) indicating a different woman.
Certainly, asserting some identity – some shared ground. Yet the ‘back-view’ of
the second image complements the ‘front-view’ of the first: the opposites that
make up a whole (‘as if’ they were the same person). It is as if we have a
background, a back story, ‘written on her back’, ‘written on skin’, as the next
door, metonymic comment, to the topic of the first picture (note we are
normally drawn to the face-bearing image first, as prior, and that the order of
reading is left to right, the default global standard of reading and writing
direction, further suggesting the left image as prior, or as topic). The
‘second’ image then, the back view, or metaphoric ‘back-ground’ acts as a
comment which inverts the priority of first and second, indicating the lie or
in this case half-truth; the apparently lesser problems of the ‘first’ image,
presented, up front, the ‘face’, its ‘no comment’ expression - and the marks and scars on her body……
which perhaps we did not notice when we were too quickly distracted by the
vivid colours of the medical marks on the second…
(Now reading from right to left - the old traditional directionality of reading
in Eastern cultures – so suggesting that we need to re-examine the first
image.)
The
content of the first image is a woman already semi-clothed, and with signs of
the medical covering over invisible wounds: as well as other visual wounds (a
black eye, incision scars on breast and stomach). The second image then shows
(what is probably) another woman’s back (although the same person may have
posed for both) and we see a frightening array of red welts and bruises,
scrapings and rashes; frightening looking, but typically the effects of medical
treatment (the main meaning, somewhat negating the shock of the original
impact). If the first suggests the physical and emotional pain (invisible) of
physical or domestic abuse, then the second suggests either the pain undergone
in the treatment or the pain of the original malady (which may also be
psychological or spiritual). As the title ironically indicates, there is the
question of commensurability, of identity: to what extent can we compare pain?
Are domestic violence and bodily or mental illness comparable? The gender and
postures indicate similarity; questioning the causes does not.
Marks
on the back. (Marks on background…) Signs of ill health, of earning a living,
of stress (‘cupping’ and ‘scraping’ as ancient remedies, now again fashionable
forms of traditional Chinese medicine and relief). Like black marks on the
background of the first two pictures… the negatives that carry the pictures
into notoriety. But the latter case ‘Your pain is my pain’, the second negative
distracts from the first - aided to be sure by the ‘I can cope’ attitudinal
image of the first. The less livid marks on the front of the first tell the
story of violence by others -or even by the self (‘self-harm’)- with their
accompanying, but hidden, physical and spiritual pain.
All
four art works reference women: the first two as persons with Proper Names, the
third as a nameless image, the fourth with the artist (and maybe another),
through the pronouns ‘I’ and ‘you’. The first two images use these particular
real women only because of their background: the third, an altered documentary
image problematises gender, culture and speech in a
women of a given background; the fourth raises the background of a problem (the
causes) through the role of the artist as model (a particular person embodying
a general problem). The first photograph, by Jiang Zhi,
has a moralising tone added by a ‘spicy’ reputation,
its background as its only source of value-judgement; in the second artwork (by
Marcus Harvey), of photographic origin, it is again the person’s background
that, provides an extra, shocking, level of meaning; Gao Bo’s photo-portrait,
by contrast, signals a more responsible, interrogative way of proceeding, the
question of voice as applicable to the marginalized, what Gayatri Spivak has
called the ‘Subaltern’; whilst in the last art work, by Xing Danwen, paired images, perform the change of face of the
‘first’ image by the ‘second’ part, by first distracting from the injuries in
the first, then, as we look more closely, discovering and comparing them -
suggesting the forms of life behind the images… The pain behind the images,
their origins… the relevant background. In all four cases we might argue that
the background in some way ‘spoils’ the image, alters the image; in the latter
case by the form of a clever ‘optical illusion’ - strategically eclipsing the
pain (the wounds) of the depicted at first glance, only to permit its return
(their recognition) at second glance. Like a metaphor where we look for the
second meaning.
Like so much human
suffering: ‘Hiding in plain sight’
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Copyright Peter Nesteruk, 2018