McDonald - Erotic ambiguities : the female nude in art

EROTIC AMBIGUITIES

Art is always ambiguous. When it involves the female body it can also be erotic. Erotic Ambiguities is a study of how contemporary women artists have reconceptualised the figure of the female nude. Helen McDonald shows how, over the past thirty years, artists have employed the idea of ambiguity to dismantle the exclusive, classical ideal enshrined in the figure of the nude, and how they have broadened the scope of the ideal to include differences of race, ethnicity, sexuality and disability as well as gender.

McDonald discusses the work of a wide range of women artists, including Barbara Kruger, Judy Chicago, Mary Duffy, Zoe Leonard, Tracey Moffatt, Pat Brassington and Sally Smart. She traces the shift in feminist art practices from the early challenge to patriarchal representations of the female nude to contemporary, postfeminist practices, influenced by theories of performativity, queer theory and postcoloniality. McDonald argues that feminist efforts to develop a more positive representation of the female body need to be reconsidered, in the face of the resistant ambiguities and hybrid complexities of visual art in the late 1990s.

Helen McDonald is an Honorary Fellow in the School of Fine Arts, Classical Studies and Archaeology at the University of Melbourne.

EROTIC AMBIGUITIES

The female nude in art

Helen McDonald

First published 2001

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada

by Routledge

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group

2001 Helen McDonald

Typeset in Galliard by

Florence Production Ltd, Stoodleigh, Devon

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

McDonald, Helen, 1949Erotic ambiguities : the female nude in art / Helen McDonald.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Female nude in art. 2. Feminism in art. 3. Gender identity in art. 4. Women artistsPsychology. I. Title.

N7573 .M39 2000

704.9424dc21 00032184

ISBN 0415170982 (hbk)

ISBN 0415170990 (pbk)

IN MEMORY OF MY FATHER CHARLES

CONTENTS

PLATES

32 Cathy Freeman at the Commonwealth Games, Canada, 1994

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I thank the University of Melbourne for awarding me a post-doctoral fellowship for women with career interruptions. This award enabled me to work with staff and students in the Universitys Department of Fine Arts and Cinema Studies between 1993 and 1995, during which time the plan for this book began to take shape. I am also grateful to Rebecca Barden for considering my initial proposal and offering me a contract, for without it I might not have been able to proceed towards the books completion. For early encouragement and valuable professional advice I am indebted to Julie Gibbs, Margaret Manion and Freya Mathews, and for later advice I am thankful to Patty Brown. Virginia Fraser and Fiona Nicoll read excerpts from the chapter Making a Difference with Ambiguity, and I greatly appreciate their astute comments. Norbert Loeffler, Nicky McDonald, Sue Russell, Jenepher Duncan, Robert Gaston, Lutz Presser, Pierrette Dudley-Hill, George Szmukler, Barbara Creed, Lynda Nead, Jeanette Hoorn and Jaynie Anderson were generous with addresses and bibliographical assistance, while Amanda Stuart kindly advised me on the translation of Italian. Many people from various institutions cheerfully provided me with assistance in obtaining illustrations, permissions and details of information. These busy people included Anna Ward, Miranda Francis, Catherine Gallagher, Fiona Moore, Domenica Chincarini, Paula Feldman, Rachel Young, Vicki McInnes, Sarrah Preuhs, Russell Storer, Nicola Vance, Esther Pierini, Juliana Engberg, Irene Sutton, Stephen Mori, Roslyn Oxley and Dermot McCall. At Routledge, Christopher Cudmore, Alistair Daniel, Juliane Tschinkel and Maggy Hendry responded helpfully to my queries. I especially thank Rebecca Barden and the anonymous readers for their suggestions on improving the manuscript. For frequent assistance with computer and communications technology, and for the formatting of the final draft before submission, I am beholden to John Clarke, and to Lorin and Lucia Clarke for their goodwill and forbearance. I am particularly indebted to Jean McDonald, who assisted indefatigably with tedious practical tasks, such as keeping records of permission correspondences, and with moral support. Finally, with a book such as this, the co-operation between the author and the artists whose work is discussed in the text is crucial. Although they may not agree with my general argument when they see it in print, the artists whose work is reviewed in the following pages were extremely helpful in providing me with the most important insights that this book offers.

The author and the publisher wish to thank the following copyright holders for their permission to reproduce the illustrations appearing in this book. by permission of the artist.

INTRODUCTION

There is no such thing as the ideal female body. Even the old masters would have agreed that an ideal is a concept not a thing. Some of the famous nudes in art history were thought to be near-perfect configurations of the ideal female form. For instance, Venus de Milo was sculpted for the citizens of Ancient Greece according to the Classical ideal of bodily perfection, and nearly 2,000 years later, Botticellis Venus of Urbino was painted as a Renaissance version of this ideal for the Medici princes. Executed in a representational style, both works of art served for centuries as interpretations of the ideal, and were endlessly copied in art. Popular fashion and pornography provided a succession of specific cultural fantasies of the female body, which ran parallel to and intersected with this high-art industry. In being sanctified as art, however, the nude became singular, academic, historical and exclusive, a myth that was disqualified as a standard that might be applied to living bodies.

In our own century, the goddesses of the silver screen displaced this highart tradition, adding voice, movement and the illusion of a closer link to real bodies, while seducing mass audiences on an unprecedented scale. Despite their international fame, few stars from this glittering constellation stand out or are remembered as approximating to the ideal. This may be because movies fracture the womans body to focus on the face or some erotic part, or because even film stars are condemned to be victims of changing fashion, tarnished with the aura of mortality. Occasionally, as in the case of Marilyn Monroe, who was acclaimed as the ideal of her day, personal tragedy and premature death confirmed this aura. It was as though the designation or symbolisation of a womans body as ideal forced recognition that her body was only too real and particular, a material fact that would soon turn to dust. In spite of this or perhaps because of it Marilyns image achieved the status of a myth. It was repeated in the prints of Andy Warhol and simulated in the performances of Madonna, thus spawning ever-new formations of iconic, feminine beauty.