Taschen is an art book publisher founded in 1980 by Benedikt Taschen in Cologne, Germany. They specialise in publishing art books about less well-covered topics including queer, fetish and erotic art. This relatively small-format (15.3 x 20 cm), high-gloss art book does what it says on the tin and features four-page spreads on 46 women artists of the 20th and 21st centuries – each gets two pages of text about them facing two pages of representative images, whether paintings, sculptures, photos of installations or performances etc.
German
The text is sourced from a range of experts on the various artists, but they and the introduction by Ute Grosenick, are all translated from the German. The resulting prose often feels heavy, in fact is sometimes incomprehensible – and is not helped by the liberal use of the kind of artbollocks which is required to explain and make sense of most of the artists from the 1960s onwards.
Wordy yet uninformative
Here’s the opening of the article about Andrea Zittel.
An inundation of stimuli and pressure to consume are two of the operative terms continually used with regard to the influence of mass culture on the individual. The former supposedly leads to distraction and nervous overloading, the latter to an awakening of futile needs, prestige thinking, and meaningless superficiality. Andreas Zittel’s blithe ‘applied art’, at first glance ascetic but in fact quite sensuous, can be interpreted against the background of this discussion. She stands, as it were, on the other shore and her mundane ‘art world’ lacks every form of moralising attack, overhasty critique, or complaining cultural pessimism. Rather, the lifestyle she offers is rife with both pragmatic and utopian aspects, and upholds the dignity of the individual within mass culture without losing sight of the factor of desire. (p.186)
On the basis of this passage what do you think Zittel’s art consists of or looks like? Would you expect to see paintings, installations, sculptures, film or video?
For me the key word in this verbose, pseudo-intellectual but strangely prim (‘with regard to’) and ultimately uninformative style is ‘supposedly’. The use of this word in the second sentence undermines the whole of the remainder of the paragraph. It indicates that the writer (Raimar Stange) is hedging their bets. Mass culture and consumer culture ‘supposedly’ lead to nervous overload and superficiality.
Stange invokes these concepts (which are key to understanding Zittel’s resistance to them) but is anxious to emphasise that she is not so naive as to actually ‘believe’ in them. No, the use of ‘supposedly’ indicates that she is dealing with ideas which may satisfy the mainstream media and uneducated plebs, but that you and I – who have read our Foucault and Lacan and Barthes and Derrida and Deleuze (heavily referenced in her text) always use with forceps (even if we are forced by the demands of publishing and writing for morons) to base our entire analysis of a living artist on them.
She wants to use pretty straightforward banal truisms of our time to explain Zittel’s work – but she is painfully aware that the ideas she’s invoking are, well, pretty commonplace, and so writes supposedly just to let us know that she’s cleverer than that. She’s having her cake and eating it.
(If you want to understand what Zittel’s very distinctive ‘art’ is like and how it ‘lacks every form of moralising attack, overhasty critique, or complaining cultural pessimism [but ] rather …. offers a lifestyle rife with both pragmatic and utopian aspects, and upholds the dignity of the individual within mass culture without losing sight of the factor of desire’ check out her Wikipedia page, where you will discover that some of those descriptions are actually very accurate – once her project has actually been explained a bit.)
Clichés
Alternatively, the writers resort to clichés and truisms. Admittedly, writing about art is difficult. Having read all the introductions and all the wall labels for over 100 exhibitions over the past five years I am all-too-aware of how you have to say something, and so there is a terrible temptation to just fill up the space with plausible-sounding padding. Still, there’s no excuse for just writing empty clichés.
Which artist would you say this is describing?
This is an art on a continual search for the meaning and possibility of personal identity, which both emotionally appeals to and intellectually challenges the viewer. (p.44)
It could be quite literally about any artist, ever.
Alphabetic order
The artists are arranged in alphabetical order, which is one way to do it. But an unintended consequence is that the first 40 or 50 pages are of modern artists, whose work, dating from the 1960s and afterwards, tends to be highly experimental, with lots of installations, photos of performances, film and video and so on.
Women’s bodies / sex
Also women artists from this era often depicted the naked female body in ways designed to subvert the way it’s depicted in ‘traditional’ male art, undermine ‘the male gaze’ and so on. But the unintended cumulative effect is of lots of chaotic scenes and naked women. The Vanessa Beecroft entry features 16 colour photographs of extremely attractive naked or scantily clad woman. We’re still on B and this tends to set the tone for the way we read – and see the images of women in – the rest of the book.
- Imponderabilia (1977) by Marina Abramovic ‘Body material’
- VB 36.048 by Vanessa Beecroft ‘Waiting for beauty’
- Teenage girls on a beach by Rineke Dijkstra ‘Identity and gaze’
- Caressing the Pole (2000) by Marlene Dumas ‘Identity as interpretation’
- Blinding (2000) by Tracey Emin ‘The tyranny of intimacy’
- Genital panic (1969) by VALIE EXPORT In 1968 Waltraud Lehner (who had renamed herself VALIE EXPORT) cut a hole in the crotch of some trousers and walked through a cinema with her naked crotch at viewers’ head height. ‘Her action was intended to confront and communicate the cliché of women’s cinematic representation as passive objects. This was aimed to change people’s seeing and thinking.’ In fact the most striking thing for me was how hairy her crotch is (and the crotches of most of the nekkid women in these photos). Modern pornography, fashion shoots and pop videos by the likes of Miley Cyrus have accustomed us to images of women who are completely hairless at crotch and armpits. Looking at many of these old photos reminds me of the notoriously hairy illustrations of the ‘scandalous’ book of the period, The Joy of Sex (1972), whose male figure was full bearded and about as hairy as a man could be. Illustration from The Joy of Sex. It was the early 70s man. Let it all hang out.
- Chelsea Lights by Elke Krystufek
Take, for example, the work of Viennese artist Elke Krystufek (b.1970). Her entry begins by describing how, at a 1994 group exhibition JETZTZEIT, she bared her breasts and masturbated in a mock-up of a comfortable bathroom in front of gallery guests, starting with her hand and progressing to using a dildo and vibrator. After she climaxed in front of everyone, she got into the bathwater and relaxed.
As in many of Krystufek’s works, the performance addressed the interrelationship between (male) gaze and (auto)erotic pleasure, as well as the interplay between artistically staged identity, feminist emancipation, and the female body. What at first sight may seem like a crude and narcissistic provocation, brusquely ignoring the distinction between the public and private spheres, turns out in the end to be a deliberate game in which social orders and their unconscious normative ascription – intent on authoritatively determining all expressions of sexuality – are consciously subverted. (p.116)
I know plenty of men who’d love to have watched their ‘unconscious normative ascriptions’ being subverted in this way. I wonder if she videoed it? Can’t find it on YouTube, but there is this work, which, I think you’ll agree, pretty much annihilates the Male Gaze.
Here’s another ‘subversive’ work by Marlene Dumas.
‘Because the images are culled from porn magazines, sex in Dumas’ paintings is stripped of its erotic charge’. Got that? These images have no erotic content whatsoever.
Phallocentrism and the castrated woman
In a 1973 essay titled ‘Visual pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, the film director, scholar and feminist Laura Mulvey examined the relationship between the patriarchal unconscious, the pleasure derived from looking , and the conventional image of woman in cinema and society. Male phallocentrism, Mulvey observed, has defined woman’s role in society as ‘an image of the castrated woman.’ In order to ‘arrive at a new language of desire’, this definition must first be analysed, after which the (visual) pleasure derived from perceiving these images should be destroyed. (p.116)
44 years later I wonder how the project to destroy the visual pleasure to be derived from viewing ‘the conventional image of woman in cinema and society’ is getting on. Maybe it will take a few years more. Or decades. Or centuries.
Traditional art
Away from hard core sexual imagery, ‘traditional’ art – in the form of oil painting – is relatively rare in this book. The names which stand out are Sonia Delaunay, Natalia Goncharova, Frida Kahlo, Lee Krasner, Tamara de Lempicka, Georgia O’Keeffe and Bridget Riley, with Barbara Hepworth as a ‘traditional’ Modernist sculptor. Reading their entries is a relief because there is a lot less about masturbation, sex, vaginas, gender and identity.
Also their work, being so traditionally restricted to painting and sculpture, has been thoroughly assimilated and so is easy and so is a ‘pleasure’ to read.
Middle way
But there is another group, a sort of middle way of plenty of women artists who don’t feel the need to masturbate in public, paint themselves or other women naked or generally harp on about female sexuality. There are plenty of strange and interesting women artists.
Hanne Darboven’s obsession with numbers which seems to have led to walls covered with sheets of papers with various mathematical formulae or combinations of numbers all over them – Wunschkonzert (1984)
Isa Genzken’s abstract sculptures – Guardini (1987)
Mona Hatoum’s cool detached sculptural objects – Kapan (2012). She is now widely acknowledged as one of the leading living artists in the world.
Eva Hesse’s minimalist sculptures – Right After (1969)
Rebecca Horn – admittedly more naked women, but in a genuinely beautiful, aesthetic way – Unicorn (1969), and the later work seems entirely abstract – High Noon (1991)
Kiki Smith – disturbing installations featuring animals and birds – Jersey Crows (1995)
The list of artists
I’ve read criticism saying there’s a bias in the artists selected towards German and European artists, though the bias I noticed was towards American artists. A third of them are or were based in New York, testimony to the centrality of that city – centre of global capitalism, awash with bankers’ money – to the post-war art world.
Here’s the full list. I indicate country of origin and country where they ended up working, link off to some works, and link their names to reviews of exhibitions about or featuring them:
- Marina Abramovic – b. 1946 birthplace Yugoslavia, Workplace Amsterdam – Performances
- Eija-Liisa Ahtila – b.1959 Finland, Finland – The House (2002) 14 min DVD
- Laurie Anderson – b.1947 Chicago, New York – Home of the brave
- Vanessa Beecroft – b.1969 Italy, New York – VB45 (2001)
- Louise Bourgeois – b.1911 Paris, New York – Cell
- Lygia Clark – b.1920 Brazil, Brazil – A Morte do Plano (1960)
- Hanne Darboven – b.1941 Germany, New York
- Sonia Delaunay – b.1885 Ukraine, Paris
- Rineke Dijkstra – b.1959 Netherlands, Netherlands
- Marlene Dumas – b.1953 South Africa, Amsterdam
- Tracey Emin – b.1963 England, London
- VALIE EXPORT – b.1940 Austria, Cologne – Action Pants, Genital Panic (1969)
- Sylvie Fleury – b. 1961 Geneva, Geneva
- Isa Genzken – b.1948 Germany, Germany
- Nan Goldin – b.1953 Washington, New York
- Natalia Goncharova – b.1881 Russia, Paris
- Guerilla Girls –
- Mona Hatoum – b.1952 Beirut, London
- Barbara Hepworth – b.1903 Yorkshire, St Ives
- Eva Hesse – b.1936 Hamburg, New York
- Hannah Höch – b.1889 Germany, Berlin
- Candida Höfer – b.1944 Germany, Germany
- Jenny Holzer – b.1950 Ohio, New York
- Rebecca Horn – b.1944 Germany, Germany
- Frida Kahlo – b.1907 Mexico, Mexico
- Lee Krasner – b. 1908 New York, New York
- Barbara Kruger – b.1945 New Jersey, New York
- Elke Krystufek – b.1970 Vienna, Vienna
- Tamara de Lempicka – b.1898 Warsaw, Mexico
- Sarah Lucas – b.1962 London, London
- Annette Messager – b.1943 France, Paris
- Mariko Mori – b.1967 Tokyo, New York
- Shirin Neshat – b.1957 Iran, New York
- Louise Nevelson – b.1899 Kiev, New York
- Georgia O’Keeffe – b.1887 Wisconsin, Santa Fe
- Meret Oppenheim – b.1913 Berlin, Basle
- Elizabeth Peyton – b.1965 Connecticut, New York
- Adrian Piper – b.1948 New York, Cape Cod
- Bridget Riley – b.1931 London, London
- Pipilotti Rist – b.1962 Switzerland, Switzerland
- Niki de Saint Phalle – b.1930 France, California
- Cindy Sherman – b.1954 New Jersey, New York
- Kiki Smith – b.1954 Nuremberg, New York
- Rosemarie Trockel – b.1952 Germany, Germany
- Rachel Whiteread – b.1963 London, London – House (1993)
- Andrea Zittel – b. 1965 California, New York – A-Z
Insights from Ute Grosenick’s introduction
In the second paragraph of the introduction Ute Grosenick says there is a ‘gender war’ going on. Alright. It does seem likely when you read any academic work about modern art or any newspaper.
It’s interesting to learn that the first women-only exhibition was held in Amsterdam in 1884. Women-only exhibitions were held in Paris in 1908 and 1918. But there were few female art teachers, women members of national art academies, women art dealers networking among women artists, as well as bans on women attending some or all classes in most art schools.
Grosenick gives the impression that there were two great boom periods in 20th century art:
- The decade from just before to just after the Great War saw Art Nouveau, Expressionism, Fauvism, Futurism, Cubism, Vorticism, Constructivism, Dada, Abstract Art, Neue Sachlichkeit and Surrealism.
- The decade from the mid-60s to the mid-70s saw an explosion in the possibilities and definitions of art, exemplified by Pop Art, Op Art, Conceptual Art, Land Art, Fluxus, Arte Povera, Happenings, Performance Art, Body Art and Minimalism.
She says the 1980s were ‘a decade of disillusionment for most women artists’.
She says that the rise of gender studies in universities reflects the way ‘the critical examination of the significance of one’s own and other people’s gender… is becoming ever more central to art’. In my experience of recent exhibitions, I would say that gender and identity are becoming almost the only way in which gallerists and curators can now relate to art.
Related links
Related book reviews
Reviews of exhibitions of women artists I’ve been to
- Vanessa Bell @ Dulwich Picture Gallery
- Emily Carr @ Dulwich Picture Gallery
- Metamorphoses by PJ Crook @ The Royal West of England Academy
- Sonia Delaunay @ Tate Modern
- Tracey Emin – My Bed and J.M.W. Turner @ Turner Contemporary
- Barbara Hepworth: Sculpture for a Modern World @ Tate Britain
- Emily Jacir: Europa @ Whitechapel Art Gallery
- Tove Jansson @ Dulwich Picture House
- Winifred Knights @ Dulwich Picture Gallery
- Rachel Whiteread @ Tate Britain
- Agnes Martin @ Tate Modern
- Georgia O’Keeffe @ Tate Modern
- Winifred Knights @ Dulwich Picture Gallery
- Conflict, Time, Photography @ Tate Modern included the photography of Jane and Louise Wilson, Sophie Ristelhüber and Ursula Schulz-Dornberg.
- The American Dream: pop to the present @ the British Museum included prints by Helen Frankenthaler, Carroll Dunham, Ida Applebroog, Dotty Attie, Kiki Smith, Lee Lozano, Louise Bourgeois, Emma Amos, Kara Walker
- The World Goes Pop @ Tate Modern included work by Joan Rabascall, Kiki Kogelnik, Judy Chicago, Evelyne Axell, Ángela García, Mari Chordà, Jana Želibská, Dorothée Selz, Beatriz González, Anna Maiolino, Uwe Lausen, Eulàlia Grau, Ulrike Ottinger, Nicola L, Ruth Francken, Ángela García, Mari Chordà, Marta Minujín, Isabel Oliver, Teresa Burga, Martha Rosler, Dorothée Selz, Delia Cancela, Renate Bertlmann, Chryssa Vardea, Romanita Disconzi, Natalia Lach-Lachowicz (Natalia LL), Sanja Iveković.
- Strange and Familiar: Britain as Revealed by International Photographers @ Barbican included works by Edith Tudor-Hart, Evelyn Hofer, Candida Höfer, Tina Barney and Rineke Dijkstra.
- The World of Charles and Ray Eames @ Barbican featured the design work of Ray Eames.
- America after the Fall @ the Royal Academy included a section on Georgia O’Keeffe.
- Abstract Expressionism @ the Royal Academy included works by Lee Krasner, Janet Sobel, Joan Mitchell and Louise Nevelson.
- A Crisis of Brilliance @ Dulwich Picture Gallery included work by Dora Carrington.
- Art and Life @ Dulwich Picture Gallery included work by Winifred Nicholson.
- Queer British Art 1861-1967 @ Tate Britain included works by Dora Carrington, Gluck, Ethel Sands, Clare Atwood, Ethel Walker, Laura Knight, Cecile Walton.
- Ruin Lust @ Tate Britain included works by Jane and Louise Wilson, Rachel Whiteread, Tacita Dean and Laura Oldfield Ford.
- Shoes: Pleasure and Pain @ Victoria & Albert Museum featured the work of shoe designers including Sandra Choi, Caroline Groves, Vivienne Westwood, Sophia Webster, Fleur Oaks, Zaha Hadid.
- Killer Heels @ the Brooklyn Museum featured work by shoe designers like Westwood and Hadid, but also videos by Marilyn Minter, Leanie van der Vyver.
