Introduction.
In the 21st century feminism is seen as no longer relevant to most young women. In this paper I will be exploring feminism in the 21st century and its influence on young female artists. I will initially look at the contributing factors that have created a feminist backlash and how feminism has moved on under its influence. I will be focusing on the generation of women defined by Third Wave Feminism, those born in the mid 1960s to mid 1970s. I will also look at the current cultural climate in which young people have grown up and the effect this had on them. I will then go on to investigate how feminist attitudes and pop culture have influenced young female artists. I will be looking specifically at two artists from the Third Wave generation. I am hoping to find out how young women are reacting to and dealing with feminism in the 21st century.
Chapter 1 – Contemporary Feminism.
By the end of the 20th century feminism had become a ‘dirty word’. In the 1990s ‘Girl Power’[1] was a slogan for young girls. In the ‘noughties’ young women feel that feminism has done its job, they were equal and empowered. Young women feel they are entitled to a successful career, a meaningful relationship, a family and also they have the freedom to choose to ‘get their breasts out’ in magazines and to be seen as glamour icons. Young girls now strive to succeed in the professions of glamour modelling and being a celebrity[2]. They no longer feel they need for feminism.
These changes are having extraordinary effects on women, their culture and their desires. Young girls, especially, seem to be a new breed of women. Not only do they surpass boys in examinations at all levels, they have begun to speak a new language, and it is one of buoyant confidence…These women are beginning to move somewhere without any markers or goalposts. Although they have heroines, they are making up their lives as they go along. No one before them has ever lived the lives they lead. They are combining traditionally feminine and traditionally masculine work and clothes and attitudes…When they grow up, they expect to be able to give birth one year and negotiate a pay rise the next. The raw, uncharted newness of these lives make the old certainties of feminism look outdated.
(Walter, 1998)
However, Germaine Greer believes that culture is less feminist today than it was 30 years ago (The History of Feminism, 2005). Issues such as pay, maternity leave and power structures still disadvantage women.
Published in 1992, Susan Faludi’s Backlash: The Undeclared War Against Women, was one of the first books to address the problems that had arisen in society since Second Wave Feminism[3]. At the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s a voice arose that expressed the unhappiness, stress and loneliness of being a newly liberated woman. The women who were told they could have equality with men were pursuing careers, but were burning out and suffering health problems. They were said to be suffering from putting off relationships and marriage. They experienced a lack of confidence and became desperate for a man later in life. Women who chose to remain childless were said to be feeling empty and depressed. These were the women that were supposed to be rejoicing in their new found freedom and the gains they were experiencing from the feminist movement. However, as Faludi wrote,
The women’s movement, as we were told time and again, has proved women’s own worst enemy.
(Faludi, 1992)
There was a feeling that the women’s movement had caused more problems for the modern woman, than advances. This feeling was demonstrated in the media, ranging from newspaper articles to features in glossy fashion magazines. They took a stand against feminism and berated it for the problems it had caused. However, Faludi found that this attitude was not necessarily the opinion held by women at large. In fact, it seemed that the average woman was just as interested in feminist issues and the fight for equality as they ever were[4]. What was making them unhappy and stressed was the inequality still present in the workplace and at home. These problems had been massively under-represented in the 1980s. They were replaced by the backlash attitude that had, by the mid-eighties, been fully integrated into popular culture. Faludi claims that it was the backlash to blame for women’s problems, rather than the feminist movement.
Backlash happens to be the title of a 1947 Hollywood movie in which a man frames his wife for a murder he’s committed. The backlash against women’s rights works in much the same way: its rhetoric charges feminists with all the crimes it perpetrates.
(Faludi, 1992)
Not all women were feeling a backlash against the feminist movement but the presence of feminism was fading. A proportion of women were now actively saying they were not feminists[5]. Messages fed by the media, that these ‘have-it-all’, ‘Super Women’[6] were not getting the life they were promised, were filtering down into the consciousness of the everyday woman. The news and trends articles that were saying women were happier in traditional roles rather than ‘having-it-all’, were not about what was already happening, but what they were encouraging to happen. Young women were learning that they would not benefit from feminism. They were being told that they would be seen negatively by men and as unattractive if they pursued these ‘old fashioned’ feminist ideas.
The backlash was not pushed by one person or group of people, in particular. It was not orchestrated and it wasn’t a movement. It was just an atmosphere that pervaded society. It appeared not to be political or to be a point that was fought for. This made it more powerful, as the issues that arose became private and personal[7].
The prevalence of the backlash within popular culture[8] has led people to believe feminists are “unstable, mannish, unattractive” (Whelehan, 2000) women who wanted to make ‘normal’ women uncomfortable for living ‘traditional’ lives. Feminism was subscribed a certain aesthetic, associated with that of the “stone-faced, hairy-legged manhater” (Jervis, 2004), and women were told that if they were to enter into the male world they would become desexed.
All this imagery and backlash language was to have the effect of making feminism a ‘dirty word’. Women didn’t want to be associated with feminism and all that it had come to imply. Second Wave Feminism had made enough progress for women to be able to apply to university, have jobs, force new legislation and enjoy more equal rights. Enough had changed, along with the negative portrayal of feminism, for women to believe that no more was needed to be done. They had ‘made it’.
By the early 1990’s this attitude was widespread. Young girls read magazines telling them they could achieve whatever they desired. They saw successful women on TV and saw fashion models and pop stars as role models. At this time two new feminist discourses were emerging; Postfeminism and Third Wave Feminism.
Postfeminism arose in the early 1990s and articulated the anti-feminist feeling many young women felt and it attacked ‘hard line’ feminism[9]. Postfeminism actively embraced the current pop culture climate. It has a right wing value system, of “brutal individualism” (McRobbie, 2000), wealth and success. It is an opinion that many women may not even see as feminist and it is this that postfeminists want to draw upon. Women are much more likely to suggest an interest in identity politics, which in some discourses has become interchangeable with postfeminism. Postfeminism is much more concerned with issues of ‘I’ rather than the Second Wave’s collective ‘we’. Zoe Williams summed up the cultural climate that has fostered postfeminism in a recent Guardian article;
Postfeminism is a broad church, taking in love for Jordan, full and unashamed comprehension of the creed of Atkins, and a post-ironic appreciation of posh girls going to pole-dancing lessons instead of Pilates.
(Williams, 2004)
Postfeminists read the current popular culture as a positive example of how far women have come since Second Wave Feminism. Young women wanted to prove they could do it without feminism.
Third Wave Feminism embraces the history of feminism. Women who are part of this Third Wave are looking back at the past accomplishments and failures in order to draw on this to create a new future for feminism. These new feminists are generally assumed to be of the generation born between the mid 1960s and mid 1970s[10]. They are exploring new ideas, structures and issues that need to be addressed. Third Wave has moved on from the Second Wave focus on a handful of issues[11], to cover all aspects of society[12]. It does not claim a hierarchy of importance for the issues being addressed. What is important to a specific individual is what is important in the Third Wave. This individualist attitude has troubled the Second Wavers[13]. Interestingly this ‘I’ in today’s Third Wave points to the postfeminist attitude of individual and identity politics. This indicates links between, and influences of, postfeminism on the Third Wave.
Popular culture is the arena in which the postfeminist attitude is most clearly visible. The construction of young women’s femininity is so heavily influenced by popular culture, feminists are having to engage with this in order to be able to construct a useful discourse for women’s issues. Kathleen Rowe Karlyn emphasises this point:
If a productive conversation is going to happen among women of all ages about the future of the feminist movement, it will have to take place on the terrain of popular culture where young women today are refashioning feminism toward their own ends. An Australian feminist Catherine Lumby argues, “If feminism is to remain engaged with and relevant to the everyday lives of women, then feminists desperately need the tools to understand everyday culture. We need to engage with the debates in popular culture rather than taking an elitist and dismissive attitude toward the prime medium of communication today.” Catherine M. Orr similarly warns that academic feminists may find themselves “positioned uncomfortably” against the populism implicit in the Third Wave.
(Rowe Karlyn, 2003)
It doesn’t seem possible in today’s society to dismiss or ignore popular culture, the effect it has on feminism and vice versa. This is where the biggest changes have happened for women in the past decade. Angela McRobbie claims that “becoming aware of what it is to be a young woman today almost inevitably means being touched by elements of feminist discourse.” (McRobbie, 2000). Through 21st century popular culture, feminism has become diluted and disseminated. In the past ten years the face of popular culture has changed irrevocably.
In the mid 1990s a new social phenomenon of the lad and, in reaction, the ladette, emerged as a model for young people. Men’s magazines like Loaded and FHM appeared on the shelves of newsagents and in boy’s bedrooms. Suddenly men felt that they could admit that they still ‘fancied birds’. In a BBC documentary, Girls and Boys, 2005, exploring the music scene and its effect on young people in Britain, the founder of Loaded, James Brown, claimed this new lad came about with the emergence into the mainstream of the rock and roll band Oasis. These were men’s men, who were seen to represent the average man in Britain. Men were validated in publicly admitting their desire to look at ‘fit’, naked, ‘birds’, to get ‘pissed up’ and ‘lairy’ and to enjoy a good football match. Loaded picked up on this atmosphere of lad culture and presented the young men in Britain with a magazine that showed men who they were and gave them what they wanted, instead of showing them how they ‘should’ be. Talking on the same programme Jo Whiley, Radio One DJ, commented that at this time “girls got in on the act and did everything men did. And why shouldn’t they?” (Girls and Boys, 2005).
Now, in the 21st century, this backlash aesthetic is still continuing to dominate popular culture. The idea of the lad and ladette has faded, only to be replaced by more general attitudes that are now very much part of our daily culture. You don’t have to be a ‘lad’ anymore to read the new weekly men’s magazines such as Nuts or Zoo. Apparently this new kind of man has evolved from those days of laddism. Ross Brown, editor of FHM, claims;
Five years ago men saw life as a bit of a laugh. They wanted minimum effort for maximum results, sitting on a sofa, signing on the dole, on the end of a bar and having fun. Really enjoying life. Women then were arm-candy. But men have never been so aspirational as they are today. They still want to go to Tenerife and get pissed. But they want to take their girls somewhere nice. They don’t want to be a drain on them. They want a woman who’s got a job, who’s equal, who isn’t going to go down the road saying, “Ooh, buy me those shoes, buy me that dress.” FHM readers want their girls to be perfect.
(Turner, 2005)
Janice Turner has recently explored the newer phenomenon of men’s weekly magazines, Nuts and Zoo. In the article Dirty Young Men, Turner is investigating the content of these magazines, the men who edit them and the influence they have over their readers. These editors claim their magazines are just harmless fun, but they can also be seen as dramatically misogynistic. However in this backlash, postfeminist society this seems to be accepted by men and women alike.
So why the lack of feminist disapproval? When Loaded was launched 10 years ago, many women felt enough had been achieved for feminists to lighten up. It became fashionable to find porn amusing, to tolerate being called “babes” and “birds” as long as it was done ironically. To oppose sexism – even to utter the word – seemed uncool, humourless, outmoded and prudish.
(Turner, 2005)
These editors are in control of how masculinity is portrayed for young men to emulate. Many boys are learning their social, moral and sexual standards from these magazines. Young men’s expected standard for a woman seems to be getting higher. It seems the more success and power women have, the more they need to prove their femininity. The new ‘Super Woman’ will have to have the education, the job, the relationship, the family, the sex life and the looks. Janice Turner talks to Phil Hilton, editor of Nuts, in relation to the working woman. Talking about his secretary, who is also a Nuts columnist and model;
“Yes she really is my secretary,” Hilton says. “She runs my diary and everything.” He adds triumphantly: “It’s not how it is supposed to be, is it?” By which I assume he means: “See, outdated feminist, how today’s modern woman can be good at her job and still be willing to pose in her knicks?” But to what extent is this now a requirement? Young women may think they are high achievers, but the men’s mags imply, you still can’t cut it if your tits don’t look good in a basque.
(Turner, 2005)
Interestingly these men are all born in the same period as the women who are writing on Third Wave Feminism and they also experienced the feminist backlash. Their reaction to the backlash has created a new kind of masculine agenda. Having been told by the media that women can now have it all, men are trying to claw back some of their power, which includes their freedom to ‘ogle’ naked women. However, even this specific group of men contradict themselves about how women really feel about life and their behaviour. Phil Hilton claims;
…these women really do like being sexy, really do like meeting guys and having sex with them. You see this on any high road on a Saturday night. It shouldn’t be news to anyone, but this is what life is like.
(Turner, 2005)
However, all the men’s editors in Janice Turner’s article insist that their readers know how to separate the images, stories and articles in their magazines from real life women and how to treat them and act around them. Martin Daubney spoke on this topic.
My readers are ordinary blokes – squaddies, students, bricklayers, lawyers – and to them Loaded is pure escapism. They have girlfriends and wives. They know real women aren’t like that.
(Turner, 2005)
Turner’s article on lads magazines was featured in The Guardian’s Weekend glossy supplement. There have been many other features in The Times, The Telegraph and The Observer newspapers and supplements on similar issues. There have been many articles featuring the women that are at the height of this ‘lads mag’ culture, such as Jordan and Abi Titmuss. There has even been a discourse, on the pages of the BBC website at the end of 2005 on the bad and the good of ‘lads mags’. This rise in attention that these issues are getting suggests an increased awareness of the backlash atmosphere present in popular culture. Women are starting to feel it may have gone a bit too far and are trying to restart a discourse in order to retain the ground they gained with Second Wave Feminism. Most of these women are of the Third Wave generation or older. Much of the younger generation still avoids association with ideas of feminism and feminist issues.
These younger women have never experienced a direct relationship of, or seen the changes made by, feminism. These women came of age surrounded by the popular culture images we see today. As one of the women in this generation, I have been fed the postfeminist ethos. I grew up believing that I would not face any boundaries in life because of my gender. I learnt that I could use my femininity to my advantage. As a woman I would never be the same as men and didn’t want to be. We celebrated our sexual differences and embraced the advantages and disadvantages of this. We have seen women start to use their gender as a powerful tool to achieve success and fame. Jordan, Jodie Marsh and Abi Titmuss are role models for our generation. Women have learnt that they can use the overly sexualised society to their advantage. They know what men want and the women get what they want by giving it to them. This is an extreme example of how women are using gender stereotypes, but it is a model many women are learning from. Now it has become an option not to have to behave in a stereotypical way, it is often seen to be useful and even fun to play up to gender stereotypes. We can stage our female sexuality. As we know this is what we are choosing to do, we gain a feeling of success or of having ‘got one over’ on the ‘lads’, by duping them with our behaviour. However, as long as women are encouraged to uphold these gender stereotypes, the stereotypes will remain. If women want gender justice this staging of female sexuality will be a hindrance in the long run.
It is my generation who will be next to step up and contribute to the feminist agenda but with the prevalence of this ambivalent attitude the future doesn’t look as hopeful as it was for even the Second Wave Feminists in the 1960’s. Women no longer want to take to the streets and fight for their rights. They do not want to be seen to be publicly fighting for any kind of feminism. With this in mind, I suggest that feminism needs to come from different places than previously seen. ‘Girl Power’ in the 1990s was a positive step for this and for girl culture, but this idea disappeared along with the Spice Girls. A new language for gender justice has to be formed, relevant to and accessible by the main stream. It needs to have many faces, able to address the many different women. It may even need to enter into the current cultural system before it can emerge as exciting and revitalised.
However this new discourse is formed, it is undeniable that it will be needed. Feminist issues touch women of all generations everyday and feminism is as relevant today as it has ever been.
Chapter 2 – Young Female Artists.
In the early 1990s a body of female artists emerged whose work reflected and was influenced by postfeminist society. These women were born at the same time as the Third Wave generation, the mid 1960s and mid 1970’s. The backlash against feminism these women felt in society was also present in the art world. Many female artists shied away from describing their work as feminist. They wanted to distance their work from the seemingly old fashioned and separatist views of the Second Wave Feminists.
The combination of art and feminism has, in the past, brought many female artists more problems in the art market than success. Feminism in art is seen as working within pre-defined boundaries and working with established clichés. The art establishment, the audience and feminists see feminism as a specific aesthetic or a characteristic style. This is the limited structure that these young women were, and still are, trying to avoid. The disappearance of traditionally feminist art can be linked to a growth in young women interested in addressing and exploring identity politics[14].
Identity politics is a central theme for the artist Elke Krystufek. The Austrian artist, born in 1970, has fought off being labelled as feminist as she feels it would have a negative impact on her work and how it is perceived.
…I usually don’t like the context in which some feminist artist work, or the group shows that are made about such themes. I’d like to be seen in a larger context than this…If I were to present myself as a feminist artist, I would be somewhere completely different – where I don’t want to be. (Eiblmayr, 1997)
Despite expressing a desire to distance herself from making feminist art and addressing issues relating to the female body[15], her body appears constantly as a central element in her practice. She makes regular paintings of herself as well as making videos and photographing herself. She uses some of her photographs to make photomontages and collages, positioning herself in relation to artistic and cultural icons. She has also done numerous performances where she utilises and explores her body.
Krystufek has a complex and often contradictory relationship with the presence of feminism in her work and the extent to which she will discuss it. She has previously demonstrated this when she talked about how she lives in a feminist way, but does not make feminist art[16]. In a 1997 interview with Silvia Eiblmayer, Krystufek tried to distance her work and the conversation away from issues of feminism and the female body.
EK: I think feminism is a socio-political issue. It’s not an artistic issue.
SE: I would counter and say it can of course be both…And I ask you now, given all you have been saying about dealing with your position as a woman in relation to violence, structural violence and certain clichés that you are dealing with, doesn’t your work have a feminist impact in as far as you deal with these issues?
EK: I’m sure that it has. But, I think in order to position myself, I need to neglect it.
(Eiblmayr, 1997)
Even though Krystufek had positioned herself away from feminist discourse, most writing on her mentions the importance of feminism, gender or sexuality in her work[17]. When reviewing Krystufek’s exhibition In the Arms of Luck, 2000, Elizabeth Janus notes the ambiguous relationship Krystufek has to feminism.
Hers is a vision imbued with some of the lessons of second-wave feminists,…who contested the sublimation of male fears of female sexuality. Yet Krystufek doesn’t seem to buy into the movements politics. This ambivalence is what makes her work compelling.
(Janus, 2000)
This ambivalence is present in her interview with Eiblmayr. She expressly defined that she negates the feminist connotations of her work and then went on to speak of the way her body relates to society and how society relates to her and the female body in general.
Krystufek sees her body as a projection surface. She is addressing her specific body, not the body in general, and she uses her own body to discuss wider and more political ideas on society and culture. She does not use traditional means of social criticism and that enables her to express her own particular political standpoint. She has been said to have created her own system of social criticism.
Hers is an unclassifiable work that defies the political and critical establishment (between feminism and subversion), and produces a wide-open and prolix imagery on her own positions as an artist and a woman.
(Moisdon-Trembley, 2000)
When I interviewed Elke Krystufek (see appendix 1.) I was hoping to uncover how she feels her position as a woman is important, and how it can be liberating and also limiting. However, she still seemed reluctant to discuss women’s issues in relation to her work. She associated the questions I posed much more to her personal life than to a discussion of her work, for example:
S: In your experience, how does female physicality and sexuality limit women making art that involves themselves and their bodies?
E: Having children and working would be very difficult timewise.
Krystufek’s position on feminism reflects the general postfeminist attitude in popular culture today. The use of popular culture images and signs is present in all aspects of Elke Krystufek’s practice. Beauty, leisure time and pop culture are an intrinsic part of her conceptual construction. She uses pop and rock music as soundtracks in her videos, images of pop culture icons and lyrics in her paintings and collages, and she also makes cultural references through the titles of her work: I am what I am (Gloria Gaynor), 2003, (see fig. 1.), Kurt Cobain at the Basel Art Fair…2003, (see fig. 2.).However Krystufek’s visual language does not draw from any of the glossy popular culture imagery such as in fashion magazines and pop videos. Her paintings and drawings use raw and aggressive gestures. She uses bad taste and disgust in her works to analyze the cultural norms. She uses repulsive and graphic imagery in some of her films, like Skin Mail, 1999, where she examines her body in dramatic close ups. She uses a mirror to examine her own flaws and picks at spots using tweezers.
Krystufek forges her own identity through the inclusion of pop culture in her work and uses it to question the social norms and standards. Her identity is formed by holding up a mirror to herself, culture, symbols, art scenes and publicity.
We cannot hear her voice, but…at an intersection of comic strips, collage, pop music and painting, Elke constructs a contradictory postmodernist self-biography.
(Malasauskas, 1999)
When she was younger Krystufek strived to physically emulate popular culture icons. She really wanted to look like these women and see what her life could be like. She had eating disorders and tried to be very thin. She realised this wasn’t making her happy, it was a fiction she was having to uphold. These popular culture icons were constructed images. In her work she openly shows the aspirations that created her identity in the first place. By constructing her identity through these ‘role models’ that had such an influence on how she saw her self, she is able to critique this system of images and reclaim her own identity back from them.
In her work, Krystufek is showing her ideas and identity through exposing her physical surface. She feels her works, especially her self-portraits, (see fig. 3.), are like passport pictures.
Passport pictures [are used to] define the identity of a person. I thought in a way it’s very limited, but also very important, it’s limited to the face.
(Eiblmayr, 1997)
Passport photos are images of the physical surface of a human that are used to identify their identity. Krystufek seems to be interested in the dialectic of surface representing an identity and the limited ability for that surface to represent anything personal. Krystufek often pushes the limits of how much of her physical self she puts on display. In these situations she tests what is actually being exposed. Has she exposed so much of her physical self that it has become her identity that she is exposing? The exposure of herself in her work creates a radical elimination of the contrast in the public and private.
As Krystufek explores and exposes herself, she submits herself to the public gaze. She has said she is working on the misunderstanding that people have about what constitutes private life (Eiblmayr, 1997). She takes elements of private life and private spaces into a public space to confuse and question this notion of privacy. Her work also seems to be questioning what about the physical self is actually private[18]. Though she exposes her body publicly not much is known about her private life or identity, other than that she is an artist by profession.
By publicly staging herself so explicitly, Krystufek prompts the audience to address her authenticity and that of her work[19]. She has claimed that it is not possible to have authenticity in art shows or in the public. She is “showing this impossibility” (Eiblmayr, 1997) in her work. Raimundas Malasauskas has explored why there may be a lack of authenticity and sincerity in Krystufek’s work by highlighting her cultural specificity.
Though by exposing her body, passions and iconic self-reflection she supposedly reveals her inner self, it would be naive to expect authentic sincerity: being well aware of the subject’s cultural conditioning, Elke constructs her image in the context of popular magazines, pop music and literature.
(Malasauskas, 1999)
Krystufek openly constructed her identity from popular culture and puts this all on display. Through her work she is effectively putting on a show. By consciously creating a self to be shown, she is staging her identity. She is performing the self, performing being Elke Krystufek. By constructing an identity reliant on popular culture references it is difficult to see the authentic Krystufek. Can ones identity really be so simply represented as surface and cultural signifiers? I think by using this in her work, Krystufek, as she has said[20], is demonstrating the impossibility of showing anything authentic in the art world or in the public[21]. Silvia Eiblmayr links these questions of Krystufek’s authenticity with being a woman.
…I think it is remarkable that [authenticity] is used symptomatically in relation to women. On the one hand it’s expected of them to be the authentic, to say the truth, and on the other hand to lie, to simulate. This is a dialectical figure that goes together.
(Eiblmayr, 1997)
This could be seen to represent a postfeminist attitude. Women can be liberated and open, but still need to ‘keep up appearances’. Women want to seem feminine and attractive, but also to be able to act and behave how they choose. These two ideas can’t always go together and creates the problem of having to be seen to be honest, but not too honest. In Krystufek’s work, everything of her ‘life’ is on show. However is it really everything? Is it the truth? Only Krystufek can answer these questions, which may be why her authenticity is questioned.
By operating behind the fictitious privacy she has constructed, Krystufek has also made several controversial and dramatic performances. She uses her body as a place for displaying issues of pornography, female sexuality and male fantasies. In her performance Satisfaction, 1994, Krystufek had the elements she would most like in a room, a bath tub, wash basin, toilet, coffee maker, a CD player and a television with a video of the singer Kim Fowley running, set up as a room within the gallery. In this space she masturbated with her hand then a dildo and vibrator, after which she took a bath[22]. This performance aggressively addressed the audience and raised questions of the gaze, pleasure, staged identity and the female body. Krystufek gives the audience the opportunity to voyeuristically partake in the performance. However she seemingly gained pleasure from this exchange[23]. The audience became Krystufek’s object of desire. She took their voyeuristic power away and utilised them for her performance.
The viewer is forced in to the role of a voyeur and finds him/herself as an unassuming onlooker in the midst of Krystufek’s fascinating peep show.
(Biennale, 2002)
Krystufek reverses traditional roles and behaviour in her work. Often, she is playing with the position, nature and role of the voyeur. Krystufek’s has a complex relationship with her role as artist and model. When she photographs and paints herself it is through a mirror. Her paintings in particular address ideas of the gaze. Set up in front of a mirror, Krystufek stares into her reflected image, which becomes the model for her painting. The finished effect is that Krystufek is staring directly at us, as she stared at her model, which was in fact her self. “I look at myself, but when the picture is finished, I look at the audience.” (Eiblmayr, 1997) Through her gaze Krystufek is able to be the model and the artist and her work represents this relationship to the audience.
Elke synchronically experiences the pleasure provided by the exhibitionism and voyeurism as she shows and observes her body, being paparazzo and a model in one.
(Malasauskas, 1999)
Krystufek’s attitude seems to be a symptom of the cultural climate in which she is living and working. She has seemed to capture the issue of her generation of women and continues to present her audience with work that provokes discussion and addresses cultural norms and standards.
Elke Krystufek creates her own provocative soap opera for a “showbiz society.”
(Naked and Mobile, 2003)
Another artist of this generation who is addressing identity, sexuality and questioning traditional male and female roles and stereotypes is Cecily Brown.
Cecily Brown is a thirty seven year old artist. Born in England, she moved to New York at the age of twenty five. She makes large scale, gestural paintings, often of erotic or pornographic images. Brown seems to adopt a traditionally masculine role and position in her work. Painting is and has always been seen as a masculine endeavour, especially the gestural and strong style of the Abstract Expressionists. Brown seems to absorb all the stereotypes of these male painters in order to take on these characteristics as her own. She is claiming her right and equality to paint in this way. She proudly refers to how she ‘steals’ from other artists and their styles. She feels “the desire to be new is just as bad as the desire to be fashionable” (Wood, 2005).
Brown also deals with the masculine subject of pornography. In her early work she displays erotic, sexual paintings derived from her own carnal fantasies. Some of these paintings are explicit in their depiction of the subject, for example in Teenage Wildlife, 2003,(see fig. 4.) while others are abstracted and layered up, so the image becomes unrecognisable: you are unsure if you are looking at an arm or a leg or even a person at all, as in The Girl Who Had Everything, 2003,(see fig. 5). In this work Brown strived to make the paint embody the same sensations that bodies would during sex. These images of couples and sex are very voyeuristic; a traditionally male position.
Brown is operating on a fine line with these traditionally masculine roles. Is she utilising them to critique them or to imitate them or merely because she admires them? Dennis Kardon doesn’t think she is imitating masculinity and men, but that she ‘envelops’ them. “Why not re-invent the traditionally male language of painting from a gynocentric point of view?” (Kardon, 2000). By using the images of pornographic bodies, Brown is turning the image back on itself. She is asserting the power of woman as artist while refusing the typical, readymade female identities.
As an example of how female artists still suffer from discrimination and being placed under the banner of ‘woman’, Dennis Kardon offers a very masculine position on Brown’s recent, less figurative paintings.
Brown’s new paintings are aggressively female because they challenge the viewer to fill them with form, while giving the most mixed of signals. So one has to decide whether to commit on the slenderest of promises while risking looking like a fool for falling for something so obviously and cheaply flirtatious.
(Kardon, 2000)
This statement hardly seems to talk about painting at all; rather, it comes across as an attack on a generalised image of ‘woman’ taken from an aggressively male standpoint. His statement can be read as a sexist, emotive and retrosexual opinion about woman:
…aggressively female…challenge[s] the viewer to fill them with… [penis], while giving the most mixed of signals. So one has to decide whether to commit on the slenderest of promises [of sex] while risking looking like a fool for falling for some[one] so obviously and cheaply flirtatious.
This comment on Brown’s work may demonstrate the problem some men may have with a stronger, more assertive woman. Why are her paintings seen as ‘aggressively female’? They are a representation of another, newer, different kind of femininity that doesn’t necessarily conform to female stereotypes.
Brown has said she is interested in “abject ideas about the body, the cheap and nasty” (Wood, 2005). I think her work transforms images of women in pornography from abject, cheap and nasty, into something seductive. They bring up issues of the female role and choice, along with questions on the power women have over their representation.
Through her work, Brown represents the emotions and sensations she has imagined. Unlike Krystufek, there has been little debate of Brown’s authenticity. She is expressing genuine sensations and her sexual fantasies. She isn’t staging sex, she is acting it out and representing it through paint.
I want to transcribe the feeling of heat inside your body, inside your mouth, the feeling of skin on skin, and flesh and graspings. I want it caressing; I want it brutal and tender and everything at once.
(Hunt, 2000)
Her honesty has been assumed by many who have written on her[24]. Richard Dorment finds this emotional honesty the most impressive element of Brown’s work and claims it to be a representation of who she is.
She doesn’t do irony. I can find no distance between the artist and her subject. There is a truthfulness in these raunchy, funny, perverse pictures that is rare in contemporary art. This is who Cecily Brown is.
(Dorment, 2005)
It may be because of the lack of the artist’s body in the work, or the ambiguity of the images that creates this sense of honesty. If Brown were to be physically present in her work the attention would be focused on her and how she would have represented herself. By not being present Brown manages to represent sex and fantasy without staging her sexuality, and her authenticity is assumed.
Cecily Brown is very much an artist of the times. When she moved to New York at the age of twenty five she was quickly picked up by big hitters in the art world, notably Larry Gagosian. She became a fashionable and new kind of ‘rock and roll darling’. She is now a high profile New York socialite with articles about her in magazines such as Vogue and Vanity Fair. She is part of a celebrity group of artists of the same generation. In the 2000 article Portrait of the Artist as Young Woman, Roberta Smith explores this phenomenon of ‘Bright Young Things’ – BYT’s: 20 – 30 something, beautiful, female artists that, like Cecily Brown, are being featured in glossy magazines across the UK and US[25] (see fig. 6.). The art boom in the 1980’s produced a similar phenomenon of celebrity artists…
But the glossified 80’s artists were overwhelmingly male. The mediagenic artists of the noughties, as the current decade is sometimes called, are often women. And they are women who exude high levels of postfeminist attitude and are as fearless about tackling sexual issues in their work as they are about using their sexuality — or general attractiveness — whenever the media look in their direction.
(Smith, 2000)
Women continue to be identified more with their sexuality than male artists and in these times of mass pop culture women artists have to compete in the media as well as in the art world. With pop culture having such a dramatic effect on the representation and success of these artists, it must be intrinsic to their practices. In the case of Brown it seems that the lifestyle she has from being a BYT has enabled her interaction with popular culture to be a direct one. She is a recognizable character within both popular culture and the art world[26]. It is inevitable that whilst operating within the system of mass media and pop culture the attitudes and influences will rub off on the BYT’s.
In these post-Warholian times, Ms. Brown and her contemporaries don’t perform within the art world proper. They perform within a much larger, more accessible arena: the media. In this respect they may be taking their tips more from Madonna than from any art world precedents. But it is still debatable whether they are using their sexuality any more than their male counterparts always have.
(Smith, 2000)
These women are getting a message from popular culture that they should be postfeminist icons of beauty, sexuality, talent and success. These BYT’s are exercising a freedom that Second Wave Feminists have paved for them. Smith suggests that the behaviour of these postfeminist women is a reaction against the boys getting all the fun and proposes a “girls just wanna have fun” (Smith, 2000) rationale for their relaxed attitudes. Smith’s comment on whether these young women artists are using their sexuality more than male artists raises interesting questions on perceptions of the female body. Traditionally the female body is much more sexualized than the male, so a female may not be acting or representing themselves in a more sexual way, but the reading of their behavior would be taken more sexually than if it were a man.
It seems that instead of making art about how these women are still being discriminated against in the art world, they are acting with total freedom, in a way that says there is no discrimination. This may be a better strategy for changing attitudes around women’s politics. Instead of talking about it, they are living it. They are feeling they can behave as freely as their male counterparts. It may be then that these BYT’s could be read as presenting a performance of the self, consciously using their looks, sexuality and talent to create an ‘irresistible force’.
Both Cecily Brown and Elke Krystufek are free to represent themselves in any form they choose. The ground breaking feminist art of the 1960s and 1970s opened up possibilities for younger women artists by pushing the boundaries of the way women can represent themselves and the work they can do and make. These younger women now don’t feel they have to conform to any stereotypical female roles. They are also able to comfortably work with the imagery, symbols and systems of popular culture.
Nevertheless, however much they behave in a feminist way, neither artist will proclaim themselves as feminist or as making feminist work. They want to distance themselves from feminism and the movement’s politics. In the art world Feminist Art is seen as a movement that is over and is no longer a relevant or valid method of working in contemporary practice. With the high exposure of the female nude in everyday society and the extent to which women’s representations are still controlled in popular culture, feminism is an issue that still affects young women. Young women now have to find different ways to address these issues in art.
Conclusion.
Feminism has evolved from the stereotypes of Second Wave and is having to deal with a very widespread and deeply ingrained backlash against it. My own position has been significantly altered as a result of this investigation. I believed women could live their lives without encountering any boundaries or limits. I felt that if they were to keep focusing on women’s inequalities then they would only be accentuated and perpetuated. I have come to understand how my opinions and prejudices had been formed. Today pop culture is a central influence in the value systems of young people. However, the messages given to young women are ambiguous and contradictory. On the one hand women should feel free and liberated to behave in the same way as men, but they should conform to female sexual stereotypes in order to be truly happy. These young women want to distance themselves from a backlash idea of the “stone-faced, hairy-legged manhater” (Jervis, 2004) that is summed up by the term ‘feminist’. Many young women are still concerned with feminist issues, but these stereotypes cause them to distance themselves from these ideas. The connotations of the language that relates to feminism is at the heart of the problem.
Elke Krystufek and Cecily Brown seem to epitomise this position. They are happy to address feminist issues through their work but shy away from anything that labels them as feminist artists. The associations made about art that goes under the title of ‘feminist’ limits the work from being read in a wider context. These artists are an example of the effect the feminist backlash has had on women of their generation. Recently women have become more aware of the need for a new feminist discourse on popular culture and women’s position within it. In the 21st century feminism is at an exciting juncture where the possibility for change is on the horizon. The next generation of women needs to form a new language that is more appealing, to break the negative and stereotypical associations, so that feminism can move forward and no longer be seen as a ‘dirty word’.
Appendix 1.
Elke Krystufek Interview.
I contacted Elke Krystufek in September, 2005, in order to ask her some questions that might give me a better insight into her and her work. Very few interviews have been conducted with Krystufek in English, so I was eager to hear what she had to say. Due to her busy schedule she was only able to answer my questions briefly, but her responses were interesting.
S: I am investigating the role and representation of women in women’s art, in relation to the role and representation of women in contemporary popular culture. In popular culture women are seen as strong, independent, sexual figures, able to control their own representation in the media. The fact that they are women enables them to use the media and men, to further themselves in the way they desire, with no limits on how they behave. Your work seems very liberated and displaying yourself seems very important. I have some questions for you on these areas in relation to your work. I would really like to hear your opinions and views on these questions.
S: How do you think the way you represent yourself in your work relates to the way women in popular culture use the media to represent themselves?
E: I have no commercial interest while representing myself while women in popular culture want to sell their music, design etc.
S: What do you think about the links drawn, by some writers, between your work and that of Tracy Emin’s? Why do you think these links are made?
E: I really like Tracey’s work though I think it is more autobiographical than mine -I work on many different topics which are also not connected to myself and have a more openly political position in my work. I think these links are made because we are both working with our autobiography.
S: Do you feel your representations of yourself are of a liberated, confident, sexual person? Is this how you feel in general?
E: The representations of myself are of someone fighting, which is how I feel in general.
S: How do you feel liberated?
E: By money.
S: Does your work liberate you?
E: It liberates me from thinking and reading too much.
S: How does your position as an artist, able to express your self, enable you to be more liberated?
E: I am most liberated when I am not making art and outside of that context.
S: How do you feel constrained and limited, as a woman making art?
E: Getting less shows, less money, being paid slower, no time to have children, etc.
S: In your experience, how does female physicality and sexuality limit women making art that involves themselves and their bodies?
E: Having children and working would be very difficult timewise.
S: How important is it to you that you are a woman making the work you do?
E: It cheers other women and some other minorities up.
Appendix 2.
Figure 1.
Elke Krystufek
I am what I am (Gloria Gaynor)
2003
Sculpture-Installation
Figure 2.
Elke Krystufek
2003
Kurt Cobain at the Basel Art Fair
Painting
Figure 3.
Elke Krystufek Elke Krystufek
Home I Wanna Be A Movie Star
1999 1999
Acrylic on canvas Drawing
Elke Krystufek Elke Krystufek
I Am You and You Are Mine Like An Arrow
2001 2002
Acrylic on canvas Acrylic on canvas
Figure 4.
Cecily Brown
Teenage Wildlife
2003
Oil on Linen
Figure 5.
Cecily Brown
The Girl Who Had Everything
2003
Oil on Linen
Figure 6.
D. P. Columbia
Guests of Doug Cramer for the performance of “The Boy From Oz” included: Cecily Brown and Adam McKewn
2003
Photograph
Todd Eberle
Cecily Brown for Vanity Fair
2000
Photograph
Image List
Brown, Cecily. (2003). Teenage Wildlife. Oil on Linen. [Internet image]. Available
from <http://www.saatchigallery.co.uk/artists/artpages/brown_
Teenage_Wildlife.htm> [Accessed 6th January 2006].
Brown, Cecily. (2003). The Girl Who Had Everything. Oil on Linen. [Internet
image]. Available from <http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/artpages
/brown_The_Girl_Who_Had_Everything.htm> [Accessed 6th January 2006].
Columbia, D. P. (2003). Cecily Brown and Adam McKewn. Photograph. [Internet image].
Available from <http://www.newyorksocialdiary.com/socialdiary/2003/
socialdiary10_08_03.php> [Accessed 6th January 2006].
Eberle, Todd. (2000). Cecily Brown for Vanity Fair. Photograph. [Internet image].
Available from < http://www.contemporaryartproject.com/cap/Othercontent/
Portraityoung.htm> [Accessed 17th November 2005].
Krystufek, Elke. (2003) I am what I am (Gloria Gaynor). Sculpture-Installation.
[Internet image]. Available from <http://www.web.artprice.com/classifieds/
details.aspx?idr=MDAzMTg0MTc0ODc5OTk=&id=58361&l=en#> [Accessed 17th July 2005].
Krystufek, Elke. (2003). Kurt Cobain at the Basel Art Fair. Painting. [Internet
image]. Available from <http://www.artfacts.net/index.php/pageType/
artistInfo/artist/813> [Accessed 17th July 2005].
Krystufek, Elke. (2002). Like An Arrow. Acrylic on canvas. [Internet image]. Available
from <http://www.antonioferrara.com/main.html> [Accessed 6th January 2006].
Krystufek, Elke. (2001). I Am You and You Are Mine. Acrylic on canvas. [Internet
image]. Available from <http://www.antonioferrara.com/main.html> [Accessed 6th January 2006].
Krystufek, Elke. (1999). I Wanna Be A Movie Star. Drawing. [Internet image]. Available
from <http://www.gandy-gallery.com/exhib/elke_krystufek/ima_elke_Krystufek
3.html> [Accessed 14th November 2005].
Krystufek, Elke. (1999). Home. Acrylic on canvas. [Internet image]. Available
from <http://www.antonioferrara.com/main.html> [Accessed 6th January 2006].
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[1] ‘Girl Power’ was the term coined by the Spice Girls. Mel B from the band has said the “Spice Girls wanted to use their sexuality to get what they wanted, but not to be treated like girls.” (Girls and Boys, 2005)
[2] “According to a recent survey among 15-19-year-old girls…63 percent now wish to become ‘glamour models’ instead of doctors, teachers or nurses…When asked what they would like to be known for 89 percent said they’d like to be recognized as a celebrity, as opposed to a mere 11 percent who sought ‘achievement with little recognition.” (Gardner, 2005)
[3] Second Wave Feminism is the name given to the women’s movement of the 1960s and 1970s.
[4] “Women themselves don’t single out the women’s movement as the source of their misery. To the contrary, in national surveys 75 to 95 percent of women credit the feminist campaign with improving their lives, and a similar proportion say that the women’s movement should keep pushing for a change.” (Faludi, 1992)
[5] “In 1986…41 percent of upper-income women were claiming in the Gallup poll that they were not feminists.” (Faludi, 1992)
[6] The idea of the Super Women emerged when women were able to start going out to work. They were working ‘nine to five’ jobs and then coming home and having to take care of their homes, children and husband. These women were running all aspects of their lives with little or no help. The term Super Woman is used by many writers when discussing contemporary feminism. (Wheleham, 2000), (Faludi, 1992), (About, 2005).
[7] “…when it lodges inside a woman’s mind and turns her vision inward, she imagines the pressure is all in her head, until she begins to enforce the backlash, too – on herself.” (Faludi, 1992)
[8] Along with articles in the press, many Hollywood movies were depicting the “independent women as psychotic or neurotic” (Wheleham, 2000), such as in Fatal Attraction, Surrender, Disclosure and Basic Instinct.
[9] There is another discourse similar to that of postfeminism, that of post-feminism. Post-feminism is the idea that we have passed the time where feminism is needed or relevant, that it is no longer part of any current personal or political discourse and that it does not need to be. This post-feminism is a more extreme reaction against feminism than postfeminism.
[10] In their book Third Wave Agenda Leslie Heywood and Jennifer Drake bring together a section of writers in their Third Wave generation, writers born between 1963 and 1974, to discuss what is important for feminism now.
[11] Equal pay, sexual discrimination legislation, pornography and the objectification of women and misogynistic and patriarchal language.
[12] “While feminists in the second wave were more focused on fighting for gender equality in the work place, abortion rights and economic parity, today’s activists say they are looking at a wider range of topics through the feminist lens.” (Friedlin, 2002)
[13] In the Veteran Feminists of America conference at the beginning of 2002 a growing conflict between the two generations of feminists was demonstrated. Here the Second Wave Feminists expressed their dismay at the individualistic approach of Third Wave Feminists and the relegation of feminism to a minor concern for many women. (Friedlin, 2002)
[14] “In the 1970s, female artists questioned the representation of the female body in order to highlight the depiction of women as passive objects of male desire…This once revolutionary idea provokes young female artists to disassociate and distance themselves from feminism. At the same time, identity politics, has since the 1990’s become an instrument of the mainstream of the traditional art market. The expectation of the art establishment towards marginalised and discriminated female artists is manifested in the demand to make their identity a central theme, but without referring to the history of oppression and resistance.” (Reitsamer, 2004)
[15] “…when I am making art I don’t think of myself as a woman…I think something transsexual or both sexes. I don’t think really of sex when I start making art.” (Eiblmayer, 1997)
[16] Eiblmayr addressed this in her interview with Krystufek. “…you said once you live feministically, or in a feminist way, maybe that’s the better expression – but you don’t think of yourself as a feminist artist.” (Eiblmayer, 1997)
[17] “Her artistic practice is based on feministic discourses and traditions.” (Thumm, 2005); “…she has adopted a strong feminine stance…” (Moisdon-Trembly, 2000); “Clearly indebted to women’s body art from the ‘70s…” (Janus, 2000)
[18] “…it’s certainly not true that it is my private sphere…” (Eiblmayr)
[19] Malasauskas, 1999; Grosenick, 2001; Eiblmayr, 1997, have all discussed the question of authenticity in Krystufeks work.
[20] “Well, I think that I am showing that it is not possible to have this kind of authenticity in art shows or in the public. I think I am showing the impossibility.” (Eiblmayr, 1997)
[21] I don’t necessarily agree with this idea as a rule for all art. It may be the case for Krystufek, but not for all artists. However when any work that is seen to be confessional or sincere is displayed in the public realm, questions of authenticity undoubtedly arise. One again I think it is the staging of an identity that creates this problem. If an identity is staged then it must have been constructed. So what is being questioned is the truth of the material from which the staged identity has been constructed. With Krystufek it is only her surface which is present in her work. Krystufek takes “aesthetics of private life and private living spaces into the public spaces….consciously…so it is a kind of fiction of privacy.”(Eiblmayr, 1997)
[22] Unfortunately no documentation of this performance is available.
[23] “SE: Did you satisfy your audience? Was it also about satisfying the audience?
EK: No, not really. I think the audience wasn’t really satisfied, because they got something they
didn’t expect. I think they felt kind of intimidated. From my point of view, it was a criticism of
the audience, of the voyeurism that is also in the art business, the way people look at
works.” (Eiblmayr, 1997)
[24] Whether like Dennis Kardon (2000) who read her paintings like a woman flirting with him, or Richard Dorment (2005) who was seduced by her honesty, Brown manages to exert an honest, sexual power over her audience.
[25] “In the January-February issue of i-D, a fashion-rock-art magazine, photographs of female newcomers, including several artists, often approach soft-core levels in their poses and uncovered skin. In the February Vanity Fair, Inka Essenhigh, Cecily Brown, John Currin and other artists bared various areas of midriff, chest and leg in full-colour photographs. In the February Harper’s Bazaar, eight young female photographers lounged around a Chelsea restaurant, looking pretty much like a gang of disaffected supermodels.” (Smith, 2000)
[26] This relationship with mass media and popular culture is a new idea for female artists. The mass media really started focusing on female artists with the rise in success of Tracy Emin and Sarah Lucas. These young British artists seemed to get press attention due to the shocking nature of their art work and their behaviour. From here a public interest in these women’s lives grew, taking them out of the art world and into popular culture. With the new BYT’s this interest seems less in shock and rather in acceptance. The images of these women are often very glamorized and fit into the system of images in which they are placed. The postfeminist ideals of being successful, beautiful, feminine, wealthy and having it all is quite clearly represented with this coverage of these young artists.
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