HETERONORMATIVITY (heteronormative): Those punitive rules (social, familial, and legal) that force us to conform to hegemonic heterosexual standards for identity. "
This explosion of polysyllability was induced during a visit to the Manchester Art Gallery to see the Holman Hunt exhibition. Hunt was a prominent figure in the Pre-Raphaelite movement, and this exhibition gathered together a range of his work. The Pre-Raphaelites used to be a favourite but the more varied art I view, the less I find to praise in this movement. I can appreciate the quality of the artistry, but the subjects are too sentimental for my current tastes. Hunt’s are of particular interest because of his religious overtones. For example, in the Awakening Conscience, he depicts his interpretation of a “fallen” woman.
The quotes below are from a deconstruction of the painting."The Awakening Conscience is a fine example of popular Victorian painting. It tells a story. Its theme is the fate of the fallen woman. Many details are intended to be read symbolically. The moral message is stern and strongly disapproving.
There's a ring on every finger except the "wedding finger". She is a kept woman, entirely dependent on the support and whim of the man. If he rejects her, she is likely to resort to prostitution in order to survive.
The soiled, discarded white glove on the floor symbolizes the woman's fate if she stays with her lover." Ref: Robert Cumming's Annotated Art , DK Publishing, 1995
It is fair to say I was most Victorianly not amused by this.
Other Pre-Raphaelites in the Manchester Gallery include Rossetti (the bloke, not his more admirable sister). Some of the notes beside his paintings gave me the distinct impression of a sleazy over-entitled male, which I'm sure was not the intention. For example, his Astarte Syriaca has these comments:
"Astarte was an Ancient Middle Eastern goddess, an earlier, more malign version of Venus, the Classical goddess of love. Above her head is her emblem, the eight-pointed star, and behind this the sun and moon meet. These are symbols of her power over nature. In legend, Astarte's girdle made her an irresistible force and Rossetti has conveyed this by cramming the picture space so that it seems as if Astarte might stride out of the painting and confront you, half-threatening, half-alluring. Astarte has idealised feminine features that recur in Rossetti's paintings: soulful eyes, sensuous rosebud mouth and luxuriant, flowing hair, based during this period on the features of Jane Morris, his friend's wife."
Not a Pre-Raphaelite painter, but hanging opposite Astarte Syriaca is Sappho by Charles-August Mengin which has this explanation on the card beside it:
"The painting has an intense sexual charge intended to appeal to male viewers visiting the officially endorsed Paris Salon exhibition. Its eroticism was legitimised for them by the meticulous finish of fine brushstrokes and the scholarly reference to Classical history."
So much for heteronormativity and the male gaze; could these descriptions not have alternative notes written by informed radical feminists? I'd really enjoy myself reading those but instead, public art galleries remain places of mild disgust to me, owing to the preponderance of pudenda and nipples parading as “high art”. It is the basic dishonesty that is so insulting; these are paintings for men by men, often with the explicit double standard of female objectification and moralistic control of women's agency. And yet, we are expected to admire this as 'art' and to swallow an extremely slanted patriarchal analysis of what we are looking at. More erudite feminists than I have expounded on this subject, notably the Guerrilla Girls.
From their website:
"In 1985, (in the USA) a bunch of female artists, incensed by an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art that included 165 artists but only 17 women, founded the Guerrilla Girls. Dubbing ourselves “The Conscience of the Artworld,” we started making posters that bluntly stated the facts of discrimination and used humour to convey information, provoke discussion and to show that feminists can be funny. We assumed the names of dead women artists, and began wearing gorilla masks when we appeared in public, concealing our true identities and focusing on the issues rather than on our personalities."
http://www.guerrillagirls.com/admin/moreherstory.shtml
Manchester Art Gallery has a painting by the first woman to be admitted as an associate of the Royal Academy - Annie Swynnerton, a Manchester lass. The gallery has one of her paintings on display, although disappointingly, no image of it on their website. However, below is their description which differs from my perception of it. In fairness, I didn’t warm to this particular painting, but some of her other paintings which are more to my taste.
Manchester Art Gallery has this to say about the Swynnerton on display:
"Montagna Mia means 'My Mountain'. Natural features in a landscape are often personified by the humans who live near them. The painting may show a protective mountain 'spirit', but breasts and arms metamorphosing into peaks create an ambiguous, erotic, perhaps symbolic image. Is Montagna Mia waiting to be conquered?"
http://www.manchestergalleries.org/the-collections/search-the-collection/display.php?EMUSESSID=eeb6690341ca67e575aba7014dbe44de&irn=3904 
Above is a Swynnerton painting I do like.
Here is a link to the Society of Women Artists history page which discusses the difficulties of women being admitted to the Royal Academy. Other pages on their site contain glorious art by women.
http://www.society-women-artists.org.uk/History.html
Holman Hunt Exhibition http://www.manchestergalleries.org/whats-on/exhibitions/index.php?itemID=45
4 comments:
ooh I could blog a storm about this. My great great grandfather helped start a break away org as his daughter was not allowed to join the Royal Scottish Academy. She was an artist who studied in Paris and went on painting expeditions to Algeria. An American Academic did a book about Edinburgh Women artists and I came across her by accident (Engender talk and she mentioned my great great grandmother as one of the lost artists she was trying to find !)and was able to direct her towards my mother and the collection of letters and drawings she had. I must get hold of the book when it was published it was 45 pounds so I hesitated at the time - which I now regret...
How wonderful to hear about her. Please let me encourage a blog storm on that!
Just as you were posting this about ‘heteronormativity’, a word I’d not heard of before, I came across ‘heteropatriarchy’ (defined as ‘The combination of male supremacy and heterosexual supremacy’ at http://www.publiceye.org/glossary/glossary_big.html#h), on the feminist-reprise site at http://feminist-reprise.blogspot.com/2006/05/alleyways-of-heteropatriarchy.html (I’m grateful to blogger Amy’s Brain - hope I’ve got this right - for giving me an insight into a more complex idea of separatism than I previously had). There’s a lengthy article ‘Heteropatriarchy, A Building Block of Empire’ at http://www.solidarity-us.org/node/736, a US socialist site which looks at how it structures colonialism, white supremacy and capitalism.
I feel much the same as you about Pre-Raphaelite art; I love it except when it gets sentimental or banal (in the way of the worst Victorian art). But I tolerate its use of faux-medievalism surprisingly well, perhaps because I don’t mind that kind of nostalgia in Victorian literature: Tennyson’s ‘Idylls of the King’, William Morris’s fantasies. But I should say it’s far from the main thing for me: my favourite poet is Browning, tough and unsentimental.
Thank you for introducing me to Annie Swynnerton, a painter I’d not heard of before. I suppose with the general neglect of women artists, this isn’t surprising. I love the painting you posted, but found her output quite mixed. The Sense of Sight, the similar The Angel of the Annunciation, New Risen Hope and Miss Elizabeth Williamson on a Pony are all the kind of Victorian art (by look if not by date) I can do without. Oreads and Cupid and Psyche are paintings of myths that are conventional and don’t engage me. Yet Joan of Arc I love; the colours are wonderful, and I adore her expression of devotion. She is that passive devout woman typical of the Pre-Raphaelites, yet she is dressed in armour and has a mighty sword: the Victorians like their warrior women, as long as they’re not threatening!
For me, her best paintings came at the end of her life. They’re wonderful portraits of women, much more gritty than say Miss Elizabeth. Look at The Convalescent (1929), Dame Millicent Fawcett (1930), and S. Isabel Dacre (1932). Count Zouboff (1931) and Oleander (don’t know the date) have a for me European feel to them.
There's nothing quite as simultaneously uplifting and enraging as surfing amongst the radical feminist blogosphere. You can learn much more than fabulous new jargon!
Always worthwhile on a slow Friday at work.
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