Portraits as a feminist act. 

 

The cannon is being re-evaluated and re-examined. 

 

When reflecting on my practice and moving forward beyond the MA. I want to experiment with incorporating more than one figure into a composition. I started to explore during the MA Summer show, by painting on the wall and opening the wall of the exhibition space to encompass all the women within it. 

 

Lisa Brice is an example of an artist who incorporates multiple women within one compotation, in her signature cobalt blue. Brice often paints the female nude as a method to reclaim the body from the male gaze. (Ropac, T) Her portraits feature groups of women, who have been liberated from the stereotype of the objectified model, they hold the paint brush and are the creators of their image. ‘Brice depicts women- who appear to be models, studio assistants and artists, including Helen Frankenthaler... engrossed in their actives and engaging in process of forming their image, not for the viewer but for themselves.’(P63) The figures she depicts often their features are often blurred with cigarette smoke or fluid brush stroke marks, not only reflecting the women as active in their activity but me allowing for self-projection. The women Brice depicts are using their own bodily experiences as a means of creating knowledge. This can be supported by autotheory as a feminist means of knowledge production 

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Autotheory as a practice ‘centres and legitimizes individual, bodily experiences as a means of processing knowledge production — basically, a way of thinking through “high” cultural theory via our physical, embodied selves.’ (McNamara, R. 2021) I would argue that Brice has embraced autotheory as a method of production in giving agency and control to her subjects. 

 

Observed through Brice and her referring to the western canon of male artists before her, in her use of composition. Which results in challenges to the representation of women within the western cannon art of history. Autotheory as Fournier explores is an ‘an interdisciplinary approach to history, weighing in on the politics of access surrounding knowledge production and what it means’(McNamara, R. 2021) 

 

Brice’s figures feel fluid and dreamlike yet based in our known reality referencing the cannon of Western art. This is a similar method to the artist Marier Lauencin, creating a dreamlike female space, ‘her soft way, she’s constructing a world without men, of female harmony, there’s something pretty revolutionary in there as well.” Lauencin's paintings craved space for women and lesbian representation, her works pronominally feature animals and women, creating a world for women. These paintings demonstrate a socially constructed feminine essence. The women feel soft and delicate, they appear reassured in the space they occupy. Almost a utopian space, without the fear of sexual harassment. 

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This world Lauencin has created is a striking opposite to the world generated by Alex Garland, in his film Men. It is a British horror film, which demonstrates the harassment and gaslighting women experience by Men, in a graphic and visually disturbing way. In the final scenes of the film, we are presented with a cycle of men birthing men, which to me reflects the grating feeling you experience as a woman about sexual harassment. The contrast repressiveness of it. When reflecting on Lauren Fournier’s Autotheory as Feminist Practice in Art, Writing and Criticism, in a recent interview Fournier explained how Autotheory is ‘ an attempt to ground one’s writing in oneself while also looking outside of or beyond that self. It is understanding the consequentiality and stakes of the personal, but also the limits of that personal “self.” The self is always already relational, always already in excess of that self.’

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Reflecting on Fournier’s writing and the connection I experienced when watching Men. Led me to experiment with creating my own self-reflective autobiographical experience, of sexual harassment:

 

 

Saturday Afternoon 

 

Picked up your cigarette.

 

How stupid. 

You engaged. 

 

‘What’s your name, where you from, what your name, what do you do, who are meeting? Do you live around here? Where are you going now? I can come with you?’ 

 

Now I must play the game. Treading that fine line of distance and not being too rude to anger him. 

 

‘Kate, not around here, oh I’m a teacher, meeting friends, not too far from here. I’m meeting my friends.’

 

I get on the train. He follows. 

 

‘You’re a teacher ‘why, should you teach me something’. Winking at me. 

 

I shudder. 

 

I try and get away, move through the train. Please leave me alone. I sit with other people, nice and busy. Headphones in, eyes shut. No space for him. I open an eye.

 

I see him watching me. 

 

I close my eyes. Trying to protect myself. 

 

I get up. Stand by the door, he is right behind me. Arm above me.

 

 I can smell him. 

 

I rush off the train. 

He is shouting now.

Think, Think, Think. 

Following me. 

He is behind me. 

On the escalator. 

How can I escape? 

How can I disappear? 

Thud, Thud, Thud. 

Panic. 

Hide in a shop. 

Boots. 

I rush in. 

Look at the sandwiches. 

He is searching for me.

He is waiting now. 

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I hadn’t yet found a way of connecting the women I’ve been exploring from the archive and the women in my life. An example of a successful blending of these different significant women can be seen though in the mural Work in Progress by Jann Haworth and Liberty Black. Within this large-scale mural, this work was commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery in their project Reframing Narratives: Women in Portraiture. ‘which aims to enhance the representation of women in the Gallery’s Collection and highlight the often-overlooked stories of individual women who have shaped British history and culture.’ (National Portrait Gallery, 2023)

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This mural represents 130 women from history and modern life, including household names alongside less well-known women. I found this mural significant as it investigated the archives of the National portrait gallery, looking at the collection and exploring the narratives of women who have been overlooked. I enjoy the context that the women represent have been discovered already inside the gallery and now they are being brought to the foregroun

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