Sunday 20 January 2013
Showgirl Art #11
An artwork inspired by comerce, consumerism, the glamour of cars and embodied by girls in catsuits performing a Busby Berkeley-esque kaledoscopic routine. Roman Vasseur's Franchise
Sunday 17 June 2012
Showgirl Art #10
Andrea Fraser takes up the position
of the stripping woman in her
performance Official Welcome, in which she
addresses an assembled art audience giving an introduction to ‘the artist
Andrea Fraser’. The scripted
dialogue, in which she performs ‘artist’ and ‘supporter’ quotes a number of
collectors’ and artists’ real introductions and acceptance speeches, all delivered whilst
Frasers strips naked and then clothes herself again by the end of the
performance:
Artist
Yeah,
the art world likes “bad girls.”
But if you tell the truth and people don’t want to hear the truth. If you’re honest about how stupid and
fucked over life is, you end up in the tabloids. I don’t go looking for it. It just comes in a big stinking tidal wave.
Removing
bra, then shoes, then thong.
I’m
used to it. It’s boring.
[…]
Supporter
Well,
thank you. Thank you for your
dedication, for your vision, for your life. I think we all must dare, as artists do, to break free of
the past and to create a better future, rooted in the values that never
change. That’s the great lesson
our artists teach us.[1]
Fraser’s work can be understood within the
context ‘Institutional Critique’, as pioneered by the artists Hans Haacke and
Michael Asher. Within this
positioning her work takes on an intellectually engaged examination of what we
expect a contemporary artist to give us; she subverts what we think art is by
conflating the site of the artwork, the museum, the collector, the critic and
the performer. Can we be sure
where they all begin and end?
The project 'Untitled' is also really worth looking up. Fraser's work is always smart and fearless and I have incredible respect for her practice.
[1] Andrea Fraser and ed. Alexander
Alberro (2005) Museum Highlights: The
Writings of Andrea Fraser, Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
Showgirl Art #9
I feel I shall have to transition from photography and video and into live art and performance practices to really continue this list. Before I do, I shall just list women photographers who in some way address the Showgirlian.
Elinor Carucci is a photographer by day, but a belly dancer by night. She's documented her dancing life in the book and series 'Diary of a Dancer'. A well observed project in which we see the types of venues, audiences, costumes, dance moves, preparations and the come down following performing. Its documentary and a diary. Just through pictures a complex narrative is told. With lots of sequins.
Katharina Bosse's book New Burlesque is a fabulous collection of portraits of New Burlesque dancers. The dancers look fabulous in clothes the look like they could be performance costume, or in some cases, sassy day wear. The pose and flirt with the camera knowingly, in domestic spaces, corners of cafes and deserts - nowhere you'd expect to find them. They are there, at the beginning of this new movement, carving out a space for themselves. Its a joyous book.
Elinor Carucci is a photographer by day, but a belly dancer by night. She's documented her dancing life in the book and series 'Diary of a Dancer'. A well observed project in which we see the types of venues, audiences, costumes, dance moves, preparations and the come down following performing. Its documentary and a diary. Just through pictures a complex narrative is told. With lots of sequins.
Katharina Bosse's book New Burlesque is a fabulous collection of portraits of New Burlesque dancers. The dancers look fabulous in clothes the look like they could be performance costume, or in some cases, sassy day wear. The pose and flirt with the camera knowingly, in domestic spaces, corners of cafes and deserts - nowhere you'd expect to find them. They are there, at the beginning of this new movement, carving out a space for themselves. Its a joyous book.
Jo Ann Callis's practice spans decades. I saw an exhibition of her work at the Getty Center, Los Angeles and I made loads of notes as I wanted to review the show for a magazine (I didn't in the end). But you know, I almost feel that to write about Callis's work is a redundant gesture. I don't think they need to much introduction. I adore her photographs and I love looking at them. Much of her work is concerned with femininity and the experience of being a woman. Just take a browse round her website. Look out for 'Woman Twirling' and 'Performance'. She taught me when I was at CalArts, and she was just had so much style, I would wear any of her outfits.
Katy Grannan makes portraits of people who respond to her newspaper adverts. Much of her work early photographs were of teenage girls, naked, who had responded to her requests.
Showgirl Art #8
To reduce Sophie Calle's down to just the work she did stripping is a sin. However, this is what I shall do here and now. Please go look up Calle's wider practice if she's new to you.
Sophie Calle's practice is brave, transgressive, self-reflexive, uses herself. But its wider than that, its also about how we perform ourselves, how we connect to other people, how our emotions shape us. How we look, and how we are looked at. Again, total fan!
Sophie Calle's practice is brave, transgressive, self-reflexive, uses herself. But its wider than that, its also about how we perform ourselves, how we connect to other people, how our emotions shape us. How we look, and how we are looked at. Again, total fan!
Showgirl Art #7
In feature film Viva artist/filmmaker Anna Biller constructed a recreation of a
Seventies sexploitation movie.[1] The film is an uncomfortable mix of
camp pastiche and truthful real-emotions storyline, which sees Barbie/Viva
going on a journey of sexual emancipation. The final scene, celebratory and sad, sees Barbie and her
friend in a down-market recreation of Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell’s number Two Little Girls from Little Rock from
the film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.[2] For Biller, the aim is to negotiate how
female desire might be represented and provoked. Most interesting to Biller are the responses she receives
from female viewers in support of the film; women can read the resistance in the
film, but she finds male viewers only see pastiche.[3]
[2] Howard Hawks, Marilyn Monroe, Jane Russell, Charles Coburn, Sol C.
Siegel, Charles Lederer, Joseph A. Fields, and Anita Loos (1953) Gentlemen Prefer Blondes [film] Beverly
Hills, CA: Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, 2001.
[3] I talked to Anna Biller about the film in
September 2010, LA.
Showgirl Art #6
Jemima Stehli adopted the position of the
stripper in her photographic series Strip,
in which she questioned the designation of power in the art world within a
voyeuristic framework. She stands with her back to the camera in front of
a seated male who is identified only by his job title, ‘Critic’, ‘Writer’,
‘Curator’ or ‘Dealer’. A long cable-release is visible in his hand. In each photograph Stehli is in a
different state of undress caught in the act of stripping. The precise
moment the photograph was taken during this private strip is controlled by the
seated male, his power doubled through the status of his job in the art
world. And yet, he is the pawn
within Stehli’s game. She has created the scenario; it is her concept,
her intellect, her skill, and her body that she chooses to display. She is active. The seated male is unable to not look;
he must play the stooge. The photograph registers his level of
satisfaction or discomfort: is that us, the viewer, looking at ourselves?
Showgirl Art #5
Leigh Ledare represents a transition into the frame, and a new way of approaching the showgirl. Now, my examples will be about embodying or trying out the showgirl, and thus, the following examples are about what she symbolises, how she can be used, rather than, who is she?
Let's start with two recent examples. Liz Cohen and Nikki S Lee put themselves into their photographs and literally embody the woman-as-object, but through that embodiment we have to deal with the concept of the woman-as-object having a brain. These approaches bring intelligence into the body.
Liz Cohen turns a Trabant into an El Camino, and herself from mechanic to bikini clad model posing on the car. Two kinds of body transformation.
Nikki S Lee goes native in particular social groups. The documented results show her passing as one of the gang. Amongst the groups she's become part of where exotic dancers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bs6mlzYBY7E
It's worth pointing out, that these practices would not exist without a number of female photographers, whose work engages less with a Showgirlian impulse, but women-in-representation. So, look up, if you don't already know:
Claude Cahun
Hannah Wilkie
Cindy Sherman
Renee Cox
It's worth pointing out, that these practices would not exist without a number of female photographers, whose work engages less with a Showgirlian impulse, but women-in-representation. So, look up, if you don't already know:
Claude Cahun
Hannah Wilkie
Cindy Sherman
Renee Cox
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