I’ve been using Simone de Beauvoir’s TheEthics of Ambiguity (1947) as a lens through which to look at Francesca Woodman’s self-portraits.
My initial ideas for the research paper all had something to do with presentation of self and authenticity and multiplicity and contradiction. My starting point was a subversion of a statement from Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle (1967). He wrote that “In a world that is really upside down, the true is a moment of the false”. I was interested in subverting this and considering when/how the inverse might also be illuminated, that the false might be a moment of the true. Because this is how I feel when I look at Woodman’s photographs. In her work I see the images she created that speak to illusion, fantasy, movement, transience, contradiction, myth, magic, shadows, and I think that what she offers is quite a stark “truth” rather than a falseness, despite the theatrical and dreamlike qualities of her images. And I think it’s her offer of illusion itself that that creates the authenticity present in her work, i.e. the falseness is the truth.
The Ethics of Ambiguity offers a more specific framework to hold Woodman’s work up against. I’m currently working through the key ideas that de Beauvoir posits in her writing about ambiguity and exploring to what extent Woodmans’ self-portraits embody the principles. In the book de Beauvoir argues that, “As long as there have been men and they have lived, they have all felt this tragic ambiguity of their condition, but as long as there have been philosophers and they have thought, most of them have tried to mask it. They have striven to reduce mind to matter, or to reabsorb matter into mind, or to merge them within a single substance.” and that, “To attain his truth, man must not attempt to dispel the ambiguity of his being but, on the contrary, accept the task of realizing it. He rejoins himself only to the extent that he agrees to remain at a distance from himself.”
I’m interested in why ambiguity is important now in particular. To me, embracing ambiguity (and paying attention to art that does this) is a potential antidote to some of the contemporary problems around presentation/performance of the self (which also relates to much of what was described and anticipated by Debord in The Society of the Spectacle). The problem, in my opinion, is that the presentation of self has moved away from an exploratory gesture often present within art, into the everyday and has become so commonplace and heavily commodified that people seem reluctant to embrace the multifaceted-ness of self in favour of a flattening of self, a creation of a niche personality, a defined set of attributes that are presented to their audience, so that they (their “self”, their “image”) can be neatly categorised and monetised. There appears to be little room to present oneself as a contradictory being because this is too complex, too nerve-wracking, too confusing for an audience with a diminishing attention span, and too difficult for sponsors and advertisers to work with.
I mentioned to Maiko in my tutorial that I don’t want to come across as though I’m condemning the presentation of self online or condemning social media etc. She said that it’s okay to highlight something that I am wanting to be resolved and to focus on what I am advocating for rather than condemning something.
We also talked briefly about how in the case of Francesca Woodman, she is an artist who frequently has a mythical “self” projected onto her from other people. Her life was so short and so there is a not a huge amount of material that gives us insight into her thinking about her work. There are some letters and bits of journals and some back and forth correspondence with an interviewer but a lot of what we know (“know”) about her and how she worked and viewed art comes from the observations and opinions of her family and friends. And because she died by suicide, the circumstances of her death are often projected onto her work. Assumptions are made about her mental and emotional state and her images are often read through that lens. So there is a whole other layer around “self” in relation to her work, beyond just the fact that she made self-portraits. There is the “self” of her that is located outside of her that has been constructed by other people in her absence.
All of this feels like a lot to consider when writing a relatively short paper. But it still feels too early to be too contained. My focus for now is to write about Woodman’s work in relation to ambiguity and The Ethics of Ambiguity and keep going from there.
I recently read Girl Online by Joanna Walsh. It was published in 2022. I don’t have the energy to write much about it, I’m just going to include this photo of a part that I really liked and related to and felt moved by:
I recently finished this book. It was published in 2021.
Notes, quotes, thoughts:
Horgan writes about some of the problems of work under capitalism. She writes in a way that is quite straight-forward, which I appreciate. She breaks a complex topic down into manageable ideas, suggestions, statements. I relate a lot to the way she talks about work and control. She writes, “At work, we are subject to control by others. Being subject to the power of others might not always be bad, but the particular way in which this control is exercised, and particularly in the context of a relative powerlessness of workers, means it can be extremely harmful. The lack of freedom in the workplace is, in part, the product of a background condition of work. This background condition is that the majority of society must find a job to be able to live. In this sense, we do not make a free choice to enter work. Of course, we are not forced to work. We are not dragged from our beds and plonked in an office chair, made to look at spreadsheets at gunpoint, and shot if we fail to meet monthly targets – but the kind of society we live in is one in which having a job is a necessity.”
And, “At work, our employers have direct control over our activities. … We don’t control the conditions of our work and challenging them can be difficult. … If you need a job to live, especially if it’s hard to get one (you don’t have the right kind of skills or the right permits to work, or there’s high unemployment), the direct control your boss has over you is greater. You’re more likely to go along with practices that put you or other people’s health in danger – or just make you miserable – if you need the job more than the job needs you.”
I think a lot about how being employed is something that makes one appear as a functioning and worthwhile member of society. Being employed is everything, literally because it’s essential to survive and also socially. To be unemployed is to be a failure, someone who “doesn’t contribute” and a source of confusion to others. Horgan articulates this well, she writes, “Whether it is the retroactive ideological justification or the formative underlying ethic of cuts to the welfare state, the claim that hard work is morally good and laziness morally culpable pervades contemporary politics. To be unemployed is to have failed. In wage societies, paid work, our jobs, are the primary route through which we can gain recognition from others.”
I liked this part: “Sometimes, arguments for seeing sex work as work rely on accounts of what work is, often flagging the skill, especially emotional skill it involves. When sex worker exclusionary feminists argue that sex work should not be considered as work because that would mean downplaying the violence against women that they claim it instantiates, this also hails a particular account of ‘work’; specifically, one in which violence and coercion do not occur.”
Horgan writes, “That our jobs are one of the only places in which people can express themselves is a travesty. It’s not that people should not find fulfilment in work but, given the time demands that work places on most people, and the destruction of and cuts to other sources of meaning and fulfilment, there are only rare chances for other moments of fulfilment.” This makes me think of another thing I have thought about a lot that she also mentions, which is that because most people spend so much time at work, there is this expectation that your workplace is like a “family”, or that’s how you should view it, and there is pressure to socialise with colleagues: “However, even though those at the bottom aren’t offered the perks of ‘fun’ co-working spaces, they are often expected to enjoy their work and to see their employers as their friends or families. Work is supposed to be fun, even when there’s very little that’s actually fun about it.”
My MA project is titled Dignities. I settled on this word because my project is about/inspired by the idea of work and to me work and dignity (or indignity) are closely linked, in many ways. I was interested to the see the word “dignity” come up several times in this book, for example: “Those in jobs marked out as ‘lower’ status (unskilled manual labour, ‘dirty’ work, routine service work, among others) are denied access to the meaning, autonomy, and recognition of higher status work. The sociologist Richard Sennett terms this lack of status and the psychological fallout from it the ‘hidden injuries of class’. In a class society, he argues, not everyone is given ‘secure dignity’ in the eyes of others. This is because someone’s class position is ‘presented at the ultimate outcome of personal ability’ “, and “The division of labour, with some jobs coded as more worthy of respect and dignity than others, is a source of significant harm. But for those pushed out of it, either temporarily or more permanently, it is not just income lost but a major site of social esteem.”
I recently finished this book by Frances Borzello, who also wrote The Naked Nude which I wrote about here and here. Seeing Ourselves provides some (euro-centric) history of and commentary on women’s self-portraits from the 16th-21st century. It was first published in 1998 and was revised and expanded in 2016.
Some quotes, notes and thoughts:
Interesting links between women, self-portraiture, and depictions of the self at work or as an artist. Commenting on trends in the 16th century, Borzello writes, “While all woman artists wanted to look as gracious as the ladies in portraits, the passivity and limited range of activities displayed in them was of little use in inventing ways to show off their professional skills. When an activity is shown, it is with decorum. The sitter holds a book or lays a calming hand on a small dog nestling in her voluminous skirt. Frequently she clasps her hands in a pose that resonates with prayer, constriction and passivity. Accessories are limited to a flower, child, fan or piece of embroidery. Since ‘lady’ and ‘career’ were contradictory concepts, women in portraits were expected to look neither active nor skilled.”
On Angelica Kauffman’s 1791 painting Self-portrait: Hesitating Between the Arts of Music and Painting Borzello writes, “Traditionally muses and personifications of the arts were female and artists were male. By inserting herself, a woman, between two other women, she presents a world of female creativity. The dynamic line of the composition, taking the viewer from the sheet of music along Painting’s outstretched arm tells a story of female energy and aspiration.”
Borzello describes an 1887 painting by Anna Bilinska titled Self-portrait with Apron and Brushes. She writes, “… Anna Bilinska paints herself taking a break from her work. She is convincingly scruffy. She has not bothered to remove her apron, and, although her hair began the day pinned up, some tendrils have escaped. As she sits on a homely bentwood chair, she bends forward to gaze intently at the spectator, a bunch of brushes held across her apron in one hand and her palette hanging down at the extremity of the other. The capacity of the language of self-portraiture to address women’s changing view of themselves is revealed in her pose, which had not been seen before. Bilinksa has set herself down in front of a curtain, which acts as the background for a model. The combination of transitory pose and backcloth is an understated but witty way of telling the viewer that she has become – but only temporarily – the model, not the artist.”
I liked the observations of links between self-portrait photography, vanity and mirrors. Borzello writes, “Since vanity for was centuries personified by a woman looking in a mirror, a female self-portrait is evidence of this female vice, a real-life personification in the manner of Artemisia Gentileschi’s Self-portrait as ‘La Pittura’, but far more damning. This negative view of women and their self-portraiture is part of a larger set of attitudes about women and art, all stemming from the fact that the female artist was a minority member of the art world with little control over the judgements, views and rules affecting her.”
Later, she writes about photography and reflections/reflective surfaces and how the mirror, “throwing off its link with vanity” is now “used to suggest the complexity of being human. Reflections fascinated photographers. The twentieth-century project of self-scrutiny was tailor-made for them and many charted their lives through their self-portraits.” She also writes, “As for that damning link of women, mirrors and vanity, I hope the self-portraits prove just how empty it is. women artists, and in particular photographers, make extremely creative use of the mirror. Vivian Maier, for example, a reclusive children’s nanny whose thousands of photographs were not revealed to the world until 2013, took self-portraits in any reflective surface she came across: shop windows, wing mirrors, wall mirrors. … Employed to care for others, secretive about her passion for photography, he self-portraits have less to do with vanity than with the creative possibilities of her craft and her untiring curiosity about the world around her.” I love mirrors and reflective surfaces and using them in my work.
Borzello writes about selfies and compares them to the artist’s self-portrait. She writes, “What is new about the selfie is the lack of agency. The one thing that defines it – the spur of the moment – is the one thing a self-portrait is not. Unlike an artist producing an image, the selfie-taker requires little thought or skill beyond the need to get one’s head in the picture and, if possible, to present one’s best angle. ‘Duckface’, selfie shorthand for the exaggerated lip pout, requires the palest shadow of the thought and skill required for the composition, colouring and explanatory surroundings and accessories of an artistically considered self-portrait. Even the fastest photographic self-portraitist needs experience and a moment to compose, crop and angle, not to mention the skills that come into play afterwards in the darkroom or through adjustments to the image on the computer. The selfie is the self-portrait democratised. Its distorted faces, inconvenient hands, hopeful attempts at looking great and hopeless attempts at humour that only interest and amuse the participants and their circle clarify the art involved in the artist’s self-portrait.”
The way she writes about selfies doesn’t resonate with me. It seems pretty judgemental and reductive. Selfies are a form of self-portrait but they are not works of art by default, just like any photo that any person takes is not a work of art by default. Therefore, it seems unnecessary to me to compare the two things and state that taking a selfie takes little effort or skill. Also, not all selfies are made with the intention of creating art but selfies and art are not mutually exclusive. My self-portraits are often selfies and they are also works of art. I would also argue that a lot of selfies are in fact not very “spur of the moment” and that selfie-takers often put a lot of thought into creating and editing their images, even if they are not making them with the view of making works of art. A lot of my self-portraits are quite “spur of the moment” and the poses and moments that I capture are often somewhat unplanned and accidental. Does that make them not artistic?
It’s interesting to look at photos like these that would have been quite novel at one time and are now a very recognisable style of image:
Mirror selfies and selfies in which a camera is visible must come very naturally to people. I have taken photos like that since I was a teenager and at that time I had no reference for it. I wasn’t aware that people had been doing this since it was possible, I hadn’t yet seen photos like the ones above. It was such a natural inclination for me, to want to capture the self and to see the self reflected in a mirror and to then want to capture this reflection. And not just capture the reflection but capture myself capturing the reflection.
Overall, Borzello’s argument is that self-portraits made by women are their own genre. She writes, “I came to the conclusion that no self-portrait by a woman could be taken for granted. Whether it was ‘good’ or ‘bad’ or ‘powerful’ seemed of less interest than the fact that a female face signals a radical departure from the norm and is therefore enough to stop the image being read in the same way that a male self-portrait is.” I agree that self-portraits by women will always be read differently to self-portraits made by men. Women will always have to justify what they do with their bodies and how they present their bodies more than men do. Images of women, especially self-portraits, are therefore much more loaded by default.
Last week I met with a guy who lives in London who I had first talked to through Instagram when I was in Australia and who offered to take me to dinner when he heard I would be in London. The next day after we had dinner he took me for a walk around Canary Wharf, where he lives and works. He offered to show me around there because he knows I’m interested in photographing corporate buildings and I had told him that in London it had felt impossible for me to take photos inside office foyers. All the ones I had walked past looked very security heavy and like I wouldn’t be able to just walk in and meander around, the way I often do in Australia.
In London there is generally a much more obvious presence of security and restriction and surveillance than in Australia. These things exist in Australia of course but the feeling of it is not quite so constant and oppressive, there is less bag checking and card swiping and barrier patrolling.
Anyway, we went for a walk and he took me past and into some buildings so that I could take photos. I was in a slightly bleak, perfect little heaven.
I’m thinking about ways to make images using text, the ways I’m currently using or could potentially use text in my work. I’ve written about it here.
I went to the Tate Modern on Friday and there happened to be a small area in the gallery dedicated to art that uses text. I was drawn to two works. The first was by Douglas Gordon, part of his series from 2010 titled Pretty much every word written, spoken, heard, overheard from 1989…
The second was by Louise Bourgeois, titled I am Afraid (2009).
In both works, I was drawn to the simplicity of the presentation, the colours, the fonts, the formatting of the words and the words themselves.
The first work in particular reminded me of one of my initial aesthetic inspirations regarding using text in my MA project – corporate themed wall decals. When I presented the text based works in the interim show I used whiteboards mostly for practical reasons but my initial ideas were leaning more towards applying text directly to a wall as opposed to attaching text to another thing to then put onto a wall.
What happens when text is placed on a wall? Well, there is a lot of text on a lot of public walls. Paper signs or instructions taped onto walls, more permanent signs with symbols indicating lifts or stairs or bathrooms, graffiti, scribbles on bathroom walls. It just fades into the background. But when it comes to art specifically, and in a gallery setting, text maybe becomes imposing somehow… Not necessarily just in relation to the size, although this can contribute. More like, the specificity and deliberateness of it makes it stand out and seem significant. Maybe it has something to do with the “instructional” connotations. Like, because text on a wall is usually related to information, instructions, directions, rules, restrictions, guidelines, when it appears on the wall as a form of art, there is something about it that has a resonance with those things, subconsciously.
I do feel there can be a specific kind of “coldness” that is created when text is used as art (not always) and I don’t mean that in a bad way. It’s something I would like to utilise. I like the idea of reconfiguring the text from my poems, which are extremely personal and subjective, into images that are quite cold and stark. This is one of my earlier office decal inspirations which gives some context to the kind of aesthetic I’m talking about:
My thinking about text relates to my ideas around book making as well. I want to make books of my poems which I have already written about a few times, including here.
My ideas around all of these text-related things feel quite chaotic at the moment. The things I want to do are:
make a handmade copy of my poem Sermon on the Body, viewing this as a work of art/sculpture
make a handmade copy of a book that brings together all of my OnlyFans content captions, viewing this as a work of art/sculpture (can’t do this until the end of the degree as I will be creating for OF throughout the whole course)
consider making scaled-down versions of the books above that could be replicated, printed in multiple copies
think about and experiment with ways that poetic text could be presented in an installation context with the view that this is something I might like to incorporate into my final MA show
I was looking forward to this workshop as I’m planning to make some books of my poems. It was really helpful.
Some notes and thoughts:
Is the structure of the book part of the meaning of the book? If the structure was different would the meaning of the book change?
One of the poems that I would like to turn into a book was written over the course of one year. I contributed at least one line to poem each day for 365 days. So during the workshop I thought about how the structure of the book might connect with how the poem was written. I thought about diary and calendar formats, using these formats as some kind of starting point/inspiration.
Rosie talked about the idea of “book” and how broad the definition of “what is book” can be… “bound together in some way”. To me this was quite moving to think about, the expansiveness.
I’m thinking about the difference between making a book that is a one of a kind art object versus a book that can be replicated into multiple copies. I would like to try both but right now I’m more interested in making a one of a kind art object, something that I would view as a sculptural object to be used in an installation.
I liked learning the basic folding and stitching techniques. Right away I wanted to experiment, fold things in different ways, create asymmetrical edges on the paper.
There is a relief in making some kind of physical thing with no preconceptions, goals, pre-planning. It can be therapeutic.
Unexpected connections can be formed when serendipity (or destiny) is allowed/encouraged.
Maybe approaching materials without preciousness is an effective way in to making.
I’m so interested in the philosophies and concepts and choice-making strategies behind art curation, it’s really fascinating, feels like a whole other huge world.
I wrote another post about The Naked Nude by Frances Borzello here.
In the “post script” of this book, added ten years after the original publication in 2012, Borzello mentions the nude and social media. She writes, “A decade ago, I referred to its new and perhaps final home in photography, but now it is clear that it [the nude] has found an even newer one in social media. The nude selfie, taken above all by women with a smartphone in the privacy of their bedrooms, has generated much excited chatter in the art wold – is the selfie the art form of our times? – as well as serious concern over the fact that it is often teens who are taking the photographs.” This was a little confusing to me. Selfies have been hugely prevalent on social media yes, but nude selfies? I’m not sure if when she says “nude” selfies she means “revealing” or “provocative” rather than actual total nudity. I don’t think nude selfies are posted often on social media unless it’s people who make pornographic content posting their work on platforms where this is allowed, like Twitter/X and Tumblr. Has she really seen a large number of nude selfies of teenagers on social media?
Anyway, I’m not sure I agree that the nude selfie or selfies in general are taken “above all by women”. It might be true and I guess she’s just going by her own observation. But from my observation of social media, many men also take selfies, selfies that are both physically revealing and not. And I have received dozens of unsolicited nude selfies, taken in the privacy of their bedrooms, from men in direct messages on Instagram.
Borzello writes, “The words the critic John Berger wrote in 1972 about women in Ways of Seeing have taken on a whole new relevance: ‘Whilst she is walking across a room or whilst she is weeping at the death of her father, she can scarcely avoid envisaging herself walking or weeping. … Her own sense of being in herself is supplanted by a sense of being appreciated as herself by another. … The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself in to an object – and most particularly an object of vision: a sight.’ He was talking about the ideal nude in art, but his words apply to the takers of today’s nude selfies. They present themselves with all the artifice and skills that a trained artist brings to the traditional nude, managing the lighting and finding the artful pose that hides the defects and exaggerates the good points. They are ‘dressed’ for nudity, as the ideal nude always has been, with perfect breasts, well-chosen jewellery, judicious depilation and a graceful pose. And it is there, on social media, that we leave her, the descendent of all those glorious nudes who decorate the walls of the world’s greatest galleries.”
I agree that John Berger’s words can apply to “todays nude selfies”. I wrote some notes about Ways of Seeinghere.
She then writes, “Meanwhile contemporary artists get on with the job of reinterpreting the nude, raising issues, picturing the taboo, and facing us with the raw honesty of their work, as Chantal Joffe does in her semi-naked self-portraits of her middle-aged body. Dedicated to telling the truth of what she sees and feels, the bold brush strokes and lack of glamour of Joffe’s self-presentations bear no relationship either to Kenneth Clark’s ideal nude of the past or to the sucked-in stomachs and blow-dried hair of today’s selfies.”
I found this a little grating. I think I feel protective over the contemporary woman who takes a lot of selfies (and I guess I’m one of them). I wouldn’t argue that every woman/person who takes selfies and uses social media to present them is an artist. But I don’t like the way Borzello writes sort of dismissively about this act. The selfie-taking woman is often dismissed. The online girls are often dismissed. Women are often dismissed. By comparing/contrasting the act of selfie-taking directly with the so called “raw honesty” of contemporary artists who work with the nude, she basically reduces “the selfie” to a superficial, less “honest” form. Again, I’m not saying that taking selfies means you’re an artist but selfies can be a legitimate form/medium of artistic expression. They are a big part of my work. I don’t agree that “it is there, on social media, that we leave her, the descendent of all those glorious nudes who decorate the walls of the world’s greatest galleries.” I don’t think we leave her there. I don’t think we should. I don’t leave her there. Selfies can be superficial and bland and vapid and repetitive and dishonest and not-raw and so can other kinds of art/portraits/nudes. And they can also be the opposite. It’s also interesting that she only talks about selfies and their apparent vapidness (she didn’t use this exact word, this is my interpretation of her words) in relation to women. Again, if in her personal observation it is mostly women who take selfies/nude selfies and put them online, fair enough. But men also take them and post them on social media, whether as often as women do I don’t know, but they still do it. So what do we make of their selfies? It would seem they don’t undergo the same scrutiny as women do. Some of my earlier notes in this blog have touched on this kind of thing, for example:
I don’t think there is any possible way for a woman to photograph herself and avoid projection from (most) viewers of those photographs regarding their judgement/assumptions about her levels of attractiveness and femininity and her sexuality or their assumptions about the absence of those things. Analysing her/their sexuality or lack of, or attractiveness or lack of, or promiscuity or lack of, seems to always be a primary way into the work of women/feminine artists who use their bodies at the forefront of their work. There will be judgements made about her/their level of exhibitionism and why she has chosen this apparent level of exhibitionism. Woman are always placed in categories regarding their appearance and the choices they have made (or are presumed to have made) about how to “present” their appearance.
I’ve just started reading another book by Borzello called Seeing Ourselves which is specifically about self-portraits by women. I’m only a few pages in and she’s already written this: “Since vanity for was centuries personified by a woman looking in a mirror, a female self-portrait is evidence of this female vice, a real-life personification in the manner of Artemisia Gentileschi’s Self-portrait as ‘La Pittura’, but far more damning. This negative view of women and their self-portraiture is part of a larger set of attitudes about women and art, all stemming from the fact that the female artist was a minority member of the art world with little control over the judgements, views and rules affecting her.”
This view is more aligned with my own and seems contradictory to her reaction to the selfie. Maybe I’m fixating on the selfie thing too much.
I like reading about art and learning about art but I usually do it in a fairly meandering, fragmented kind of way. It’s hard for me to read an entire book about a topic and focus on it and make notes and really take it all in and think deeply about it. So I’m appreciating that doing this course is challenging me to do that. Not that book research is the only or best kind, but there is something useful about delving into a specific topic in this way. It’s useful for me to think more about the origins of things (like, “the nude” and how they’ve developed over time. It helps put things into context.
An artwork pictured in The Naked Nude that stood out to me was this painting by Marlene Dumas:
I don’t know exactly if I like it and if I like it why I like it but it was just striking to me.
Holly Brindley 