Outside Gets Inside Catalogue
By Christine Kapteijn
The last decade has seen a new spirit achieving mainstream status in the visual arts, an art which mirrors wider social and cultural developments, offering new approaches to the traditional dichotomy between masculine and feminine, ratio and intuition, control and submission. Perhaps the beginnings of this trend were best expressed by the artist Louise Bourgeois whose answer to the question: “Do you think there is a specific style or aspect of a style which women artists share?” was: “Not yet. Before this takes place women will have to forget their desire to please the male power structure.” (1)
In eschewing an implicit requirement for specialist knowledge on the part of the viewer this artistic development offers an alternative and more direct route for engaging with art. The artists, Tine Bech and Clare Chapman, whose work is included in ‘Outside Gets Inside’ offer such alternatives. Broadening the aesthetic experience their works open up paths towards artistic engagement other than the reading or interpretation of forms.
A return to the original impulses of art was a desire felt in earlier work by female artists: “Defying styles and movements and returning to the sources of art – to the cultural expression of communal belief and emotion” (2) was part of the tribute accorded to Louise Bourgeois at the 1980s Women’s Caucus for the Arts Awards in America.
The writer Lucy Lippard drew attention to several features of the new feminine aesthetic in her infamous definition including: “a new fondness for the pinks and pastels and ephemeral cloud colors that used to be tabu unless a woman wanted to be accused of making ‘feminine’ art.” (3)
In Bechs and Chapman’s practice the absence of pompous statements, of grand schemes awards the work a force which is quietly subversive, implicating the viewer in an active relationship. A lingering impression, a gentle vulnerability, a greater subtlety of meaning is offered, allowing space for coming to terms with its substance and freedom to define or leave unsaid.
Through not resisting but leaving behind the dominance of the left side of the brain, a more intuitive path is being offered. Their art does not tackle whys and wherefores in the exhausted cerebral idiom: no point scoring through verbal constructs, no clever conceptual one-liners, no reshuffle of tired terminology, no technological paradigm shifting, no showing off.
Instead, an artistic language has emerged which uses the medium of everyday - the canvas of old, the objects from our daily existence - to tease out a different meaning, engendering: “that sense of a very special place where the atmosphere is about the work and the viewer, a contemplative space.” (4)
Both Tine Bech and Clare Chapman use this innate familiarity into which art can tap, heralded by Louise Bourgeois and developed by Cathy de Monchaux, to new effect. Their works project a strange intimacy, incorporating an internal logic which transfers itself in an oblique manner. While transmitting the experience of art as a complete acceptance by the senses, a reconciliation between form and content, their work draws attention to the space between the poles of tenacity and vulnerability, first signalled by Lucy Lippard. (5)
It is Cathy de Monchaux who formulated an approach that has become visible in the work of many women artists of today:
“ I use the language and desirability of utilitarian objects, but the sculptures frustrate because they deny expectations, they never do the business of real objects. It is like a permanent flirtation that is never consummated.” (6)
The importance of these statement is borne out by the works included in ‘Outside Gets Inside’: ten years on such aspiration have taken firm root. These are exciting times for women artists, when the prophetic insights of several feminist predecessors are coming to fruition:
“ On one level I see myself as a mainstream artist and not as an outsider, but at the same time there is a kind of anxiety there, because I am a woman. We have a very short history of active participation and we are just at the beginning. I am working in very exciting times. It would be really boring not to investigate the fact that we are different.” (7)
In concentrating on exploration, not through the whole sale replacement of one formal idiom with another, but by finding a language for a new role of art ‘Outside Gets Inside’. The exhibition signals the excitement of discovering that a mindset nurtured by previous generations of women artists is bearing fruit.
Christine Kapteijn Curator
Galleries Co-ordinator Foyer Gallery / James Hockey Gallery
The Surrey Institute of Art & Design University College
Sources:
Beavis, Helen (1998). Erotic Art: Cathy de Monchaux and Helen Chadwick. Thesis.
Bernadac, Marie-Laure and Obrist, Hans-Ulrich (1998). Louise Bourgeois; Destruction of the Farther, Reconstruction of the Father: Writings and Interviews, 1923 – 1977. Violette Editions: London.
Button, Virginia (1999). The Turner Prize. Tate Gallery Publishing: London.
Deepwell, Katy (1997). Feminist Readings of Louise Bourgois or Why Louise Bourgeois is a Feminist Icon, Part 1 and 2, N.Paradoxa: Issue 3, May .
(1) Bernadac, Marie-Laure and Obrist, Hans-Ulrich, p94.
(2) Deepwell, Katy, Part 1.
(3) Deepwell, Katy, Part 2.
(4) Button, Virginia, p. 150.
(5) Deepwell, Katy, Part 1.
(6) Beavis, Helen, p. 19.
(7) Beavis, Helen, p. 30.
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