Vale, Sinéad!

Sorry, but I had to switch videos again! Just found: Sinéad & Roger Waters in a live performance of Water's "Mother" in Berlin. Note: this song is addictive. (I posted Water's newer, solo version here. It's odd, but I was a little snarky - okay, very snarky and I apologize - about Water's bad mother relationship at the time, but I notice I can sympathize with Sinéad's... Ah well, none of us aren't guilty of some sexism, right?)

Meanwhile, here's the missing video: My Lagan Love. Former previous tune: Moorlough Shore. Also, remember this collaboration?

***

This just found... on the lovely blog, Sophia's Mirror: Caoin na Sídhe - Keen of the Sídhe - A Tribute. Also, while there, read Emma's Invocation, from which the quote below was taken.

"We pray for all women who are suffering for their beliefs,

or because of the beliefs of others.

We pray for all women who are suffering for their ideals,

or for their dreams unable to be realized,

or for no other reason than that they are female.

We commend all these women to your grace, Blessed Shekinah,

may they find solace in the shadow of your shining wings."

***

"At the age of 15, her shoplifting and truancy led to her being placed for eighteen months in a Magdalene asylum called the Grianán Training Centre run by the Order of Our Lady of Charity. In some ways, she thrived there, especially in the development of her writing and music, but she also chafed under the imposed conformity. Unruly students there were sometimes sent to sleep in the adjoining nursing home, an experience of which she later commented, 'I have never - and probably will never - experience such panic and terror and agony over anything."

-Via the Wiki entry for Sinéad O'Connor.

I wasn't able to sleep at all last night. And, after I finally dealt with the morning routines and entered cyberspace I was immediately confronted with the news that Sinéad O'Connor has died...

Sinéad O'Connor was an artist's artist. Her intensity and her breathy voice with its dazzling range was sheer poetry and, for many of us, the first of its kind to emerge in the (late 20th Century) rock & roll world. Her technique gave international exposure to a lilting Celtic style -  as in the video above featuring the traditional song, Moorlough Shore - which would eventually become influential across many musical genres. Her popular hit "Nothing Compares 2 U" (originally written and performed by Prince) became solid gold in the music industry. (See the early live version below... impassioned to the degree of an alchemical combustion. Suggestion: watch it in full screen mode.)

I think she was a little scary to (even) me in those days. I sensed a sensitive woman whose calling in life, coupled with her spontaneous and quirky outspokenness, might bring her undeserved tragedy one day. And it did... the world, being what it was in those days... and, to some degree, still is. From the Guardian article:

"She became just as well known for her shaved head and outspoken views. Ripping up a picture of the pope created a huge backlash – there were death threats and radio boycotts. Frank Sinatra wished to “kick her ass”.

Many considered that O’Connor was vindicated by subsequent revelations about Vatican cover-ups of sex abuse scandals."

I think, like many an anguished artist, O'Connor had "the sight," but as in the lives of many artists around the world and across most periods of history, their vision is often confused with madness and cannot be tolerated within the context of the societal status quo then current.

Farewell, daughter of Brigid. Slán abhaile.

Sinéad & her son, Shawn

"But 56 is way, way too young to die. The millions who love you have been dreading this for, oh, three decades, even though you had a life force strong enough to power 50 lifetimes. I hovered for updates when you went missing in 2016; I read your aching, awful posts grieving your son Shane who died by suicide last year, only 17, the worst thing of all."

- From Michelle Griffin's touching tribute: "We needed you, Sinead, the crazy-brave anti-Barbie."

(If the singing bird has flown away, we've no one but ourselves to blame.)

Qualifying Feminism: Empowerment and the Arts (Part IV)

The late, great sculptress Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010) and her sculpture Fillette in
a 1982 portrait by the brilliant (and often-censored) photographer Robert Mapplethorpe.
(Click-on post images for actual sizes.)

(Update as of August 3, 2019: Originally this article was referred to as "Part 3b" of what I had intended to be a 3 part series. This has changed. It is now Part 4 of a 7 part series. My apologies for any confusion - DS.)

“'I am lucky to have been brought up by a mother who was a feminist and fortunate enough to have married a husband who was a feminist, and I have raised sons who are feminists,' Germaine Greer quoted her as saying in The Guardian, not long after Bourgeois’ death in 2010. The artist, famous for her mammoth sculptures of spiders, pointedly leaves herself out of the list, insinuating not a rejection of the -ism, necessarily, but perhaps a bit of condescension toward critics eager to associate her with the term, no matter her opinions.

Bourgeois does owe a lot to the feminist movement. Born in Paris in 1911, she spent many of her early years known merely as the wife of Robert Goldwater, the American art historian with whom she moved to New York in the late 1930s. Though she drew, painted, sculpted and printed throughout the 1940s and ‘50s, Bourgeois didn’t receive real art world attention until her 50s. She had to wait more than a few years before she moved from the periphery of art critics’ minds to somewhere closer to the center. During that time, the feminist movement was blooming."

- Excerpt from a December 25 (Bourgeois' birthday), 2017 Huffington Post article by Katherine Brooks entitled A Love Letter To Louise Bourgeois, A Feminist Icon Whether She Likes It Or Not. Inset right is one of Bourgeois' "mammoth spiders."

"O'Keeffe, whose comfort with her sexuality is evident in the nude photographs taken of her by her husband Alfred Stieglitz, was not comfortable with the way that the paintings were interpreted as erotic images. This may have more to do with the degrading ways that the paintings were discussed. Stieglitz marketed her flower paintings in sexual terms, including quotes from men who were influenced by Stieglitz's viewpoints. She asked her friend, Mabel Dodge Luhan, to write of her work from a feminine perspective to counter interpretations by men.

Judy Chicago gave O'Keeffe a prominent place in her The Dinner Party (1979) in recognition of what many prominent feminist artists considered groundbreaking introduction of sensual and feminist imagery in her works of art, seeing it as a sign of female empowerment."

- From the Wiki entry for Flower Paintings of Georgia O'Keeffe. Inset left is an O'Keeffe orchid found there. Inset right is an element from Judy Chicago's tribute to O'Keeffe: a dinner plate from her ground-breaking, 1979 feminist art installation, The Dinner Party.

"I thought you could write something about me that men can't – What I want written – I do not know – I have no definite idea of what it should be. – but a woman who has lived many things and who sees lines and colors as an expression of living – might say something that a man can't – I feel there is something unexplored about woman that only a woman can explore – Men have done all they can do about it. Does that mean anything to you – or doesn't it?"

- American artist, Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986), from a 1925 letter to Mabel Dodge Luhan found in the Wiki entry (linked above). Inset left is a photograph of O'Keefe by her husband, Alfred Stieglitz.

"Louise Nevelson has been a fundamental key in the feminist art movement. Credited with triggering the examination of femininity in art, Nevelson challenged the vision of what type of art women would be creating with her dark, monumental, masculine and totem-like artworks. Nevelson believed that art reflected the individual, not "masculine-feminine labels", and chose to take on her role as an artist, not specifically a female artist. Reviews of Nevelson's works in the 1940s wrote her off as just a woman artist. A reviewer of her 1941 exhibition at Nierendorf Gallery stated: "We learned the artist is a woman, in time to check our enthusiasm. Had it been otherwise, we might have hailed these sculptural expressions as by surely a great figure among moderns." Another review was similar in its sexism: "Nevelson is a sculptor; she comes from Portland, Maine. You'll deny both these facts and you might even insist Nevelson is a man, when you see her Portraits in Paint, showing this month at the Nierendorf Gallery."

Even with her influence upon future generations of feminist artists, Nevelson's opinion of discrimination within the art world bordered on the belief that artists who were not gaining success based on gender suffered from a lack of confidence. When asked by Feminist Art Journal if she suffered from sexism within the art world, Nevelson replied "I am a woman's liberation."

- Sourced from the Wikiwand entry for Louise Nevelson. Inset right above is a portrait of Nevelson by Richard Avedon. Inset left is her 1985 piece, Mirror-Shadow VIII.

"The first act of violence that patriarchy demands of males is not violence toward women. Instead patriarchy demands of all males that they engage in acts of psychic self-mutilation, that they kill off the emotional parts of themselves. If an individual is not successful in emotionally crippling himself, he can count on patriarchal men to enact rituals of power that will assault his self-esteem."

"Patriarchy both creates the rage in boys and then contains it for later use, making it a resource to exploit later on as boys become men. As a national product, this rage can be garnered to further imperialism, hatred and oppression of women and men globally. This rage is needed if boys are to become men willing to travel around the world to fight wars without ever demanding that other ways of solving conflict can be found.”

- A quote from feminist (and wise woman), bell hooks, (found here). Her photograph was sourced here. And, here's her blog (last updated September 29, 2016.)

(Update, April 8, 2019: I've just added a quote from a Vietnam vet that supports hooks' insight. It can be found in a footnote at the end of the post. I've also added another quote by hooks.)

____________________________________________________

The Newer Woman

Well, I guess the operative question is: what became of the New Woman? Did she simply morph into a Newer Woman?

No, not exactly. Two world wars got in the way. And, by the end of the second one, patriarchal society reasserted itself once again. The upshot is (in as few words as possible), after the disastrous effects of toxic-masculinity-in-action (i.e., war and genocide) depleted the world's population by millions (upon millions) of humans; the world's "little ladies" were obligated to return to the confines of the home, and dedicate their lives to what nature (and the state) intended: motherhood. In reality, the war machine needed new blood (literally) and more human fodder, the bloated corporate sector needed fresh regiments of gullible consumers, and the government needed its tax revenue which, in the form of new taxpayers (requiring new Social Security numbers) it was a patriotic citizen's "duty" to provide. Women were expected to push more and more babies out of their wombs (and purchase the latest soap-powder) while men were obliged to finance the whole deal (or die trying).*

Needless to say, the New Woman movement lost much of its momentum during the post-war years of the mid-1900s. But, then, in (almost) Karmic retaliation, the Baby Boomer generation was spawned. And, the Baby Boomers, in turn, beget the 60s... a time when pretty much all the best-laid plans of white mice and white men went straight to hell. Well, at least, for a decade or two. It was as if, suddenly, all the King's horses, vassals and concubines no longer gave a hoot about putting Humpty Dumpty back together again, but, instead, decided to make an omelet (with his remains) which all might share... regardless of race, religion, nationality, gene-pools or gender. And, it was from this mighty upheaval that second-wave feminism was born.

This is not to say that all females of artistic persuasion were driven underground during the post-war period. No, the feminist spirit was kept alive by a number of female artists who had been born later in the time-frame, at the very end of the 19th century. Many of these women also gravitated to Paris, and it is their artwork which illuminates this section.

First in line: the 1939 painting, Rhythm Colour no. 1076,  by Ukrainian-born French artist Sonia Delaunay (1885-1979)  - above, inset left - who co-founded Orphism (a form of cubism) with her more celebrated husband, French artist, Robert Delauney. Wiki tells us that "she was the first living female artist to have a retrospective exhibition at the Louvre in 1964."

As it was, she was one of four female artists initially considered Cubists and one of three who survived the wars to witness the next wave of feminism in bloom. The one Cubist who tragically missed the new resurgence was Spanish artist María Blanchard (1881-1939), whose 1916 painting Composición cubista appears next (above, inset right). Above, inset left, is Composition cubiste by Polish painter Alice (or Alicja) Halicka (1894-1975), while (directly) inset right is a portrait of artist Diego Rivera by Russian-born (Cubist-turned-pointillist) Marie Bronislava Vorobyeva-Stebelska (1892-1984)... also known as Marevna. Of note: in 1919 Marevna gave birth to a daughter fathered by Rivera who, as we know, later married (Patron Saint) Frida Kahlo. More of Marevna's work can be found here.

Speaking of Patron Saints, there was another, German-American visionary and Transcendentalist artist, Agnes Pelton (1881–1961), who can be counted among the women who appear here. Her Patron Saint article is here. Her 1939 painting below, Sea Change, was sourced from a Whitney Museum of American art page. As it was, Pelton was one of two female artists asked to join the Transcendentalist Painting Goup, the other was Florence Miller Pierce (1918-2007). You can find her work here.

And, then, in the latter years of the 19th century, something marvelous occurred... and the 19th century dealt us one of its last cards: an American pioneer, an artist who, living for almost 100 years (1887-1986), would take us into the 20th century and beyond, finally setting the record straight for all female artists while inspiring countless others (myself included). That is, yes, women could be innovators in the art world, and yes, women could be masters at their craft, and, most definitely, women could contribute to the human footprint sans the obligatory "baby-bump." Her name was Georgia Totto O'Keeffe and she broke every rule in the book, besting the men at their own game without batting an eyelash. She is, in fact, Trans-D's missing Patron Saint #12... but, if I never get to her, know that I meant to. Of all her prolific work she is best known for her massive flower paintings (Inset left is Red Canna (1924); another painting is below the jump); organic marvels of which she said: “When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it's your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else.” 

Qualifying Feminism: Empowerment and the Arts (Part III)

"You've come a long way, baby." But, no, this is not a vintage ad for
Virginia Slims. It's a (1896) self-portrait by New Woman photographer
Frances Benjamin Johnston (1864 -1952). Then again, for a woman of that period,
blatantly smoking a cigarette in public was a radical feminist statement...
that is, when it wasn't illegal (see quote below).

"Though men could, and did, smoke with abandon anywhere they wished, a woman with a cigarette was regarded as dangerously sexual, immoral and not to be trusted. That the government tried to ban only women from smoking says a lot about how society responded as women claimed new rights at the turn of the 20th century."


(Update as of August 3, 2019: Originally this article was referred to as "Part 3a" of what I had intended to be a 3 part series. This has changed. It is now Part 3 of a 7 part series. My apologies for any confusion - DS.)

____________________________________________________

The New Woman

"As educational opportunities were made more available in the 19th-century, women artists became part of professional enterprises, including founding their own art associations. Artwork made by women was considered to be inferior, and to help overcome that stereotype women became "increasingly vocal and confident" in promoting women's work, and thus became part of the emerging image of the educated, modern and freer "New Woman". Artists then, "played crucial roles in representing the New Woman, both by drawing images of the icon and exemplifying this emerging type through their own lives," including Abbéma who created androgynous self-portraits to "link intellectual life through emphasis on ocularity". Many other portraits included androgynously dressed women, and women participating in intellectual and other pastimes traditionally associated with men."

- Reference to the New Woman via the Wiki entry for New Woman painter, Louise Abbéma (1853 -1927). Inset right is one of her self-portraits. Below is an example of her work: La dame avec les fleurs (1883). More of her work can be found here.

"At the age of 18, Abbéma painted her first portrait of the 'Divine Sarah,' which she showed at the Paris Salon of 1876. It was an instant success, and the work propelled the young painter into the limelight alongside her famous subject. From that moment, Abbéma became Bernhardt’s official portraitist; she also received a flood of commissions from wealthy and fashionable clientele. Her works hung in the homes of the French elite, as well as on the walls of the Paris Town Hall and Opera House.

Yet, it was not just her famous subject that brought her success – Abbéma possessed, like Bernhardt, a certain je ne sais quoi. She was brash, smoked cigars, and dressed in men’s clothing, and the attention she attracted brought her much public acclaim. Favored almost as much for her flamboyant behavior as for her popular paintings, it is no wonder that Abbéma became fast, lifelong friends with the equally eccentric Bernhardt. Throughout their fifty-year-long friendship, Abbéma would paint Bernhardt’s portrait numerous times, and would serve as her companion and confidante until Bernhardt’s death in 1823."

- Excerpt from the article: Bernhardt and Abbéma: Leading Ladies of the Belle Époque. Primarily known as an actress and muse to a number of artists and writers (including the equally flamboyant Oscar Wilde, who referred to her as the "Divine Sarah" or the "Incomparable One"), Sarah Bernhardt (1844 -1923) (in costume, inset left above) was also an accomplished sculptress.*

"The Woman's Building was designed and built for the World's Columbian Exposition held in Chicago in 1893. It had exhibition space as well as an assembly room, a library, and a Hall of Honor. The History of the World's Fair states 'It will be a long time before such an aggregation of woman's work, as may now be seen in the Woman's Building, can be gathered from all parts of the world again.'

14 women architects submitted designs for the Women's Building. The Board of Architects selected Sophia Hayden's design. Alice Rideout was chosen as the official sculptor for the Women's Building. She created the exterior sculpture groups and the pediment. Enid Yandell designed and created the caryatid that supported the roof garden.

The Women's Building contained exhibits of works by women across a variety of fields from fine art, applied art, literature and music, to science, and home economics. There were also exhibits about women in American History and other cultures and places in the world.

... Buildings at world's fairs are often demolished when the event ends, and finding another home for them is rarely practical. (The exception was The Crystal Palace after the Great Exhibition of 1851.) The Woman's Building was destroyed as part of the general demolition after the Fair. Sadly, after the exposition, Cassatt's mural and many other artworks by many women were placed in storage and subsequently lost.

Eighty years later, the Woman's Building had been almost lost to history. With the flourishing of second-wave feminism, women went searching for what had gone before. Feminist artist Judy Chicago and her team of students, in the midst of creating The Dinner Party, discovered a copy of the Woman’s Building catalog in a second-hand bookstore. When the Los Angeles Woman's Building was opened in 1973, the founders decided to name the organization after the 1893 Woman's Building."

- Excerpts from the Wiki entry for The Women's Building (inset left is a photo of the interior): a segregated exhibition space made by women for women at the World's Columbian Exposition held in Chicago in 1893. Inset right and left above are photographs of sculptress Enid Yandell (1869 -1934) standing beside her massive caryatid of the goddess Athena. Interestingly, Yandell maintained a studio in Paris where the 40-foot statue was sculpted, and finally shipped to the states. Allegedly, while in Paris, Yandell also "worked with" Auguste Rodin. As for the fate of her Athena: it was never cast in a permanent material and deteriorated within a year. (Note:There seems to be no evidence of the finished piece online.) In reference to the Woman's Building founded by Judy Chicago, Sheila de Bretteville and Arlene Raven in 1973: it was formally designated a historic cultural monument during the summer of this year.

"In the dread art of war the male element of the race asserts itself alone. In its antithesis, the art of peace, woman is paramount... A generation ago the seers of our race foretold two great things: a material growth and prosperity, the like of which the world has never seen; a mastery of electricity, that most potent of man's friendly genii, and a great city through which the traffic of the world should roll, one of the strongholds of the earth–all this the voice of the male seer foretold from his tower, and much more.

A clearer, sweeter prophecy went forth from the tower where the wise women watched the signs of the times: "Woman the acknowledged equal of man; his true helpmate, honored and beloved, honoring and loving as never before since Adam cried, 'The woman tempted me and I did eat.'"

We have eaten of the fruit of the tree of knowledge and the Eden of idleness is hateful to us.

- Excerpt from Maude Howe Elliot's The Building and its Decoration, a chapter from the 1894 publication: Art and Handicraft in the Woman's Building of the World's Columbian Exposition, 1893, edited by Maud Howe Elliott. Insert left is the official poster for the Woman's Building created by French painter, Madeleine Lemaire (1845 –1928).**

"What started as a playful game in woman's fashion is gradually becoming a distressing aberration... It is high time that sound male judgement takes a stand against these odious fashions... the excesses which have been transplanted here from America... the look of a sickeningly sweet little boy is detested by every real boy."

- Quote taken from a vintage Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung's 1925 article: "Enough is enough! Against the Masculinization of Woman."  Found in Marsha Meskimmon's We Weren't Modern Enough: Women artists and the Limits of German Modernism. Inset right is the lovely actress, Louise Brooks... and her "sickening, sweet little boy" look...?

Note: challenge for the day: substantiate the phrase "sound male judgement." ;-)

“The chief obstacle to a woman's success is that she can never have a wife. Just reflect what a wife does for an artist: Darns the stockings; keeps his house; writes his letters; visits for his benefit; wards off intruders; is personally suggestive of beautiful pictures; always an encouraging and partial critic. It is exceedingly difficult to be an artist without this time-saving help. A husband would be quite useless."

-  A quote from the New Woman painter, Anna Lea Merritt (1844 –1930). Inset left is her 1885 painting Eve.

"In 1907, the French filmmaker, playwright, journalist, feminist, and political activist Germaine Dulac (1882-1942) gave a lecture on the “international task of French Women.” She urged her audience to “create things anew and according to your own spirit” and to organize into cooperatives and unions. Tami Williams’s in-depth historical study and critical biography Germaine Dulac: A Cinema of Sensations reveals the breathtaking extent to which Dulac followed her own advice. Among the most prolific and influential figures in early French cinema, Dulac is today virtually forgotten."

-  An excerpt from Jenny Mcphee's 2014 article: The "Pure Cinema" of Germaine Dulac. Inset right is the cover of an early French cinema review featuring a photo of Germaine Dulac (1882-1942) a pioneer filmmaker whose 1928 Surrealist film La Coquille et le Clergyman (The Seashell and the Clergyman) predated  Buñuel's  and Dalí's Un Chien Andalou. She was also on the editorial staff of the radical feminist newspaper La Fronde (The Sling).

“Do you really believe ... that everything historians tell us about men – or about women – is actually true? You ought to consider the fact that these histories have been written by men, who never tell the truth except by accident.”

- Quote from Il merito delle donne, oue chiaramente si scuopre quanto siano elle degne e più perfette de gli huomini (On the Merit of Women, Wherein Is Clearly Revealed Their Nobility and Their Superiority to Men) by 16th century Italian writer and poet Moderata Fonte (inset left). An additional article (in English) can be found here. More quotes can be found here. Other Italian poets of the period: Vittoria Colonna, Veronica Gambara, Chiara Matraini.

***

Impressionist painter,
Berthe Morisot.

Well, it took long enough, but finally I've the presence of mind (and quality time) to tend to the last Feminist Art and Empowerment post - which, incidentally has already fragmented into Part 3a and Part 3b (no, it never ends) - but, first, allow me to back up a bit and clear up an oversight.

In "A Day for the Little Ladies," which mostly focused on the political aspect of first-wave feminism in relation to International Women's Day, we witnessed a solidarity of assertive, empowered, formidable women who, outraged by their second-class citizen status, literally fought "tooth and nail" for emancipation. In some countries, such as Russia, they also helped ignite actual revolutions; in Spain, they led them.

Après le déjeuner - oil painting - 1881, Berthe Morisot.

Pre-Raphaelite
Marie Spartali. 

Yet, this was merely a portion of a much larger picture. Underlying the political strides of the feminist movement during the latter decades of the 19th century and the early decades of the 20th there emerged a different form of feminist insurgence (and/or resurgence); equally as liberating and, perhaps, even more radical. A creative New Woman was finding her voice and autonomy under the auspices of what was, in effect, a new cultural renaissance across the globe. While the New Women's contributions may have been undervalued at the time, or lost in subsequent years - as were those of women who flourished in the initial Renaissance (see here) - the New Woman reopened the door for all future generations of women and her existence was the crucial, empowering force which lay dormant in the contemporary woman's psyche until the next wave of feminism was established.

Madonna Pietra degli Scrovigni.
1884, Marie Spartali.

And, who were these New Women? They were the artists, writers, poets and performers of the late Victorian era, the Belle Époque, the Fin de Siècle, the Naughty Nineties, the Roaring Twenties and the beginning of the Jazz Age. Talk about an exciting, multi-faceted time! Within this period (covering approximately 40 years) the art world would explode with new forms, innovations, and a multitude of new genres: Romanticism, Symbolism, Impressionism, Expressionism, Cubism, Fauvism, Constructivism, Futurism and early Modernism. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and Arts & Crafts movement were established earlier during this period. Art Nouveau (Jungendstil) and, later, Art Deco emerged. Surrealism was born. Poster art flourished. It was the Golden Age of Illustration. Photography became an art form and the first motion picture was shot in 1888; by 1896, movie theatres had opened in France, Italy and Great Britain.

And, as for the New Woman, she was a player in all of these arenas... and, very often the star...

Qualifying Feminism: Empowerment and the Arts (Part II)

A poster in a London bus station featuring an image by the artist Egon Schiele.
The banner, however - strategically plastered over the figure's pubic area -

was not of the artist's device. See here or here.
(All images in this post can be clicked-on to enlarge.)

_______________________________________________

The C-Word: Censorship

“Art cannot be modern. Art is primordially eternal.”

- Egon Schiele, Austrian painter (June 12, 1890 - October 31, 1918).

"The purging wave seems to know no bounds. The poster of an Egon Schiele nude is censored; calls are made for the removal of a Balthus painting from a museum on grounds that it’s an apology for pedophilia; unable to distinguish between the man and his work, Cinémathèque Française is told not to hold a Roman Polanski retrospective and another for Jean-Claude Brisseau is blocked. A university judges the film Blow-Up, by Michelangelo Antonioni, to be "misogynist" and "unacceptable." In light of this revisionism, even John Ford (The Searchers) and Nicolas Poussin (The Abduction of the Sabine Women) are at risk."

- Via an English translation of one of the more coherent passages from the notorious "#MeToo" backlash letter published in Le Monde earlier this year, written and signed by 100 French women-of-note, up to and including Catherine Deneuve. The original document (in French) can be found here and, in English, here. Inset left is the  painting under scrutiny at that time, Thérèse Dreaming.

"As with previous awareness raising campaigns, it is not unlikely that the backlash will snowball and that the deeply entrenched patriarchal mechanisms that have maintained sexism for centuries will reassert themselves. That is after all how the system has survived to date. It is also all too likely that we will all — men and women — soon grow weary of allegations of sexual harassment as we have done in the past, making #MeToo a distant memory, a bud that did not blossom into long-lasting structural change. As Jessa Crispin writes in her manifesto about why she is not a feminist, popular social movements must, by their very nature, be “banal… non-threatening, and ineffective.” This underscores the problem with movements propelled by hashtags and celebrities."

- Excerpted from the Public Seminar article The Many Faces of the #MeToo Backlash, written by Maryam Omidi.

"In an angry riposte, French feminists described the letter’s signatories as “apologists for rape” and “defenders of paedophiles”, a reference to Deneuve’s vigorous support of the French-Polish film director Roman Polanski, convicted of raping a 13-year-old girl.

'There’s nothing really new in the arguments they use; they’re like the embarrassing colleague or tired uncle who doesn’t understand what’s happening,' a group of feminists wrote in an open letter of their own to French radio."

- Regarding a backlash against the former backlash via this article. Inset left is a still from Repulsion, a Roman Polanski film starring Catherine Deneuve (pictured) as a woman who kills two men, one of whom sexually assaulted her. As one might expect, Deneuve's character is portrayed as psychologically deranged (i.e., violence of men is expected and often applauded in a patriarchal society, violence in women - even when justified - is pathological.)

As for Roman Polanski, in 2018: "in light of the #MeToo and Time's Up movements, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences voted to expel Polanski from its membership." As for Polanski's relationship with his "victim," Samantha Geimer, apparently they have become friendly... see Samantha Geimer on Roman Polanski: 'We email a little bit'.

"The problem of comprehending Lolita begins with this moral discrepancy and her literary position as a rape victim. It causes us to unravel with Humbert. We question the book, ourselves, our culture, and in the space between our disgust and Humbert’s desire, we obsess over and recreate the story. Spawning two films, several musical adaptions, ballets, plays, a Russian opera spin-off, fashion subcultures, and endless memorabilia, Lolita is a transcendent literary icon. Her ghost lingers in Lana Del Rey, Katy Perry, Britney Spears, Miley Cyrus and many a pop icon seen cradling a teddy bear in skimpy lingerie. The hyper-sexualization of young women is Lolita’s legacy, a cast thrown sixty years into the future: a transition from rape victim to sex icon."

- From Emily Roese's 2016 (Huffington Post) article: The Problematic Idolization of Lolita. Inset right is a detail from a poster for Stanely Kubrick's 1962 film adaption Lolita.

"Violence against women is often against our voices and our stories. It is a refusal of our voices, and what a voice means: the right to self-determination, to participation, to consent or dissent, to live and participate, to interpret and narrate. A husband hits his wife to silence her; a date rapist or acquaintance rapist refuses to let the 'No' of his victim mean what it should, that she alone has jurisdiction over her body; rape culture asserts that a woman's testimony is worthless, untrustworthy... Having a voice is crucial. It's not all there is to human rights, but its central to them, and so you can consider the history of women's rights and lack of rights as a history of silence and breaking silence."

- From Rebecca Solnit's A Short History of Silence, an essay from her (highly recommended) collection: The Mother of All Questions, 2017, Haymarket Books.  Regarding the photo (inset left) - "STILL NOT ASKING FOR IT" - more info can be found here and here.

***

Apparently, the poster which introduces this section is one of several which appeared in London bus stations this year announcing an exhibit of artwork by Egon Schiele, a Viennese artist and painter, known for his oddly contorted human figures, both nude and otherwise (inset right and sourced here). I don't know that any feminists were involved in the censorship of his work - and, possibly, the exhibition of his nudes in a bus station wasn't the most brilliant of plans to begin with - but, in terms of censorship "100 years old and still too daring" makes a significant point. In terms of culture, are we as a species moving forwards, backwards, or remaining stationary? More importantly, will the censorship of art and/or the artist - either contemporary or from the distant past - solve anything? Lastly, is the sensual and/or sexual content of art - regardless of the variety explored or intimated - a feminist issue? And, if so, should art fall under the jurisdiction of any and/or all other political and societal movements as well?

While I can both sympathize with and applaud the #MeToo
(and subsequent Times Up) movements - which marked the historical moment when women finally broke their silence and dragged a few "rape culture" enthusiasts out from under their proverbial rocks (where they'd been congregating for a very long time) - the infamous backlash letter signed by 100 French female luminaries was correct in one respect: suppressing a work of art due to its sexual content or the sexual behavior of its makers - even when said content or behavior is presently considered taboo - is antithetical to the nature of art, human creativity and human expression. But, most importantly, for a feminist, fanning the flames of censorship can also backfire.

Then again, history tells us that in almost every case of censorship or prohibition - across the board - the eradication of the offending behavior was not achieved... neither in the short term and, most certainly, not in the long term. Case in point: Lolita, the 1955 novel written by Russian American novelist Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977). Basically, it's a feminist's nightmare - and a hebephile's wet dream - following the obsessional musings of a middle-aged man directed towards his manipulative, sexually precocious 12-year-old stepdaughter whom he eventually rapes. Banned in Great Britain and France for a period of two years, it was then banned in Australia from 1958 to 1965. Meanwhile, when it arrived in America, 100,000 copies were sold in its first three weeks. After all, nothing says "Must Read" like the word: "Banned"...

Qualifying Feminism: Empowerment and the Arts (Part I)

Gal Gadot in her 2017 film role as Wonder Woman.

"But it was within this busy, unorthodox household, where (William Moulton) Marston upheld a "hodgepodge of Aquarianism and psychology and feminism," that Wonder Woman began to take shape. Marston proudly claimed that his most famous creation was meant to be "psychological propaganda for the new type of woman who ... should rule the world." The superhero made her debut in December 1941, the same month the United States entered World War II. With her mandate to fight "evil, intolerance, destruction, injustice, suffering, and even sorrow, on behalf of democracy, freedom, justice, and equal rights for women," Wonder Woman not only battles Nazis but also aids (in the guise of her alter ego, Diana Prince) female department-store workers on strike over meager wages."

- Melissa Anderson from her Newsday book review of The Secret History of Wonder Woman by Jill Lepore. Inset left is a Wonder Woman comic book panel (possibly from the 1970s) featuring an explosive rant which begins: "Men! It was you who did this, with your weapons and your war, and your mad need for confrontation..."

"This perception shifted over the years, however, as demonstrated in December 2016 when the United Nations decided to drop the title of "honorary ambassador for the empowerment of women and girls" which it had given to the comic book character Wonder Woman a few months prior, in a ceremony attended by the actors who had portrayed her (Lynda Carter and Gal Gadot). The title was eliminated in response to a petition signed by 44,000 people which argued that Wonder Woman undermines female empowerment due to her costume, described as a "shimmery, thigh-baring bodysuit with an American flag motif and knee-high boots". The petition stated that "it is alarming that the United Nations would consider using a character with an overtly sexualised image at a time when the headline news in United States and the world is the objectification of women and girls"...

The debate continued with the release of Jenkins' 2017 film, Wonder Woman, which according to the BBC had "some thinking it's too feminist and others thinking it's not feminist enough". Kyle Killian found an inherent contradiction in the construction of Wonder Woman as "a warrior" whom, she states, is also highly sexualized. Killian thus suggests that these elements "should not be the focus of a kickass heroine—her beauty, bone structure, and sexiness—if she is to be a feminist icon..."

- Excerpt from the Wiki entry for Wonder Woman, the 2017 film directed by Patty Jenkins. Inset right, Wonder Woman and her controversial costume.

"Spartan women, of the citizenry class, enjoyed a status, power, and respect that was unknown in the rest of the classical world. The higher status of females in Spartan society started at birth; unlike Athens, Spartan girls were fed the same food as their brothers. Nor were they confined to their father's house and prevented from exercising or getting fresh air as in Athens, but exercised and even competed in sports. Most important, rather than being married off at the age of 12 or 13, Spartan law forbade the marriage of a girl until she was in her late teens or early 20s. The reasons for delaying marriage were to ensure the birth of healthy children, but the effect was to spare Spartan women the hazards and lasting health damage associated with pregnancy among adolescents. Spartan women, better fed from childhood and fit from exercise, stood a far better chance of reaching old age than their sisters in other Greek cities, where the median age for death was 34.6 years or roughly 10 years below that of men."

- Excerpt from the Wiki entry for the ancient Greek city of  Sparta. Note that, in the ancient world, the life span of a woman was shorter than that of her male counterpart. Inset left is a bust of Helen (Helénē) of Troy (or Sparta) by the artist Antonio Canova. She was that famous swan daughter of (Spartan) Leda and the god, Zeus.

"Girls with guns, big guns - what fun! Even the most pacifistic woman - and really, I am - experiences a certain vicarious release when, with a gun in each hand, a superwoman blows away a flock of her opponents, without so much as blinking her eyes. Hell, I have a hard time swatting a fly, but when I watch Kate Beckensale blast her way through a bevy of creeps, I get to share a certain heady sense of power...

So, you go Kate, and Charlize, and Carrie-Anne... and you go Milla, and Sigourney, and anybody I may have left out. There are no underdogs quite so "under" as women, so, when you shine, all of our repressed warrior instincts finally get to kick some ass!"

- Excerpt from my (2011) PMB post "The New Superheroines - Girls With Guns." Inset right is
Kate Beckinsale as the Vampire (and Death Dealer), Selene.

***

From 1987.

The word "superheroine" isn't even an official word according to my computer system's 2009 dictionary... (and maybe it isn't now, either, judging by the way it's being underlined in red as I write this post). But, considering that the comic book character, Wonder Woman, made her debut over 70 years ago (in December of 1941), and noting, too, the plethora of female warrior-types who've invigorated the film, television and comic book industries since that time, well, one would think the word would have surfaced in the English language by now.

But, as it happens, the official world transforms very, very slowly... and, in certain areas of the globe, almost not at all; and in regards to the subordination of the female gender, well, despite several "waves" of feminists - and thousands upon thousands of years spent pushing the world's population out of their (collective) wombs - women are still essentially the underdogs. The odd thing is, even when a woman is the boldest, most attractive, most ingenious person she can be, chances are she still fears she is never quite good enough and her accomplishments are trivial, often driving her to overcompensate for a deficiency she never really had. Inwardly, regardless of her accomplishments, she still feels as if she's treading water, or as if some undefinable force continues to hold her back or drag her down. This is not a delusion. Metaphorically, society - under the spell of a pervasive patriarchal zeitgeist - clipped her wings many ages ago. And this legacy - this insidious mutation - was genetically* passed down to her in such a way, that she needs no outside force to enslave her - the trappings of her prison exist at all times embedded within her own psychology.

So, the question becomes: how can a maimed bird fly?