A Fine, Vintage Wine - Happy Birthday, Judy Chicago!

Judy Chicago. Photo credit:Martin Godwin. (Source: this interview.)

Judy Chicago turns 80 this month... but, don't imagine for a moment she's going to let the day slip by with merely a sigh and a whimper; she's celebrating it with a bang!

First up, she's launching her new, designer wine - Judy Chicago (inset right) - inspired by her feminist art organization's Through the Flower motif - just in time for the Grand Opening of her new Art Space this Saturday, July 20, 2019, for which she's giving tours all weekend.

She's also showing a film, having a wine release party, having a Pop-Up exhibition AND a special firework's performance: A Birthday Bouquet for Belen.

All these events are open to the public, so if you just happen to be in New Mexico, well, drop by! More info can be found here and here.

By the way, here's a little more info regarding Chicago's new Art Space. As it happened, she recieved a proposal late last year by the (dirt-poor) city of Belen's mayor and town councilor: the creation of a museum in Belen dedicated to one of the most notorious feminist artists in America... Chicago, herself!

Alas, it seems as if a group of religious-right fanatics opposed the museum. I quote Alisa Valdes from her Alibi article appearing earlier this year:

"Speaking to the Times, a member of the Calvary Chapel, located in Belen's old WalMart (of course it is) 19 year old Lacey Greet, explained her opposition to the museum thus:

'As Christians, we are for order, justice, security and protection. I'm for protecting the eyes of children.'"

Oh, yes, we see... NOT!

As it was, Valdes had the sneaky suspicion that Chicago's "Jewishness" might have been at the root of all this "righteousness," but, then, racism and sexism are symptoms of the same malady that has infected America for some time now: Trumpism and the empowerment of the evil far-right.

Inset left is a tapestry banner from Chicago's 1974 Dinner Party (for discerning eyes only). It reads: "And then all that divided them merged."

Anyway, not to worry; Judy declined the original offer and took the matter into her own capable hands. She set up a Go-Fund-Me page to pay for the new Through the Flower Art Space... and the rest is herstory! (More here.)

As for the Grand Opening, well, I'm hoping to be there... although the present state of my car might thwart my efforts. In any case, from all of us to all of her:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JUDY!

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Note: Ironically, the New Mexico town of Belen - apparently a hot-bed of Christian righteousness - shares its name with a pagan sun-god! His name is Belenus, which is the Romanized version of Bel or Belen. Beltane is his fire festival. Sourced from this article, we have:

"Based on surviving inscriptions and archaeological remains, Belenus was among the most widely venerated and beloved deities of the Celtic world. The center of his venerations seems to have been in France, where the most artifacts have been uncovered, but inscriptions dedicated to him have been found from the British Isles to Slovenia.

Belenus’ shrines often incorporated therapeutic springs. He may have dominion over the healing power of the sun. An erotic spirit, he may be a spirit of reproductive fertility for people and livestock. He is sometimes called the Lord of Flocks."


For more info about Belen see here, and - if you're on Facebook  - check out Hecate's Haven.

And, you know, the town of Belen might think about having its own Beltane fire festival. Judy Chicago could do one of her fireworks displays. Inset right: remember this guy?

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.)

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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"...