-
36 The Nation. November 15, 2004
ings, the West is a paragon of reason bycomparison. Therefore,
whatever Americadoes to rein in Islamic fundamentalism isworthy of
support. If bin Laden and his ilkcannot be captured, Harris writes,
other-wise tolerant people may be justified inkilling them in
self-defense. This is whatthe United States attempted in
Afghanistan,and it is what we and other Western powersare bound to
attempt, at even greater cost toourselves and innocents abroad,
elsewherein the Muslim world.
Bin Laden thinks the Koran is the wordof God and has killed
thousands. Bushthinks the same of the Bible and has so farkilled
several times more in Iraq. His topaides, according to Ron Suskinds
recentarticle in The New York Times Magazine,are contemptuous of
what they call thereality-based community. So who is livingin a
more dangerous fantasy world? Thetimes are so out of joint that
even soundideas like secularism and science leadpeople astray.
West 57th Street is currently paying tribute,would have been
magical and enigmaticwhatever her fate, but the suicide
causedviewers to wonder if it was foreshadowedin her images, which
were mostly of her-self. The relationship between an artistslife
and work is always tentative, even whenthe life seems obviously to
have been thesubject of the work, as in the case of MarcelProust.
The best reason for reading his bi-ography is to learn how
different the lifeand the great novel are, despite the inter-nal
relationship between the two. The dif-ference between the author
and the narra-tor of Remembrance of Things Past is amatter of
intricate interpretation, thoughboth are named Marcel. And, of
course,the novel does not end with the death ofits narrator; it
ends, rather, with his reso-lution to begin to write it. Death is
not anevent in life, Wittgenstein said. Death isnot lived
through.
Whether or not Francescas suicide isprojected in her art, the
work seems reve-latory of her inner life, not only because sheis
typically the model for the photographsof which it is made up but
because of theway she pictures herself. The photographsare of a
young woman, often nude, oftenwearing the kinds of vintage clothes
or in-timate garments that Francescas friendssay she wore. They
typically show her alonein the largely empty rooms, with
stained,
peeling walls and the odd piece of second-hand furniture, that
she used as studiosor living spaces or both. So people havepored
over the prints with forensic eyes,looking for diagnostic clues. I
must saythe evidence strikes me as pretty crude.In one she shows
herself in a bathtub,which a hermeneutical sleuth pounces onas
metaphoricallya coffin! But modelshave been shown in bathtubs from
Degasthrough Toulouse-Lautrec to Bonnard,without anyone thinking
that mortality isa subtext. Or did the critic have in mindthe fact
that Seneca committed suicide inhis bathtub, fearing a worse end at
thehands of his dangerous disciple, the Em-peror Nero? In fact,
there is very littleevidence in the photographs of one of themost
important truths of Francescas life:that she was a photographer,
and indeedthe very photographer who took the pic-tures. In a
portrait taken in her studio inProvidence, Rhode Island, she sits
behinda large, boxy camera on a tripod. But it isby a friend,
George Lange. The camera,so far as I have been able to discover,
isnever a prop in any of her sparsely fur-nished spaces. There are
not even over-looked signs, like a telltale cable, exceptin the
very early picture Self-Portrait atThirteen, taken when she could
have beenas old as 17, judging by the date. It is a self-portrait
as a 13-year-old girl, whose chief
Darkness VisibleARTHUR C. DANTO
FRANCESCA WOODMAN
The remarkably gifted artist Francesca Woodman abruptly ended
her brief
life and career on January 19, 1981, leaping to her death from a
window
in her New York studio. Francesca was 22 years old. The work of
her eight
productive years, to which a small show at the Marian Goodman
Gallery on
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11/15 X Books.qxp 10/27/04 12:01 PM Page 36
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38 The Nation. November 15, 2004
feature is her hair, which covers all herother features, and
whose most conspic-uous garment is a cable-knit sweater. It isa
cable-knit image: The cable is deliber-ately left in the print to
make the pun.Francesca was as fastidious about plantingsigns and
meaning as a Flemish master.If there were so much as the shadow of
acamera, it reflected an artistic decision.As it is, the
photographic apparatus is al-ways external to the image, though
cer-tainly internal to her life.
Ihave referred to Francesca by her firstname, though I never
knew her personal-ly. I did get to know her parents, Georgeand
Betty Woodman, both of them im-portant artists in their own right.
Betty is
one of the major ceramists of our time, andI have written about
her work on severaloccasions. George had been part of the Pat-tern
and Decoration Movement of the late1970s, but is today best known
for his ownfrequently exhibited photographs. By 1986,Francescas
work had become very widelyknown, with major exhibitions
everywhere.She was the subject of studies by majorcritics, European
and American. Her work,which seemed almost obsessively ad-dressed
to her gender and sexuality, coincid-ed with the intense
intellectual preoccupa-tion these themes had awakened through-out
the art world. The circumstances of herdeath gave her life an
almost Rimbaldianaura. It is impossible to view her workwithout
being drawn into the vast ques-tions it raises about life, art and
the mean-ing and embodiment of sex.
The Woodmans have assumed the re-sponsibilities associated with
shepherdingtheir daughters artistic estate as her famehas spread
and, alas, have had to deal withthe inevitable myths that attach to
artistswhose work cries out foryet also suffersfrombiographical
explanation. I havenever discussed their views on Francescasdeath
with them, but I have a pretty vividsense of her life. She was born
in Colorado,where her parents taught art at the univer-sity in
Boulder. It was and is an artistichouseholdher brother Charlie is
also anartistand Francesca grew up artisticallyliterate, to the
point that one need hardlyseek outside the culture of her home to
findsuch influences as may have inflected herimagery. The family is
Italophilehenceher nameand in 1969 purchased a housenear Florence,
where they continue to spendpart of each year. Francesca attended
theRhode Island School of Design in Provi-dence, spent a year in
Rome and finallymoved to New York. She made her firstphotographs
when she was at boarding
school, and seems to me to have been in-stantly an artist. In
that respect she remindsme of Robert Mapplethorpe, whose
firstphotographs have an immediate authority,though he was
suspicious of the impor-tance of photography as a medium.
Theirsomewhat cognate visions were alreadypresent at the beginning.
Francescas vi-sion always informs her work, in Boulder,Providence,
Rome and New York. It is likea personal signature. One has the
sense thatshe could have done nothing but what shedid do. Her work
unfolds over time like theoeuvre of a brilliant and precocious
poet,like Keats or Rimbaud, whose voice is pres-ent in every
line.
The photographers of Francescas gen-erationMapplethorpe, Cindy
Sher-man and Nan Goldin come to mindespeciallyall used themselves
assubjects, in varying ways. Like Fran-
cesca, Sherman used herself almost ex-clusively as her model,
but her photo-graphs are in no sense self-portraits, andare
importantly not of her. Particularly inthe Untitled Film Stills of
the late 1970s,Shermans photographs are of the differ-ent personas
she assumed as masks (whichis what persona originally meant):
younggirl mooning over a letter, jaded house-wife, young dancer,
nurse, vagrant, officeworker, vamp, aging glamour girl and soforth.
By contrast, Nan Goldin has neverportrayed herself as anyone but
herself inwhat is often referred to as Nans world.Thus she shows
herself with a black eye,hung on her by her boyfriend, Brian; or
ina train going someplace for rehabilitation;or making love. Even
when Goldin ap-pears in the costume of a dominatrix, itsa picture
of herself dressed up, not stand-ing in for a dominatrix, the way
SarahSiddons stands in for the Tragic Muse inSir Joshua Reynoldss
portrait. The samerule applies to Mapplethorpe, who, evenwhen he
portrays himself as a faun or as ayoung girl, is always
recognizable as him-self. Francesca is closer to Sherman, itseems
to me, in that she never shows her-self as herself. The difference
is that shealways shows herself as the same char-acterthe character
of a young womanin various mise-en-scnes. The work, inother words,
has a subtle fictive dimen-sion, which is all too easily
overlookedby those in search of biographical cluesabout her tragic
end. We have to distinguishbetween Francesca the artist and
Fran-cesca her character, as we do betweenMarcel Proust and the
narrator Marcelor between Franz Kafka and the protago-nist of The
Trial, Josef K.
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November 15, 2004 The Nation. 39
floor next to a window, dissolved in light,with only her legs
fully emerged into ac-tuality. It is like the portrait described
byBalzac in The Unknown Masterpiece, inwhich only a single foot is
legible.
Francesca was at home in the dark-room, unlike her peers among
the 1970sphotographers. Mapplethorpe was suc-cessful enough to have
his own dark-room technician, though he was fas-
tidious about his prints. He was a collec-tor of vintage
photographs, with a keensense for the aesthetics of surface. So
faras I know, Sherman and Goldin always had
their work developed and printed, thoughthey naturally were
concerned with con-trolling how the prints came out. But Fran-cesca
needed to intervene in order to findways of representing the
spiritual stateof her character. The final effect is that ofa
photograph taken in the parlor of a me-dium, in the midst of a
sance. WhetherFrancesca Woodman explicitly entertainedsuch beliefs
is something I cannot speak to.
What I think it safe to say is that a re-curring motif is
Francesca undergoingsome form of metamorphosis, from onestate of
being into another. In a set of im-ages made when she was resident
at the
Why, then, did Francesca always photo-graph herself, if not to
reveal herself? Askedthis question, she replied that she was
al-ways available; it was easier for her to showwhat she had in
mind than to try to get amodel to do it. But my conjecture is
thatshe invented a character, whose fictivelife was in many ways a
metaphor for herown inner life. She adored the novels ofColette,
who published a series of largelyautobiographical works in which
the cen-tral character is named Claudine: Claudine lcole, Claudine
Paris, Claudine enmnage, Claudine sen va. I have givenFrancescas
character the name Francescajust to underscore the problem of
sortingout what pertains to the artist and theyoung woman in the
photographs. Letsthen say that there are four short
pictorialnovelsFrancesca in Boulder, Francescain Providence,
Francesca in Rome, Fran-cesca in New York. Interestingly,
Francescararely if ever shows Francesca as anartist. Its not clear
what exactly Fran-cesca does, in fact. The picture could al-most be
seen as dreams that Francescahas, or as symbolic enactments of her
innerthoughts and feelings. She is nearly alwaysby herself.
The gelatin silver prints are quite small,which goes with the
extreme intimacy theyestablish with the viewer, implying thatthey
could be printed as illustrations in abook and held in the hand.
They are char-acteristically in sepia or silver tones, whichgive
them a slightly dated, almost Victorianfeeling, as if to establish
the fictive onceupon a time framework of a fairy tale. Ilove one of
the Providence images, donesometime between 1975 and 1978,
whereFrancesca is shown at the extreme right,wearing what looks
like a short robeitmay be a dressover a nightgown. She islooking
out of the photograph at us, buther arms are extended toward the
dark cor-ner of the room, where there are two doors,one of which
opens onto darkness. Her ex-pression, slightly triumphant, is like
thatof a magician, opening a door by an act oftelekinesis. Her
cheek is illuminated by alight behind her, but the light seems to
bedissolving the hems of her garments, as ifshe is disappearingor
is somehow onlypartially materialized. She looks like achild, with
long blond hair, on the cusp ofadolescence. It is an exceedingly
magicalimage.
In another print her legs, arm andbellywhich is all that we see
of herarenaked. She seems to be emerging from thewall, tearing the
flowered wallpaper intolarge, uneven pieces as she achieves
em-bodiment. In yet another, she is lying on the
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11/15 X Books.qxp 10/27/04 12:01 PM Page 39
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40 The Nation. November 15, 2004
lazzo del bastonado, or what we might call,in American showbiz
tradition, the shtickof the stick. The theatrical scholar
MelGordon, who has compiled and translatedthe old commedia
handbooks, cites a con-cise description of this lazzo: When
youraudience becomes restive, you may winback their attention by
whacking anotheractor with a good strong length of wood.
Anyone who has put on a puppet showfor children will recognize
the sound-ness of this advice. Indeed, historical re-searchers into
the fortunes of Punch andJudy have confirmed that the use of
thebastonado is especially funny when itcauses a baby to fly
wailing out of itsmothers arms. This observation may leadus on to
consider the various infantilelazzi, which include suffocation,
throt-tling and the beating of a childs brainsagainst the
proscenium arch, all of which
have attained a just venerability.The mind, convulsed, grasps
for such
precedents when contemplating the newpolitical comedy Team
America: WorldPolice, an animation featuring a rosterof
marionettes, plus two house cats anda cockroach. Prominent among
this castare puppets representing the likes of SusanSarandon, Tim
Robbins, Janeane Garofaloand Michael Moorepeople who sup-port The
Nation and its causes, and who forthis good work are incinerated,
decapitat-ed, eviscerated and dynamited in effigy,with effects that
are as bloody as the film-makers, in their glee, can muster. Do I
jus-tify my helpless laughterdo I deepen myunderstandingby tracing
these comedicenormities to a reputable past? Or am I for-getting
that tradition also endorses the prac-tice of female circumcision,
the myth ofJewish blood lust and the alcoholic yowling,
War GamesSTUART KLAWANS
TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICEHEARTS AND MINDS
In the players handbooks that once circulated among commedia
dellarte
troupes, the wandering actors of early modern Italy used to set
down
inventories of the lazzi, or comic turns, that were their stock
in trade. Among
these routines, out of which entire performances could be
constructed, was the
FILMS
MacDowell Colony, she pictures herselfin a stand of birch trees.
Sometimes sheappears nude, with strips of birch barkaround her
arms. At other times she is wear-ing a dress, but without
armsalready atrunk. In other images she wears the dressand displays
her arms encased in birchbark. It feels as if she is enacting the
mythof Daphne being transformed into a tree.In one image, she shows
herself holding asmall cylinder of birch, the way a saint isshown
with the attribute of her martyr-dom. One could not have spent much
timein Rome without soaking up such ideas. Inone of her Roman
images, she stands, withonly her parted bare legs showing, withher
feet planted at the ends of two roughlydug trenches, which reflect
the legs, as ifshe has risen from the ground. I am deeplymoved by
an image in which she has flat-tened herself, nude, against a wall,
with dirton her legs, as if she has undergone resur-rection. The
expression on her face is al-most beatific.
This beautiful, haunting installationat the Marian Goodman
Gallery will beon view only until November 13. But herimages are
not difficult to find on the Inter-net. In the gallerys catalogue,
FrancescaWoodman: Photographs 19751980, thephotographs are, unless
otherwise indicat-ed, reproduced at their exact size. This willgive
you enough visual information to seewhat she was getting at, though
of courseit is difficult to reproduce the exquisitesurfaces of the
photographs themselves.In 1980 she began to work in a larger,even a
much larger format. The cataloguereproduces Girl With Weed, printed
onblue-print paper. It seems to be a narra-tive, told in three
sequential images, inthe last of which The Girl, naked and
tri-umphant, holds the weed up, like Salomholding the head of John
the Baptist byhis hair. The intimacy has, of course, beenforfeited.
It is impossible to say whetherits sacrifice was leading to
somethinggreater.
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