Feminist Aesthetics by Gisela EckerReview by: Jennifer FitzGeraldCirca, No. 23 (Jul. - Aug., 1985), pp. 36-39Published by: Circa Art MagazineStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25556990 .

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CIRCA 36

BOOK REVIEWS

IMAGES OF GOD By Peter Fuller, Chatto &Windus, 1985, 320 pp, ?4.95.

This is Peter Fuller's seventh book on art

since the publication of Art and

Psychoanalysis in 1980. Fuller is therefore forefront among contemporary British art critics by

indulging in what he spends an

inordinate amount of time railing against in modern art: the reproductive capacity

of the media. The current book is his

third volume of collected essays, reviews and commentaries already

published in journals and magazines. While one might appreciate republishing

in book form if the essays required lengthy consideration and constant

reference, in Fuller's case there are a few

basic concepts which run throughout and amount to little more than a

simplistic doctrine that insists on

repeating itself. The question that

follows is, why is it that Peter Fuller is an attractive proposition when other of

his associates in art criticism have not

managed any publications?

Images of God, subtitled, Consolations

of Lost Illusions, is a selection of

writings between 1982 and 1984 which purport to represent a shift in Fuller's

thinking. Precisely what the shift is is more implicit than explicit, since the

single specific reference to his position is in the introduction where he hints at

"cultural shifts" and the need to respond to these. However, his sense of cultural

shifts is narrow to say the least and his

analysis of why these are occurring is

merely a blanket dismissal of

Modernism. I refer to the total impact of

the book because the "essays" are

FEMINIST AESTHETICS Edited by Gisela Ecker: The Women's Press,

1985, ?4.95.

One of the most valuable features of this collection is that, despite their

multiple authorship and varying focus, these essays provide an integrated and comprehensive perspective on the

subject. It is therefore possible to discuss the ideas rising from its pages as aspects of a single argument, rather

than as disparate statements requiring individual attention. The effect is thus

more than the sum of the several pieces; it stimulates a single line of thought

upon which the reader puzzles, meditates and enthuses.

The perspective provided by this German collection complements and comments on a parallel French enterprise, characterised in particular by the psychoanalytical approach of Luce

___^_____________Pv_5>> *_-*5&5_i__ ?_i_-M ?<?' V.* '" '^

Irigara and H6idne Cixous (see New French Feminisms, edited Elaine Marks and Isabelle de Courtivron (Brighton, Harvester Press, 1981). Recognising that female experience has been repressed, the French critics attempt to reclaim the unconscious through the deliberate expression of the female body, in its sexual characteristics. This new consciousness will not be

restricted to the female sex, as men too

will benefit from a new gender-free femininity which transcends the limitations imposed on human

experience by patriarchy. These German critics, however, point to the dangers of the reception of such a theory, which can easily boomerang back into biological reductionism. Describing 'how women are' a-historically

threatens to return us to a prescriptive 'nature of women' essentialness.

Instead, Sigrid Weigel insists on the careful discrimination of ideological, empiric and Utopian meanings of

'feminine', that is, women as they are

defined by patriarchy, women as they experience themselves in the here and now, with all the contradictions of internalized gender roles vying against

their subliminal awareness of their own

experience and potential, and finally, woman as she would be when men as

well as women no longer function according to these destructive prescriptions allowing human autonomy to all (p. 64).

Because women, including feminists, inevitably live under the shadow of the

first two categories, while only glimpsing or yearning after the third, feminist aesthetics, as well as the whole of female experience, labours painfully under problematic paradoxes. Feminist

art is not such merely because it is created by a woman; and indeed even when women are allowed entry into the artistic world (as in the eighteenth and nineteenth century novel), they are not

necessarily or even possibly creating a

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CIRCA 37

actually reviews of exhibitions with

some commentaries on writers and

artists who happen to be in currency at

the time of writing. Hence there is little

expansive theoretical justification for

the attitudes expressed, and the

coherence of the thinking must be

deduced, in part, from the way in which

the individual reviews are strung

together.

There are eight sections in the

collection. The first, Changing, is

accorded some significance by Fuller in

that it establishes his perception of

"post-Modernism", and the present situation in art and design as well as

aesthetics. The succeeding sections

deal with Expressionism, British

painting and sculpture, Australian art, a

section loosely to do with art vis a vis

institutions and society at large, then

Craft, and finally Writings which refers

to texts to have influenced him. While

these sections are to some extent

calculated to fit the pre-existing essays,

they are nevertheless redolent with

Fuller's desires for art and design.

Firstly, it seems that Fuller looks no

further than New Expressionism in his

diagnosis of recent developments in art.

On the face of it this is peculiar for a

critic who still maintains he is of a leftist

persuasion ?

"we, on the left", is the

identity he chooses in his introduction.

On this count one might expect Fuller to

explore the art to have surfaced in

Britain particularly, which is political in

subject matter, (i.e. Victor Burgin, Feminist artists). The implied reason

why he avoids this art (apart from the

fact other critics have championed it) is

that it is aligned with Walter Benjamin's thesis on the necessity of reproductive

imagery in a world of mass

communications, and is the antithesis

to Fuller's beliefs on tradition and

craftsmanship. But if he ignores certain

aspects of contemporary art, why does

he devote review after review to pouring scorn over New-Expressionism?

Fuller uses anti-Expressionist rhetoric in

a number of ways. Since the style is in

vogue he uses it as a platform to draw

attention to certain British painters with

Expressionist-like characteristics. For

example, in Auerbach versus Clemente,

he makes the introductory statement:

"If you are sick of 'bad painting', you should have seen Frank Auerbach's

exhibition at..." (p. 56). He continues,

"Whatever is happening in Auerbach's

painting cannot be ascribed to any

attempt to veil given reality before he

has taught himself to see it clearly; Auerbach is not intent upon evasion, or

the drowning of the appearances of the

real in numbing illusions, or a curtain of

subjective expressionistic gestures", (p.

57).

The more insidious aspect of Fuller's art

criticism is that while damning the 'New

Art' he connects it with his favourite

artists for the sake of the attention to be

gained: "Societies, as Ruskin perceived, tend to get the art they deserve. It could

be said that the unparalleled decadence

of the New Art is an apt expression of

the reality of Western cultures ... I still

believe in the affirmative possibilities of

an alternative aesthetic tradition. For

these to become generally realised,

however, a much more radical critique of the Late Modernist episode would

seem to be necessary. Such a critique, I think could draw a great deal from

certain culturally conservationist

tendencies in British art... lam thinking, for example, of that pioneer post

Modernist, David Bomberg; and of his

pupils, Leon Kossoff and Frank

liberated female art. The detour via the

male idea ?

internalised as part of the

woman artist's experience of herself

and her work ? must be taken into

account. The result is not straight achievement, or even unambiguous

striving: "Renunciation and

remonstration, independence and

subservience, courage and despair

usually lie so close together that we

have to decode the hidden structure of women's opportunities for expression in

a patriarchal culture before we can

evaluate their writing" (pp 64-65).

The most impressive feature of these

essays is their readiness to face up to

the necessarily painful contradictions of

feminism, which may be seen as

working against the immediate interests

of still-trapped sisters: "The latent

schizophrenia of woman consists in the

fact that those elements of the model of femininity which earn her moral respect (for example, motherliness,

understanding, sociability) are also the

basis of her social subordination. If she

questions the supposed inferiority of the female sex and enters the

professional or political rat race then she

has to pay for it with her 'femininity' and

status as a human being." (p. 80).

Understandably, many women prefer the gratification and security of the stereotype. As Jutta Bruckner points out, in Women Behind the Camera, feminist film does not (yet) provide aesthetic pleasure; the demands it

makes on men and women alike are as

yet too strenuous: "The courage it

demands really hits home when it creates the autonomous female, for at

the same time it destroys the lovable one", (p. 124).

Even when women consciously undertake the feminist aesthetic enterprise, "they are confronted with

difficulties which are literally indescribable, for the medium 'through'

which we want to expose the fact that

men have stamped the neutral concept of humanity with their own mark is itself a product of this process" (Gisela

Breitling, p. 164). The feminist artist has first of all to cope with the myth of universal, gender-free art. All the

evaluative criteria of establishment

aesthetics presume that what is

relevant and excellent is determined by characteristics which appeal to the

highest human aspirations. The first

task of the feminist aesthetic is to dismantle this myth by a return to a

genderised (not biologised) aesthetics ? a move much resisted by female

artists who no longer want to be

collectively examined (and dismissed) under the rubric 'women's art'. Until

now, women have had to deny their

gender in order to obtain access to the

portals of art, ignoring therefore a

fundamental element of their subjective

experience essential to artistic

expression. Men have not had to repress the complementary vital part of

themselves, since what is considered

'universal' art is literally the male

experience. Thus women should reclaim

their gender, their sexuality, without

being thereby marginalised: "A truly genderised perspective would mean

that the sex ? male or female

? of both

the artist and the critic is taken into account. This also implies their relation to gender-values in the institutions and

within the theories they apply. It cannot be stressed enough that it is impossible to deconstruct this myth of gender

neutrality in art if, at the same time, male artists and critics do not develop a consciousness of their own gender. If

they do not, we'll have to make it

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Auerbach; of the best of the British Slade painters; and certain members of our Royal Academy too ...", (Goodbye Moma And All That, p. 22). It is a long time since Royal Academicians thought of themselves as "radical", not to say,

"post-Modernist", but Fuller is capable of twisting prevalent concerns to his own ends.

In defence it might be argued he is justified as the Modernist and post

Modernist art he abhors is that which

receives critical attention, and his tactic

is the supermarket ploy of drawing in

the public with a gimmick in order to sell something else. For some years now, Fuller has run a one-man campaign

against Modernism in both art and design. His premise is that in so far as

art and design have mimicked the

machine ethic it destroys human capacity to observe and express the

human environment through visual

form. This theme recurs throughout

Images of God and is a pretext for two

sections devoted to British painting and

sculpture. In the review, 'Neo

Romanticism': a Defence of English Pastoralism, he advances the view that

British art is more protected from

Modernism than European and

American models, because the ideology has not infiltrated so deeply. And, by the

same token he virtually ignores American art which he has previously cited as the perpetrator of post-war International Modernism, (see, Beyond

the Crisis in Art).

The weakness of Fuller's thesis is he

merely asserts this to be the case rather

than shows it through sustained

argument. He insists what he is saying is self-evident and invokes the old

chestnut that while aesthetic

judgments are not reducible to positivist verification there is a biological nature in man that opens the way for universal

discrimination in matters of taste.

Modernism of course prevents access

to this biological function and his task is then to seek out and bring forth more

traditionalist artforms. His choices

though are sometimes idiosyncratic.

Why for example devote one section of

Images of God, conspicuously short as

it is, to Australian art when Australia as

a nation has much in common with the

United States: Whites in an alien

environment systematically destroying the indigenous culture and establishing

synthetic, urban protectorates. Fuller

proclaims his interest in Aboriginal and frontiersman visual art and artifacts, but

it seems little more than the White Man's fascination with and desire to

conquer the outback. Fuller could

equally find such examples in the United States yet the art critic in him wants to

explore what might well be a good bet for the future

? the emergence of

Australian art.

For all his lofty musings on the biological nature of man when it comes down to

discussion of individual artists he can

reach unrivalled levels of vulgarity.

Presumably working on the principle that the psychology of the artist is a condition of the art, Fuller drags out for

public delectation the private problems of many artists. If you want to know

why Soutine was repulsive, or the latest

theory why Ruskin was unable to

consummate his marriage, then Fuller is

your man. Equally spurious is the rating

games: "... some of the new artists are

better than others: Chia is better than

Baselitz, who is better than Kiefer, who

is better than Clemente; who is better

than Schnabel; who is better than Salle ?

who is unspeakably awful."

transparent to them that what they term 'natural' or 'general* norms are

questionable. Otherwise women artists will still be forced either to bang on the doors of 'Art" for admittance or establish secluded spheres of women-only art, if

they are not to be silenced altogether" (Gisela Ecker, p. 22),

This book registers both truthfully and

chaltengingly the pains and problems of

even beginning to create artistically as a woman. The glimpses towards

Utopian woman and her aesthetic achievement transform the dissection of present disability into encourage

ment and hope for the future. The feminist Utopia is not a 'no place', although it certainly is a 'not-yet' ona Nevertheless speculation is not entirely hypothetical, and immediate steps can be envisaged. Sigrid Weigel suggests a double, refracted vision, gazing in two directions simultaneously md (also) out of the corner of one's eye: Woman "will

only be able to correct this sideways took when the woman theme is redundant ? when living and writing

woman has overcome her double life of

living by the pattern set by the dominant

images and in the anticipation of the

emancipated woman", (p. 71). She has to keep in focus both the no longer (duped by the stereotyped illusion) and the not yet {autonomous, self-defined): "What the liberated woman will look like cannot be imagined with any certainty or in any detail at the moment, let alone how she will be experienced. In order to live through this transitional space between the no longer and the not yet without going mad, it is necessary for woman to learn to look in two diverging directions simultaneously. She must learn to voice the contradictions, to see them, comprehend them, to five in and

with them, and also learn to gain strength from the rebellion against yesterday and from the anticipation of tomorrow" <p. 73).

Elizabeth Lenk goes further, intimating that this feminist aesthetic can break the impasse under which modernist {visual) art languishes at the moment.

The enigma of beauty, identified with woman, the fetish gaze which consumes the art object, has brought

modernist art to a full stop. "When women start to conquer the aesthetic space, when the pretty, silent picture disintegrates of its own accord, then the

enigma which is no enigma must

necessarily be solved, dissolved and demystified" (p. 52). What is released

is movement, process, the humanizing of art: "The dehumanising character of art can perhaps disappear only when woman stops being that strange, alienated being who can be circum scribed by the gaze* In woman's new

relationship with herself she is Many, or rather she occasionally melts for

moments into pure movement In these moments femininity is as distanced from her as masculinity and the world of stereotyped sex characteristics. It is this movement, which for so long was a dream-like movement, which expands wherever it wakes into consciousness an external action which becomes internal and thus a mirror image action, an action which reverses sides as a mirror does. It is aesthetic action" (p. 53).

Thus positive results begin to emerge from the attempt towards a feminist aesthetics. The essay I found most

disturbing but also, despite all my qualms, most exciting, was Heide Gottner Abendroth's Nine Principles of a Matriarchal Aesthetic. Mot having read

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(Goodbye Moma And All That, p. 21.) Or, "Just a few years ago ... I compared

Auerbach and Kossoff. I argued that

Auerbach's work was manifesting a

growing detachment from perceived

objects and persons. At that time, I felt

that Kossoff was superior to Auerbach, and I suggested that the qualitative distinction between the two might have

something to do with this difference", (Auerbach versus Clemente, p. 57). This

sort of thing might be on occasion received as sick humour, but it happens to be a feature of Fuller's 'art criticism'

and nowhere in the writings will one find particular observation and

discussion of works of art, or design. That for one moment it is taken

seriously as art criticism is beyond the

realms of credibility.

It raises a point though about art

criticism in general within Britain and

Ireland, which is the absence of substantial theoretical writing. Most of

the art critics one might describe as

influential earn their living freelancing and perhaps part-time teaching or

lecturing. That is to say they are

constantly running against deadlines for

reviews, catalogue introductions,

selections for exhibitions, etc. Compare this with equivalents in the field of literary criticism and immediately one is

into a world of University donships, sabbaticals and a whole manner of

institutional support systems for literary writing. It is in the former situation that Peter Fuller thrives, which indicates a

need for a more concerted approach to

art criticism. If the evolution of the art

critic is of the dilettante, a degree of professionalism will not go amiss.

Images of God is a lament for loss, loss of tradition and imagination in art and

craft/design, features which reflect the

broader social order. But in fact this

hankering after a lost tradition is little

other than a fantasy which ignores the

actual conditions of art production: "The pot rises up at once from the

hands of its maker. The inertly physical clay is transformed by imagination and

skill; the individual expresses himself through transfiguring (without rejecting) both inert stuff and the constraints handed down by tradition

and function. For the pot, if it is any

good, transcends the materials of which

it is made, while remaining true to them; the product of imagination, it can serve

the most practical needs of containing, or storing; highly personal in its conception, and execution, it

simultaneously enters immediately into

tradition and social life", (The Proper Work of the Potter, p. 243). Fuller

refuses to acknowledge that

Modernism is by definition a rupture with a past tradition, just as the Renaissance is a rupture with the

Medieval, etc., and that there are

legitimate aims in such changes.

Instead Fuller waxes on about a

mythical "shared, symbolic order" as a

necessary prerequisite for a healthy art

and a healthy society. Religion, he believes, provided a common social

base and the last essay in this collection

explains not only the title of the book but indicates his direction. The Christs of Faith, first published in New Left Review (?), is a reflection on the life of Jesus which is ostensibly from a

materialist point of view. It is surely now

time that we left Peter Fuller to contemplate the green pastures of

England for himself, and for us to get back to the more immediate problems of art criticism.

Joan Fowler

her historical account of matriarchy, Die Gdttin und iir Heros (Munich, 1980), I am not in a position to evaluate the evidence upon which she constructs her belief in this pre-existing and reclaimable culture; however, with very little taken on trust, her principles open

up a vista of an entirely new, integrated, liberated art which resolves many of our

contemporary aesthetic problems:

"Matriarchal art transcends the traditional mode of communication

which consists of: author ? text (art product)

? reader. Matriarchal art is not

'text', it is not limited to manufacturing art products. On the contrary, it is a

process which gives a pre-existing inner structure, founded in the ritual of dance, external expression. It is a process in which all participate collectively to create this external expression; all are similtaneousty authors and spectators" (p. 82). Intellect and emotion are no longer divorced, nor are the producer

and consumer: "The division between art and non-art is also redundant On the one hand, matriarchal art breaks down the barrier between art and theory. In its ancient form, matriarchal art merges with mythology and astronomy; in its

modern form with philosophy, the humanities, and with the natural and social sciences. At the same time, it breaks down the barrier between art and life. As ancient matriarchal art it merges with practical skills too, and with lifestyles which are opposed to the status quo. That is another reason

why it cannot be applied to traditional communication models, for matriarchal art is not a simple one-way communica tion process, but a complex process of social interaction of which communication is only a part." (p. 83).

The logical development of the nine principles leads even the reader most sceptical of historical matriarchy to recognise the value of an aesthetic thoroughly integrated with the experience of living, with the community rather than with individual subjectivity. As an as~yet Utopian vision, it allows us to contemplate the resolution of many of the problems of contemporary (male) art: its consumerism, its Elitism, its static value as product/object; its self contemplative paralysis (along the spectrum from narcissism to self

parody); its alienation from ordinary

human experience. Whether one accepts matriarchy historically or not, its nine aesthetic principles infuse new life into our concept of art.

To those with a specific interest in the visual arts, the reproduction of one picture each by contemporary German

women artists wilt add a special flavour to this book, although there is no analysis of these works from the perspective of the theory aired in its pages

? which may be a pity, but may also reflect the authors' and editor's caution in not attempting too much on the basis of too little certainty. The care with which theory is qualified by pragmatism and by experience guarantees this collection's professional as well as feminist credentials; no uneasy or awkward inconsistencies are smoothed over in the interests of ideological purity. Rather, theory is

constantly viewed through the (often painful) perspective of lived reality. This

method constitutes a book both challenging and reassuring, sustained by powerful intellectual debate and validated by immediate experience.

Jennifer FitzGerald

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