Exposure Self Portraiture Performativity
Exposure Self Portraiture Performativity
Exposure Self Portraiture Performativity
by
Kim Connerton
This two-part thesis consists of a dissertation and studio component and was
undertaken for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Sydney College of the Arts,
University of Sydney.
i
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements P.iii
Abstract P.x
Introduction P.1
Conclusion P.134
Bibliography P.144
ii
Acknowledgements
knowledge and insight into this project. Additionally I wish to thank Vanessa
iii
List of Illustrations
Introduction
Chapter 1
Figure 1.5. Kim Connerton, Nico (I canʼt put you in a plastic box), 2008-2009.
Dura-clear photograph, mirror, perspex, 31 X 21cm.
Collection of the artist. P. 23
Figure 1.6. Kim Connerton, Yes Yoko Ono, Loose Projects, 2006.
Video still, 3.5 minutes in duration, shown on monitor.
Collection of the artist. P. 23
iv
Figure 1.10. Parmigianino, Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, 1524.
Oil on wood, 24.4 cm diameter.
Collection Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.
[http://www wga hu/art/p/parm g a/convex jpg htm ] P. 32
Figure 1.21. Marc Quinn, (We Share Our Chemistry with the Stars) MQ1 280L,
2009.
Oil on canvas, 100 cm diameter.
Collection of Mary Boone Gallery, New York.
[http://www maryboonega ery com/exh b t ons/2009-2010/Marc-Qu nn
/deta 1 htm ] P. 49
v
Figure 1.22. Marc Quinn, (We Share Our Chemistry with the Stars),
Installation view, 2009.
Oil on canvas, 100 cm diameter.
Collection of Mary Boone Gallery, New York.
[http://www maryboonega ery com/exh b t ons/2009-2010/Marc-Qu nn
/deta 6 htm ] P. 51
Figure 1.24 Mariko Mori, Last Departure & Enlightenment Capsule, 1996.
Cibachrome print, aluminium, wood, 213 X 365 X 7.5 cm.
Optic fibre cables, glass, 150 X 100 cm.
Collection of Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, Paris
[http://www de tch com/projects/s de pop php? mageId=263&name=
Mar ko%20Mor htm ] P. 53
Figure 1.25. Yasumasa Morimura, To My Little Sister for Cindy Sherman, 1998.
Photograph, 120 X 66.7 cm.
Private Collection, Tokyo.
[http://www chr st es com/LotF nder/LargeImage aspx? mage=/
otf nder mages/d39147/d3914705x jpg htm ] P. 55
Figure 1.27. Yasumasa Morimura, An Inner Dialogue with Frida Kahlo (Festive
Decorations), 2001.
Photograph, 120.02 X 95.89 cm.
Collection of Luhring Augustine, New York.
[http://www artnet com/usernet/awc/awc workdeta asp?a d=424262577
&g d=424262577&c d=98146&w d=424475984&page=1 htm ] P. 57
Figure 1.31. Claude Cahun, Untitled (I am in training, donʼt kiss me), 1927-1929.
Gelatin silver print, 13.97 X 8.89 cm.
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. San Francisco.
[http://www sfmoma org/artwork/10807# htm ] P. 60
vi
Figure 1.32. Claude Cahun, Untitled, 1927.
Gelatin silver print, 24.5 X 19.3 cm.
Private Collection.
[http://www v n and org/scamp/Cahun/p x/ba d deb jpg htm ] P. 63
Figure 1.36. Kim Connerton, Warhol Re-Incarnated (Back From the Dead), 2007.
Photographic & video installation, dimensions vary.
Collection of the artist. P. 74
vii
Figure 2.4. Tracey Moffatt, Self Portrait, 1999.
Hand coloured silver gelatin print, 33.2 X 22 cm.
Collection of The University of Queensland, Brisbane.
[http://www artmuseum uq edu au/moffat-sp htm ] P. 92
Figure 2.5. Christian Thompson, The Gates of Tambo, Andy Warhol, 2004.
Lambda print, 124 X 125 cm.
National Gallery of Art, Canberra.
[http://nga gov au/exh b t on/n at07/Deta cfm?IRN=163877&
V ewID=2 htm ] P. 100
Chapter 3
viii
Figure 3.7. Kim Connerton, Mirror Self-Portrait 3, 2009.
Dura-tran photograph, acrylic mirror, perspex, 80 cm diameter.
Collection of the artist. P. 132
Conclusion
ix
Abstract
This project, begun in 2006, uses photographic and video imagery to investigate
the shifting nature of self-representation and identity, and the elusive concept of
the ʻself-portraitʼ. Using myself as subject also allows me to explore the
excitement of self-transformation.
Ideas around homage, mimicry and mimesis are integral to this project due to
my interest in producing images of myself that are also self-identifications with
more famous others. These are specifically Andy Warhol, Sylvia Plath, Yoko
Ono and Nico. However, my last body of work is something of a departure from
representing myself through another, since instead I explore self-portraiture
without adopting the persona of another artist.
x
Introduction
I know of nothing more utterly moving than a face giving birth to an
expression in slow motion.
Jean Epstein1
comprise this two part thesis, I investigate two ways of constructing identity: the
first by impersonating the pictorial images of celebrated artists who I admire and
to whom I pay homage through this act; the second by constructing images of
1
Bernadette Wegenstein, Getting Under the Skin, or, How Faces Have Become Obsolete (Cambridge: MIT
Press, 2006), 231.
1
Figure 1, Kim Connerton, Inhabiting the Space of Being Open, 2010
The concept of the authentic self, in this thesis refers to the unique way a self
inhabitation of the body, which is illustrated in the series, Inhabiting the Space of
performing the psychological and emotive space of being open. The gesture of
standing straight, extending my arms wide open and parallel to the ground
2
This project considers how art can draw attention to the intriguing and often
erotic performance of life such as “the face giving birth to an expression in slow
motion” that Epstein refers to in the above quote. I achieve this by representing
relationships between self and other, that I hope also depict the physical and
eight photographic and video series including: Yes Yoko Ono, Warhol
plastic box), Sylvia Plath, Mirror Self Portraits & Mirror Chairs and Inhabiting the
Space of Being.... Furthermore, as an art historical context for my own ideas and
production, this project examines contemporary artists who also appear and
perform repeatedly in their work, and who question the concept of self-
portraiture, whether this is intentional in the case of Cindy Sherman or not in the
My own guiding question is why I have a strong urge to find and resolve a state
series on Andy Warhol and Yoko Ono where I use wigs and props to ʻbecomeʼ
3
identities of Andy Warhol and Yoko Ono I now see as investigations of my own
the topic, and a growing body of international literature that places homage and
Since 1998 my studio projects have explored image, identity and performance.
video self-portraits that explored various aspects of my identity. This initial work
the material world concurs with the role of homage in my work, since homage
the gifts received from a celebrated artist one resonates with. Homage was an
element in my earlier work and is now the dominant investigation of this PhD.
The PhD gave me the opportunity to formalize the art historical and theoretical
contexts for my interests in the idea of homage through portraiture and develop
2
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (New York: Routledge Classic Edition, 2002), 74.
4
the terrain for others by comparing Australian and international art and literature
Initially when this project began in 2006 it was titled Knowing the Self through
the Other, a title that encapsulates my ongoing fascination with the selfʼs
formation by its many relationships with other selves. The focus in Knowing the
Self Through the Other was autobiography and the self and other examined
from a literary and sociological perspective. The exchanges between self and
developed video self-portraits and paid homage to Nico and Truffaut in digital
works shown on monitors and as projections. I mimicked how Nico looked with
props and reinterpreted a scene from Truffautʼs film The Man Who Loved
elements.
However, over the course of my study the title of this research has changed to
5
and perform repeatedly to reflect moments of self-inquiry in my photographs.
The areas of theoretical research pursued in my PhD project that are relevant to
relationship between self and other is therefore the basis for both the theoretical
The face has become my obsession. In most of my work and in most of the
the Space of Being…Fig. and Fig. distinguishes itself from the earlier seriesʼ
discussed throughout this thesis, since the whole body in the urban environment
is the focus instead of the face. The face, like the body in Fig. and Fig. is the
centre of the examination of homage and the site where the investigation and
exploration of an interior self emanates from. The French film theorist Jean
Epstein focused on the face as a stage for the drama of subjectivity, and his
fascination with the face in slow motion, apparent in Transcendental Andy, Fig.1.
The significance of the face in my work represents a portal between self and
other (the viewer, an imaginary viewer), as well as the artist and the viewer. The
repeated use of close-up shots of my face “give birth to an expression” and also
6
through the spacial investigations in the ten photographs that comprise this
series.
Figure 1, Kim Connerton, Transcendental Figure Kim Connerton, Inhabiting the Space of
Andy, 2009 Defying the Odds, 2010
states:
of mask and window to the soul, one of the better-kept public secrets
essential to everyday life.4
many defining and constantly changing relationships with the other. The face in
whereas the mask of self is only meant to be a trace of Warhol. By trace I mean
while continuing to reveal my identity. The priority is to depict the interior space
4
Michael Taussig, Defacement: Public Secrecy and the Labor of the Negative (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1999), 3.
7
where I resonated with Warhol and to expose and extend the self by ʻwearingʼ
myself resonating with Warhol I am suggesting to viewers that they too can
In this model discussed above “contingency”, as Taussig refers and in, Fig. 1
Transcendental Andy, the self is a space that is inhabitable and that inhabits
space. The self is contingent on an engagement with life and future unknown
state:
Ultimately, Fig. 1 depicts the relationships between myself and Warhol and
between the viewer and the image. The relationship in Fig.1 depicts a space
in art and life not primarily measured by time and when viewed as a ʻrhizomeʼ
above.
Homage exemplifies change and the selfʼs spacial inhabitations. In the seriesʼ
8
way by art or an artistʼs persona that has affected me in a meaningful way
and videos.
My earlier work also explores homage. First I chose Andy Warhol, Nico, Sylvia
Plath and Yoko Ono as subjects to mimic and pay homage to, selecting well-
known photographs of these celebrities that also showed them in classic poses,
celebrated artist: Warhol, Plath, Ono and Nico inhabit me, as I in turn inhabit the
working process. Using props such as wigs and make-up, and by the blurring of
the image, I made rough reconstructions of their poses and attitudes that
signified. I chose only the most basic signifiers of each celebrity to create an
immediately convincing likeness for viewers. From the moment that the
The tactics used to facilitate Yes Yoko Ono, Warhol Reincarnated, YokoPeace,
Nico (I canʼt put you in a plastic box), Sylvia Plath, Transcendental Andy, Mirror
9
videotaping this private performance in my studio or on location. Furthermore,
the photographs I chose to mimic were taken when each celebrity emerged as a
successful artist in the 1960s. For me this decade represents and symbolises
change, and I felt it suited the intention of my work, which is also about change.
Wave cinema, 1958-1960 which focused on the individual in the urban context
and celebrated the absurdity of life. The structural changes that were
implemented with French New Wave cinemaʼs arrival, which moved away from
classical French cinemaʼs strict use of the narrative, allowed cinema to be more
disjunction can be seen to rupture the French film canon in the same way the
gestures to address life and the spaces people inhabit from a positive viewpoint.
narrator and talk about my philosophy on life rather than guide audiences with a
traditional narrative.
10
Nouvelle vauge--teknonika
garden. Unlike the previous work involving celebrity images and paying homage,
moment of pleasure with oneʼs self. I have never resolved this difference. Is it
any different to mimic the appearance of a celebrity from a celebrity image than
Digital cameras are my main apparatus. The camera acts as one kind of mirror
I use acrylic mirrors in my later series YokoPeace, Nico (I canʼt put you in a
plastic box), Sylvia Plath, Transcendental Andy, Mirror Self-Portraits and Mirror
Self-Portraits to convey the concept of the fleeting self. The mirrors are layered
under transparent self/images and allow the viewerʼs image to also be visible on
5
Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics (Dijon: Presses du réel, 2002), 18.
11
the mirrorʼs surface due to the reflections. When viewers stand in front of Mirror
Chairs they can literally see their reflections in the mirrors as they are
away from Mirror Chairs their image disappears from the workʼs surface, since
The relational exchange between the self and other is activated when viewers
see their reflections in the mirrors that are superimposed with the transparent
social interactions that would not normally take place and ones the viewer was
the video image moves slightly, or the reflections of myself and the viewer
merge. Often it is only in the realm of art that this heightened visual sense takes
place.
The reader will note my key terms are homage, mimicry, narcissism,
explain how I use each one. First I will discuss homage. In Transcendental Andy
I depict myself resonating with Warhol and show my admiration for him. The
celebrated artists. Homage is an act of admiration, gift, even love and is partly
12
architect Neil Leach in his book Camouflage when he discusses German
For Benjamin, the concept of mimesis allows for an identification with the
external world. It facilitates the possibility of forging a link between self and
other. It becomes a way of empathising with the world, and it is through
empathy that human beings can—if not fully understand the other—at least
come ever closer to the other, through the discovery and creation of
similarities.6
“Mimesis” is the philosophy of mimicry. The kind of mimicry that Leach describes
and that concurs with my research “allows for an identification with the external
world” and facilitates the development of empathy between the self and other.
The method I use to represent this depicts myself identifying with a celebrated
artist, and suggests that the self can empathise with the other by seeing their
aspirations mimicked. Two examples of this are the homage I pay to Warhol in
Masquerade:
The reader may now ask how I define womanliness or where I draw the
line between genuine womanliness and the 'masquerade'. My suggestion
is not, however, that there is any such difference; whether radical or
6
Neil Leach, Camouflage (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006), 19. Leach cited Mohsen Mostafavi and David
Leatherbarrow, On Weathering (Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press, 1993) to discuss Benjamin and the theory of
mimesis.
13
superficial. They are the same thing.7
Riviere was a contemporary of Freud and with her essay assisted in the
up. The concept of the masquerade can be seen in all of the self-portraits
used in a positive way to explore the moments of self-recognition that infer the
artist Francesca Woodman that are examined in detail in this chapter. The
appears and performs repeatedly in her photography, while looking into mirrors
he argues:
7
Joan Riviere, “Womanliness as a Masquerade,” The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, Vol.10
(1929): 303-313.
8
Christopher Lasch, as quoted in Leach, 128-129. Leach quoted Christopher Lasch, The Culture of
Narcissim (New York: Warner, 1979), 96-97. For Lasch this is a form of secondary or pathological
narcissism, and he is careful to distinguish it from primary narcissism.
14
The various self-portraits discussed in this thesis typify the mirrorʼs surface that
Lasch speaks of, since the dialogue and representation of an artist with
mirrors” that Lasch speaks of exemplifies the external view of the self, which can
be vacuous and does not develop an interior world. The interior world I speak of
narcissism in contemporary culture. Instead it is the basis for the external world
…learning how to take rather than to desire…those who have learned how
to take are more modest than those who are rooted in the narcissism of
unfocusable desire.
what he takes from the world. The desire Sennett discusses connotes a
15
behaviour that in some way fails to consider how expressing oneself will effect
In the self/images discussed in this thesis artists offer evolved and unique ways
The artistʼs selectivity in their self/images suggests they understood what they
This leads me to discuss the self and other, self-portraiture and performativity.
The ʻselfʼ that I discuss throughout this thesis is a concept illuminated by the
French artist Claude Cahunʼs concept of self that she represents in her
metaphysical aspects of the self dwell. The “fleeting” spaces Cahun depicts are
also depicted in many of the self/images that are discussed in this thesis,
including my own. The “dreamlike” self is inhabited by and inhabits the other
while being in constantly changing relationships with the other. The other refers
to other people, art, the gallery, and various aspects of oneʼs self. The concept
concept of intersubjectivity which views the self as an entity in social acts with
9
Rachel Kent, ed., Masquerade: Representation and the Self in Contemporary Art (Sydney: Museum of
Contemporary Art, 2006), 23.
16
the other that transcends individual perception to experience the in between
Tracey Moffatt, Tomoko Sawada, Marc Quinn, Mariko Mori, Cindy Sherman,
Yasumasa Morimura, Gillian Wearing, Cahun, and myself represents the fleeting
The concept of the self/image by American art historian Amelia Jones accurately
self/image will be used interchangeably with the term self-portrait. Jones titled
her book Self/Image and to refer back her title and concept I will continue to
write self/image as she did. Rather than a representation of the likeness of the
York in 1995. The performance style I use mimics Onoʼs extrasensory style of
10
Dan Zahavy, Subjectivity and Selfhood (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2005), 174-176. Zahavi discussed
intersubjectivity from Edmund Husserl, Shorter Works, eds. P.McCormick and F.A.Elliston, (Notre Dame: University
of Notre Dame Press, 1980), 68.
11
Amelia Jones, Self/Image (New York: Routledge, 2006), xiii.
12
ibid.
17
performing to create an intimate dialogue with audiences. The focus is to exude
mimic from the artist I pay homage to. My research does not engage in a
18
Chapter Outline
the foundation for this thesis. The last two chapters elaborate upon the
explores the relationship between the portrayal of self and the changing ideas of
represent the self transcending cultural boundaries and widen the definition of
gender. In this chapter the multiplied self, transformed self, and self-
including Tracey Moffatt, Tomoko Sawada, Mariko Mori, Marc Quinn and Gillian
chapter.
Chapter 2, Mimicry - Between Us, examines the use of mimicry in the self/
19
analysis of the work of contemporary artists such as Christian Thompson,
Tracey Moffatt, Andy Warhol and myself. Also discussed will be my repeated
13
Lasch, as quoted in Leach, 128-129. For Lasch this is a form of secondary or pathological narcissism,
and he is careful to distinguish it from primary narcissism.
20
Outline of literature
and ʻotherʼ. The secondary concepts include performativity, the face, digital
imaging, the contemporary relational exchange with the viewer, gender, identity
The crucial texts in Chapter 1 are Self/Image by Amelia Jones [2006], Self-
[1999] edited by Shelley Rice, Subjectivity and Selfhood [2005] by Dan Zahavy,
[2002] edited by Sidonia Smith and Julie Watson, and donʼt kiss me The Art of
In Chapter 2 the subjects of mimicry and homage are explored. The key text is
mimicry as a basic human way to learn and assimilate and become more
21
portraiture. Phenomenology of Perception by Maurice Merleau-Ponty illuminates
the transcendental and transformed self. Getting Under the Skin [2006] by
Bernadette Wegenstein provides insight into the use of the face as a portal into
In Chapter 3, Narcissism, the main topics are narcissism, the photographic self-
key texts in Chapter 3 are Camouflage [2006] by Neil Leach, which informs a
Narcissus myth that allows the self to view itself as other. Francesca Woodman
transformative and between the visible and non-visible worlds. Mirror Women,
extended concepts of identity and gender through the changing genre of self-
portraiture.
22
Chapter 1
Contemporary self-portraiture – multiplied and
ambiguous selves
Part 1: Multiplied identities and self-examination
Throughout history the self-portrait has represented the artistʼs ʻselfʼ, namely the
and self-knowledge, and is assumed the only agent who can reveal their
subjectivity (the condition of the self) is not only in flux but is constructed from
the world around, including the world of media images. Yet self-portraiture
continues to act as a mirror through which culture and the artistʼs identity is
In this chapter the relationship between the portrayal of self and the changing
14
Jean Baudrillard as quoted in William A. Ewing and Nathalie Herschdorfer, editors, Face (London:
Thames & Hudson, 2006), 209. Baudrillard quoted from For Illusion Isnʼt the Opposite of Reality, 1998,
http://www.egs.edu/faculty/jean-baudrillard/articles/photographies/.html.
23
practice. In particular, contemporary self-portraitureʼs role in widening the
definition of self-identity is examined. The steps that follow will examine various
The chapter will progress in the following way. Firstly, I will present a brief
destabilises identity and gender. All of these artists investigate the masquerade
step will be to examine the multiplied self through the work of artists such as
Tracey Moffatt and Tomoko Sawada, who use their bodies repeatedly to
examined through the work of Marc Quinn and Moriko Mori. Next, self-
The genre of self-portraiture in contemporary art has seen many changes. One
of the biggest changes is how the idea of self is represented. The concept
15
Jones, Self/Image, xiii.
24
performative aspects of the self. The self/image extends self-portraiture to
work by the Japanese artist, Tomoko Sawada, b.1977, the series ID400, 1998-
identities in her self/image. This work will be discussed in detail later in this
chapter.
16
ibid.
25
Figure1, Tomoko Sawada, ID400, #201-300, 1998-2001
The boundaries that define identity, gender and sexuality are blurred in
Many of the categories, such as the multiplied self, self-transformation, and the
chapter. These defining categories are flexible and circle around a definition of
self rather than offering only one concept of self. Similarly, theories of
subjectivity overlap in the same way as the self is represented overlapping with
26
The shifting view of women in contemporary self-portraiture
subjectivity and self-hood have altered the way women are seen in
Cindy Sherman, Barbara Kruger and Jenny Holzer were part of the feminist
discourse of the 1980s in the U.S.A. where identity was not authentic but
17
Rosalind Krauss, as quoted in Joanna Woodall, Self-Portraiture Facing the Subject (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1997), 244. Woodall quoted Rosalind Krauss, Cindy Sherman, 1975-1993
(New York: Rizzoli, 1993), 17.
18
ibid.
27
masquerade of femininity.19 This has benefited contemporary culture, while the
shift continues, so does a less patriarchal gaze at women and a forum for
Figure 4, Kim Connerton, Sylvia Plath, 2009 Figure 5, Kim Connerton, Nico (I canʼt put
you in a plastic box), 2008-2009
In Sylvia Plath, Fig.4, Nico (I canʼt put you in a plastic box), Fig.5, and Yes Yoko
Ono, Fig.6, I perform masquerades and pay homage to three artists I admire:
American writer Sylvia Plath 1932-1963, German musician Nico (born Christa
homages I pay to Plath, Ono and Nico concur with Kraussʼ notion of the
“masquerade”… “as the phenomenon to which all women are submitted both
19
ibid.
20
ibid.
28
inside and outside representation”.21 The biographical details of the celebrated
Plath, Nico and Ono inspired me to pay homage to them because they were
progressive and strong female icons that I identified with. Kraussʼ statement,
“that as far as femininity goes, there is nothing but costume” is insightful about
the imposition of the construct of femininity on women. However, Plath, Nico and
Ono refute Kraussʼ notion, since they do not allow the historical and cultural
production. Instead each artist relied on their internal motivations to facilitate the
progression of their creative work and as a result were able to subvert the
Briefly I will discuss each of the celebrated artists and why I choose them. I will
begin with Nico. The German filmmaker Susan Ofteringerʼs documentary Nico
Icon provides the basis for Nicoʼs biographical details in this section.22 The fact
Although she was beautiful, a fashion model who appeared in Frederico Felliniʼs
film La Dolce Vita, she preferred to be considered ugly. Nico was a heroin addict
but somehow found the clarity to perform the music she really wanted to make,
in spite of the obstacles. The title of Fig. 5, Nico (I canʼt put you in a plastic box)
was inspired by an incident where Warhol wanted to put Nico in a plastic box at
21
ibid.
22
Nico Icon, DVD. Directed by Susanne Ofteringer, Germany: Bluehorse Films, 1995.
29
a Velvet Underground performance in the 1960s so she would appear as a
perfect, beautiful, blonde female object. She refused because she wanted to be
Although Plath and Ono are public personas their success originated from
their unique talents that reflected their interior natures. The content of Plathʼs
poetry deconstructed the notion of family, in particular the image of the father.
Plathʼs poetry began a discussion that questioned womenʼs roles and the
female identity. The success that Plath had as poet in the U.S.A. in the 1950s
the viewer. During this performance the sixty-eight year old Ono wore a black
sleeveless body suit, danced and moved constantly, and performed songs
from Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band in her primal screaming style. Watching
Ono perform gave me even more insight into the power and skill she has as a
performing artist. She radiated a presence that was in complete control of her
destiny. Onoʼs performance was extrasensory: I felt this psychic energy fill the
23
ibid.
30
Working similarly to Sherman, the homages I pay reveal identity as a
construction. In Yes Yoko Ono, Fig. 6, I mimic Ono performing while holding
the world in my hands, which is symbolised by the globe. I wear a long black
wig and a black turtleneck to emulate how Ono looked in the 1960s. The
American art historian Alexandra Munroe wrote in the book, Yes Yoko Ono:
While her work has confounded critics, her faith in the power of art to open
and uplift the mind has touched millions.24
In Fig. 6, the globe also refers to Onoʼs “faith in the power of art to open and
uplift the mind” which concurs with my own belief in art. The identity I
construct based on Ono in Yes Yoko Ono resonates with something inside of
in this self/image is always exposed to reveal the self in relationship with the
other (the celebrated other). In Yes Yoko Ono I have extended my identity
The deconstruction of femininity has shifted gender identities for both male and
31
The art historical framework of this thesis is grounded in the 20th and 21st
directly affects my self-portraits since I am the subject. This brief look back at
The self-portraits and portraits from the Renaissance represented the idealised
self. This idea of the self-portrait remained focused on the church or social
status until the influence of psychology in the early 20th century. The English art
historian, Joanna Woodall, in her book Portraiture Facing the Subject, wrote:
26
Woodall, 3.
27
ibid.,1.
32
Figure 7, Michelangelo Caravaggio, Narcissus, 1598-1599
As Woodall points out, the “first image was a portrait”.28 An illustration of the
mythological character Narcissus saw his image reflected in the mirror-like lake.
He found his own image so mesmerising and perfect that he fell in love with it.
28
ibid.
29
Mary D Garrard, as quoted in Jones, Self/Image, 5. Jones quoted Mary D. Garrard, Artemisia
Gentileschi: The Image of the Female Hero in Italian Baroque Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1992), 365.
33
Figure 8, Kim Connerton, Mirror Self-Portrait 1, 2009 Figure 9, Albrecht Dürer, Self-Portrait at
28, 1500
This pool was the idealised image of male beauty. As with Caravaggio, Dürerʼs
“transcendence” and the “divinely inspired capacity to render the truth of the
world that conflated image with the self”.31 Instead of painting an image that
“the Saviour” in Fig. 9. Dürer affirmed Christianityʼs religious and social power
30
ibid.
31
ibid.
32
Christopher Masters, Renaissance (London: Merrell Publisher Ltd., 2008), 41.
34
portraiture religion is not a determining force in the propagation of the idealized
in a moment of pleasure. I press my face and hands into flowers. My eyes are
closed and my gaze is turned inward to reflect on the feeling of delight I have
inside this garden. Dürer combined his desire for recognition and a higher status
with the image of Christ. Yet I represent a moment of peace and inner
demanded an external gaze, since the priority was to emulate the patriarchal
portraiture from being a forum for artists to represent their subjective experience
as I do in Mirror Self-Portrait 1.
clarified by Woodall:
35
events and stages of reign, eliciting the love and reverence due to
oneʼs lord, ancestor or relative…the raison dʼêtre of these images
was actually to represent sitters as worthy of love, honour, respect
and authority. It was not just that the real was confused with the
ideal, but that divine virtue was the ultimate, permanent reality.33
Woodall describes the details of how portraiture represented and reinforced “the
Rather than simply illustrating the selfʼs relationship with culture, psychology
Heidegger:
An important shift is defined here. The shift that happened in the beginning of
the 20th century, before Heidegger asserted his argument, was that art was not
used to emulate the prevailing power structure. Instead it acted as a forum for
33
Woodall, 3.
34
ibid.
35
ibid.
36
Martin Heidegger, as quoted in Jones, 5. Jones quoted Martin Heidegger, “The Age of the World
Picture”, 1938, in The Question Concerning Technology, and Other Essays, trans. William Lovitt. (New
York: Harper & Row, 1977), 132-134.
36
Figure 10, Parmigianino, Self-Portrait Figure 11, Kim Connerton, Self-Portrait 2, 2009
in a Convex Mirror, 1524
As seen earlier in this chapter in Caravaggiosʼs Narcissus, Fig. 7, the lake acts
Correspondingly, the self-portrait in the past has used the mirror to facilitate the
Parmigianino in 1524, Fig. 10, represents the artistʼs face and hand painted
from his mirror reflection. Of this painting Woodall wrote that “the optical
period the mirror aided self-portraiture by reflecting the artistʼs self back to him.
37
Woodall, 170.
37
Instead, Parmagianino used the image that was reflected on the surface of the
inferred that he deliberately wanted his painting to look like a mirror reflection.
The mimetic device of the mirror was important to Parmagianino and I in the
own image and paint his self-portrait. Instead I use two mirrors to produce Self-
Portrait 2, Fig. 11, which is a photographic mirror object. One of the mirrors is a
material in Fig. 11 and the other mirror is the camera I use to represent my
duraclear photograph of me. The presence of this mirror allows the viewer to be
to Fig. 11.
The relationship Parmagianino and I have with the viewer is specific to the time
we produced our self-portraits in. The relationship I have with the viewer, in the
confronts the viewer with a direct stare, allowing the viewer to have a sense of
reciprocity since they are looking at his likeness and being looked at by it.
38
Concurrently, in Fig. 11, the viewer is literally immersed in the photograph, since
it is transparent and they can see themselves in the mirror that is overlaid with
Nicolas Bourriaudʼs book Relational Aesthetics and conveys the main concept
beauty that looks inward to subvert the exteriority of contemporary culture. In,
Fig. 10, Parmagianino depicts himself exhibiting the conventions of male beauty
during the Renaissance. His porcelain-like skin, indicated by the smooth lineless
brush strokes, represents a youthful male beauty that is feminine. This sense of
beauty mirrors Dürerʼs depiction of divine beauty that it was crucial to emulate
39
Parmagianino asserted his identity when he deliberately mimicked the convex
mirrorʼs view in his painting, revealing his process. To expose the process was
art from the 1960s onwards, exposing the process of art became much more
process also facilitate the depiction of multiplied selves, as Eleanor Antinʼs work
illustrates in Fig. 12. The performance of identity was often synonymous with
process art of the 1960s and allowed artists to extend their identities, which
would be prohibited for artists working before the twentieth century. An example
Eleanor Antin, b.1935, Fig. 12. Antin performs her identity while revealing her
process. Antin uses her body weight as the subject of her performative
photography.38 The fact that she performed her weight loss as a ritual is ironic,
as it is a shift away from the weight of art history that Parmagianino was bound
to.
The unique technology that facilitated artistsʼ freedom to express their views
about life was the camera. The freedom artists now have is exemplified by the
camera and mass media created shifts in art history. The camera became the
38
Tracey Warr, ed., The Artistʼs Body (London: Phaidon Press Limited, 2000), 87.
40
new mirror in contemporary art; the mirror that documented Antinʼs body
Certainly, then, from the early modern period onward, the notion of
the self is bound up with complex beliefs about representation, and
in turn with the development about the imaging technologies
(among which could be counted Albertiʼs model positioning the
painter in relation to the world and his canvas). With the rise of
industrialism in the 19th century and the concomitant burgeoning of
technologies of reproduction (photography in the early nineteenth
century then cinema and the means to reproduce images in the
mass media alongside text at the end of the nineteenth century),
the premium placed on the individual artist as a source of creative
genius increased.39
The “notion of the self” that was bound up with complex beliefs in
Contemporary artists have been aided by mass media and the camera to
destabilise notions of the self and power. Mass media has enabled the spread
the 20th century is certainly not all positive, as Baudrillardʼs arguments illustrated
the camera the individual artist now has more resources and access to express
39
Jones, Self/Image, 5. Leon Battisti Alberti was an architect, writer and painter, a true Renaissance man.
He invented a grid structure for the artist to see with. Alberti stated, “I inscribed a quadrangle of right
angles, as large as I wish, which is considered to be an open window through which I see what I want to
paint”.
Alberti, Leon Battisti, On Painting, 1435-36. Trans. John R. Spencer (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1979)
40
ibid.
41
a unique “creative genius” and vision of the world.41 In Self-Portrait 2, Fig. 11,
the mirror is used to literally bring the viewer into the circular image, to be in the
image with the artist. This transparent photographic self-portrait is layered over
the mirror and when the room or people are reflected and appear in it a
passes through the other and is passed through by the other.42 This exemplifies
The circular frame in Fig. 10, represents Parmagianinoʼs convex mirror that he
saw himself reflected in. In contrast, in Fig. 11, the circle is a metaphor for the
this series and each is comprised of my face and a fleeting moment. I represent
myself in relationships with the other: nature, myself, the world and viewers. In
the next section of this chapter the relational notion of self will be illustrated by
41
ibid.
42
ibid.
42
Multiplied Selves: Tracey Moffatt and Tomoko Sawada
Figure 13, Tracey Moffatt, Being Georgia OʼKeefe, 2005 Figure 14, Tracey Moffatt, Being Lee Krasner, 2005
Under the Sign of Scorpio, artist43 Tracey Moffatt, b.1960, performed as several
female artists and celebrities born under the astrological sign of Scorpio. The
43
Moffatt has been adamant about not being referred to as an Aboriginal artist and prefers to be referred to
only as an artist. She felt the term “Aboriginal” was used negatively by arts writers to disregard her unique
vision. file:///Volumes/Untitled%201/moffatt1.html.
43
manner of a film or theatre director constructing realities that look
like documents but which she often refers to fantasies.44
At first glance Fig. 13 and Fig. 14 look like proof sheets for a commercial or
fashion shoot. The lines between what is real and what is fantasy are blurred,
as Snelling has inferred about Moffattʼs photography. There are several different
and Lee Krasner in Fig. 14. By capturing fleeting movements and gestures she
Hawn, Joni Mitchell, Hillary R. Clinton, Indira Gandhi, and Mahalia Jackson. The
rhythm in Being – Under the Sign of Scorpio is quick and transitory. The artist
44
Michael Snelling, ed., Tracey Moffatt (Brisbane: Institute of Modern Art, 1999), 8.
45
L.A. Galerie, Frankfurt, GE, [gallery brochure], “Tracey Moffatt Under the Sign of Scorpio”, March 2-April
22, 2006.
44
as Moffatt does. Moffatt replicates gestures that refer to OʼKeefe and Krasner,
portrait, a self/image exposes the performative aspects of the self. Moffattʼs and
Being – Under the Sign of Scorpio is both a homage to the female Scorpions
she admires and a performative play. In the same way, Warhol Reincarnated
pays homage to Warhol and I perform my identity that is extended by the role I
play as Warhol. Moffattʼs identity is also extended by the many roles she plays.
and intersects with Krasner and OʼKeefe and other women she admires.
Moffattʼs photographs are clearly staged yet they are raw. The rawness in Fig.
strewn and stretched, which fails to cover the entire frame of the photographed
performing with no make-up and filling the background with crumpled aluminium
46
Amelia Jones, “Performing the Other as Self,” in Sidonia Smith and Julia Watson, eds., Interfaces
Women Autobiography Image Performance (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2002), 83.
45
foil. However, Warhol Re-Incarnated pays homage to only one person who
different woman that inspired her, which were produced quickly and in one
series. Similarly photographic and video installation that produced the seeds for
Traces of another
The way the self is costumed for Moffatt when she performs as another is like a
trace of another, rather than a disguise that hides her self. A trace is a residue
of another placed over the body of the performer. The representation of the
The screen that Lacan and Jones describe is the activity of the photograph
reproducing the self. The trace is the residue of another laced over the artistʼs
47
ibid., 77.
48
ibid., 77.
46
Figure 16, Kim Connerton, YokoPeace, FirstDraft,
Sydney, 2009
Amelia Jones:
various celebrated women we admire. The idea that “identity passes beyond
examining my feelings of resonation with Ono, which was the motivation behind
YokoPeace. The reverberation I felt with Ono was not a visible exchange, rather
49
ibid., 90.
50
ibid., 90.
47
it was an invisible feeling. By reflecting on this feeling of resonation I was able to
reflected in Ono. These aspirations include: singing and using my voice in video
Hollywood-like movie scenes that are surreal. The scenes Moffatt photographs,
often made with several cast members, evoke scenes from Hollywood films
about Aboriginal and Australian cultural issues, racial and familial abuse, and
gender distortions.51
To grapple with identity, as Moffatt and I do, we wear traces of others. The term
performed reference to a person that an artist pays homage to, which I do when
performing as Ono. In the same way, Moffatt retains her physical identity in
Being – Under the Sign of Scorpio, while referencing the women she admires.
The traces worn on the self of the artist, whether it is Moffatt, myself, or another
51
Uta Grosenick and Burkhard Riemschneider, eds., Art Now (Koln: Taschen, 2001), 108-109.
48
Identity cards as self-portraits
Figure 17, Tomoko Sawada, ID400-(1-100) detail, Figure 18, Tomoko Sawada, Omiai, 2001
1998
Like Moffatt, artist Tomoko Sawada depicts her self as having multiple identities
in Fig. 13 and Fig. 14, Sawada masquerades her own identity in various roles
whose picture would be sent out by her family to advertise her availability to
potential husbands and their families. The Omiai is part of the dying Japanese
societal roles: the cute girl, the office worker, the Japanese bride - in the same
way that Claude Cahun takes on various societal roles in her photographs
49
Japanese women, although Shermanʼs stereotypes are more blatant than
Sawadaʼs.52
In Fig. 17, ID400 (1-100), Sawada took a total of four hundred pictures of herself
inferiority complex about her appearance but discovered that she prefers how
characters.53
52
Ken Johnson, “Art in Review: Tomoko Sawada”, The New York Times, September 5, 2005,
http://www.zabriskiegallery.com/artist.php?artist=8&page=90
53
Ewing, 208-209.
50
The photo-booth photograph – a close-up portrait, black and white with a solid
background, regular in size – is the type that is most often used for mass-
were the small, cheap and easy to reproduce photographs used to identify
criminals and to document the dead so that loved ones could remember how
they looked. The Russian inventor, Anatol Josepho, 1894-1980, invented the
the photo-booth to take some of the first photographs he used in his art, as seen
in Fig. 19. “For Warhol, the photo booth represented a quintessentially modern
Warhol, Sawada utilises the photo-boothʼs “mass entertainment and private self-
in part to articulate the impossibility of capturing oneʼs true self in one image. In
ID400, Fig. 17, it is as if the many portraits of Sawada are an “erasure of the
original”.57
54
Vicki Goldberg, “The Photo-Booth Studio of Oneʼs Own”, The New York Times, August 3, 2003,
http://www.zabriskiegallery.com/artist.php?artist=8&page=89.
55
"Andy Warhol: Photo Booth Self-Portrait (1996.63a,b)," Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, New York: The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/phef/ho_1996.63a,b.htm (October
2006).
56
ibid.
57
Ewing, 208-209.
51
Transforming Selves: Marc Quinn and Mariko Mori
b.1964, and Mariko Mori. Often in Quinnʼs art he depicts the transcendence of
his own body. An example of this is Self, Fig. 20, where Quinn used blood from
his own body to fill a lifelike bust of his head. The Italian curator and art critic
Self brings into play the materia prima or ultima of the body—the
blood—and translates it into a sculptural material out of which the
artist creates a likeness of his own head. An operation that bears
upon the life of every human being, it is at once a blood and bodily
image, and a way of closing the circle around the limits of
existence, so as to reconcile such opposites as, firstly, inside and
out, and secondly, before and after, finite and infinite.58
58
Germano Celant, ed., Marc Quinn (Milan: Fondazione Prada, 2000), 10.
52
Quinnʼs use of his blood is representative of a material that all humans possess
and which is essential to life. Quinnʼs use of blood to make his self-portrait
shocking, rather his motivation is to “close the limits of existence”.59 The poetics
of Quinnʼs work, that “reconcile opposites, inside and out, before and after, finite
and finite” are exemplified by the fact that he extracted his blood and used it as
material to form a likeness of his head and face. Externalising a material housed
in the body represents Quinnʼs unusual way of examining himself and blurring
the bodyʼs internal and external boundaries. Quinnʼs examinations utilise and
Figure 21, Marc Quinn, (We Share Our Figure 22, Marc Quinn, (We Share Our Chemistry with the
Chemistry with the Stars) MQ1 280L, 2009 Stars), installation view, 2009
Quinnʼs paintings of irises, in Fig. 21 and Fig. 22, depict gigantic individual
universes. Fig. 21, titled (We Share Our Chemistry with the Stars) MQ1 280L, is
a close-up painting of Quinnʼs iris. The painting of Quinnʼs iris refers back to the
self-portraits in Romantic art that are indicative of the sub-genre of the portrait
59
ibid.
53
miniature, the many representations of the single eye of the beloved.60
eliminating the psychological space and time the artist devotes to the sitter.61
duplicating close-up images of Quinnʼs and othersʼ irises for the production of
the paintings.
In (We Share Our Chemistry with the Stars) MQ1 280L Quinn continues his
fascination with bringing the inside out.62 In the same way Quinn extracted blood
from the inside of his body and showed it on the outside in Self, Fig. 20, Quinn
looks inside the iris, which is usually what brings the outside world inside the
individual. Discussing (We Share Our Chemistry with the Stars) MQ1 280L
Quinn describes irises as “doors of perception... the link between us and the
world…they are like a leakage of the vivid interior world of the body to the
The leakage of an individualʼs interior that is evident in Fig. 21 blurs the line
between the interior and exterior world a self inhabits. Similarly to the Romantic
portraits of a loverʼs eye, obsessive romantic love both takes the individual away
from everyday, worldly concerns, and submerges lovers into the cosmos of
romantic love. This can make the lovers feel connected to the whole world.
60
Woodall, 125. An example of an (anonymous) English eye-miniature in the Victoria and Albert Museum is
reproduced in J. Murdoch et al., The English Miniature (New Haven and London, 1981) col.pl.35d.
61
ibid.
62
Mary Boone Gallery, New York, NY, USA. Iris, Marc Quinn, [Gallery Press Release], 30 October 2009.
63
ibid.
54
Figure 23, Mariko Mori, Kumano, 1998
Although Mariko Moriʼs art is about universal love it is not about romantic love.
Despite Quinn and Moriʼs similar interest in connecting to the universe, Mori
transcend individual identity and to highlight a connecting force between all life.
The American art critic Dominic Molon discusses Moriʼs art in his essay,
Countdown to Ecstasy:
55
Figure 24, Mariko Mori, Last Departure (photograph) &
Enlightenment Capsule (sculpture), 1996
humankind.65 This is evident in Fig. 23, where Mori performs as female Buddhist
deities and transforms herself into a transparent light being. Mori digitally altered
her image to be translucent in Fig. 23, “to present multiple versions of a fantasy
The being that Mori describes is a metaphor for the potential any self has to
become many different selves. Human potential is represented in Fig. 24, Last
Departure. In this photograph Mori represents herself tripled. The self in the
centre holds a crystal ball to see the whole world and to see the world whole.
65
A. Jones in Smith and Watson, eds., 83, 84. The article referenced by Jones was Linda Nochlin, “Some
Women Realists: Painters of the Figure,” Arts Magazine 48 (May 1974): 29-33.
66
Warr, ed., 160.
56
The title, Last Departure, alludes to Moriʼs notion that the self arrives or is
enlightened when it intersects with the other. The other in Moriʼs work is the
symbolises sitting with the self to become enlightened in the Buddhist sense.67
Both Quinn and Moriʼs art opens to a third other in Fig. 21 and Fig. 23. In the
genre of self-portraiture the American art historian, Linda Nochlin, defined a third
subjectivity in her essay, “Some Women Realists: Painters of the Figure”, which
is expounded on by Jones:
the reception of the art. The viewerʼs part in the subjective triad and
with concepts that transcend the boundaries of life and death. This is evident in
Quinnʼs art when he reincarnates his own blood, while Mori depicts various
and re-incarnation.
The confronting self-portraits that Mori and Quinn produce bring up the role of
the viewer as they consider mortality. Their subject matter and form place fewer
67
Molon, ed., 2.
68
A. Jones in Smith and Watson, eds., 84.
57
obstacles between the viewer and the artist. In her essay, Beneath this Mask
Another Mask, Jones discusses the complexity facing viewers when she states:
from the viewer. The performance of the self in the likeness of the artist propels
Both Mori and Quinn have used their own likeness in Fig. 20 and Fig. 21,
collapsing the relationship between sitter and artist: the artist and sitter (object)
are the same person. Instead of a relationship with the sitter, which they have
eliminated, the relationship is with themselves and the viewer. The third
69
A Jones, Self/Image, 55.
58
Self-Portraits As Famous Others: Yasumasa Morimura
Unlike Quinn and Mori, Yasumasa Morimura transforms his identity and masks
it with famous others from the canon of Western art history. An example of
Morimuraʼs masked and inserted identity can be seen in To My Little Sister For
Morimura performs the same attention to detail and styling that Sherman
59
Sherman portrays a young woman tired out from looking for jobs in the
into existing and acclaimed art to discuss issues of race, Eastern and Western
Figure 27, Yasumasa Morimura, An Inner Figure 28, Yasumasa Morimura, An Inner
Dialogue with Frida Kahlo (Festive Dialogue with Frida Kahlo (hand-shaped.
Decorations), 2001 earring), 2001
Morimuraʼs inserts his identity into Frida Kahloʼs paintings in An Inner Dialogue
with Frida Kahlo, Fig. 27 and Fig. 28, muddling the division between Eastern
embellishes his figure with Japanese motifs including signs, flowers, fish, and
cranes. He mimics Kahloʼs design style, the Mexican patterns of her clothing
70
Sarah Howgate and Sandy Nairne, The Portrait Now (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 13.
60
and use of flowers in a traditional Mexican style as adornments, yet he also
portraits.
entity we are unable to completely know since new facets of the self are always
shifting. This idea is reflected upon by the French philosopher, Jean Baudrillard,
in his statement:
In English artist Gillian Wearingʼs, b.1963, Self-Portrait, Fig. 29, and Self-
Portrait at Three Years Old, Fig. 30, are examples of the “identity behind the
71
Jean Baudrillard, as quoted in Ewing, 209. Ewing quoted from Baudrillard, Jean, “For Illusion Isnʼt the
Opposite of Reality”, 1998, http://www.egs.edu/faculty/jean-baudrillard/articles/photographies/
72
ibid.
61
Figure 29, Gillian Wearing, Self-Portrait, detail, 2000 Figure 30, Gillian Wearing, Self-Portrait at Three
Years Old, 2004
At first glance Wearingʼs Self-Portrait, Fig. 29, looks like a simple photographic
self-portrait of a young woman. Then the viewer notices she is wearing a mask
and spying out from under her mask.73 The mood in Wearingʼs photographs is
three and masked her face. Through the cut-out eyes of the masks in Fig. 29
and Fig. 30 her eyes stare directly at the viewer.74 Wearing has masked her
identity at different times in her life and by doing this she has destabilised and
confused memory and identity. She both is and is not herself.75 In this way
73
Ewing, 91.
74
ibid.
75
Howgate and Nairne, 49.
76
Baudrillard, as quoted in Ewing, 209.
62
In conclusion, the self/images discussed throughout this chapter, including those
the self transcending cultural boundaries, multiplied, being inserted into famous
artistsʼ art, and blurring the lines between the internal and external. A move
and the impact of this on contemporary culture is evident. Ultimately, the selves
depicted are expansive, fleeting, mutable and elusive because the many
relationships that inform these selves constantly change. The self responds to
of the self, provides new opportunities to reflect on the self and other.
63
Chapter 1, Part 2: Claude Cahunʼs ambiguous self/images
Beneath this mask, another mask. I will not stop removing all these faces.
Claude Cahun77
In this section I will examine the self/images of French artist Claude Cahun,
portraits will be examined, along with the themes of gender, identity, and
work in this chapter since she lays the foundation for performative photography
77
This quote is taken from the text written on Claude Cahunʼs photomontage, IOU, 1929, Fig. 33. It is also
the title of a chapter in Amelia Jones, Self/Image, 35-79.
64
French psychoanalyst Felix Guattariʼs progressive philosophical concepts of
Sherman will be discussed to compare and contrast her photography with her
will be discussed to view a more recent societal intervention that extends the
the representation of deconstructed gender roles however her work was largely
overlooked during her lifetime. It has taken a long time (fifty years) to understand
her work and its influence historically and in contemporary art. Her presence in
contemporary art may have come just at the right time. Cahunʼs photography
demands examiners that can properly elucidate her pioneering work, some of
whom are referred to in this chapter, including Rosalind Krauss, Amelia Jones,
affluent and literary Jewish family. During her lifetime she was known mainly as
65
literature and history.78 For Cahun to choose the name ʻClaudeʼ, which is
androgynous, and ʻCahunʼ, which is the Jewish name ʻCohenʼ in English, was to
suggest her lesbian and Jewish identity. This was an act of bravery at a time
when it could be dangerous to identify as either. By the early 1920s Cahun was
living and making her art in Paris. Although the Nazis occupied France, Cahun
remained and eventually moved back to Nantes in 1938 with her lifelong partner
Marcel Moore (born as Susanne Malherbe, 1892-1972).79 The two lovers were
imprisoned and sentenced to death for their part in the French Resistance.
Fortunately, they were released after four months when the Germans were
defeated.
identity she subverted societal norms and has become one of the most
representations of herself that typify her individualism. What was lost in time, in
legacy will illuminate the deconstructed boundaries that are blurred, merged and
78
Shelley Rice, ed., Inverted Odysseys Claude Cahun, Maya Deren, Cindy Sherman, trans., Norman
MacAfee (Cambridge: MIT Press,1999), 43.
79
Louise Downie, donʼt kiss me The Art of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore (London: Tate Publishing,
2006), 7.
66
Figure 32, Claude Cahun, Untitled, 1927
Cahun performs both genders. On the left side of the photograph she has her
hand on her hip signifying the feminine; on the right side her hand is in her
pocket signifying the masculine. Her hair and attire are masculine, her face is
67
We only know how to recognise ourselves, love ourselves, through
dreamlike, unrefined and fleeting reflections—moving bodies that we can
contemplate only in passing.80
This statement by Cahun can also inform the work of contemporary artistsʼ self/
The American art critic Rosalind Krauss, in her book Bachelors, has said of
Cahunʼs art:
Cahunʼs autobiographical project not only puts her on both sides of the
camera simultaneously the subject and object of representation – but it
also endows her, a woman, with the power of projecting the gaze and
returning it, as Claudeʼs eyes meet ours, sometimes seductively,
sometimes hostilely, sometimes quizzically, from the image. Indeed…the
very enterprise of self-portraiture, otherwise so absent from the entire
corpus of surrealist photography, comes down to reclaiming agency for the
female subject.81
The ambiguous self that Cahun performs in Fig. 31 and Fig. 32 represents the
“unrefined and fleeting reflections” in her photographic oeuvre. These two black
and white photographs are consistent with her small scale photographs.
feminine and Fig. 32 is more masculine, yet Cahunʼs gaze looks directly at the
viewer as if she is challenging them: ʻWell what about you?ʼ ʻWhat gender are
80
Kent, Rachel, ed., Masquerade: Representation and the Self in Contemporary Art (Sydney: Museum of
Contemporary Art, 2006), 23.
81
Rosalind Krauss, Bachelors (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999), 37.
68
Figure 33, Claude Cahun, IOU, 1929
transformation. All the different masks that Cahun employs reveal her in
personal appearance. This performative play elicited the need for a survival
Womanliness as a Masquerade:
69
superficial. They are the same thing.82
be a condition that was not fixed. Cahunʼs photography confused the meaning of
Baudrillard was born, and Cahun completed I.O.U. (Self Pride), Figure 33.83
“The surface of I.O.U. (Self Pride) is itself shattered, splintered into multiple
wrote her famous phrase, “beneath this mask, another mask”. Amelia Jones
seems to have sensed (fifty years before Baudrillard) that the modernist
belief in a subject behind every image, securing its meaning and value
(the artist, the critic, the gallery-owner) was beginning to peel away—
itself a “mask” of illusion bound to decay under the increasing pressures
of the exchange of money, information, and bodies in capitalist, then late-
capitalist, Euro-American culture. The succession of gazing (even
glaring) heads seems to suggest such a peeling away: of masks, of
faces, of selves.85
the subject and object and the self and other. Performing identity ruptures the
Cartesian notion that the self has a fixed identity and portrays the instability of
kind of tableau vivant”.86 Cahun was a pioneer to utilise performance in her self-
self. The autobiographical work that Cahun depicts in her photography explores
82
Riviere, 303-313.
83
Jones, Self/Image, 36.
84
ibid., 37.
85
ibid., 36-37.
86
Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida, trans., Richard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 1981), 31-32.
70
her identity as a woman and a lesbian. If gender can be performed than it is not
sexual identity.87 The strategy that Cahun employed in her self-portraits, to make
unmasking, was a fight for life, an affirmation of her own vitality even if it was
The reason Cahun is such a trailblazer is because she was a female artist
playing with the construction and representation of women and self during the
1920s when women were, for the most part, represented as the objects of menʼs
sexual desire. Instead, Cahun pursued her own path and examined societal
As Krauss has pointed out Cahun “reclaimed the female subject” because it was
otherwise lost (or desired over). The fact that Cahun represented reflections of
87
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1999).
88
Krauss, Bachelors, 37.
71
herself in art was enigmatic during the Surrealist movement. This was
supported the capitalistic power structure, but did not suit Cahun. The truly
enigmatic act that Cahun performed was that she produced photographs of
herself that were depictions of defiance. She challenged the concept of what a
woman was in representation because she certainly did not exemplify the image
of the feminine, demure, sedate women, sexualised to seduce men of the early
20th century.
Figure 34, Claude Cahun, photograph, 1929 Figure 35, Man Ray, Rrose Selavay, 1921.
Concurrently, identity and gender were themes that French artist Marcel
transgressed his own gender. Cahun dressed both as a man and as a woman in
72
her photographs. The similarities of cross-dressing are evident in both Cahun
man dressed as a woman, still has agency; for Cahun, dressing like a man gives
of gender roles.
implemented the concept into his art and eventually altered Western art. The
signed it, making the object into art. This was a minimal way to make art and a
subjective roles, which was her lifelong artistic motivation. Some of these roles
Cahun digested from society included: man, woman, Buddhist, pilot, angel, girl,
monk, transvestite and Jew. Since Cahun rejected the conventional appearance
roles.
Both Cahun and Duchamp subverted artistic and cultural conventions in the
early part of the 20th century. Each artist unhinged the boundaries and
73
definitions of art and identity. Cahun altered the genre of self-portraiture by
produced objects, which gave artists license to import meaning to these objects.
Cahun reclaimed the representation of herself (as the subject) through masking
The contemporary concept of the self is complex and ambiguous like Cahunʼs
are unstable. The concepts of self explored in this thesis are informed by the
The self is “fleeting” and the reflections of the self are “dreamlike”. A dreamlike
reflection challenges the reality of self. Cahun exhibited her art along with the
Surrealists in Paris and London. She assimilated with her contemporaries yet
distinguished herself from them. Cahun employed the tactics of the Surrealists
photographs of her self. The various roles Cahun wore suggest self-reflection.
89
Kent, ed., 23.
74
Sigmund Freud in the 1890s. The concept of the subconscious allowed the
stream of conscious writing, and imagery that was not based on re-creating
of the self.
The realities distorted by the Surrealists and Cahun alike were meant to
dissolve the boundaries and conventional notions of gender, identity,
sexuality, and art through defiance. 90
This leads me to discuss the frame through which the art I present in this
chapter and throughout this thesis is analysed. Deleuze and Guattariʼs criticism
complex, which is the historical basis for psychoanalysis. They argued that it
was built on the notion of loss (of the mother) and a negative idea of
which is the basis of the Lacanian notion of the signifier and the signified used to
90
Rosalind Krauss, “Corpus Delicti,” October, Vol.33 (Summer 1985), 40. Available from: The MIT Press
http://www.jstor.org/stable/778393 (accessed 16 June 2009).
91
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Anti-Œdipus, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem and Helen R. Lane,
(London and New York: Continuum, 2004), and Capitalism and Schizophrenia Vol. 1, trans. (Paris: Les
Editions de Minuit, 1972-1980).
75
we live with in popular culture.92 The theories of French psychoanalyst Jacques
The “phallus”, as defined by Jacques Lacan, was identified with the subject. I
it is the male power centre that the signified (female) submits to. This dynamic,
This complexity leads me to discuss both the traditional notion of the subject
while also conversing about change. Since Cahun was the signified and the
signifier, she eradicated those divisions. Deleuze and Guattari push past the
Lacanian notion of the “phallus” and suggest a language outside of the confines
since she moves beyond either gender to represent her ambiguous identity. In
philosophical endeavors challenge the way difference is thought of. From their
76
fundamentally different thought process than the currently held notion of the self
and subject, which has a higher value than the object and other. Ultimately,
thinking positively about “difference” will inform the representations of the self
and other.
essay The Age of the World Picture that “the fundamental event of the modern
Rrose Selavy, Fig. 35. The camera permitted Cahun to take numerous,
instantaneous, and fleeting self-portraits. The photographs that Man Ray took of
Similarly, Portapaks, hi8 video cameras, and instant Polaroid cameras gave
The performances by artists in the 1960s, such as Marina Abromivic and Ulay,
Yayoi Kusama, Dennis Oppenheim, Paul McCarthy and Joan Jonas, can
In the 21st century, digital technology has overtaken its analogue counterparts.
94
Martin Heidegger, as quoted in Jones, Self/Image, 5-6. Jones quoted from “The Age of the World
Picture” (1938), in The Questioning Concerning Technology and Other Essays, trans. William Lobitt, (New
York: Harper & Row, 1977, 132, 134).
77
exemplifies the potential for artists, who often work at the edges or against
the grain of permissible or common ways of using technology in mass
media contexts, to push technologies to their limits and beyond – thus to
probe and even push beyond the limits of the contemporary self.95
Cahunʼs influence
Figure 36, Kim Connerton, Warhol Re-Incarnated (Back From the Dead),
video still, 2007
photograph, I.O.U., and her statement that, “we only know how to recognise
using the terms camouflage and masking to differentiate self-exposure and self-
concealment. Although both terms are about assimilation as a way to enter into
will mean concealment is the tactic used to combat the masquerade. Masking
95
Jones, Self/Image, 11.
78
will mean that exposing the artistʼs identity is part of the motivation behind the
work. The act of masking is a way for an artist to reveal her/his identity and
fact any female artist that photographs herself playing various female roles will
Cahunʼs work a more complex reading can subsume. In almost all of Cindy
Shermanʼs photographs she also performs the subject, as Cahun did. They are
both female artists that enact self in their portraits and have been immortalized
in their photographs.
There are important differences between Cahun and Sherman that elucidate the
and unmasked self. In Fig. 38 Sherman conceals her identity, camouflaging her
the 1950s. The genius of Shermanʼs photography is her technical mastery and
execution, which creates a distance, as the male gaze she recycled does in
96
Leach, 241.
79
Untitled Film Stills. Sherman wears this male and objectifying gaze to illustrate
In her photography in the 1990s she highlighted the abject realities of simulated
horrifying that she disappeared as the subject in her work for a while. This horror
can be understood through French writer, theorist and filmmaker Guy Debord,
who anticipated the seeming impossibility of negotiating life in the digital age in
Sherman took the camouflaged self away, she looked “behind the glitter of the
abject. Although Cahun wore societal roles as a mask she didnʼt camouflage or
conceal herself. She moved away from the abject to comment on gender and
societal roles. Like the personal nature of Cahunʼs work Sherman, now in her
50s, is depicting women who are ageing, which is a more personal theme.
older elite women she has met at her level of success in the New York art world.
Her tactic reveals her identity, while it subverts the masquerade she performs.
97
Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, ed. Donald Nicholson-Smith (Cambridge: Zone Books,1995),
38.
80
To elaborate on Cahun and Shermanʼs motivations the American art historian,
Figure 37, Claude Cahun, Self-Portrait, 1920 Figure 38, Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #6,
1977
man and today I feel like being a monk. I want to sit quietly and be in this
momentʼ. Cahun doesnʼt wear the image of a woman that the conventions of her
time would dictate. Instead, she dissolves them by her individualistic personal
98
Katy Kline, “In or Out of the Picture Claude Cahun and Cindy Sherman, ” in Whitney Chadwick, ed.,
Mirror Women, Surrealism, and Images Self-Representation (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998), 66-81, 79.
Kline referenced Katy Deepwell, “Uncanny Resemblances,” Womens Art Magazine no.62
(January/February 1995): 18.
81
appearance. When she sits as a monk Cahun posits one of her “multiple
order to be seen”, Cahun set up scenes “in order to reveal herself incrementally
to herself”.99 Also both works engage with the sexuality of the self – Cahun is an
Both Cahun and Sherman enact the female subject and “reclaim” it in different
critique its ownership. Cahun enacted her self-portraits with less artificiality than
99
Chadwick, ed., 79.
82
Me, Cahun and Sherman
Cahun and Sherman did. In the series Warhol Re-Incarnated, 2007, Fig. 39, I
wear a mask of Andy Warhol to bring him back to life and represent him in a
performance of Warhol emphasises the act of being inspired and its meaning
Similar to Cahunʼs self-portraits, my work suggests the selfʼs inner life. This
interior world is indicative of the personal connections I have with the celebrated
artists I perform as in my photography and videos. For Cahun her inner life is
revealed since she reveals her identity while trying on various societal roles. In
both Cahunʼs and my work our faces are always exposed. In my photographs
83
minimal and only act as a trace of the persona I take on. I want to expose myself
with the stereotypes she wears in her photographs. Sherman conceals her face
Self-image and representing identity are confusing in the digital age since you
often see yourself from the outside. There are negative aspects to viewing
The interior viewpoint that Cahun and I possess circumnavigates the negative
aspects of viewing yourself from the outside. In the homages I pay to Warhol I
relationship to an artist is modeled to the viewer as a way to cut through all the
ourselves that is not our own and is exterior, like seeing yourself in a
100
Jones, Self/Image, xvii.
84
surveillance camera at a store. I express a part of myself that resonates with
“damaging force” and the artifice of the popular mediated images of Warhol. In
Cahunʼs photography the societal roles she represents for viewers to reflect on
are like the resonations with celebrated artists I represent, as the roles Cahun
Cahunʼs Mask
I was grieving over my brother, Johnʼs, death when I felt Andy Warholʼs
presence flow into me. The memory I have of myself, during these
moments Warhol came to me in my studio, was that of oneness. The
internal self and external became a transcendental field of oneness.101
that “we only know how to recognise ourselves, love ourselves, through
contemplate only in passing”. The Warhol screen I created was “fleeting” and
85
Warhol. I wear a silver wig, almost no make-up, and use the least amount of
does. The distance created in Shermanʼs images is crucial to her intentions and
reliant on the artificiality she employs. Similar to Cahun, I use a minimal amount
of styling to continue to reveal the self. This minimal and “unrefined” strategy of
represent and myself, and in the screen between the audience and the art.
Klineʼs statement:
86
Sherman, on the other hand, is entirely absent from her work; her “nominal
referent exists only by means of representation”. From the outset, with the
moody nostalgia of the Untitled Film Stills of the late seventies through her
series of centerfolds, fashion images, disasters…Sherman has been
consciously playing to an audience. She has set up situations in order that
be seen…102
The self-enactments by Pipilotti Rist are video installations that are spectacles in
Glade (Flatten), Fig. 40, she mimics Paul McCarthyʼs video/performance, Press,
1973, where he presses his face against a piece of glass so that when the video
screen and into the gallery. Ristʼs identity is visible: she is herself, mimicking art
Sherman moves into the mass media because she assimilates the look of it by
images”.
Rist represents the societal role, as Cahun did, to push beyond its barriers. The
Times Square. She performs as a passer-by who fights to be heard by her fellow
urban travelers. Rist is looking out, escaping out of the screen and inserting
herself into that space of chaos, which is the atmosphere of human and
commodified visual traffic. She is trying to get the attention of the people that
pass by in Times Square. She wants them to look up and see another person
like themselves, negotiating this time and space in a human way, rather than a
102
Kline in Chadwick, ed., 79. Kline quoted Norman Bryson, “House of Wax”, in Cindy Sherman (New York:
Rizzoli, 1993) 218.
87
model advertising a product to sell. It is a face-to-face intervention that is meant
for the large public audience who would be surprised by Ristʼs video image
Cahunʼs photography and techniques of examining the self have enlightened the
This section has displayed how the development of self/images reflects the
analogue photography in the early 20th century and in Sherman, Rist and
myselfʼs use of digital technology in the early 21st century. Cahunʼs photography
was original in that it depicted and challenged the concept of self, which
work that examines the self is an ongoing process that is enlightened by the
88
Chapter 2
Mimicry – Between Us
The investigation of knowing the self through the other that was the initial focus
including my own, since it highlights this connection with the external world and
links the self to the other. One such manifestation that connects me to the
by paying homage and inhabiting his self-portraits allows me to identify with the
discussed in this chapter that represent the self assimilating with the other,
hence extending identity. The process for examining mimicry will be the analysis
Andy Warhol and myself. Thompson and I mimic celebrated artists such as
Warhol and Moffatt. We both highlight the knowledge gained from mimicking
89
What is Mimicry? What is Mimesis?
The terms mimesis and mimicry will be used interchangeably. In general the
term mimicry is an action of mimicking and mimesis is the theory of that action.
insights English architect and theorist Neil Leach formulates about mimicry in his
will be discussed.
Theodor W. Adorno are the theories that Leach sought to clarify the concept of
he states:
For Benjamin, the concept of mimesis allows for an identification with the
external world. It facilitates the possibility of forging a link between self and
other. It becomes a way of empathizing with the world, and it is through
empathy that human beings can—if not fully understand the other—at least
come ever closer to the other, through the discovery and creation of
similarities.103
characterise 21st century life and culture. The artists discussed in this chapter
image machine led me to photograph myself in a natural setting that does not
103
Leach, 19. Leach cited Mohsen Mostafavi and David Leatherbarrow, On Weathering (Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press, 1993) to discuss Benjamin and the theory of mimesis.
90
reproduce an existing image but instead reproduces a recognised experience.
The identifications between selves and others are depicted in the contemporary
The main ideas Leach extracts from Adornoʼs theories of mimetics are evident
Mimesis for Adorno does not pertain to the relation between the sign and
the referent; it is not a category of representation. Rather, it aims at a mode
of subjective experience, a preverbal form of cognition, which is rendered
objective in works of art, summoned by the density of their construction.104
sensual level. One such moment is inhaling the scent of a flower. In Self-Portrait
104
ibid., 34.
91
I mimic and reproduce a moment that illustrates being alone with the self. Self-
92
Chapter 2, Part 1: Mimesis in Contemporary Culture – A Line of
Flight
The link between imagination and culture that begins early in life is observed by
Mimicry is an automatic gesture that facilitates the childʼs lucid and creative
performs another artistʼs work. The imaginative play and mimicry by Australian
reflections.
boundaries slippery.
105
Leach, 27.
93
Figure 2, Christian Bumbarra Thompson, Gates of Tambo
Tracey Moffatt, 2004.
Thompson imitates Moffatt to learn how she constructs her artistic concepts in
life act as a catalyst that he reflects in his photography. This style of mimicry is
The urge to imitate and to look for similarities lies at the heart of the human
condition: “The human is indissolubly linked with imitation: a human being
become human at all by imitating other human beings.”106
explains:
She has really set a precedent and demonstrated to the other Aboriginal
artists that we donʼt have to render… that we actually have more of a
global message to think about… I think it was really unusual for me as a
young teenager to open up this magazine and read this article on Tracey
106
Leach, 19. Leach quoted from Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, trans. E.F.N. Jephcott (London:
Verso, 1978), 154.
94
Moffatt. She is from Queensland and of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal
decent you know. I could see myself in her. I thought if she could do it I
could do it as well.107
The strategy Thompson uses to express his admiration for Moffatt is elaborated
on by Riphagen:
Portrait, 1999, Fig. 4, and mimicked her to reference this original photograph.110
Moffatt and Thompson are both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, were born in
art world.111 In Search of the International Look, Fig. 3, pays homage to Moffatt
will be examined first as she is Thompsonʼs predecessor who has inspired his
work.112
107
Marianne Riphagen, “Re-framing Indigenous Australian Photography: Meaning and Materiality of
Christian Thompsonʼs ʻIn Search of the International Lookʼ,” The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 8,
2007: 337. Riphagen quotes from a personal communication with Thompson on 10 August 2006.
108
ibid, 336.
109
Leach, 19.
110
Riphagen, 336.
111
ibid.
112
ibid.
95
Figure 3, Christian Thompson, In Search Figure 4, Tracey Moffatt, Self Portrait, 1999
of the International Look, 2005
of the Australian desert is out of focus and could be real or a studio backdrop.
Her eyes are hidden behind sunglasses and she looks beyond the frame. She is
dressed like a modern day Aboriginal Grace Kelly: stylish, detached, like a
and seeks to re-focus the gaze of Australian culture. Moffatt takes charge of the
gaze when she actually (and metaphorically) looks beyond the existing way
113
Riphagen, 337.
96
The Hollywood-like veneer that Moffatt employs brings to mind Baudrillardʼs
Moffattʼs sets and production style.114 Like Cindy Sherman in the infamous
Untitled Film Stills, 1977-1980, Moffatt used the device of the cinematic image
machine. However Moffatt uses it differently. Moffatt mimics the slick style of
cinematic images. She uses the unreality to discuss her own identity, under a
revealed in Self-Portrait. She isnʼt revealing her momentary feelings, instead she
reveals her Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal cultural background and her choice of
114
Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, trans. Sheila Faria Glaser (Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan 1994).
115
Riphagen, 340.
116
ibid.
97
In 2005 Australiaʼs photographic journal Photofile, published by the
Australian Centre for Photography, commissioned Thompson to produce a
work for their Autumn 2006 edition [ better than ] THE REAL THING.
Contributions to this issue discussed questions of authenticity, originality
and the status of the copy with regard to photo media arts in contemporary
society. In response to this theme the artist created a photograph titled ʻIn
Search of the International Lookʼ.117
The overall look of the two photographs is similar. Both photographs are staged.
nervous and slightly sad in Fig. 3. His eyes are visible through his light rose-
coloured glasses. The colours in In Search of the International Look are similar
The composition of his self-portrait positions his body closer to the viewer than
himself to work outside the safety of the studio. Seeing Thompsonʼs face so
empathetic way. He shows his vulnerability, which can be seen to reflect human
117
Riphagen, 335.
118
ibid., 337.
98
Empathy
the International Look, asks audiences to empathise with him in a personal way
that reveals more autobiographical details about his life than Moffattʼs Self-
Portrait. His gender and sexual identification are uncertain territory in his portrait.
I believe that if ideational mimetics are followed up, they may be as useful
in other branches of aesthetics…” Freud writes about the term in the
context of jokes. Mimesis is what allows us to empathise with a joke. Here
mimesis is clearly ideational. It operates through the medium of the idea,
and allows us to imagine ourselves as someone else. In listening to the
tale of the unfortunate individual who slips on a banana peel, we put
ourselves in the position of that individual by drawing upon corporeally
119
ibid., 341.
99
embedded memories of personal experiences, and imagine ourselves also
slipping up.120
International Look “operated through the medium of the idea, and allows us to
and reproduces her performance of self. The slipping actions that Thompson
creates blur and transform gender and sexual identities. Through Thompsonʼs
then reflect on ourselves: what we are, what we are not, what we hope to be.
allows us to put ourselves in his place and ask ourselves if we could mimic this
advances the role of the artist, the audience, and contemporary culture due to
Look, and one that illustrates how the mimetic act differs from imitation, is
Thompson “assimilates” Moffattʼs art and identity into his art. He resonates with
Moffatt. They share autobiographical details and he wanted to do what she has
120
Leach, 20. Leach discussed and quoted Sigmund Freud, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious
(1905), trans. James Strachey (London: Routledge, 1960), 193.
121
ibid.
122
Leach, 22. Leach quoted Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, trans. C. Lenhardt, G. Adorno and R.
Tiedman (London: Routledge, 1984), p.162, as quoted by Shierry Weber Nicholson, Exact Imagination,
Late Work: On Adornoʼs Aesthetic (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997), 146.
100
done – become an international artist with his photography. In Moffattʼs art and
Interestingly enough, Deleuze and Guattari rejected the term mimicry because
and difference. Their term “becoming” does indeed overlap with mimesis
The “border or line of flight” defines the space Thompson occupies by taking in
Moffattʼs concepts and re-framing them, as well as his own identity through
mimicry.
International Look serves two purposes: mimicking Moffatt to pay homage to her
Think about the fact that colonisation isnʼt just about colonising
land. It is about colonising identity, sexuality, the body. Think about
how that impacts on a day-to-day life…enduring romantic
123
ibid.
124
Leach, 84-85. Leach discussed the notion of becoming in Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus,
275.
101
representations of black, Aboriginal bodies as ʻOtherʼ, has caused
many Aboriginal men to feel ʻoppressed and suffocated.125
with an alternative view of gender. He learned from Moffatt, “that if she could do
it I could do it too.”127 Through mimicking Moffattʼs art Thompson was also able
to reveal his own identity. The revelations Thompson represents and the gender
sameness with Moffatt and his allegiance to Aboriginal culture as well as his
The exchange between Thompson and Moffatt was “between two producing
subjects”.
125
Riphagen, 341. Riphagen in conversation with Thompson (personal communication, 16 May 2006).
126
ibid.
127
ibid., 337.
128
Jacques Derrida, as quoted in Leach, 87. Leach quoted Derrida as quoted in Arne Melberg, Theories of
Mimesis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 5.
102
Part 2: Homage, a Style of Mimicry
In this section I will discuss artists, including Christian Thompson and Andy
work. Homage is a specific style of mimicry and means “to do homage or have
Thompson has received from Moffattʼs art. The admiration Thompson felt for
Thompsonʼs homage to her, and through this allegiance and links to both of
The acts of homage performed by Thompson in Fig. 2 and Fig. 3 are a way of
reflecting back out to the world what he took in from Moffattʼs art. According to
the ability to look back in return.131 The “investment” Thompson made becomes
visible in the gift of the homage paid to Moffatt. The worth of an act of homage is
measured by the particular resonance one artist feels towards another. Yet
homage in art has worth outside of that frame. Homage has several positive
129
“Homage” in Oxford English Dictionary, v. second edition, (Oxford University press, 1989)
http://dictionary.oed.com.ezproxy1.library.usyd.edu.au/cgi/entry/50107329
130
Leach, 87. Leach quoted Derrida, as quoted in Melberg, 5.
131
Leach, 26-27.
103
Figure 5, Christian Thompson, The Gates of Tambo
Andy Warhol, 2004
Christian Thompson pays homage to both Andy Warhol and his Aboriginal
heritage in The Gates of Tambo Andy Warhol, 2004. The Gates of Tambo is in
the same series in which Thompson pays homage to Moffatt, Rusty Peters and
himself. For Thompson the homage he pays to individual artists such as Andy
that content into his photography, which is now part of the international art
Riphagen:
The Gates of Tambo are two bottle trees planted outside the tiny town of
Tambo by the artistʼs great uncle, marking the old highway between
Barcaldine and Brisbane.132
132
Riphagen, 339.
104
artistic aspirations and then performs the masquerade through mimicking
Warhol, Moffatt, and Peters. The culmination of the circle happens when
the connection Thompson makes between Aboriginal art and the international
Love
philosopher and psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva discusses the role of love in art in
her statement:
The experience of love and the experience of art, which serve to solidify
the identificatory process, are the only ways in which we can maintain our
psychic space as a living system that is open to the other and capable of
adaptation and change.134
133
ibid.
134
Julia Kristeva, as quoted in Leach, 212-213. Leach quoted Julia Kristeva, New Maladies of the Soul
(New York: Colombia University Press, 1995), 175.
105
artists he admires. Correspondingly, the admiration he imbues extends to his
family, country, Aboriginal and Australian culture, Andy Warhol, Tracey Moffatt,
and Rusty Peters. Thompson receives the visual support from the artists he
pays homage to and expresses gratitude for the gifts he has received, through
engage with cultural icons I resonate with rather than refer to my ancestral
which unite us. Transcendental Andy, Fig. 6, was originally a video titled
Shadow Andy from the Warhol Reincarnated series. This video is unique in that
mouth contemplating and looking at the viewer, directly merged with one of his
self-portraits with his face and facial shadow, shown in Fig. 7 and Fig. 8.
106
Figure 7, Andy Warhol, Self-Portrait, 1978. Figure 8, Andy Warhol, Self-Portrait, 1981.
putting my hand on my mouth and looking both at and beyond the viewer.
and one video projection. The two photographs are hung one on top of the other
and to the left of the large-scale video projection. In the photograph on top I
wear a dazed expression and look beyond the viewer. In the bottom photograph
I look directly at the viewer. Unlike my gaze at and beyond viewers, Thompson
looks down and away from viewers, which infers a defiance of the conventions
107
The moment of seeing yourself in the mirror in Transcendental Andy alludes to
the Lacanian mirror stage. When viewers see themselves reflected in the mirrors
allows viewers to be inside Transcendental Andy and inhabit my art the way I
inhabited Warholʼs. The video is six minutes and thirty seconds in duration and
looped. The footage is slowed down and depicts me as Warhol turning my head
side to side while looking at and then away from the viewer.
The French film theorist Jean Epstein theorised the filmic power upon the
between the apparatus, the spectator, and the external world.135 Epstein stated:
“photogenie” through the use of the video camera and digital software. The
two photographs are a second of captured footage. This multiplies one video
135
Wegenstein, 231.
136
Epstein, as quoted ibid.
108
Figure 9, Andy Warhol, Beuys, 1984
In Transcendental Andy homage acts “as a living system that is open to the
Joseph Beuys in Beuys, 1984, Fig. 9. Warhol was prolific, creating many
did he pay homage in his art. The silkscreen of Beuys is unique, since Warhol
uses flocking, which looks like felt. Felt was a fundamental material in Beuysʼ
experimented with many materials including diamond dust, the flocking was a
new material and specific to his homage to Beuys. By using it Warhol expresses
137
Kristeva, as quoted in Leach, 212-213.
109
In Warholʼs homage he doesnʼt mimic or perform as Beuys, which is unique in
– felt. Warhol is open to the other artist, Beuys, and takes him into his art by
way of the felt. Felt was a very personal material for Beuys, a material through
When Warhol opened his art to another (Beuys) he performed an act of homage
Moffatt and Warhol can also be seen as acts of love. The emphasis in an act of
homage is on “being open to the other”.139 However being open to the other is a
process, as Leach states, “One can love the other, only if one first loves the
self”.140
This kind of love that opens self to another is, as Kristeva would define it,
higher form of love than Eros, as it, according to Kristeva, enacts a union with a
138
Julia Kristeva, as quoted in Leach, 212. In discussion about Kristevaʼs notion of love, Leach quoted
James Lechte, Julia Kristeva, (London: Routledge, 1990), 215.
139
ibid.
140
Leach, 212.
110
personal desire since it involves an openness and identification with the
other.141
copy him in the Platonic sense. Instead I merely reference him. The non-
way:
141
Lechte , as quoted in Leach, 212.
142
Merleau-Ponty, 74.
111
oneness. The internal self and external became a transcendental
field of oneness.143
story about the loss of my brother, in particular when I say: “the memory I have
with myself, my studio, and Warhol. Ultimately, I was able to transcend the loss
I felt for my brother John. This universal connection exemplifies the experience
of not needing to physically have someone there to connect with them. The
power of art and creativity can connect us. I chose to accept the presence of
Additional insight into being open to the other is expressed by Lechte, when he
states:
Face
expresses the fullness of life, instead of the loss I experienced. Like the
143
Kim Connerton, artistʼs statement in Thesis [exhibition catalogue], eds. Adrian McDonald and Nerida
Olsen (Sydney: Sydney College of the Arts, 2009), 12-13.
144
Lechte, as quoted in Leach, 213.
112
transparent screen over my face. The American film and media historian,
The human face is the screen of the body, the place of encounter
between individuals… Behind faces we see the person. We
address people by facing them. This is also why the facial skin has
been interpreted all along as a mirror to the soul: it reflects the
state of mind, the degree of well-being of the person behind a
face.145
In Transcendental Andy the face is the primary focus precisely because “behind
faces we see the person” and “we address people by facing them” and the face
is the “mirror to the soul” and “reflects the state of mind” that I use my own face
and allow it show through. Ultimately, the effect Warhol has had on my life is
invisible and lives in my internal world but in my art I can expose this and try to
explore this invisibility. In this sense I use the face as a “mirror to the soul”
and Fig. 14, when he put his fingers on his mouth, while gazing directly at the
Thompson mimics the look of Moffattʼs art in Gates of Tambo Tracey Moffatt.
Warhol and myself elucidate mimesis and its significant role in contemporary
145
Wegenstein, 231-232.
113
unique and progressive imagery that facilitates change and more openness to
and the other and transform ourselves through these cultural identifications.
114
Chapter 3: Narcissism
His eyes are deceived, but the strange illusion excites his senses.
Ovid146
Narcissism is a widely used term and often infers the malady of self-absorption.
However in this chapter the concept of narcissism will illustrate the positive and
by architect and theorist Neil Leachʼs book Camouflage, which is a key text in
this chapter.
We live in a swirl of images and echoes that arrest the experience and
play it back in slow motion. Cameras and recording machines not only
transcribe experience, but alter its quality, giving to much of modern life
the character of an enormous chamber, a hall of mirrors.147
artists repeatedly appear and perform in their photographs and videos. The self-
146
Ovid, Metamorphoses, trans. by David Raeburn, (London: Penguin Books, 2004), 113.
147
Lasch, as quoted in Leach, 128-129. For Lasch this is a form of secondary or pathological narcissism,
and he is careful to distinguish it from primary narcissism.
115
chapter, as she repeatedly uses her body in her photographs. Her photography
The “hall of mirrors” that Lasch defines as empty and shallow can also be seen
The Narcissus myth took shape in the epic poem Metamorphosis by the Roman
As Narcissus leans out over a pool for a drink following a hard dayʼs
hunting, he is captivated by his own image, mistaking the reflection for
reality itself. “While he sought to quench his thirst,” writes Ovid, “another
thirst grew in him, and as he drank, he was enchanted by the beautiful
reflection that he saw. He fell in love with an insubstantial hope, mistaking
a mere shadow of a real body. Spellbound by his own self, he remained
there motionless, with fixed gaze, like a statue carved of Parian marble.”
He tries in vain to reach out and grasp the image, which also appears to
reach out for him, but eventually, lying there without food or sleep, he
wastes away in his own self-love, and dies. When they come to bury him,
they discover that his body is nowhere to be seen, but that a flower with
white petals and a yellow centre has blossomed. To this day this flower still
bears his name, Narcissus.149
In this myth Narcissus represents the self from antiquity and his muddled
himself that was new and not yet known to him. It was the seed of his
148
Leach, 130.
149
Leach, 119. Leach quoted and retold Ovid, Metamorphosis, trans. Mary Innes (Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1955), 84.
116
Narcissusʼ transformation and re-birth. The self-reflection and transformation
artists such as Francesca Woodman and Claude Cahun mimic the status of
contemporary self-identity so that culture and the self can be examined in their
reflections.
image in the pool. The self is incomplete in the sense that its entirety cannot be
completely captured in only one image. Knowing the self is an ongoing process
– there will always be more to discover. When Narcissus “tries in vain to reach
out and grasp the image” the desire to recognise the selfʼs transience is
in front of and see oneʼs self in. In global capitalist mass media culture there are
The French philosopher Maurice Blanchot probed the nature of the image when
he wrote:
But what is the image?...The image speaks to us, and seems to speak
intimately to us of ourselves…The image fulfils one of its functions, which
is to quiet, to humanize formless nothingness pressed upon us by the
indelible residue of being. The image cleanses this residue…and allows
us to believe, dreaming in the happy dream which art too often authorises,
that, separated from the real and immediately behind it, we find, as pure
pleasure and superb satisfaction, the transparent eternity of the unreal.150
150
Maurice Blanchot, as quoted in Jones, Self/Image, 254-255. Jones quoted Maurice Blanchot, “The Two
Versions of the Imaginary,” The Space of Literature, trans. Ann Smock (Lincoln, NE, and London:
University of Nebraska Press, 1982).
117
When contemporary artists depict the act of self-reflection the significance of
ourselves”. The human “formless nothingness” embodies the parts of the self
yet to be known to itself. The fragmented self is like a “dream” that already
exists in the recesses of the mind, but its various fragments have yet to emerge
to the surface.
paintings are the exciting moments that bubbled out of their own perceptions
and onto the surface of their cultural and self representations. The images that
know (process).
118
Figure 1, Francesca Woodman, Self-Deceit #1, 1977-1978
Part l: Self-Recognition
Narcissus looking:
#1, Fig. 1. In her photography she is often depicted in the state of possibly
disappearing. In Fig. 1, she could stare into the mirror for infinity or she could
151
Leach, 119. Leach quoted and retold Ovid, Metamorphosis, 1955, 84.
119
recede back around the corner. Half of her body is already hidden and around
that corner. The mirror in perspective is largest towards the viewer. It comes
closer to the front of the photograph than Woodman does. There is a ghost in
this image and this ghost is Woodman. She committed suicide at the age of 22,
Woodmanʼs work was made thirty years ago her performative photography and
dialogue.
When Woodman depicts herself looking in the mirror and staring at her reflection
Woodman, when Narcissus misunderstands his own image for another, “his
photography. In particular, this stems from the theories of narcissism that Lacan
The art historian Whitney Chadwick examines narcissism in her book Mirror
Even before 1936, when psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan first presented his
paper arguing for the origins of selfhood in a “mirror stage” (the
120
“misrecognition” of another in the mirror that produces the self, or subject),
theories of subjectivity and sexual identity had revolved around seeing.
Lacanʼs theory of subjectivity, which derives from Freudʼs concepts of
narcissism and the “specular” ego (the formation of the subject around a
dynamic of seeing/not-seeing that initiates the castration anxiety around
which male sexuality is formed) left Women in the position of signifier for
the male other, her subjectivity (or “femininity”) determined by the
discourse of patriarchy.152
art historians such as Rosalind Krauss, Amelia Jones, Hal Foster, Craig Owens
and Chadwick herself to define identity and selfhood in art as determined by the
however it also has its limitations. The main limitation that Chadwick highlights
The masculine can partly look at itself, speculate about itself, represent
itself and describe itself for what it is, whilst the feminine can try to speak to
itself to a new language, but cannot describe itself from outside or in formal
terms, except by identifying itself with the masculine, thus by losing
itself.154
The monumental point that the “feminine cannot describe itself from the outside
152
Chadwick, ed., 8.
153
ibid.
154
Luce Irigaray, as quoted in Chadwick, ed., 62-76. Quoted from Luce Irigaray, “Women's Exile", trans.
Couze Venn, Ideology and Consciousness 1 (1977): 62-76.
121
subjectivity for women artistsʼ self/imagings. For a woman to identify with “the
masculine”, according to Irigaray, she loses herself and instead needs a “new
Irigaray in mind is that her art is about loss but also the fleeting possibilities of
self. Woodmanʼs body is repeatedly represented leaning into the space she is in,
structure, is a core idea behind the psychological language used in art criticism.
Guattari. Deleuze and Guattari abandon the Oedipus complex because it is built
on the notion of loss (of the mother) and a negative idea of difference.155
with Lacan. Their criticism did not completely dismiss Lacan, but suggested that
he would eventually conclude that the Oedipus Complex was a “despotic Great
155
Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Œdipus, 1972 and Capitalism and Schizophrenia, vol. 1, 1972-1980.
122
positive style of analysis rather than one that pre-supposes that the self begins
its life operating at a loss. The position that Deleuze and Guattari take in regard
156
Deleuze and Guattari, as quoted in Mark Caldwell, “Schizophrenizing Lacan: Deleuze, [Guattari], and
Anti-Oedipus,” intersections 10, no. 3 (2009): 18-27,
http://depts.washington.edu/chid/intersections_Autumn_2009/Text_Image_&_Discourse/index.htm,
(accessed March 8, 2009).
123
opening up to the other – of identifying with the nonidentical”.157 That other
includes the self, as it did for Narcissus. The other he saw was other from what
he knew to be himself.
The nonidentical other that Woodman identifies with in Self-Deceit #6, Fig. 2, is
the environment she is surrounded by. The pushing into mirrors that Woodman
does in her photographs in Fig. 1 and Fig. 2 suggests pushing herself into her
own world in the studio to examine her own gaze towards herself. It is as if she
pushes herself free from the oedipalising structures in the world she created.
The American art critic, David Levy Strauss, discusses her work:
in her studio.159 Woodman is the only authority inside the literal and
metaphorical walls in her photography. The act of letting the external world go is
both narcissistic and instrumental in her art. The photographs are evidence of
her going into an internal space not unlike the nirvana of the womb. The mood
157
Leach, 130.
158
David Levi Strauss, as quoted in Isabel Tejeda, ed., Francesca Woodman (Murcia: Espacio AV, 2009),
18.
159
ibid.
160
Margaret Sundell, “Francesca Woodman: The Elusive Self” in Chadwick, ed., 169.
124
postindustrial womb. She represents herself immersed in these decaying
Self-Deceit, Fig. 1, depicts her body and her reflection in the mirror. The other
reflected back is her in the mirror. The mirror and the camera signify the
expose self. This image is absurdly funny in its melancholy because Woodman
is pushing into the mirror and hiding part of her naked body behind it.
Woodmanʼs hiding is meant to be seen and to reveal her integration into the
space. Again the mirror is closer to the viewer than Woodman. Instead of seeing
her face the viewer sees a mirror that could possibly reflect them but it doesnʼt
Woodman cannot see her face either because the mirror is turned away from
her and towards the viewer. The act of seeing for Woodman is cancelled out
and she does not confront the viewer with her gaze.
and seek. In Fig. 2 Woodman uses three elements to build the image: the
161
Leach, 121.
125
decayed corner she leans her body against, the mirror, and her body. The
repeated use of her mostly naked body, and her often hidden face, expresses a
raging desire to be seen, and not be seen to see, and to not see. The poses that
Woodman stands in push her body into the mirror and wall. The fleeting self that
Woodman models can move in and out of the place sheʼs in, whether it be
create a space to be in – even for a fleeting moment. Until the next photograph
passion is defined by the act of disappearing and pushing into mirrors, wallpaper
and furniture. The image represented in Self Deceit #6, Fig. 2, is a catharsis of
sorts. All the surfaces – the walls, Woodmanʼs body, and the shiny mirror –
narcissistic. When a friend of Woodmanʼs, Sloan Rankin, asked her why she
and expresses a deeper truth, according to Italian art critic, Marco Pierini:
162
Sloan Rankin, as quoted in Tejeda, ed., 19. Quoted from Sloan Rankin, “Peach Mumble – Ideas
Cookin,” in Francesca Woodman [exhibition catalogue], Foundation Cartier pour lʼart contemporain-Scalo,
(Paris-Zurich_Berlin_New York 1998), 35.
126
objects, the clothes, the plaster on the walls, the doors and the window is a
corollary inevitably stemming from the previous axiom.163
work. The repeated act of using herself in her photographs is also a driving
force that imbues the work with the relentless passion to perform the pose of
leaning against walls and mirrors to become one with her self and her
defines the space around Woodman in her photographs where she becomes
one with the “fabric” of that world. Consequently, the things the (other) “prolong”
and “annex” the definition of self by becoming one with her. Two worlds – a
photography.165
163
Marco Pierini, “From the inside. Notes from Francesca Woodmanʼs Artistic Route,” in Tejeda, ed., 19.
164
Maurice Merleau-Ponty as quoted by Pierini, ibid. Marco Pierini quoted Lʼoeil et LʼEspirit, Italian edition
Lʼocchio e lo spirito, SE, (Milano: 1989).
165
ibid.
127
Part 2: Metamorphosis
Fig. 3, Woodman lands in one fell swoop on a large mirror and presses her
body weight into it. She lies on top of her own mirror image and looks at her
reflected face, a face looking back at itself that we cannot see. The consistent
features in Woodmanʼs work appear once again: the face we cannot see, her
body, the mirror, the gesture of pressing into an object, and the raw studio
By pressing into the mirror in Fig. 3, Woodman pushes her body into an illusory
space for us to see. The mirror allows Woodmanʼs self to bounce off of her and
onto the space of the mirrorʼs surface. There is a gestalt in this photograph of
128
Woodmanʼs body and the space and objects in it uniting. As Merleau-Ponty
states:
This illusion created in In the Mirror is like a dance that is “visible and mobile”
gesture of pushing her body into the mirror, she inserts her image into this circle
of oneness that includes her body, the mirrorʼs surface and the space.
The Spanish art critic Fernando Castro Florez, in his essay about Woodmanʼs
The elusive concept of the self-portrait is similar to the slippery concept of the
166
Merleau-Ponty as quoted in Pierini, in Tejeda, ed., 19.
167
Apuleius (c. AD 125–after 170) North African Roman poet, philosopher, and rhetorician, whose
best‐known work, the comic novel Metamorphoses or The Golden Ass, is the only complete work of Latin
prose fiction to survive. Its interwoven stories became a quarry and model for the Italian and French
novella: Boccaccio borrowed three, and others appeared in the 15th‐century Cent Nouvelles. The
much‐reprinted complete translation of 1566 by William Adlington, The Golden Asse, was known to William
Shakespeare. Cupid and Psyche is the most frequently retold of Apuleius' stories. See Robert H. F. Carver,
The Protean Ass: The ʻMetamorphosesʼ of Apuleius from Antiquity to the Renaissance (2007).
"Apuleius," The Oxford Companion to English Literature, ed. Dinah Birch, Oxford Reference Online. Oxford
University Press.
http://www.oxfordreference.com.ezproxy2.library.usyd.edu.au/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t1
13.e303, (accessed 1 December 2009).
168
Fernando Castro Florez, “Mirror Floating Down River,” in Tejeda, ed., 156.
129
capturing reflections of herself represents the mutability of self. The mirror, like
the photograph, captures an increment of the experience of the self. Once the
subject is outside of the mirrorʼs surface or the cameraʼs lens it has moved on.
into a mirror and taking photographs of this act – captures moments in time and
infers the primary mirror stage. Woodman mimics the naïve mind, awakened by
the surprise of self-recognition through the act of seeing herself in the mirror.
represented.
The mirrorʼs value in Woodmanʼs work is that it is the object that assists in the
act of self-discovery. Yet it is an object that can never hold an image: the
Captured disappearance
mirrorʼs inability to retain images. Yet the camera is another mirror, with the
reversed slightly she would not be visible in the photograph or in her mirror
130
reflection. In Fig. 2, Woodman pushes her body out of a corner and into a
mirror, which she hides her face behind. The blank mirror reflection becomes
the front surface of Woodmanʼs body. Lastly, in Fig. 3, Woodman covers her
reflection with her body while looking at her face. In these three photographs
only the back of Woodmanʼs body can be seen. Her poses are crawls, pushes,
transformation. She can push into and push out of realities. The everyday reality
is pushed away in her studio where her photographs were staged and taken.
Woodman danced around her studio, pushing into the imaginal world of
childhood, to subvert the patriarchal gaze at women and construct her own.
169
Leach, 30.
131
artistʼs internal psychic flexibility, which permits identification with and
portrayal of a wide range of characters and themes. The emphasis on
“regression” and childhood “access” derives from the relatively flexible
psychic structures and identifications of children as compared to
adults.170
The “regression” that Adams defines is akin to the primary mirror stage. In
“always shows herself as the same character – the character of a young woman
170
Laurie Schneider Adams, as quoted in Leach, 30. Leach quoted Laurie Schneider Adams, Art and
Psychoanalysis (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994), 8-9.
171
Chadwick, ed., 8.
172
Adams, as quoted in Leach, 30.
173
Arthur C. Danto as quoted in Pierini, in Tejeda, ed., 40. Marco Pierini quoted Arthur C. Danto, “Darkness
Visible”, in The Nation, 15 November 2004.
174
Pierini, in Tejeda, ed., 21-22.
132
The “sameness” that Danto spoke of is not only that Woodman plays herself.175
She was a young, female photographer who photographed herself in the studio
and that is the role she played. She photographed moments imbued with the
narcissism.176
“intimate communion with the world” that she portrays.177 She is a character that
openness and creates a sense of intimacy between her and the viewer.
being a singular person to a person merged into a relationship with space and
objects. This is where the fabric of the world and the fabric of the body become
one, opening the definition of narcissism, to include the world around us. 178
Narcissism can mean more than the self – self is part of culture and Woodman
represents through her interactions with spaces and objects that the self is part
175
Danto, as quoted in Pierini, in Tejeda, ed., 21.
176
Chadwick, ed., 8.
177
Pierini in Tejeda, ed., 21-22.
178
ibid.,19.
133
Figure 4, Kim Connerton, Mirror Chair 2009, Figure 5, Kim Connerton, Mirror Chair,
2009
Woodman merges with the “fabric of the world” by standing on a mirror and
pressing her body into the wall in Fig. 6.179 In my most recent series Mirror
Chairs Fig. 4 and Fig. 5 the chairs are objects that are in the world yet canʼt be
sat on. Similarly the mirror in Self-Deceit #3, Fig. 6, is not functional either, since
and in Mirror Chairs support literal or photographic reflections of the artist, while
opening the definition of narcissism to include the world around us. In Mirror
Chairs the mirrors comprise all of the surfaces. They allow viewersʼ reflections to
be on the surface of the chair since the mirrors can absorb their reflections. As
179
ibid.
134
Woodmanʼs transformations are repeated visions but visions originating from
her inner world. She sourced these moments from her inner life and
transformed and reflected them in front of viewersʼ eyes. The invisible worlds
that Woodman made visible, such as the act of becoming one with the fabric of
Woodman did. To signal a retreat into the selfʼs inner world my eyes are closed.
that merges with the natural world. In Fig. 7 I lean into and touch flowers with my
face and hand. I stop and take a breath in a garden. I include Australian native
135
land that has become my home. Unlike Woodman I depict myself interacting
Viewers can see themselves reflected on the mirrorʼs surface while the
with their image in the mirror. Woodman and I both use mirrors in our
allow the viewer to be in the work by appearing on the surface of the mirror. The
mirror Woodman uses in Fig. 6 doesnʼt reflect the viewer, instead it signifies a
Looking at oneself in the mirror and the act of self-reflection are the basic tools
136
identifying with the non-identical.” 182 Listening, to herself and the world, is at the
flections “broaden our horizons” because she echoes our horizons for us to
ponder on.183
reflected a different facet was “dissolved in the light with the aim of reasserting a
in her photographs illustrates Merleau-Pontyʼs point that “the world and the body
are made of the same fabric” showing that narcissism does not necessarily
exclude the world, but the world is also reflected, alongside the self.
182
Leach, 130.
183
ibid.
184
Pierini in Tejeda, ed., 21-22.
137
Conclusion
…in the beginning, or at the core, at the essence of life, there are
excitations. Of themselves they are intensities, moments of potential that
accumulate and discharge themselves, moments of feeling both pleasure
and unpleasure.185
The feeling of love, as it expounds on the concepts of beauty and desire are
and reveal the libidinal drive that I now believe is integral to my work. Lingisʼ
insight extends the research I have done on Deleuze and Guattariʼs notions of
of erotic mimicry, desire, and beauty. However I will focus in the future,
I anticipate that examining the concepts of desire and beauty and developing
mimicry, homage and narcissism, which have been key concepts in this
138
artists such as Eva Hesse, Francesca Woodman, Marguerite Duras and Simone
de Beauvoir. I have chosen these artists and writers because they have had a
Each of the above artists depicts various acts of mimicry, while also exploring
a fictionalised element that will begin to explore erotic gestures. I will reconstruct
facilitate the production of environments that will investigate the viewer in the
space, which shifts the focus from the individual face-to-face relationship in my
overlapping bodies reflected in the space on the walls and in the video
and de Beauvoirʼs literature, their work and vivid imagery has become a part of
blurred in her decaying studio while her nude body disappears; of how Duras
described herself as a teenage girl waiting along the Mekong river with a
threadbare silk dress and silver lamé shoes; and about a character in de
139
The video projection I propose to make will mimic the desires I perceive in my
The memories will be distorted and changed to represent the most sensual
looped video projections will mimic the fleeting yet continuous nature of desire.
The video will exemplify this by illustrating brief scenes of human desire based
In this new work the viewer will be conceived as the “sensitive being” and the
“locus.” The role of homage will represent the self, which is extended by
immersed in. This field is similar to Merleau-Pontyʼs theory that the body is
My memories are the imprints of desire in this field, represented by the video
186
Lingis, “Philosophy and Phenomenological Research”, 168.
140
fleeting sensations a self has, rather than the relationships between the self
and other.
that I will not alter my appearance by wearing wigs or costumes. Additionally the
photographs or videos. The focus in the new work will be to explore myself in
the artists I have chosen to pay homage to, since the video endeavors to be
One of the work in the photographic and video series that continues this
Duras by reinterpreting a scene based on her book North China Lover. The
homage to Duras I am planning is immersive and abstract and will explore the
concepts of erotic mimicry, beauty and desire. The reference to Duras will be
indirect, as it will emulate a scene from her book rather than her persona. In the
photographs I will represent a man and a woman (me) filmed from behind. The
male figure introduces a new element into my work, since this will be the first
141
The woman will stand to the left and the man to the right as both look forward at
the ocean on a cool summer evening. It will be dusk and the figures in clear
view. Their shadows will be large on the sand that is underfoot and behind them.
The feeling will be one of possibility and it will be clear they are lovers. They
wonʼt touch and their faces will not be revealed at first. In several additional
photographs the man and womanʼs faces will be shot close-up while they look at
each other with the blinding light of the sunset in their eyes as the night
encroaches. The photographs will not be blurred but the faces may be distorted
because of the extreme light and close-up range. Only part of the faces, with
expressions that reveal fleeting desires, will be revealed, which is similar to the
elusive and fleeting subjectivity described in this thesis. The face will no longer
and Ono, yet it will still be an important element in my photography. Instead, the
Mirrors have played such an important role in my research and in the future I will
utilise them in a different way. The mirror will be the surface I will project the
video from this new series onto. The viewer will still appear on the mirrorʼs
However in the new video viewersʼ reflections will be on the mirrorʼs surface and
overlaid with the moving image of the projected video. Projecting the video on
the mirror will enlarge the image to encompass the entire gallery space, since
142
presence. Shadows from viewersʼ bodies will also be able to mingle with the
mirror, video and light of the projector in the dark space. The role of subjectivity
for the PhD. Woodman replicates her self and the world in her self-reflective
pictorial depictions of identity, which is this projectʼs core investigation, and also
play a role in the discovery that the changing cultural view of woman and its
Self/images in the 21st century represent women who have agency, in contrast
masquerade that was interchangeable with the many roles that one can play in
187
Leach, 130.
188
Riviere (1929).
143
society, which she depicted in her photography. The fact that Cahun performed
Although Cahunʼs work was largely forgotten until nearly fifty years ago she still
produced work that was progressive in the 1920s and 1930s while continuing to
states:
…it is nonetheless undeniable that Cahunʼs oeuvre, with its consistent play
with the instability of identity, its frequent deployment of masquerade, its
penchant for masks and mirrors, is startlingly close to the terms of
contemporary feminist thinking about identity, gender, and sexual
difference. Consequently, it requires almost more of an effort to resituate
Cahun in her actual time and milieu than it does to consider her work in the
context of contemporary theoretical formulations about femininity, identity,
and representation.189
Cahunʼs “play with the instability of identity” merges with contemporary self-
essay “Visual Pleasure and Visual Narrative”, she pointed out that the
Mulvey observed that men controlled the images of women in cinema, since it
189
Abigail Solomon-Godeau, “The Equivocal “I”: Claude Cahun as Lesbian Subject” in Rice, ed., Inverted
Odysseys, 114.
1
Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Visual Narrative”, as quoted in Amelia Jones, Self/Image, 47-48.
144
the filmic convention of representing women, which eventually facilitated the
depiction by and of women who had agency. The shifting role of women in
representation has also changed the power relationship between men and
depicted her subverting the male gaze and empowering the female gaze in her
performative self/images.
Moffatt and Sawada also empower the female gaze in their self/images. Both
Moffatt, in Fig. 2.13/14, and Sawada, in Fig. 2.17, represent their identities as
conventions of gender and identity. In the 1980s, Moffatt made photographs and
films that tore apart her multicultural identity so that she could be seen as more
arranged marriages in Omiai, 2001, Fig. 2.18. She photographed herself and
cultural obligation women do not want to adhere to. Sawada and Moffatt extend
their gender and cultural identity in their photographic self-portraits through their
role-plays.
191
Grosenick and Riemschneider, eds., 108-109.
145
Extending identity opens the self to the excitement and unlimited possibilities of
life. One of the main ways I extend my identity and the representation of women
order to demonstrate how my own persona has been affected by him. A crucial
also extends his identity in Gates of Tambo when he pays homage to Moffatt in
Moffattʼs self/images and the fact that he chose to highlight her importance to
Paying homage in a work of art is an act of love that facilitates the openness
The experience of love and the experience of art, which serve to solidify
the identificatory process, are the only ways in which we can maintain our
psychic space as a living system that is open to the other and capable of
adaptation and change.192
while being “open to the other and capable of adaptation and change”. In
192
Kristeva, as quoted in Leach, 212-213.
146
maintain his identity while being open to the influence of the other, in this
instance Moffatt.
I have enquired into how beauty and love are encapsulated in the moments
when one is alone with oneself. This is what I aimed for in Mirror Self-Portraits,
series and leads me in a new direction with my studio practice and research.
147
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156
List of Images for Examination
CD
Each artwork listed corresponds to the number on the CD.
8. Nico, 2009.
Dura-clear photograph, back-mounted with acrylic mirror,
face-mounted with clear perspex, 25 X 25 cm.
9. YokoPeace (the space between us), installation, First Draft Gallery, Sydney, 2008.
Shown in adjacent corners, 2 digital photographs printed on Ilford film gloss,
90 X 95 cm each and a photo object suspended from the ceiling, 2 separate photos
shown back-to-back, duraclear prints, acrylic mirror back-mount, clear perspex
front-mount, 83X45cm each.
157
11. YokoPeace (the space between us), installation view, First Draft Gallery,
Sydney, 2008.
12. YokoPeace (the space between us), installation view, First Draft Gallery,
Sydney, 2008.
13. YokoPeace (the space between us), installation view, First Draft Gallery,
Sydney, 2008.
14. YokoPeace (the space between us), installation view, First Draft Gallery,
Sydney, 2008.
DVD
158