...[Philip] Monk proposed that, for the new art in Toronto at least, while representation can lead to action rather than to the mere contemplation allowed by formalist modernism, it is nevertheless only women artists who, in Monk's estimation, have shown a genuine and authoritative acquisition of representation and all that this slippery term means. [...] "The lines of difference," Monk wrote, "…are really between a passive resignation and melancholy despair, pessimism, nihilism and decadence on the one hand and the sense of the possibility of action on the other." Men, Monk insists, have given themselves over to a romantic yearning for aesthetic unity, to dreams of a fallen wholeness, to a longing for heroism; men he says, are basically expressionists. It is women who hold sway over meaningful representation." ...from "Reading Philip Monk: Analysing a complex and controversial theory about Canadian art and artists," by Gary Michael Dault in Canadian Art, Winter/December 1984, Volume 1, Number 2, p.70-73. To read the whole article, go to the Canadian Art website
Wow...cool, eh? So controversial. I wonder, is this when Philip Monk allegedly jumped the shark? I applaud Canadian Art for putting up these old articles, very helpful to anyone like me obsessed with recent Canadian art history. I spent the 2nd half of the 80s in art school in Nova Scotia. I remember Philip Monk came to give a lecture and showed slides of paintings by Joanne Tod. I liked them. I was painting at the time, and being told by staff and fellow students in no uncertain terms that I (in my self-referrential irony) was making "boy" art, and that I had to "realise that women make a different kind of work." I can still feel the flush of weird inarticulated frustration that came over me in the face of these statements. And it was kind of true, at least in the context of the painting department at my school. The only people who related to my projects were guys: faculty like Gary Neil Kenedy, who was supportive and bemused, and fellow students who were themselves tied up in knots about the impossiblity of meaning, the death of painting, and such spirals of despair. Monk's statement (as filtered through Dault) sounds preposterous, but I feel like I know something of what he meant. While venturing into ironic or self-referential territory got me slaps on the wrist from other females (the laden scrawl, "Clever girl" written in the comment book of my graduating show still stings), I was still less boxed in, and had more generative scope to play with signs and signifiers than my male fellows.
Clever girl? During a show of mine (called Retail) someone wrote "Smart money, you clever Betty".
Are you saying this isn't a compliment? My perky view of my tiny perfect universe could crumble under the weight of this revision.
You also bring back memories of so many incoherent and tyrannical 80's art ideologies. Art schools are ground zero, those investigations by students in any unacceptable direction must be corrected. (fortunately during that period, I was constantly shit-faced and popping dexedrine, so if anything should still sting me, I just can't remember)
"Are you saying this isn't a compliment?" ...I could construe it as a compliment but I know who wrote it and...no. I think in the 80s there was still this lingering construct that women were "of the body" and not so cerebral. The idea seems really quaint from this vantage point, but the damage persists. I still get hives around andy kind of art using dresses, even though some of it, like Lois Andison, is really good.
How did you feel about Jana Sterbak's meat dress? (I was jealous, I wish I had done it, though faced with some of the viciousness that it attracted, I would have crumbled into a snivelling heap)
Howdy!
For what it is worth, the link is:
http://www.canadianart.ca/20years/cowi1984.cfm
Baseball Sucks!
thank you Zeke!
I remember the day I read that piece twenty years ago as if it were yesterday - I was totally down with a bad cold and somebody brought me some mags to look at in between doses of neo citron and coughing spasms. I'll never be able to think of that article, or even that whole issue of Canadian Art without thinking about phlegm!
I can't sort out the meat dress from the meat dress controversy. I LOVED the meat dress controversy...so entertaining! General public in an outrage, "You could keep 4 starving children alive for 2 and a half weeks with that steak! (providing they're not fussy eaters)." High culture types peeking over the ramparts of the ivory art gallery, wringing their lilywhite hands in paralysed distrait, "The ignorant masses have noticed us! Divert them quickly! Toss them some Archie comix or shiny baubles!" Meanwhile the dress dries out and for some reason doesn't smell bad. I never understood that. Was it part of Sterbak's art plan to have it get all leathery-looking, or was the project only really 'alive' in the initial stages when a model was wearing fresh wet meat?
More on meat dress. It's actually called "Vanitas: Flesh Dress for an Albino Anorectic." The image on the left above is how the work is typically presented. The image on the right is more like how it looked when I saw it. The nutty thing is that this image is a painting of the work, by an effusive fan, John Schuerman, who saw the work at the Walker in Minneapolis, and has a fun review posted here, that includes the quote:
A friend's response upon my asking was an immediate, "Gross! But its good art." Gross and good are primitive concepts which cannot be explained by other, more basic words. They are labels for human primal responses. (For example gross follows from that bleaaahh feeling in your gut.)
I loved the public controversy too. What creeped me out was hearing about the real hate mail that the gallery, curator and artist received. The kind of letters that you handle with tweezers just in case they need to be dusted for finger prints.
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Wow...cool, eh? So controversial. I wonder, is this when Philip Monk allegedly jumped the shark? I applaud Canadian Art for putting up these old articles, very helpful to anyone like me obsessed with recent Canadian art history. I spent the 2nd half of the 80s in art school in Nova Scotia. I remember Philip Monk came to give a lecture and showed slides of paintings by Joanne Tod. I liked them. I was painting at the time, and being told by staff and fellow students in no uncertain terms that I (in my self-referrential irony) was making "boy" art, and that I had to "realise that women make a different kind of work." I can still feel the flush of weird inarticulated frustration that came over me in the face of these statements. And it was kind of true, at least in the context of the painting department at my school. The only people who related to my projects were guys: faculty like Gary Neil Kenedy, who was supportive and bemused, and fellow students who were themselves tied up in knots about the impossiblity of meaning, the death of painting, and such spirals of despair. Monk's statement (as filtered through Dault) sounds preposterous, but I feel like I know something of what he meant. While venturing into ironic or self-referential territory got me slaps on the wrist from other females (the laden scrawl, "Clever girl" written in the comment book of my graduating show still stings), I was still less boxed in, and had more generative scope to play with signs and signifiers than my male fellows.
- sally mckay 12-12-2004 3:48 am
Clever girl? During a show of mine (called Retail) someone wrote "Smart money, you clever Betty".
Are you saying this isn't a compliment? My perky view of my tiny perfect universe could crumble under the weight of this revision.
You also bring back memories of so many incoherent and tyrannical 80's art ideologies. Art schools are ground zero, those investigations by students in any unacceptable direction must be corrected. (fortunately during that period, I was constantly shit-faced and popping dexedrine, so if anything should still sting me, I just can't remember)
- L.M. 12-12-2004 10:06 pm
"Are you saying this isn't a compliment?" ...I could construe it as a compliment but I know who wrote it and...no. I think in the 80s there was still this lingering construct that women were "of the body" and not so cerebral. The idea seems really quaint from this vantage point, but the damage persists. I still get hives around andy kind of art using dresses, even though some of it, like Lois Andison, is really good.
- sally mckay 12-12-2004 10:59 pm
How did you feel about Jana Sterbak's meat dress? (I was jealous, I wish I had done it, though faced with some of the viciousness that it attracted, I would have crumbled into a snivelling heap)
- L.M. 12-12-2004 11:16 pm
Howdy!
For what it is worth, the link is:
http://www.canadianart.ca/20years/cowi1984.cfm
Baseball Sucks!
- Zeke (guest) 12-13-2004 3:00 am
thank you Zeke!
- sally mckay 12-13-2004 4:10 am
I remember the day I read that piece twenty years ago as if it were yesterday - I was totally down with a bad cold and somebody brought me some mags to look at in between doses of neo citron and coughing spasms. I'll never be able to think of that article, or even that whole issue of Canadian Art without thinking about phlegm!
- J at simpleposie (guest) 12-13-2004 8:04 pm
I can't sort out the meat dress from the meat dress controversy. I LOVED the meat dress controversy...so entertaining! General public in an outrage, "You could keep 4 starving children alive for 2 and a half weeks with that steak! (providing they're not fussy eaters)." High culture types peeking over the ramparts of the ivory art gallery, wringing their lilywhite hands in paralysed distrait, "The ignorant masses have noticed us! Divert them quickly! Toss them some Archie comix or shiny baubles!" Meanwhile the dress dries out and for some reason doesn't smell bad. I never understood that. Was it part of Sterbak's art plan to have it get all leathery-looking, or was the project only really 'alive' in the initial stages when a model was wearing fresh wet meat?
- sally mckay 12-14-2004 12:51 am
More on meat dress. It's actually called "Vanitas: Flesh Dress for an Albino Anorectic." The image on the left above is how the work is typically presented. The image on the right is more like how it looked when I saw it. The nutty thing is that this image is a painting of the work, by an effusive fan, John Schuerman, who saw the work at the Walker in Minneapolis, and has a fun review posted here, that includes the quote:
- sally mckay 12-14-2004 1:22 am
I loved the public controversy too. What creeped me out was hearing about the real hate mail that the gallery, curator and artist received. The kind of letters that you handle with tweezers just in case they need to be dusted for finger prints.
- L.M. 12-14-2004 6:39 am
- tom moody 12-14-2004 12:02 pm