Bad places and good people

How often do we hear tell that women should stay at home because the outside world is bad? Any place at all may be labelled bad, and hence, they shouldn’t set foot there. I think men in India sprout these value judgements only to control women’s movements, like putting them up on a pedestal they can’t get off of.

In the Indian social context, ‘bad’ is something the respectable and dignified should not associate with. Women brought up to hold ‘respectable’ and ‘dignified’ as high ideals must be, in other words, trusting and obedient to the controls set upon them. Few of these women ever question the word of their men folk, or cross the lakshmanrekha (invisible boundary) drawn for them. What can we do, we are only women, is the common refrain of their life-long dependency. 

One such bad place is the office of the Licencing Authority. And who inhabits these “bad places”? They are members of the bureaucracy, not rapists, paedophiles, and other criminal elements! Many women keep the driving licences they issue merely as trophies. These are never used, because the people on the roads in India are also bad. Neither have the women ever set foot on the office premises to get the licences. There are male ‘representatives’ to do that dirty work for them!

Well, I need to renew my licence, and so I head over to the office. On my way into the building, at least half a dozen touts clamour to “represent” me. Why, I ask each of them, do I look illiterate? I hardly need to hire somebody to buy the forms from a vendor and then to fill in my details! 

I complete the required medical formalities, and a few days later, I am ready to submit my application. I expect the process to get arduous here on. It is common knowledge that governmental institutions tend to be arbitrary in their dealings with the public, and their departments can shut down at any time before transactions complete. I am likely to have to make several visits to get it done, but so be it. It still seems worth doing for myself.

 

Back in front of the building, I see several young men approaching me, and wave them off. A few mutter that they have been unable yet to make boni (first catch), but I am certainly not feeling charitable. I march into the building and there seems to be a lot of people hurrying in different directions. I’m reminded that time is of essence.

I ask a policeman on duty where the papers will be received. He doesn’t quite know the process. But, Wait, he says, let us find out. Several young men around are eager to show off their knowledge, perhaps hoping to be called up for representation. He tells them sternly they had better be right or else! They indicate a certain window and I have to go around the building to get to it.

The man on the other side of this open window seems busy. As I wait for him to finish with what he already has on his hands, another scruffy young man walks up and pushes ahead of me to thrust a fresh bunch of applications through the window. I tap him on the shoulder. Am I really invisible to you? I enquire loudly. He grins a little sheepishly, and backs off.

But it turns out I am actually at the wrong window; this one is for payments only. My application details need to be checked first at another window open further along. A young man sits to one side at the counter desk in there. He looks up as I speak, and recites a list of supportive documents that must also be submitted in photocopy. I find I don’t have the appropriate address proof document with me, like passport, voter’s id, Bank passbook or statement.

I have a chequebook though, with my full address on it - will that serve purpose? The young man shakes his head, no. Ah well, I think resignedly, I’ll just have to come back tomorrow.  Just then, his senior arrives. What’s the problem, he asks. He listens and then says decisively, OK, just submit the first page in photocopy. His young assistant is surprised, but takes it in stride. Take care; don’t drop anything, he calls out as I hurry away to get the relevant copies before they change their minds!

The young man at the copiers frowns at the chequebook, and says that it won’t be accepted. They said so, I insist. Who said that, he asks, was it the man in the window? I nod. Very strange, he comments. It’s not the norm and they usually are very particular, he explains. But logically, why should it not be accepted? It is a legitimate document, after all! He shrugs, Sign the photocopy and submit it, see if it works. He photocopies all the documents I need and pins them together. Put the licence in a polythene cover and attach it at the top, so it won’t get lost, he advises. He points where the cover may be obtained.

The man in the window is a perfectionist. He doesn’t like the way I attached the licence to the application. He calls out to somebody and a small man appears beside me to do it right. My documents are then accepted without fuss. I’m told to make the payments. That means the other window for one payment quickly completed there. I am then directed to a third place for another payment.  I see a big crowd milling about outside, and only one window in operation. It looks to me my luck is running out, and I’m sure I won’t reach the counter before it closes today. Still, I join the queue and several people look around in surprise. I ask if that queue is for the payment I am supposed to make. Several heads shake in unison and several hands point to a room inside the building. 

Thankfully there are no crowds at the window inside.  I pay up and am handed the receipt. I head back to the receiving window, and submit all the various papers I have collected. The small man materializes again, and makes two sets of my papers  – one, to be received at the counter, and the other, my takeaways of receipts. These are now stamped on the reverse with the official seal of the Authority. Come back in 25 days, the young assistant says from the other side of the window. 

25 days? My question is how I am to manage without licence meanwhile. The senior smiles slightly, and points to the stamped paper he has just signed.  That’s enough to cover it, he says, but if you like you can put your photograph on it, and have it attested. That makes perfect sense to me, and accordingly, it happens. 25 days, I ask again to reconfirm. 15 days should do it, he replies, Come back then and check.

I am elated that I’m done in less than an hour. As I walk away, I wonder what is so bad here? Government offices may look seedy and run down, but the bureaucracy functions all right. They keep the country going. In fact, good people may be found at these socially condemned bad places that are really helpful to the public.

Seems to me that it is not they, but the ubiquitous representative culture of touts that overrun the place that are the problem. They are poorly educated young men socialized into speed money by the more privileged sections, and now it is their livelihood they protect. Indeed, it is their accosting anybody and everybody as a matter of course that gives the places the bad name. 

For too long, women have swallowed the value judgements men throw at them as gospel truth. They need to realize the truth, to be out and about, doing their own thing themselves. That does not take away from being respectable and dignified, rather it actually facilitates independence - and self-worth. It may be better for societal advancement for them to be less trusting of judgements, and less unquestioningly obedient!

Loudness is in the genes

The teenager I started to speak with, turned his head to stare at me. You’re too loud, he said, I don’t like loudness. Fair enough, I responded, dropping my voice to a stage whisper, does this work better for you? This was a family counselling session, and it seemed to me that the boy was habituated to pushing buttons. His intent may have been only to embarrass the adults, but his statement gave me food for thought. Perhaps, culturally we are indeed rather loud in this country. ‘Privacy’ hardly exists; even personal conversations tend to be broadcast to all and sundry.

 

 

It must be the result of social learning. But surely it didn’t happen in a day, and has been ingrained in us over generations. It shows up our cultural roots - the agrarian background, the traditional collectivism, and the societal divisions based on birth that has been the practice of our ancestors. Sharing everything within the biraderie (one’s own kind, family or caste) was common within these social groups. Their information pool grew as a result; it nurtured interpersonal ties, and gave the group the strength of unity. Social allegiances were inward, and the wellbeing of the community trumped that of individuals.

These bonds were routinely reinforced through various activities, especially those of religious festivals, whereby the entire community was able to come together. To be loud was to feel at home, included in the crowd. Entire villages grew around this biraderie of strong intra-group ties. People didn’t need to whisper; it was safe to holler across cultivation fields and large ponds. Where everybody was somehow related to everybody else, there were no secrets. 

Mostly for economic reasons, this scenario has changed today. Many village people migrate to the towns in search of work, and their own kind therein is minority, like small fish in big ponds. Still, the loud communicative patterns are carried forward from village to city. They may now own mobile phones, but they still holler in answer to phone-calls, unconsciously attempting to bridge distance between members, as in the past.

Loudness many also be a technique meant to establish some level of interpersonal positional authority. Parents and teachers do it to ensure compliance in children.  Age, in Indian traditions, is hugely respected, even if the difference is only of a few years. The form of address tends to change, in response to social perceptions. For instance, in Hindi, there are three distinct forms of address. Anybody a little older assumes the right to address younger people as ‘tum’ rather than ‘aap’. Amongst peers, the form is generally ‘tu’, which testifies to their mutual familiarity.

Although in cities, many diverse families house in close proximity, the loudness continues - albeit here, it is for a different reason. More people, more establishments and more vehicles lead to rising levels of white noise.  As a matter of course, people go up the scale to compensate for the hustle and bustle of everyday living. The loud to drown out ubiquitous external sounds. And, because we forget to adjust in more confined spaces, raised voices in ordinary conversations become normal, not an obvious sign of conflict.

Thus, loudness must be embedded in our genes. For women in a patriarchal society, however, loudness is new learned behaviour of social assertiveness, a measure to protect their comparatively new self-dependence. Through generations, men have had tacit social sanction to shout at their mothers, wives, sisters and daughters. Women, perceived as second-class citizens, are thus dominated verbally, and sometimes much more. Any man on the street, unwilling to change with the times, and considering himself superior to women, would expect similar subservience from them. Women now need to be loud to ensure that boundaries are kept, and they are not aggressed upon. Being shouted at by a woman in public is extremely shaming for the Indian male! 

Culturally, we are loud, but our communications are faulty, since the collectivistic element of our heritage is almost lost. A new togetherness has not been built with the diverse city elements; rather the traditional concept of the biraderie diminishes. The extended ‘family’ of yore has been left by the wayside. The social universe grows smaller, and we hardly know who lives next door. We routinely become members of various social groups, but our allegiances to them are tenuous. 

The outcomes of public arguments may depend on the vocal strength of each side, as is often clearly proved with our state and union parliament representatives - members rush into the well of the House, shout slogans, and so on, to crank up the decibels. They need to understand that mere loudness is hardly the substance of good, communicative governance! Similarly, our inherited speech patterns need reexamination too, if we want others to actively listen to our words of wisdom.

Drives on Kolkata roads

For the past so many months, my focus has been the roads of Kolkata, and driving on them myself. The need to improve spatial orientation was the motivation. What better way to know directions than actually discover the routes to different places myself? Bad idea, said family and friends, no sane person drives in this city. Well, then, I reasoned, since my sanity is so often questioned, perhaps I am indeed appropriately equipped to do so! Moreover, they told me frankly and kindly, an old dog can’t learn new tricks. So of course I felt goaded to try my hand at it! Truth is, the learning has been intense.    

 
In Kolkata, value is on size. The hierarchy on the roads is based on this parameter – from the pedestrian to two-, three-, four-wheelers and so on. Within each category of vehicle then, class matters. A luxury SUV, for example, scores over a small economical car. Yes, big assumes ascendancy, and their association with masculinity is strong. The car model I choose is for a minimal carbon footprint, and to better maneuver the narrow lanes and bylanes of the city, with their problems of parking space. However, it automatically relegates me to the low end of the scale, and raises social expectations of my giving way to those hierarchically superior.

It is common knowledge in this region that women have no affinity for things mechanical. Most believe that they cannot drive because of gender, and men have learnt to patronize them when they do. Women that want to get behind the wheel must expect to be put down or intimidated by the majority on the roads. They must take in stride the standard received wisdom yelled out to them: like, get a driver, or go home and cook, sister-in-law!
 

 

Random males I have encountered around the city, whether casual bystanders or themselves drivers, have presumed this ‘natural’ gender superiority. Many modern husbands are unsupportive of their wives driving, unable, they say, to bear the tension of them being out on the road. Many women in turn, prefer to remain within the bounds of their gilded cages. Those that can drive rarely venture out at peak traffic hours, or to areas unknown, and never drive heavier vehicles. Perhaps all this is to keep away from any public confrontation with men.

I put it down to family traditions being carried forward. It is customary for families to await the coming of sons rather than daughters. The production of an heir makes it easier on the mother. Else, her childbearing days do not end; the husband feels less of a man, and she is blamed for it. Mothers that suffer extreme low self-esteem, are hard on their daughters, but pamper their sons. From early childhood itself, girls are taught to wait on their brothers or any male visitor that happens along. They pick up after the little emperors that grow up expecting right of way and gender deference from all women. But, due to changing times and the disobedience of modern women, wishes are left unfulfilled and anxiety becomes generic.

 

Seems to me that the point is performance anxiety, rather than insanity on Kolkata roads. The women fear being judged in public, and Indian men are stricken with the irrational drive to get there first. The mad rush is to be on and off before anybody else. On trains and airplanes, they will block the aisles simply to prevent others from getting ahead of them. Even in a queue, it is usual to cut in before any woman that happens to be there, as she is unlikely to protest. They must impose, though ask them why and they probably have no answer. 

The same prevails while driving. The men driving bigger cars, taxis, trucks or even passenger buses, are in too much of a hurry getting to destinations they know not where to mind the traffic rules. Cutting past as the lights turn red or before they are green is rife. My car has been bumped and scraped several times just for being in the way. They hit and they run. If unable to escape, they invoke the ineptitude of women as the obvious cause of the accident. The police are seldom around and when they are on hand, they seem too preoccupied to notice or take action against them. The victim must find the nearest police station to report the matter, file a case to fight out in court, and deal with the insurance claims thereafter. In terms of time, money and effort, getting redressal is a Herculean task. Hence, it is futile to argue; the perpetrators get away scot-free, which they count on. 

It is true that driving in Kolkata is dicey. Roads are frequently wide enough for only one lane of cars to pass either way. Often cars parked on the sides have to be negotiated around, whilst being hounded by some impatient tailgater. Initially, it is scary to be on the road, because other vehicles pass so close. They are just inches away - sometimes deliberately, to force the less experienced off track, and women out of this assumed male bastion of roads.

However, as a wise veteran driver told me, everybody is afraid of failure, not just women behind the wheel. Socially at the receiving end, women have traditionally tended forge special bonds with their sons in private. This has been their investment for their future - to dominate their sons’ lives from behind the scenes, backseat driving. 

This behaviour pattern needs to change, and they need to self-actualize with their own abilities. In fact, on these roads, women drivers are forced out of their shells of social inhibition. This is the positive outcome, I experience. One gradually discovers method in the madness, and learns patterns of intent.

 

Women need to realize their adaptability to fluid situations through mastering two-, three- and four-wheelers. They need to get in the driver’s seat, to rely on their strengths of purpose to raise their self-esteem. They need to break the traditional mould and storm the male stronghold as it were, and drive themselves forward rather than be driven backseat. The process would enable them to increase visibility, to step out in numbers to create a stronger, more confident group presence in public.

Why naked and ashamed

Mention ‘modern art’, and many of us might think vaguely of abstract sculptures and paintings that make little sense. Mention ‘erotic art’, and we immediately tune in to expect nude or semi-nude studies. The association of this branch of art with sexuality is strong. In the context of male and female identity development, the imagery could play an important socializing role. However, the focus of the artworks seems to be majorly on the sexual domination of gender instead.

A person’s sexuality would depend on their acceptance of the self, and their coming to terms with feelings and emotions generated in growing up. Knowledge about gender orientations, and acceptance of related social roles and responsibilities are a crucial part of the developmental process. The understanding helps young people become balanced, well-adjusted members of society. Thence, all of creation may be perceived living, breathing works of art. Male and female elements of Nature interact with the environment, secure in their own type of sexuality.

Erotic art imagery exalts nakedness. Nothing wrong with that really, since eroticism relates to arousing or being affected by sexual love or desire. The word originates in Eros, the name of the Greek god of love. Hence, the expression of desire should of course include love. In the present age, however, cynicism has crept in, and love is forgotten. Modernity seems to jump straight into sex instead. 

Erotic art has been made the product of male sexual fantasy. The function of the female form is the sexual service of men. Sculptures and paintings, developed in the West from the nineteenth century onwards, draw attention to the female anatomy thus sexualized.  Women are defined by the 3 b’s – breasts, buttocks, and belly. The artworks build upon the presumption that the modern fertility goddess aches to be touched.

To all intentions, they may as well be mindless and faceless objects. In the essay, Eroticism and Female Imagery in Nineteenth-Century Art, Linda Nochlin writes: 

Whether the erotic object be breast or buttocks, shoes or corsets, a matter of pose or of prototype, the imagery of sexual delight or provocation has always been created about women for men’s enjoyment, by men.

The art seems replete with the subtle derogation of gender. In their imagery, women are props, devoid of individual identity. Consequently, active word associations with them are weak, passive, and sexually available. The exploitation of women within the composition and beyond are just part of the process culture created.

The point of erotic art is ownership – by men, of women. John Berger (quoted in Nochlin's essay) explains the trend that originated in Europe:

She is painted with extreme sensuous emphasis. Yet her sexuality is only superficially manifest in her actions or her own expression … The painting’s sexuality is manifest not in what it shows but in the owner-spectator’s (mine in this case) right to see her naked. Her nakedness is not a function of her sexuality but of the sexuality of those who have access to the picture. In the majority of European nudes there is a close parallel with the passivity which is endemic to prostitution.

Women’s personas are preyed upon, as willing or unwilling actors in the ongoing fantastical narrative of male sexual liberties. Men as a group have the power to enjoy the woman’s innocence, her vulnerability and her inability to protest her plight. Almost in the same vein, women artists themselves are deprecated. They are better known for their external relationships than their intrinsic talent. Naked and ashamed might sum up women’s social subordination in erotic art, and underscore their now characteristic low esteem. 

Nochlin however, appears to blame women rather than men for the situation. She writes:

This is, of course, not the result of some calculated plot on the part of men, but merely a reflection in the realm of art of woman’s lack of her own erotic territory on the map of nineteenth-century reality. Man is not only the subject of all erotic predicates, but the customer for all erotic products as well, and the customer is always right. Controlling both sex ad art, he and his fantasies conditioned the world of erotic imagination as well. Thus there seems to be no conceivable outlet for the expression of women’s viewpoint in nineteenth-century art, even in the realm of pure fantasy.  

No calculated plot? I would beg to differ. Patriarchy has been a social imposition all around the world from an earlier time no longer in memory. Not a bloody revolution, this was a slow, cultural assimilation that wiped off all trace of gender equality. The women's erotic territory that existed, suffered hostile takeover. 

The invasion of the social psyche has been insidious. The organization of community life institutionalized the dominance, and further, conditioned women into becoming the carriers of the culture. The projection of shame has been the most effective weapon to keep them in line and off-balanced, since the days of Eve. Individual men may distance from the perspective, but as a group, they do precious little to fix what, from the male viewpoint, does not seem broken. It is far more expedient to patronize the victim. 

The imagery used carries forward the culture. Which would women viewers identify with - the male perspective, or the low self-esteem? Either way, the patriarchal dominance continues. Women need to find new inspiration, to build a new perspective for the future free of objectification. Perhaps women artists could set a new trend to break the patriarchal stranglehold on their group. Naked is fine in erotic art – as long as the representative women own their sexuality with pride, not in shame, nor in service. 

Reference for this post:

Nochlin, Linda. “Women, Art, and Power and Other Essays”. ISBN 0-06-430183-4 (pbk.) Icon Editions. Westview Press, USA & UK. 1989.

Blessed to be born female?

Georgia O’Keefe’s early twentieth century paintings of the Black Iris flower are more readily perceived as her metaphoric preoccupation with female genitalia. It seems to me that the Nature worshipping era of the remote past would have instead perceived spirituality in her artworks. They would have definitely been taken to denote the awesome fertility powers of the Mother Goddess. However, since Freudian interpretations of sexuality impacted social knowledge, connotative associations appear to be grasped first in the global forum.   

Remnant artifacts of Nature worship have been found from the Indus Valley civilization of ancient India dated thousands of years before Christ. Several nations of the Asian sub-continent, independent in present day, share this common heritage. Excavations ongoing mainly in two countries, India and Pakistan, at Mohenjodaro, Harappa and other places, have so far uncovered only a small percentage of the buried cultural wealth. But, although the hieroglyphics of the time have not yet been deciphered, surely the art forms discovered there can tell a story of the time! They could give us an inkling of the stark social differences of mindset and value regarding gender, past to present.  

Various objects made and used by the people have been discovered. Many figurines of the artwork found have accentuated breasts and pelvis. Does this mean women were objectified then as now? No, say the fact-finders, the exaggerations are symbolic. They represent divinity, not humans - the cult of the Mother Goddess, the Earth Mother or Nature – and invoke attributes of bounty of the deity. Made of clay or terracotta, they show kinship with Earth. 

A website collecting historical information about deities explains the point:

As significant and suggestive is her iconography - the large breasts filled with milk, uncovered genital organs, beautifully dressed hair and a good number of bangles on her wrists. This is the iconic perception of the Being who bears, feeds, takes all calamities on her head and covers the born one under her protective umbrella and, at the same time, defines in the modeling of her form an absolute aesthetic beauty. As suggest her bangles, the traditional emblem of marital state, besides a mother she is also a consort. Thus, in her material manifestation, She represents, with absolute motherhood, also the absolute womanhood. She causes life and sustains it, and is also the cause of life, its inspiration and aspiration, and the reason to live.

Social demarcations would thus have dual levels to span the universe – the gods that live in the heavens, and humans on earth, descendent from them or fallen, stripped of powers. A saying in India, that what is fine for the gods is not fine for mortals, reminds the humans of their ultimate fallibility. And that the all-powerful divine beings need to be worshipped for appeasement and blessings, because the humans are too puny to manage on their own against harsh reality.

In this ancient Indian context, the female form has spiritual and religious significance. Because of the association with divine functions, women most likely enjoyed a high position in society. Perhaps to be born female was to be blessed! It is a distinct possibility that matriarchy, which now exists in pockets around the country, was far more pervasive. A ritual originating in fertility rites that to this day  initiates Hindu image worship, is the ghot puja. It is an earthenware pot filled with water and inscribed with a figure in vermilion, which symbolizes the pregnant womb. It invokes the Mother Goddess. The traditional Indian reverence for the mother figure may have its roots therein as well. 

By the third millennium BCE, the people of Indus Valley had learned to cast in metal. The bronze Dancing Girl is the most famous amongst the human and animal artifacts found. The difference from the Mother Goddess is immediately apparent - she lacks the physical exaggerations. Perhaps a little crude in face and limb technically, the statuette nevertheless indicates the status of women of the time. A quote from British archaeologist, Mortimer Wheeler, describes its form and feature:

There is her little Baluchi-style face with pouting lips and insolent look in the eye. She's about fifteen years old I should think, not more, but she stands there with bangles all the way up her arm and nothing else on. A girl perfectly, for the moment, perfectly confident of herself and the world. There's nothing like her, I think, in the world.  

Indeed, attitude is immediately apparent in the body language. The pose – the hand on hip, the cocked stance, the lifted chin, the half-closed eyes, and the slanted look exude the impudence and comfort in skin hard to find amongst women today. Some writers suggest that the figurine is transgender. It is interesting to think, in extension, that gender may not have always been the divisive social issue it is at present. Identifying as female, in the image of the divine, may well have been totally acceptable in society.

Her nudity makes no difference to our appreciation of the artwork. Perhaps we notice it only because we belong to a different era, socialized into a different value system. Maybe in the early times, women were unused to suffering body issues! In remote regions of India, in tribes isolated from the mainstream to preserve their ancient culture, nakedness is their way of life. Jarawa women, for instance, may be more comfortable in the natural than many more civilized others might be fully clothed!

During the age of Nature worship, the people lived in awe of the environment. The power of the Goddess was perceived in every creation in the environment, and they bowed in reverence. Their imagery has been in celebration of the Divine. Against the spiritual backdrop, it is no surprise that temple art - rock carvings and cave paintings - are pretty explicit on the bountiful attributes of Nature.  

From there and then to here and now, how the perspective has changed! We expect that we control the environment today; hence we patronize the past. In the process, we tend to lose awareness of the sociocultural context of the age - and the artistic intent. Women, as a group, are habitually objectified. I remember overhearing some tourists a while ago. Eyes gleaming, the young men conversed raucously about the full figure displays of chicks in the temple artworks. It is not the fault of the artists but of particular sociocultural learning that perceptions of gender channel as they do. 

Must they be ugly?

I never really considered a social context to art before.  Artists idealize gods or royalty, create something incomprehensible or objectify sexuality. At least, it so seemed in my experience. A friend recently passed on to me Linda Nochlin’s collection of essays that I initially looked at only to be polite. But then some insights caught attention - the social power of gender portrayed in and through art.

Nochlin’s focus is the social status of women - or rather the lack of it - depicted in the structure and theme of the artworks. She investigates images painted by both male and female artists in the West, between 18-20^th centuries. It is interesting to note that in the art world as in any other organization, for female workers, the glass ceiling is imminent, among other things. Their being out of sight, so to speak, makes no difference!

In the essay Women, Art and Power, Nochlin writes:

… representations of women in art are founded upon and serve to reproduce indisputably accepted assumptions held by society in general, artists in particular and some artists more than others about men’s power over, superiority to, difference from, and necessary control of women, assumptions which are manifested in the visual structures as well as the thematic choices of the pictures in question.

Her sentences sometimes feel a sea of words, and I cannot claim to have understood all pronouncements of the book, but some perceptions make absolute sense. She points out how prevailing social contexts have strongly influenced the artists. Their works reflect the thought and guidelines of behaviour in the society of the times. These notions appear as subtext in the pictures about women and by women.

 

 

In the eighteenth century, assumptions about women being the secondary sex were clearly stronger than they are now. Women were conditioned to prefer death to defying conventions. Gender was objectified in art as in all aspects of everyday life, and so was class and race. The hierarchical divisions were rigid, immovable. For instance, a painting of honourable British women in colonial India during the sepoy mutiny, entitled In Memoriam, portrays them heroic in the face of danger. How so? The women do nothing at all to survive, but properly await their fate.

Nochlin explains:

Now there are at least two discourses articulated in this image. One is the overt story of heroic British ladies and their children during the Sepoy mutiny, fortifying themselves with prayer as they are about to be assaulted by savage, and presumably lustful, natives. The other discourse, less obvious, is the patriarchal and class-defined one which stipulates the appropriate behaviour for the lady, and it implies that no lady will ever unsex herself by going so far as to raise a hand in physical violence, even in defense of her children.

She says that the original image, considered too graphic for the delicate sensibilities of the upper crust Victorian society, had to be painted over with the Scottish rescuers appearing at left replacing the “presumably lustful” Indian rebels! 

For eons, respectability for women has meant the confines of home and family. Women are honourable in the community as long as they are weak, passive, nurturing and domesticated, available for the needs of their husbands, and with no real needs of their own except to be of service to preserve the social order. Women artists have been hard-pressed to find acceptability and self-expression outside the entrenched social rules. They have had to be subtle in their approach; else risk caricature. Case in point, Nameless and Friendless by Emily Mary Osborn in the nineteenth century that describes in more than a thousand words the plight of women in the harsh reality of the time.

The young woman artist/model, stepping outside the home, possibly facing hard times yet unwilling to lose her dignity, is nevertheless subject to keen male scrutiny and condescension, both for her person and her work. It is surprising that, despite this painting of 1857 being created by woman herself, it was described in a 1970 art publication as Gentlewoman reduced to dependence upon her brother’s art. Perhaps the standard received wisdom carried forward is that women are incapable of creativity. The female artist too must adhere to that social norm and deny talent to her female model...but does she?

The slightest aggression amongst women or other signs of being unsexed would banish them from the respectable class, and put them beyond the pale of ‘normal’ or ‘human’. Women social activists have thus been portrayed as poor, ugly, demonic rabble-rousers, destroyers of the social fabric. It would seem that these social have-nots strive, in frustration rage, to reverse proper power equations. Apparently, the mere attempt at being a change agent renders a woman certifiably insane! 

Some women artists of earlier times have adhered to the popular myth in their creations. Perhaps, riding the traditional bandwagon has been the only way for them to survive in the man’s world. Sadly in the process, they do themselves and their own representative group no service, because the association renders capable women untouchable - poor, mad and ugly – and open to derision. 

 

Many closet feminists suffer emotional pain in private at their own public obeisance to gender inequality. Unable to cross the invisible social barrier, they confess cloying the deception to the pages of their personal journals. In an essay on the works of Florine Stettheimer, Nochlin quotes a telling poem written by the artist and poet, but published only after her death:

Occasionally

A human being

Saw my light

Rushed in

Got singed

Got scared

Rushed out

Called fire

Or it happened

He tried to extinguish it

Never did a friend

Enjoy it

The way it was

So I learned to

Turn it low

Turn it out

When I meet a stranger---

Out of courtesy

I turn on a soft

Pink light

Which is found modest

Even charming

It is a protection

Against wear

And tears

And when

I am rid of

The-Always-To-Be-Stranger

I turn on my light

And become myself. 

Ah, yes, on the other side of the world in India as well, feminine initiative is traditionally discouraged. This image of assertive women being dark and disorderly has endured through mythological epics created over two and a half millennia ago. Durga, the sylvan deity, is the epitome of beauty and grace as wife and mother. But in her role as the warrior goddess Kali, she is depicted as so frighteningly bloodthirsty and uncontrollable that few women would want to identify with her fearsome (outcast) image or be inspired to action. Of course, only the intervention of husband Shiva, shames her into remembering her place, and brings the Kali fighting evil outside back home to her senses!

The at best patronizing attitudes to women and women’s work have resisted change in many parts of the world. Women must think, feel and act exactly as males at home or in society decide for them, or else. In social fundamentalism even today, women and girls seeking education or employment have been brutalized, defaced by acid, shot, raped and murdered; punished for transgressing some gender role or dress code dreamed up by men to reiterate authoritarianism. 

It is more than time to rectify this demeaning outlook. Many women artists have used deconstruction techniques to make their point, to expose and deny the standard received concepts of beauty. Hannah Hoch’s Pretty Girl is an intriguing photo-collage from, I believe, the 1920s. This woman artist was earlier considered marginal, but it seems to me that her bold perspective and courageous rejection of the pervasive patriarchal order puts her far ahead of her time.

Nochlin writes:

Pretty Girl is in part a savagely funny attack on mass-produced standards of beauty, the narcissism stimulated by the media to keep women unproblematically self-focused. At the same time, the collage allegorizes the arbitrarily constructed quality of all representations of beauty: the “pretty girl” of the title is clearly a product assembled from products …

I must confess that as a very ordinary spectator, my unconscious search has been for aesthetic harmony in art images. I remember once visiting a photo-art exhibition in USA in the late 1990s. I forget both theme and name of artist, but it seemed an ugly, unabashedly cynical display of larger-than-life male genitalia. Possibly I was both naïve and prudish that I found the pictures off-putting, although other viewers appeared unfazed. I thought it a deliberate intent to elicit reaction, which I found repugnant. Was it necessary to assault the senses to draw attention? I took it as narcissism hidden behind the right to freedom of expression, laziness in actually harnessing creativity, and a banking on gender to carry the work.

Nochlin’s essays push me, the reader, to rethink my own premises. Definitely there are thought-provoking aspects to art I overlooked before. I wonder today if I did that phallic photographer a disservice in my negativity. There might have been a social comment in the work that escaped me. Perhaps the artist attempted to shock viewers into a conscious awareness of the effects of overindulgence. The graphic images might actually have highlighted the increasing social preoccupation with the pursuit of pleasure in developed society. That technology scales new heights, but the minds of men remain entrenched in overt, self-absorbed and even deviant sexuality… I don’t know, maybe…  


Reference for this post:

Nochlin, Linda. "Women, Art, and Power and Other Essays". ISBN 0-06-430183-4 (pbk.) Icon Editions. Westview Press USA & UK. 1989.