The Slave Narrativessusan Hamlinthe Art of Historical Detection
Confronting Our Will: Sexual Trauma in American Art Since 1970
Vivien Green Fryd
University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019; 368 pp.; 29 color illus.; 65 b/w illus.; Hardcover: $49.95 (ISBN: 9780271082066)
Included in the introduction to Vivien Light-green Fryd'south new book, Against Our Will: Sexual Trauma in American Art Since 1970, is a respond the author received in response to a query she posted on an academic listserv, one that in my view reflects both the necessity of her project and its originality every bit a work of scholarship. While in the early on stage of research into the topic of sexual violence in art, Fryd asked members of the listserv for suggestions of artists who have addressed rape or sexual trauma in their work. One person responded with what reads as dismay: "What has art history come to that you would want to write about a topic like this?" (8). While such a comment may seem myopic in the current climate of #MeToo, Fryd makes articulate that this answer was non an isolated incident. She writes, "Although some agree that the project is long overdue, a number of my interlocutors, whether art historians, scholars in other fields, or not-academics, take expressed surprise and sometimes distress over what they perceive to be an unusual and disturbing scholarly endeavor" (8). The fact that Fryd started working on this book virtually sixteen years ago, and that it was published inside just months of Nancy Princenthal's book, Unspeakable Acts: Women, Fine art, and Sexual Violence in the 1970s (Thames & Hudson, 2019), reveals the urgency of the subject of art and sexual violence, as well equally its demands (both scholarly and emotional) on those who face up it. Instead of request, "What has art history come up to?" nosotros might await to Fryd and the artists at the center of her book to assistance us re-envision the role that fine art can play in the current #MeToo movement and other efforts to raise awareness of the pervasiveness of rape and incest within American civilisation. Indeed, anyone committed to social justice as an artistic and scholarly endeavor volition find much to larn from Fryd's methodology and, possibly most importantly, from her voice as a scholar and a survivor of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Although she does not mention socially engaged art history equally information technology has emerged within the last decade or and so, I would argue that Fryd's book is instructive for art historians interested in using scholarship equally a form of activism.i, https://doi.org/10.24926/24716839.2271).] In her detailed historical analysis of feminist art that addresses sexual violence, Fryd urges us to take seriously the touch of all forms of sexual violence on our society, while encouraging us to consider how art might serve as a source for constructive public dialogue and even a catalyst for alter.
In addition to sharing her own goals for this project, Fryd begins her volume with a brief overview of the scholarship on the bailiwick of rape in art and culture.2 She situates her assay of art and sexual violence within a feminist art historical framework, beginning with feminist art historians' critique of and then-called heroic rape imagery. Heroic rape imagery, Fryd writes, "elided the reality of the concrete violation of women in order to produce spectacles of pleasure that also involve hurting and forbidden desire" (4). In dissimilarity to this creative expression of patriarchal violence, the women in Fryd's account (men do contribute to this history, but the majority of the artists in Against Our Will are women) challenged, and continue to challenge, idealized representations of rape so familiar to students of Western European fine art history, such as Nicolas Poussin's The Rape of the Sabine Women (c. 1637–38; Louvre) or Titian's The Rape of Europa (1560–62; Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum). In dissimilarity to these historical images of submissive white female nudes, feminist artists commencement in the 1970s created work centered on first-person testimony, empowerment, and healing through art. Fryd writes:
[S]uch works of art face, correspond, reenact, and negotiate trauma, an emotionally stressful and catastrophic experience that wounds the body and encephalon. I contend that artworks, installations, and exhibitions establish repetitive traumatic sites, representations, and stories that surround, involve, and challenge the viewer to witness, acknowledge, and retrieve sexual trauma. Rather than aestheticize and neutralize this violent subject matter, these artists instead betrayal it as a traumatizing experience (18).
The title of Fryd's book connects her projection directly with the legacy of anti-rape activism, namely the influential 1975 book Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape past Susan Brownmiller. A fitting homage to Brownmiller'due south revolutionary piece of work, Fryd'south championship links her writing with this early moment in the feminist movement, when feminist activists, including artists, sought to transform the dialogue (or lack thereof) about sexual trauma. A self-disclosed survivor of trauma, Fryd brings both personal and professional experience to comport on her subject. Framing her own project equally "strategic agency through scholarship," Fryd takes an interdisciplinary perspective when interpreting this history (27). Similar the artists and activists she includes in her account, Fryd seeks to requite "voice to the voiceless and brand sexual trauma known and knowable" (xv). She writes, "[A]s you read this volume, you, too, become a witness, just as I performed the part of a witness in the writing of this book" (27). By weaving together trauma theory, sociological data, and art-historical scholarship, Fryd presents a comprehensive account of the ways in which feminist artists sought to change people'southward attitudes and beliefs about sexual violence in American society (8).
To account for feminist artists' continued activism centered on sexual violence, Fryd identifies what she calls an "anti-rape and anti-incest bike" that develops kickoff in the 1970s. Fryd defines the anti-rape and anti-incest wheel as a "counternarrative [that] starts and restarts from a commencement without a uncomplicated progression or reject, merely instead with an 'increased circulation and popularization'"(i).iii Co-ordinate to Fryd, the key aim of the "anti-rape and anti-incest bicycle" is to provoke the viewer and facilitate social alter, thereby ending the stigma, silence, and hurting resulting from sexual trauma. Fryd contends that the "anti-rape and anti-incest wheel" "must be assessed and reassessed so that politicians, members of the military and church building, and the general public may more than fully understand the history of the rape crunch motion and the necessity of its application today" (16).4 In this manner, she aims to show that there was a repeated and intentional effort on the part of feminist artists to aid survivors of sexual violence share their stories and end the silence that had rendered rape and incest taboo subjects within public and private discourse.
Feminist artists of the so-called 2nd wave believed in art's ability to motion viewers emotionally, ethically, and politically. They engaged with materials and techniques, such every bit operation and video, that could provoke the viewer into feelings of empathy and outrage. In Fryd's account, the "anti-rape and anti-incest cycle" began with early piece of work on sexual violence by Ana Mendieta and Yoko Ono. In detail, Fryd points to Mendieta's Rape Scene (1973) and Ono's Cut Piece (1964; Museum of Modern Fine art, New York) as initiating a feminist perspective on sexual violence that incorporated the dual elements of witnessing and testimony (to a lesser degree in Ono's piece) that would become cardinal to feminist art activism that addressed rape and incest. On the West coast, Judy Chicago, Suzanne Lacy, and Leslie Labowitz introduced new forms of feminist activism on sexual violence that today we would call socially engaged art. In projects such as Three Weeks in May (1977) and In Mourning and In Rage (1977), Lacy and Labowitz use art for its ability to heal and therefore cease the silence that isolates survivors of sexual violence. Their performances, community projects, and protests stand out every bit some of the first customs-engaged projects intended to facilitate public sensation and dialogue on sexual violence.
In chapter two, "Performing the Anti-incest Bicycle in the Los Angeles Woman's Building, 1977–1985," Fryd introduces readers to the innovative ways in which feminists in Los Angeles used video to enhance awareness of the devastating furnishings of and misconceptions near incest. Betwixt 1979 and 1981, the Woman's Building in Los Angeles, founded in 1973 past Arlene Raven, Judy Chicago, and Sheila Levrant de Bretteville, organized the Incest Awareness Project, which included Nancy Angelo'due south securely affecting multi-aqueduct video installation entitled Equal Fourth dimension in Equal Space (November 13, 1980). Using the circular format of a feminist consciousness-raising session, Equal Time in Equal Space included six video monitors arranged then that viewers could sit and watch as survivors shared their stories. After watching the videos, viewers could then participate in journal writing and discussions run past counselors trained in the handling of incest trauma. Fryd provides a powerful analysis of this projection, as well equally Angelo's innovative use of the early video format. As she notes, video quickly became ane of the most effective ways for artists to deploy survivor testimony and secondary witnessing every bit a means for social change. Recording survivor's stories in video served two purposes: first, it enabled a therapeutic process for survivors to stop their silence and stigma while fostering community back up; and second, information technology enabled the public to experience kickoff-person testimony within a structured framework that provided support for the general audition, too, in the form of referrals to support organizations and therapists and the presence of organizers who made themselves visible and bachelor to any audience member needing emotional support (97).
Chapter three, "Faith Ringgold: Quilting the Anti-rape and Anti-incest Cycle, 1972–1986," shifts the reader's attention abroad from collaborative projects to the work of a single artist, Faith Ringgold, whose story quilts are amongst the most powerful examples of anti-rape representation. Fryd closely analyzes imagery from Ringgold'south twenty-i quilt serial called The Slave Rape Serial (1972–1985), arguing that Ringgold presents a compelling counter-narrative to the predatory white, masculine gaze. Combining the format of Tibetan thangkas with painted quilts, a technique for which Ringgold would afterwards become renown, the series is comprised of paintings that describe a nude blackness woman in the mural, running, hiding, or appearing to stand guard while in a position of active looking. Fryd reads Ringgold'due south anti-rape cycle in relation to what Kaplan calls the "transgenerational trauma" of slavery, noting that Ringgold rejects a white, Western, European art-historical framework that arcadian the white female body while hypersexualizing or dehumanizing the black female body (106).
Affiliate four, "Recirculating the Anti-rape and Anti-incest Cycle in Exhibitions, 1980–1993," reexamines the criticism that arose in the 1980s concerning what fine art historian and critic Moira Roth perceived to exist feminist artists' retreat from sexual violence as a focus of their activism. Contrary to this criticism, however, Fryd identifies three exhibitions in the 1980s and early 1990s that "circulated and recirculated the anti-rape and anti-incest bike within their contemporary political contexts" (150). These include A Decade of Women's Functioning Art at the Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans (1980); Rape, the traveling exhibition curated by Susan Brownmiller, Jenny Holzer, and Barbara Kruger for Ohio State Academy Gallery of Fine Fine art (1985); and The Discipline of Rape, organized by participants of the Independent Report Programme for the Whitney Museum of American Art (1993). Each of these exhibitions evinced an "activist curatorial practice" that ensured the continuation of the anti-rape and anti-incest wheel within feminist art activism, demonstrating that a so-called retreat never occurred (152).
Affiliate five, "Judy Chicago and Donald Woodman: The Anti-rape and Anti-incest Cycle, 2001–2006," focuses on the continuation of the anti-rape and anti-incest cycle into the early 2000s via 2 projects organized by Judy Chicago and Donald Woodman at Western Kentucky University from 2001 to 2006, and at Vanderbilt University in 2006. The first project, entitled At Domicile: A Kentucky Project with Judy Chicago and Donald Woodman, reenvisioned Chicago'due south earlier installation, Womanhouse, which she co-organized with Miriam Schapiro in 1971 and 1972 during their tenure at the California Institute for the Arts. The 2006 projection at Vanderbilt University, on which Fryd collaborated with Chicago and Woodman, was entitled Evoke/Invoke/Provoke: A Multimedia Project of Discovery and included work meant to "bewitch" participants' personal experiences with rape and sexual set on (211).
In chapter six, "Kara Walker: Creating a Tertiary-Wave Anti-rape and Anti-incest Cycle in Silhouettes, Videos, and Sculpture Since 1994," Fryd's cardinal statement about the healing effects of the "anti-rape and anti-incest cycle" seems to unravel equally she situates Kara Walker's piece of work inside this history. Walker's cut-paper silhouettes of sexual violence, deviancy, and racial stereotyping inside the context of the antebellum South subverts and calls into question the redemptive aims of some of the before feminist artists addressed in the book, artists Fryd claims "deliberately tried to provoke viewers to respond to their visceral images and take action" (27). There is no incertitude Walker's work provokes viewers, but their responses to the silhouettes of sadomasochistic antebellum scenarios will exist significantly dissimilar from those viewers who feel Suzanne Lacy'south socially engaged projects or Faith Ringgold's empowered women in her Slave Rape series. In her analysis of Walker's cutting-paper silhouettes and her more contempo public sculpture, A Subtlety (2014), Fryd accounts for the difference between Walker's work and that of earlier feminist artists by considering how the concepts of transgenerational trauma and Toni Morrison's term "rememory" (224) may help to elucidate the work's effects. Fryd's assay of Walker's identify within this history of art and sexual violence is worth quoting at length:
Since Walker declines to visualize alternative behaviors and, conversely, repeatedly visualizes the trauma of slavery in her "bits and pieces" of reconstructed and imagined retention, this relenting repetition of horrors as a postmemory is stuck in a airtight loop. This implies that no resolution exists. The very continuous looping of her videos establishes the repetition coercion characteristic of PTSD. Rather than suggesting that testimony can assist in healing trauma (as some W Coast feminists, Ringgold, Clarissa T. Sligh, Lynn Hershman, JoEl Logiudice, and Kate McSpadden imply or explicitly state), Walker instead embodies the hopeless, helpless, terrorizing repetition of trauma that becomes transgenerational because of its continuity in the present (264).
While Fryd's inclusion of Walker's work provides a compelling disruption or complication to the anti-rape and anti-incest cycle, I agree with Coco Fusco's cess of Fryd'due south interpretation. Fusco writes, "At that place doesn't seem to be room in [Fryd's] interpretation to acknowledge that Walker's sardonic approach to historical tragedy has catalyzed discussions nearly collective memory and our lingering attraction to scenes of subjection."five
In the last chapter, "Mapping and Chronicling the Anti-rape and Anti-incest Cycle into the Twenty-Kickoff Century," Fryd concludes her historical assay of the anti-rape and anti-incest cycle in feminist art activism with an assessment of the cycle'southward enduring legacy in the presence. Most notably, Fryd considers Emma Sulkowicz'due south Mattress Operation: Acquit That Weight (2014–15), an endurance performance in which Sulkowicz carried a twin mattress each twenty-four hours to form in protest against the university'southward treatment of her rape accusation during her sophomore yr, for which the homo was found not guilty. Fryd examines the circulation and recirculation of Sulkowicz's functioning in the class of "commonage carries," such equally the rally at Columbia University in September 2014 (282). In the context of the feminist fine art activism presented in her book, Fryd identifies Sulkowicz's project every bit "a return to the earlier 2nd-wave feminist goal of instigating change." (285).
As ane of the most comprehensive histories of feminist art activism, Confronting Our Volition should inspire scholars and activists to continue Fryd's investigation into fine art's potential as a tool for social change. Fryd'southward application of trauma studies to this cloth will appeal to an interdisciplinary audience of scholars and students, not merely in the field of art history merely also in the fields of trauma studies, sociology, and gender studies. Scholars and students alike will find the illustrations helpful. Particularly noteworthy is the chapter on Faith Ringgold's Slave Rape series. Against Our Volition stands out as one of only a few publications that I am aware of in which a reader tin run into the unabridged series of these rarely reproduced paintings, also as The Slave Rape Story Quilt (1984–85; Drove of the artist) and The Purple Quilt (1986; Private drove). Readers will discover full-page color illustrations, as well as color details and black-and-white reproductions of the Slave Rape serial.
As I write this review, a jury consisting of seven men and five women has found Harvey Weinstein guilty on two charges of sexual abuse and rape. Although this trial addresses a mere fraction of the allegations against him (more than lxxx women accept bravely come forward), in the words of one of the survivors, this verdict marks a "reckoning and an awakening."6 Like many feminists and supporters of the #MeToo movement, I have been following the Weinstein trial, have listened to the harrowing testimony of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, and proceed to hope that their incredibly dauntless testimonies would non be for cypher. Undoubtedly, the cross-examination of Weinstein'southward victims was excruciating. Already having undergone physical and emotional violation, the women who stood upwardly to speak their truth in public were forced to relive their trauma in an atmosphere of skepticism and outright set on on their credibility. Like the jury verdict against Weinstein, Fryd's book sends the bulletin to survivors of sexual violence: Nosotros hear you and we believe you.
Cite this article: Lesley Shipley, review of Against Our Will: Sexual Trauma in American Art Since 1970 , by Vivien Greenish Fryd, Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Fine art half-dozen, no. 1 (Spring 2020), https://doi.org/10.24926/24716839.10003.
PDF:Shipley, review of Against Our Will
Notes
About the Author(s): Lesley Shipley is Assistant Professor of Art History at Randolph College
Source: https://journalpanorama.org/article/against-our-will/
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