Posted on Monday, May 30, 2011 by Jim Norrena
The following students presented their work at the 2011 Visual Studies Spring Symposium:
Jennifer Byer
"Squeezed Out, Cast-Off: The Art of Mika Rottenberg"
Eve Letendre
"Lynch’s L’amour fou: Loss, Longing, and Los Angeles"
Natalie McBride
"Almost Where?: Race, Gender and the Disney Princess"
Eden Phair
"Art Historical Angst: Pop Art and Postmodern Irony in Gregg Araki’s Nowhere"
Susan Y. Sherpa
"Vanessa Beecroft in Black and White"
Christopher Wagner
"A Patchwork of Histories: James Gobel and Contemporary Craft"
Jennifer Byer
"Squeezed Out, Cast-Off: The Art of Mika Rottenberg"
Mika Rottenberg’s video installation Squeeze follows the artist’s lineage of faux-documentaries that cast the female body as a site of production. Throughout the video, Rottenberg juxtaposes scenes of ethnically and physically diverse women working in a surreal factory setting with footage of workers on an Arizona lettuce farm and an Indian rubber plantation.
These workers cooperatively mold raw material into a sculptural cube in a nonlinear narrative. Buried within the confusion, allusions to cast-off female materials that are commonly considered repulsive -- spit, urine, and flaked-off skin -- are repurposed to create the revered art object in Rottenberg’s exploration of harvesting materials from the body.
This paper positions Squeeze both within the larger contexts of feminist art and critical theory. Drawing from methods across the disciplines of philosophy and anthropology, I argue that Rottenberg’s glorification of bodily materiality demonstrates a consistent engagement with the productive and creative potential of the female form. The artist rebels against societal constraints that undermine this form, that “squeeze” it into a subservient and objectified role.
Eve Letendre
"Lynch’s L’amour fou: Loss, Longing, and Los Angeles"
David Lynch’s 2001 film Mulholland Drive follows the surrealist themes of the uncanny, doubling, desire, and death. The disjointed narrative of the film mimics the labyrinthine nature of dreaming: characters blur into one other, anachronistic interior scenes suggest nostalgia, and the color palette marks changes in mood.
Viewers are forced to question the nature of reality, as the characters question their perception of memory. Although most critics have focused exclusively on the characters of this film, Betty and Rita -- their relationships, conversations, and confusions -- one cannot deny that place plays the central role.
The city of Los Angeles and the domestic interiors that appear throughout the film reveal a strong distinction between the “dream factory” of glamorous Hollywood and the harsh destroyer of dreams, Los Angeles. It is this tension -- between Utopia and dystopia -- that eventually leads to a loss of self for both Betty and Rita.
Confronted with their own disillusionment, the two women find themselves placeless. They no longer belong within the geography of a fantastical Hollywood and their interior living spaces collapse in on them.
This paper argues that using the visual methods of framing, costume, and set design, Lynch constructs a strict binary between the characters of Betty and Rita. But, when the binary begins to break down, these two characters are similarly destabilized. In doing this, Lynch connects a sense of self to a sense of place.
Natalie McBride
"Almost Where?: Race, Gender and the Disney Princess"
For many generations, Disney princesses have been a staple of children’s entertainment. From Snow White to Ariel, each princess has provided young viewers with animage of “ideal” feminine dress and behavior.
The princess archetype has come under scrutiny by feminist critics, who question the norms of class and gender that these characters represent. Princess Tiana, star of the 2009 film The Princess and the Frog, is a princess created by the Disney corporation in direct response to such criticism.
Instead of placing her in a European castle, Tiana lives in 1920s New Orleans. Instead of a wicked stepmother, Tiana’s kind and loving biological mother is voiced by Oprah Winfrey. Instead of being poisoned by an apple or pricked by a spindle, Tiana’s peril lies in the lips of a frog.
But, perhaps most importantly, Tiana is also black. Tiana, the first African American princess, represents Disney’s attempt to align itself with post-feminist, post-race audiences. However, this paper argues that these supposedly progressive intentions are only skin deep.
Through a close analysis of scene, dialogue, and costume, I explore Tiana’s connections to Disney’s past and reveal a more problematic pattern of stereotypes -- one that reinforces binaries of both gender and race.
Eden Phair
"Art Historical Angst: Pop Art and Postmodern Irony in Gregg Araki’s Nowhere"
Gregg Araki began making films in the late 1980s and has since developed his signature style, often depicting dystopic worlds cast with sexually ambiguous, angst-ridden teenagers. The seminal Teenage Apocalypse Trilogy is the quintessential example of Araki’s pop-cultural parade.
Nowhere (1997), the final film, is often considered the most difficult part in the trilogy to interpret. Yet when viewing Nowhere through an art historical lens, it is clear that Araki is speaking the language of Pop art.
This paper argues that Araki uses the art historical angst of Pop art in the film to reflect the angst of his teenage characters, who exist in a Los Angeles littered with bus benches decorated with phrases like “God help me” and liquor stores covered with signs that read “consume,” “eat,” and “shop.”
Nowhere references the hidden nihilism of Andy Warhol, the camp and kitsch of Jeff Koons, and the advertising aesthetic of Ed Ruscha. Yet the sincerity and earnestness of the film’s characters’ search for a romantic Utopia transcends the limitations of Pop art.
In Nowhere, Araki presents a contemporary conception of postmodern irony both informed by and complicated by art history.
Susan Y. Sherpa
"Vanessa Beecroft in Black and White"
The work of Vanessa Beecroft demonstrates the complexities of representing the body in contemporary art. Using the same formal qualities for more than 60 staged performances -- nude or almost nude models, dressed in high heels, covered in makeup or wearing wigs, or both -- these works seem to rehearse an art historical obsession with the female form.
However, Beecroft’s recent practice is more nuanced. Via her inclusion of whitewashed female models and minstrel men, she creates conversation around the postmodern mediations of a subject’s identity and gender.
Using the examples of VB62 (2007) and VB65 (2009), this paper analyzes the structural relations and the social discourses involved in representing a mediated subject. I will argue against modernist readings of Beecroft’s staged performances, as the social and political problems are always present in the identities of this artist’s subjects.
These two recent performances show the diversity of the postmodern subject and reflect the aesthetic differences that result from the artist’s application of specific formal structures onto the body. In Beecroft’s work, postmodern theories and representations of subjectivity become real and tangible.
Christopher Wagner
"A Patchwork of Histories: James Gobel and Contemporary Craft"
James Gobel’s artwork is a scramble of signifiers. The history of painting, portraiture, domestic craft, queer theory, and feminist doctrine all come together in the space of the artist’s monumental canvases.
Gobel’s unexpected use of felt collaged onto painted surfaces creates a complex juxtaposition of color and warmth that is amplified by references to contemporary homosexuality woven throughout his compositions. A combination of formal art techniques, traditional craft material, and contemporary questions about sexuality, Gobel’s artwork stands as an example of the blurring of lines around the histories of gender and formalism.
Looking at several of the artist’s trademark canvases, this paper will position Gobel’s work at the intersection of several ideas about art. The late 1960s and early 1970s were an era in which art and politics combined to complicate hierarchies of gender as well as art history, introducing craft and domestic arts to a fine arts context.
More than 40 years later, Gobel’s work similarly brings craft and traditional history painting into a dialogue. This paper argues that although certainly influenced by the innovations of Abstract Expressionism, feminism, and the traditions of contemporary craft, Gobel’s practice is an absolute reflection of none of these.
Instead, his inclusion of this combination of history, politics, and media is in the end a sophisticated commentary on the instability of such hierarchies in our daily lives.