MUSEUM WITHOUT WALLS
Body
Alexandra Kokoli
a.m.kokoli@rgu.ac.uk
***Announcements***
• Both screenings on ‘BODY’ (Monday, 3 & 10
Dec.) also in 225, Business School.
• This Wednesday (28 Nov.): instead of seminars,
a DROP-IN session for all, 10am-12pm:
– Any questions/issues
– MWW brief 2
• Seminars resume next week:
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Group 1: 5 Dec. 10am
Group 2: 5 Dec. 11.30am
Group 3: 12 Dec. 10am
Group 4: 12 Dec. 11.30am
MWW: PROJECT
• Poster submission date:
Monday 17th December
• Time & venue tbc
• Poster display tbc
• TWO chosen objects: may or may not
include the one you’ve been working on
• On TIME or PLACE
BODY & the critique of VISION
• Vision linked with knowledge & understanding
– Cf. dead metaphors: ‘I see your point’; ‘being left in
the dark’; ‘clarity’; ‘epiphany’; even ‘theory’
• Vision linked with power & control
– Cf. Bentham/Foucault: panopticon
• Vision linked with desire & pleasure
– Cf. John Berger; Laura Mulvey (‘scopophilia’)
• Art and the (other) senses
Allen Jones, Chair.
From the series Women as Furniture (c.1969)
Laura Mulvey, ‘Fears, Fantasies and the Male Unconscious
or “You Don’t Know What is Happening, Do You, Mr.
Jones?”’ (1973), in Visual and Other Pleasures
(Basingstoke: Palgrave, 1989)
‘The achievement of Allen Jones is to
throw an unusually vivid spotlight on the
contradiction between woman’s fantasy
presence and real absence from the male
unconscious world. […] the image of
woman comes to be used as a sign, which
does not necessarily signify the meaning
“woman”.
‘Women are constantly confronted with their own
image in one form or another, but what they see
bears little relation or relevance to their own
unconscious fantasies, their own hidden fears
and desires. They are being turned all the time
into objects of display, to be looked at and gazed
at and stared at by men. Yet, in a real sense,
women are not there at all. The parade has
nothing to do with woman, everything to do with
man. […] The time has come for us to take over
the show and exhibit our own fears and desires.’
Jemima Stehli, Chair (1997/8)
The Nude &/vs. the Naked
• Distinction introduced by Kenneth Clark in
The Nude: A Study of Ideal Art (Penguin,
1956)
• The NAKED = simply unclothed; found
everywhere through time
• The NUDE =
– a form of art (GR, 5thc. BCE); Western
– nakedness: a pretext
– an ideal vehicle for ALLEGORY
– Nakedness (in)vested with meaning
‘Apart from biological needs, there are
other branches of human experience of
which the naked body provides a vivid
reminder – harmony, energy, ecstasy,
humility, pathos. […] It seemed that there
was no concept, however sublime, which
could not be expressed by the naked
body, and no object of use, however trivial,
which would not be the better for having
been given human shape.’
Capitoline Venus (Roman copy, c.100-150 AD of Hellenistic original, c.340-30 BC)
Lynda Nead, The Female Nude
(Routledge, 1992)
• Uncovers the ‘active/passive heterosexual
division of labour’ in Clark: mostly female
nudes discussed from a male perspective
• The nude = ‘flesh tamed by form’
• Femininity = also in need of ‘taming’; more
liable to be out of control; more dangerous
L: Venus of Willendorf (c. 24,000-22,000 BCE)
R: Venus de Milo (2nd c. BCE)
Giovanni Battista Moroni, The Vestal Virgin Tuccia (Chastity) (c. 1555)
Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger
(1966)
• Thresholds of all kinds (temporal, bodily,
architectural) give rise to anxiety and need to be
managed e.g. through ritual
• Bodily orifices – sites & symbols of the
vulnerability of the body
• Structures of ideas also vulnerable at their
margins
SO:
• Permeability = dangerous and anxiety-inspiring
• Containment = security
At least 3 different bodies
• The represented body
• The body of the artist
• The body of the viewer
The Artist’s Body
• Always there! But sometimes more
obviously than others
• E.g. self-portraiture
• BUT: not only present as representation
but inscribed as active agent (Pollock)
• BUT: not only surface (Hatoum)
Jackson Pollock, One: Number 31 (1950)
Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914)
Categories of the Sign:
• Icon
– Resemblance (visual)
• Symbol
– Convention (arbitrary)
• Index
– Trace (physical)
Mona Hatoum, Corps étranger
(1994)
The viewer’s body
• Viewing as encounter
• ‘Reception’ never in a vacuum: personal history,
knowledge, experiences, state of mind
• A sentient body (NOT just vision)
• 2-dimensional vs. 3-dimensional: installation
issues
• Art and/as life
– Cf. Dalziel & Scullion, The Horn (1997): an invitation
to the passing driver to re-view their familiar
environment (the transformation of a non-place?]
Art & the senses
Anya Gallaccio, Because Nothing Has Changed (2003)
‘Feelings. They make a body
“real”’. (Amelia Jones)
Daniel Joseph Martinez,
to make a blind man
murder for the things
he’s seen, or
happiness is
overrated (2002).
Life-size, cloned,
computer-controlled,
animatronic cyborg,
sculpture in a room
installation.
Mieke Bal: ‘sticky images’
[Jacques Villeglé, Carrefour Turbigo (1967)]
‘They make you
dizzy from the
back-andforthness
between
microscopic and
macroscopic
looking where
no eyeglasses
or contact
lenses will do
the job. Looking
itself becomes
tortuous, almost
tortuous.’
Further Reading (optional)
• John Berger, Ways of Seeing (1972)
• Amelia Jones, Self / Image (2006)
• Lynda Nead, The Female Nude (esp. 1st
chapter) (1992)
• Marina Warner, Monuments & Maidens:
The Allegory of the Female Form (1985)
 See also BRIEF
Preparation for the seminar
(NOT next week’s drop-in session!)
Do either or both of the following:
• Make notes on the screening(s) and
be prepared to discuss them in class
• Start rehearsing your poster (cf.
MWW Brief 2)