For Tupelo Quarterly, Andrea Applebee interviewed Bea, the Turkish born American artist, whose work can be viewed here. She says, "I use erotic themes—nudity, the female gaze, the female body, landscapes of desire—but I don’t think I make erotic art. . . .This series [of "Send Nudes," one of which is reproduced below] features nude self-portraiture, but it is not meant to be erotic. Sensuality and intimacy are always a part of me, and my refusal to excise or censor these thoughts makes them an underlying theme in my work." Here's an excerpt from their conversation:
AA: When I think about writing erotic or sensual poems, what immediately comes to mind is the epistemological and aesthetic disenfranchisement of these themes that separates us from our own bodies. How do you anticipate and deal with this dilemma?
BB: One issue I’m grappling with currently is the question of “taste,” as it often defines and judges erotic content. It is a concept that is relative to individuals but it is also socially coordinated to promote what is considered acceptable in visual and poetic language. It aligns with socially prioritized ideas about beauty and the female body. The word itself appeals to our senses and implies that something should be pleasing—historically it is heteronormative and circumscribed by ideals of attractiveness. But today there is a very narrow category of bodies that is considered universally appealing. There are certain bodies—dependent on age, dis/ability, race, sexual orientation, and body type—that have been considered objectionable or unaesthetic in visual arts, effectively disenfranchising huge groups of people, and further perpetuating this epistemological and aesthetic alienation you mention.
AA: This is an experience I’ve had personally as a blind woman—I can remember not taking my cane to my grauate poetry classes because I thought it would be unattractive and somehow discredit me. I also had no idea how to incorporate my actual body into my work, and wrote only about objects and landscapes for many years
BB: Certain bodies outside of the young white female have a problematic place in our art history through the colonialist male gaze, like Gauguin’s portraits of Polynesian women. The beauty Gauguin finds in his subjects lies in his fascination with what he deems exotic and pure in a primitive way, and he packages that fascination skillfully for the consumption of the Western male.
I wonder about abjection as an art movement in the 90s, and whether some bodies, stages of bodies, body parts, or even poses are perpetually abject in our contemporary aesthetics. Taboo bodily functions—urine, feces, menstrual blood—are abject, but so are certain sexual acts and unions, like anal. Abject art evokes evulsion and disgust, an impulse to look away, a nobody-wants-to-see-that feeling. Presenting the human body in any way other than what has been deemed aesthetically pleasing is abjection.
AA: The abject movement coincides and grows out of the rise of AIDS and queer culture taking a stand against conservative politics. It makes me think of Bersoni’s “Is the Rectum a Grave?” and Mapplethorpe’s photography. And before them—French erotic revolutionaries, like Rimbaud and Bataille. They were all about smashing the unspoken codes that contain and constrain erotic narratives.
BB: I started to think about this when I presented the drawings for “Sits Like a Lady” to an art group, and one of the women said that it made her uncomfortable. I showed the two drawings individually, and the reaction was discomfort. When I showed how I intended to overlay the two drawings, the group mentioned that they liked the combination. The purpose of this work was to express the interface of female social propriety and closeted female desire, and the group affirmed that they did not want to look at spread legs and orgasmic faces; they are more comfortable if passion is screened through the veneer of modesty and decorum. We use so many tools for this in visual arts—modesty covers, shadows, strategically placed drapery or objects, the gracefully resting hand on private parts, poses that obscure and block, even more aggressive forms of censorship like bars, pixelation, and cropping.
AA: In poetry, we have similar practices: euphemisms (“he possessed her”, “they slept together”, “bed (v.)”) and metaphors (“manhood”, “member”; “folds”, “sheath”). These strategies veil what is really being talked about. Can we identify the sometimes unspoken strategies for obscuring or censoring the details of sexuality in visual art?
BB: Anything stylized or blurred is more acceptable than hyperrealism. Male breasts are always acceptable. Women’s breasts are more scandalous—less offensive than some other body parts but still in need of coverage, for instance in photography. Pussy can be tolerable depending on the position of the legs. It can be present but shouldn’t be spread. Same thing with the butt—standing or seated positions are demure, bent over is too suggestive. Buttholes are generally in poor taste, especially in proximity to hands or pussies. If you insist on depicting intimacy, missionary position is sensual and beautiful; anything else is unseemly.
Click here for more of the interview.
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