Ensayo que analiza obras de Janine Antoni y Pipilotti Rist que escribí en Julio del 2012 y reeditado en Diciembre del 2013.
Anxiety and Aggression in the work of Female Artists
Janine Antoni and Pipilotti Rist
“The struggle between love
and hate, with all the conflicts to which it gives rise, sets in, as I have
tried to show, in early infancy and is active all through life”
Melanie Klein
“I suggest that we must
expect to find playing just as evident in the analyses of adults as it is in
the case of our work with children”
D.W Winnicott
Janine
Antoni and Pipilotti Rist are both contemporary female artists who have demonstrated
throughout their work a great interest on the subject of the female body and
how women experience the world through it as well as how they express
themselves with it. For my investigation I will use specific case studies; two
pieces of artwork created by the named artists: “Gnaw” by Antoni, and “Ever is
Over All” by Rist. As an artist myself I have taken great interest in the use
of the body and our consciousness of it while making art, as well as the notion
of creation through destruction. In the works presented here, these ideas are
intertwined and I find this symbioses to be more than mere coincidence; for I
would argue that the awareness of the body and the urge for destruction are
already linked in the psyche. I will analyze the symbols presented by the
artists and how the concepts of anxiety and/or aggression come through their
work. I shall approach the study from a psychoanalytical point of view through
the theories of Klein on anxiety and Winnicott on the process of play. Klein’s
theories will be taken as a metaphorical interpretation that I will then
combine with what I believe the signs and symbols in the art works to signify.
Anxiety and Aggression
In
order to proceed I feel the need to define both of these terms since they will
be coming up throughout the whole of this essay. To do so I reached out to
Laplanche and Pontalis book on “The Language of Psycho-Analysis”. However, I
was unable to find a global definition of anxiety - as in every day life
anxiety- the only terminology found related to anxiety was anxiety hysteria and
anxiety neurosis.
Therefore I must provide my own definition of anxiety, as I understand it to be
experienced in the life of every single human being:
Anxiety
is a state of fear, concern, uneasiness or worry. It is the anxiety with which
all human beings are familiar. This is the anxiety to which I refer to in my essay,
and not the anxiety hysteria or anxiety neurosis described by Freud.
When
it comes to aggression, Laplanche’s and Pontali’s definition suits this study well.
Aggressiveness (or aggression or aggressivity):
Tendency or cluster of tendencies finding expression in real or phantasy
behavior intended to harm other people, or to destroy, humiliate and constrain
them, etc.
Janine Antoni – “Gnaw”
I
shall now begin with the artist Janine Antoni.
Antoni was born in
Freeport, Bahamas, in 1964. She received her BA from Sarah Lawrence College in
New York, and earned her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. Antoni’s
work usually mixes performance art and sculpture. She uses everyday activities
to create her work, such as eating, licking, bathing and sleeping. Her main
tool in her art making is her body. In “Gnaw” specifically she used her teeth and her jaw.
This
piece dates from 1992. It was made using 600 pounds of chocolate and 600 pounds
of lard. Antoni bit repeatedly into both blocks and spit out the gnawed parts.
With the chocolate residue she made 45 heart-shaped chocolate boxes, and with
the lard residue she was able to make 400 lipsticks by mixing the lard with
pigment and beeswax.
I warn beforehand that alternative interpretations have
been presented for this specific piece, taking into account its issues of
temporality related to the materials Antoni used and also its evocation of minimalism
by the use of geometric forms and the reestablishment of mark-making.
Other analyses include the difference between the materials themselves and even
the use of lard as a representation of female fat, making the act of biting
into somewhat cannibalistic.
However, my interests lie more in the repeated act of gnawing and its possible
nature as an innate drive related to theories of psychoanalysis. I do not
reject these readings of the artwork, I simply skew my vision into another
angle where I find that this piece, to me, speaks more about a sublimating act (from
the sublimating definition in psychology and not in the philosophical sense) related
to anxiety and of a reparation act following the aggression that has led to the
destruction of the materials in their original state.
I conjecture that in “Gnaw”, Antoni materializes a vicious circle
generated by the anxiety Klein theorizes about. I shall now explain how I
appropriate her theories. Anxiety - state that we come to know during our
infancy - is triggered by feelings of sadism or rage towards our caretaker
(the mother or the breast according to Klein). This happens when we feel the
caretaker is denying something we want or keeping it all for itself; be it
nursing,
or as in Klein’s example of the child in the opera, by forcing him to do his
lessons. The child instead wants to “eat all the cake in the world” and in
response to the denial he wants to “put mother in the corner”.
We all experience a similar fury when we are denied something we want in
infancy and, therefore we want to attack and destroy the caretaker. While in
our oral sadistic stage “the libidinal desire to suck is accompanied by the
destructive aim of sucking out, scooping out, emptying, exhausting”.
In this oral stage - which includes sucking and biting – we have the impulse to
hurt with our teeth. Our primal approach to the world is through the bodily
experience, “the Kleinian subject relates to its environment as a field of
objects to be fused or split, possessed or destroyed, by means of fantasies of
introjection, projection, and splitting that are produced by bodily drives”.
Therefore when Janine Antoni is biting into the chocolate and lard she is
acting out her oral fixation. Biting has
become a way in which to release the anxiety; to sublimate it. This is a
necessary process that demands internal response, every human being learns to
deal with anxiety, this can be expressed in for example going for a walk,
playing the piano or any form of habit. I believe that the repeated bites into
the raw material by Antoni are the way in which she deals with anxiety. Her bodily drive habit to achieve
sublimation is that of sadism and destruction with her teeth. Since in Kleinian
theory there is no history or time, simply a shift in position,
when threatened the artist shifts back into the position of her original
anxiety where the “breast”
might have been taken from her and she fantasizes about revenge.
This analysis however covers only the first
half of the process of the piece. In the second stage of her piece, Antoni
takes the bitten residues and makes lipsticks and heart shaped chocolate boxes.
Continuing with the Kleinian theory I would hypothesize that the re-shaping of
the raw materials she has destroyed is the reparation
she makes to deal with the guilt she
now feels for the destruction she has caused. Like Klein’s baby that fantasizes
about putting it’s mother’s bits and pieces back together
(because he needs her and loves her). Moreover, the objects she creates are
those of female masochistic desire.
The lipstick symbolizes the love/hate relationship Antoni might feel as a woman
towards the process she must undergo to achieve the idealized body image.
Meanwhile the heart shaped chocolate boxes made of chocolate represent a tradition;
that of men giving their loved female companions boxes of chocolate. It is
interesting here how Antoni chose not to make small pieces of chocolate
truffles, but the box that is supposed to contain them. This brings a new
variable into play; even though chocolate itself is already a source of anxiety
for Antoni - it gives her pleasure but at the same time she is conscious that
it will make her fat, giving her pain by creating a conflict in her mind– but
in addition, she has to deal with the old courtship tradition where she cannot
reject the chocolate unless she wants to reject the wooer. In other words,
these objects generate anxiety; an anxiety that affects specifically the female
gender and its relationship to body image; and, just as any other anxiety, it
will need sublimation. Thus we have come full circle. Antoni take’s us back to
the beginning of her piece by making herself those objects that will trigger
the bodily drive of gnawing. In this way “Gnaw” represents a Kleinian vicious
circle where there is a constant search for sublimation and reparation for the
destruction the body constantly causes.
However there is still one question that
remains in the air (even though given my analysis the answer seems quite
obvious): Why did she choose to bite into lard and chocolate? My answer is
simple; she was conscious about the fact that she needed to bite into something
that she could then transform into objects that would represent female
masochism. Even though makeup and chocolate are products consumed not only by
women, they are objects associated with the gender in societies idiosyncrasy.
While the associations with the gnawed cubes of raw material might be hard to
digest for the spectators– no pun intended- the second part of the piece, the
lipstick and chocolate boxes are relatable and easy to read objects. In this
way, with the finished product, Antoni hints towards female anxiety and the
observers will be more prone to make the connection between the gnawed cubes
and anxiety than if there was no finished product but just the innate drive for
gnawing.
Pipilotti Rist – “Ever is Over All”
Pipilotti Rist, born Elisabeth Charlotte
Rist in 1962 is a Swiss female artist focused mainly in sound and video
installations. She studied at the Institute of Applied arts in Vienna, Austria,
and in the School of Design in Basel, Switzerland. Her opinion about art is the following: “Arts task is to contribute to evolution, to encourage the
mind, to guarantee a detached view of social changes, to conjure up positive
energies, to create sensuousness, to reconcile reason and instinct, to research
possibilities and to destroy clichés and prejudices” It is my believe that
“Ever is Over All” is a good example of how she manages to “reconcile reason
and instinct” and also “destroy clichés and prejudices”.
For my analysis of “Ever is Over All” I have
chosen to take once again some of Klein’s theories on aggression, and also take
on Winnicott’s views on playing as therapy. What I take from Klein is the
sadistic nature of children and therefore humans in general without any
differentiation between genders. That is to say that both male and female have
an innate drive for sadism and destruction when they feel threatened. Culture
and society have taken people to believe that the only gender with a desire for
aggression is the masculine one, pushing women towards passive aggression. However we are capable
of as much anger and desire for violence as any man. In her installation “Ever
is Over All” Rist breaks this mistaken cliché by presenting a very feminine
woman, dressed in a flowing blue dress, wearing very girly, almost child like
red shoes with just a hint of a heel, carrying a flower while she walks down
the street in a dance like manner. She is the embodiment of femininity.
Suddenly without any previous warning she smashes the flower (actually cast out
of steel) into the side windows of the cars parked along the street. She
continues her stroll as if nothing out of the ordinary has happened. Even a
policewoman salutes her with a smile as they go their separate ways. The salute
from the policewoman probably steals a couple of smiles in the installation
room. Going along the lines of Winnicott I would even go as far as assuming
that the policewoman is a stand in for the other child and socialization is
taking place in the play space. One cannot get away either from the fact that
it’s a policewoman and not a policeman, reinforcing the strength of the female
gender.
On
the right side of the screen fields of long stemmed orange flowers dissolve
into the street scene. The video is accompanied by an audio of a woman humming
playfully. Rist is very explicitly communicating that aggression is as much
part, or even more, of the female gender as the flowing blue dress and the red
girly shoes. This aggression released as violence towards the cars is embedded
in women’s nature. It is the sadistic drive that Klein develops in “Love, Hate
and Reparation”. The same sadistic drive that lead Antoni to the compulsive
behavior of gnawing and destroying the cubes of chocolate and lard. The difference in “Ever
is Over All “ is that there is no reparation; the woman lashes out but there is
no sense of guilt at all. She never shows a sign of regret therefore there is
no need for the reparation vital to Antoni’s “Gnaw”.
Here I
must also mention, as in my previous analysis, that there are several other
interpretations for “Ever is Over All”; that imply notions of voyeurism and that
the long flower is related to the female’s envy of the penis (theory introduced
by Freud).
Yet again they are irrelevant to my investigation. I find that the flower is
not a phallic symbol; in my opinion it symbolizes the female gender, which is, in
all its beauty, very capable of inflicting physical harm.
To convey this message, Rist has chosen to
put the main character in a state of play. The video takes place in a space
that is not completely internal or external; a limbo where the woman is in
magical control of her surroundings and plays uninterruptedly. Winnicott
proposes that this play space is necessary for self-healing. I interpret the woman’s
play in the video with the flower and the cars as an outlet for her interior
anger; an anger that we do not see in her face but that we can feel in her blow
on the cars. As spectators we do not need to know where this anger comes from
for we can easily relate to the need of an outlet. She is actually having fun;
we can see joy in her face. There is no rage or fury because the girl is
comfortable with her game; she is liberated from the restrictions of norm and
society. Winnicott reminds us that in the process of playing there is
everything, and therefore there is also the possibility for the game to become
frightening. Rist again breaks preconceived ideas of playing - such as it being
only smiles and laughter – she presents play as a state that can also be
dangerous; a statement that Winnicott already expressed in his book “Play and
Reality”. It provides a time and space where anything goes, and therefore
anything can happen, like for example, the bodily drive of bashing car windows
without a sense of regret.
The flowers on the other side of the screen
are shot in such a way that they look very tall and powerful. According to
Rist, this has been done to show strength in weakness, again, a notion
relatable to the female gender most commonly known as “the weaker sex”. When
Anne Soll interviews Pipilotti Rist about this piece she says, “the cars are a
symbol for unnecessary obstructions and fears that are more easily overcome
than we suppose”.
Thus the bashing of something so strong and sturdy as a car, is easily
destroyed by the pretty and seemingly fragile woman (the flower) but who is decided
and strong to release her aggressiveness and obliterating her fears.
Finally, in the mentioned interview, Rist explains
that the installation offers an effective liberation from a feminist point of
view. By the end she concludes “the figure (woman in the video) congratulates
both female and male viewer on freeing themselves from a lot of different
ghosts, not only, but also from sexism”. However, the learned way
in which women act out their aggression is different to that of the male gender
and the artist winks at us with the flower made of steel. As stated lines
above, women mask their attacks and are able to induce real harm under a veil
of fragility, just like the flower. Women are
aggressive, but society has been telling women that it is not lady like to act
out physically. Also brutal force is more often stronger in males than females,
putting most women in danger if a physical confrontation arises between a man
and a woman. Therefore, as evidenced by Dana Crowley in "Behind the Mask", our gender has resourced itself with wit and a sharp
tongue. We popularly know this as passive aggression. It is the physical act
and release through it in the video that makes the piece relatable to both male
and female spectators. By no means do I imply that men do not partake in
passive aggressiveness, not at all, I simply infer that stereotypes and sexism
allows them to act out more in a physical manner.
In this way Rist not only frees viewers from
the sexism attached to the notion of aggression but also frees them from the
possible refrains adults have on playing as an adult. Playtime is often
associated with children and therefore frowned upon since it carries the stigma
of immaturity. The benefits the video suggests tend to be overlooked; the
artist is basically saying “its ok to play, in fact, it’s good for you”.
For the means of this specific thesis I
shall leave my analysis here. Art is complex and I know there are still many
parts of the installation that I haven’t analyzed; such as the sound that
accompanies it and it’s specific projection on a corner. These are left open to
the readers’ interpretation. On a personal note, it is my belief that in the
end art has a level of subtext that should be left un-analyzed. It is that
level where it speaks to something beyond reason in each human being that
depends more on sensibilities and the baggage acquired through each specific
life.
On Sublimation
Summarized definition of “sublimation” in
psychology by Laplanche and Pontalis:
Process postulated by Freud
to account for human activities which have no apparent connection with
sexuality but which are assumed to be motivated by the force of sexual
instinct. (…)
The lack of coherent theory of sublimation remains one of the lacunae in
psycho-analytic thought.
The fact that the term itself remains
somewhat open gives room for personal interpretation; a freedom this essay has
certainly taken. I personally understand sublimation as the effort we make to
suppress sadistic aggression.
I took this idea from Mignon Nixon in “Bad Enough Mother” (when she refers to
“Gnaw”) and I reshaped it with my own version of the forms this struggle might
adopt. In my first analysis (Gnaw pg. 3), I point out that the biting is the
sublimation for the sadistic instinct. I have done this without much
explanation to keep the analysis on track, however I will now elaborate more on
how I arrived to this conclusion.
I recognize Antoni’s repeated biting as a
form of sublimation for I myself am sometimes drawn towards this compulsive
behavior in situations of stress or anxiety. I know that it is related in some
deeper level to oral sadism. This is how I identify personally with the piece
and therefore with the behavior. However I will not extend on that for it is
not the goal of this essay to describe parallels between Antoni’s anxiety and
my anxiety. A better approach and illustration perhaps of this redirection of
anxiety towards biting is by thinking about anxious people biting on pen caps.
Of course, “Gnaw” takes this behavior to an extreme, but it is possible that
they share the same bodily drive to destroy with the teeth.
Taking what I had read in Klein, in Mignon
Nixon, what I had seen in Antoni’s work and what I had personally experienced I
came to understand that all reparation is sublimation but not all sublimation
is reparation. They are not synonyms; reparation happens only when some kind of
destruction has occurred and needs to be literally repaired. Sublimation is the
struggle against anxiety and therefore it may take many forms, not only
creative ones but also destructive ones; it all depends on the person who is in
the middle of the struggle. Destroying something with our teeth can be
considered sublimation as long as there is no potential harm to another being
(where there is no sadism, only aggression). The aggression is displaced
towards the blocks of lard and chocolate in an effort to ease the anxiety. The
destruction of such pleases in a way the desire for sadism without inflicting
any real harm. She does not act her aggression towards her body, with which she
has a love/hate relationship, or, against those whom she might feel envious
of. Nonetheless the new objects on which she has displaced her aggressive
anxiety (blocks of chocolate and lard) are now destroyed and a new kind of
sublimation is needed to wash away the guilt generated by the act of biting and
spitting. Here is where the reparation comes in. Something needs to be fixed in
order to sublimate this new remorse, which I believe to be a specific type of
anxiety different to the original one. These are all raw conjectures I have
made in my first approach to Klein in relationship to Antoni’s work. I do not
expect these to be embraced, however I find that they are useful when it comes
to the dissection of the piece “Gnaw”.
In the case of “Ever is Over All” I cannot
be as precise because the character is in a state of play while the actor in
“Gnaw” (in this case the artist herself) is very conscious of what she is doing.
She seems to be only acting out her aggression and not struggling with it, she
simply accepts it and liberates it against inanimate objects. But where does
this leave the sadistic drive and sublimation? I would hint at the idea that
during the state of play the woman acts outs her sadistic drive in a different
way and since everything is possible in play there is no need for sublimation.
I would suggest approaching this matter from theories on therapy and
therapeutic activities such as art-therapy. This uncertainty leaves space for
further investigation on the subject.
Conclusion
Janine Antoni and Pipilotti Rist have
materialized some of the psychoanalytic theories developed by Klein and
Winnicott in their pieces “Gnaw” and “Ever is Over All” respectively. They do
so from a female point of view that evidence’s the feminine struggle with
anxiety and aggression in relation to their bodies. I chose these pieces
specifically because they show clear examples of anxiety and aggression acted
out through bodily drives. Yet, they differ in medium and portray different
female states of mind.
Antoni’s piece narrates a vicious circle
that involves: the struggle against anxiety, the effort the body puts on
sublimating it through displacement, the new sense of guilt and the reparation
she makes for it, which, generates again anxiety through objects of female
masochism. This is not an artistic representation of the Kleinian theory but an
extension of it that I have made, which is in no measure fabricated from an
expert’s point of view. On the other hand, Rist portrays a woman in a state of
play, acting out the physical aggression that is embedded in males and females
equally since childhood in their fantasies of sadism. The point of repression
of the sadistic drive here remains unsolved since during the video there is no
need for remorse. It is more of a portrayal of the play state Winnicott describes
that is necessary for both children and adults to deal with their obstacles. A
play state not valued, I would say, as it should in adult life and regarded
more as a sign of immaturity. However the artists coincide on the fact that through
the unveiling of the broader spectrum of their own psyche -which includes the awareness
of their bodily drives- they succeed in demystifying the preconceived notions
associated to their own gender. It is
also now evident, that both of them have been able to create through
destruction.
Bibliography:
-
Klein,
Melanie and Riviere, Joan:
“Love, Hate and Reparation” W.W Norton and Company – United States of America 1964
-
Klein,
Melanie: “The Selected
Melanie Klein Edited by Juliet Michelle” The Free Press – New York – United
States of America 1986
- Klein, Melanie: “Envy and Gratitude and other works
1946-1963” The Free Press – New York – United States of America 1984
-
Nixon,
Mignon: “Bad Enough
Mother” The MIT Press 1995 http://www.jstor.org/stable/778742
-
Winnicot,
D. W: “Playing and
Reality” Routledge Classics – London – England 2005
-
Crowley
Jack, Dana: “Behind
the Mask” Harvard University Press – London – England 1999
- Laplanche,
J. and Pontalis. J-B:
“The Language of Psycho-Analysis” W. W Norton and Company – United States of
America 1973
- Bitterli,
Bronfen, Iles, Muller, Rosenthall: “Pipilotti Rist: Eveball Massage” Hayward Publishing – London
– England 2012
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Soll,
Anne: “Pipilotti Rist”
Dumont – Berlin – Germany 2005
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Martha: “The Contingent Object of Contemporary Art” The MIT Press – Massachusetts
– United States of America – 2003
- Heon,
Laura: “Janine
Antoni’s Gnawing Idea” in “Gastronomica: The Journal of Food” Vol 1 No 2
University of California Press – United States of America 2001
1. Anxiety Hysteria:
Term introduced by Feud to distinguish a neurosis whose central symptom phobia,
and to emphasise its structural resemblance to conversion hysteria.
2. Anxiety Neurosis: A
type of illness, which Freud isolated, distinguishing it: a. symptomatically
speaking from neurasthenia, because of the predominance here of anxiety
(chronic anxious expectation; attacks of anxiety or of its somatic
equivalents); b. aetiologically, from hysteria: anxiety neurosis is an actual
neurosis characterized more particularly by the accumulation of sexual
excitation which is held to be transformed directly into symptoms without any
psychical mediation.
