68. Art Monsters | Lauren Elkin
unruly bodies in feminist art
‘Why have there been no great women artists?’ asked Linda Nochlin in 1971.
Friends,
You may be familiar with Lauren Elkin’s work via her books Flâneuse: Women Walk the City and No. 91/92: diary of a year on the bus which is how I came to know and love her writings. Deborah Levy believes "Lauren Elkin is one of our most valuable critical thinkers - the Susan Sontag of her generation."
I also highly recommend listening to Lauren in conversation with Katy Hessel (of The Great Women Artists Podcast) as she discusses two feminist artists from her book, Carolee Schneemann and Hannah Wilke.
“Exploring the ways in which feminist artists have taken up this challenge, Art Monsters is a landmark intervention in how we think about art and the body, calling attention to a radical heritage of feminist work that not only reacts against patriarchy but redefines its own aesthetic aims.” — Lauren Elkin
Lauren introduces us to the concept of Art Monster early on in the book.
2014. I am struck by a phrase, recognising it without knowing, exactly, what it means. A few pages into Jenny Offill’s novel-in-fragments Dept. of Speculation, a thunderbolt.
My plan was to never get married. I was going to be an art monster instead.
Art Monster.
Google search it.
Nothing; no original point of reference. The expression exists in French: monstre de l’art. Someone big and important and unreasonable. Male, obviously. Charismatic, an egomaniac. But in English, not at all. In Angela Carter’s The Sadeian Woman (‘A free woman in an unfree society will be a monster’). ‘A woman had to be a monster to be an artist’ said the surrealist painter and sculptor Dorothea Tanning.
Lauren sets the scene for the remainder of the book that will follow by clarifying that it isn’t important whether someone is or isn’t an art monster, the word monster was just as effective as a verb: art monsters. It’s about the strict boundaries in art that are placed on women by society, patriarchy, and internalised misogyny. What is monstrous and what is not, the boundaries dividing evil from good, clean from unclean, human from animal etc., are subject to debate, an invention of Western culture, maintained since antiquity by (male) philosophers who have often labelled ‘monstrous’ bodies that differ from that of an able-bodied white male.
Aristotle too elaborated on the relationship between monstrosity and the feminine. ‘A monster is a mistake; a female is a deformed male, therefore a female is a born monster.’
Lauren uses this term as the foundations for the book as she introduces us to the monster connections between Virginia Woolf, Louise Bourgeois, Artemisia Gentileschi, Sutapa Biswas, Rebecca Horn, Eva Hesse, Carolee Schneemann, Roxane Gay, Zadie Smith, Kara Walker and many others. An extraordinary amount of research went into this book - it is an absolute treasure. I found myself disappearing off down internet rabbit holes to learn more about the women I was hearing about (some for the first time).
If you’re into art, feminism, gender equality and courageous women breaking boundaries, I think you’ll love this book.
She takes up too much space. Also she’s mad. Which has nothing to do with anything. She lives in her own world because she makes the whole world hers. — Kathy Acker, Eurydice in the Underworld
PS: I’ve just spotted that Lauren has a new book out in the UK in June 2024. (Pre-order here.)
What kind of art does a monster make? And what if monster is a verb? Noun or a verb, the idea is a dare: to overwhelm limits, to invent our own definitions of beauty.
some other (art) things:
an art monster called muriel spark
paul gauguin - why are you angry?
making space, women and the man made environment
I have to read this book!