Rrose Is A Rrose Is A Rrose

PHOTOGRAPHY
(A CI
GENDER PERFORMANCE
(A CI
IN
PHOTOGRAPHY
(A
a C/VFV4&
GENDER PERFORMANCE
IN
(A
a )^/VM)6e
PHOTOGRAPHY
JENNIFER BLESSING
JUDITH HALBERSTAM
LYLE
ASHTON HARRIS
NANCY SPECTOR
CAROLE-ANNE TYLER
SARAH WILSON
GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM
Rrose
is
a Rrose
a Rrose:
is
Gender Performance
in
front cover:
Claude Cahun
Photography
Organized by Jennifer Blessing
1928
Self- Portrait, ca.
Gelatin-silver print,
Solomon
R.
Guggenheim Museum, New York
January 17 April
This exhibition
the National
27,
is
supported
Endowment
11 'X.
in part
by
tor the Arts
The Solomon
New York.
R.
Guggenheim Foundation,
ISBN 0-8109-6901-7 (hardcover)

(softcover)
Guggenheim Museum Publications

1071 Fifth
Avenue
New York, New York
10128
Hardcover edition distributed by
Harry N. Abrams,
Inc.
100 Fifth Avenue
New York, New York
10011
Designed by Bethany Johns Design,
Printed in Italy by Sfera
cm)
Nan Goldin
Paulettc
Cibachrome
and Tabboo!
in the
print,
30 x 40 inches (76.2 x 101.6 cm)
All rights reserved.
ISBN 0-89207-185-0
x 23.8
back cover:
Jimmy
)1997
9>s inches (30
Musee des Beaux Arts de Nantes
1997
New York
and
Courtesy of the
artist
Matthew Marks
Gallery,
New York
bathroom, NYC, 1991
Contents
JENNIFER BLESSING
xyVwMie
is
a c/\rose
is
Gender Performance
z/vxose
in
Photography
JENNIFER BLESSING
CAROLE-ANNE TYLER
134
id'emt nut files - KyMxUcuo&wuieS
SARAH WILSON
156
c/ erfoymuiq
me
c/jodt/ im
me
J970s
NANCY SPECTOR
176
^ne S$r/ of
~&e#idew
Bathrooms, Butches, and the Aesthetics

JUDITH HALBERSTAM
190
f//a waclna
LYLE ASHTON HARRIS
204
Stfrtists
'
iyjtoqra/inies
TRACEY BASHKOFF, SUSAN CROSS,

VIVIEN GREENE, AND
221
*jndex 0/ cyle/wt
J.
FIONA RAGHEB
<///<//<
as
of
Female Masculinity
///,.. /</<< tin
Honorary
Solomon
Justin K.
/n
Trustees in Perpetuity
R.
Guggenheim
Thannhauser
Peggy Guggenheim
^7'o((}i</<rfroM
Trustees
Giovanni Agnelli
Jon Imanol Azua
Edgar Bronfman,
Jr.
The Right Honorable

Chairman
Earl
Castle Stewart
Peter Lawson-Johnston
Mary Sharp Cronson

Carlo
De
Benedetti
President
Daniel Filipacchi
Ronald O. Perelman
Robert M. Gardiner
Barbara Jonas
Vice-Presidents
David H. Koch
Robert M. Gardiner
Thomas Krens
Wendy
Peter Lawson-Johnston
L-J.
McNeil
Rolf-Dieter Leister
Vice-President
and Treasurer
Stephen C. Swid
Peter B. Lewis
Peter Littmann
Wendy
McNeil
L-J.
Director
Edward H. Meyer
Thomas Krens
Ronald O. Perelman
Frederick Reid
Secretary
Edward
F.
Richard A. Rifkind
Rover
Denise Saul
Rudolph
Schulhof
B.
Honorary Trustee
Terry Semel
Claude Pompidou
James
Sherwood
B.
Raja Sidawi
Trustee,
Ex
Jacques E.
Officio
Lennon
Seymour
Slive
Stephen C. Swid
John
S.
Wadsworth,
Director Emeritus
Cornel West
Thomas M. Messer
Michael
F.
Wettach
John Wilmerding
William
Ylvisaker
Jr.
-Z.<'//f/r/'.j
c j ////</ Yff
///<
/(
Timothy Baum,
//
New York
The Museum of Modern
Cecil Beaton Archive, Sotheby's
London
Art,
National Portrait Gallery,
Galerie Berggruen, Paris
Daniel
Patrick Breen
Galerie Nierendorf, Berlin
Bugdahn und Kaimer,
Galerie
Diisseldorf
New York
London
Newburg
Michael James O'Brien
Robert C. Conn, California
Parti
The Detroit
The Philadelphia Museum of Art
Institute of Arts
Communiste
Deutsche Bank AG, Frankfurt
REFCO Group,
William
Regen
S.
Ehrlich and Ruth Lloyds
Alexandra Epps
Ltd.
Projects, Los Angeles
G. Rossi, Milan
M. Anthony and Anne

Fonds Albert-Birot,
The Royal Photographic
E. Fisher
Society, Bath
Beverly and Harris Schoenfeld
Paris
Barry Friedman Ltd.,
New York
Michael Senft,
Nan Goldin
New York
Fisher Stevens
Howard Greenberg
Gallery,
New York
Ronnie and Samuel Heyman,
New York
Jack Tilton Gallery,
Ubu
Gallery,
New York
New York
Wooster Gardens,
Jane B. Holzer
Vivian
Francais, Paris
New York
Horan
Jedermann Collection, N. A.
Joan and Gerald
Three lenders
who wish
to
remain anonymous
Kimmelman
Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and

Reproduction,
Margo Leavin
Inc.,
Gallery,
Los Angeles County
Bloomington, Ind.
West Hollywood
Museum
of Art
Christian Marclay
Matthew Marks
Gallery,
New York
Richard and Ronay Menschel

Carol and Paul Meringoff
Annette Messager
The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Robert Miller Gallery,
New York
Musee d'Art Moderne de
la Ville
de Paris
Musee des Beaux- Arts de Nantes

Musee National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges
Pompidou,
Paris
VII
Cindy Sherman
Untitled, #112, 19H2
Color photograph,
REFCO
Group,
45.'
Ltd.
x 30 inches (114.9 x 76.2
cm), ed.
1/10
Jp'<ume,Je,
Js
Yi/ce. :
n 'cUmefiaA
'
like,
don'l like
salad, cinnamon, cheese, pimento, marzipan,
the smell of new-cut
hay (why doesn't someone with
a "nose" make such a perfume), roses, peonies, lavender,
champagne, loosely held
Glenn Gould, too-cold

cigars, Handel,
political convictions,
beer, flat pillows, toast,
Havana
slow walks, pears, white peaches,
cherries, colors, watches, all kinds of writing pens,
desserts, unrefined salt, realistic novels, the piano,
Twombly,
coffee. Pollock,
all
romantic music, Sartre,
Brecht, Verne, Fourier, Eisenstein, trains,
Medoc wine,
having change, Bouvard and Pecuchet. walking

sandals on the lanes
southwest France, the bend
of
Adour seen from Doctor
of the
Brothers, the
mountains
leaving Salamanca,
J/ cloot Y /(Arc
at
L.'s
house, the Marx
seven in the morning
etc.
white Pomeranians,
in
women
in slacks,
geraniums, strawberries, the harpsichord, Miro,

tautologies,
animated cartoons, Arthur Rubinstein,
villas, the afternoon, Satie, Bartok, Vivaldi,
children's choruses, Chopin's concertos,
telephoning,
Burgundian
branles and Renaissance dances, the organ, Marc-
Antoine Charpentier, his trumpets and kettledrums, the

politico-sexual, scenes, initiatives, fidelity, spontaneity,
evenings with people
J/ li/oe, J/
to
anyone;
all this
don't know, etc.
aon Y Yi/ce :
this,
means:
this is of
apparently, has no meaning.
my body is
not the
Hence, in this anarchic foam
a kind
no importance
of listless blur,
same as
of tastes
and
And
yet
yours.
distastes,
gradually appears the figure
of
a bodily enigma, requiring complicity or irritation.
Here begins the intimidation

others to endure
me
of
liberally, to
by pleasures
polite confronted
the body,
remain
which obliges
silent
or rejections
and
which they
do not share.
(A
If I
fly
bothers me,
had not
kill
killed the
pure liberalism:
it:
you
fly, it
kill
what bothers you.
would have been out
o/
am liberal in order not to be a killer.)
ROLAND BARTHES
Xjrovetuwd
THOMAS KRENS
An
important milestone
in the history
of the Guggenheim
Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation made a combined
gift
Museum was
reached in 1993,
permanent
established photography as a significant part of the Guggenheim's
gift
collection, thus offering
an additional medium to further the Guggenheim's mission of interpreting the
museum
the
of a significant body of photographs and a
Modern and contemporary photography. The
supporting grant for the future acquisition of
the past few years, the
when
art
of this century. In
has offered a rich selection of photography exhibitions including
monographic shows on Robert Mapplethorpe and
Joel-Peter Witkin;
photography sections within
the context of other exhibitions (The Italian Metamorphosis, 1943-1968; Joseph Albers: Glass, Color,
and
Light;
and
German Art (Walker Art
other institutions, such as Photography in Contemporary

the Edge:
organized by
In/sight: African Photographers, 1940 to the Present); as well as exhibitions
Twenty Photographers
in
Europe, 1919-1939
(J.
Center);
Museum); and
Paul Getty
Women
on
Dieter Appelt (Art
Institute of Chicago).
As we reach the end of
this century,
more
exhibitions that attempt to synthesize the art and
issues of the twentieth century are being organized.

art as
The Guggenheim
committed
is
to
approaching
an international and transhistorical phenomenon. The institution has always been strongly
linked to Europe; now, responding to changes in contemporary society brought about through
advances in transportation and telecommunications,

Rrose
is
a Rrose: Gender Performance in Photography
exhibition to be based
strictly historical.
opment
We
that are thematic
of
most
are
is
grateful to the National
a Rrose
many
artists
is
Endowment
a Rrose. Without
shown
Guggenheim Museum
I
theoretical rather than
first
is
photography
monographic or
want
in seeing
And,
it
to
institutions
in the
United
its
devel-
through
to
who were
who
imprimatur,
this
it is
its
its
early sup-
unlikely that the research for this pro-
support, our audience will be permitted to enjoy the

at
museum
the
and, in
some
cases,
States.
Assistant Curator Jennifer Blessing proposed this exhibition several years
thank her for suggesting
finally, this
the lenders
its
for the Arts, a Federal agency, for
whose work has not previously been exhibited
has never before been
ago.
Guggenheim Museum's
the
and
global. Rrose
an issue across the course of the twentieth century and examines
traces
could have been undertaken. Through
ject
is
become
orientation has
in several countries.
port of Rrose
art
It
on premises
its
this innovative
show, and for her diligence and commitment
splendid realization.
exhibition
would not be possible without the
so considerate as to lend them.
artists
My gratitude goes
who
to
so generously contributed to the success of this project.
all
created the works and
of the individuals and
JENNIFER BLESSING
have seen further
If I
sued the topic.
is
is
by standing on the shoulders
of
Giants.
NEWTON
ISAAC
This exhibition
it
the fruit of encouragement from colleagues, without which
am
had the opportunity to present
grateful to have
might not have pur-
my initial
ideas in graduate semi-
nars conducted by Linda Nochlin and Robert Lubar at the Institute of Fine Arts,
University. In 1993,
Guggenheim Museum Associate Curator Nancy Spector
my academic work in
pose an exhibition related to
first
New York
suggested that
Surrealism and the theory of masquerade.
pro-
thank
her for being a source of inspiration and a supportive comrade throughout this project.
At an early stage in
Rrose
is
a Rrose
is
development, the National Endowment for the Arts awarded a grant to
its
a Rrose:
Gender Performance
unknown
ported the show are
me,
to
wish
Photography. Although the various parties
in
who
sup-
could personally thank each one. This important grant
provided the necessary impetus to propel the show from the drawing board to the implementation
stage.
feel that
that they
felt
should also thank the
the exhibition
would speak
exhibition has achieved that result,
Of course, without
never have become a
moments,
to their interests
will
it
am,
and concerns.
If,
me
over the years
in the final analysis, the
have accomplished one of the goals of the NEA.
the support of the
reality.
on behalf of the people who have told
museum's
Thomas
director,
as ever, grateful for his perspicacity
Krens, this exhibition
and
insight.
would
At crucial
have relied on the support and advice of Lisa Dennison, Curator of Collections and
and Germano Celant, Curator of Contemporary
Exhibitions,
On
NEA
behalf of everyone at the
bition's lenders,
who
private collectors
museum, I would
like to
are listed elsewhere in this catalogue.
who
Art.
extend
I
my
would
heartfelt gratitude to the exhi-
particularly like to thank the
have so generously lent their important works.
It is
many
our great good fortune that
they were willing to share their pieces with our visitors.
would
made
also like to express
this exhibition possible:
Director,
my appreciation
Samuel Sachs
II,
to colleagues
Director,
The
and
their institutions
Detroit Institute of Arts; John Bancroft,
and Jennifer Pearson Yamashiro, Associate Curator, Kinsey
Gender, and Reproduction,

Curator, and
Inc.,
Bloomington,
Tim Wride, Assistant
Ind.;
Graham
whose loans
Institute for Research in Sex,
Beal, Director, Robert Sobieszek,
County Museum of Art; Philippe de
Curator, Los Angeles
Montebello, Director, and Maria Morris Hambourg, Curator in Charge, The Metropolitan
of Art,
New York;
de
Ville
Museum
Suzanne Page, Director, and Gerard Audinet, Curator, Musee d'Art Moderne de
Paris; Jean Aubert, Director,
Alain Sayag, Curator,
Georges Pompidou,
Musee des Beaux-Arts de Nantes; Germain
Musee National d'Art Moderne, Centre de Creation
Paris;
Glenn Lowry, Director, Peter
Study Center Supervisor, The
Museum
of
Modern
Art,
and
Industrielle au Centre
Galassi, Chief Curator,
New York;
Viatte, Director,
and Virginia Dodier,
Terence Pepper, Curator of
Photographs Collection, and Paul Cox, Picture Librarian, National Portrait Gallery, London; Anne
d'Harnoncourt, Director, Innis
Howe Shoemaker,
Associate Curator of Photography,

I
am
among
Senior Curator, and Martha Chahroudi Mock,
The Philadelphia Museum of Art; and Pam Roberts, Curator,
Society, Bath.
deeply appreciative of the galleries from which
we borrowed works; they
are also listed
the lenders. Frequently, their directors and staff also provided important information and
assistance.
am
la
especially grateful for the efforts of Alexandra Rowley, Robert Miller Gallery,
New
York; Florian Karsch, Galerie Nierendorf, Berlin; Shaun Caley, Regen Projects, Los Angeles;
Boxer,
Ubu
process,
Gallery,
New York; and
also benefited
from the expertise (and enthusiasm) of other
Virginia Zabriskie, Zabriskie Gallery,
New York and
Marie-Claude Lebon, Galerie Bouqueret-Lebon,

Isy Brachot, Brussels
New York.
Brent Sikkema, Wooster Gardens,
and
Paris;
Paris.
must
Paris; Christine
also
and
dealers,
In the research
most
Hoffman
Isy Brachot, Galerie Christine et
Martin McGeowin and Andrew Wheatley, Cabinet Gallery, London;
Gladstone Gallery,
Gallery, Chicago; Paul
New York; Rhona Hoffman and
Kasmin, Paul Kasmin Gallery,
Rudolf Kicken, Cologne; Matthew Marks, Andrew

Gallery,
New York;
particularly
thank Christian Bouqueret and
Chantal Crousel, Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris; Ealan Wingate, Gagosian Gallery,
Fletcher, formerly Barbara
Adam
and
Janelle Reiring
Leslie,
and
Tom Heeman, Metro
New York;
Jeffrey
Pictures,
New York; Mark
Judy Brauner, Rhona
Rudolf Kicken, Galerie
Peabody, Matthew Marks
New York; Ben
Barzune, for-
Deborah Irmas, formerly
merly Metro Pictures; Marcel and David
Fleiss,
Galerie 1900-2000, Paris;
PaceWildensteinMacGill Gallery, Beverly
Hills;
Eleanor Barefoot, PaceWildensteinMacGill Gallery,
New York; Alain

Tilton Gallery,
Paviot, Galerie Alain Paviot, Paris;
New York.
various occasions.
am
and Jack Tilton and Annabella Johnson, Jack
Michael Joseph, Janine Antoni's
also grateful for the
good
offices
assistant, has
been quite helpful on
of Ariane Grigoteit, Deutsche Bank AG;
Georges Marchais and Jean-Louis Raach, Parti Communiste Francais; and Philippe Garner and Lydia
Cresswell-Jones at Sotheby's London.
My research
was
assisted
Director, Berlinische Galerie;
by various colleagues, to
Dana
whom am
I
Friis-Hansen, Senior Curator,
especially grateful: Jorn Merkert,
Contemporary Arts Museum,
Houston; Julian Cox, Assistant Curator, and Jacklyn Burns, Rights and Reproductions Coordinator,
J.
Paul Getty
Museum, Santa Monica; Erna
Haist, Institut fur Auslandsbeziehungen, Stuttgart; Didier
Schulmann, Chief Curator of Collections, and Nathalie Leleu, Loan Coordinator, Musee National
d'Art Moderne, Centre de Creation Industrielle au Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Paul Schimmel,
Chief Curator, Russell Ferguson, Editor, and Connie Butler, Associate Curator/MSW,
Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Adam Brooks, Curator,
REFCO
Group,
Ltd.,
Museum
of
Chicago; Ulrich
Krempel, Director, Sprengel Museum, Hannover; Peter Boswell, Associate Curator, and Rochelle
Steiner, Curatorial Assistant,
Exclusive Agent,
both formerly Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and Vincent Fremont,
The Andy Warhol Foundation
for the Visual Arts,
have provided important information and support

Battaglioli, Gilberte Brassai, Eileen
Lehr,
Anne
Radcliffe,
Michael and
Many Guggenheim Museum

tion.
At various times,
who
also
J.
staff
Filipacchi,
Schwartz, Arturo Schwarz,
Thomas
members contributed enormously
Other individuals who
Wayne
Baerwaldt, Gaia
Frank Kolodny, Janet

Walther, and Jack Woody.
to the success of this exhibi-
have greatly relied on the astute aid of Vivien Greene, Curatorial Assistant,
wrote the bulk of the catalogue biographies.
have benefited from the adept assistance of
Lamoureux and Claudia Schmuckli. Other
Exhibition Assistants Josette
counsel
are: Arlette Albert-Birot,
Cohen, James Crump, Daniel

B. Z.
New York.
curatorial colleagues
have frequently depended upon include Assistant Curators Clare
Bell,
Matthew
whose
Drutt, and
Fiona Ragheb, and Exhibition Coordinator Jon Ippolito. Heidi Weber, Manager of Government
Grants and Research, and
Julie Schieffelin,
Manager of Foundation and Corporate Giving, both
thoughtfully developed grant applications for this project.

Aileen Rosenberg, Assistant Registrar, has ably handled the myriad complex arrangements for
the loans to this exhibition.
also
thank Suzanne Ouigley, Head Registrar for Collections and
Exhibitions, for offering assistance at various
moments.
Gillian McMillan, Conservator, has thought-
fully
considered the conditions of the works and
how
best to present them. Elizabeth
Paper Preparator, carefully realized ingenious solutions to various framing
Assistant
Jaff,
issues. Jocelyn
Brayshaw,
Exhibition Technician, led a wonderful installation crew that included Jack Davidson, Jody Hanson,
Matt Schwede, and Bob Seng. Without their expertise, the exhibition presentation would have been
diminished. Peter Read,
Jr.,
Production Services Manager/Exhibition Design Coordinator, deftly orga-
nized the overall installation arrangements, which included the services of Richard Gombar,
Groom, Exhibition Technician/ Administrative
Technician. Jocelyn
contributions to this project in the design stages.
devised the lighting for the exhibition.

Affairs,
and
am
Julia Caldwell, Public Affairs
likely
Managing
ly controlled the
Lighting Technician, sensitively
Coordinator, for their efforts on behalf of the show.
Editor,
my
My gratitude
imagination.
no understatement
I
am
to
acumen
Deborah
to this project,
to say that this
book
especially grateful for the talents of
and Melissa Secondino, Production
Assistant,
who
have meticulous-
Knox White,
Associate
and Keith Mayerson provided invaluable
assistance.
Drier, Project Editor, for her sensitive editing of the essays in this
profound. Her expertise was essential for
am most
it is
book's production. Edward Weisberger, Editor, and Jennifer
Editor, lent their editorial
helpful
thank Scott Gutterman, Director of Public
also like to
Without him
have remained a figment of
Elizabeth Levy,
is
made numerous
Assistant,
deeply appreciative of the encouragement of Anthony Calnek, Director of Publications, and
his skillful realization of this catalogue.
would
would
Mary Ann Hoag,
Museum
this project
and her contribution
fortunate to have had the opportunity to
work with Bethany
is
book
greatly appreciated.
Johns,
who
designed this
catalogue as well as the exhibition graphics. She has created a beautiful book, which superbly articulates the intentions
of Rrose
a Rrose
is
is
a Rrose.
This project has been subsidized by the contribution of

past few years,
on myriad aspects of the show. These
many
interns
interns include
Ann Pomplas-Bruening,
tance, without
I
am
which
Rajendra Roy, Janice Yang, and Kate Zamet.
would not have been
delighted to include the
have worked, over the
Pamela Burns,
Cardinali, Alison Engel, Jan-Philipp Friihsorge, Franziska Martin, James
Lee
who
able to see this project to
its
work of catalogue contributors whose
Raffaella
McNamara,
am
Jennifer Miller,
grateful for their assis-
fruition.
efforts are a constant source
of inspiration. These authors have brought their unique vision and style to the material and immeasurably enhanced the final product.
Spector, Carole-Anne Tyler,
my colleagues
want
to
and Sarah Wilson
in the curatorial
thank Judith Halberstam, Lyle Ashton Harris, Nancy

for their stimulating insights.
my
and
my
efforts.
level defy
any discourse
from many of the

ments.
artists'
am honored
(like
work
in the exhibition.
is
and object has
patient responses to
work
my numerous
own
its
mine) that attempts to define
to include their
Fiona Ragheb,
It is
ultimately their
it. I
which
will always
on
have benefited enormously
inquiries
in this exhibition,
logic,
and
their thoughtful
com-
and look forward with anticipation
their future endeavors.
To
but
my
colleagues, friends,
who have
that I
may
who
Studying their work has been a tremendous pleasure for me,
also a great challenge, because each oeuvre
some
J.
artists in the exhibition.
deepest thanks go to the artists whose
creativity that has inspired
also deeply appreciate
department, Tracey Bashkoff, Susan Cross, and
contributed additional biographical entries on the

Finally,
and family, who not only have home my
actually enjoyed the ride, I give
obsession with this project,
my sincere gratitude and affection, and heartfelt
be for you in the future that which you have been for me.
wish
to
Cecil Beaton
(
ouiUca
'astegii,
1927
Gelatin-silver print, 8
5 ".
inches (21 x 14.5
London
cm)
Jw?fc
JENNIFER BLESSING
This exhibition and book represent an argument. They are based
on a chain
choose
of interlocking
As
to follow or not.
ness about the selection
who
premises that you, the reader,

in all
of
group shows, there
works: artists
lived at different times,
who sought
is
may
willful-
who have never

to
met,
achieve widely dis-
parate goals are linked together despite their differences. Which

is
not to say that the selection
is arbitrary.
Rather, these works,
gathered together as they are, shape a narrative

story of
human
of sorts, reflect
existence in the twentieth century.
In skeletal form, the chain of postulates
and which underlie
develop,
the other contributions to this book, looks
like this:
S$- i&i/dnavu
intersects with
vi-tUrne
popular interest in gender presentation and sexuality in the 1990s
an explosion
in the
production of
art that takes as
it
subject the
body and
Claude Cahun
Self-Portrait, 1927
its
coverings. Books, articles, films,
and web
sites
on cross-dressing, transgenderism, and
}''
inches
various sexualities ("lesbian chic," the rehabilitation of bisexuality, and so on) proliferate.
The
Neo-Expressionist painting and language-based Conceptual art of the 1980s
and Peggy de
(11.7
8.8
cm)
Detroit Institute of Arts,
Founders Society Purchase, Albert
this decade,
by work that focuses on the body
as a physical entity
is
followed, in
and the construction of
Trust
Salle Charitable
and the DeRoy
Photographic Acquisition
identity. In this light,
the 1990s.
//te
(
J. ).')(
studies,
feints
and disguises seem
The contradictory juxtapositions of body
ground gender
y
y>
Cindy Sherman's
:>
play,
developments of
and vestimentary codes
Endowment Fund
fore-
or "gender trouble."
/riV//<\,. t
much
parts
to herald
an exponential expansion
of which
is
in the
growth of academic gay and lesbian
influenced by the provocative
new
theoretical
models of gender
construction developed by philosopher Judith Butler. Butler's 1990 book Gender Double:
Feminism and
the Subversion of Identity inspires subsequent research in a variety of disci-
plines, including art history
ments
in the theoretical
Queer
studies present
some of the most
stimulating develop-
understanding of the formation of identity since the 1970s and
1980s
work of
theorists.
and
feminist psychoanalytic
These conceptual tools enable
film
fruitful
readings of contemporary cultural production
whether
me
ten
fine art or
mass media.
tens of investigation
is
widened
beyond our contemporary preoccupations,

clear that
last,
now
historical
not the
is
moment
first,
in
nor
which
will
it
it is
be the
issues of gen-
der and sexuality hold a particular prominence.
Not only do
aspects of European art production
between the two world wars (notably Dada and

its
legacy in Surrealism) resemble certain fea-
contemporary
tures of
art,
but some of the psy-
choanalytic roots of current gender theory date

to the late 1920s
and
1930s.
Furthermore, a sub-
sequent continuum appears to begin in the
late
1960s, proceeding with greater or lesser vitality

until the present.
The phenomenon of "Sexual
Liberation" manifested
tion, so that
itself in cultural
performance and body
early 1970s resonate in
of the
art
contemporary
produc-
art.
Hypotheses concerning the lacuna of the early
from
postwar period
1945 to the mid-1960s
remain to be analyzed.
Cecil Beaton
Gary Cooper,
1931
^//ie
(
lelatin-silver print,
12 x 8
% inches (30.5 x 22.7 cm)
medium
0/ photography
yields the perfect arena for the play of gender
and
sexuality.
means of reproduction corresponds (not by
technological inception of photographic
The
accident) with
Cecil Beaton Archive,
Sotheby's
London
the nineteenth-century unfolding of the legacy of the Enlightenment's exaltation of the individual.
The
rise
logical
of mythologies of the self such as psychoanalysis and capitalism coincide with the techno-
means
to reflect each being
unto
itself,
Representing the physicality of the body in contemporary
mediums such
as film
promote
as well as to
art,
it
in the
photography and other reproductive
and video share with sculpture and performance
notions of the Real. This exhibition examines the
manner
in
body and
its
a special relationship with
which photography's strong aura of
ism and objectivity promotes a fantasy of total gender transformation,

ulation of incongruity between the posing
world without.
or, conversely,
real-
allows the artic-
assumed costume. The range of photographic
representations includes documentary-style portraiture, theatrically constructed self-portraits, and
photomontages created from found photographically based materials, with frequent overlaps
nique or method
among
such categories.
These are the postulates that generate the patterns of Rrose

in Photography:' In the
following essay
logical order, the works.
in tech-
is
a Rrose
is
a Rrose: Gender Performance
present four narratives that encompass, in roughly chrono-
These are not the only
stories that
could be told, but rather four ways to look
Nan Goldin
at the
assembled material. They elaborate the premises
listed above,
providing historical evidence to
support the theses, yet they should not be construed as indicating that the
artists
involved created
)avid at
zo
their
works
the art
is
to illustrate a theory, or that the
examined
as a text,
among
works themselves are reducible
other texts
to a single issue. Rather,
(literary, historical, theoretical), yet
with
its
own
them through
logic.
Each of
my fellow
authors elucidates
their particular expertise, and, at times, diverging
some of
the
from them
same themes, enriching
in
meaningful ways.
Wove
Street,
Boston, 1972
x in
inches
50.8 \ 40.6
ourtes) of the artist and
Matthew Marks
New York
motives and internal
<
ielatin -silver print,
iallery,
cm
'
.
///)//'(/
n<
/(/'.,/<
(//'<<//// 1/
he infer
</
////<< j'
tf
>/ //<
We may
but
not
know
we do know
exactly what sex
that
with the possibility
it
of
is
is;
mutable,
one sex being changed
into the other sex, that its frontiers are often
uncertain,
and
that there are
many
stages
between a complete male and a complete female.
havelock
ellis, The Psychology of Sex, 1933
With the post-Enlightenment decline of such explanatory systems of
human
civilization as
discipline
monarchy and
religion, there arose the central
concerned with the epistemology of the individual, the
sci-
ence of psychoanalysis. By the end of the nineteenth century, psychoanalysis
had organized
development of
itself
around
body and
issues of the sexual
the
behaviors in the mind. Psychoanalytic accounts of
its
the formation of gender identity (and here
Sigmund
Freud's texts are
key) posited masculinity as normative, and femininity as a kind of
enigma, an excess or inscrutable other." The period between the two
world wars witnessed
burst of publications examining the nature of
feminine sexuality and identity,
whose
Claude Cahun
-
<
</
role of
Portrait, 1929
women
in society."
lelatin silver print,

1
13.9 x 8.8
Museum Boymans
I'm
van
uningen Rotterdam
cm)
woman," with her
call for
changes
took on particular urgency in

tions in marriage
dress
lence,
fear that
in
women's
this period, in
and inheritance
and comportment.
and the
women
which
women
were becoming
rise
women demanded
and professions,
sought to have equity with men, which led to ambiva-
men
(wearing their clothes, smoking, endangering
that the analyst loan Riviere
made
appear
imperiled.
ity
Masquerade," published
For Riviere, femininity
by burying
it
beneath
a veil
It is
in this context
her contribution to the debate in the form of a paper entitled

in 1929, in
which she posited that professional
ultrafeminine attire in order to assuage their male colleagues,
in
roles,
as well as alterations in
through "unnatural" intellectual pursuits, and so on).
as a
of the "new-
the right to vote, modifica-
their reproductive capacities
"Womanliness
analysts,
and domestic and public
inferior legal status
laws, access to universities
In each case,
women
women
were drawn to the question of feminine
very nature of femininity was part of a larger social debate. The
identity, as the
inches
written by
assimilation into their profession reflected wider changes in the
not accidental that
It is
many
is
who
women
fear their prerogative
constituted in dissembling or the masking of
is
women's masculin-
of decoration. She makes no claims for an inherent femininity, but
rather constructs feminine identity as an alienated social performance.
facques Lacan resuscitated Riviere's
contains
i
a line
that has since
become
work
in a 1958
a dictum: "I
would say
to say, the signifier of the desire of the Other, that the
femininity, notably
[lysis
all its
attributes
"The Meaning of the
paper,
that
woman
through masquerade.""
it
is
in
In the context
is
which
order to be the phallus, that
will reject
with linguistics, Lacan maintained that the phallus
Phallus,"
an essential part of her
of his rereading of Freudian
a signifier of
power; however,
Madame Yevonde
Mrs.
Edward Meyer
as "Medusa,"
Vivex color print, 14
'
11
from the Goddesses
inches (36.3 x 29.7
Society, Bath
cm)
series, ishs
'
although each subject has a Symbolic relationship to the phallus

in the
form of "having"
no one
tity is
it
actually possesses
or "appearing" as
{beingthe phallus),
it
how
Film theorists interested in
it.
iden-
constructed diegetically in movies, as well as in the condi-
work
tions of spectatorship, absorbed Lacan's
French
critics first specifically
1970, British critics in 1975.
engaged
From
into their
own.
his reading of Riviere in
the 1970s to the present,
Lacanian constructions of femininity as masquerade have been
many
developed and contested in
disciplines, including feminist
psychoanalysis, cultural studies, and art criticism."

In the 1990s, theorists have
ninity as
ininity,
masquerade
masculinity
is
broadened the notion of femi-
encompass any gender
to
identity. Like
mythic construction that
is
fem-
perpetuated
through the performative repetition of stereotypes of behavior
and
dress."
Gay and
lesbian theorists have been especially con-
cerned with the study of various
sites in
which performances
cause "gender trouble," namely female impersonation, crossdressing,
and butch/femme
aesthetics. This
work convincingly
exposes the heterosexist presumptions of earlier theoretically

inspired studies, and delineates the range of gender positions
Man Ray
Cini-sketch:
(as
Adam and
opposed
to a strictly binary
dichotomy)
as well as their historical diversity.
Eve.,
mentioned the simplified reading of
Butler's
work
as indicating that "all
When
gender
is
an interviewer
drag," Butler
1924-25
responded, "Yet
%'/,
x 5X inches
(21 x 14
Collection of Daniel
cm)
accept the idea that gender
is
an impersonation, that becoming gendered involves
impersonating an ideal that nobody actually inhabits, and
where
that's
have a certain sympathy
Newburg
with Lacanian discourse."
12
Accepting as a given that a fixed notion of the concepts "man," "woman," "masculine," and
"feminine"
a position.
is
impossible does not
mean
that each individual can always voluntarily choose to inhabit
For example, the feminine masquerade of a female-born subject
to social expectation, while, for the
same person,
butch presentation
may
may
involve conformity
yield a forced self-
consciousness in certain contexts because of a socially perceived enunciation of difference.

is
drag? Hypermasculinity and hyperfemininity in a heterosexual situation
essentially equivalent to their respective
read as a purposeful (or
conformist
when
as Butler asserts,
sex
artificial)
they would
that,
and
works
is
more
easily
performance. The hyperbolic representation of gender seems
lines
between
sex, gender,
15
differ.
Yet,
gender presenta-
sexuality.""
having evacuated these concepts of any essential biological determination,
become amorphous,
Instead, as the
subjects, while cross-dressing
"There are no direct expressive or causal
might seem
perceived as
and gender presentation correspond and oppositional when they
tion, sexual practice, fantasy

It
male and female
may be
Which
free-floating signifiers subject to arbitrarily assigned -meaning.
in this exhibition exemplify,
myriad codes
exist that are, alternately,
accepted or
manipulated. Throughout history there have been attempts to transcend the notion of binary sexual
and gender distinctions through "third sex" concepts such

Eonist, Uranian, invert, Sapphist, or
appeared
to
as the
androgyne and neologisms such
Amazon." The nineteenth-century
deny difference, basically annexing "femininity"
to
figure of the
as
androgyne
masculine precepts."' Third-sex terms
Brassai
"Bijou" o) Montmartre, iy32
11
-xi). inches (30.2 x 23.2 cm)
New
York,
David H. McAlpin Fund
fix a
variety of subjectivities under
one banner, on the margins of the "master" binary
logic.
Current
theoretical conceptualizations of identity recognize both the inability to escape the binary system
and the
desire to corrupt
are described as
much
result in
it
in a pleasurable way. Occasionally, these pleasures, these
ambiguous, yet they seem to be anything but. Mixing gender codes does not so
uniform gender blurring, which presupposes
effects yielding indeterminability,
but rather a variety of
mances. In other words, a gender-ambiguous subject

of codes
in
one
is
kind of equal distribution of gender
specific, readable,
never invisible;
know much about
art,
but
am reminded
this
you, the
announces the juxtaposition
know what
like."
of that commonplace of the casual art
Perhaps gender operates in the same
way, in that sometimes you don't want to know, you just want to
tell
it
and nameable perfor-
subject.
So where does the pleasure come from?

lover: "I don't
troubled genders,
more you
learn, the
more your
tastes
feel.'"
And
yet, as
any student
will
change. In the epigraph that appears at the start of
book, Roland Barthes posits a deceptively simple notion of
self that
is
defined by the peculiar
Art,
George
I
Piatt
Lynes
accumulation of seemingly inconsequential
'ntitled, ca. 1941
likes
and
dislikes, the
concatenation of
and distinctions from others
vidual can define itself by similarities to
tastes.
"
("I like cherries, too;
Each indibut unlike
9% x
(
7/.
inches (23.2
\ 19.4
cm)
!ourtesy of the Kinsey Institute
tui
him,
like
women
in slacks.
always be examined and
My body
more or
is
like/unlike his.")
The
possible reasons for given tastes can
you are so
inclined.
Perhaps one's gender presentation and responses to those of others are determined by
how one
less
convincing explanations developed,
if
Research in Sex, Gender,
and Reproduction,
Inc.,
Bloomington, Indiana
thinks (consciously/unconsciously) one ought to look at a given

greater or lesser extent, of
knowledge,
my
taste,
which has been formed by
moment. Here
a question, to a
it is
a confluence of factors-
environment,
desire.
In the course of
developing
which was modified the more

quent junctures,
this exhibition,
read, the
more
an elaborate system of selection
looked, the
more
questioned the apparent logic or arbitrariness of
spoke, the
my
criteria
more
choices.
emerged,
wrote. At fre-
understood why
did not want to include any photographs that are voyeuristic or sensationalistic in a predatory kind
14
of way, but this exclusion broadened to include intimate or sexualized nudity. The result
is
highly artificed, social images with a remote, lapidary quality that exudes an exhibitionistic
group of
Hannah Hdch
Training
Ertuchtigung), u>2s
self-
Photomontage,
delight without, for a

tality.
How different
lably betrays every
stranger.
trol,
moment,
that
is
indicating any gap in the performance, any self-doubt, any sentimen-
from
emotion, where your heart
worn on your
is
These photographs, instead, are images of fantasy
the icy
demeanor of mastery,
Most of the photographs
like a
femme
fatale
in this exhibition
figure looks directly at the camera, at you, fixing

film, this
is
a subject
vengeance. This
be, forever.
is
who
is
which your
a quotidian experience of the world, in
world where to perform
Even when the address
is
is
is
an awkward
they represent the dream of
and book
its
and your body
total
preserved on film, the classic phallic
you with
capturing you: you are
sleeve,
face uncontrol-
its stare.
other,
to control.
are characterized
This
is
not
through which
It is
not direct, your presence
a
is
world
in
it
by
con-
woman.
direct address
a subject
"captured" on
defines itself with a
which you are
who you
acknowledged. The performer
is
will
11
\ -
inches
28
\ 18.7
cm
Galerie Nierendorf, Berlin
who
playing to you, smiles and winks at you. There are those
smirk always remains
away (the moment
a split-second
who
clown, but theirs
sure
and play pervades the exhibition, holding
a self-absorbed laughter,
is
present the picture of seriousness, yet a
And
after the shutter clicks).
which you may join
if
you wish. This
promise of transcendence (not
there are others

spirit
of plea-
a taunt), a possibility
that you, too, are not trapped in a body, that time can be stilled, that you, too, have the phallus that
power.
is
Notes
1.
During the period
in
which
this exhibition
was
pp. 47-82 (English-language abstract, "Staging
Pompidou
the Self
in Paris
presented femininmasculin:
Le sexe de Fart (October 24, 1995-February

1996).
12,
The premises of one of feminin-
masculin S
&
five sections, entitled "Identites
Essay on Identity, Exotism, and the
Photography 1840S-1980S, exh.
cat.
is
"II Identites
&
Gallimard/F.lecta and Centre Georges
form of
1995), pp. 119-21.
my
3.
Furthermore, the
introductory exposition has been
is
Photography.
theme
the
masculin, where the exhibition's premises were
tations in
and the catalogue
in wall labels
as a
series of postulates. Like the organizers of
femininmasculin,
would
the rhetorical nature of

I
like to
my
Rrose
is
a Rrose
is
however,
differs
a Rrose
&
my
historically
mind
it
of scholars
and Eve Kosofsky

title
the
alter ego,
Duchamp and
on
photographic represen-
issues of
"found" photo-
tation, including the use of
graphic reproductions
in collage.
For a
Selavy
is
pronounced
and
poem
like a
Stein's line first
biological reproduction, see the reviews by
Juan Vicente Aliaga, Frieze 27 (March-April
and Elisabeth Lebovici,
1996), pp. 58-59;
"trench Lessons," Artforum
34, no. 3
Of course,
and
desire,
it is
dictum, "Eros,
appeared
other exhibitions and publica-
as a
and thus,
to
my
In the art-historical literature,
les
execs pho-
Fssai
Masquerade,"
from which
all
9.
My
Jacques Lacan, "The
reference to Stein
Duchamp's gesture
is
not singular,
imper-
Meaning of
the Phallus,"
Stephen Heath, "Joan Riviere and the

Masquerade,"
in
Burgin, Donald, and Kaplan,
Formations of Fantasy,
p. 57, cites:
"Morocco de Josef von Sternberg," Cahiers du

cinema, no. 225
(November-December
1970),
pp. 5-13; reprinted in Peter Baxter, ed.,
subsequent masquerades are
intended to complicate that reading, to indi-
eds.,
Sexuality, p. 84.
form of
Duchamp's
that there are different types of drag,
mise en scene
ecole
York:
reprinted in Mitchell and Rose, eds., Feminine
confluence of meanings.
Jean-Francois Chevrier and lean Sagne,
comme
(New
1982), pp. 2off.
Joan Riviere, "Womanliness as
eds.,
cate that
sur l'identite, I'exotisme et
8.
mind, the happy
tions have influenced this project, including
"L'Autoportrait
eds.,
1986), pp. 35-44-
e'est
in a sen-
irrevocably tied to sexuality
considered derivations.
1996), pp- 34. "9-
and Jacqueline Rose,
(1929), pp. 303-13; reprinted in Victor Burgin,
drag gesture has been canonized into an act
(March
review of the "great debate" over female
International Journal of Psychoanalysis 10
dedicated to Emily Dickinson.
presentation,
apotheosis in metaphorical representations of
Formations of Fantasy (New York: Routledge,
Although gender can be conceived
receive their
Standard Edition,
the gender premises of the exhibition: Rrose
sual
and vaginal imagery, which
241-60; and
ations have erotic connotations that parallel
la vie";
literal phallic
(1931), in
James Donald, and Cora Kaplan,
femininmasculin, and
focus on
For
W. W. Norton,
7.
Stein's cre-
thoughtful critique of the heterosexist bias of

its
vol. 19, pp.
freudienne, trans. Jacqueline Rose,
Rrose Selavy. The references
Paris. Also,
exclusively
"Some
Feminine Sexuality: Jacques Lacan and the
Duchamp's
apparatus underpinning the show
as well. The present exhibition focuses
6.
in Juliet Mitchell
Stein allude to the historical
both Duchamp's and
and
Press,
sexuality, see Juliet Mitchell, "Introduction-I,"
basis of the exhibition in between-the-wars
distinct
ed.
vol. 21, pp. 223-43.
work
section of femininmasculin, and the theoretical

is
Standard Edition,
proper reiterates
to recall Marcel
Sigmund Freud,
James Strachey (London: Hogarth
"Female Sexuality"
is
famous motto with an addi-
R intended
feminine
to
calls to
Introductory Lectures"
Distinction between the Sexes" (1925), in
descriptive subtitle indicates
which the gender of the subject
Stein's
New
The Standard Edition of the Complete
i953-i974)> vol. 22, pp. 112-35; see also
of the show, photographic represen-
like Butler
Sex Changes
Psychical Consequences of the Anatomical
ture of gender theory,
tional
Mascarades"
is
highlighted. For those familiar with the litera-
Gertrude
markedly.
more
is
oriented than the "Identites
trans.
Sedgwick. The flowery
argument.
)espite these similarities,
approach to the material
underscore
The
vol. 2:
example, Sigmund Freud, "Femininity,
Psychological Works of
York:
a Rrose: Gender Performance in
inspired by the presentation of feminin-
presented
(New
have frequently been asked to parse Rrose
Rrose
See, for
(1933), in
and
Routledge, 1990).
exh. cat. (Paris:
I'art,
5.
Lecture XXXIII,
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism
Land,
Yale University Press, 1989),
pp. xii-xiii.
(London:
1986).
the Subversion of Identity
Mascarades," in feminin-
masculin: Le sexe de
Pompidou,
2.
R. Smith, 1933),
Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan
in
No Man's
(New Haven:
Plymouth Arts Centre,
a Rrose
quoted
p. 255;
Self: Self-Portrait
somewhat
is
Long and Richard
Gubar,
Staging the
National Portrait Gallery; Plymouth, England:
similar to those of Rrose
Ellis,
Lingwood,
ed.,
The Psychology of Sex (New
Havelock
York: Ray
Photographic Excesses," pp. 132-34); and James
Mascarades" (Identities and masquerades), are
a Rrose. See M.-L. B. [Marie-Laure Bernadac],
i(S
4.
tographiques," Photographies 4 (April 1984),
being developed, the Centre Georges
is
Sternberg, trans.
Diana Matias (London:
British Film Institute, 1980);
and Claire
Johnston, "Femininity and the Masquerade:
Anne of
the Indies," in Claire Johnston
sonation, or gender performance, in various
Paul Willemen, eds., Jacques Tourneur
contexts and with diverse meanings.
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh Film
and
Festival, 1975),
most
pp. 36-44. Perhaps the
tion of Riviere's theory
adop-
influential
ple,
was that by American
Mary Ann Doane. See her "Film and
scholar
October
1982), pp. 74-97; reprinted in
Femmes
l-atales:
Psychoanalysis
Doane,
The
ory
field
York: Routledge, 1991),
example of the use of
an art-historical context
is
Riviere's the-
with positive meaning. Marginalization
manifested, and created, through an inability
Representation and Sexuality, exh.
to
On
New
New Museum
cat.
16.
Contemporary Art,
ot
"The Meaning of the
The Lacanian
men would
or medals.
p.
vetement
le
34
1;
cited
resist
See Kari Weil, Androgyny and the Denial of
iust like
[Paris: Editions
du
to
if
they
them
anymore." Butler, "The Body You Want,"

(
the
Seuil, 1983],
how
they probably wouldn't be interested in
ties
no one has
a flaw:
"I'm not sure that anybody knows
were able to account for their sexual practices,
was the phal-
have no need of leathers or
the phallus." [La Robe: Essai psychanalytique
sur
appears to
account for their sexual practices, and
Lemoine-
analyst Eugenie
masquerade, thus betrays
17.
appears as femi-
itselt
Display [parade],
it
implicit) logic.
Difference (Charlottesville: University Press of
Phallus," p. 8s, I.acan
I.uccioni explains, "If the penis

lus,
identity because
(named or
itself is
Virginia, 1992).
notes that "virile display

nine."
name an
a master
1984), pp. 7-17.

In
words that are
probably that
"Posing," in Kate Linker, ed., Difference:
11.
demand-
of contested language, or that the margin-
alized should attempt to replace
of Craig Owens, via Doane. See Owens,
York:
not a coincidence that the
identifications of people
derogatorily coded and to reinvest those words
earliest
in
Mrs./Miss/Ms.; gay,
ing rights and political visibility inhabit this
PP- 17-3210.
It is
names and
Feminism, Film Theory,
New
>
American.
September-
girl, gal,
homosexual, queer; or negro, black, African
the Masquerade: Theorising the Female

Spectator," Screen 23, nos. 3-4
the changing connotations in the twenti-
eth century for
p. 86.)
18.
Roland Barthes by Roland Barthcs

Richard
Howard
(1975), trans.
Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1994), pp. 116-17.
bv Heath, "loan Riviere and the
Masquerade,"
p. 56.
Recent publications that examine constructions of masculinity
encompassing
manifestations include
Helaine Posner,
artistic
Andrew Perchuk and
The Masculine
eds.,
Masquerade: Masculinity and Representation,

exh. cat. (Cambridge, Mass.:
Arts Center and
MIT
Berger, Brian W'allis,
Mil
ist
Visual
and Maurice
Press, 199s);
and Simon Watson,
eds..
Constructing Masculinity, with picture essay by
Carrie
199S
12.
Mae Weems (New York:
Routledge,
1.
Liz Kotz,
"The Body
Y'ou
with Butleri, Artforum
Want"
}\,
no.
11
(interview
(November
1992), p. 85.
13.
For Butler's articulation of the hyperbolic, see

"Critically Queer," in Butler, Bodies that
On
the Discursive Limits oj "Sex"
(New York:
Routledge, 1993). PP- 223-42.
Matter:
14.
Butler, "Imitation
and Gender
Insubordination," in Diana Fuss, ed.,
15.
Inside/Out: Lesbian Theories.
Gay
(New York:
P- 25-
"Eonist ,"
Routledge, 1991).
named
for the eighteenth-century
Chevalier d'Eon de Beaumont,

Ellis's
Theories
term for the
transvestite.
is
Havelock
"Uranian" and
"invert" are late nineteenth-century terms
indicating the
used
homosexual
in literary circles, the
subject, the
first
second derived
from the psychopathology of Richard von

Krafft-Ebing and others. Sapphist and
Amazon
suggested the lesbian. All of these neologisms

indicate a disturbance in language, in the sense
that the contestation of
names and
their signi-
fications are manifestations of a society's

inability to agree
on meaning. Note,
for
exam-
i"
Man Ray
Marcel
(
Duchamp
us Rrose Silavy, 1920-21
lelatin-silver print, x
The Philadelphia
Vera White Collection

18
Museum
'
inches (21.6 x
of Art, Samuel
17.3
S.
cm)
White
III
and
JENNIFER BLESSING
Gender Performance
1.
Some European Photography Between

Rose
a rose
is
is
a rose
in
Photography
Two World Wars
the
a rose.
is
Loveliness extreme.
Extra gaiters.
Loveliness extreme.
Sweetest ice-cream.
Gertrude stein,
What I do
is color.
is
recollect is this.
From
words are not
Life
collect black
and black
birds.
How
is
letters of
Marcel
Gertrude stein,
black and white.
easily
name
intention
I
for
thereafter,
first
is
recollect
So
not.
black. Black
when I am
was using
taste
to get
myself. Call
name? change
and Selavy
sex
of
is
is
that
tin-foil.
Rose being the most
the easy play on
words That's
it
away from
a
little
myself, though
game between
"I"
knew
Duchamp
as part of the
punning reference
for the Belle Haleine
yet ironic disdain for
not beautiful, she
Euripides's account, this Helen
is
is
life.
perfectly well
and "me."
in
drag as Rrose.
packaging for a line of "eau de
to the beautiful
mass
signed.' Shortly
version of these photos was

voilette," called
Helen of Troy. Rrose Selavy thus
brand of perfume.
This gesture bubbles with double entendres and inside jokes, manifesting
For Rrose
there
interview, 1962 4
Marcel
Rigaud perfume bottle
became the spokesperson
and
black. White
replace birds with
appeared in 1920 as the author of various Dada artworks, which she
"Belle Haleine," in a playful
delight in
is
all color
handwritten note, undated'
was always
Man Ray photographed
mounted on
do
white
Duchamp
my personal
marcel duchamp,
Rrose Selavy
What
of
"Next: Life and Letters of Marcel Duchamp," 1920 2
marcel duchamp,
that
white. White
feel thin. Birds
Rrose Selavy born in 1920 in N.Y. Jewish
My
is
is thin.
and
"ugly"
and white. From the standpoint
the standpoint of black. Black
black. White
Silver
"Sacred Emily," 1913
culture, in this case advertisements
not Helen, and she
is
not a she. Like the
a typical
Dadaist
and product marketing.
phantom Helen
not the "real" Helen, but rather an imposter. She, too,
is
in
as
19
Man Ray
Belle Haleine,
ephemeral
Eau de
as the breath
haleine) of the
perfume and
perfume
as "faked" as the appropriated
Voilette,
Tristan Tzara facetiously pointed to the artificiality of Belle Haleine,
Eau de
Voilette,
bottle.
and, by exten-
1921 (printed 1930s)
sion, the fashion system that
4%> x
3%
inches
(11
8.5
cm)
on
its
it
parodied, in the journal
Madam, be on your guard and
cover: "Therefore,
New
York Dada, which featured Belle Haleine
dada product
realize that a really
is
a differ-
Collection of Michael Senft,
New
York
ent thing from a glossy label.""
Or
is it?
Disputing the distinction between
tinctions of any kind
readymades
fice, his
a keystone of
is
through
are,
a scientific system of notation,
Like
11
Duchamp's
reality
illusion
artistic practice:
a process of selection
Duchamp
and
defined by another and
Which
is
not to say that difference
that perhaps
male versus female.
In
though
insistently
devoid of
art;
arti-
and using
creates "real" technical diagrams of fantabulous machines.
in a constant state
The binary system

the sexual one
is
for that matter binary dis-
and naming, transformed into
rue Larrey (1927), a door hinged between two entryways,
another, are multivalent.
or
is
Duchamp's
objects, not
erased, but rather that
of redefinition in relation to
its
one thing or
one thing
is
opposites."
most fascinated Duchamp (apart from the game of chess) was

works such
as
The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even
(The Large Glass) (1915-23), he created feminine and masculine spheres, charting the uncertain
exchange between the two. In L.H.O.O.Q.

tion of the
portrait
Mona
Duchamp
sitter.'" It is in this
Born
in 1887,
intended to foster
rise
Lisa,
it,
(1919),
by drawing
moustache and goatee on
reproduc-
asserted that he had discovered the hidden sexual identity of the
context that the gender bending of Rrose Selavy should be seen.
Duchamp
witnessed an explosive increase
a legacy of the convulsive
consumerism and the advertising
growth of capitalism
of capitalism and industrial rationalization was,
Renunciation" of flamboyance and ostentation
in
in the
nineteenth century.
in part, responsible for the
in favor
The
"Great Masculine
of the standardization of a more sober and
Marcel Duchamp
L.H.O.O.Q., 1919/1930
Pencil
on reproduction,
Gift of Louis
Communiste
Aragon
to
19 x 13
inches (48.3 X33
Georges Marchais
Francais, Paris
cm)
for the Parti
Raoul Ubac
Mannequin by Marcel Duchamp,
1938
9% x 6X inches
Musee d'Art Modernc de
la Villc
(23.2 x 17.2
de Paris
cm)
circumspect form of male dress. The harshly drawn sexual distinctions of modern masculine and
feminine attire in which male clothing came to
remained the
domain of sensuality and
sole
consciousness about self-presentation,
women
twentieth century, while

thereof, engaging in
artifice,
moral seriousness and feminine dress
are both
symptom and
and the dividing
cause of an increasing
self-
between the sexes." In the early
line
challenged social strictures by wearing men's clothing or elements
presumably masculine
men
sports to smoking,
play
reflect
ranging from working outside the
activities
home
to
dressed in traditional women's wear in only the most limited circumstances. 12
Certain stereotypical "ideals" of feminine and masculine dress were perpetuated in mass-
media fashion magazines and advertisements. Hannah Hoch, one of the

photomontage, cruised popular magazines
early exponents of
Dada
in the 1920s, shattering the classically ordered, integrated
bodies represented in the magazines into fragments, which she recombined into strange and exotic
hybrid personae." Mixing body parts and articles of clothing,
Hoch
creatures out of the "real" (photographs representing real objects
While an implicit critique of the "normative"
zines).
work, there
The
practice.
also an undeniable playfulness
is
titles
members of society
ginalized
dancers). Here,
ers,
who
of the montages
Hoch
them
It is
and
from the commedia

titles
it is
dell'arte
in her
and
men,
singers,
circus perform-
norms
society's
(precur-
and the saltimbanques of Pablo
metaphorically indicate the social position of
identities
circus performers, they
permissible as long as
in this
period frequently refer to performers and mar-
mutual ostracism due to lack of conformity to
people who represent ambiguous
jects present. Like carnival

is
this
(tragediennes, vagabonds, lion tamers, clowns, strong
Rose Period paintings). Hoch's montage
the unusual
seems apparent
rigidity of advertisements
follows the traditional identification of artists with actors
represent for
category crossers
and actual clippings from maga-
and humor, which suggests Hoch's own pleasure
made during
sors include Antoine Watteau's players

Picasso's
created unnaturalistic, fantastical
of any kind
which her hybrid sub-
occupy the liminal space of the
circumscribed.
which
freak, in
14
the juxtaposition of apparently disparate parts that causes the "gender trouble" in Hoch's
photomontages,
just as
it
Duchamp
does in the drag performance of
as Rrose. In
one
of pho-
set
tographs of Rrose Selavy, she holds the fur collar up around her neck in a typically "female" coy gesture.
Upon
careful inspection, the
sible angle to the
body, but
his playful subversion
we do not need
would not work
wearing women's clothes. (In
Germaine
hands appear too small
fact,
if
these clues, since
we were not
Everling.) This back-and-forth
he "shaves"
Duchamp's
knowledge
in reverse)
letter,
Duchamp
game
is
the keystone to
refers to
is
man
Duchamp's work, unfolding across
on the Mona
Lisa,
making "her"
female mannequin
is
into a "him,"
cross-dressed in
himself as "une primadonna a Yenvers"
and signs himself "Sarah Bernhardt
woman,
referring to an actress
reverse"
makes him
man
in
an unending
famous
for her
alias
Marcel Duchamp."
circuit of identifications:
own
15
Here,
own
as a lover of
men, conceives himself as
prima
Duchamp
inverted prima
married woman; Duchamp,
The "prima donna
cross-dressed performances.
again, while recalling the artist's
(a
he represents himself as
donna
Lisa and, by extension, Leonardo's possible hidden portrait of himself as a
known
that he
clothes at the 1938 Exposition Internationale du Surrealisme, reversing Rrose's male-to-
performs textual cross-dressing
Mona
an impos-
has never intended to pass
in possession of the
her, creating a reverse drag. Similarly, a
female drag. In a 1950
donna
Duchamp
at
Rrose Selavy 's hands and hat belonged to a female acquaintance,
the course of his lifetime. After drawing a moustache

in 1965,
and are
in relation to the face
in
the bearded
woman. Leonardo,
a lover ol
women,
shares
his identity with a similarly disposed actress.
2*
Hannah Hoch
Vagabonds
Vagabunden), 1926
Photomontage,
12
s8
inches
Collection of G. Rossi, Milan
(31.5
x 22.5
cm)
Hannah Hoch
Clown, 1924
Photomontage, 4
\ 3
inches
12.5 x
90 cm
New York
Barry Friedman Ltd.,
Hannah Hoch
The Tragedienne (Die Tragoedin), 1924
Photomontage,
Sprengel
6'-
inches (16.8 x 12.8
Museum, Hannover
cm)
Hannah Hoch
Tamer Dompteuse),
(
Photomontage,
Kunsthaus Zurich
26
ca.
14 x 10
/,
1930
inches (35.5 x 26
cm)
Hannah Hoch
The Strong Men (Die starken MShner),
1931
Photomontage,
13.5
Institut
ftir
inches (24.5 x
cm)
Auslandsbeziehungen, Stuttgart
Man Ray
jean Cocteau, 1922
4K x 3H
inches
(12.1
x 9.6
cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York,
Purchase, Joyce and
Robert Menschel Gift, 1987
Man Ray
participated in
and pieces signed by
many
of these gender games with Duchamp, photographing Rrose Selavy
her.'" In his
own
excellence: his fashion work, portraiture,

subjects.
Man Ray became
endeavors,
his
Dada
friends
he would create a female torso that resembled a minotaur;
member; or
penis.
These
fetishistic pictures
nude
portrait of a
of phallic
stand out
lus
and being the phallus
his
most sumptuous photographs
in
photographer of
and more experimental images
Employing the kind of puns favored by
suggest the male
women
Man
woman
significantly feature female
Duchamp and
woman
par
Francis Picabia,
with her head thrown back to
with a printing-press handle as surrogate

representations of
literal
Ray's lavish
women
women
and glamorous female
having the phal-
portraiture.
are those of Barbette, the transvestite trapeze artist
Among
championed by
Jean Cocteau and beloved by Surrealist Paris. This circus performer, born Vander Clyde in Texas, was
one of the most beautiful

appealing to Cocteau,
In writing
mances
"ladies" in between-the-wars Paris. Barbette's transformation
who was
about the trapeze
as being "in that
perennially
artist,
magic
Cocteau
light
drawn
to the
theme of metamorphosis
was
in his
especially
own
work.
17
refers to the liminal space of Barbette's public perfor-
of the theater, in that club of tricks where the truth no longer
has currency, where the natural no longer has any value.""
Barbette's
both
in the
fame should be seen
psychoanalytic literature, as well as in
feminine masquerade,
duced
in the
ined as a
in relation to a
''
contemporaneous
more popular
interest in
gender
identity,
writing. Joan Riviere's 1929 article
on
predicated on Freud's notion of the bisexual foundation of identity, was pro-
context of a burgeoning literature on homosexuality, in which cross-dressing was exam-
symptom of "psychopathology." 20 The
early twentieth century witnessed the flowering of the
nineteenth century's seemingly insatiable interest in the sexual body: the psychomedical construction
of identity (and
its
28
commerce
its
disruption in madness);
(prostitution).
21
its
sexual practices, both hetero
and homo; and
especially
-.
Man Ray
Barbette, 1924
(
ollection of Timothy
\ s
inches (20 x 14.9
cm)
Baum, New York

29
Man Ray
Barbette, ca. lyzos
4X
x 3
inches (10.5
The Metropolitan Museum of

Gift ol Ford
30
Art,
x 7.5
New
Motor Company and Fohn
cm)
York, Ford
<-..
Motor Company
Waddell, 1987
Collection,
Brassai's
photographs of brothels, gay and lesbian clubs, and masked
document
balls
sexual activities of early 1930s Parisian nightlife, illustrating the intersection of scientific
he frequented,
interest. Like the Surrealists
Brassai'
who perambulates
of the journalistic voyeur-observer, the flaneur

process. First published in 1933, in his
the voyeur's delight in the unusual
photographs from
this period,
book
followed the nineteenth-century
and popular
realist tradition
gathering material in the
city,
Paris de twit, Brassai's photographs are characterized
and forbidden."
In the text
The Secret Paris of the
'30s,
accompanying
the transgressive pleasures his "outlaw" subjects enjoy
was not necessarily unsympathetic
by
his later edition of
Brassai's value-laden descriptions indicate
the disdain with which he approached these subjects. 23 While he
violence. Yet he
the
the
he
drawn
is
in
by
"lesfleurs
du mar"
and
also underscores their dangerousness
They
to the people in his photographs.
are indi-
vidualized in tight close-ups and frequently look directly at the camera with a haughty disdain or
even a kind of patience, the
latter
In theatrical traditions
appeared as women, and

val
time and
masked
at
perhaps the result of the cooperation required to get the shot.
from the ancients
women
"normal" behavior were sanctioned
who determined
individuals
become
author O.
a
is
P.
Gilbert's studies
focus
human
that keep the
above."
the
number of books
on the
spawned English
in burlesque shows.
At carni-
above, these diversions from
at certain times. Yet
there
a history of
is
whenever they wanted, and whose
'
Clothes,
translations
role of clothing in the fixing (or
Two
male or female
it
imitators. ^ In
undoing) of gender
view of
articulates this
likeness, while
underneath the sex
years after the publication of Orlando, Virginia
which
while
and
all
acts
have
attire
texts in
for
women
to
it is
clothes,
s/he states, "In
only the clothes
the very opposite of what
is
it is
and Leonard Woolf 's Hogarth
London, released
wear men's
The narrator of
when
J.
Press,
C. Fliigel's study The Psychology of
identified the "Great Masculine Renunciation" of vestimentary finery.
was possible
The French
of these works
identity.
being a vacillation from one sex to the other takes place, and often
main publisher of psychoanalytic
that,
and
have frequently
collecting the stories of these figures were published.
Woolf 's 1928 novel Orlando: A Biography
Virginia
every
in certain spaces
to dress the part they chose
men
the stuff of historical accounts. In the period between the wars, apart from the psychomed-
ical literature, a
there
men
common. As mentioned
sex changes were
balls,
to Shakespeare to the circus,
often performed cross-dressed as
men
26
Flugel argued
could not breach the gender divide
without opprobrium.
Poets throughout history have conceived of social identity as a mask. Certainly, individuals
whose
lives specifically involve a daily
reveries.
Anyone who does not automatically
ety will understand the
who
decision about artifice might be especially disposed to such

fit
the expectations of
masquerade of conformity. So
have been schooled from childhood in the
arts of
it
(for gay or lesbian subjects,
who
as
no
makeup and
sen to examine gender identity in the twentieth century.
embodying "gender trouble" between
comes
Or
that
dominant (read
patriarchal) soci-
great surprise that
women,
graceful deportment, have cho-
some of the most
incisive
work
the wars was produced in the context of lesbian relationships
are put in the position of "passing" or
"coming
forced to confront their identity). These creations often functioned as love
out," are similarly
letters,
which indicates
the pleasures inherent in the production of the work. For example, Hoch's gender-blending pho-
tomontages were produced during her relationship with
Brugman);
a writer
2~
Orlando was created
as
an
Brugman Clown
(
act of love for Vita Sackville-West;
and photographer associated with the
Suzanne Malherbe.
Til
Surrealists, collaborated
is
a portrait
of
and Claude Cahun,
with her companion,
Brassai
Quarrel, 1932
(
ielatin-silver print, n
\ y

32
Art,
inches (29.2 x 23. s
New York,
cm)
Brassai
Female Couple, 1932
11
x 8

<
Art,
inched (30.2 x 22.6
New York,
cm)
Brassai
Woman at
Le Monocle, Montparnasse, 1933
Gelatin-silver print, 12 x 9'A inches (30.5 x 24.1
The
Museum
of
Modern

34
Art,
New York,
cm)
Brassai
Homosexual
Ball, 1933
9^ x

Gift of Gilberte Brassai
11
Art,
inches (23.5 x 29.5,cm)
New York,
0....SQTlÂmu
Claude Cohnn
Self-Portrait, ca. 1921
Gelatin-silver print, 4X5
Collection of Richard and
y/,
inches (10.9 x 8.2
cm)
Ronay Menschel
Claude Cahun
I.O.U. (Self-Pride), 1929-30
Gelatin-silver print, 6 x
Los Angeles County
4'/,
inches
Museum
15.2 x 10.3
cm)
of Art,
The Collection of Audrey and Sydney Irmas,

1
36
.lit
o\ the
lrmas Intervivos Trust of June
7,
19H2
Cahun performed both

pseudonymous
first
textual
name, Claude,
gender ambiguous
is
Claude Cahun
and photographic cross-dressing. Born Lucy Schwob, her

in French.
28
Self-Portrait, ca. 1928
In her photographic self-por-
traits,
she often appears as a dandy in masculine attire and short hair. In
Cahun
even today,
has frequently been presumed to be a
Cahun was profoundly committed
as artistic pursuits.
own
identity, as
woman and
as creative person.
engage defense of Surrealist practice

sexologist Havelock
Ellis;
and, in her prose
on the evidence of her literary as well
and her
well
known
Communist
poem Aveux non
for Les Pari* sont ouverts, her
criticism; she translated the
avenus, she
continuing the literary legacy of Arthur Rimbaud and the Symbolists,
whom
she was linked through her uncle, Marcel Schwob,
avenus
is
illustrated
Moore/" In I.O.U.
with photomontages
(Self-Pride) (1929-30),
Cahun
who was
which was reproduced
on one neck. The
mask.
will
resulting lingam shape
never be done
indicated by the artifice of
all
many
clear
which of her costumed
The
distinction
is
identified herself as
Aveux non avenus,
in
of which appear to be Claude,
That Cahun saw identity
her self-portraits, including those in which she
artists in this exhibition,
self-portraits
Cahun was
this
as a
literally
mask another
masquerade
is
wears a mask.
involved with the theater. Thus,
were produced
Aveux non
who
surrounded by the words, "Beneath
lifting off all these visages.""
Like
of the
is
all
self,
she admired and to
their contemporary.
as plate
renowned
examined the divided
whom
created with Malherbe,
eleven heads, including that of a doll-like Sumerian-style goddess,

rise
during her lifetime and
to exploring questions of identity
She was
in the face of
man
fact,
it is
not always
in the context of theatrical productions.
not, however, consequential because the very nature of portraiture involves the
subject's collaboration in
its
creation.
theatrical or strictly photographic.
Cahun
is
the author of her self in these performances, whether
x 2
'
inches (10 x _ .s
Galerie Bersruen, Paris
cm
Cecil Beaton
Portrait
</
Stephen Tennant, 1927
Gelatin-silver prim, 12 x 10 inches (30.5 \ 2s. 4
Courtesy of Robert Miller Gallery,

38
New York
cm)
'rt/>re<(((rf
Gertrude
Z<
ijh/.tif /> :
Stein, the
(circa
//</< //
/.'I-j~>)
matriarch of expatriate Paris and modernist writing, pioneered
a sensual literary style in
meanings, often deeply
which strangely juxtaposed words exude
and gender ambiguity, and both
work
Cahun's, Stein's mature
erotic. Like
women blossomed
a variety of
celebrates sexual
within the context of a lesbian
relationship. In the mid-i930S, Cecil Beaton created a formal double portrait of

Stein, in
which her substantial presence
woman-behind-the-woman, her
game
that Stein initiated
in 1933.
when
is
developed,
is
the
character
is
oir,
and
self are
is
if
to suggest that the
Stein herself. Beaton continues the
in
which the author's
whose
subject, the person
which was written by
Toklas's "autobiography,"
not contiguous, and because the book

It is
tempting
to
Is
Stein's
at the
reveals Toklas, slightly out-of-focus, in the proverbial wings.
the position of Gertrude's alter ego.
is
mem-
compare Beaton's double por-
with a decidedly more casual photograph, presumably taken
which
B. Toklas
between author and subject, since the autobio-
told through Toklas's "voice."
trait
reiterated as
she published The Autobiography of Alice
self.
Stein, subverts this relationship
graphical writer
alter ego,
form
Autobiography
is
same time,
Here Alice takes
Alice Gertrude or Gertrude Alice?
Beaton's double portrait of Stein recalls the frequent recourse, in his photographs, to mirror
Dorothy Wilding
Cecil Beaton, 1925, in
reflections,
which made
it
possible to include himself in a portrait (hopefully, of
This interest also seems to be linked to a delight in shimmering surfaces of
all
someone grand).
kinds
even
costume
All the Vogue,
Cambridge
Footlights revue
glare
that
emphasized the
artifice
of his images and promoted the status of his
sitters as
for
,;
London
Olympian models
divorced from pedestrian existence. As a society and fashion photographer, Beaton represented a par
ticularly exaggerated femininity, the
Certainly, he
kind that frequently seems indistinguishable from drag.
was conscious of the masquerade
traits indicate a particular
entailed; his
artifice
iJ
designed sets and costumes. To
the field of portraiture.
all
best
War
II
Paris
work
is
a series of portraits of society

ball,
women
become
delightfully kitsch.
Though
both of which he
35
a colleague in
many
Greek
in
fantastic outfits, such as that
Beaton's friend Oliver Messel. Yevonde
talent for the nascent Vivex color process with a Surrealistically inspired
that can, like Beaton's,
as
in fields
in the guise of
of which there were
and London, Yevonde did more than document
worn by Lady Dorothy Warrender, which was designed by

combined her
film, for
name of Yevonde Cumbers Middleton, was
mythological goddesses."' Probably inspired by a costume
pre- World
and
all
of these he brought the rarefied sensibility of the dandy.
the professional
Her
know me
His professional endeavors were
society portraiture; fashion photography; theater
Madame Yevonde,
cross-dressed self-por-
pleasure in constructing the self." "I don't want people to
am," he writes in a diary, "but only as I'm trying to be."
devoted to
own numerous
iconography
part of a tradition in British portraiture
dating back at least to Joshua Reynolds, in which aristocratic
sitters are allegorically
equated with
mythological figures, the gusto with which Yevonde describes this project in her autobiography suggests a
more personal
investment.'"
An outspoken
suffragist
and supporter of women
professional photography, she advocated color portraiture as the
Goddesses photographs heroize

identify historic role
models
saints to Judy Chicago's
modern women, and may be
from Cahun's
compendium
series
way of the
in the field
of
future. Yevonde's
linked to recurrent feminist attempts to
on "Heroines"
to Sackville-West's biographies of
of foremothers featured in The Dinner Party (1979 )-
"-
is
>9
Cecil Beaton
Gertrude Stein, 1935
Airbrush on gelatin-silver prim,

(
ecil
'
kS'A inches (23.6 x
Beaton Archive, Sotheby's London
21
cm)
Cecil Beaton
Gertrude Stem ami Alice
B. Toklas, 1^35
x 7 % inches
22 x 18.5
cm
London
41
Cecil Beaton
/
ady
avet
y,
ca. 19 )o
(
42
11
inches (33.5 x 28.6
ourtesyoi Robert Miller Gallery, New York
cm)
'<
Cecil Beaton
Debutantes - Baba Beaton,
The
J.
Paul Gettv
Wanda
13
Baillie-Hatnilton
inches (50.3 x
Museum, Malibu
35.1
and Lady
cm)
Bridget Ponktu'1928
Cecil Beaton
Igor Markevitch, 1929
1
<
44
lelatin-silver print, 9
e<
il
\ 7
inc lies
Hc.iton Archive, Sotheby's
24.8
London
\ 19. 8
cm)
Madame Yevonde
Mrs. Richard Hart-Davis as
Vivex color print, 14% x
11
"Ariel,"
from the Goddesses
inches (36.6 x 29.3
series, 1935
cm)
London
45
o
z
Madame Yevonde
Lady Dorothy Warrender as "Ceres," from the Goddesses
Vivcx color print,
14
%x8
'X,.
inches (37.6 x 22.1
National Portrait Gallery, London
46
cm)
series, 1935
Madame Yevonde
Lady Bridgett Poulett
Vivex color print, 16
as "Arethusa,"
"/.
x 10
from the Goddesses
% inches
42 x
27. 5
scries, 1935
cm
London
4-
Madame Yevonde
Lady Milbanke
from the
as "Penthesilea"
Vivex color print,
'/,,
x 10

48
(Queen
oj the
Amazons),
Goddesses series, 1935
inches (37.3 x 27.9
Society, Bath
cm)
Madame Yevonde
Lady Michael Balcon
Vivex color print,
as
13 %
"Minerva,"from the Gqddesses
x 8 %. inches (34.2 x
22.1
scries, 1935
cm)
London
4s>
Pierre Molinier
Effigy (Effigie), 1970
(
lelatin-silver print, 8
5%
inches (22.5 x 14.5 cm), ed. 3/6
Mnscc National d'Art Moderne,

50
lentre
Georges Pompidou, Paris
2.
An
Interlude: Photographic Pleasure (The
It
no doubt through the mediation
is
meet
the feminine
in the
of
masks
that the masculine
Is
interest of perversion extends
upon gender.
strips sexuality of all functionality,
of
many
human beings
than the need
to
of the
to
is
Subjectivity," 1988
is
40
always
in
some ways
Imagination," 1967 41
the speaking of a stranger through
Bodies that Matter, 1993
and as
oneself.
42
suis lesbien.
je
engraved portrait." By the end of the century,

psychotically tormented,
if
he was homosexual, undated
this sentiment, expressed
(I
by
am
41
the other) under his
a poet
who was
would become an emblem of the modern construction of
this construction
by providing multiple, frequent, and
other, thus enforcing the notion of a kind of split personality: the

4
is itself.
'
when
address in portraiture,
no less profound
Shortly before his death, in 1855, Gerard de Nerval wrote "Je suis I 'autre"
another one, which
brings to bear
whether biological or social
transcend "the personal"
pierre molinier, when asked
Photography fed
it
be a person, an individual.
judith butler,
Non
force
binary oppositions upon which the social order rests.
susan sontag, "The Pornographic
Speaking
and
beyond the disruptive
kaja Silverman, "Masochism and Male
The need
Fulcrum)
a Picture?" 1964*
The theoretical
Perversion also subverts
of Pierre Molinier as
most acute, most intense way.
Jacques lacan, "What
It
Work
An
literal
one that
frequently
identity.
reminders of oneself as
sees itself looking at
exceptional characteristic of the photograph
is
the
power of direct
the subject seems to be looking straight at you, the viewer.
It is
no
accident that two of Roland Barthes's favorite photographs were intimate portraits of beloved
women
wife
one
childhood picture of his mother, the other Nadar's image of "his mother (or of his
no one knows
effigy of
someone who
unseeing in the
looking
for certain)."
at us.
first
is
place
now
"
Powerful emotions, eeriness and nostalgia, are aroused by the
dead. Yet
we
cling to the replica as a sort of talisman: this person,
(become an image), whether dead, away, or grown
Although, of course, paintings
cal relation to a
being
who was
at
may
older,
is still
before us,
conjure similar responses, the photograph's indexi-
one time before the camera seems
to strengthen the intensity of the
"
viewer's response.
The
pleasures of the photographic image are polymorphous, yet the various forms they take
coalesce structurally
around the
the photograph as icon.
dialectic of reality
and fantasy
The recognition of oneself in
the index of the photograph versus
photograph can serve to define
oneself, to
e
create an identifiable
and
distinct subject. This
is
the narcissistic pleasure of the mirror, in which
we
51
Pierre-Louis Pierson
(
ountess de Castiglione, ca. iuss (printed 1940s)
Gelatin silver print from glass negative, 7 H x
The Metropolitan
Si
Museum
of Ait,
inches (18.7 x 12.7
New York, Gift
cm)
of George Davis, 1948
reassure ourselves of our existence.
of the loneliness that
The mirror can
our
individuality, of the loss of
is
reminder of the pain of separation,
also be a
first
reflection in
Photographic fantasy can assuage the ache of remembrance.
our mother's
might show us
It
of disintegrated identity suggesting the blissful abandonment of subjectivity,

(m)other.
Or
model
the photograph might present a perfect
enforce the psychic reconciliation of an untenable
a truth.
The
fact that
it
"
The
collapse into
its
ego
ideal. It
reality effect
its
the sensation
and
transfix,
that
a fetish
is
a trace
represents
it
promote
fictions, to
its
can help us to
photograph
fact that the
photographic means can be employed to create
fantastic illusions, to create fetishes that are fixed
lost
image
a delirious
memory. Thus, the photograph becomes
guarding against the reiteration of unacceptable perceptions.

or index of something that was once there gives
our
self,
eyes.
surreal or
what makes the photograph an
is
icon as well.
These aspects of photography may begin to suggest why

lesser extent,
why
is
it
tion of photographic
it is
compelling to look
popular custom to create photographs. Regarding the
and, to a
the dissemina-
equipment and technological improvements has allowed photography
widely practiced and to have a particular private, personal usage as well as

line
latter,
at,
between the public and private status of photography
is
a fine one,
its
be
to
public function.
The
somewhat comparable
overlap between autobiography and fiction in Marcel Proust, for example. There
is
to the
a trajectory in the
history of photography that encompasses semi-intimate self-portraiture, which functions as a private

pleasure, a personal tool of realizing the
artistic significance as well.
with the
modern esteem
''
and
The photographic
which a subject performs
writer, but
which are now valued
as
for the camera.
is
the development of rolled film with
its
and
consistent
Not
surprisingly, this tradition,
there
if it
all
art.
manner of work
can be called
that,
in
is
never just one shot but rather always a seem-
is
only partly due to the technical possibilities of the medium:
unfolding frames or the ability to repeatedly print an image.
more meaningful explanation
for the sheer
minute distinctions between each of them,
to achieve an unattainable goal.
is
independent works of
history of the pieces in this exhibition encompasses
ingly endless parade of images. This
rately
yet frequently has an extra-personal, social,
and the journal, both of which were once considered modest
one characterized by compulsive repetition
Instead, a
and
Contemporary appreciation of this type of photography
for the sketch
private tools of the artist
self,
A momentary
is
volume of images of this
compulsive motivation
their
frisson
is
type,
and the elabo-
the burning desire
superceded by recurring desolation, and the
circuit begins again.
From
its
inception, photography
public personages, the
self,
family,
and
was perceived
friends. Its
as
superb
an optimal means of obtaining portraits of

ability to accurately
and quickly document
the individual virtually replaced the portrait miniature in the mid-nineteenth century.
Kodak
era
began
in the 1890s,
when photographic technology was
appealing to vast numbers of people, individuals

investing in the necessary photographic
photographer to
de Castiglione
realize their portraits.
in Paris,
equipment might go
For example,
though from very
photographs they commissioned

interest in their self-portraits
who wished
to
was flavored by
"
Before the
sufficiently simplified to
make
it
document themselves without
to a studio or solicit
Hannah Cullwick
different social milieus,
in the third quarter
in
an itinerant
London and
the Countess
both quite actively directed the
of the nineteenth century. These women's
erotic tastes
in Cullwick's case, a desire for a

I
masochistic image that would please her lover; for the countess, an apparently personal fetishistic
delight in her
own
body."
Alice Austen
Self-Portrait, Full
Length with
Fan, Monday, September gth,

1892, 1892
Gelatin-silver print
from
glass negative,
8%
x 6'A inches (22 x 16.5
cm)
Courtesy of Staten Island

Historical Society,
Alice Austen Collection
The
relatively
low cost of photographic,
development of the snapshot
aesthetic, in
as
opposed
to painted, portraiture, permitted the
which anyone could indulge
their desire for self-images,
not only for the formal portrait destined for posterity but also for more casual and playful representations.
Experimentation and theatrical performance for the camera were fostered by the ease of pho-
tographic production. Thus Alice Austen might photograph herself on October
on September
9,
1892 as a
woman." Or
15,
1891 as a
man and
the legacy of allegorical portraiture could be traced through
the worker-genre 1920s self-portraits of the Morter Sisters, in which the
women
dressed as builder or
housemaid, garnering prizes for their enigmatic depictions." Then there are the countless private
albums,
many now
dispersed or
lost, in
favored guises for personal delectation.
54
which anonymous photographers present themselves
The
in their
aesthetic pretensions organizing these images vary.
Alice Austen
Julia
Martin, Julia Bredi and
Dressed
Up
as
Men, 4:40
Thursday, October
Nevertheless, the photographic
manipulated
self-portraits,
work of Cahun or
should be situated
Pierre Molinier, an artist
in relation to this tradition
who
created intricately
of self-documentation.
would be invigorated by the Polaroid innovations of the
instant gratification as well as the ability to shoot images without the
1960s,
need
to
i$th, 1891, 1891
from
glass negative,
It is
6'A
a tradition that
Sell
pin,
which provided
have them developed
x 8
*/
inches (16.5 x 21.8
cm)
Courtesy of Staten Island

Historical Society,
Alice Austin Collection
at
the neighborhood drugstore, and
camera, which maintains
all
it
would be transformed by the
proliferation of the video
the benefits of the Polaroid camera plus the incorporation of time
and movement.
Memory
is
a creative process,
which
is
now aided by
photographs, such that
difficult to
it is
discern which of your childhood recollections are "real" and which have been confused with photographs. Sensations generated by viewing a photograph might be entangled with
tained from later years. For example,
mask, which you are seen wearing

it
no doubt with
later
Similarly,
photo taken
clammy
at
Halloween when you were

insisting that
ideal of femininity, sporting curlers, lipstick,
perhaps what you remember

it.
in a
recall the
claustrophobia of that plastic
Halloween memories. Or you "remember"
graph you in your childish
about
you
is
memories
sus-
Superman
four, conflating
your mother photo-
and high heels
however,
not asking to be photographed but your mother later telling you
photographs that do not depict the past you wish to construct meet
you destroy the negatives of images
that
do not represent you
as
you want
a violent end:
to be represented;
you cut
out the figure of a person you wish not to remember. Photography, as the record of a specific
55
Man Ray
Barbette
Making Up, 1928
Gelatin silver print, 8
The
56
|.
Paul
<
letty
'
x.6
Museum,
'
inches (21.9 x 16.4cm)
M.ilibu
Man Ray
Kiki oj Montparnasse, 1924
'A
11
% indies (22.2 x 30 cm
Musee National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou,

Gift of
M. Lucien
Treillard, 1981
Paris,
Claude Cahun
Self-Portrait, ca. 192X
11
%x
9/. inches (30
Musee des Beaux-Arts de Nantes

58
x 23.8
cm)
moment
that
is
by definition
related to nostalgia
from
home.
for
a lost
moment
some photographs may
that
of childhood
derive their power:
images that present a dispersed
phous and
structurally
is
and memory, which always
seem uneasily headed

It is
past,
self,
an amor-
indistinct outline, recalling the
euphoric experience of integration that a child

with
feels
its
mother." This
is
a pleasure of bodi-
lessness, of indistinguishable boundaries, that
echoed
out of
itself,
reflection
and begin
out of control,
moment, howev-
into delirium. This
soon the child
relatively short, for
er, is
its
in a child's desire to spin
to
way
this loss,
must
find
to feel that they control their mother's sep-
and intimacy.
aration and return, her distance
Photographs seem to offer

this original loss,
means of organizing
which structures
all
including the ruin of one's youthful

painful passage of time,
itself.
cause for
is
it is
mourning/
Children must master

a
will see
understand that
separate and distinct being, which
joy and also for
is
realities
self,
the
and ultimately death
Photographs thus become
deny the
losses
fetishes that
of existence. The prevalence of
mirror images, doubled and multiple portraits,
and pictures of otherworldly mannequins and

dolls in
photographic production can be
explained, in part, as the natural union of subject
and
structure; fantastic fetish objects for a
fetishistic
medium,
anxieties that the

tain.*
look
their
uncanniness signals
photograph attempts to con-
Claude Cahun
These images embody the knowledge that the day
at this picture
of me;
will, thereby,
will
come when someone
have become the one
who
does not
other than
will
6x5 inches
Freud conceived of fetishism as the process by which an adult manages his childhood fear that
his
mother was castrated
insists that his
may
and
that, therefore,
evil,
may be
as well."
By
denial, in other words, he
(17.5
x 12.8
cm
Private collection, East Sussex,
England
mother, indeed, bears the phallus, and he develops various means through which he
continually reassure himself of this "fact."
wards off
he
Untitled, 1928
see.
that
is
More
broadly, the fetish
is
a sort of
charm
enlisted to prevent feared outcomes. Sexually fetishistic practices for
encompass cross-dressing,
in
which the
man "becomes" his mother and
a penis; or obsessional attractions to specific articles of clothing or
substitutes. Certainly, there
is
erotic pleasure in these practices,
is,
body
though
thereby, a
that
men
woman
with
parts that act as phallic
it is
frequently laced with a
shiver of anxiety.
59
Man Ray
\/i/(7/i7i,
1944
inches
14.5 \ 11.2
cm)

60
Paris
Cindy Sherman
Untitled Film
Still,
#56, 1980
Gelatin-silver print, 8 x 10 inches (20.3 x 25.4 cm), ed. 1/10
Collection of lane B. Holzer

6]
Born
Pierre Molinier
The Doll Id Poupee),
i
ca.
1970
in 1900, Pierre Molinier trained as a painter
whose
taste ran to the sensual exoticism
of Gustave
Moreau."* In the mid-1960s, Molinier shifted his painterly concerns to photography, creating elabo-
Gelatin -silver print,

4/, x 3/- inches
10.8 \ 8
rate self-portraits constructed of
cm)
Musee National
d'Art Moderne,
Centre
Pompidou,
leorges
death in 1976. His
artistic
animate and inanimate
parts, a practice
he continued until his
process included taking photographs of himself, sometimes masked,
Paris
dressed in corsets, stockings, and stiletto heels, as well as shots of friends.

ettes
He
then cut out the silhou-
of figures and body parts, which he recomposed and combined with photographs of
nequins to create fabricated portraits and fanciful collages. Through
this process
man-
of cutting and
recombination, which might require several intermediate generations, Molinier sought to achieve an
ideal
image of himself,
as well as to realize his sexual fantasies.
The
erotic pleasure of his process
is
graphically indicated by maquettes he created in which the photographic paper literally penetrates
another sheet, and by the lavish delicacy with which he embellished his prints. Through
and retouching, Molinier accentuated and improved upon desirable

unwanted,
in
order to secure an impossible yet seemingly
real
features,
persona
this
marking
and eliminated the
who was "documented"
in
the final photograph.
Two
key transformative procedures are reiterated in Molinier's self-portraits: one
"becoming female" through the elimination of

in lingerie; the other
fetishistic
emphasis on
dildo attachment.
62
is
his penis, the addition of breasts,
his ironization of masculinity

legs,
Through
and
his
appearance
through the proliferation of phallic objects,
high-heeled shoes, and especially his prized invention

a
his
is
his
the shoe with
symbolic castration that announces the feminine and the assertion of a
Pierre Molinier
Self-Portrait with Top Hat, late 1960s
(15.9 x 5.4
',
X2S
inches
cm)
Wooster Gardens,
New York
Pierre Molinier
The Spur of Love (L'Eperon d'amour), 1966-68
(16.2
9.5
6^x3^
inches
cm)
Courtesy of
Ubu
Gallery,
New York
63
Pierre Molinier
i
Wand Melee
lelatin-silver print, 6 \ 6
Wboster
64
<
<
Irande Melie),
lardens,
New
late
inches
York
1960s
(
is.-?
17.5
cm
masculine presence through inorganic replicas, Molinier disrupts the codes of femininity and
masculinity that would link bodily apparatus with gender definition. Peter Gorsen argues that
"Molinier introduces himself in the pose of a shaman aesthetically amputating (retouching) his male
genitals
and replacing them with
godemiche
nature ironize dominant male sexuality"

it is
useful to recall Kaja Silverman's
59
[dildo], a prosthesis
whose toy character and double
To understand why Molinier's images are so compelling,
work on male masochism,
in
which she argues
that the
masochist wants to replace the authority of the father with the phallic mother, thereby denying the
"law of the Father," which
is
imbricated with the "law of nature." 60 Since "nature"
frequently cited to lock individuals into socially predetermined roles,

ing to those stifled by
its
strictures. Visions of phallic
of sexualities and genders, combat the repression of
its
power
is
a construction,
and that you can make one
no one
ed Andre Breton and received an enthusiastic response. From

its
greatly appeal-
fathers, the proliferation
nominal end
actually has the phallus,
for yourself.
Molinier's interactions with the last generation of Surrealists date
Surrealism, published by Breton in 1924, to
is
binary oppositions into male/female, mas-
culine/feminine, father/mother. Such images graphically argue that

that
the authority so
subversion
its
mothers and castrated
strict
is
as
its
from
1955,
inception in the
when he
first
contact-
manifesto of
an organized entity with Breton's
death in 1966, Surrealism was profoundly engaged in investigating the body, sexuality, and the nature
of
11
desire.'
Breton conducted inquiries into sexual practices and subjects, in various Surrealist jour-
nals, as early as 1928,
when
surrealiste, to the late-i950s
the
first
transcripts of "research" sessions were published in La Revolution
and mid-1960s investigations of striptease and the nature of eros. 6:
Molinier participated in the
later ventures,
and
his
work was seen
the concerns of Surrealism as articulated by Breton.

tion,
which privileged a search
for transcendence
63
at that
time as sympathetic with
Unlike the legacy of twentieth-century abstrac-
through harmonious
spiritual
sought transformation through disruption and was grounded in the material
The name
itself
indicates a relationship to the real,
articulation of mental experience, this
made
and
yet
it is
a realism
means, Surrealism
reality
made
of the body.
strange by
its
manifest in visual and textual representation. Breton
advocated a stream-of-conscious, unrepressed creative process that could be enhanced through the
delirium induced by the folly of desire,
work
among
other things.
He saw
in Molinier's
diverse attempts to transgress the confinement of bourgeois conformity
surable disorientation of passion.
appeared
The scope of entries
in the catalogue for L'Exposition
artists'
and represent the
plea-
in the "Concise Lexicon of Erotism" that
InteRnatiOnale du Surrealisme, a 1959 exhibition (directed
by Breton and Duchamp) that included Molinier, demonstrates that

within Surrealism's purview.
and other
all
aspects of the erotic were
64
Si
a
J
-
65
Katharina Sieverding
z
transformer, 1973-74
Photographs,
in five parts,
each
overall 59
120& inches
(151

66
59/,,.
x 24 inches (151 x 61
X305 cm)
cm)
3.
Some Photographic Work

It
seems very evident
for
1970s
of the
that one person's narcissism
who have renounced
those others
part of their
has a great attraction
own
narcissism and
are seeking after object-love; the charm of a child lies to a great extent in his
narcissism, his self-sufficiency
certain animals
and
and
which seem not
to
inaccessibility, just as
concern themselves about
Are these photos
mick jagger,
Narcissism:
as
such as cats
us,
a mirror, what
andy wa rhol,
it
is
to
not
is
me
purposes?
1970'"'
and see nothing.
a mirror and
a mirror looks
if
there to see?
The Philosophy of Andy Warhol:
B and Back Again,
(it
Introduction," 1914*
Turner in Performance,
People are always calling
From A
An
for narcissistic or publicity
I'm sure I'm going to look in the mirror
Yet
of
the large beasts of prey.
sigmund freud, "On
into
does the charm
seems
to
197s"
me) by Painting that Photography touches
Art,
but by Theater.
roland barthes, Camera
JeAi/a/ îltem/w n wrul One
XCftiaia
Lucida, 1980"*
o^^yfumcuuîilu
The "Great Masculine Renunciation" of sartorial

geoisie during the French Revolution to 1930,
be challenged
finery that Fliigel traced
when he published The Psychology
in the 1960s. In a controversial 1965 article,
voiced a widespread alarm about the
crisis in
from the
"The
New
Mutants,"
rise
of the bour-
of Clothes, seemed to
critic Leslie Fiedler
masculinity evidenced by the ambisexual clothing and
long hair of rock stars and hippies."" The popular models of masculinity and femininity promoted by
Hollywood
in the 1950s
the sultry Ur-sensuality of Marilyn
Monroe and
symbols, and the supermacho, predatory playboys in perfectly cut suits

in the 1960s
and 1970s
boyish type
like
for
more androgynous
ideals.
some and
made
who
chased them
The fashionable woman became
Twiggy or Edie Sedgwick, and men wore the long
clothing and hairstyles
on
to
other hypertrophied sex
hair, caftans,
gave way
a short-haired,
and beads. Unisex
distinguishing male from female a difficult prospect, which was a turn-
a source of anxiety for others.
In 1974, the Swiss curator Jean-Christophe
Ammann
organized an exhibition, "Transformer":
Aspekte der Travestie, that attempted to link manifestations of cross-dressing in popular music
and contemporary
a
art.
means of expressing
70
The exhibition was premised on
the self as multiple,
and
conception of travesty as a creative
a critique of
act,
narrow bourgeois definitions of mas-
culinity In his catalogue essay, Patrick Eudeline traces the "outrage of traditional masculinity" in
!
68
Jiirgen
Klauke
Transformer, 1973
Three color photographs, framed,

each 59 % x 53 % x
% inches (152 x 135 x 3
cm
Courtesy of Galerie Bugdahn und Kaimer, Dusseldorf

69
rock
'n' roll
performance from
Presley, to the
inception with Little Richard and Elvis
its
second generation antics of the Rolling Stones and the Kinks,
David Bowie and Lou
to the glitter rock of the early 1970s that included

71
Reed.
The exhibition borrowed
its
name from
Reed's 1973
album
Transformer (produced by Bowie), in which the singer chronicled urban
much
as
he had
in the
life
songs he wrote in the 1960s for the Velvet
Underground. By referring
to the title of Reed's
acknowledging Reed's reputation
album,
as the songwriter of
Ammann was
drag queens
Transformer contained the hit drag anthem "Walk on the Wild Side." The
catalogue opens with documentation of the performance-based photo-
graphic
work of Continental European
vestism, followed by sections
on
British
artists
engaged with issues of trans-
and American rock performers and
drag entertainers. In a brief mention in his preface,

Ray's
photograph of
Duchamp
as
"Dame
Ammann
cites
mit Hut" as a precursor.
Man
7'
Reed's lyrics spoke for a generation fascinated by gender ambiguity,
or confusion, and
Jtirgen Klauke,
Urs
/'//
its
Urs
pleasures. Artists included in "Transformer" such as
Liithi,
and Katharina Sieverding, voiced,
Be Your Mirror, 1972
union with
a unified ambisexuality or realize a perfect
their lover.
'
Liithi
work, a
which they would embody
desire for a Utopian conception of androgyny, in
Liithi
in their
and Sieverding produced
Photograph on canvas,
39 % x yj% inches (100 x 95
cm)
Private collection, Courtesy of
photographic works in which they and their lovers appear almost identical.
theses
phallic breasts
and
a strap-on vulva that
he embellished with lipstick
the artist
tiple sexual
younger
persona. Molinier's photographic montages, included with the
artists,
were characterized
And Klauke
created pros-
that visualized a
mul-
work of these much
pages of the catalogue as representing their creator's
in the
attempt to achieve the state of perfection exemplified by the androgyne.
The English word "transformer," Reed's motto, was imported by
German
artists to
Klauke used
I'll
this
word
European
communicated
young Swiss and
describe the act of transcending binary gender definitions. Both Sieverding and
as the title of
Be Your Mirror, which
for these
these
is
artists,
also the
the
new
works
initiated in 1973.
name
75
In 1972, Liithi
made
of a 1966 Velvet Underground song.
vision of gender transformation
via a popular culture influenced
It
a piece entitled
appears that,
was emanating from America,
by Andy Warhol and
his
involvement with
drag queens.
Warhol's inspiration
on the
artist's
1972 film
Darling, and Holly
is
Women
in Revolt,
Woodlawn. However,
movies that included The Chelsea
Velvet
whose
it
(1972).
stars
in a series
and the Paul Morrissey- directed
These
German
article
were the drag queens lackie Curtis, Candy
was only the most recent
Girls (1966)
and Heat
Flesh (1968), Trash (1970),
by the republication of
registered in "Transformer"
films,
of Warhol drag
trilogy of
along with Warhol's management of the
Underground, the content of the band's songs, and
its
performances
in the
Exploding Plastic
Inevitable shows, suggested Warhol's position at the forefront of "gender fuck dressing," in
which
identity, especially
gender
identity,
was conceived
as
an impersonation,
a role, a put-on.
Warhol's self-presentation, the antics depicted in his films, and, ultimately, the
influenced are characterized by a delight in high camp. As Susan Sontag defined
"Being-as-Playing-a-Role.
theater."
70
"
The camp
It is
the farthest extension, in sensibility, of the
aspect of glitter rock,
its "
it
glitter
in 1964,
metaphor of life
dandysme provocateur" and the challenge
it
rock he
camp
is
as
posed
to
Andy Warhol
Self-Portraits in Drag, 1986
traditional masculinity through
its
derision of the sacrosanct masculine image was noted, in 1974, by
Polaroid photographs, each

3
Eudeline in his "Transformer" catalogue essay.
Camp
was
means through which
patriarchal roles could be challenged through ridicule. This challenge
was
rigidly defined
significantly
informed by
'/,
x2
% inches (9.5x7.2cm)
Musee National d'Art Moderne,

Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
camp's relationship with flamboyant male homosexuality.
The entry of the camp
sensibility into the
tion with the artifice of female impersonators,
mainstream, in the 1960s and 1970s, and
must be seen
gay liberation movement." Warhol's activities and

keted, the
campy female impersonator
was against the law

homosexuals, and
in
glitter
as gay or bisexual idol.
some American
cities,
presumably because
self-presentation of
pop
critics,
most, simply
stars was, for
made
was perceived
it
an homage to
Duchamp
as
even mar-
as the
domain of
performance was not only a
then and now, rightly point out that the

a
marketing device,
this
campy
does not totally negate
the importance of the visibility of alternate gender presentations in mass culture.

In
visible,
At a time when female impersonation
in light of the Stonewall Riots in 1969, gay-identified
pleasurable but also a political act. Although
associa-
contemporaneous
in the context of the
rock performance
its
78
Rrose Selavy, Warhol appeared in drag in a 1981 photograph by
Christopher Makos, Altered Image. Warhol subsequently incorporated a version of this photo into a
centerfold project for Artforum magazine entitled Forged Image, in which he flanked the self-portrait
in
drag with a series of silk-screened dollar signs. Just as Rrose Selavy 's appearance on Belle Haleine
suggests the deceitful replication of Helen of Troy (or the artifice of femininity
Warhol's Forged Image implies that the

Warhol's "altered image"
makeup and
It is
is
artist's
identity
blond wig, yet
his attire
which supports the deduction
gender identity
reading that
is
is
But which part
a forgery.
is
one reading of
duplicitous?
half-male and half- female: from the neck up he wears heavy "feminine"
is
"masculine"; his pose
not clear which elements are counterfeit (in
in a tie),
is
itself),
constructed and
that they
artificial.
evacuated or oblique
He
at best in
fact,
all
Andy
might
in a
is
girlish,
wig
is
while his hands seem manly.
more normative than Andy
be. In this way, his
also underscores the latent
Duchamp's
gesture.
image suggests that
queer content
in drag, a
1*
%:
$
71
While the content of Warhol's films indicates that gender identity and sexuality are more
complex than
artist's
traditional
Hollywood cinema has tended
early 1960s silk-screen portraits, also suggest that
can be a
theatrically depict the self in

strips in
all
identity
is
a performance
and
that
anyone
Warhol's portraits manifest a resolute disinterest in the notion that an introspective
star.
countenance represents the inner

its
life
and reinforce
its
of a
mug
employed
sense of
sitter.
on ready-made images
Instead, the artist focuses
that
public guise, using found celebrity publicity pictures or photo-booth
which the not-yet-famous
in the silk-screen process he
ty
to represent, these movies, along with the
artifice.
for the camera. His use of
found images, and
commodification of identi-
to create his paintings, suggest the
By applying
a grainy
their repetition
black-and-white image to variously colored
grounds, Warhol emphasized the reproductive, photographic origins of the image. These were pictures of "real" people, the
ficiality are
photo quality
is
an assurance of
that,
but their commodity status and
arti-
emphasized by the variety of color backgrounds. You could buy a Blue Marilyn, Gold
Marilyn, or Green Marilyn
but they
are
the same, the
all
same "Marilyn,"
a construction of
our
expectations of celebrity.
Warhol
also applied
subsequent layers of color to highlight specific parts of the
application of veils of paint
is
mode
face.
This
of covering, of obscuring and masking, which conforms with a
conception of identity as masquerade. The frequent misalignment in the registration of the various
silk-screened applications of paint notifies the viewer of a gap in the disguise, emphasizing a disjunction
between mask and
ing of lips
and
whether
be
it
face.
eyelids, often
Elvis,
This slightly skewed registration, in conjunction with the garish color-
makes the
portrait subject appear to be wearing
makeup, to be
in drag,
Mao, or Marilyn.
Warhol's 1963 silk-screen painting of multiple
Mona
Lisas
is
entitled Thirty
Are Better Than
One, and certainly from the point of view of the consumer, you can never have enough of anything.
Desire
is
by definition unquenchable, but the more you have, the more you sustain the
you are reaching
satiation,
plays to this illusion,

tity is also
must be
even though you never do. Photography, with
promoting the fantasy
that,
conditioned by repetition, in that
it
some
performance
in his
potential for repetition,
its
day, perfection can be achieved.
entails the
maintenance of
reiterated in order to claim coherence. Sociologist Erving
as a ritual of
illusion that
Gender iden-
performance, one that
Goffman, who presented identity
popular 1959 study The Presentation of Self in Everyday
Life, later
writes about the unfixity of gender:
What
the
human
provide and
to
nature of males and females really consists
read depictions of masculinity
schedule for presenting these pictures,

females or males.
One might just as
and
of,
then,
and femininity and
this capacity they
well say there
is
is
a capacity to learn
to
a willingness to adhere to a
have by virtue of being persons, not
no gender
identity.
There
is
only a schedule
for the portrayal of gender.""
Warhol's photo-based
to fix the elusive,
Perhaps
ic
it is
and
serial portraits
frequently, especially in the 1970s, that slippery quality concerned identity
to insure that the
self-portrait
seems
share with portrait photography in general an attempt
to take
mirror
on the
will
not be blank
status of
star.
Much
Warhol voiced
that the
photograph-
"Me
Generation," representing the farthest exten-
when each person becomes
his or her
own
god, a celebrity, a super-
of the photographic work of the 1970s explores this aspect of contemporary society
through the
72
a fear
an obsession. The photo booth and the Polaroid camera
allowed for the constant self-documentation of the

sion of the cult of individuality,
itself.
series
and the grid format, which, through
repetition, declare identity as manufactured.
Andy Warhol
Ethel Scull 36 Times, 1963
Synthetic polymer paint

silk-screened
79 K x 143
'/,
on canvas,
inches
(202.6x363.9 cm)
The anxiety behind
the play
is
captured in a scene in
when Dennis Hopper's troubled
character, the
Wim
eponymous
Whitney Museum
Wenders's 1977 film The American Friend,
Art,
New York,
Ethel
protagonist of the film, shoots himself
Redner
ot
American
Gift of
Scull
with a Polaroid over and over again, the exposed pictures fanning out around him on the pool table
on which he
lies.
Beginning
and
One
portraits.
of the
in a grid format." In
tough guy dangling

ing
of the
ic
self,
a cigarette
all
from
artist
his
appears in
makeup and
mouth. Samaras
of them comically twisted.
sexual, cultural,
and
religious
is
An
a long, blond wig; in another he
playing a grown-up
artist
Samaras quite
game of
is
dress-up, try-
deeply involved with the mechanics
self-consciously explored the narcissism
pursuing his investigations in a variety of media. The high theatricality of his photograph-
works acknowledges him
suggests the visceral

Self,
works, Auto Polaroid (1969-71), consists of eighteen prints arranged
earliest
one image the
on various personae,
of fetishism
Lucas Samaras created extensive series of Polaroid self-portraits
in the late 1960s,
Samaras
ate
as a student of the
Happenings of the
late 1950s
power of photographic and reproductive media
photographs of
his father,
mother, and
s:
sister.
vene the "real" and bend
it
it,
in the process
embodying
early 1960s.
It
also
generally. In a 1969 film entitled
Later, in his Photo-Transformations
(1973-76), he manipulated the wet emulsion of the Polaroid, actually
image, defacing and embellishing
and
working on the photographic
the urge to
fix
the image, to contra-
into fantasy.
73
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Auto Polaroid, n;69-7i
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(9.5 \ 7.4
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The Museum
ditt ol Robert
74
of
14
Modem
and
24
Art,
Polapan), each
inches (36.8
New York,
(iayle (Ireenhill
x 61.6
cm)
3 , x
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75
//'ant ///:>/;<
Ammann's
<///</ ///<
t(<t:>a//c/'0((<' </ //'<//>/ n/ //////
exhibition "Transformer" was exclusively concerned with male-to-female cross-dressing
and conceived of the female impersonator

male-born subject.
by, specifically, a
It
and
in the exhibition,
specifically that of
men
Yet during the
was questioning the
in
its
for artistic explorations of
was premised on the notion of
masculinity as represented by the uptight
and performers
model
as a
it
a revolt against traditional
company man, who was probably
championed the nascent gay
implicit espousal of visibility as a
the father of the artists
liberation
means
same period documented by "Transformer"
gender ambiguity,
movement
to assert identity.
reemergent feminist movement
a.
Lucy Lippard published an
social construction of femininity. In 1975,
mented with
socially
determined
roles into
alternate possibilities.*'
which they were thrust
Performance
artists
and female personae (Antin's repertory included The
The Nurse), who seem
to literalize
works demonstrate the elaborate
from
man
The King, The Black Movie
Goffman's notion of identity as performance.
artifice
masquerade of femininity
and
scented,
entails,
exquisitely apparelled.
she reflected; "for

chaste, scented,
which they
may
women
of these
ego indicates the taxing social imposi-
alter
echoing Woolf 's Orlando
and
"Now
have
I shall
are not (judging by
my own
exquisitely apparelled by nature.
transformation
after her
women must
to
pay
men. Messager,
They can only attain
The Voluntary Tortures (Les Tortures
like
Women-Men
socially
those desires,"
these graces, without
to
women
volontaires),
to
Annette
make themselves more
Hoch, appropriated the stereotypic representations of women
popular magazines and transformed them to her
tampered with
my own person for
short experience of the sex) obedient,
Messager documents the myriad commercial methods available
the
in
be obedient, chaste,
enjoy none of the delights of life, by the most tedious discipline.""
In her 1972 "album-collection"
(Les
own
Hommes-Femmes
ends. In another album-collection, The
et les
Femmes-Hommes,
Men-
Messager playfully
1972),
and subverting them.
Positive reproductions are
housed
nominally
in the
private space of the album, while negative prints are exposed in the public
domain of the
enframed. And,
defacements on the
in
in
imposed gender definitions by inserting the images of male/female couples
into other binary systems
ures,
and
of femininity described and metaphorized in the ritual of
She remembered how, as a young man, she had insisted that
Women and
Many
Star,
woman:
to
attractive to
and experi-
such as Eleanor Antin created both male
Ballerina,
makeup. The "construction chart" of Lynn Hershman's

tion that the
as female subjects
article
women
compiling numerous examples of Conceptual and performance-based artworks in which
examined the
again
each image, Messager has defiantly scribbled
drawing moustaches and beards on the
women and
graffitilike
accentuating the eyelashes and
wall,
lips
fig-
of the
men, thereby making metaphorical husbands into wives and wives into husbands. This bifurcation of
identity echoes Messager's self-defined personae,
who
include "Annette Messager Artiste" and

5
"Annette Messager Collectionneuse," each the inhabitant of different areas of her house." The albumcollections are the product of the collector
incorporating
ply allowing
it
it
There
into her albums, thus compelling
to
is
who rummages through
impose
its
it
to express
homogenizing message on
deadpan humor
to Messager's
the detritus of mass culture,
what she wants
it
to,
rather than sim-
her.
work, which
it
shares with
much
of the
post-Abstract Expressionist, Duchamp-inspired art that has flourished since the 1960s. Like the Dada
and
76
Surrealist laughter that
it
frequently resembles, however,
it is
not content simply to amuse but,
.-try7??
,/W-P*v> /*
Lynn Hershman
Roberta's Construction Chart, 1975
C-print, 30 x 40 inches
(76.2 x 101.6
cm)
Courtesy of the
instead, has
more or
less clear critical implications.
Laughter can be a disruptive
your-face exuberance that only partially masks ridicule of

play with and question gender identity often
ming with
glee at the
refuse to conform,
turned.
It is
show
literally
subject.
and
to
imagine another
reality,
one
in
act,
expressing an in-
The works of the
or metaphorically
mockery she has made of traditional expectations.
It is
their
1970s that
maker brim-
these artists' pleasure to
which repressive conventions are over-
here that the political implications of camp, as a rejection of a set of rules and
replacement with alternate conceptions, become

the
its
86
work of artists who explore
clear.
artist
The
critical potential
the definitions of femininity
of wit
and masculinity
is
its
often engaged in
in the 1970s.
77
Annette Messager
I
he
Men -Women and
Women-
the
Men, Annette Messager Collector

(Les
Hommes-Femmes
el
la
Femmes-Hommes, Annette Messager

(
ollei
tionneuse),
Album-collection No.
album photographs),
(details of
1972
Nineteen photographs under glass
and one album

lollection
<>t
the artist
facing page:
Annette Messager
The
Men-Women and
Annette Messager
Femmes
et les
the
Women Men,
'ollector
les
Hommes
emmes Hommes,
Annette Messager Collectionneuse),
Album
collection No.
it
(installation
detail), 1972
Nineteen photographs under

each
(
maximum
l8 x is
j'At
5/.
artist
glass,
inches
em), and one album
Collection of the
78
Cindy Sherman
(
'ntitled
Gelatin
Film
silvei
Still,
#6, 1977
print, 10
8 inches (25.4 x 20.3
Collection of Samuel .mil Ronnie lievman,
80
cm), ed. 3/10
New
York
4.
Some Contemporary Photographic Work

Not only are some people more masculine or more feminine than others,
but
some people are
just plain
more gender-y than others
whether the gender they manifest be masculine, feminine, both,

or
"and them some."
eve kosofsky sedgwick, "'Gosh, Boy George, You Must Be

Awfully Secure in Your Masculinity!'" 1995
There
is
a sense
nan goldin,
f/<jif/c/'
'An 1 /a
:,
of
freedom
in
The Other
s7
having a desire that has never been labeled.
Side, 1993
s"
1/
In her Untitled Film
Stills,
produced between 1977 and 1980, Cindy Sherman appropriated the format
of black-and-white Hollywood publicity photographs. There

clothes
and poses depicted
B-movie
whose
starlet
in these images,
films
we cannot
and
recall.
for a
moment, we presume we
wigs,
is
mannequin sans
visage
melodrama, the damsel
ninity in
is
whose representation
makeup, costume, and distracted
facial expressions.
in distress
who
that preposterous cinematic female victim-to-be
is
is
She
constructed through the

is
fixes
her
is
sion.'''
There
camera angle
too extreme.
is
trickster; this is
There
the
seems out of
Or
place, or
"still"
makeup and
about to
is
being watched. She
is
presumably to pre-
hair,
befall her.
about the picture, that highlights
slightly too eccentric,
is
is
also
is
due to reading Sherman's
as that
later
set.
work back
They tend
one has the sensation something
of pause, of anticipation,
skewed
uncanniness
is
its artifice:
be distracting; a
to
is
the
work of a
something troubling, something vaguely ominous, about the Untitled Film
quality,
is
is
Stills.
into these earlier photographs. Yet
quality of the image suggests the quiet before the storm. Film
been captured
enough
an enactment. This
stills
to represent a fixed
action. Sherman's pictures are frozen in the extreme, not so
slightly
is
there are giveaways like a visible shutter-release cord or the reflection
movie or production pictures taken on the
moment
of
someone's fun and games.
arguable that this
some
is
off,
sprinkler system, which inform the viewer that this
loft
artifice
are brilliantly manipulated in Sherman's work,
always something wrong, something
is
a furnishing or accessory
It is
still
which the
not to say they are transparent replicas that could ever be confused with the Hollywood ver-
which
of a
film
which
a familiar figure of spectacular femi-
perfectly cognizant she
who
some
series,
a theater within a theater in
pare for her rescuer, instead of trying to escape the trauma that
The conventions of the cinematic
are looking at
However, the accumulated impact of the
includes sixty-nine pictures, forces the realization that this
performer
a deceptive nostalgic quality to the
is
much
can be shots from a
moment
in the
way
but
may show
the action has
about to happen, or already has. The
fetishistically exaggerated, intensifying
by those disjunctions unassimilable
to
an anxiety fed by the
our expectations. This photographic
expressed in the frequent doubling, both within individual pictures, through the
many
mirror reflections and planted framed portraits, and the repetition of poses between various images.
a
-
'
81
Cindy Sherman
I
'ntitled
Film
Still,
#14, 1978
Gelatin silver print, 10
8 inches (25.4 x 20.3
Collection of Carol and Paul Meringoff

82
cm), ed. 8/10
Cindy Sherman
Untitled Film
Still, #11,
1978
Gelatin-silver print, 8 x 10 inches (20.3 x 25.4 cm), ed. 3/10
Collection of
M. Anthony and Anne
E. Fisher
83
Cindy Sherman
Untitled, #201, 19X9
(
olor photograph, 52
\ 3s
inches
134.3 x yi.i
Collection of Beverly and Harris Schoenfeld
84
cm), ed. 4/6
~-
Cindy Sherman
Untitled, #193, 1989
Color photograph, 48
Collection of William
S.
x 41
inches 124.1 x 106.5 cm), ed. 5/6

(
Ehrlich and Ruth Lloyds
In the History Portraits she
began
Sherman
in 1988,
masterpieces of art history, frequently drawing on the
created tableau vivant reenactments of
work of eighteenth-century
the
of wigs and the powdery white makeup worn by both men and women
such as Francois Boucher."" In these images she plays with the
leisure
elaborate hairstyles
as the trappings
artifice
of period dress
as well
of wealth that were an indicator of status, the fine tapestries and
displayed in the period's portraits.

artifice
of painting
painters of sensual
itself,
in
The purposefully faked
which any
liberty
so prominently
silks
aspects of Sherman's pictures point to the
might be taken
to flatter a sitter, but they also suggest a
personal pleasure in the willfulness of their perverse disruption of the models from which they
derive.
thetic
The protagonists of
body
parts along with
and the prostheses take

In
the series are male
and female, and most of the
more conventional props,
Sherman's
until, in
portraits include proslater
1985,
Yasumasa Morimura began
and disguise
vision various masterpieces of Modernist art history, inserting himself in drag
the figures in paintings such as
Edouard Manet's Olympia
Selavy in living color, in the process multiplying
sexualized.
(1863). In 1988,
Duchamp's binary
Morimura's
insistent use of
doubling (two hats, two
sets
Morimura
distinctions
include ethnic and cultural dimensions and the
axis, to
lost
is
over.
mixed-media photographic tableaux dating from
male/female
work, the body
manner
in
of hands)
to reen-
as
all
of
recreated Rrose
beyond the
original
which these terms are
summons
uncanny
the
nature of fetishism, in which multiplication signals a preventative repetition to ward against castration
and death, while
also magnifies the binary logic inherent to
it
Duchamp's
piece.
Through the
juxtaposition of hands and arms of different colors, and the obviousness of heavy white
(also exaggerated in
Duchamp, mining
ideal of femininity),
Morimura
nicity.
The
title
the ancient historical convention equating whiteness with an
signals the implication of sexuality in the constructs of race
as well as a sense of the diffusion of
"dubbed" into other contexts. While writing himself into
ry,
are
Morimura
and eth-
of the piece, Doublonnage (Marcel), suggests a variety of duplications, including
Morimura's double of Duchamp,

is
makeup
this exclusively
also heightens the latent content in the original, the
subsumed or taken
for granted in these works.
of dominant ideologies.
Morimura
Western culture and the way
way
in
Western Modernist histo-
which race and ethnicity
Examining the marginalized often
reveals the logic
forces the margins to the center, in the process compelling the
viewer to acknowledge the ideological positions that inform the image that the
Matthew Barney, who
it
integrates recorded
artist reconstructs.
performance and sculptural objects
in his
multime-
dia installations, also exhibits production photographs in "self-lubricating" plastic frames as indepen-
dent artifacts from his videos. His enigmatic work presents various images of masculinity, particularly as
represented in the arduous athleticism of professional sports, but including the realm of myth.
Often he portrays an apparently male protagonist involved
in a quest,
whether rappelling along the
walls of a gallery, enduring repeated punches, tap dancing into oblivion, or practicing blocking in
drag."
The environments within which
these events occur are frequently linked to ritualized contests
of masculine endurance such as the race course and the football
Barney has finished two videos of

muscle that retracts the
testicles.
The
first
It is
as if
movie produced, Cremaster 4
86
is
(1994), involves
an elaborate
never finally resolved into complete
Duchamp's The Large Glass metamorphosed
Disneyesque walk-in storybook. In Cremaster 4 and Cremaster

series,
92
his projected five-part cycle, entitled Cremaster, after the
exploration of the binary logic of sexual differentiation, which

difference or unity.
field.
into a fantastical
(1995), the
second film made
Barney presents color-coded masculine and feminine symbols of bodily organs,
in the
as well as pro-
Yasumasa Morimura
Doublonnage (Marcel), 1988
Color photograph, 60 x 48 inches
(152.4 x 121.9
cm
Jedermann Collection, N.A.

87
*__-_
Matthew Barney
(
each
Faerie Fie/d, 1994
/.
our
prints in self-lubricating plastic frames; three pieces,
<
!
17
'
\ \i
one piece 27
:',
x
\
r inches
w,w
(44.5 x 32.4 x 3.8
inches (70 x 84.5
Courtesy of Midi.icl lames O'Brien

88
cm),
x 3.8
cm), ed.
AP
1I1
Matthew Barney
CR
4:
Loughton Manual 1994
C-print in self-lubricating plastic frame, 25 x

(63.5 x 53.3 x 3.8
cm), ed. 6/6
Private collection,
21
inches
New York
89
tagonists
whose gender
not clearly denned. The settings and characters in these videos are surreally
is
Body makeup and
saturated with color and unusually costumed.
question to the nth-dimension
characters like the three faeries
prosthetics take the "Is she a he?"
who accompany
Candidate in Cremaster 4 and the satyrs in Drawing Restraint 7 have a

beings are not male, not female; elements of dress or
makeup may
but, finally, these figures are so elaborately constructed that the
gender identification are
The
legacy of
literal
the
second
Loughton
These
skin.
suggest masculinity or femininity,
most extreme indicators of "absolute"
nullified.
body
art,
performance, and video of a generation earlier
is
apparent in works
such as these by Sherman, Morimura, and Barney. But while their precursors were interested
in real time,
an integration of art with "real
these artists'
work
of the
late
is
life,"
and an
moving
highly aestheticized,
ephemeral and the
ethics of the
into another world, that of fantasy.
transitory,
The works
1980s and 1990s often cite popular film and high-art sources, in the process purposefully
subverting and happily perverting the traditional definition of gender while crossing the imaginary
divide between high
with theatrical
and
low. All of these artists
artifice (as
did
work
in
and against commercial
Duchamp, Beaton, and Warhol,
fields
concerned
engaged
for example): they are each
with the fashion system; the Hollywood dream factory; and their integration and transmutation
into art."
Christian Marclay works with music and

representations of music
Masks
and
(1992) series, Marclay
its
rial,
modus operandi
the
album
94
Viewing these
series as a
headless torsos, long legs,
and round buttocks
Marclay 's strategy of conjoining the disparate
figures
and
whole graphically underscores
of advertising, summarized in the familiar adage "sex
body
media
Body Mix (1991-92) and
his
sewed found record album covers together, creating hybrid
covers, characteristically fetishizes
the exotic other
visualization, in the process investigating
marketing by the music industry. For
visages out of multiple overlapping parts.
the
its
sells."
parts, especially female.
Marclay 's raw mate-
The same
shots of
are featured ad infinitum, an aspect highlighted by

parts. This technique also calls attention to the
represented by brown bodies and
"ethnic" costumes
is
called
upon
way
to feed the
trope of music as sensual stimulation and particularly sensuality as the province of the ethnic and
sexual other.
Marclay 's engagement with montage, both

formances,
covers),
is
and
artists like
rooted in
Dada and
Surrealist practice. His
their juxtaposition to create
Hoch,
in these
as well as the Surrealist
works and
his
employment of
mixing of music
in his per-
the found object (album
new and
surprising meanings, recall the
game of
Exquisite Corpse, in which strange figures were
photomontage of
forged through a process in which each participant added to a drawing without knowledge of what
had come before. 9 Marclay's Magnetic

'
from
a text written
Fields, a
complex piece
in the
Body Mix series,
gets
its title
by Breton and the poet Philippe Soupault, four years before the former published
his first
manifesto of Surrealism."" Soupault and Breton's text forecasts Surrealist practice, in the
manner
in
which
it
juxtaposes prose fragments. Marclay's work mines this technique in
numerous
ways, combining seemingly disparate objects, images, and sounds, to expose tropes that are often
taken for granted.
The
resulting disclosures
may be compared
learning another language or living in another culture;

a
thought
is
expressed or a social interaction
questioned, of what
distinctions between
90
we took
for granted.
sound and
sight;
is
it is
to the insights
we experience when
by comparing the difference
in the
way
conducted that we become aware of what we never
The tropes Marclay engages
are the socially constructed
male and female; black and white; past and present.
'>
Christian Marclay
Magnetic
Fields,
from the Body Mix
Record covers and cotton
thread,-
Collection of loan and Gerald
series, 1991
27X x 24X inches (69.2 x 62.2 cm)
Kimmelman
91
The hybrid masculine and feminine

tures that Marclay fabricates in his
series recall the sexual
often used to market
crea-
Body Mix
and gender ambiguity
pop music. David Bowie
(1991) includes the singer's
album cover
depict-
ing Aladdin Sane, one of Bowie's gender-bending personae of the early 1970s,
whose name
employs a Duchampian pun. Other works

emphasize the conjunction of gender play and
its
appeal by incorporating album covers by stars
who seem
to shamanistically represent this
realm of transformation to their fans, from Lou

Reed, in his early 1970s packaging, to Michael
Madonna. 97 The
Jackson, Prince, and
intriguing
interplay of Marclay's combinations, while

creates impossible,
humorous monsters,
it
also
demonstrates the meanings that already reside

the individual
album
covers. In other words,
there can be
no "normative" model without
comparison
to a socially constructed notion of
an other,
who
It is
which
is
in
found wanting.
like that
old Twilight Zone episode in
a post-operative
woman, swathed
in face
bandages, expresses desperate hope that her

plastic surgery has
been successful. The ban-
dages are removed, and as she and the doctor
and nurses lament the horrible
failure of the
procedure, the audience sees, for the

that the "hideous"
beautiful by
woman would
first
time,
be considered
contemporary human standards
while the "normal" medical staff would be

strous freaks.
The moral of the
ing of any characteristic

socially contingent
Christian Marclay
niches (74.9 x 33.7
Collection of the
artist
and
and not determined by some
standards for noses.
series, 1991
Record covers and cotton thread,

19
historically
mean-
abstract law of "nature." Beauty does not reside in a feature, a nose, for example, but in constructed
David Bowie, from the
Body Mix
is
story: the
mon-
The use of montage
to create
uncanny hybrids
is
facilitated
by new technology
in Inez
van
cm)
Lamsweerde's recent work. In various
posed models and recombined their

perfectly real beings
who
series
produced since
1993,
van Lamsweerde has elaborately
parts, in the process creating photographically seamless images,
are mysteriously
and deceptively unreal. Van Lamsweerde plays with the
codes of perfection manipulated by the fashion advertising industry, an industry that spurred the
development of the paintbox computer technology she
uses.
Conventions of advertising that
bright shadowless lighting to suggest "realness" or the wholesome,
92
and hence
"truth," are
utilize
employed
by van Lamsweerde
The
reality.
series
in the presentation
ecstatic reclining
The Forest
close inspection
men
in her four-piece
(1995) are puzzlingly strange.

it
becomes apparent
parts are not scaled to the figure,

ject
of an alternate
wears nail polish and
some body
that
and
Upon
that a "male" sub-
In fact, van
lip gloss.
Lamsweerde has mixed and matched female and male
The
bodies.
collaboration with
artist, in
Matadin, also works

is
known
Vinoodh
in the fashion industry
and advertising work that sub-
for editorial
She presents
verts expected codes.
where she
men
feminine pose of self-absorbed rapture
in the classically
precursors
range from Renaissance paintings of Danae's Golden
Shower
to
ing starlets
whose
Hollywood
publicity photographs of loung-
as well as aggressively
gigantic stature dwarfs their surroundings.
Today,
many
artists
mass culture and the way

While
macho women
engage the visual tropes of
in
which gender
is
marketed.
works "make strange" images whose very
their
ubiquity enables them to be taken for granted, the

artists
show how
images actually
Cremaster
are.
For example, watching Barney's
which
the synchronized
movie
peculiar (or arbitrary) the "original"
elicits
earlier films
recalls a
swimming
Busby Berkeley musical or

in
an Esther Williams
how
the realization of
were and what that might suggest about
the society from which they emerged.

er,
perverse those
do
not,
howev-
take perversion to be a pathology but rather a fasci-
nation with possibilities that

tions of conformity,
and
lie
outside social expecta-
a desire to disrupt rigidly
defined roles for pleasurable ends. Contemporary
"mainstream"
interest in
"gender trouble"
which
is
manifested in Hollywood movies, national magazines,
and sitcoms
to
name
just three
popular arenas
over-
laps with the widespread production of art that plays
with gender.'" This interest seems to be diversely motivated. There
is
Christian Marclay
a sense of curiosity, of fascination
with gender as a
site
of potential and creativity.
And
then there
is
anxiety about the implications of
Slide Easy In,
Body Mix
the instability of sexual and gender assignments. This fear probably underlies the daily barrage of
jokes ridiculing people
who
incorrectly read the gender
and sexual
identities of others,*'
accounting
from the
series,
1992
Record covers and cotton thread,

27 x 13
'/
inches (68.6 x 34.3
cm
Collection of the artist
as well for the neat resolution of

al
homosocial subtexts in big-budget movies into absolute heterosexu-
masculinity and femininity. And,
who do
not
"fit"
finally,
there
is
the assertion of visibility
the socially acceptable categories delimited by
dominant
on the part of subjects
culture.
5:
j
93
Inez van
The
Lamsweerde
Inez van
The
Forest. Marcel, 1995
C-print in pcrspex, 53 X x 70% inches
(135
Courtesy of Matthew Marks Gallery,
New York
x 180
cm)
Lamsweerde
Forest. Rob, 1995
C-print in perspex, 53% x 70 X inches
(135
New York
x 180
cm)
Inez van
The
Forest.
Lamsweerde
Inez van
Andy, 1995
The
C-print in perspex, 53 X x 70 X inches
(135
New York
x 180
cm)
Lamsweerde
Forest. Klaus, 1995
x 180 cm)
C-print in perspex, 53% x 70 % inches
(135
New York
95
^///<( J'
//\<<t/l/l/
In the early 1970s,
who hung
out
Nan Goldin began
taking photographs of drag queens and pre-op transsexuals
Boston bar called The Other
at a
Side.
Drag queens have been the subject of many
twentieth-century photographers, including Brassai, Lisette Model, Weegee, and Diane Arbus.
Typically, this
work
characterized by
is
its
voyeurism,
in
which the drag queen
presented as a
is
debased theatrical personality alongside aging strippers and denizens of carnival sideshows.
Pictures like these play into the realm of photography that delights in the documentation of the
unusual, asserting the "realness" of the never-before-seen or the unimaginable, and allowing the
viewer to
stare, to
ponder without shame,
"Is
it
really a
These photographs feed the voyeur's yearning, which
is
man? Does
this
many
look quite pleased about
Arguably some of these photographers,

alienation of their subjects.
What
or
exist,
is it
a trick?"
not necessarily a predatory phenomenon,
knew they were being
since the subjects in photographs like these are performers, or at least
photographed, and clearly
person
it.'""
like painters
before them, identified with the social
from the
distinguishes Goldin's photographs
images
earlier
is
her
relationship with her subjects as well as their self-presentation. These are public pictures but also
intimate ones, the result of time spent together.
The
legacy of Warhol's Factory lurks in the constant
self-documentation, that repetition suggesting an attempt to

of the
to
self,
who you want
be
to be, to be "real," but,
fix identity, to
most of
all,
hold up a mirror image
be sure you
to
exist.
While the
self-
conscious ambition behind making the private public indicates the Warholian desire for celebrity, to
be a
star,
hopefully for
more than
fifteen
minutes, Goldin's pictures differ in the
family album, a community, and a struggle with which the viewer
move away from
the almost nihilistic insistence
Goldin's documentation of her subjects' lives

refute the traditional
the feminist adage,
others
"The
by
race,
by
euphoria. This
age, and,
book
surface,
book
is
is
and nothing more,
including her own
the political."
"Most people
is
in
is
Warhol's work.
designed to humanize them, to
get scared
most of all, by gender," Goldin writes
suggest a
asked to empathize. This
is
view of their sexuality and gender presentation as pathological,
"The personal
pictures in this
on
way they
when
in the spirit of
they can't categorize
in her preface to
The Other
Side.
'"
are not of people suffering gender dysphoria but rather expressing gender
about new
possibilities
and transcendence."
"2
Goldin's photographs and those of other "Boston School" artists such as Philip-Lorca
diCorcia and Shellburne Thurber are shot almost exclusively on-site, in the environments of the
11
people documented." They tend to indicate
moments caught amid
daily
life
and
activities.
Robert
Mapplethorpe's pictures, on the other hand, while they similarly document his friends and lovers, are
more
frequently consciously contrived studio portraits. His images demonstrate the high value he
placed on formal aesthetics. His portraits suggest the conventions of celebrity advertisements. Their
fiat
backgrounds, tight cropping, iconic
on the
subject. Mapplethorpe's pictures
centrality,
and minimal distracting
announce
a glistening perfection. Like Molinier's, his
detail focus all attention
images
of sex acts are gorgeously beautiful; they aesthetically exalt pleasure. Mapplethorpe's style of portraiture glorifies
its
subjects, in a
way
that
is
completely contrary to the moralizing implications of the
"reality effect" that characterizes the gritty pictures of, for

In 1991,
example, a photographer
Gatherine Opie exhibited a series of portraits of friends
in
like
Weegee.
"4
drag entitled Being and
Having, a witty send-up of Lacan's theory of Symbolic sexual differentiation, in which the female
most commonly presumed
96
to "be" the phallus, to represent the desire
of the male, and
men
is
instead
Nan Goldin
Ivy with Marilyn, Boston, 1973
Gelatin-silver print, 20 x 16 inches (50.8 x 40.6,cm)
Courtesy of the
artist
and Matthew Marks
Gallery,
New York
97
Nan Goldin
Pat
and Denine
in the Profile
Room, Boston, 1973
Gelatin-silver print, 20 x 16 inches (50.8 x 40.6
Courtesy of the
98
artist
cm)
and Matthew Marks Gallery,
New
York
<
Nan Goldin
Marlene, Colette and
Naomi on
the street, Boston, 1973
Gelatin-silver print, 20 x 16 inches (50.8 x 40.6,
Courtesy of the
artist
and Matthew Marks
cm)
Gallery,
New York
99
Nan Goldin
David ami Mistiest lamina
(
libachrome print, 30
curtesy of the
artist
Gay
at the
40 inches
76.2
Pride Parade,
x
101.6
and Matthew Marks
NYC,
1991
cm)
Gallery,
New
York
Nan Goldin
Jimmy
Paillette
Cibachrome
and Tabbool
print, 30 x
Courtesy of the
artist
in the
bathroom, NYC, 1991
40 inches (76.2 x ioi.6,cm)
and Matthew Marks
Gallery,
New York
Robert Mapplethorpe
Self-Portrait, 1980
(
lelatin-silver print, 20 x 16 inches (50.8 x 40.6
Solomon
(lilt,
R.
Guggenheim Museum, New
York,
The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation
cm), ed.
AP
3/3
Robert Mopplethorpe
Self-Portmit, 1980
Gelatin-silver print, 20 x 16 inches (50.8 x 40.6 cm), ed.
Solomon
Gift,
R.
Guggenheim Museum, New York>
AP
2/3
1
The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation

103
Catherine Opie
(
<
<
104
hief,
from the Being and Having series,
Ihromogenic
Catherine Opie
print, framed, 17 x 22 inches (43.2 x 55.9
ourtesy of Regen Projects, Los Angeles
Jake,
1991
cm),
ed. 3/8
Chromogenic
(
print,
framed,
Collection of Fisher Stevens,
17
1991
x 22 inches (43.2 x 55.9 cm), ed. 2/8
Courtesy of Regen Projects, Los Angeles
$
Catherine Opie
Catherine Opie
Papa Bear, from the Being and Having
Chromogenic
print,
framed,
17
series, 1991
x 22 inches (43.2 x 55:9 cm), ed. 3/8
Courtesy of Regen Projects, Los Angeles
Chicken, from the Being
Chromogenic
and Having
series, 1991
print, framed, 17 x 22 inches (43.2 x
=55.9
cm), ed. 2/8
Collection of Patrick Breen, Courtesy of Regen Projects,
us Angeles
10s
Catherine Opie
Mitch, 1994
Chromogenic
print
Collection of Vivian
Kktacolor), ;H
Horan
',
x 14
inches (46.4 x 35.9
cm)
to "have" the phallus. Sporting theatrical
moustaches and goatees, the female-born subjects in these
pictures pose as their masculine personae,
which are named on metal plaques on the frames. In
close-ups and glowing color, these are images of desirable subjects
but
to
whom? These women
perform their "masculinity," they have the phallus, but they also represent the desire of an other
female other
thus they
and having"
as
desire.
are the phallus as well. Opie's series contests a logic that
Looking
at the thirteen
is
much
men
cross-dressed as
such
deadpan visages
women commonly
appear in
Drag queens have almost become
films, television,
(FTM)
and advertisements.
gender-crossing?
Is it
problematic for a female-born subject to take on overt signs of masculinity than
on femininity? Could
subject to take
extraneous otherness
tampered with?
is
it
be that femininity
the
available for play, while masculinity,
In the 1970s, feminist artists investigated
Opie's
roles.'""
work of the 1990s examines gender
dignified individuals pose in clear,
warm
and shaved bodies announce
reinforcing a conception of the

nature, biology
body
male impersonation
in the context
Why is
somehow more
it is
for a
male-born
and sexual
as they
questioned
of sexuality and,
specifically,
quietly
hued backdrops. Their
pierced,
pleasures, incidentally (perhaps)
ay a site of personal intervention,
where culture subsumes
we do what we
will.
Opie's care-
images assert the viability of the subjects they represent, portraying individuals
fully crafted
all
there
and S/M communities,
not destiny but, instead, a raw material with which
is
and
cliche,
which symbolizes power, cannot be
light against simple, richly
their aesthetic
male
throwaway gender, that inscrutable
lesbian desire. In her portraits of friends in the lesbian, transgender,
have been
see "being
in this series also spurs the realization that
rarer sight than the opposite.
dearth of popular images of female-to-male
tattooed,
would
mutually exclusive, as neatly resolving into a female/male duality of heterosexual
impersonation
gender
tight
who
but invisible to "mainstream" society.
In 1987
and
which he appears
1988, Lyle
partially
Ashton Harris created
a series of self-portraits, entitled
The Americas,
in
nude, wearing a blond wig, a boater hat, and white makeup. His whiteface
persona inverts the blackface performance of minstrel shows, highlighting the way in which constructs of
gender and sexuality are bound up with
caricatured African
race. In
nineteenth-century minstrelsy, white
American subjects by wearing exaggerated black burnt-cork makeup.
often also cross-dressed as
women,
thus impersonating both gender and race.
Through
"n
men
They
these imper-
sonations and the skits they performed, minstrel players frequently ridiculed both abolition and
women's
rights, suggesting the anxiety
American
society.
Thus, as cultural
caused by the social dislocations of nineteenth-century
critic
Kobena Mercer
persona "performs a version of black masculinity that

minstrel
mask
ty as spectacle."
and
who
107
and does so
They
signifies
upon
the grotesque pathos of the
such a way as to simultaneously evoke the masquerade of feminini-
His white makeup
yet they are not.

is
in
suggests, Harris's gender-bending whiteface
is
mask,
signify identity
and
as are the mascara, lipstick,
identification,
and blond wig he wears,
which are variable and dependent upon
looking and constructing a subject through that look.

In collaborative
that contests the
works dating from
mythology of the bourgeois nuclear
2.4 children. Against a tricolor
Universal Negro
tive visions
1994, Harris reimagines a vision of
background that
community and nation
family: European-descended, middle-class, with
recalls the nationalist flag
Improvement Association (UNIA), various couples
of Marcus Garvey's
iconically exemplify transforma-
of contemporary kinship. For example, in Sisterhood, Harris and Ike
dandy's archetype of feminine masculinity, appearing before a carved

together, these images disrupt traditional conceptions of race
gilt
throne
Ude
fit
present a
for royalty.
and gender, kinship and
Taken
sexuality.
107
Lyle Ashton Harris and Alexandra Epps

Alex ami
yle,
1994
Polaroid photograph, 24 x 20 inches (61 x 50.8
Collection
oi
cm)
Alexandra Epps, Courtesy of lack Tilton
and Margo Leavin
Gallery,
West Hollywood
Ciallcry,
New
York,
Lyle Ashton Harris
and Ike Ude
Sisterhood, 1994
Polaroid photograph, 24 x 20 inches "(61 x 50.8

Collection of Robert
W. Conn,
cm)
California
loy
Lyle Ashton Harris

The
luhl,
and Renee Cox
u)94
Polaroid photograph, 24 x 20 inches (6i

(
lourtesy oi fack Tilton Gallery,
New
x 50.x
York, and
cm)
Margo
I.cavin Gallery,
West Hollywood
Referring to a related collaboration with his brother, filmmaker
Brotherhood, Crossroads and Etcetera, Harris

This collaboration with
Thomas
We
using masquerade
as our
mode of transgression
to the liberatory potential
Janine Antoni's 1993 triptych
Mom
Man
and Dad
who appear both
tographs document her parents,
march and other black

is
is
envisioned in the
are challenging a construction of African nationalism that positions queers
outside of the black family, the Million
who
Allen Harris, entitled
states:
expanding the notion of who can lay claim

flag.
Thomas
way of
UNIA
and
feminists
institutions.""'
another type of family portrait. Three pho-
as themselves
and made up
as each other. Antoni,
applied the makeup, confounds the gender distinctions of her parents, taking on the question of
gender roles
sexuality
at
the
site at
and gender are
and construct ourselves
do not divide neatly
which they are formed.

located.
in
into
We
It is
with our parents that our
see the reflection of ourselves
experiences of
through the eyes of our parents,
and against those images. Antoni's piece
some
first
indicates that these conceptions
"natural" dichotomy of paternal/maternal, male/female,
masculine/feminine, or hetero/homo.
Whether
self,
the self
in the
we wish
mirror or in the image of the other, we each seek the reflection of our ideal
to be. In this way,
to "be," to "have," reflected in the gaze
Antoni's triptych are the
artist's
we attempt
to reinhabit the space in
emanating from our parents'
parents,
who, apparently, willingly
which we
eyes. Ultimately,
sat for their
felt
ourselves
what we see
daughter and
in
who
stare lovingly at her, at us.
5:
(roHCf/dfott
This exhibition and essay are informed by theories of gender and sexuality that, though developed
throughout the course of the twentieth century, have been refined
temporary notions of gender and sexuality

distinction between the
constantly shifting. So
photography"
viewed. As
author,
its
is
words presently
it is
exists,
lens
of quite recent origin: in
is
a Rrose
is
so.
Our con-
some languages no
and the connotations of these and
that the pretext of Rrose
contemporary
I
are, in fact,
decade or
in the last
related terms are
Rrose "gender performance
in
through which the objects described herein have been
myself have engaged in
my own
Utopian project of unification under the sign
of difference.
Yet
my
position
is
not self-invented but, rather,
ed in various media and venues.

live in
an age
in
Why are
which individual identity
reflects interests that are extensively represent-
these questions about identity so motivating

is
widely conceived as an
artificial
glomeration of signs through which we are (not necessarily willingly)
tics"
112
shared by others
like us.
We
are caught in a
new
the
version of the old
We
performance, a con-
fixed. Yet, at the
claim these socially imposed identities in order to unite under a banner
now?
flag
same time, we
of "identity poli-
mind-body dilemma.
We
Anloni
Jctnino
Mom
and Dad, 1993
Mother,
father,
makeup;
each photograph 24 x 20 inches
want our body to "be" and yet we

are not,
idea that
we
are fixed in language
which we are circumscribed
However, there also lurks
has
a secret
on underlining our
belief in absolutes
that
we
are,
and
we turn
in
is
that
we perform according
dread of being caught
subjectivity
what
true,
it is
to
combat
by defining our
what
is
(61 x 50.8
cm)
Solomon
R.
Guggenheim
Museum, New York,
a certain logical elegance, a
the ability to determine oneself. Perhaps

selves,
it;
our bodies.
The
in
assert the priority of the spirit (or language) over
real,
amber, without
dread that we
identity. In
an era
insist
in
we can attempt
free will,
itself
to describe,
without
on declaring our-
which we have
and the notion of objectivity
to locate a corner of the universe that
Gift,
International Director's Council
compelling sense of "truth."
like a fly in
this
to the dictates of a system
it is
lost all
to the self
not to determine
it,
not to extrapolate our experience to others, but simply to identify ourself as one individual and,
thereby, insist
we can be
upon
sure
its
existence. Today,
it
seems that the shifting sand that
is
the self
is
the only thing
of.
The "author" has been resurrected

out authority. In various
themselves in the
first
fields
after a
much-touted death; however,
this
is
an author with-
of literary and visual production, authors look to themselves, voice
person and represent their bodies, yet do not
are necessarily identical to themselves.
One
is,
and
is
insist that these representations
not, one's self-presentation.
The notion of
v-
113
authorial objectivity
not believed possible and
is
is
not
a goal.
Academic historians include
first-
person accounts in order to assert rather than obscure the motivation of their readings; documentary
filmmakers show the trappings of the camera and the ways their presence changes the environment
they record; and the line between fiction and
memoir
is
willfully breached.
"1
'
Critics charge the
authors of these trends with "pathetic" narcissism, and yearn for a return to the godlike authority of
the omniscient narrator and the "objective" reportorial voice, thereby wishing to ally the author's
who
voice with the voice of the master. Instead, "narcissistic" authors,
pretend to speak for everyone, to speak as

voices, that there should be
Other
there
is
first
person and do not
only one way to be, show, through their specific
no master.
than the right) argue that what
critics (of the left rather
any notion of individuality and
free will in the face
from governments
corporate
entities,
context
to indulge an escapist impulse
is
if
use the
truly pathetic
holding to
is
of technological rationalization and the gigantic
To focus on the body
to multinationals, that rule us.
is
to create a mysterious
and holy
biological site
in this
in a des-
perate attempt to counter the impersonality of modernity and the vision of self as an inconsequential
cog in a great mechanical combine. In

strange, or different self
is
this critique, the presentation of
of
much
such
as
art
argument can be made
concerned with mass media and
Duchamp and Hoch,
as attempts to
form of
the very
this critique
critical discourse,
is
artists like
Warhol, may, on some
mediums from which
and works that do not
logic,
privilege
aspired to create for the "businessman or writer" an art that

chair in which to rest
from physical
and censured by others, may be

crucial question
Which
body
114
is
is
now
brings us back
fatigue." "
this (cynical)
level,
artists
be understood
imagery has been culled.""
which presumes that there

it
is
one
are retrograde. Henri Matisse
would be "something
is
like a
good arm-
cited with approval
by some
said to encapsulate the function of the art in this exhibition. Yet the
full circle to
not the same as yours!'"
their
This comment, which
not what does this art do, but
something valid to
mechanisms. The Dada-inspired works of
another master
is
homog-
that a love/hate relationship underlies the production
its
Pop
as well as of
manage anxiety about
However, underlying
correct
exotic, special,
perceived as misguided and as impossible a counter to capitalistic
enization as the smashing of machines by the Luddites. There

reading. Certainly, the
an unusual,
who
is it
doing
it
for
who
is
in that
armchair?
Barthes's assertion of identity as taste, to the realization that
Nor
is
my
pleasure.
"my
Notes
1.
Gertrude
and
Geography
Stein, "Sacred Emily," in
New York: Something
Plays (1922;
12.
and
Letters of Marcel
2.
Stein, "Next: Life
3.
"Rrose Selavy nee en 1920 a N.Y./nom juij?
Duchamp,"
Rose
etani
nam
le
la vie
."
.4)!
Reproduced
Duchamp"
Voice: Talks with
thinking
&
Harper
Row,
New
Marcel
1962), p. 83; cited in
Duchamp New
Hannah Hoch
tled
6.
created a
Da Dandy
Rose (with one"r") Selavy
Duchamp
13.
14.
of the
1921). Parts
and 4 below, appear
in
label.
Mary Garden,
who
figured
on the
See Nancy Ring,
Man Ray, Francis

Duchamp in the United
and Marcel
States, 1913-1921,"
Ph.D.
University, Evanston,
8.
New
York
Dada
1921
diss.,
111.,
),
quoted
"Duchamp's Masquerades,"
in
in
Ades,
17.
9.
London: Reaktion Books,
"'a
It
rue Larrey,
door need not be either opened or
may be
both." See Silver,
Disclosure:
and the Rise of Pop

and Paul Schimmel,
eds.,
Mason
on Barbette, reprinted
Man
Duchamp (New York: Abrams,

For a
summary of causal
1969), p. 477.
those of the writer

J.
who
him
(pp. 9-10). This
Brown,
C. Flugel, see Kaja Silverman, "Fragments of
a Fashionable Discourse," in Tania Modleski,
book
"Dans
le
19.
Institute of
Lavin, Cut with the Kitchen Knife, p. 128.
Claude Cahun's biographer Francois Leperlier

notes Cahun's other
pseudonyms such
XIV
Leperlier,
"Claude Cahun,"
in
Mise en Scene:
Claude Cahun, Tacita Dean, Virginia
29.
Bird,"
the Arts:
New
in
Havelock
1:
La
Ellis,
Femme
Schwob
L'Hygiene
dans
la societe, trans.
Mercure de France,
1929);
and Cahun, Aveux non avenus
(Paris:
du Carrefour,
Symbolist
critic
1930). Marcel
(Paris:
Schwob
and friend of Oscar
Wilde. Sarah Bernhardt used Schwob's translation for her Hamlet, en travesti,
Yorker,
performed
lumiere magique du theatre, dans
Paris sont ouverts (Paris: Jose
[sic]
was
An
(London: Institute of
Lucie
Editions
27, 1969, pp. 130-43.
cette
It's
sociale, vol.
The
Cahun,
Corti, 1934);
Biography Boston:
is
as
Claude Courlis and Daniel Douglas. See
in
also includes
1970), pp. 523-29; this
Flower,
30.
Cahun
which she
in 1900.
also illustrated a
nominal
children's
book with photographs of whimsical tableaux

of objects: Lise Deharme, Le Cocur de Pic
naturel n'a plus aucune valeur." {Le
N[umer]o
coined the phrase,
C. Flugel, The Psychology of Clothes (1930;
28.
cette boite a malice oil le vrai n'a plus cours, oil
"Great Masculine Renunciation," including
J.
cat.
September
18.
Biography (1928;
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1956),
Arts, 1994), p. 16.
Angel,
explanations for the
in his preface.
Nimarkoh, exh.
states that
"Onward and Upward with

Arturo
M. M. Dowie
Virginia Woolf, Orlando:
Contemporary
Cocteau
revised version of Steegmuller's article
in
Mysteries of Sex:
Man Ray
1980).
For
Posed as
par] Francis Steegmuller (Paris: Jacques
Museum
Rizzoli, 1992), p. 183.
Thompson, The
S.
p. 169.
27.
Ray, photographies
(Los Angeles:
New York:
Postmodernism and the
Marcel Duchamp,
London: Hogarth Press and
par] Jean Cocteau; [avec un
Little,
of Contemporary Art;
of
Psycho-Analysis, 1950).
Zabriskie Gallery, 1995).
Steegmuller's Cocteau:
Schwarz, The Complete Works of Marcel
u.
26.
Man Ray and
exh. cat., with essay by
(New York:
J.
New York:
collaborations, see Conspiratorial
previously published as appendix
Hand-Painted Pop:
Women in Men's Guise,

May (London: Bodley Head,
p. 189.
Man Ray and
in Transition 1955-62, exh. cat.
Note Duchamp's comments, quoted
25.
Francis Steegmuller's "A Visit to Barbette,"
Salvo
Guise, trans.
Men and Men Who

Impersonated Women (1938; New York:
Causeway Books, 1974); Thompson thanks
See Cocteau's July 1926 Nouvelle Revue
for
Identity
Women's
Gilbert,
Lewis
Women Who
p. 100.
review of
made photos of Barbette's "metamorphosis"
closed.'
Donna De
Postmodernism
American Art
and
10.
Art," in
discussed on
a useful
essai
"Modes of
The Construction of Gay
For
Damase,
illustrates that
and
I.
C.
En-Gendering of Marcel Duchamp,
inedites; [texte
notes
E. Silver
Duchamp
1926);
trans.
Gilbert and
in Jones,
Le N[umer]o Barbette:
1992), p. 108.
another context, Kenneth
In
that in
Russo, "Female
Feminist Studies/Critical
ed.,
francaise article
Glarke, ed., The Portrait in Photography,

(
the
Duchamp,
Graham
in
Douglas (London: Bodley Head,
B.
1932); cited in Jones,
Mary
reproduced
Letter
Klein
Dawn
especially,
1976).
Men
Gilbert,
Robert
6.
Laughtcr/A Friendship:
Northwestern
P.
an example of Gilbert's influence, see
Duchamp's
1991, p. 239.
O.
arguments regarding the liberating space of
p. 121;
16.
(New York: Random House/
En-Gendering
and
the Grisis of Masculinity:

Picabia,
24.
1987).
Secret Paris of the '30s, trans.
Richard Miller
Press, 1986), pp. 213-29.
bottle's original
The
Brassai,
Pantheon Books,
p. 41.)
Studies (Bloomington: Indiana University
15.
published in
For a germane analysis of Mikhail Bakhtin's
de Lauretis,
the opera
"New York Dada and
and
1978).
by Paul Morand
Brassai, Paris de nuit, text
(New York: Pantheon Books,

23.
Hannah Hoch (New
of
Robert
English as Paris by Night, trans. Gilbert Stuart
loss of
Lavin's ground-break-
trans.
1,
(Paris: Arts et Metiers, 1933);
end he conclud-
Grotesques: Carnival and Theory," in Teresa
Fashion, and Photography)," in Art/Fashion,
singer
Maud
indebted to
the carnival, see
modified
exh. cat. (Milan: Skira, forthcoming 1997).

also not
am
see chapters 4
attributed to her. In 1921, the
in Jennifer Blessing, "'Eros, e'est la vie':
is
in the
Haven: Yale University Press, 1993);
Fetishism as Cultural Discourse (Surrealism,
Rrose
22.
Identity [Chicago:
Weimar Photomontages
as the
1920),
present discussion, as well as small portions of
7.
and
Fashion, Culture,
enti-
emerged
first
Widow
Picabia's L'Oeil Cacodylate
form
and
Michel Foucault, The
Hurley (New York: Pantheon Books,
hold a position offinancial
to
University of Chicago Press, 1992],
signature of Rrose Selavy appeared on Francis
sections 3
since afterward he could
life,
See, for example,
History of Sexuality, vol.
ing study, Cut with the Kitchen Knife: The
copyright holder of Fresh
which
of his
1882-1935," in
Pietz, eds., Fetishism
University Press, 1993), pp. 31-61.

21.
as he could expect to
prestige entailed." (Cited in Fred Davis,
of
1419).
rest
Women,
as Cultural Discourse (Ithaca: Cornell
"It
ed that no price would be enough for the
Amelia
photomontage
Emily Apter and William
some morning, first
much
to be as
responsibility again;
University Press, 1994), p. 154.

5.
and the Theory of Perversion,
Federal Reserve Bank, asked
to the office
See Jann Matlock, "Masquerading
Pathologized Men: Cross-Dressing, Fetishism,
the strong disincen-
over for a moment, he said,
never expect
Gambridge
York:
it
earn the
York:
Postmodernism and the En-Gendering
[ones,
1986), pp. 35-44.

20.
to cross-dress:
hat
would have
(interview), in The Artist's
Seventeen Artists
answered, "Fifty thousand dollars." Then, after
Marcel Duchamp, quoted in Katherine Kuh,
"Marcel
men
officer of the
his wife's
le
Boston: G. K. Hall, 1985), no. 286.
approximately
what was adequate compensation for wearing
\el
Marcel Duchamp: Motes
in Raul Matisse, ed.,
4.
tive for
pour mon gout personnel/et Selavy
de mots facile/C'est
/en
book demonstrates
1937
405-06.
in ibid., pp.
changemeni del sexe

plus 'laid'
An
contemporaneous anecdote drawn from
Press, 196H), p. 187.
These circumstances included theatrical comedy and gay bars or clubs.
Else
(Paris: Jose Corti, 1937).
Barbette, p. 23.)
loan Riviere, "Womanliness as a Masquerade,"
31.
"Sous
erai
ce
masque un autre masque.
pas de soulever tons
Ic
n'en fin-
ces visages."
"--
ed., Studies in
Entertainment (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1986), pp. 138-52.
James Donald, and Cora Kaplan,
eds.,
32.
For interesting insights on Gecil Beaton's use

of mirrors and reflection, sec David Alan
-
115
Mellor, "Beaton's Beauties," in Philippe
Garner and Mellor,
(New York:
1920-19/0
Chang,
33.
43.
&
Stewart, Tabori
Cabinet Gallery, 1993),
at
Sotheby's
44.
London.
34.
Creative
35.
Hugo
Vickers,"
45.
earlier generation
of Looking. For the
Photography (1980), trans.
Pam
See Robin Gibson and
[Madame] Yevonde,
In
Madame
Roberts,
and Myth,
exh. cat.
46.
Faust
February
28, 1925; cited in
Cahun Photographe,
p. 165.
47.
(Garden
Musee
For examples of
the Dove:
A Study
in
ontrasts: St. Teresa of
(Garden
City, N.Y.:
Amelia Jones,
ed.,
Sexual
Politics:
Los Angeles:
Hammer Museum
UCLA
at
the
Armand
Press, 1996).
"What
Is a
Picture?" in Lacan,
Alan Sheridan
(New
York:
W. W. Norton,
Subjectivity,"
"Masochism and Male
Camera Obscura
Subjei tivity
til
Margins (New York:
the
New York:
Camera
York:
(oubleday, 1991
imits oj "Sex"
Routledge, 1993),
p.
242.
),
p. 70.
On
(New York:
the
The photographs
Look?
Women
Camera,"
Corcoran Gallery
Lucida,
How Do
ed.,
Staging the
Photography uyos-iySos,
and Plymouth, England: Plymouth Arts
best at describ-
is
ot photographs, in
memory
Centre, 1986), pp. 52-53.
of his
53.
Photographs by the Morter
photography
Poses
(fall
in relation to film, see
Christian
Critical linage (Seattle:
Bay
54.
55.
am
referring here to a
New
York
6, 1993).
mother
figure, not
photographic medium. For instance,
older examples of the kind ot
enjoyment of the family and

I
[owever, the
is
derived from Lacan. See Lacan,
"The Mirror Stage

Function of the
work presently
under discussion were frequently mounted
This description of the child's development

of identity
conceptions ot the status
friends of the photographer.
Gallery,
necessarily to a female subject.
greatly complicated by rapidly
for the
were
Striking
Portraits, 1918- 1928, at the
(September 23-November
1985), pp. 81-90; reprinted in Carol
The
Self
Sisters
Mesdames Morter:
Houk Friedman
definition ot private versus public pho-
albums
illustrated here are
James Lingwood,
in
exhibited in
The
1.S66-1952
Before and Behind the
Self: Self-Portrait
mother. For a comparison of the fetishism of
ol the
Ha ursive
1976).
discussed in Susan Butler, "So
Abbeville Press, 1985),
power
Imagination,"
of
and Jane Livingston,
DC:
Alice's
an
exh. cat. (London: National Portrait Gallery;
Barthes, in
historical
New
in the Service
ol
(Old Greenwich, Conn.: Chatham Press,
Photography and Surrealism,
changing
Judith Butler, Bodies that Matter:
Ann Novotny,
American Original/Alice Austen,
photography with reference to
Susan Sontag,"The Pornographic

Sontag, Styles of Radical Will
outside the scope of the present essay.
For Alice Austen, see
(spring 1981), pp. 33-38. Krauss also discusses
"Photography
stairs to
The
masquerade often inform pho-
World: The Life and Photography
is
in
example, scrubbing the exterior
see Krauss, "Nightwalkers," Art Journal 41
tography
1969;
52.
Press, 1990), pp. 155-64.

49.
pho-
herself
while related to the theme of this exhibition,

is
her essay on Brassai's photographs;
Squiers, ed.,
Male
had
tographic portraiture. This interesting subject,
(New York: Dover,
in
Routledge, 1992), pp. 185-213.
(tor
erotics of class
work
no. 34
17 (1988), p. ^y,
different" version appears in
Hannah
her house on her hands and knees).
Metz, "Photography and Fetish," October,
Kaja Silverman,
ot
Solomon-Godeau, "The Legs of
pp. 65-108. Cullwick
in Philosophical
terms that resonate with the
L981), p. 107.
a "slightly
represents the pho-
Rosalind Krauss introduces Pierce's
ing the fetishistic
1973), ed. [acqucs-Alain Miller, trans.
Cullwick, see Heather Dawkins,
the Countess," October, no. 39 (winter 1986),
pp. 15-42.
The lour Fundamental Concepts ofPsychoAnalysis
see Abigail
of Art, 1995),
it
Hannah
pp. 154-87; for the Countess de Castiglione,
(New York:
1955).
of Art; and
4S.
Jacques Lacan,
cat.
For
Cullwick," Art History 10 (June 1987),
see Pierce, "Logic as Semiotic:
S. Pierce;
exh. cat. (Washington,
with University of California
in association
photographic means of
household employments she could imagine
VAmour fou:
of Art and Cultural Center
including the daguerreotype
The terms "index" and "icon" describe types
Pierce in
Chicago's Dinner Party in Feminist Art History,

exh. cat.
Museum
Surrealism," in Krauss
Judy
am
tographed performing the most degrading
Surrealist
Doubleday, Doran, 1944). For Judy Chicago,

see
Nadar, exh.
duction by Justus Buchler
City, N.Y.:
"The Diaries and Photographs
Writings of Pierce, selected and ed. with intro-
Doubleday, Doran, 1936); and The Eagle and
Avila, St. Therese of Lisieux
et al.,
The Theory of Signs,"
Claude
Here,
tographer's bedridden wife, Ernestine.
C.
lit-
Victoria [Vita) Sackville-West's biographies,

see Saint loan of Arc
51.
(or wife)." Nadar's
of signs in the semiotic system developed by
exh. cat. (Paris:
d'Art Moderne, 1995),
68 reads,
p.
mother
pp. 53 and 73, assert that
and
medieval manuscripts were
as
in the rubric of
ambiguous way. Maria Morris
Metropolitan
"Heroines" [Sophie, Beauty], Le Journal

teraire,
artist's
Hambourg
ff.
Salome], Mercure de
),
50.
and Wang,
photograph has traditionally been identified
Eve, Delilah,
France, no. 639 (February 1925);
on
the caption
Ibid., p. 70;
in this
much
carved up in the past.
reproduction.
"Nadar: the
Camera (London:
1940), pp. 232
Hill
the
tion of individual shots as "masterpieces,"
1981), p. 12.
on the Goddesses,
Cahun, "Heroines" [including
Margaretha
Howard (New York:
Richard
commanded
which encourages the disassembling of

albums,
Reflections on
(Mellor,
p. 34.)
albums).
in
only relatively recently that
it is
kind of prices that have led to the presenta-
the advent of myself as other: a
exhibition of the charismatic
Judith of Holofernes, Helen of Troy, Sappho,
116
a History
mounted
prints were
photographic prints have
action
Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida:
Woman's Book Club,
42.
whose
ot the distur-
new
Julia
Margaret Cameron and Lady Hawarden,
identity"; see
self."
nineteenth-century photographers
in
Furthermore,
is
work
of art (see, for example, the careers of the
cunning dissociation of consciousness from
of
"Yevonde: Gradus and Parnassum," pp. 31-40.
41.
want
did not pre-
it
clude a reading of the photograph as a
masculine.
no one has thought
that
held had a public status. Also,
appropriate to photography,
dandies, put forward performance and the
especially Gibson's essay
40.
"Odd
Photograph
Yevonde: Colour, Fantasy
39.
it
bance (to civilization) which this
1985),
(London: National Portrait Gallery, 1990),
38.
Note that
p. 6.
it
while the album was a format considered
13.
causes.
"Beaton's Beauties,"
37.
note
p. 207,
"Instead of the production of goods, Beaton,
Oscar Wilde and an
tographs
trans-
p. 4;
(London:
Nineteenth-Century France,"
pp. 11-12.
like
36.
The
Camera 252 (December
often quite large, indicating that the pho-
Clarke, ed., The Portrait in Photography,
Beaton, quoted in Terence Pepper, "Reviewing
Authorised Biography' by
number of people who viewed an album was
in
et
Roger Cardinal, "Nadar and the Photographic

Portrait in
the Reviews of 'Cecil Beaton
make
"lesbienne" to
self-portraits in his
which are now located
quoted
homme
Molinier has modified the French noun
Beaton also preserved
numerous cross-dressed
archives,
lesbian." Pierre Molinier,
femme," Canal 32 (October 1979),
often associated with
theatrical roles,
am
lated in Pierre Molinier, exh. cat.
1995), pp. 8-58.
Though most
"No
Jacques Donguy, "Molinier,
Cecil Beaton: Photographs
in
Selection, trans.
W. W. Norton,
as
Formative of the
I" (1949), in Ecrits:
Alan Sheridan (New York:
1977), pp. 1-7.
An
earlier ver-
sion of this paper appeared in The
International journal oj Psychoanalysis 18
lanuary 1937) as "The Looking-Glass Phase."
For
a useful
examination ot Lacan's theory
relation to fashion photography, see

1
uss,
Diana
(summer
Inquiry 18
(.'.ritual
(1919
64.
"The 'Uncanny"'
Complete Psychological Works

I
rend, ed.
Hogarth
and
oj
Sigmund
lames Strachey (London:
trans.
Press, 19531974), vol.
65-
pp. 219-52.
17,
For an examination of the uncanny dimen-
VAmour
Delicti," in
66.
57-100.
ton, pp.
Standard Edition,
1,
Through
vol. 21, pp. 152-57.
cannot be
1927
this logic,
67.
The quote
The
Peter
iorsen,
on the
1.
"Hans Bellmer
An \rchaeology
Pierre
Artforum
in this issue
Turner
is
Michael Robinson,
B and Back Again (New York:
Leslie Fiedler,
Review
in her
An
oldness
McNeil
and Cruelty
New
The anxiety
white rock
York: George Braziller, 1971).
'n' roll
performers
in Sontag, Styles of
contemporary male
England and
PP- 1-47-
into themselves tor even to assimilate
collected
and translated
Research 1928-1932, trans.
Malcolm
I
heirs ot the Renaissance
of the future
Surrealisme.
le
mime 4
strip-tease," Le
1
spring 1958), includes
in
and
62);
Gerard Legrand, "La Philosophie dans
quete"
),
Le Surrealisme,
mime 5
Molinier's 1958 response
p. 61.
is
in the
"Strip-tease" entry in "Lexique succinct de

l'erotisme," in [.'Exposition InteRnatiOnale
70.
du
Surrealisme, exh. cat. (Paris: Galerie Daniel
Cordier, 1959),
to
p. 140.
"L ne enquete sur

;
Molinier also responded
la
representation ero-
(p. 391)
&
Jiirgen
Klauke also
titled a
work Ziggy
Stardust (1974).
in
76.
New
total of
have identified with

these children
they must not only
Sontag, "Notes on 'Camp'" (1964), in Sontag,

Against Interpretation and Other Essays (1966;
them-
p.
77.
York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1986),
280.
Popular interest
sonation
in theatrical
in the early 1970s
female imper-
was manifested
in
gamut
a spate of publications that ran the
who
is
most
likely
"impotent or homo-
beyond the scope of
important to note the way
this essay,
in
but
which race
it
is
is
gender-coded as masculine or feminine.
See "Transformer": Aspekte der Travestie,
Kunstmuseum,
Patrick Eudeline, "Le
dans
la
Rock Music,"
unpaginated.
1974).
Phenomene du
in
travesti
"Transformer."
superficial to scholarly.
decadent or perverse when
goes on to discuss "the non-or anti-
exh. cat. (Lucerne:

71.
on
Pierre
impersonation continued to be denigrated as
guities are
(spring 1959),
quoted
ehen Hermaphroditen (Munich: Rogner
sexual or both" (p. 391). His position's ambi-
saloon" (following "Le Striptease: Fin de l'en-
on Gorsen,
Bernhard, 1972).
which the middle-class
to feel,
relies substantially
from
male,"
le
Molinier
than male.
He
another illustration appears
seem
In the "Transformer" catalogue, the entry
become more Black than White but more female
an illustration and a response by Molinier

(pp. 58
sum
"woman." To become new men,
York:
Verso, 1992).
"L ne enquete sur
74.
Molinier, lui-mimc: Essay iiberden surrealistis-
the United States to assimilate
rejected psychic elements
Imrie,
Dawn Ades New
ot the effort of
selves into) that otherness, that
in
Jose Pierre, ed.. Investigating Sex: Surrealist
with an afterword bv
thinking
the Denial of Difference
1992), pp. 144-69.
is
75.
young men
Arbor: University ot Michigan Press, 1969),
is
including 1970s positions, see Kari Weil,
civil rights
Dietrich
cat. (Berlin:
1986).
(Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia,
movement:
am
N.Y'.:
and Androgyn: Sehnsucht nacht
Androgyny and
bands emulating black
troubling one in the face of the
1924), in Manifestoes ot Surrealism, trans.
with
in Art, exh. cat.
engagements with the concept of androgyny,
in
seen as a symptom, and a
is
Androgyny
by Gail Gelburd (Hempstead,
Reimer Verlag,
male becoming Negro. The phenomenon of
Interpretation of
The
Zolla,
For a critique of twentieth-century feminist
Happening
Richard Seaver and Helen R. Lane (Ann
This research
and
complicated by his anxiety about the white
Andre Breton, "Manifesto of Surrealism"

1
York: Stein
Fiedler expresses concerning
the feminization of the
"Pygmalion
and Elemire
1;
Vollkommenheil, exh.
Radical Will. pp. 193-204, especially pp. i99ff.
dis-
1967), trans. lean
(New
America" (1966), reprinted
P- 256.
For Deleuze's account,
see Deleu/e, Masochism:
vol. 2
Love Reexamined,"
Kozloff,
York: Crossroad/Thames and Hudson,
1982);
reprinted in Collected Essays
1;
Sontag's response in "What's
"Masochism and Male
56ft".
Partisan
Day, 1971), pp. 379-400. See also Susan
cussion of Gilles Deleuze's conception of
masochism,
1965
fall
and Max
Emily Lowe Gallery, Hofstra University,
ucida, p. 31.
Surrealist Cult of
1981). See also

text
"The New Mutants,"
of Leslie Fiedler,
example, Silverman's sympathetic
Subjectivity," pp.
<
art, respective-
Whitney Chadwick, "Eros or Thanatos
(New
Oxford Art
1987), p. 70.
38-45 (also
1975), pp.
Androgyne: Reconciliation of Male and Female
1975), p. 7;
Self,"
(November
of Artforum are two other articles
Reversed," pp. 30-37
Whiting, "Andy Warhol, the
'amera
Barthes,
eds., Real Text
(Vienna: Ritter Klagenfurt, 19931,

See, for
no. 2
10,
69.
Georg Schollhammer
in
and Christian Kravagna,
ly:
pp. 46-56;
in Cecile
example, Robert
Surrealism and contemporary
responding to Chas's
The
to
Theory
that deal with notions of androgyny, in
And) Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol:
68.
Against Technological Paranoia," trans.
63.
lagger as has-been rock star
14
request to take Polaroid photos of him.
journal
of Eroticism
in art, see, for
Performance (1970), directed by Donald
Mick
New
Anchor
"The Myth of the Androgyne,"
Knott,
British film
Public Star and the Private
Winnipeg:
androgyny
vol. 14, p. 89.
Cammell and Nicholas Roeg, with lames Fox
quoted
best English-language reference
Molinier:
62.
from the
is
N.Y'.:
For contemporaneous investigations of
Introduction"
Standard Edition,
in
1,
An
Harcourt Brace (ovanovich,
Plug In Editions, 1993
61.
1914
to "voluptuousness."
Narcissism:
and
artist is Pierre Molinier, exh. cat.
60.
Press/Doubleday, 1976).
"On
From A
Discourse, pp. 101-15.
59.
and "Lee, Gypsy Rose,"
Elizabeth Grosz, "Lesbian Fetishism?" in Apter

Pietz, eds., Fetishism as Cultural
For a 1970s Jungian view of androgyny, see
of Sexuality (Garden City,
secretary/lover.
women
fetishists. In this regard, see
"auxgrandes etonnees/M. Duchamp."

73.
June Singer, Androgyny: Toward a
Freud,
of
a detail
"aphrodisiac" and "ardor," to "Gardner, Ava"
as Chas,
which
in
reproduced with the caption
is
"Lexique succinct de l'erotisme" range from
Turner, and Anita Pallenberg as his
Freud, "Fetishism"
Katharina Sieverding's portfolio of photographic self-portraits,
in
in the
(Cambridge, Mass.: Mil
Press, 1993).
in the
"Transformer" catalogue, in the context of
du Surrealisme,
Examples of entries
Duchamp's work appears again
Elant Donnes
See also Hal Foster, Compulsive Beauty
57.
58.
was then included
artist
L'Exposition InteRnatiOnale
sion of Surrealist photography, see Krauss,
"Corpus
72.
Paris exhibi-
Breton's Galerie L'Etoile Scellee, in
at
pp. 121-42.
The Standard Edition of the
in
1,
first
subsequent Surrealist exhibitions.
1992),
For Freud's articulation of the significance of

the uncanny, see Freud,
was
surrealiste, no. 7
1964), p. 94. His
lanuary 1956; the
pp. 713-3756.
December
tion
"Fashion and the Homospectatorial
Look,"
La breche, action
tique,"
in
it
However, female
was not per-
formed by an ostensibly heterosexual
subject.
Contemporaneous publications on female

impersonation include Gillo Dorfles
Gli uni
& gli altri:
nell'arte, nel teatro, net
cinema, nella musica,
nel cabaret e nella vita quotidiana
Arcana
Editrice, 1976),
which was
dilles Larrain, Idols
(New
York:
influential study
Rome:
also
lished in a French edition; picture
and the highly
et al.,
Travestiti e travestimenti
pub-
books
like
inks. 1973);
by Esther
Newton, Mother Camp: Female Impersonators

in
America (Engiewood
Hall, 1972).
who
78.
cross-dressed cited in note 24 above was
and Theory," pp. 213-29. For an example of
Formprinzip
als
Gorsen
asthetisches Verhalten,"
interests, distinguishing
community, which was
process of trying to identify
itself in a
is
"Le Rire de
97.
with Morimura's 1994
Madonna and Michael
of rock star as shaman or godlike figure
pieces
(1975), pp. 39-54.
Your
and
related sculptural constructions
such as Skin
98.
in his
columnar and cruciform Body Mix
iconically
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, "'Gosh, Boy George,

in
this
Jackson. Christian Marclay ironizes the notion
Feminisms:
a revised version of
meduse," LArc
Compare
Psychoborg series on
Isabelle
Au Sans
Paris:
Mix
(1990).
Note, in this regard, the recent explosion of
cross-dressing represents a higher aspiration
Masculinity!'" in Maurice Berger, Brian Wallis,
books about drag:
for a psychological ideal. See also Gorsen,
and Simon Watson,
Moore, Drag! Male and Female Impersonators
und
"Intersexualismus
Matthes,
ed.,
&
Rogner
Bernhard, 1972; second
Weems (New
like
New York,
Haleine
1973," in
88.
Anne
Museum
of
Modern
Philadelphia
89.
of Art, 1973),
p. 227.
Warhol's contribution to this catalogue con-
of a photograph of the
sists
barker's
artist in a
to
compared
Television:
York: Scalo
Cassell, 1994);
made
Madame
tions
Boucher on
(Munich:
Portraits
scholarly contribu-
on cross-dressing such
eds.,
The Cultural
of Gender Ambiguity,
Politics
Routledge, 1991); Lesley Ferris, ed.,
Crossing the Stage: Controversies on Cross-
Schneider deals
Dressing,
(New
York: Routledge, 1993);
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
depict female subjects.
Dressing
The works
Routledge, 1992); and Vern
referred to are, respectively,
Matthew Barney's Blind Perineum
Goffman, The Presentation
(1991),
as Julia Epstein
Body Guards:
and Kristina Straub,
(New York:
(1743) in Christa Schneider,
p. 18.
more
1995). See also the
Marjorie Garber, Vested
Display"). See also
History of Female
Diaries (San Francisco: Chronicle Books,
this
book Cindy
Rizzoli, 1993), p. 17.
Schirmer/Mosel, 1995),
91.
Illustrated
and Catherine Chermayeff,
exclusively with the History Portraits that
"Gender
An
Michael
Performing Arts (London:
in the
Erving Goffman, Gender Advertisements
i979)> P- 8 (in the chapter entitled
F.
Jonathan David, and Nan Richardson, Drag
to Boucher's
Longue
and
Roger Baker, Drag:
Impersonation
p. 7.
Cindy Sherman: History
be a group of drag queens.
1994);
For example, Cindy Sherman's Untitled, #193
a Chaise
Stage, Screen
for example,
World History (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland,
Nevertheless, at least one art critic
is
kind of
costume and black wig, inserted into
what appears
Nan Goldin, The Other Side (New
Sherman (New York:

90.
on
."
that
is
mistake, as Krauss notes in her
and Philadelphia:
Art;
Museum
eds.,
(New York:
cat.
Mae
p. 16; this
"One implication of work
Sandra Bern's
Publishers, 1993),
d'Harnoncourt and Kynaston McShine,

Marcel Duchamp, exh.
sentence begins,
rev. ed.,
See also "For Rrose Selavy and Belle
Constructing
eds.,
Masculinity, with picture essay by Carrie
Subkultur," in Axel
Maskulin-Feminin (Munich:
1975), pp- 93-137-
Bonnie
The
Interests: Cross-
& Cultural Anxiety New York:

(
B.
Bullough and
L.
Bullough, cyoss Dressing, Sex, and
of Self in Everyday Life (Garden City, N.Y.:
Jim Otto Suite (1990), Cremaster 4 (1994), and
Gender Philadelphia: University of
Doubleday, 1959),
Radial Drill (1991).
Pennsylvania Press, 1993).
p. 19 (in
the chapter entitled
"Performances"). Goffman's influence
by Kirk Varnedoe, "Introduction,"
The Self & Others, exh.
Portraits:
York: Wildenstein, 1976),
The Auto
Polaroids were
Samaras Album, exh.
Museum
cat.
xxv, note
p.
first
cat.
in
is
cited
92.
York:
(1995)93.
Whitney
of American Art and Pace Editions,
-minute,
with
Kim
Lucy
R. Lippard,
16-mm
film
was created
For examples of each
artist's
engagement with
David King,
Transformation
in
Women's
(1991);
(New
York: E.
P.
Woolf, Orlando, pp. 156-57.
85.
The album
collections were
Limits of Duality (Bloominglon: Indiana
in
her
Collectionneuse."
is
his exhibitions ol
Bakhtin's influential
which Barbette
less
obvious
University Press, 1989).

99.
to note
work on the carniva-
Stills;
in
in
See
on
(
lover
random sample during
a single night
I
counted
one joke per show, ranging from
man
of
at least
trying
Morimura's
to convince his son to trade in his Barbie for a
which he emu-
GI
('remaster
1,
Joe,
with the
had dressed up
and
final revelation that the
as a girl
woman who
when he was
tries to
seduce
band of many
years,"
which
elicits
ence's laughter (October 9, 1996,
interesting essay
work, "Corpse on a Pink Record
Dancing Upside Down,"
in
Masks,
man
a child;
middle-
aged bureaucrat until he refers to his "hus-
as well as
production photographs
Wayne Koestcnbaum's
this
In a
watching national television,
refer-
from the video.

94.
worthwhile
Le
Crawford; and Barney's Busby
Berkeley references
produced
movie goddesses from Marilyn Monroe
to loan
bedroom by "Annette Messager
it
poete, 1930], in
photographs (1996),
Actress
lates
Dutton, 1976), pp. 101-08.
84.
In this regard,
Jean Cocteau's film The Blood of a Poet
and Sex-Changing
York: Routledge, 1996); and Holly
Devor, Gender Blending: Confronting the
and Barney's use of designer
Sherman's Untitled Film
on Women's
Blending Genders: Social
(New
Sister
ences to Hollywood, see, for example,
Art," in Lippard,
the Center: Feminist Essays
eds.,
and ongoing); Yasumasa Morimura's
wears Chanel.) For more or
"Transformation Art,"
seem innumerable;
Aspects of Cross-Dressing
Sang d'un
Levin.
in their titles
example, Richard Ekins and
fashion, see Sherman's Fashion series (1983-84,
is
"Making Up: Role- Playing and
Art
see, for
photos
Ms. 4 (October 1975), pp. 33-39; reprinted
From
"gender"
clothes in his videos (an interesting precursor
This 22
as
Today, books and articles with the word
(New
8.
referred to are, respectively,
Barney's Cremaster 4 (1994) and Cremaster
published in
(New
The works
Modern
1971).
118
la
is
You Must Be Awfully Secure
fashion, while for the authentic transvestite
86.
245-64; this
1981), pp.
87.
New French
eds.,
(summer
Signs
Marks and
Anthology (New York: Schocken Books,
Ait
rather than the traditionally negative way. For
Gorsen, the pop transvestite manifestation
Champs magnetique
Les
Cohen and Paula Cohen,
1993).
Andre Breton and Philippe Soupault,
Pareil, 1920).
de Courtivron,
in the
96.
Drawing Center,
York:
feminist implications of laughter, see Helene
Keith
positive
(New
Cixous, "The Laugh of the Medusa," trans.
1976); reprinted in Elaine
cul-
from the "authen-
ture's pseudo-transvestites
tic" transvestite
pop
and Mary Ann Caws
Schaffner, Charles Simic,
polemical text of the 1970s that engages the
criticizes
Exquis, exh. cat., with texts by Ingrid
"Female Grotesques: Carnival
in
For contemporary examples of the Exquisite
Corpse game, see The Return of the Cadavre
on
(as well as Riviere's
In his "Transformer" catalogue essay, "Die
commercial
83.
work
reception of this
masquerade)
of transvestites, gays, and transsexuals) by
82.
95.
reprinted in 1974.
und
81.
MIT
1992),
unpaginated.
Russo summarizes the feminist
Press, 1968).
(Rome: Valentina Moncada,
exh. cat.
1965), trans.
Helene Iswolsky (Cambridge, Mass.:
the cooptation of intersexual subcultures (that
80.
Rabelais:
Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World
of historical figures
Geschlechterentspannung
79.
work of Francois
lesque in the
Prentice-
Thompson's The Mysteries of Sex,
compendium
the 1930s
Cliffs, N.J.:
100.
It is
the audi-
NBC).
interesting to note, in this regard,
Sedgwick's provocative discussion of the genesis
of shame and
its
relationship to perfor-
mance,
in
Memoir," with portraits by Goldin, Harris,
her essay "Queer Performativity:
Henry James's The Art of the Novel? GLQ: A
and Catherine Opie, among others,
journal of Lesbian and
spersed with family snapshots),
Gay
Studies
no.
i,
pp. 25-27;
0993). PP- 1-16.

101.
Goldin, The Other Side,
Storytelling:
p. 6.
See Lia Gangitano, ed., Boston School, exh.
104.
mechanism of
The
New
York: Hill and
Wang, 19X6
|,
The
"Curating
Blake,
in the 1970s
Lawrence Rinder, and
Amy
pp. 141-4X.
al
cat.
Pacific
Source Book by Artists and Critics Berkeley:
Flenri Matisse,
What
an appeasing
something
University of
African American performers began
an art
p. 135:
of balance, ol purity
an art which might be for every

writer, like
mental soother,
a good armchair in which
to rest
fatigue.
See the epigraph at the start of this book,
from Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes

trans.
pp. 267-303.
is
influence, like a
like
from physical
112.
in Vested Interests,
in
o)
mental worker, be he businessman or
and
and White TV: Cross-
form minstrel companies
dream
subject matter,
and Robert C.
Flill:
and scremtv devoid of troubling or depressing
Show
Press, 1991), pp. 163-78. See
they also wore blackface.
of David
at
Blacking Up: The Minstrel
Dressing the Color Line,"
When
many
such as Major Tom.
University of California Press, 1968),
Allen, Horrible Prettiness: Burlesque
to
lyrics,
in
Nineteenth-Century America (New York:
also Garber, "Black
fear manifested in
Space
"Notes of a Painter" (1908),
information on the minstrel shows, see
North Carolina
films such as 2001:
Herschel B. Chipp, Theories of Modern Art:
111.
Berkeley, 1995), pp. 31-33.
American Culture (Chapel
its
Scholder,
Museum and
Press, 1974);
with
corpore-
Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968), and the pro-
Film Archive, University of California
Oxford University
art,
artist's
temporaneous
(San Francisco: City Lights Books; and
Toll,
time and the
gy and space exploration, as evidenced in con-
in
Bowie's
in
real
Nayland
found
Robert C.
identifying with the enemy.
presence, might be viewed as a reaction to
Sexual Identity, Queer Practice, exh.
106. For
1,
anxiety about advances in computer technolo-
eds., In a Different Light: Visual Culture,
Berkeley: University Art
June 24 and July
of performance and body
emphasis on
and the present
in a Different Light," in
rise
Howard
Note Nayland Blake's distinctions between the

use of drag
Narrative Suddenly So
Yorker,
Warhol's professed desire to be a
the reality effect in literature. See his essay

Reality Effect" (1968), in Barthes,
is
Sew
machine could be equated with the defense
"The
Rustle of Language, trans. Richard
105.
110. In this light,
refer loosely here to Barthes's articulation of
1996,
1996, pp. 11-12.
cat.
(Boston: Institute of Contemporary Art, 1995).
12,
Buford, "The Seductions of
Bill
Why
Popular?" The
K12. Ibid., p. 8.
103.
and
inter-
May
1975
1,
Richard Howard (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1994), pp. 116-17.
the late 1860s,
A complicated
cir-
which started with whites constructing
cuit,
black characters by shoehorning elements of

black American slave culture into European
minority stereotypes, came to be reclaimed by

blacks
who
redeployed the minstrel conven-
tions, eventually tor black audiences.

107.
Kobena Mercer, "Busy

Wretched Phantasia,"
Race, Difference
Institute
I
and
in the
in
Ruins of
Mirage: Enigmas of
Desire, exh. cat.
(London:
of Contemporary Arts, 1995),
p. 32.
thank Lyle Ashton Harris for bringing
my
essay to
108. Harris,
this
attention.
quoted
in
Michael Cohen, "Lyle
Ashton Harris," Flash Art 29 (May-June 1996),

p. 107.
109. For a journalistic
account of the autobio-
graphical aspects of current academic writing

in the field
ple,
Adam
of literary criticism, see, for examBegley,
"The
I's
Have
It,"
Linguafranca 4 (March-April 1994), pp. 54-59-
On
the contemporary
breakdown of the
tinction between fiction
and memoir,
dis-
see, for
example, James Atlas, "The Age of the Literary
Memoir
New
Is
Now: Confessing
for Voyeurs,"
The
York Times Magazine special issue,
"True Confessions: The Age of the Literary
119
Dinos and Jake

/
in kfat e
Chapman
win, 1995
Fiberglass, resin,
and paint,
$3
21
Deste Foundation, Athens, Courtesy

120
<>l
\ k-,
inches (8s
Victoria
Miro
54 x 67
Gallery,
cm)
London
zDealA <yftcM/c;KA
Queer photography, indeed, these pictures of an underworld or another world, an
we know them have been burlesqued,
future where identities as
cut up,
Urs
ognize, a double
we would
Nan
deny, like
Goldin's drag queens,
in unusual,
Be Your Minor
Ill
(1972),
we would not
cross-dressed self-portrait promises us, offering an image of ourselves
Liithi's
alternative past or
and collaged anew
sometimes grotesque and frightening, sometimes beautiful combinations.
CAROLE-ANNE TYLER
Hannah Hoch's man-woman
rec-
Tamer,
or the masquerading self-portraits of Claude Cahun, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Cindy Sherman.
Perhaps more disturbing
are Jiirgen Klauke's cyborg bodies with penis nipples, or
still
Chapman's "Siamese Twat
Fuckface Twin
Two-faced Cunt
biogenetic de-sublimated hbidinal model," child

anuses,
and vaginas
arms, and
in surprising places,
mannequin
we imagine
ties
it)
in
and ours?
that
We
gaze
at
"back to the future"
fixes
us?
zygotic acceleration,
we knew
as
it,
is
so complex.
Marty McFly
Can we
them? What do we
wondering what
up
line,
"Rose
cross the tenses
aporias
life itself,
The
all
circle
is
more
the hero played by Michael Fox
do? Like
J.
is
strives to
identity in those paradoxes of time travel that
make
insoluble than the film suggests.
McFly moves
a rose
and tensions of
identi-
ever secure a comfortable
Robert Zemeckis's series of films about the oedipal adventures of masculinity
him, we must
torsos,
desire take us, theirs (as
these pictures as into a developing tray,
as if
(and perhaps their other) faces
as
class
might take shape when the chemistry of desire
identity, get
own
or race or custom
and what does make of Where might
shield us, desires incompatible with gender
make of these queer beings
Cunt-chops
sculptures sprouting adult penises,
numbers, and combinations, along with extra heads,
Are these the faces of desires from which our
legs.
Dinos and Jake
a rose
might seem very
in
is
a rose," or
far
indeed from that of Gertrude
from Marcel Duchamp's feminine
Stein's
alter ego,
Gertrude Stein's
famous
letterhead (detail), n.d.
Rrose Selavy,
Beinecke Rare Book and
the
muse
for this exhibition together with Stein's rose. Yet
the necessity
and impossibility of
fixing identity
all
three, like the exhibition itself, point to
through representation, however often we repeat
Manuscript Collection,
Yale University,
New
Yale Collection of
We
figure ourselves out of
no name can do us
remember
comes
it.
to us
justice
our figures of ourselves because identity
when
it
has forgotten our future
from the
right,
performance
always under (re)construction;
and, unlike McFly,
As biographers and autobiographers know, every identity

future, rather than the past,
ing of the past (even the past of the
come out
is
body
with the proper ending
artist
and
is
in transsexual
for that
what
will
American
Literature
never can
retroactive. Identity
^%*
have been, a defensive edit-
and cosmetic
moment.
is
it
Haven,
it.
surgeries) to
"I" will be another
all
make
it all
too soon, as
Orlan demonstrates in the surgical reconstructions of herself she stages
in
operating rooms (fittingly termed "theatres" in British usage, which seems to acknowledge the
common
presence of observers at medical spectacles).
Only the end of life
Kermode reminds us
in a
itself
provides closure for this process. As literary
book on time and
narrative, death
is
what
critic
Frank
gives us the sense of
'*
an ending:
121
Men,
like poets,
mediis rebus, and
to
such as give meaning
make
own
made
Stein once
"but
and
to lives
to
poems. The End they imagine
and
it,
as far
we can
a similar observation. "In writing a story
one had
Walter Benjamin claims that
all
storytelling
in a
novel cannot be presented any better than
ing'
of his
life is
But
is
done
experience of death:
actual one.
the final period that
if
the language that
makes of each
which
to
human
would represent
a "period,"
it
is
any element of
is
finalized
when we
and
actually written
which
says that the 'mean-
whom
he derives the
advance that he
in
will share their
but
end of the novel
the
preferably their
in his
We
punctuated by some other,
it is
something with
are subjected to
what have we been
for that other
us, as
Death
it; it
is
the point of view of the
makes us human
subjects, as
who
sees us
it:
Who
fundamentally masochistic.
is
or
from beyond our grave, who makes our death mask,
murderous
of "identity"? The gaze of the other
still-life
does the photographer, according to Roland Barthes, and yet we
collaborate with
places
theory of a death drive, which he articulates to account for the
finish us off to represent us in that
and embalms
who
a definite shape, a beginning, middle,
it all.
aggression that exceeds the pleasure and reality principles and
am
history.
beings from
as the significance of
looks ahead.
life
Sigmund Freud emphasizes
is
remembering," she writes,
which
life,
in this statement,
need be their figurative death
and end from which identity emerges
we even
End
The stream of life and
who must
so; the
revealed only in his death," he writes.
the reader of a novel actually does look for
meaning of life,
done
such an obituary. "The nature of the character
is
"meaning of life." Therefore he must, no matter what, know
truth,
to be
as in the novels."^ Identity
end only with the death of
revised by others in a process that can
it;
see have always
and have become our obituary, the story of our
it
ends,
will reflect their irreducibly
realizing the existence of living beings actually existing did not have in
are past revising
and
deaths.'
remembering so the time of existing was not the same
kills
arc horn; they also die in
sense of their span they need fictive concords with origins
intermediary preoccupations. They fear

figure for their
when they
rush "into the middest," in medias res,
sit still
"The photograph represents the very subtle moment when,
neither subject nor object but a subject
ence a micro-version of death (of parenthesis):
who
am
feels
truly
he
is
becoming an
becoming
a specter."'
object:
to
tell
for
the
then experi-
Film theorist
Christian Metz also affirms a connection between death and photography, asserting that "the snapshot, like death,
is
an instantaneous abduction of the object out of the world into another world, into
another kind of time
unlike cinema, which
unfolding time similar to that of
Each shot makes us into

pose" as what
was able
we
life."
trophy or a taxidermist's triumph, catching us
a hunter's
we
are "supposed" to be. Yet
believe portraits
to find the essence of these athletes," a
photos of 1996 Olympians." Her gaze
Madonna's phrase
tion to this
///
in
fixes
them
show
us as
Time magazine editor
mimicry through which we express ourselves
front of the lens,
am
at the
same
words a strange action:

Richard Avedon remarks on
time: the one

I
we
in a "natural
really are: "Leibovitz
asserts of
Annie Leibovitz's
in heroic impostures, as they "strike a pose," to
"Vogue," projecting themselves into images of an
am, the one the photographer thinks
122
replaces the object, after the act of appropriation, in an
ideal.
echo
Barthes draws our atten-
for others:
I
think
am, the one
want
others to think
am, and the one he makes use of to exhibit
his art. In other
do not stop imitating myself."
this facet
of portraiture
when he
argues that "Rembrandt must have
been acting when he made

just
making
faces,
his
own
self-portraits.
but always, throughout his
in the full tradition
of performance."
life,
Not
working
Rembrandt
"
displays
not the essence but the appearance, the death masks that
disguise the desires of the living being, impostures
about the man, duped by their
tinize for clues
Robert Mapplethorpe's self-portraits
qualities.
he masquerades
ilar scrutiny, as
in turn as a
we
scru-
"lifelike"
sim-
solicit a
female imper-
sonator in 1980, a terrorist with a machine gun in 1983, and

finally
death
between
1988 photo that invites a comparison
itself in a
his face
and the
skull
crowning the walking
he grips. Only the small skull and
ground
the middle
ground
is
luminous
in the photo's fore-
fist
are in sharp focus; while his
disembodied face
Mapplethorpe
already
is
death within his grasp what
Is this
really is?
in
otherwise velvety
in the
blackness of the image, the soft focus suggests he

fading, disappearing.
stick
literally his
It is
"lifelike" (solid-seeming, tangible,
and
support and more
"realistic")
than the
Robert Mapplethorpe
face dissolving into darkness.
Self- Portrait,
The
isman or
medium
portrait artist in any
is
condemned
to the cliche of the "lifelike" as a
kind of
tal-
24 x 20 inches (61 x 50.8 cm)
with prophylactic powers against the threat of death, as Barthes notes of the photog-
fetish
1988
Courtesy of The Robert
rapher, who, he writes,
must
resort to "contortions to
Photograph from becoming Death."

in art
They
are gestures
effects that are 'lifelike' ... to
drawn from
the aesthetic as stereotype, as art critic Rosalind Krauss says
everyday
as a
11
produce
life,
as
is
a
i:
museum
but
keep the
of gestures, preserved
Mapplethorpe Foundation,
New York
also in the theater of
suggested by Barthes's use of quotation marks to signal the artifice of the "lifelike"
time-worn pose. Furthermore, the contortions Barthes describes are not those of the photogra-
pher but of the model

the others for
different
of
whom
who
responds to the demands of the photographer,
Barthes and the rest of us posture. They
the poses
we hope
to
is
no
Jacques Lacan.
as the title of
We
are
all
...
am
all
perhaps something
reiterates," as
literally
make him,
he
for
photographed" according to
exhibitionists, soliciting the other's gaze as confirmation of
We desire the
our contours are consolidated, we

(into being)
which
can stand in for
our existence;
Sandra Bernhard's 1990 film of cross-rnce and cross-gender performances declares,
Without You I'm Nothing.
what
it
seems to
are.
reflect.
photograph that the making of
duced the
and indeed, they quite
identity without that mortifying gaze "through

14
make something
impose on them. "[T]hey make me," Barthes
describes his performances for the eyes of the other,

there
who
other's desire; with his or her gaze framing
This
is
and caressing
the generative dimension of photography:
Art historian John Tagg notes that
it
it
us,
performs
was through the taking of
bourgeois subject occurred. Photography represented and repro-
status of those with the status to be photographed: they could afford to pay for the privi-
lege, unlike the
lower orders, even
if
they could not
sit
for a portrait in oils, as aristocrats did." Like
Tagg, sociologist Pierre Bourdieu draws attention to photography's performativity.

creates the family unity
snapshot, whatever the
it
depicts, gathering the
rifts
that precede
group together
and succeed
it.
He
argues that
it
to be preserved forever in the family
"Photography
itself,"
quently nothing but the reproduction of the image that a group produces of
he asserts,
its
own
"is
most
fre-
integration."
'
>.
123
What
else
the "being" of the Diane Arbus photo
is
not a performance for a gaze that
(1968)
if
"him"
to "her," with
passes for
organ that
trated, stripped of the
man
doubleness. As a "naked
This
is
itself.
to
what
is
is
make of him. The
woman" he
man
is
shutter
whose
trace
the
is
naked
actually being a
slice like knives;
tailor's, as
is
me
"Commemorativo"
an image that does not quite
to "me,"
one of the
Buffalo
Bill,
why he
tries to seize
the skins of "real girls"
man
orgasmic pleasure in the
woman
theft.
possible. For him, a
cut. If his
mad basement
because fetishism
ships
insistence
on
woman
being a
cas-
is
his
for
signs.
its
it
fit,
like the
me down
to size,
emperor's
new
and
is
fits
me
clothes.
Mastery
The Silence of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme,
killers in
for himself.
to a
1991),
would-be self-made woman, he repeatedly
steals
transsexual slang) in which to dress himself. Psychoanalyst Eugenie
("r.g.'s" in
of fetishism, in which the
it is
he
performing the same
tequila,
Lemoine-Luccioni points out that kleptomania frequently has been described
is
own
title's
not even there in the picture except as a suspicious rereading of
"She's a He," proclaims a recent ad for Sauza
knows, which
thing
transforms
second castration, one that deprives the would-be deceiver of the power of masquerade
pattern, stitches
the
in the act that
and the frame
double gesture of un/veiling the female impersonator. The other cuts
is
woman, New York City
being a
the very figure of self-revelation), the subject
signifies his pretense,
being
naked
an imposture? Caught
nothing to hide (since nudity
what the other helps
that gaze that sees
fixes
make up
for
Like every fetishist, Buffalo
Bill
takes things to
woman's
skin
is
what she
"lacks,"
l7
"feminine form"
experiencing an
believes that with the right outfit, any-
the finest fabric, and there
burlesque involves cutting up the
as the
woman
to
is
the added pleasure of the
mock
her as well as mimic her,
characterized by a double attitude. As Freud explains, the fetishist both wor-
knows and ignores
castrates his fetish object,
the fact that
eyes only.'" Buffalo Bill can never be the master tailor, the
one who
its
magic properties are
in his
fixes these properties so all
may
witness them; even a night-blinded female detective can see to that, sewing up the case with a shot
that
makes him the picture of the pervert
The law
is
the master
who
an image of myself with which
as sociopathic criminal.
coauthors
am
me
by authorizing "me," providing
urged to identify from the
the mirror and told to see the pretty baby, the one
sents me. Mastery
the one
whose wish
erally subjects us,
that of the other
is
that
but
it
we
subjects
me,
imitate a particular object
also belongs to that object
master's desire, having captivated

it,
who
who
it.
overcoming our difference from
If
it,
we could
if
is
first
we
moment am
not quite "me" but
alienates
me
held up in front of
who
nonetheless repre-
take as the law of our
own
to
whom we
It
belongs to
desire,
alienates us
imitate this alter ego well enough,
we can dupe,
name and
me, and constitutes me.
we mimic, whose mastery
only for those
with a
which
lit-
from the
we might become
have implicitly
assigned the power to judge.
That
is
the tragicomic message of Paris
about African American and Latino voguers

ideals touted
Is
who
women
whom he models
poise.
tive to
impersonate the primarily white and feminine
modeling school
for the very
himself. "I'm trying to bring their femininity back
You know, whether they become models or not,
to those ideals.
But
it's
nice to
women
after
and
and bring some grace
know because
it's
more
attrac-
men," he explains. This statement might be taken as evidence for the assertion of perfor-
mance-studies scholar Peggy Phelan that

that femininity ...
124
documentary
1991), a
they teach to emulate them: Willie Ninja, one of the
"mothers" or heads of a house of voguers, runs
and
by our media culture and judge each other's "realness" with respect
they also judge the realness of the real
before
Burning Jennie Livingston,
is
if
these gay
thoroughly masculine,"
"
men
valorize femininity, "the architecture of
operating in the service of patriarchy and capitalism
(the
women
are commodities, deeply identified with the clothing
ing style that they
consume
men who
for the
for a California clothing-store chain offers
will
and other accoutrements of
"consume" them).
women
recent television commercial
viewers a transvestite role model with
can compete through commodity consumption. Proclaiming "If Clothestime can make
this
good, imagine what we can do for you," the commercial implicitly levels the
everyone a gender "player," rather than the

ty as fetish
and
a pleas-
field
whom
they
Mark look
by making
investment in the commodi-
real thing, soliciting a serious
prosthesis.
American-literature historian Eric Lott outlines the double of such scenarios in his book on
blackface minstrelsy. "I take as normative a long, conflicted history of racial exchange that significantly 'blackened'
makes
American culture
creolized African cultural imports, a history that in
it
about expropriation
difficult to talk
it
as
Black performance
The
result
was
sometimes developed
"racially
he writes.
was precisely "performative" a cultural invention, not some precious
and for
essence installed in black bodies,
cation
at all,"
one sense
mixed forms
it
tandem with white
in
better or worse
that both did
was often a product of self-commodifispectators.
and did not read
2"
as 'black.'"
21
As Lott explains, one
black Shakespearean, Ira Aldridge, incorporated into his act an imitation of a white minstrel's imita-
him because
tion of
it
sold well," while the dances of the black blackface minstrel Juba included imi-
own famous
tations not only of other minstrels' dances but even of his

Willis.
23
In a similar gesture during the
1987, Dolly Parton
Which
is
announced
that
the master or original
which race and gender are
if
first
dance, according to Susan
broadcast of her short-lived weekly
TV variety show
in
she had been born a man, she would be a female impersonator.
and which the copy
mobius movements of simulation,
in these
in
joint productions, imitations of others' imitations of oneself, veering in
the direction of self-parody? Paris
Is
Burning
invites just
scenes of "real people" and their impersonators until
we
such reflection by cross-cutting between

are
no longer
certain
which
is
which. The
Cheryl Lynn song to which the soundtrack compulsively returns, "Got to Be Real," becomes an ironic
commentary on an impossible demand.

Yet
it is
one with which every American
The European immigrant
to
were the
who
Irish
immigrants
America
taxed, as political scientist Michael
is
"synecdochal for Hollywood," Rogin argues;

in
imaginary harmony before the Civil
or Cinderella
burnt cork of blackface, and

mobility by changing one
scripted by others
were caught.
We
are
self.
it
the
is
mask
racial difference split
immigrant
for another. If
"gives
rises
it.
earlier
America
and
from the
ashes, leaving
its
a host
moment
America into quarrelsome
of
fac-
behind the
American culture of upward
Americans are self-made,
them from an
24
reborn into that mythic
assimilated into an implicitly white
condemned
of identity that construe

given or essential
is
a role that frees

all
War when
it
Holiday Inn, Swanee River, and Dixie"
of other films. Through blackface the immigrant and minstrel
phoenix
sees
transformed into a white American through imposture, as
self-making through role-playing
tions. Like the
Rogin
constituted a large percentage of the original blackface minstrels in
the nineteenth century. Blackface
meaning
is
is
it is
when they
("un-American") image
to such mimicry, according to psychoanalysis
as a performative social construction rather
in
play a role
whose
grip they
and other theories
than an expression of a pre-
"Performatives are forms of authoritative speech: most performatives ... are
statements that, in the uttering, also perform a certain action and exercise a binding power," Judith
Butler explains, giving as an example of this "the promise,"
identities of
both the speaker and auditor.
25
whose words change the
relationship
and
All discourses are finally performative like promises;
1
1
125
they produce what they name, including the subject
who
named
is
he or she
"I" in the statements that
utters. Paradoxically, Butler writes, "the discursive
condition of social recognition precedes and conditions the
formation of the subject: recognition
conferred on a subject, but forms that
person
is
not
is
subject."''
the impersonation an other recognizes
as the self; there
nothing more genuine behind
is
that mask, as there
in the sociological theory
is
of role-playing developed by Talcott Parsons, in
which the subject
beyond the
role.
That the
assumed
is
and
to exist before
27
self actually
is
mask
is
implicit in
the Freudian notion of the ego as a projection of the

surface of the
body the
subject recognizes in the
mirror or in others with
whom
he or she
encour-
is
aged to imagine a resemblance (such as those of the
"same"
or gender).
class, race,
my self and
tions as
imprint of
my
original, like a
imitate such projec-
thereby shape
my
self.
am
an
mirror image, a copy without an
photograph. There
is
no ego before
such mimicry, no original given to "self-expression,"

like the
Barbara Kruger
'milled
Your gaze
I'hotogr.iph, 55 x 41 inches
J9.7 \ 104.1
Courtesy of
New
York
in the first of the
breathes
life
"Theses on the Philosophy of History,"
inside Benjamin's chess-playing
or the
"
artist
whose genius
hits the side
of my face), 1981
machine
hunchback
and "soul" into the formulae of
to the captivating
image
appropriate as
it
genre painting. The violence of the gaze that pins
expropriates
me
(or, rather,
me
whatever there was before the
cm)
Mary Boone
Gallery,
picture that represents "me")

face) (1981), a
"Your gaze
(and
caught by Barbara Kruger
is
photomontage of
hits the side
of
stone bust of a
my face." The woman
in Untitled
woman upon which
"makes up" her
face, a
which her
we
self
is
hits the side
of my
Kruger has collaged the words
nine masquerade" psychoanalysts such as Joan Riviere and Lacan
read this addressee as a male
some Pygmalion. She
projected for
mask of cosmetics and expressions she dons
feminists have linked to an alienating sexual
Your gaze
has been petrified by the other she would please
in a patriarchal society that takes heterosexuality for granted,
spectator), turned into the statue in
29
as a lure
and
literally
a shield in the "femi-
have discussed and that
and commodity fetishism assigned
to
many
women. The
woman
disappears into the props and prostheses through which she exhibits herself as the "good
object."
They
are an integral part of the orthopedic armature that
any other) ego, for they have entered into her dreams and
age
in
young amputees;
as Elaine Scarry explains, the
is
the substance of her (and
fantasies, a process therapists also
amputees are advised
encour-
to sleep with their
artificial limbs."'
Yet the failure of such prophylactics
make
visible)
become
is
the stuff of nightmares.
the phobic object in her recent
work with the
always imminent, as they (and the
woman
they help
Cindy Sherman explores the reversion of the
fetish to
detritus of femininity (dropped compacts, half-eaten
candy, oozing makeup), monstrous hybrid figures with snouts and other grotesqueries, and feminine
126
Cindy Sherman
Untitled, $175, 1987
Color photograph,
47 'A x
puppets and rubber body parts,
all
of which substitute for the
woman
whom
to
who
they allude,
otherwise absent. The feminine roles or poses Sherman performs in her earlier Untitled Film
(1977-80) function similarly. There
their familiarity.
The woman
is
;<
inches (120.7 x 181.6
Metro
New York
Pictures,
cm)
and
artist
is
Stills
something uncanny about them, not despite but because of
is
own double and
her
71
Courtesy of the
ours, at once a lifeless
automaton compelled
who
mechanically repeat a feminine gesture or stereotype and a living being
represents
"all
to
our sup-
pressed acts of volition which nourish in us the illusion of Free Will," as Freud says of the doppelganger."
all
What
desires
do her
cliches conceal or,
more
terrible
still,
express? These masquerades evoke
moment
the ambivalence a fetish does because they function as such, especially in the stolen
photograph. As Metz explains, photography

theft of life itself
from
tures, "smallness [of

bilize
its
movement
temporal
predisposed to function
is
and of time, which
in
is
i:
Photographs frame and immo-
something we want to see that blocks out something we are afraid to
ment, as the mark of time and

wallets to screen us
difference
all
from what we
we
for which, in fact,
life,
might
reveal.
fear: the
We keep
see,
something any move-
the photographic image in our hearts
we
death and destruction toward which
also wish, the loss of the
whole and wholly lovable
self that
are
and
headed and
woman's feminine
too often signifies in a sexist culture.
Racial difference, too, signifies ambiguously, even in the minstrel performance

tures are intended to annul the threat an oppressed
ed group kept
its
mocked
distance and
performance for whites."
33
its
whose
group might represent. According
minstrelsy, "Black mimicry, black performance, the black mask, the technique
face
its
suggested by the photo's two key fea-
of a lingering look."
size], possibility
because of
fetishistically
of a
carica-
to Rogin, in
by which the subjugat-
oppressor, was itself expropriated and
made
into a black-
Yet minstrelsy, like assimilation, could never finally secure white
mastery because in both the identity of the performer and the spectator remains in question. In the
phrase of postcolonial-studies scholar
Homi
of colonial mimicry. In such mimicry there
menaces the
colonizer's identity.
are they playing at
when they
they are "passed" by those

are? In
My
who
to
do
at
is
How secure
fail
Bhabha, they are "not quite/not white," 3
is
once
are fooled
like the subjects
resemblance and a difference, each of which
"whiteness"
so? Conversely,
'
if
if
others can perform
it
well
minstrels can pass for what they are not,
by their performances, are they
really
woman who
puts
men
first,
if
what they think they
Geisha (Jack Cardiff, 1962), Shirley MacLaine becomes what she believes she
tending to be, a submissive
and what
is
only pre-
through her performance of a stereotype of
127
Japanese feminine passivity, which she
male dupes and the
Who
"real" geishas.
imitated to confirm her superiority over both her
initially
is
fooling
whom, who
is
whom,
assimilating
mas-
in these
querades prompted by cross-cultural exchanges? At once parody and imitation they threaten the
racial difference they constitute. Blackface
"wigger" the white parents of
TV
talk
is
shows
not only racist caricature but hip-hop identification, the

fear their teenager
is
becoming, whose
style
as
is
much
rebuke to adult values as was that of the hipster (Norman Mailer's "white negro") of an earlier generation. Whiteface
both the passing of the tragic mulatta and mulatto
is
cled by William Faulkner, Fannie Hurst,
and Nella Larsen, among
Whoopi Goldberg, Eddie Murphy, and some

impersonators poke fun
certain of the
at
is
is
up
man who wonders why
with the joke about the
will think the destination
is
Lemberg when
it
We
something
to
like
offstage.
is
Cracow.
Freud
him he
is
most female
can never be
because contrary to the
are not taken in
his friend has told
really
me
not quite not
Platonic dictum, appearances are not sufficiently deceiving.
we suspect he or she
who
the in/sincerest form of flattery).
is
meaning of the mimicry of the other who
puts on a good show,
Burning,
Is
and deaths chroni-
and the parodies of
others),
of the voguers of Paris
what they love (camp
(their lives
by them;
if
illustrates this
the other
paradox
going to Cracow so he
35
Because identities are performative social constructions, they cannot be safeguarded. The
nifiers
sig-
of race or gender can be stolen, counterfeited, or serve as another currency altogether, as histo-
rian Barbara Fields reveals in a probably apocryphal but nevertheless telling story about an
journalist's interview with the late
Papa Doc Duvalier of
Haiti. Inquiring
Haitian population was white, the journalist was very surprised to learn
percent and repeated the question to be certain Duvalier had heard
it
American
what proportion of the
it
was
as high as ninety-eight
correctly. "Struggling to
make
sense of this incredible piece of information," Fields writes,
American finally asked Duvalier: "How do you define white?" Duvalier answered
the
with a question:
"How do you
the United States

"Well, that's the
Just as
define white in
black,
and white
one can
in another,
European tennis tournaments during the same period she was defined
U.S.
Women's Tennis Association and
also
compete
border, as did transsexual Renee Richards. She was able to
Association and the
Duvalier nodded and
as a
as a
in
the U.S. Tennis
women's
Open.
die again into a
our agency
we
woman
so denied permission to play in the
masters in different times and places, which makes tricksters of us
is
change sex by
man by
Border crossings skew identity and the laws that would determine them.
we
said,
my country."'"
possible to be black in one country
it is
crossing
define black in your country?" Receiving the explanation that in
anyone with any black blood was considered
way we
the question
new
in this?
We
did not "do."
It
picture, another obituary, in
seems we cannot
are abducted
resist
all
as
which we are seen
our
We
serve different
identities are revised
in a different light. Yet
being shot and framed for something
and alienated from ourselves by the
and
where
or someone
other's mastery, to
which the
death drive submits us, silenced by the obituary in which the other's redemption, rather than our
own,
is
at stake as
present as one of
our
its
life is
own
chronicled. "For every image of the past that
make something of
ners arc neither

is
128
necessarily
as such.
We
all
make
us in a relationship that
complements nor
felt
not recognized by the
concerns threatens to disappear irretrievably," Benjamin writes
of the "Theses on the Philosophy of History."'

ers as they
is
equivalents.
is
ourselves through what
bilateral
The violence of
The gaze of the other appears
in the fifth
we make of oth-
but not reciprocal, since the part-
these appropriations, however mutual,
to rob us of
our self-image;
it
steals the
very
soul
we
discover only in
reflection.
its
whose worship
the star and his or her fans,
love deprives the star of the "aura"
had before they were subject
it
creates, that
The
star
is
self that
"unique phenomenon of
life itself
their fans are alter egos, binary
commodified
contemporary example of this than
always dying into the
another, as Michael Jackson's music video Speed

the
better
must be continually reinvented
reject; the star
and
no
the source of the star's brilliance. Paradoxically, their
is
dle the flames of devotion that are the star's

Stars
is
to mechanical reproduction, according to
other mass-produced commodities.
demand and
Perhaps there
belongs to his fans,
a distance" things
Benjamin,
lifeless
companions exerting
Demon
(1989) reveals. In
who would
trap
who
him
it,
modity
trademark "image." He
in his
him wherever he
life"
our double or
is
sexual fetish, screens us from difference, both the other's
infinite seriality."" Willis argues that in
"all
Speed
moments and modes
Demon we do
of a slightly "new and improved" Jackson minstrel figure
goes,
his multi-
actually Brer Rabbit,
As Willis and many other cultural theorists see
ego represents, because
alter
through
dis-
dueling dance of Jackson represen-
trademark Jackson "look" and the disguise that according to Willis
fetish, like the
on one
[ackson declares war on
aggressively stalk
showdown with himself in
a trickster figure of black folk culture.
and
in order to rekin-
a deadly attraction
then morphs into several other figures (something Jackson has done in "real
tations: the
as are stars
trademark fans both
"new and improved"
as
once
burning out.
guises himself in a rabbit outfit to escape his admirers,
ple surgeries) before finally having a
38
com-
the
it,
and our own, which
are merely incorporated into
its
not get another mechanical reproduction
who
us a "difference" that
sells
same, negating the explosive potential inherent in transformation."
"
really the
is
Instead, for her, Brer Rabbit fig-
ures the resistance to the black commodification that began with slavery and included minstrelsy.
However, Jackson's
Brer Rabbit of the Uncle
audiences.
The
rabbit
is
trickster
Remus
is
actually another trademark, for he
no more authentically black than the Jackson image
ticity
she has assigned
lized in
it.
none of them. The commodity
fetish splits into the black
is
which
"Michael Jackson"
is
image
and transferring alienation
as his "self"
if
none
are finally authentic?
trademark in which
symptomatic of her desire
both are cultural
"moonwalk" dance
41
for an authentic
a black
man
to
mask, immobi-
vernacular and mass-mediated
alienated, Willis closes
to the trickster
self,
Willis herself
Having begun with the assumption
is
as a
undermining the authen-
Demon, the minstrel merely moves from mask
In Speed
but which
forms
Bugs Bunny and the
was an imitation of white imitations of his).
Jackson's "exaggerated, folksy, blackface alter ego,"
is
is;
the spectacle staged for a price: the
is
the minstrel's (as Juba's
later says the rabbit
also
minstrelsy commodifications of black culture for white
tales, like
masks, and even the gesture of defiance
modern update of
is
mask he dons
that
by refiguring
to escape
it,
that
a reversal
one existing before or beyond the commodity and
the gaze of the paying spectator.

Willis's gesture denies the
modity
fetishes
including
Lacan explains, "The
how
to play with the
"art"
human
mask
ambiguity of the Jackson video, of Jackson himself, and of
which
are sites of struggle over meaning, identity,
subject, the subject of the desire that
as that
beyond which there
portion of the death drive unsatisfied by whatever

relationship in which something
is
between
Willis argues that
just
it is
self
the gaze"
we
see in or
the essence of
man
as a cause of desire,
show
to the other.
It
com-
desire.
.
As
knows
which
makes
is
that
for a
always lacking, as the other finds us "wanting" (in both senses of
the word). Identities are limited, while the drive

resolve the differences
it is
is
is
4;
and
all
is
boundless;
and other by escaping
it
would
identity
tear off
all
the masks and
and representation
altogether.
such a desire that motivates Jackson's surgical reconstructions.
He
is
raor-
129
phing into something amorphous, something whose androgynous and "beige" qualities homogenize
and
the gender
of social tension in the United States today. As
racial differences that are a source
Willis explains, Jackson resolves these conflicts
through the "magical erasure"
he performs a quasi-Hegelian synthesis that seems
effect,
metaphor
just this
scholars object.
amorphous
They
gression. Buffalo Bill

gether, to
itself.
In
"queer" update of the "melting pot"
like a
quality of the "queer" to
are critical of a subject like Buffalo
which many feminist,

Bill,
beyond the boundaries and border crossings we
posit a self
of difference
America.
for
It is
45
is
in
Hannibal
and gay
Lecter's view,
and
associate with identities
would
their trans-
neither homosexual nor transsexual but instead desires to escape gender alto-
be "horsexe" (outside
Catherine Millot claims
all
camp of the
agents in the
who,
lesbian,
sex), "toujours ailleurs" (always
somewhere
psychoanalyst
else), as
transsexuals do, given the fantasies she finds they share of being secret
other, perpetually in disguise, at
once both sexes and neither."
We
see a
similar wish to escape the limitations of having an identity in Marjorie Garber's assertion that the
transvestite
a third
is
term beyond sexual difference as
a binary construct,
'
and
African
in
Americanist scholar Michael Awkward's praise of Michael Jackson for the androgynous beige morphing that troubles Willis. According to
vestite
who
resists
Awkward, Jackson
being reduced to a "single color" or
is
sex.
both
47
a "transracial" hybrid
46
and
a trans-
Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault also
share this desire for a reification and personification of what Garber has termed "category crisis"
and
offer the
hermaphrodite
as their counterpart to the transvestite
and
48
transracial hybrid. In
Herculine Barbin, the nineteenth-century French medical curiosity whose case he published,
Foucault discovers and celebrates "the happy limbo of a non-identity,"
unlivable (s/he eventually
committed
"
which
suicide). In Spurs: Nietzsche's Style, Derrida
hermaphroditic spur {eperon) of a phallus"
50
would "invaginate"
that
itself for
"becoming woman," who plays with Truth, including the truth of gender,
veil,
beneath which there
itself,
is
proved
dreams of "the
the Neitzschean
as a fetish like a
proof neither of castration, nor anticastration. Truth
man
woman's
instead in style
is
which hides nothing.

Critics of queer theory
undoes
fied,
for Barbin
identity.
while
it
and identity
They have decried
resist
these Utopian impulses to "fix" a self-difference that
in particular a
celebrates sexuality as queer,
queer theory that posits gender as stable and uni-
ambiguous, and changing.
When
queer theory and queer
and the comple-
subjects represent themselves in terms of a liberating transcendence of confinement
tion of
more
limited critical identities
and projects (such
as feminism), they replicate the masculin-
ism and sexism they would supercede. Feminist theorist Biddy Martin expresses her concern about
such queer vanguardism:
am
worried about the occasions when antifoundationalist celebrations of queerness rely on their
own
projections offixity, constraint, or subjection onto a fixed ground, often onto feminism or the
female body,
in relation to
In the process, the
which queer sexualitics become figural, performative, playful and fun.
female body appears
to
become
its
own
trap,
and
the operations of misogyny
disappear from view."
Martin emphasizes that unmasking gender performativity does not do away with
which sexuality displaces gender cannot account for the enduring power of gender.
similar complaint about the "queer," feminist philosopher Elizabeth Grosz
and
it;
52
queer theory
Articulating a
literary theorist
Leo
Bersani note that unless they work with a concept of sexual difference, queers cannot do justice to
homosexual
130
specificity,
which Grosz and Bersani define
as
same-sex object choice.
53
Butler shares
in
these reservations, reminding us that a theory of sexuality without gender cannot account for the
practices of
some of the
sexual minorities queer studies
would wish
to address, including sex
and transsexuals/
"Implicit in these constructions of queerness,
fear, is
the lure of an existence without limit,
without bodies or psyches,'"' Martin writes. Like the vampire, the queer
has no reflection, no alter ego as a love object mirroring a lovable
"Absolute Spirit" of desire, having purged

love,
ization, including the
from the
Such
self.
has transcended identity
queer
is
Hegel's
of any imaginary demands for love. Beyond love and
it
which
erotic ties that bind,
it
aggressively dissolves.
and the inhuman chemistry that ultimately drives
"Do
give up
me
dial tissue,
me
have to give up
to be loved
self-real-
which might
When
is
the death drive
is
real-
released into entropic decay
desire.
by you?" asks Kruger's photomontage Heart (Do
have
The question appears over an extreme close-up of myocar-
be loved by you?) (1988).
to
self-
ego as a projection of the body, queer desire becomes pure Thanatos, an energy
energy captivated by the image we love as ourselves
ized, the libidinal
to
who
sublimating the dross of particular objects whose fascinations impede the death drive's
liberated
workers
human meat
signify either the less than
to
which the
"I" has
been reduced by
Barbara Kruger
the other, the "you." However,
masks the
it
might also signify the living essence of the
beyond the narcissism
"I" assumes,
self that
in desire that has attached us to the
is
behind
all
the
human form we
Heart (Do
to
have
to
give up
me
be loved by you?), 1988
Photographic silkscreen on
receive
from the
other, that lovable self in
which our love
alienates us. For, as feminist film scholar
Kaja Silverman observes, "Although at the deepest recesses of

ty
nor nameable
desire, the fantasmatic
and the moi
but determining vision of each."* Thanatos

detection unless
presence
its
The death
alloyed with eros."'
impulse in any desire.

love,
all
It is
betrayed by
drive
its
psyche the subject has neither identi-
[the ego] together
work
'
x in
'A
inches
(283.2 x 283.2 cm)
Collection of Emily Fisher
to articulate a
always fused with Eros, according to Freud:
mythic
"It
escapes
Landau, Courtesy of Mary Boone

Gallerv,
New York
being
the aggressive
is
directed against those
we
not just those we hate, destroying and renewing
and
relationships
over both
it,
is
is
its
vinyl, 111
when we
identities
are in love
done with trying
to be
(we make ourselves
and when we
are over
what the other wanted).
Paradoxically, however, the death drive's negativity also
to
its
queers
its
is
identity. In saying
no, Thanatos affirms something
a future negation,
it:
own
life itself.
which
The death
at
it
"no" even
preserves for
once masks and expresses
drive has
no authentic
face,
fi
the rending and rendering of the face of desire that
Eros assumes, a death mask. Death must appear
which we only know through
through a living
desire,
what
a pressure or tension in an eroto-
signifies
it:
genic zone, an aim or action to relieve

object choice that facilitates that aim,
it,
all
and an
of which
fig-
ure in fantasy as the figure or representation of desire.

"Desire
itself
is
a defence against desire" Slavoj Zizek
explains; "the desire structured through fantasy
defence against
this 'pure',
is
trans-phantasmatic
131
desire
exists
self
the 'death drive' in
(i.e.
through them
its
Duchamp
58
Desire
is
alienated in
la vie" (eros that is life).
The
and representation,
life
Duchamp
something Marcel
as their disruption,
Rrose Selavy, or "eros cest
Marcel
pure form)."
desire that
conveys
when he renames him-
not quite visible
is
yet only
in
him
as
or even in his transvestic feminine alter ego, the other figure or face he assumes,
expresses itself as the extra "r" that transforms Rose into "eros" (pronounced "R-rose" in French), the
repeated
R of
Stein's
The sound of this R breaks through
repeated roses in her circular rose poem.
"the mortiferous layer of the pose,"
59
as Barthes explains of the noise of the camera.
For Stein, too, the noise of the apparatus of representation resurrects the thing entombed in
the dead sign, cracking
its
fetishistic carapace.
a hole with the edges of the letters
whose
"Rose
is
a rose
repetitions, like
a rose
is
first
time in English poetry for a hundred
without the nouns that
stifle
of pure being rather than the
what
it
medium
is
Seeking a language of verbs
would be the language
posturing of signs, Stein would refuse the simulations and sarits
own
doing, a citation or represen-
promises to create. Painters and sculptors too have dreamed of an
purged of representation, striving

codes of the
think that in that line the rose
years,"" she asserts.
cophagi in which the performative becomes a pale reflection of

tation of
"I
the being of things, a "continuous present" that

lifeless
framing
an incantation, would charm the thing out
of the nothing they shape. That zero renews the mystery of being:
red for the
a rose," Stein writes,
is
for a godlike originality in
which the
art
artist creatively
of gestures
transcends the
an act of authentic self-expression. The latex and foam "pours" of Lynda
in
Benglis in the late 1960s and early 1970s constitute one such effort of pure performativity.
But there
critique of
J.
is
no pure performative
L. Austin's
For, finally,
is
that
is
not always already a citation, as Derrida argues in his
speech act theory:
not what Austin excludes as anomalous, exceptional, "non-serious," that
is
citation
(on the stage, in a poem, or in a soliloquy), the determined modification of a general citationality
or rather, a general iterability
mative? Such that

essarily
are
all
a paradoxical, but
an "impure" performative,
ognizes that there
We
without which
is
minstrels. There
to
there
would not even be a
inevitable consequence
word that Austin
use the
successful performative
will
employ
later
is
nec-
on when he
rec-
no "pure" performative."'
is
at
once self-expression and self-alienation
love objects that help define them.
The
in
our self-images and the
voices of the dead speak through us.
use their words to represent the desire that
we
are,
which
is
We
are
condemned
to
figured as the sense of something behind
our masks, or the difference between them, the death we mask with
132
"successful" perfor-
life
and
its
roles
and
fetishes.
Notes
1.
Dinos and Jake Chapman, Chapmanworld

(
London:
Institute of
Contemporary
23.
Gertrude
Something
3.
Emily"
Stein, "Sacred
Geography and Plays
(1922;
24.
Else Press, 1968), p. 187.
Frank Kermode, The Sense of an Ending:
Oxford University
Stein, "Portraits
Press, 1981
Lectures in America
House,
5.
New
25.
(1936), in
New
York: Schocken
7.
French Hermaphrodite (1978), trans. Richard
McDougall (New York: Pantheon Books,
Free Press, 1951).
50.
Jacques Derrida, Spurs: Nietzsche's Style (1978),
Benjamin, "Theses on the Philosophy of
trans. Barbara
History"
Chicago
1940, published 1950), in Benjamin,

51.
"The Meaning of the Phallus"
1980),
p. xiii.
Harlow (Chicago: University of
Press, 1979), p. 129.
Biddy Martin, "Sexualities without Genders
and Other Queer Utopias,"
(1966), in
diacritics 24,
W. W. Norton,
special issue of differences 6, nos. 2-3
1981), p. 14.
Christian Metz, "Photography and Fetish," in
The
ed.,
Image: Essays on
ritical
Bay
Seattle:
Camera
Essa\s from
Portfolio by
30. Elaine Scarry,
ed.,
ucida. p.
Bay
31.
in
Street
New
Lucida,
p. 16.
Rosalind Krauss, "A Note on Photography and
Image,
Critical
Camera
Lucida,
Barthes,
14.
Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental

(
of Representation:
and
36.
Martin, "Extraordinary Homosexuals,"
56.
Kaja Silverman, Male Subjectivity at the
(New York: W. W. Norton,
History," in
J.
p. 48.
37.
chanalytique sur
Ic
vetement Paris: Editions du

(
Sexuality
and
Rieff, trans.
Books, 1963),
(New York:
Collier
p. 219.
Politics
of
Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy
Ibid., p. 48.
22. Ibid., p. 46.
Press, 1993), p. 39.
and
15.
Lectures 1911-1945,
Meyrowitz (London: Owen,
1967),
61.
Derrida, "Signature Event Context," in

Derrida, Margins of Philosophy (1972),
trans.
Alan Bass (Chicago: University of

Press, 1982), p. 325.
Work
of Art in the Age of
Want
in
p. 222.
the Black One,"
p. 123.
Ibid.
42. Lacan,
The Four Fundamental Concepts of
Psycho-Analysis,
Want
p. 107.
the Black One," p. 120.
44. Catherine Millot, Horsexe: Essai sur le transsex-
ualisme (Paris: Point Hors Ligne, 1983),
American Working Class (Oxford:
Oxford University
University Press,
p. 118.
Lucida, p.
p. 7.
Chicago
Benjamin, "The
43. Willis, "I
and
Camera
40. Ibid.
Performance (New York: Routledge, 1993),

P-95-
The Sublime Object of Ideology
Benjamin, "Theses on the Philosophy of
39. Willis, "I
41.
Peggy Phelan, Unmarked: The
and
Honor ofC. Vann
Benjamin, Illuminations,
(1927), in Freud,
the Psychology of Love, ed. Philip
20. Eric Lott, Love
eds., Region, Race,
Mechanical Reproduction" (1936),
Joan Riviere
Barthes,
Y'ork:
History," p. 255.
38.
Seuil, 1983), p. 117.
Sigmund Freud, "Fetishism"
59.
ed. Patricia
1982), p. 146.
Eugenie Lemoine-Luccioni, La Robe: Essai psy-
the
1963),
Discontents (1930),
1961), p. 81.
(London: Verso, 1989),
Morgan Kousser and
Woodward (Oxford: Oxford
photographic (Paris:
Editions de Minuit, 1965),
and
58. Slavoj Zizek,
Barbara Fields, "Ideology and Race in
James McPherson,
la
trans.
60. Stein, Writings
Reconstruction: Essays in
usages sociaux de
and
Its
James Strachey (New
W. W. Norton,
(Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press,
les
Freud, Civilization and
no. 28 (spring 1984), p. 132.
1988), pp. 34-59.
Pierre Bourdieu, I'n Art moyen: Essai sur
57.
ed.
Freud, Jokes and Their Relation to the
p. 123.
Margins (New York: Routledge, 1992), pp. 5-6.
p. 8.
Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse," October,
American
Histories
More Gender
55.
p. 155.
Press,
11.
Metz, "Photography and Fetish,"
p. 115.
Essays on Photographies
"Against Proper Objects,"
Trouble, p.
York: Harper Torchbooks, 1958), p. 142.
Strachey
p. 104.
John Tagg, The Burden
54. Butler,
Unconscious (1905), ed. and trans. James
1978),
and Leo Bersani, Homos
1985), p. 58-
(New
Rogin, '"Democracy and Burnt Cork',"
35.
Joan
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
the Unconscious: Papers on the
trans. Alix Strachey
in
Supposing the Subject (London:
ed.,
Verso, 1994), p. 14;
On
Homi Bhabha, "Of Mimicry and Man: The
p. 14.
(New York: W. W. Norton,
Copjec,
34.
oncepts of Psycho-Analysis (1973), trans. Alan
Sheridan
Rethinking Queer Subjectivity,"
(Seattle:
33.
p. 22.
13.
and
More
Elizabeth Grosz, "Experimental Desire:
Culture
Psychology of Art, Literature, Love, Religion, ed.
32.
The
eds.,
p. 104.
Martin, "Extraordinary Homosexuals,"
(summer-fall 1994), pp. 101-02.

53.
Press, 1994), p. 95.
Benjamin Nelson,
Brunswick,
p. 14.
the Simulacral," in Squiers, ed.,
Gretchen
Freud, "The 'Uncanny'" (1919), in Freud,

Creativity
Performance and Reality:
Grand
Camera
Barthes,
Ben
52.
1982), pp. 225-46.
on the Brink: Ideologies of Technology
13.
nos. 2-3 (summer-fall 1994),
"The Merging of Bodies and
Artifacts in the Social Contract," in
Press,
Annie
Rutgers University Press, 1989),
N.J.:
Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose, eds.,
Bender and Timothy Druckrey,
"Gallery of Glory:
Sonnenberg,
21.
Herculine
Discovered Memoirs of a Nineteenth-Century
Routledge,
Parsons, The Social System (Glencoe,
in
Barbin, Herculine Barbin: Being the Recently
Gender Trouble: Feminism Meets Queer Theory,
Wang,
Richard Avedon, "Borrowed Dogs,"
19.
Michel Foucault, "Introduction,"
freudienne, trans. Jacqueline Rose (NewY'ork:
York: Hill and
10.
18.
(New York:
49.
the
(New
Barthes,
17.
On
Feminine Sexuality: Jacques Lacan and the ecole
Leibovit/," Time, July 22, 1996, p. 79.
16.
Judith Butler, Bodies that Matter:
8.
Photography (1980), trans. Richard Howard
9.
15.
48. Garber, Vested Interests, pp. 16-17.
Blackface, the Beginning of Civil
Juliet
1990), p. 158.
12.
The End of
29. Lacan,
Contemporary Photography
11.
p. 186.
Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on
Carol Squiers,
8.
p. 126.
Illuminations, p. 253.
Books, 1969), pp. 100-01.

6.
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995),
47. Ibid., p. 190.
111.:
28.
Michael Awkward, Negotiating Difference: Race,

Gender, and the Politics of Positionality
Primer for
26. Ibid., pp. 225-26.
Benjamin, Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt,
Harry Zohn
46.
Michael Rogin, '"Democracy and Burnt Cork':
27. Talcott
Walter Benjamin, "The Storyteller: Reflections
trans.
1993), p. 225.
1935), p. 181.
on the Works of Nikolai Leskov"
Culture?" in Willis,
Discursive Limits of Sex
in Stein,
Random
York:
There
Is
Rights," Representations 46 (spring 1994), p.
p. 7.
),
and Repetition,"
the Black One:
Daily Life (London: Routledge, 1991),
(19:3), in
New York:
Studies in the Theory of Fiction (1967; Oxford:
4.
Want
Willis, "I
Commodity
1996). P72.
Susan
Place for Afro-American Culture in
Arts,
45.
Marjorie Garber, Vested

Dressing
p. 61.
Interests: Cross-
& Cultural Anxiety (New York:
Routledge, 1992),
p. 16.
3
>
133
Man Ray
Surrealist
Chessboard I'Fxhiquier
(
surrialiste), 1928
Photomontage of twenty vintage photographs,

Arturo Schwarz Collection, Milan
134
18
X x
11
X inches (46 x 30.2
cm)
*J,ewi4miwUie&> - ^/(xi6M/ue4WMie&
The time may have come
to valorize
women's ideas
at the
whose bankruptcy has achieved a tumultuous climax
andre breton,
To those of you
of
men's,
today.
Arcane ly (Quebec), 1944
who
are
sigmund freud,
expense
SARAH WILSON
women
this will not
apply
you are yourselves the problem.
"Femininity," 1933
iff //'in -(/<-, /irr/e
Orlando, Virginia Woolf
'
transsexual heroine, stands at a temporal
and
cultural crossroads
she
looks back in her various guises to the past; she anticipates our future. In France, too, transsexual
1
stories
go back to Joan of Arc, man-maid of Orleans, and are reincarnated in the present in the per-
formance
artist
their being
ture."
ry
"One
whose
Orlan.
terrains
whose paths
under the aegis of patriarchy and the

is
cross: sexual difference, cultural difference. All
The
against a legendary matriarchy. There, at least, a vision of a female
eternal sex
war represented
In etymology, even before mythology,
in art
and
woman
literature
evil thinks),
and that
its
is
a less glorious tale.
Golden
evil:
on the
written "Honi soi qui mal y pense" (Evil to
the motto of the Order of the Garter.
Girls tells us that the
is
has been placed on the side of
garter of Niki de Saint-Phalle's Hon/Elle {Hon/She, 1966)
Bad
a histo-
is
origins begin neither in our century nor in the age of chivalry but in fantasy as the after-
existed."
him who
have
conflict of essence versus existence, "nature or nur-
not born but rather becomes, a woman," as Simone de Beauvoir wrote. This
math of the revolution

Age
Two
The catalogue
for the
London
exhibition
Middle English word "baeddel" means "homo utriusque, hermaphrodite?
derivative "baedling"
may be
defined as "effeminate fellow,
womanish man."
Likewise,
feminisme, which entered the French language in 1837, had a disturbing twin meaning: on the one
hand,
it
indicated the political
but, alternatively,
it
movement
to acquire rights for
defined "the aspect of a male individual
women,
who
including enfranchisement,
presents certain female secondary
sexual characteristics," a state thought to be especially dangerous for the male intellectual or
(So Charles Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal becomes Les Fleurs du male.")
teenth century that the French
The primordial
institutions of
word
artiste
It
was not
until the late nine-
acquired a possible resonance for either sex.
subject of the male artist has been the female nude, a tradition ratified
academy and salon
as well as the "professions" of
model and
prostitute
for
is
the
artist's
capacity for Bovaryisme (Gustave Flaubert's
an identification with that
flesh, a
"Madame
by the
(Edouard
Manet's Olympia, Emile Zola's Nana, Honore de Balzac's Belle Noiseuse). Yet implicit in his
fessionalism
artist.
own
pro-
Bovary, e'est moi"),
penetrating of that female anatomy, in order to understand
135
from within
its
contours, softness, thoughts. His love of and desire for this female created object
none other than
an extension of himself and
a sign,
of Pygmalion: the
artist's kiss
of
life
X (1916)
complex
affair,
may be
visage of
woman
describes, in
is
itself
lost,
is
The constructs and masks of
now
qualify
mirrors
siecle
its
all
its
77ie
Mrt with the Diamond Dress,
defined as a melancholic structure. The body and the
mask
that Judith Butler, rephrasing Lacan,
where
loss
is
consequence of
a refusal of love."
on of
masculinity, explored through the expanding field of gender
precursor:
on the threshold of a new century our gaze
The
proliferation of publications in this field today finds both
reflection in the explosion of nineteenth-century sexology
and
ous criminal, medical, nascent psychoanalytic,
literary,
on
transfixed, Janus-like,
is
its
origins
impact on contemporane-
its
Anonymous
1920
is
constructions of patriarchy, both political and intellectual. Yet our fin-de-
the past as well as the future.
and
Bovaryisme stands the myth
as "part of the incorporative strategy of melancholy, the taking
attributes of the object/Other that
studies,
to
the perfect exemplar. Sexual cross-identification
is
created by the male artist as a mask; a
Gender Trouble,
Next
symbolizing his hermaphroditic self-sufficiency. Constantin
Brancusi's phallic, polished Princesse
wherein gender
his prowess.
is
and pornographic discourses
the very
matrices of the birth of modernism.
Such
Courtesy of the Library of

Congress, Washington, D.C.
texts as Balzac's Sarrazine (1830),
Theophile Gautier's Mademoiselle de Maupin
Arthur Schopenhauer's Uber die Weiber (Of woman,

Rachilde's Monsieur Venus
Picture of Dorian Gray,
and
Joris-Karl
and Josephin
Huysmans's
Peladin's Le
texts posit a
and
Jules Michelet's
later, in
the
found
1891),
Femme
(1859), to
their reflections in
new realms of photography and
world of gender indeterminacy that has found
work of Marcel Duchamp or Woolf,
La
Rebours (both 1884), Oscar Wilde's The
Gynandre (both
Symbolist and decadent painting and sculpture and,
ema. These
1851),
(1835),
its
cin-
response not only in the
Roland Barthes's S/Z (1970) or Michel Foucault's study of
in
Herculine Barbin (1978), but also in the popular culture of today, including such films as Tootsie
(Sydney Pollack, 1982), Victor/Victoria (Blake Edwards, 1982), and Yentl (Barbra Streisand,
Beyond or beneath
der indeterminacy and
its
patriarchy, the feminine
and
disguises,
one
gestation of the
rights of
is
the erotic or the pornographic,
many masks,
becomes
(in the
the problem of differentiation, of gen-
that lies at the core of this exhibition. For both sexes within
prioritized as the site of masquerade.
dealing with serious issues
modern
it is
womb
of
love, hate,
And beyond
Olympe de Gouges,
earnest sexologists
subsumed
Vanity lair, 1920

(
.oll.igc
with photograph,
cism.
"
to the
perhaps, guillotined for promoting the
woman?"), what has been called "gender trouble" started to perturb the linearity of
Nietzsche's profound
Ernst
personal guises
and death. Looking back again
Cartesian, then Darwinian thought, of Schopenhauerian pessimism and
Max
1983).
in
misogyny was
and degeneracy
aftermath. Friedrich
reflected in the writings of Otto Weiniger
theorists
who came
both the grand Freudian narrative of
The "psychological
its
this
after
first
and the succession of
him; their researches were, subsequently,
century and,
alas,
the racial theories of fas-
'gynecide' advocated by the turn of the century male intellectual avant-
gouache, and india ink,

I
1
'
illei
New
inches (15 x 10.5
cm)
mil of Morris Philipson,
garde"
first."
But
if literal
gynecide was unthinkable,
it
only took a few decades for genocide to
be industrialized; the individual and mass psychotic structures that
York
qualify
136
came
Sigmund
Freud's oedipal paradigms and his "norms."' 2
facilitated this event irrevocably
Marlow Moss
Courtesy of Courtauld Institute of
Art Witt Library,
London
Hans Anton Prinner

Reproduced
in
View 6, no.
(February 1946),
27
//<//<////<<,
.< ji.,/.' //>
//jf
Cubism only
tentatively restored the empiricism of the grid, quavering
gaze of Pablo Picasso's Michaelangelesque demoiselles d'Avignon,
woman,
at a
under the sexually inscrutable
time
when
Parisian analyses of
conflating the "scientific" with the frankly pornographic, demonstrated a profound malaise."
Such was Dr. Caufeynon's Histoire de

et
p.
au moral
femme, son
la
scs seductions, ses attraits, ses aptitudes
phisme, nymphomanie, clitorisme,
woman, her body, her
les
corps, ses organcs, son
a I'amour, ses
aberrations sexuelles, sap-
desequilibres de I'qmour, inversion sexuelle,
(History of
etc., etc.
organs, her physical and moral development, her seductive features, her attrac-
tions, her propensities for love, her vices, her sexual aberrations,
perturbations in love, sexual inversion,

in France, in 1909,
vices, ses
developpement au physique
of Havelock
etc., etc.,
1904).
sapphism, nymphomania, clitorism,
His publication anticipated the translations
Sexual Inversion (1909) and, in 1910, of
Ellis's
Magnus
Hirschfeld's Die
Transvestiten (1910). Hirschfeld's Sexualpathologie (1917-20), translated in 1918, contained additional
transsexual/transvestite case histories.
morphosed
farce Les
as the
The androgyne entered Cubism with Marc Chagall and meta-
double figure of Terence/Therese,
Mamelles de
Tiresias
a character in
(The breasts of Tiresias,
Guillaume Apollinaire's music-hall
1917), elevating the
genre to the avant-garde
with a piquant, pronatalist topicality.
World War
whose mechanization of
battle
brought
shell
men
shock and mass death for
created a polarization of sexual roles in Europe. Yet this polarization only ratified fearful nineteenth-
century stereotypes, carrying them more powerfully into the twentieth century, as the "the
who
stayed at
home" were
France, in 1918, did not yet
neglected for
know
the
more fantasmatic images of the
great (patriotic) mother."
"new woman"; with New York Dada,
the problem of the
crossing of sexual difference with cultural difference registered at the very outset.
descending a Stairway'
woman
is
in the studio did
Woman,
not a
woman. Neither
is it
"The 'Nude
man,"" declared Duchamp. In

1
not follow the mistress/prostitute/model paradigm.
It
New York,
was American
powerful, glamorous, enfranchised, "her husband in the role of slave-banker,"
Duchamp and
girls
"
who
drove
Francis Picabia into the melancholic trope of the "machine cclibataire" (bachelor
machine). The insatiate vaginae dentatae of Picabia's protestant "Young American Girls" were depicted
137
via
imagery of their
Duchamp and
cars;
widows, extravagant eccentrics such

"artistic" clothes, black lipstick,
Picabia encountered not only
young
girls
but also powerful
von Freytag-Loringhoven, with her
as the Baronesss Elsa
wooden birdcage round her neck
(with live canary), and French
poiht (soldier's helmet)."
Duchamp's
retreat
from painting and
his
philosophy of "delay" was not only antiretinal and
onanistic but also photographic, cinematic, translinguistic, and, of course, transsexual. Far from
being an exception, Rrose Selavy was representative of a
new metropolitan
subjectivity.
France, Victor Margueritte's La Gargonne (1922), a moralizing tale of France's

sold 20,000 copies in
French population.
its first
Back
in
new boyish woman,
four days and was read by twelve to twenty- five percent of the adult
decade
is
spanned between La Garconne and
Colette's Ces Plaisirs (1932):
"Eleanor Butler would curse as she jacked up the car and would have her breasts amputated." " Overt
bisexuality or homosexuality
sumption.
look
like
"Women
was now
chic;
masked
balls
were
"
Marxists took note: in "Notes sur
Janet Flanner wrote

la
from
with an exemplary class-consciousness

predilection of lazy
women
and physiology
always impose
Paris for
until his envoi:
lay,
The amazon
laws. Everything within the
employment
disfranchised
will
instance, capitalism"
this
Nancy Cunard, Marlow Moss, Paule

"Amazons" or "Americaines"
(>tll<( /I /ni<\,.,
Both
literary
intellectual
Orlando:
<(.i
and
species."
21
World War
I.
Resulting changes
moves toward emancipation voiced by the
still-
And
with the low franc came the so-called

sisters,
Eileen
Vezelay. Lesbians, aviators, writers, painters, photogra-
the terms were almost
identical.
London and
the British Psychoanalytic Society were dependent on strong,
In 1929, the year of the
second Surrealist manifesto, one year
Woolf 's
after
Biography, the elegant Joan Riviere, Woolf's Bloomsbury contemporary, the translator
into English of
Freud and Melanie Klein, published the
Masquerade." Referring
(1927),
the
((<t.iott<'j'<t(/<'
artistic
women.
is
always be an exception
Americaines: Djuna Barnes, Jane Heap, Lee Miller, Gertrude Stein, and their English
phers.
doctrine
of France. The jazz-society stereotypes and music-hall caricatures of the
gargonne turned dour as the decade progressed.
Agar,
Montrevel
of course, behind the story of each war widow, broken engagement,
patterns found their echo in the
women
in 1925, Jean
last
Even
Yorker, in 1926.
normal constitution of woman
the thousands of spinsters created as a result of the male casualties of

in
New
The
and, in the
boys and by night they
"A word on feminism:
with intellectual pretensions.

its
life,
around one central function: the reproduction of the
Individual tragedy
like
morale sexuelle en France," published
analyzed "Christianity, monarchy, chivalry, syphilis, court
gravitates
form of superior conspicuous con-
have looked the same for two years. By day they look
female impersonators,"
will
at first to
now
celebrated text "Womanliness as a
Ernest Jones's article "The Early Development of Female Sexuality"
which claimed an inherent bisexuality
in
each person and heterosexual and homosexual types
of female development, and to Leo Ferenczi's theories of compensatory behavior (homosexual

exaggerating their heterosexuality), Riviere progressed to the notion of "womanliness"
men
itself as a
mas-
querade adopted "to avert anxiety and the feared retribution from men," discussing the cases of "an
American
woman
ing and writing"
i3 8
engaged
and
in a
work of
propagandist nature, which consisted principally
"wife and mother, a university lecturer in an abstruse subject,"
in
speak-
who would
address her male colleagues in particularly feminine clothes. ;: In each case, the conclusion
woman who
wishes to possess the father's penis
offers herself sexually as propitiation.
25
Riviere's
is
that the
"seized by horrible dread" and, fearing retribution,
is
embrace of the
and
strictures of her discipline
its
great fathers accounts for her evident neglect of both the necessary social negotiations of these
emancipated, achieving
women and
Adopting the scrupulously

analysis as a
masquerade
sions, nonetheless,
to hide
the irony of her text's autobiographical dimensions.
"scientific"
any possible
tone of her male counterparts, Riviere used psycho-
were devastating: "Womanliness could therefore be assumed and worn
both to hide the possession of masculinity and to avert the reprisals expected
:4
possess
it."
if
mask,
as a
she was found to
Furthermore, should one ask where to draw the line between "genuine womanliness"
and the "masquerade," she

whether radical or
This 1929
ship,
Her conclu-
feelings of identification with her subjects.
replied,
"My
suggestion
superficial, they are the
text,
which has been so
and gender games
in the
same
is
not, however, that there
is
thing.""
crucial for developing theories of sexuality, desire, spectator-
United States and Great Britain since the 1970s,
on "the masculine masquerade,"'
is
any such difference;
Was
apparently little-known in France.
now
generating work
this a case
of ignorance,
protectionism, or merely redundancy in the light of contemporaneous Surrealist explorations?

Riviere's equivalent in France, Freud's protector
and
Marie Bonaparte shared
translator,
Riviere's per-
sonal problems of self-definition within the context of strict Freudian orthodoxy. Freud himself
called
Bonaparte "quite outstanding, a more than
operations on her
nition of female
clitoris
is
just half
masculine female" (her obsession with
notorious). Did Bonaparte choose to ignore Riviere's revolutionary defi-
masquerade because
it
Sexuality (1931) used terms subsequently reformulated by Bonaparte as "true

(" acceptatrices"
accept"
spinsters)
children replace penis envy),
and "women who take
"women who deny"
from
history:
mere
their revenge" ("revendicatrices"),
in Surrealist circles
Agnes Masson. While
in her writing to see
women," "women who
("renonciatrices,"
Bonaparte's translations of Freud circulated widely in interwar Paris,
mate of "delirium"
On Female
upset Freud's very basic categorizations? Freud's
and beyond.
:s
compounding
the
cli-
Another woman, however, must be rescued
a faithful disciple of
Havelock
beyond the merely pathological, devoting the
Ellis,
first
Masson had the
intelligence
chapter of her book on
transvestism, Le Travestissement: Essai de psychopathologie sexuelle (1935), to the age-old cultural origins of this behavior: "in history, literature, ethnography."" She
of those
who immortalized
moved
impressively through the
list
transvestism by description or in practice: Plato, Xenophon, Lucien,
Theocritus, Virgil, Horace, Catullus, Juvenal, Tiresias, Achilles, the Amazons, the Scythians, the
Cynedes, Caligula, Nero, Heliogabalus
Pope Joan and a bevy of colorful
Maupin, King Henri
II,
courts), not forgetting
arriving finally in
transvestites: the
and the Chevalier d'Eon
la
douce France, land of the
Abbe de Choisy,
fictitious
Gautier's Mademoiselle de
XV
(secret agent of Louis
in the English
George Sand or Sarah Bernhardt. Anticipating Foucault, Masson discussed the
cultural nature of sexuality: homosexuality in Ancient Greece, the trope of cross-dressing
guise central to Renaissance literature (William Shakespeare),

"page-girls" to the
moving from Francois
works of Balzac and Rachilde. Yet the contemporary
"epidemic" of transvestite novels, she dated to the aftermath of World

called "virile
women"
and Russian
(femmes-viriles),
and
dis-
Rabelais's
situation, characterized
War
I,
boy
by an
the emergence of so-
and the current popularization of sex and psychoanalysis. Of

-^
Masson's subsequent case histories, sixty-two out of sixty-seven were translations from other sources,
for example, "Observation 26 (Hirschfeld)": "Artist.
Aged
40; quite feminine.
Succubus
[sits
on
top]
09
during coitus."" Ludicrous as
may sound
this
to late
twentieth-century sensibilities, Masson's work participated
on
in the interwar discourse
within which the Surrealist
Surrealist
(mad
foil
loss
all,
and
movement, with
its
no homosexuality
woman, Vamour
cult of
sadomasochism
was thus formed
and an immense melancholy.
masks and
gazes,
its
may be
It
conceptualized
literary nature constantly

,|
Despite the
proclaimed desire for revolution, emancipation,
free love, they
Woman
in a
through war
competition with the "phallogocularcentric."
Surrealists'
||
resituated.
/ic<t:J <t ueA
transvestite Paris itself constituted
as a series of
in
movement must be
love), exhibitionism, fetishism,
but, above
lesbian
and masquerade
r
</(>
The
transsexuality
resoundingly rejected the threatening
New
of Paris, the Amazone or the garconne, preferring
their muses,
from Kiki de Montparnasse
to Gala,
the most compliant Americaines (Lee Miller),
downcast eyes prelude the sexually
ecstatic.
and only
whose modest,
Indeed, Salvador
Salvador Dali
The Phenomenon
I
Le
Dali's
of Ecstasy
Phinomene de
Fextase), 1933
The Phenomenon of Ecstasy (Le Phenomene de
must be read
Fextase, 1933)
female masquerade, of the repressed. The ecstatic female
women
as a return, via
mask of displacement,
constitute a
Photomontage,
in
inches
27 x 18.5
Isidore Ducasse Fine Arts
cm)
concealing the hysterical
Compare
(a
man
(note the frantic, stabbing pattern of repetition in the collage).
the twenty-eight Surrealist
photomontage of
men who surround
1924), or the twenty illuminated
the portrait of the assassin
Germaine Berton
and penetrating glances of the men
in
Man
Ray's Surrealist Cliessboard (L'Echiquier surrealiste, 1928). Sixteen pairs of male eyes are closed (in
intellectual
withdrawal or masturbatory fantasy?)
[Woman] Hidden
in the Forest {Je
ne vois pas
in
Rene Magritte's painting
[femme] cachee dans
la
conjunction with the famous Surrealist survey "Recherches sur
la
investigation, published in the journal La Revolution surrealiste,
Do Not
which may be read
la foret),
sexualite" (1928).
was
in itself a
,J
the link between
what
is
all
"abnormalities." Moreover,
of Dali and Federico Garcia Lorca, the
all,
who
Max
detailed his love of "nocturnal boys" in
Surrealism equals pederasty; this equation was
Achilles heel?).
Sartre, with his
parody of Breton
Homosexual panic was
and knowing male exegete of
140
cell, self-
a classic case of
it is
become
explicit."
Think
Ernst/Paul Eluard relationship, the suicide of the
Moi
et
Andre Breton's generally "seductive" behavior toward men despite
and Jean-Paul
This frank
fashionably called "homosociality" (boy talk) and "homosexual panic"
the potential fear that suppressed homoerotic/homosexual relations will
sexual Rene Crevel,
in
stunning instance
of purported textual "openness" actually revealing closure: the Stalinist model of the
criticism, exclusion extending to the refusal of
See the
as the
made by
corps (1925), and, above
his virulent
homophobia.
writers Paul Claudel, Ilya Ehrenburg,
homosexual "leader" Achille Berton (Breton's
frantically near the surface.
Surrealist doublespeak.
mon
homo-
He
Man Ray was
illustrated Breton's
the most brilliant
concept of cxplosante-
fixe as a flurry of Lo'ie Fuller-like veils
how woman's
itself.
phallicism
but he knew
would symbolically
So, for example, Tristan Tzara's text
automatisme du gout" (On
was
taste, 1933)
a certain
by
illustrated
Man
reassert
"D'un certain
automatism of
Ray's portraits of
metonymically vaginal/phallic hats on invisible women:

"It's
the hat that
makes the man,"
masking of femininity
which "the
the condi-
slips irresistibly into
tions of male spectatorship.""
boundaries between
a case in
art
The indeterminate
and fashion
in Surrealism, its
penetration of the worlds of Elsa Schiaparelli and Vogue
and Harper's Bazaar
is
precisely because of the role
played by dress and disguise in Surrealist masquerade."
The
Surrealist
mannequins exhibited
at the Galerie
des Beaux-Arts in 1938 were inspired by Robert

Couturier's disturbing, draped precursors in the
Pavilion de l'Elegance at the Paris
World
Fair of 1937,
operating through reversal and perversion rather than

complicity with fashion magazine notions of beauty.
Duchamp's
jacket
is
severe "virilized
mannequin"
a case in point.
woman
In her nudity, too, Surrealist
in a
in tailored
game of
truth.
The idealized
woman
participated
Rene Magritte
might be displayed with open eyes
Harper's Bazaar or with the downcast eyes of modesty, as in the well-known

the naked Meret
printing press as
"woman"
itself).
as
Oppenheim
it
Veiled Erotic (Erotique voilee, 1933), hiding
symbolically besmirches her.
Woman
as
as a solarized
nude
for
Man Ray photograph
is
Do Not See
the
in the Forest (Je
of
behind the wheel of the
an allegory of truth
played off against
[Woman] Hidden
ne vois pas
[femme] cachee dans
from La Revolution
la
hi foret),
surrealiste,
no. 12 (1929)
an allegory of "deception" (hence truth equals deception: the abolition of philosophy
Together with the sociological evidence of the sex war of the 1920s and 1930s and the idealiz-
ing structures of the Surrealists' residual Catholicism, the Nietzschean input as regards the Surrealist
intellectuals
Georges
Bataille,
Duchamp, and
Picabia
is
indisputable. Behind the extravagance of
Nietzsche's misogynistic statements, Jacques Derrida has analyzed an appalling triple bind, inherited
by the
Surrealists, that far surpasses Riviere's analysis in

1.
The woman, taken
debased and despised. In the

credulous
man
2.
The
sophistry:
as a figure or potentate offalsehood, finds herself censured,
name of truth and
who, in support of his testimony,
proper credentials.
its
metaphysics she
offers truth
and
is
accused here by the
his phallus as his
own
woman
is
censured, debased
and
despised, only in this case
it is
as the figure
or potentate of truth. In the guise of the Christian, philosophical being she either identifies with
the truth, or else she continues to play with
it,
even as she refuses
guile
the
to believe in
and naivety (and
Iter
guile
economy of truth's system,
then,
is
is
it,
to
her
it
at a distance, as if
own
it
were a
advantage. Whichever,
fetish,
manipulating
woman, through her
always contaminated by naivety), remains nonetheless within
in the phallogocentric space.
twice castration: once as truth
and once
The woman, up
to this
point
as nontruth.
*l
i|i
ANDRE BRETON
QU'EST-CE QUE
LE
SURREALISME?
Marc Eemans
The Sawed-up
La
Oil
Femme
Woman
sciee), n.d.
on canvas, 36
92 \ 73
2S
inches
cm
Collection of Carl Laszlo, Basel
Rene Magritte
The Rape Le
I
lol
cover of
Andre Breton's Qu'est-ce-que

le
surrealisme?
Brussels:
Rene
Henriquez, isH4
as
Beyond
...
3.
the double negation of the first two,
an affirmative power, a
dissimulatress,
and
affirms her. She affirms herself, in

take place.
And
answered
sfie
to
anti-feminism, which
man
an
artist,
from the two reactive positions,
three types of statement are to
form an exhaustive code.""
The
teste tout
Andre Breton
solution? Gynecide
en
est
surely knew:
bon" (A headless
"An
effective
Muse
Arcane
in
27,
is
is all
Muse
is
from Vamour
do
foil
killed,
just this."
up of images of woman. "Femme
and
is
organized around endless decapitations, the fetishization of female body parts
no look
from
Woman
The Wavering
Ernst's pioneering
(La
Femme
a severed
Max
that
Ernst
yet unsevered head."' Surrealism
hacked-up or blinded nudes
above
all,
(The hundred-headless woman, 1929), to the obscene The Sawed-up
no
face,
in L'Elephant Celebes (1921),
and the collage-novel La Femme 100
chancelante, 1923),
sans
not once, but over and over again, her power
to be both powerful
eyes,
... if these
to the female
good)" runs the French proverb
and dead, present and absent,
man who
that the proliferation of
is
no
is it
overthrown.
would argue
are attempting to
to the
that
longer
so long as she was, so long as
in its turn
theories
its
the metaphoric chopping
women
And no
and affirmed
around the "heterogeneity of style
itself
female representations and styles in Surrealism, and
is
recognized
is
man. Castration, here again, does not
in
condemned woman only
Derrida posits the problem of theorizing
revolution posited by
a dionysiac.
[and]
of herself,
woman
Woman
(La
Femme
tetes
sciee, n.d.)
by the second-rate Marc Eemans, which was celebrated in the highly unanalytic exhibition catalogue
La
Femme
et le
Magritte's The
itself in
surrealisme/
The most
Rape Le Viol) of
I
reproducing
it
1934,
blatant replacement at downcast eves by
which Breton employed metonymically
on the cover of
Qu'est-ce que
le
surrealisme?
(What
is
body
parts
Surrealism?) in 1934.
woman,
her look
reinstated. Magritte's apotropaic desire for self-protection paradoxicalh creates Surrealism's
(Story of the eye, 1928),
Hans
Bellmer's
dismembered
the gaze masquerading as vagina, supplicant

reasserts
Bataille's
dolls,
metamorphic
most
Histoire de Voeil
even Duchamp's Etant Donnes (1946-66),
and sugar pink or displaced and
sealed,
still
terrifyinglv
itself.
Agar, Miller,
Riviere's categor) o(
plicil in their
142
With
in
to define Surrealism
Again, one confronts a double bind: the invitation to rape turns into the phallic
powerful image of the Medusa or Gorgonic gaze.
is
Oppenheim, Valentine Penrose,
these creative
masqueraders) caused problems
aspiration for the role of fetish
women
tor the Surrealists.
(Nietzsche's third category;
The muses
were, nonetheless, on the
attack.
so often
com-
While Agar's Angel
Eileen Agar
Angel
o)
Anarchy second
version),
1940
Plaster cast covered with
media, 27% x
"11
cm)
x 30.5 x 30.5
Tate Gallery,
mixed
12 x 12 inches
London
Roland Penrose
Winged Domino
(Portrait of
valentine), 1937
Oil
on canvas,
23
Private collection,
of Anarchy 1940) feminized and masked her husband's bust in
furs, feathers, silks,
Roland Penrose's Winged Domino
shows the
(Portrait of Valentine) (1937)
\ 17
inches
x45 cm)
(59.5
England
and diamante,
theatrical, carnival-
grotesque aspects of "femininity as masquerade." This act of seduction or compensation was not,
however, Valentine's idea; on the contrary, the masking gesture, the blue, dead skin, the butterfly-
shaded eyes have been imposed by her husband. She reads
as fetishized object. Yet if
we
identify with
Valentine as subject, her downcast eyes invite us to contemplate the mystery of her unshared subjec-
woman
tivity as a creative
tive
poet,
something that Penrose found
stumbling block. The "exhaus-
to be a
codes" are more complex than Riviere imagined.
Claude Cahun was a pioneering code-scrambler,

muse. With perverse delight, she played with
a Surrealist
woman who was
never a
range of masks in her self-reflexive photographs:
the poet (her profile portrait so close to that of her uncle, the critic Marcel Schwob), the narcissist,
the lesbian, the aviator (parodying Breton), the
me, I'm
heart, 1937).
Pic, in her
While
technically the
the "exhaustive code"
debate on
1934).
is
photographs for Deharme's children's book Le Coeur de Pic
Man Ray
medium
and
its
reversability.
Cahun's intervention
its
intellectual incisiveness
SHEKEEPSIT?
dilemma with
in the
medium
that records
Breton/Aragon
clarity
and
its
surtitles at the
heads of pages,
44
SHHHE." Two
and an
structuring grand narratives,
political revolution,
were
at stake.
Cahun
per-
ironic wealth of reference, parodying the seriousness of
an essentially competitive male squabble. Breton's brief acknowledgment of her writing

cially
political
"POETRYREVEALSHERSECRETKEEPSHERSECRET
Freudianism and Marxism, the dream versus

ceived the
the
self-referential:
.
Cahun
itself,
her tract on the role of poetry, Les Paris sont ouverts Place your bets,
remarkable, both for
SHEREVEALSIT?
(Pic's
retained the traditional artist/model paradigm, photography
of black/white inversion, becomes for
Communism,
which are evidently
kiss
blond, Aryan maiden, the pseudo-infant, identifying with Lise
in training," the
Deharme's son,
sportswoman with her slogan, "Don't
is
espe-
sont ouverts
pen was part of the
double-edged when one considers that the intellectuality of Les Paris
Cahun's means of attracting not just
doomed
his attention
strategy of her unrequited love. Breton preferred "objective chance," madness,
tion in his sexual choices (Nadja, Jacqueline
romantic
but his mind and his
love.
Cahun
Lambda), masquerading, of course,
retreated to Jersey, in the
in 1937, finding creative peace
Channel
Islands, with her friend
until war, the Nazis, brutality,
as
and domina-
monogamous,
Suzanne Malherbe,
and terror devastated her
45
life.
Images from Jean Epar\

.4
ier,
Paris sous la botte des nazis
Paris: Editions
Raymond
1946),
reproduced
no.
February 1946),
in
View
p.
Schall,
6,
M3
He //)<'<<! /HCJ
Enfranchised
Man"
fitf/J/<///.'
(>
French
at last,
')<<(// iter i'
womanhood went
'/</<<'/'/
j'
to the polls in 1945, in a period
when
who had
contrasted strikingly with the savage treatment of female "collaborators,"
shaved and were tarred and paraded publicly during the post-Occupation purge.
fetishized, this
time forced, masquerade, "a carnival of
uglies,"
Woman,"
echoed the
Look
poem
which was published by Charles Henri Ford
written by the female transsexual sculptor
litany of insults:
at her!"
4 '1
"
Slut!
The poem's form,
masochistic rage echoed in the
Whore!
Carcass!
cal
New
costume dramas
for a 1946
New York. "The
in
Dungheap!
Shaved
February 1945,
in
Disgusting!
Pile of shit!
engravings.
functioned on a sexual
still
versus the "seduction" of mistresses and prostitutes.
The froufrou of
Look, the "Miss Tabou" beauty contests in Saint-Germain-des Pres, the histori-
in the theaters
and the cinema, the
taste for a "Fantastic 40s," all played their role
reborn Frenchwoman. The excess of femininity in these masquerades contrasted
in characterizing the
acutely with the
game
fair
Hans Anton Prinner
Despite state closure of the brothels in 1946, French society
Christian Dior's
was another
It
a tribunal recalling the trial of Joan of Arc, expresses a sado-
artist's stylized
economy of bourgeois marriage
heads
their
an expression of the humiliation of the
French male during the War. The Surrealists saw the appalling photographs as
issue of the journal View,
the "Rights of
new
cult of ugliness in art: the
awkward, scratched surfaces of Germaine
Richier's
bronzes, Jean Fautrier's scarred and iridescent Hostages {Otages), followed by his Nudes (Nus) in 1955,
and Jean Dubuffet's hideous Olympic! of the

Niki do Saint-Phalle
The Death of the Patriarch
(
"ladies"
were working
in Paris,
two years
and misogynistic works, despite
their
Ladies' Bodies {Corps des dames) series. (In 1948, 600,000
after the official closure
mock
insouciance.
of the brothels.'
They correspond
7
)
These are violent
and
in their interiority
La Mart du patriarche), 1962/72
Paint
and mixed media,
90 V,6 x 43
V,t
230 x 110
Courtesy of the
cm
dissolution not only to Maurice Merleau-Ponty's

ation,
made by
embodied "cogito" but
an archetypal enunci-
also to
Jean-Paul Sartre, in 1940, in a chapter in L'Imaginaire on the
work of
art:
"The
real
is
artist
never beautiful." To desire a

is
Desire
or an
infantile, aggressive rage
in the Ladies' Bodies,

it.
mothers of Niki
is
beautiful, because
contingent and most absurd."
spreads out contiguously with
humor and
4"
painterly matter
terror the devouring mother: his
Nanas of the
cie
Saint- Phalle's
the "female gorilla" as she was called in 1865
Manet's Olympia
the Jeu de
what
is
attempting to obliterate the subject-ground relationship by engulf-
Dubuffet invokes with both
are the
forget that she
a plunge into the heart of existence, into
desire
ing
woman, "We must
Paume museum with
1960s.
The impact of
her erotic beauty.
"dames"
now
irradiated
new
ugliness in the
art
displaced the cult of female beauty, marking the inscription of the terrible caesura of
World War
II
massacre overwhelming masquerade:
"Ugliness, as an inscription of time
worn,
in the heart of a picture, asserts itself doubtlessly as a 'surface,' eroded, withered,

1
not to say
flayed."'
'
We
are
reminded
that laedere,
one possible root
wound."" De Beauvoir's Le Deuxieme Sexe (The second
(ugly)
means
in Les
Temps modernes from May 1948 and published
"to
scholarly tour-de-force: 22,000 copies were sold in
in 1949,
its first
was
she
is
the Other."' Ironically, she appropriates Sartre's

1
is
challenge the pseudo-objectivity of the male philosophical voice.
Deuxieme Sexe coincided,
144
in France,
sex), serialized
a sociological
week of
de Beauvoir redefined Sartre's fluctuatingly sexed "Other": "He

Absolute
for the French laid
and
publication. Here,
the Subject, he
own
is
the
vocabulary to
The impact of Le
with that of the Kinsey reports on male and female
and the new expressions of the feminine embodied
sexuality
gaminelike singer-actress
in the
Juliette
Greco, the child-woman Brigitte Bardot, and novels such as Francoise Sagan's Bonjour Tristesse (1955).
It
own
has been argued, however, that Sartre's
female
horror of the "viscous" nature of the biological
penetrated the writings of de Beauvoir, whose position was
shown
to falter
with her half-
hearted critique of the Marquis de Sade (a hero for Bataille, Pierre Klossowski, Jean Paulhan, and the
Surrealists).
and
Her book
the Lolita
come
Brigitte
Bardot on
syndrome de
le
Lolita (published in English as Brigitte
Syndrome, i960) could do nothing to stop the
distraction
from colonial war

dark
1958, contrasted the
in Algeria/
existentialist
Man
rise
of the
new child-woman
even the
spirit.
a wel-
Ray, in an exasperated expose, published in
waif (Greco) with the blond Marilyn Monroe, quoting Dior's
ads and Paulhan's preface to Pauline Reage's Histoire d'O (1954): "All
lipstick
Bardot
They must be continually
fed,
sex in
is
them [women]
washed, painted with makeup and beaten."" The next
Exposition InteRnatiOnale du Surrealisme, in 1959, which was devoted to Eros, signaled the continu-
woman
ing fascination with
as fetish/'
into a cannibalistic feast at the
opening was the embodiment of Eros
Arcimboldesque landscape of planes,
1962/72), an equally
strated, at last, a creative intelligence
making
went
consumption into
explicit the links
far
who
a terrifying
interiority,
and
between women,
for the war-scarred
toys, rape, colonialism,
in
postwar
austerity,
of sensuality, the
choly anticipates our own;
it is
demon-
dolls,
had
little
camp
and hideous body of France,
(1963),
Beauvoir's Le
with
description of "the
its
Deuxieme
Sexe.
intellectual competitiveness, "existential"
sympathy with mascara,
structures of feminine masquerade. Jean Genet, however,

silks,
patriarche,
and cannon fodder. For France, she
The Feminine Mystique
whose femininity was governed by
a climate of
world of flowers, of
be devoured. In
to
and dismembered
missiles,
Happy Housewife Syndrome,"' which had supplanted de

Beauvoir,
woman
could take and transform the masquerade of female deco-
metaphor
beyond Betty Friedan's analyses
De
as
androgynous sculpture The Death of die Patriarch (La Mort du
contrast, de Saint-Phalle's
ration as
Oppenheim's transformation of her own food-bedecked body
let
alone the deep
embraced with dazzling extravagance the
of female movie stars and transvestites. His melan-
the transgressive sexuality of Genet
and of Antonin Artaud
that gen-
erated the deconstructive vision of gender today. Genet's "Fragments," of 1954, a suicidal, Mallarmean
prose poem,
is
surely the
a passionate exegesis of
self-willed.
Genet
most moving testimony
homosexuality
insists that
in a solitary state."
to
human
in riposte to Sartre's
he experiences his
"The homosexual" he
state as "a
writes, "rejects
sexuality
Woman, through ou r
day: our body, suddenly riddled,
///,<
J. 'Hit,
<,</.
The following
becomes
unreal."
theme of guilt" and
woman, who,
gestures
that "inversion
ironically,
fix.
They
is
lived
wreaks her
call
us effeminate.
and intonations, seeks and
finds the
//frr-
year, in 1955, Pierre Molinier's
meeting with Breton heralded, strangely,
and sexual deviance.
the Pygmalion myth, the female figures in Molinier's Surrealist paintings
own
It is
58
the Surrealist's previously hostile stance toward transsexuality
his
in mid-century.
preposterous vision of "pederasty" as
vengeance by reappearing inside him, putting him into a dangerous

Banished, sequestered, hoaxed,
produced
transvestite image:
59
a volte-face in
In a reversal of
became transformed
into
photographs of the 1960s and 1970s, taken with an automatic timer,
play Molinier as both dominatrix
and succuba. These photos may be compared,
in
dis-
both terms of the

*B
MS
Performance of Jean Genet's

The Blacks Les Negres),
(
Royal Court Theatre, London,
May
30, 1961
Roger Blin Archives
"anagrammatic" principle of
their poses
eventually, female models), to the later
and gender confusion (Molinier used female masks and,
work of
Bellmer, such as Girl-Phallus (Fille- Phallus, 1968),
although Molinier's concern with pornographic realism was more of

gentlemen's erotica. In his tableaux, Molinier accentuated his
izing dildo fetishes, his female rubber masks,
eighteenth-century
cheap
one
toile
hotel. Revealing
critic
its
handmade
time than Bellmer's waspish

accessories, his
autosodom-
photographing himself against the patterned
de Jouy wallpaper of his studio-boudoir, which evoked the ambience of a
its
intimacies, this world
became
new
a bridge to a
wrote, with "the desire to be doubled, androgyne, bisexual, that
generation fascinated, as
we may experience
the
sexual ecstasies of the other.""" Besides the Surrealists, well-known transvestites, homosexuals,
and transsexuals who were part of the
Paris revue scene flocked to see him. In 1964,
Hanel Koeck and
Maryat (Emmanuelle Arsan, author of Emmanuelle, 1970) arrived and posed, intertwined
Communion
muses, for Molinier's photograph
(Communion d'amour,
of Love
the future painter Luciano Castelli collaborated with Molinier

1970s, a period in the art
vestite
travesti)
and Homage
"she" personae, in
United
States."
photo
series."
And,
in 1974,
During the
world marked by an explosion of confessional self-representations, a trans-
undercurrent was growing
pour un
on
1968).
as lesbian
Germany
to
Michel
Freud
Journiac's
(Hommage
parallel to the
two 1972
series Trap for a Transvestite {Piege
a Freud), in France,
and Urs
Liithi's
concerns of Andy Warhol and his fellow
"he" and
artists in the
Genet's role as precursor in the articulation of 1960s homosexual concerns should not be
underestimated. That his work had a direct influence on the Americans, such as filmmaker Kenneth
Anger,
who
lived in Paris
during the 1950s,
is
not
doubt. But the climate of
in
ual explicitness in the United States at the time of Genet's "arrival"
the
significant.
American publication of Genet's The Maids and Deathwatch, with

By
virtue of being false, the
woman
remained embedded
in
woman.
Anything can be a woman: a
Spiritualized,
flower,
his derealization: a falsification
a preface
acquires a poetic density. Shorn of
femininity becomes a heraldic sign, a cipher. As long as
146
is
it
its
The year
by
sex-
1954 saw
Sartre:
texture
and purified,
was natural, the feminine blazon
becomes a category of the imagination.
an animal, an
offemininity.
it
camp and growing
inkwell.
These fake
Such
is
the initial direction of
women who
are fake men, these
women-men who
femininity
men-women,
are
and of the
latter
this
perpetual challenging of masculinity by a symbolic
by the secret femininity which
the truth of all masculinity,
is
arc only the faked groundwork.
New York
In the
close.
art
Only recently has the
world, the heroic period of Abstract Expressionism was drawing to a

rise
consumer opulence, but
tion of
New York and
of Pop art been seen not merely as a figurative and popular celebra-
burgeoning gay identity
as "closely allied with
London."" Kenneth
E. Silver
art"
made by "rough hewn, spontaneous, male
with the transitional work of Jasper Johns and the high
tic
Two
Balls (i960).
as a "counter-castration"
He
camp of Warhol:
Johns's tributes to the
artists""
"painting with balls" versus
analyzed this painting's gesturalism
and described
worlds of
has compared "the master equation of Abstract
"tough, non-literary serious

Expressionism"
Johns's Painting with
in the art
mummified
in encaus-
homosexual poets and painters Hart
Crane, Charles Demuth, Marsden Hartley, Frank O'Hara, and Walt Whitman.
He compared
Johns's
masquerade of masculinity, the bronze-painted Ballantine Ale cans of i960, with Warhol's "outrageously female" Campbell's Soup cans: "In a
did their
own shopping
Campbell's and
Duchampian
transference,
women and men who
never
or cleaning were sent to the Stable Gallery and Leo Castelli's to buy
Brillo, just like
Mrs. Warhola and the vast majority of American women.""" In the
time between Clement Greenberg's notorious "Avant-garde and Kitsch," of 1939, and Susan Sontag's
"Notes on 'Camp,'" of 1964 ("Dandyism
Modernism had been
age of mass culture"
in the
short-circuited. In fact, the tongue-in-cheek,
of Roy Lichtenstein's comic-strip females
may be
high
"camp"
attitude
read as the precursor, "close in
spirit
(and possibly intention), to Cindy Sherman's Untitled Film
1970s
and
early 1980s.""*
),
These photographic masquerades
are,
Stills
from the
late
of course, contem-
porary with Diane Arbus's hermaphrodites and with Warhol's photographic
self-
portraits in drag.
Back
in
in
Europe, de Saint-Phalle's 1966 show, Hon,
at the
Moderna Museet,
Stockholm, invited the public joyously and transgressively to explore the body of
Nana
a giant
via a vagina
and enter
into a
huge
womb
of delights.
It
anticipated a
cultural climate that allowed the First International Exhibition of Erotic Art, in
Sweden
in 1968,
in 1969, to
and the Second Internationa! Exhibition of Erotic Art,
be held
in public,
were invited to be voyeurs
if
optimistic in their concep-
at a spectacle
"not only to the gonads but to the mind." They were also
previous or subsequent
museum
designed to appeal
more
explicit
show, containing such works as
Wesselmann's Bedroom Painting No. 20 (1969), which
is
who now remembers

Ithaca,
New York,
creations
to
in
much American
than any
Tom
dominated by an enormous
dark brown phallus."" The sense of urgency conveyed by these shows

pared to that revealed
Denmark
tax-supported museums, which were visited by over
250,000 people. These celebratory shows were naive

tion; female viewers
in
may be com-
writing on feminist art in the 1970s. Yet,
the 1972 Festival of Women in the Arts at Cornell University, in
or the Erotic Art Gallery, in
New York.?
Discussions shifted from overtly "feminist"
the sexualized flowers of Georgia O'Keeffe, or Judy Chicago's
Construct #10, 1989
classic
Dinner Party (1979)
works that were both more violent and more gender-sophisticated. De Saint-Phalle's film Daddy
(1972),
with
New York
its
incest
theme and scenes of women masturbating or being masturbated, was shown
in the early 1970s."
Lyle Ashlon Harris

Black-and-white
mural
silver
print, 72 \ 36 inches
(182.9 x 9i-4
cm)
in
Louise Bourgeois's semi-abstract Trani Episode (1971-72) was exhibited
Courtesy of Jack Tilton Gallery,
New York
<
14-
Lorraine O'Grady
Nefertiti/Devonia Evangeline, 1981
(first
performed October 1980)
Courtesy of the
artist
with Marge Helenchild's Vulva
Hammock and
Shelly Lowell's Slice of Life, an Oldenburgian pie with
meringue-peak nipples. Bourgeois's phallic white marble Cumulus No.

reimagined in
its
1973
New York
Frantz Fanon's virulent Peau

1952.
72
years
later,
rule in the
in Paris,
must be
context of Metaphorical Cunts and Measured Cocks. 71
masques blancs (Black
noir,
Jean Rouche's film Les Maitres fous (The

its
skin, white
masks) was published
in Paris in
in 1959,
Gold Coast, climaxing
and subsequently
mad
masters) profoundly shocked a select
in
of possession,
in frenzied scenes
New York, where more
black actors imagining caricature Whites
love, 1986]
again, however, he
a largely black audience:
who imagine
stereotype Niggers."
In the 1975
woman
Mythic Being
in his
74
'
The
in Paris
film
was
and London
"White Genet imagines
At the height of his
posthumous work, Un Captif
Genet refused categorically to speak about
the
civil rights
his theater
work.
and black power movements clashed with the
in the 1970s. Nevertheless, despite "the
by the mid-1970s, the
seems a precursor.
The macho dimension of

feminism
),
and blood.
than 1,400 performances between 1961 and 1964
involvement with Angela Davis and the Black Panthers (recalled

7
spittle,
(The Blacks), which was performed
an off-Broadway record, stunning and delighting
amoureux [Prisoner of
Two
reportage of a black African ritual and transsexual parody of colonialist
direct inspiration for Genet's play Les Negres
Once
now
(1962),
Henceforth, color and colonialism became issues inextricably linked with sex and power.
Parisian audience with
set
artist
series, the
rise
overwhelmingly male focus of black American
Adrian Piper was doing performances on the
masquerade was drag: an Afro wig,
bell
streets
of
of
art,"
7 ''
New York.
bottoms, dark sunglasses.
Piper recorded the "animosity, fear and indifference she experienced as a radicalized male subject.""
Her photo-offset posters declared:

(inversely):
ments:
it
"I
embody
everything you most hate and
"Changing sex doesn't consist merely
means teaching
the
in subjecting one's
whole world, forcing upon
it,
body
fear."
As Genet would say
to a few surgical adjust-
change of syntax."
"
Lorraine O'Grady's
contacts with Piper and Surrealism engendered her 1980 performances as "Mile. Bourgeoise Noire"
a perfect response, after a twenty-year gap, to Genet's
148
The
Blacks.
O'Grady paraded
in a tiara
and
ball
gown, holding
a cat-o'-nine-tails in
her begloved hands,
with which she whipped herself as she declaimed a liberation manifesto for black artists.
With her performance
Nefertiti/Devonia Evangeline (1980), she continued the
extension of
work on femininity and
beyond gender
to issues of race
and
masquerade
the
history; at the
same
time, the personal resonance of allusions to the tragic death
of her
sister
tion of
preserved the performance from the banaliza-
much
of the "post-postmodern.""
Yet Genet's notion of a change, a
fundamental
"detournenient" of syntax, implies an underlying signification
beyond transsexualism: with the
reversibility of display,
the possible abolition of the "reality" of sex altogether.
Genet experienced
as personal tragedy
was leavened,
York, by the ironic transposition of cultural
What
in
New
and sexual
codes, and has been transformed, in today's era of constant

sexual exposure
and pseudo-celebration, into
a universe of
The
substitution of "porn for sex
and sex
simulation.
for
porn" implies the breakdown of the polarity of active/passive
"and with
no longer any
it
the hetero-homo distinction since there
reality
In the chapter "A
Impersonators,
of
'sex' itself to
World of Penises"
Mark Simpson
be compared with.""
in his recent
book Male
cites Jean Baudrillard:
the distinction between poles can
is
"Where
no longer be maintained, one enters into simulation, and hence
Guerrilla Girls
Confessions of the Guerrilla Girls,
into absolute manipulation."" This tendency to abolish polarities, to conflate boundaries, to "live the
1
1995
whose very raison
simulation," impinges directly on the art world,
sentations, alternative "realities," networks, encounters.
The
d'etre
is
to provide fantasy repre-
Courtesy of the Guerrilla Girls
sexual tantalizations of reversability as an
ethos have supplanted a pornography of arousal based on a promise of "real" sex: Robert
Man
Mapplethorpe's (decapitated)
Lyle
Ashton
Harris's black
male
black male with the feminine
in
a Polyester Suit (1980)
as ballerina in
(made
reversibility
Museum
displaced, almost a decade later, by
gauze tutu and curly blond wig. The equation of the
as early as i860
by Theodore Tildon
to the hypermasculinization of black culture in rap, sports,
Male, at the Whitney
is
of American Art,
New York,
with Harris's generation, and a corresponding
s:
)
is
and cinema.'" The 1994 exhibition Black

demonstrated both
move toward
toward
star
Hill
The
system became
show of videos of the beating of Rodney King, of O.
Simpson, and of the Senate testimony of Anita

defining a territory for "the culture of the
this shift
reality as "simulation."
boundaries between the museum, popular culture, the documentary, and the
blurred, with the incorporation within the
evidently the corollary
J.
and Clarence Thomas. Hence, the impossibility of
museum,"
in
what has been categorized by Arthur and
Marilouise Kroker as a "panic exhibition" within the "fuzzy set" of the simulacra of American
4
culture." In this context,
how
possible are calls for a
new
authenticity?
85
149
,'
/(/<
/ ////</
f/l //)'.'
"A World of Penises" foresting the jungles of both

exclusivity.
The masculine masquerade,
as
art
and popular culture
Genet so well understood, seeks ultimately
was
ceaselessly to obliterate the always-recurring feminine."" Guerrilla action
1969 by
Monique
iniscent, perhaps, of Pierre Louys's exoticism
frenzy.
The American
the real game: "Facts,

1988," in
Museum
humor and
outraged response to
of
Modern
Art,
fake fur."
An
New York,
in
Orlan Before Saint-Orlan
in
which, of 169
and
mere
artists, a
and
called for as long ago as
too rem-
text,
moments of erotic
its
and
that politics
They materialized "mysteriously
International Survey of Painting
ever revealed the identity behind the
Orlan
and ultimately unconvincing
masked and metropolitan, know
Guerrilla Girls,
to engulf
and poetic sapphic
Wittig, in her novel Les Guerillieres,* a pioneering
upon
predicated, alas,
is
in the
statistics are
dark of night of
Sculpture, an exhibition at the
women." None
thirteen were
mask of her assumed persona: Romaine Brooks,
Tina Modotti, Gertrude Stein. As Lee Krasner declared: "We secretly suspect that
all
has
Frida Kahlo,
women
born
are
(Orlan avant Sainte-Orlan), 1988

Acrylic
Guerrilla Girls.
on canvas,
118
V,
x 78
Joel Nicolas
inches (300 x 200
Courtesy of the
artist
just a question
of helping them discover
89
it."
The
Guerrilla Girls have traveled to
Barcelona, Basel, Berlin, Dublin, Graz, Helsinki, Oslo, Ulm, and Vienna.
executed by Publidecor,
photograph by
It's
cm
The philosopher Yves Michaud
recently outlined the cultural
broken the eternal London-Paris-New York love
nism
had
triangle.
He
They have
and
moment, which
is
have
political shifts that
described the French version of femi-
something that has
as a battle lost: the "impression of deja-vu,"
its
yet to visit Paris.
now
in the past.
This
"'
is
certainly not true
of Orlan's current reputation in the United States, but in continental
Europe, a patriarchal, canonic vision dominates. Thus the 1993 catalogue for de Saint-Phalle's retrospective in
declare:
"Through
knowledge
that
looks at what the great artists of
duced. With innocence,
is
Bonn
could, with impunity,
of a rather intuitive kind, she
modern
preceding her have pro-
art
like a blithe spirit,
she borrows from them, as

1
if
Where were
she were picking flowers in a beautiful garden." "
Guerrilla Girls
when
the
they were most needed?
Despite the definitive survey exhibition femininmasculin, which
appeared
Centre Georges Pompidou in 1995, the antifeminist
at the
position of the 1970s generation persists in France.
"feminism" or "feminist" are experienced
as a
The very words
form of bad
taste,
par-
ticularly with regard to the marginalized "spectacle" of charismatic
women
who
writing
are far
./'/'< /jt
Helene Cixous, Luce
from idolized
( /'/</ji
In the ancient
/<>
//<"
in Paris.
/(i7/<
j:
Irigaray, Julia Kristeva'
Derision
the
mask of
insularity.
tutu/ 1/1
and Catholic country of France, Orlan blasphemously
manages her own metamorphosis, her own
woman-to-woman
150
is
transsexualism: "This
1
woman
Madonna
is
madonna
reveals a breast; the breast of the
a transvestite." "
refiguration, her
tells
own
us that the
Beneath baroque draperies, the
artist/
whore becomes the
Nicholas Sinclair
Fabian, 1995
14
x 14 inches
(35.6
Courtesy of the
single breast of the
Amazon. Orlan
version of the Pygmalion
strips finally to the
myth can dispense
back to the nude the sexual charge
redundant male
works with canonic
texts
artist.)
Orlan's canvas
is
has
it
lost."
94
man;
am
a jackal; ... a crocodile's skin
never have the skin of what
am. There
but
is
am
to the rule
because
am
am
white; a
"I
have
woman's skin but
never what
have."
95
now
reaches beyond skin-deep masquerade, beyond the mythical feminine stereotypes of Europa, Psyche, Venus,
Mona
Lisa,
beyond even the
transgressive,
anamorphic
via satellite TV,
Orlan's
tage,
"
shows how "the universe penetrates us through the rents in our body," 9
virtual reality.
nostalgically,
(1989) or bisexual torso-vest
from Matthew Barney
are differentiated
Untitled, 1990),
and Jana Sterback

to
become
from
their soft-porn fellows only
belong to the annual Parisian Salon of Eroticism or to the
fauna,
who came
Fetishism
in the flesh
with leather, rings, and
As the boundaries of the museum
celebrates a passing beauty as well as the

in
which the
computer mon-
virtuality of the
image
is
glitter to
collapse,
masquerade
the only immortality.
male Hairshirt
is
(1993), art "clothes" are extend-
the extended "family" of her book The Other
artist's eye.
art
99
Does Goldin's Kim
transgressed: each
in Brighton,
comSide
in Rhinestones, Paris
museum? And what of Nicholas
animate the opening,
gender
itself,
in her
Wedding
transsexual prosthetics. Reciprocally, the worldwide
by the
(1991)
7 100
Simone Weil wrote.
in evening dress (Radial Drill, 1991), to Robert Gober's
munity of transvestites and transsexuals photographed by Nan Goldin
as the mystic
related to the knife, into realms of genetic manipulation,
beyond the masculine or the feminine masquerade
(1993)
to the
91*
And, meanwhile,
ing
This aesthetic vision of opening wounds, broadcast worldwide
sacrifices of serial plastic surgery.
work develops beyond gender questions
and
Gown
The Re-incarnation of Saint-Orlan (La Re-incarnation de Sainte-Orlan, 1993)
For Orlan,
desire
series
the
Freud's Medusa, with Eugenie Lemoine-Luccioni,
puppy, a black skin but
no exception
(Her
synonymous with
has pointed out the transsexuality of saints and thus the sacred as well as the profane aspects of transsexuality:
an angel's skin but
am
to "give
entirely with the
soiled sheets of her repudiated trousseau. She
who
nude
x 35.6 cm)
artist
Sinclair's extravagant
of the exhibition
Amazon, each man
in a
diamond
dress,
and, in an age of HIV/AIDS, the transience of a sadder bohemia,
On
the threshold of the year 2000, The Other Side
summons
the
beyond; and the polyvalence of masquerade fuses with the pathos of endless quotation: "Exhibitionism? Narcissism? Sport?
Theater? Deviation? Inversion? Infantilism? Competitiveness? Pride? Sincerity? Imposture? Doubtless,
it's
Love.""'
151
Notes
Inversion in Nineteenth-Century Sexology," in
18.
Naumann, New
published as "Feminites-Mascarades," trans.
Gilbert Herdt, ed., Third Sex, Third Gender:
19.
In speaking of Eleanor Butler, Colette suggests
Charles Penwarden and Marie-Noelle Ryan, in
Beyond Sexual Dimorphism
A substantially
was
different version of this essay
femininmasculin, exh.
cat. (Paris:
Centre
Georges Pompidou and Gallimard/Electa,

1995
PP- 291-311. Unless otherwise noted,
)>
author.
Biography 1928;
1.
Virginia Woolf, Orlando:
2.
Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex
New York:
and
trans,
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,
ed. H.
whole
is
Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa's
(New
Dubourg
Denvy
(Paris:
Male
context, see Klaus Theweleit,
Stir la superior-
vol.
1:
trans.
Livres, 1986),
violently attacked by Francois Rabelais in
Women,
Fantasies,
For subsequent iconography, see Laure
Psychoanalyzing the White Terror (1978), trans.
Beaumont-Maillet,
La Guerre des sexes
Erica Carter
and Der Kampfder
tion with Stephen
Der neue Mythos
Heap
in
"Temple d'Amitie" and
male drag
party in
at a
Jean Montrevel, "Notes sur
morale sexuelle
la
p. 15.
Joan Riviere, "Womanliness as a Masquerade,"

oj Psychoanalysis 10
James Donald, and Cora Kaplan, eds.
Male Bodies:
in collabora-
(Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press; and Oxford:
in der Kunst,
also cites Natalie Barney's
festivals in the
Basil Blackwell, 1987). See vol.
Conway
Yale University Press, 1993),
The International journal
with
"the antifeminist manifesto of the century."
and Chris Turner,
Briffault
Anna Chave,
en France," Clarte, no. 73 (1925),

22.
University of Minnesota Press; and Oxford:

2:
Henna
Brancusi's studio.
his Le Tiers-livre (1546), called, at the time,
ed.,
Jane
in
and Chris Turner (Minneapolis:
Erica Carter
Chave
Sapphic
German
in collaboration
Tunpur. See Colette, The Pure
(1941), trans.
Janet Planner, quoted in
(New Haven:
Floods, Bodies, History (1977),
Stephen Conway,
et
York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1975),
p. 106.
21.
For the twentieth-century proto-Nazi
Pur
Impure
Constantin Brancusi: Shifting the Bases of Art
who pub-
and whose mutilated body was found
the
pp. 114-29.
20.
victim of Nazi genocide.
1509, published 1529),
desfemmes (written
Geschlechter:
1986), pp. 35-44.

23.
Ibid., Riviere, p. 37.
24.
Ibid., p. 38.
25.
Ibid.
26.
Much work was done
following the reappear-
Polity Press, 1989), for Theweleit's critique of
ance of Riviere's article in Hendrik M.
Laura Cottingham, "What's So Bad About
Freud's normative paradigms (p. 213), and for
Ruitenbeek,
Em?"
the Freudian taboo
in
Bad
DuMont,
1995).
exh. cat. (London: Institute
Girls,
of Contemporary Arts, 1993),
p. 59,
mean
Cottingham's uses "bad" to
note
body
2.
positive,
13.
treatment
in
on involving the
Sexuality
patient's
ed.,
Psychoanalysis
(New Haven:
Press, 1966). See, for
(p. 261).
and Female
College and University
example, Laura Mulvey,
"Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,"
For a discussion of the androgyny of the
David Lomas, "A Canon of
and Mary
Dionysiac, anticonservative, ironic, humorous,
demoiselles, see
and so on.
Deformity: Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and
Ann Doane,
Physical Anthropology," Art History
Theorising the Female Spectator," Screen
Naomi
Definition quoted in
and George Sand:

Butler
Schor,
"Feminism
(September
Lettres a Marcie," in Judith
and Joan W.
Scott, eds., Feminists
Theorize the Political
14.
Butler,
femme
(1904; Paris:
0] Identity
New York:
to 1950, including Histoire de
the
Routledge,
15.
See Theweleit,
Women,
Thonime
New
and Anna
York:
Routledge, 1992), pp. 4-9, 77-84.

See
"]
Olympe de Gouges's
>eclaration ties droits de la
femme
Paris: V.
(M.A.
Giard
16.
concentrate artistically on
While the psychoanalytic story
story"
my
a
is
New
is
York, the
a tale
Abrams,
of
17.
"German
See Gerf
Hekma,
"'A
Male Body': Sexual Inversion
Female Soul
as
Gender
in
Miii eel
18.
For Riviere and Marie Bonaparte, see Lisa
La Sexualite de
on
an interview with Nixola
Francis
a 1920s
la
(New
trans.
Nicholson,
Marie Bonaparte's
femme, which leans heavily
and 1930s bibliography, did not

ed.,
Female Sexuality,
John Redker [New York: International
Universities Press, 1953]). Bonaparte
4,
M. Naumann, New
would
have been familiar with Richard
Goldschmidt's December
York: Harry N.
1931 lectures at the
Faculte des Sciences, "Le Determinisme du
an interview
September
in
12, 191s;
Jones, Postmodernism
in
1914-24"
Institute of Art,
1994), p. 102.
Duchamp,
Tribune,
central to the serological aspects ol
thesis.
in
Gender Trouble,
extended bibliography,
appear until 1951 (Amer.

in
York Dada: 1915-192}
France, Great Britain, and the United States.
Vienna, Paris, and
quoted
note
Butler's
1992), pp. 329-48, 353-65.
1991).
Marcel Duchamp,
1916;
I
in France,
p. 159,
27.
in Butler,
and
Women (London: Weidenfeld and
"A Time of Transition:
Courtauld
23,
Appignanesi and John Forrester, Freud's
women;
Greeley-Smith, The Evening World, April
et E. Briere, 1907),
pp. 24-25.
In this essay,
thesis,
London,
et la
citoyenne," in Avril de Sainte-Croix, Le
Fiminisme
Bailey,
Female Representation
tragically unrealized
(1903).
complex repertoire of idealized and
for the
denigrated images relating war and
"Film and the Masquerade:
Masquerade,"
pp. 43-57;
Floods, Bodies, History,
1990), p. 48.
hissing d- Cultural Anxiety
no. 3 (1975), pp. 6-18;
"Lacan, Riviere, and the Strategies of
Cote
Caufeynon (Jean
Editions, 1989). Dr.
16,
nos. 3-4 (1982), pp. 74-84. See also, Butler,
See Marjorie Garber, Vested Interests: CrossI
no. 3
FauconneyJ wrote over 100 works from 1901
Gender Trouble: Feminism and
Subversion
16,
Screen
1993), pp. 424-46.
Histoire de la
Femmes
London: Routledge,
1992), p. 41.
152
Evil in Fin-de-Siede Culture
lished in the journal Le Probleme sexuel in
is
& Hoffmann,
1850-1930, exh. cat. (Cologne:
10.
Dijkstra, Idols of Perversity: Fantasies of
emblematically, Berty Albrecht,
12.
(Paris: A. Michel, 1984);
9.
(New
the garden of the Fresnes prison in 1946, a
was
8.
For the gynecide-to-genocide progression, see
See Johann Joachim Bachofen, Das
ite
7.
and
1934,
ed. B.
6.
Hallier, 1979).
the conclusion, pp. 400-01. Let us remember,
civilization
1851).
5.
Llangollen. Ces Plaisirs was republished in

1941 as Le
d'images de Thomosexualite (Paris:
siecle
described as feminine."
Mutterrecht (Stuttgart: Krais
4.
and Sarah Ponsonby, the so-called Ladies of
Un
Feminine
that produces this creature, inter-
famous nine-
teenth-century Welsh lesbian couple, Butler
York: Oxford University Press, 1985), especially
mediate between male and eunuch, which
3.
a Parisian reincarnation of the
1994),
emphasis of Guy Hocquenghem's Race d'Ep!
Bram
1956).
(1948),
M. Parshley (New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1993), p. 281: "It

as a
11.
Culture and
in
Zone Books,
York:
and the surprisingly German
pp. 213-39;
all
from the French are by the
translations
(New
History
York Dada, pp. l68ff.
and
Duchamp (New
University Press, 1994),
New
in
Amelia
Cambridge
284.
sexe et l'intcrsexualite." In 1932, Freud's dis-
York
En-Gendering
the
York:
p.
the
quoted
of
course on "Feminite" appeared and was

included in Nouvelles Conferences sur
analyse (1932), translated by
in 1936.
la psvcli-
Anne Berman,
28.
See Elisabeth Roudinesco, "Traductions des
in 1967; see Barthes,
oeuvres de Freud en langue francaise entre
trans.
1920
(Paris: Editions
29.
(New York:
La Bataille de cent cms:
et 1940," in
Histoire de la psychanalyse en France, vol.
de
Essai psychanalvtique sur
Paris:
The
preface was written by Rene
who
36.
in the journal Paris-Medical in 1919,

at
hospital, to the study of the
the Sainte-
"more or
among
developed lack of polarization"
patients
that
is,
the
abundance
the
of bearded
women, symptoms of virilism, endocrine mal-
flowering in the
its full
52.
Kinsey's report
on male
sexuality
was pub-
femme appeared
Jacques Derrida, Spurs: Nietzsche's Styles
Mon
(1978), intro. Stefano Agosti, trans. Barbara
repond au questionnaire Kinsey
Harlow (Chicago: University of Chicago
Editions Jean Froissart, 1953).
Roland d'Eck, De
Andre Breton, Arcane
39.
The proverb
pluralite sexuelle (Paris, 1931);
Maranon, Evolution de
La Guerre des
WO
40.
des etats
et
intersexueh (Paris, 1931); cited in Rene Colla,
Le Travestissemeni habitucl (Paris: Edition de
medicine de
Paris, 1956
41.
Jay,
The Denigration of Vision
in
Max
La
Ernst's
Femme
Downcast
Eyes:
Twentieth-
February-March
le
Lilar, in
Z.11
Femme
et le surrealisme,
quoted
To decapitate
exh. cat.
54.
From
the
De
Beauvoir, Brigitte Bardot
55.
woman's point of view, "The
Man
Le Surrealisme, mime, no.
(EROS), exh.
Cordier, 1959).
They
Imrie
(New York:
term which precludes her"
Malcolm
Garber, Vested
and
Verso, 1992).
For "homosexual panic," see Garber, Vested

Interests, p. 137,
discussing
Edward
coinage of the term in 1920 and
See Jacqueline Rose, Sexuality
its
44.
Kempf's
J.
currency
Sedgwick.
45.
Hans Anton Prinner was
unknown
analysis
by Briony
Fer,
Anton
and Marcia
Pointon, eds., The Body Imaged
J.
also, the
"The Hat, the Hoax,
the Body," in Kathleen Adler
Cambridge University
and
many
Prinner,
(New York:
Symbolism and
47.
The 600,000
Combat, September
The
48.

(1929), pp. 205-17.
Roland Barthes's essay
49.
Breton,
War
and
Un
Hans
meme and
the Galerie de
exhibited
at
the
1946);
61.
in
la
photographie
du
comme
no. 59 (1989), pp. 54-59;
"The
Artist's
extase," Cliches,
and Peter Gorsen,
Desiring Gaze on Objects of
laid (1978; Paris:
Vallon, 1994), p. 259.
etre,
Comme
je
exh. cat. (London: Cabinet
Gallery, 1993), p. 37.
L'en deca psychanaltytique
the
See Jean-Louis Poitevin, "Pierre Molinier:
Gallimard, 1940), pp. 372-73.

la laideur:
at
Paris.
Fetishism," in Pierre Molinier:
Murielle Gagnebin, Fascination de
et la
no. 4 (October 1979), a
response to Molinier's retrospective
De
quoted
32,
Centre Georges Pompidou,
and
carnaval moche
1965.
voudrais
Ibid.
at
was arranged by
the preface to the cata-
Jean-Paul Sartre, L'Imaginaire (Paris:
Champ
show
Gerard Durozoi, "Molinier, entre I'amour

mort," Canal
illustrated
APR,
(figures
Editions
50.
who wrote
Le Surrealisme,
60.
12, 1947).
of S/Z, was the prelude to his Systeme de
la
was
1993).
"Masculin-Feminin-Neutre," an early version
mode, written from 1957 to 1963 and published
Pierre Molinier's solo
(Paris:
prostitutes indicated an increase
of 200,000 since the
in
identity
(Paris:
Manya,
symbolism and female exhibitionism,

precedes Riviere's 1929 article
Cahun
La Femme tondue,
Clothes Ambivalence" (discussing polyphallic

etc.)
1983).
59
a female transvestite
Alain Brossat, Les Tondues:

(Paris: Editions
W W. Norton,
Jean Genet, "Fragments," Les Temps modernes
Paris:
in the art world. See
with eight engravings
Press, 1993), pp. 161-73.
C. Flugel's article "Clothes
to
Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (1963;
international exhibitions of Surrealism in 1959
whose true sexual
du
Galerie Daniel
logue; Molinier subsequently contributed to
See Francois Leperlier, Claude
sculptor,
cat. (Paris:
l'Etoile Scellee, in 1956,

(
7.
(August 1954), pp. 200, 203.
on female fetishism
Claude Cahun, Les Paris sont ouverts
(1958), p.
See Exposition InteRnatiOnale du Surrealisme
New York:
and
(p. 212);
i960).
58
Jean-Michel Place, 1992).

46.
(1933);
Interests,
57.
fetish envy, pp. 126-27.
See Tristan Tzara, "D'un certain automatisme
Minotaure 3-4
of
is
Jose Corti, 1934).
today, thanks to the writing of Eve Kosofsky
gout,"
in the Field
"Woman
56.
taken to desire herself but only through the
reprinted in Jose Pierre, ed., Investigating Sex:

Surrealist Research 1928-1932, trans.
the eye which eats'' See
Vision (London: Verso, 1986):
and
are collected
is
the Lolita
Ray, "Des chats et des magnolias,"
Yale University Press, 1990), p. 50.
nos. 10-11 (1928).
and
Syndrome, trans. Bernard Frechtman
(New York: Reynal & Company,
to castrate, according to
is
of Obliques (1979),
pp. 311-20.
p. 291.
Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae (New Haven:
43.
I'amour
Sartre, special issue
Chave, Constantin Brancusi,
Freud.
sexualite" were origi-
et
MacCall, "Existentialisme ou feminisme?"
Press, 1983), p. 114;
in
Dorothy
Disfiguring Poetic Language (Baltimore: Johns
his thesis.
la
de Sartre
Hopkins University
of California Press, 1993). Surrealist art refutes
sur
A propos
(Paris: Grasset, 1967), p. 77; see also
tusked Gorgon
nally published in La Revolution surrealiste,
of the viscous and
neant (1943) was challenged by
Century French Thought (Berkeley: University
The "Recherches
a la
1958).
Sartre's characterization
Suzanne
of Difference:
Lausanne, 1987).
42.
number of L'Ecran
la
(Paris:
vamp
femme,"
Etre et
(Lausanne: Musee cantonal des Beaux-Arts
).
femme
Lombroso, "De
special
example,
see, for
la
feminine "revenge of the en-sou expressed
tetes.
A World
(Paris:
The impact of
Payot, 1947); or
53.
This must have been
sexes, p. 8.
Barbara Johnson,
in
For a discussion of the notion of "phallogocularcentrism," see Martin
an anonymous copper engraving, circa
1660, reprinted in Beaumont-Maillet, ed..
and Gregorio
sexualite
la
17 (1944).
represented as a decapitation
is
the generic source for
la
another dimension;
38.
is
Une francaise
sexuel:
Gina Lombroso, L'Ame de
ethnographic craze had
also
comportement
la
Moreau,
in 1951. See Isabelle
film
other practices by Native Americans, Eskimos,
faculte de
1987).
in
La Sexualite de
1954. Bonaparte's
Ibid., p. 99.
character of castration, homosexual, and
[a
October
Press,
on female
French
in
Fashion Institute of Technology and Rizzoli,
in
and Tahitians. See
came out
1979). P- 97-
reflection in Masson's account of the ritual
its
(New York:
37.
functions, etc.
Ibid., p. 65. France's
cat.
challeng-
feminine."
sexuality (1953)
less
"Otherness reaches
1983).
p. xvi,
Levinas in Le Temps et I'autre:
Fashion and Surrealism, exh.
Anne
35.
Emmanuel
psychopathologie sexuelle (Paris: Hippocrate,
subsequently devoting himself,
34.
vetement
Beauvoir, The Second Sex,
lished in France in 1948; the report
Choisy
33.
le
De
ing
Editions du Seuil, 1983); and Richard Martin,
published on the femininity of the Abbe de
32.
and Giroux,
Farrar, Straus
See also Eugenie Lemoine-Luccioni, La Robe:
Seuil, 1982), pp. 481-83.
Laignel-Lavaltine, Masson's professor,
31.
51.
See Agnes Masson, he Travestissetnent: Essai de
1935).
30.
The Fashion System,
Matthew Ward and Richard Howard
Gorsen points
to the
important show "Transformer": Aspekte der

Travestie,
which was
at the
Kunstmuseum
in
Lucerne, Switzerland, in 1974, and traveled to

Graz, Austria, and
Bochum, West Germany,
in
-I
153
1974-75- See also Pierre Petit, Molinier:

d'enfer
Paris: Editions
ne vie
74.
Ramsay/Jean Jacques
Travestis: Kallima sur
un
French reception of Genet's
'97 1
Desk homosexuel
63.
75.
New
and Race d'Ep!
Sartre, preface to Genet,
The Maids and
Deathwatch: Two Plays, trans. Bernard
76.
Disclosure:
Pop
Rise of
77-
Hand-Painted Pop:
Art," in
Barbara Bray, does not translate "afin
67.
Susan Sontag, "Notes on 'Camp'" (1964);
and Genet's "obligatoire detournement
reprinted in Sontag, Against Interpretation and
syntaxique"
Other Essays (New York: Farrar, Straus and
"change of syntax."
no. 188
July-August 1991
69.
Mark Simpson, Male
(New
70.
and Eberhard Kronhausen
Daddy was shown
in
London
November
in
was shown,
at
Hammer
83.
eleventh
New
Mainstream Female Art Movement,"
84.
For
(New York:
now
riticism:
An Anthology
Simpson's devastating analysis of football
w 'th
no. 17 (winter 1985
its
93.
See
Dominique
amazone ..."
be extended into the arena of the
Hyper-Modern Condition,"
Frantz Fanon, Peau uoir, masques blancs

(Paris: Editions
du
While Miisks, trans.

(
New
York:
Norman
<
Marilouise Kroker,
Sex
Seuil, 1952); Black Skin,

(
Tarlcs
am Markmann
Jrove Press, 1967).
Compare
85.
Mailer's very disturbing polemic
cations,
Predal,
is
jous, a film
its
links with a
94.
in the
95.
Arthur and
its
Body Invaders: Panic

St.
l.isen, in
C. W.
Paris: Editions
eds.,
pp. 67-88, as a key
hompson,
cin&ma,
Harmattan,
199s).
p. 30.
Lea Lublin/Orlan: Histoires
example
root of the
of this
"framing"
ol
new
(ibid.)
literature
is
an
and
see also
Chapter XI,"Orlan,"
where her source
Fan
is
Louis Reau,
Chr-itien (Paris: Presse
Of course,
is
the
at the
Old Testament Genesis and, subse-
quently, of the Cabala.

96.
Orlan's seventh operation, Omnipresence, part
of the Rc-incariialion de Siiinle-Orlan series

(1993),
While The Masculine Masquerade
p. 95;
pp. 122-23. For the transsexuality of
mythicizing of gender differentiation
The Masculine
Press, 1995),
symposium
(1979).
Universite de France, 1959).
MIT
in collabora-
for the
Lemoine-Luccioni, La Robe,
pp. 133-45,
Andrew Perchuck and
exemplary exploration
Hubert Besacier,
saints, see ibid.,
Martin's Press,
problem.
86.
in
Iconographie de
exh. cat. (Cambridge, Mass.:
impli-
),
Gilbert Laporte, "A une
See Orlan's "Citations-situation,"
ibid.,
Masquerade: Masculinity and Representation,

astonishing in
ed., I'Autieei le sacrd: Surrialisme,
ethnologic
in
see bell hook's 1992 essay "Reconstructing
Helaine Posner,
contextualized by Paul Stoller, Rene
and [ngrid
eds.,
America (New York:
Black Masculinity," in
ights Books, 1959).
Monies
cer-
saintes de Part (Cergy: Lacertide, 1985),
1987), pp. 10-19, 20-34.
The While Negro (1957; San Francisco: City
/ 1'>
in
is
unpaginated.
For the concept of "panic" and
and "Theses on the Disappearing Body
York: G. K. Hall, 1993), pp. 1-20.
28ff; for a
tainly not feminist," in Critical Exchange,
"Mesonges"
Joanna Frueh,
and included four
tradictory assertion: "Deconstruction
Liberation,
10-11, 1994, p. 32.
Marilouise Kroker, "Panic Sex in America,"
,\nc\
in 1992,
106 men.
Routledge, 1994), pp.
Raven, Cassandra
anger,
the Kunst-
dated example, take Derrida's self-con-
tion with
at
discussion of this marginalization, see
See Elisabeth Lebovici, "A quel debat 'Black
New York?"
Saint-Phalle's
Stephen Frosh, Masculinity and Psychoanalysis
culture of "simulacra," see Arthur and
(New
71.
92.
quoted
hacks (September 1973); reprinted in Arlene
eds., Feminist Art
72.
p. 57;
"black male."
Last, a
off our
Territorium Artis, which opened
Beitchman
Philip
De
und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik
in ibid.
fruitfully
Maryse Holder, "Another Cuntree: At
Men
revelation of the hidden feminine, could
York Film Festival.

71.
and
Semiotext(e), 1983),
13.
above Hulten's quasi- mil-
installed
lennial survey of twentieth-century art,
p. 215.
(Male Impersonators, pp. 69-93),
1972; the revised version
in April 1973, at the
(Stuttgart: Hatje, 1992), p.
Deutschland Bonn,
December
the
Pleasure," in Niki dc Saint-Phalle, exh. cat.
(perverse) than
Impersonators:
dc Part
superieure des Beaux
Pontus Hulten, "Working with Fury and with
women and
Male' s'expose-t-il a
York: Bell Publishing, 1987).
Cinema
91.
Jean Baudrillard, Simulations, trans. Paul
(New York:
piled by Phyllis
Huhn, on France; and
ed., Feminisine, art et histoue
1994). P- 142-
Foss, Paul Patton,
82.
Britain; Rosie
Arts, 1994).
qu'il
classify you),
Performing Masculinity (London: Cassell,
81.
Tickner and Griselda Pollock
(Paris: Ecole nationale
show was
Sims, Aspects of Performance,
),
The Complete Book of Erotic Art, com-
more complex
80.
See the reprint of the catalogues to both exhibitions,
is
79-
Laura Mulvey, "A Phantasmagoria of the
See texts by Marcia Tucker on the United
(the pioneer of British feminist art history),
translator,
vous design" (so the world can
pp. 136-51.
154
The
p. 150.
Ibid., p. 197.
New Left Review,
90.
on Great
Ibid., p. 181.
Female Body: The Work of Cindy Sherman,"
1995),
p. 21.
Artists," in
66.
also
of the
Whitney
Michaud,
Criticism, p. 209.
Genet, Prisoner of Love,
p. 234; see
Grand
1972,
Nicole Dubreuil-Blondin, on Canada, in Yves
1993), pp. 178-203.
before Pop?" in Hand-Painted Pop,
the
Raven, Langer, and Frueh, eds., Feminist Art
of Contemporary Art;
p. 116.
at
September
to
Chadwick (New York: HarperCollins,
cat.
Lowery Stokes Sims, "Aspects of Performance
Women
from May
See the Guerrilla Girls, Confessions
States; Lisa
(Los Angeles:
Dick Hebidge, "Fabulous Confusion: Pop
situation has not been any better in
Guerrilla Girls, with an essay by
Whitney Museum of American
and
Giroux, 1986),
1971).
included two female artists and seventy men.

89.
Press, 1989).
65.
68.
The
Palais, Paris,
1994L
by Black American
in Transition, 19551962, exh. cat.
Museum
New York: Rizzoli,
York:
1969), trans.
ans d'art contemporain en France,
Love (1986), trans. Barbara
Contemporary Art, brochure and exh.
Art,
The Construction of Gay Identity and the
American Art
of
Wittig, Les Guerillieres
Europe. For example, the exhibition Douze
England; and Middletown, Conn.:
(New
"Modes of
E. Silver,
88.
See Black Male: Representations of Masculinity

in
1983). PP- 10-15-
Kenneth
White,
York: Alfred A. Knopf,
Wesleyan University
Frechtman (New York: Grove Weidenfeld,
64.
Genet, Prisoner
Monique
David Le Vay (New York: Viking,
Bray (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of
Paris: Editions
87.
1993). PP- 490-508.
Revolutionnaire. Subsequently, he published
Le
(New
Jean Genet
founded the Front Homosexuel d'Action
Universitaires, 1972);
Edmund
pp. 44-47. See also
Guy Hocquenghem
Maurice
play, see
"men's hut" and the very
origins of andocracy.
Lecuyer, "Les Negres et au-dela," in ibid.,
corps: Toile, idole,"
Art Press, no. 20 (September-October 1975),

pp. 12-13.
to display in the
p. 48;
for Decock's entire article, see pp. 48-50. For
example, Severo Sarduy, "Les
See, for
of Obliques (1989),
dciict, special issue
Pauvert, 1992).
62.
imagery, male masquerade surely dates back
Jean Decock, "Les Negres aux U.S.A.," in
was performed on
July
11,
1993.
The
next operation will be done in Japan, See
Sarah Wilson, "L'Histoire d'O: Sacred and
Profane," in Sarah Wilson et

i
Orlan
al.,
London: Black Dog Publishing, 1996),
PP. 7-1797.
98.
Simone
Weil, quoted
Gina Pane, exh.
cat.
F.R.A.C, 1991),
p. 38.
by Marisa Vescovo,
(Pays de
See Les Vingt Ans de
pub
la
in
Loire:
de cine de Sainte-
et
Orlan, exh. cat. (Basse-Normandie: Centre

d'Art Contemporain, 1990); Barbara Rose, "Is
It
Art? Orlan
America
81,
and the Transgressive
Act," Art in
no. 2 (February 1993), pp. 82-87;
and, for a psychoanalytic interpretation,
Parveen Adams, "This

Suture
Is
My
Body,"
in
Phantasmen der Vollkommenheit, exh.

Salzburger Kunstverein, 1994),
cat. (Salzburg:
pp. 48-56.
yy.
On Nan
(joldin, see Michael Bracewell,
"Making Up
Is
Hard
to Do," Frieze, no. 12
(1993). PP- 32-37100.
Anthony Sheldon,
Power and
Brighton
ed., Fetishism: Visualising
Desire, exh. cat.
Museum and
exhibition, which ran
Brighton:
Art Gallery, 19951.
from April
he
to July 1995,
included a foyer show of Nicholas Sinclair's
photographs. See also Nicholas
Chameleon Body: Photographs

(
Sinclair,
oiitemporary Fetishism, with texts by David
Alan Mellor and Anthony Sheldon
Lund Humphries,
101.
The
of
London:
1996).
Walerian Borowczyk, preface to Andre Berg's
book of soft-porn
transvestite photographs,
Creatures (Nyons: Le Club du Livre Secret;
and
Paris:
Pink
Star, 1982).
155
'I
!'
1
-"
*"
'1
i
;
II 1
11
11
mmm
II
11
If I
fl
111
31
1,
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Cecil Beaton
Jagger on the
set ol
Performance, iy68
Courtesy of Cecil Beaton Archive, Sotheby's

156
III IL
./*'
Mick
ondon
L
w
e&f&wvniwa
zs
m&
z/6<>du
tat
th& 497Ob
NANCY SPECTOR
Rebel, you've torn your dress

Rebel, your face
Rebel,
how
Hot tramp,
a mess
is
could they know?

I
love you so!
You've got your mother in a whirl, 'cause she's

Not sure
if
you're a boy or a girl
Hey babe, your
hair's alright
Hey babe,
stay out tonight
let's
david bowie,
Nothing
is real,
mick [agger
// r<
/<
(f//c: ////(
L((f<tcif
<
"Rebel, Rebel," 1974
everything
Turner
as
J _/
is
permitted.
in
Performance, 1970
//(//<//////
In 1967, Michael Fried published his
now famous
essay "Art
and Objecthood,"
Minimalist sculpture as overtly theatrical because, in order for

presence of a viewer over a period of time was required.'
Andre, Donald Judd, and Robert Morris,
among
acolyte of Greenbergian
Modernism, valued
to the specificities of
own medium.
its
it
to exist as
in
which he dismissed
an artwork, the physical
The corporeal implications of work by Carl
others of that generation, disrupted what Fried, an
the absolute "presentness" of an art
Inadvertently, Fried's critique of theater as that
which
"lies
between the
form
that adheres
arts" presaged the
emergence of radically new forms during the 1970s that emphatically defied categorization by medi-
um
and dramatically engaged the temporal process. The decade witnessed the emergence of
2
models that were recognized

instance, in 1970,
Dennis Oppenheim
burn;' in 1971, Chris

1973,
for their preoccupation with time, transformation,
Burden invited
slept
a colleague to
Gina Pane slashed her forearm with

5
wound; and,
as part of a
in 1974,
on Jones Beach
for five
seven-hour performance.
and the body. For
hours to induce a second-degree
shoot him in the arm with a .22-caliber
a razor blade, forcing thorns
Marina Abramovic ingested medications
artistic
rifle;
in
from cut roses into each
for acute catatonia
and schizophrenia
Fried's prophetic, albeit negative,
understanding of the phenomenological nature of
Minimalism was overlooked during the 1970s by
critics
eager to link the
new body-related
art to pres-
f.
157
tigious historical sources. Thus, early artistic prototypes such as
and Dada
Futurist theater
drawn between
tinually
particular, references
soirees
were
cited,
new work and
the
and analogies were con-
that of Marcel
were made to Tonsure
Tonsure
head into
his
both French and English, to the
refers, in
In
(1919/21), the piece in
which Duchamp shaved the hair on the back of

shape."
Duchamp.
a star
ritualistic
practice of shaving the heads of those entering ecclesiastical orders or
parody of the
religious cults.) This precocious
art world's
marginally burgeoning "star system" was considered

the conflation of self and object intrinsic to the
Because, in Tonsure,
his
own
person, the
Duchamp had
then only
paradigm
new body
for
art."
constructed an image with and on
work was espoused
key predecessor to con-
as a
temporary work involving performances conducted
in private or for
the public, acts of self-mutilation, and/or acts of self-transformation.
However, two
art
were not discussed
Tonsured
of the piece relevant to 1970s body
Duchamp had
in this context. First,
emblematic alteration to
Man Ray
Duchamp
critical aspects
his coiffure strictly for the
ond, two different photographs of his star-shaped bald spot
devised the
camera.
And
sec-
dated 1919 and 1921 document
the
(by Georges de Zayas), 1921
\ 3
inches
x 9
(12.1
cm)
New York
metamorphosis into
"cult" object:"' the dual versions of the
and conceptually bracket Duchamp's unveiling,
Private collection, Courtesy of
Howard Greenberg
self-conscious
artist's
Duchamp
time
conceived this particular presentation of
Gallery,
whether religious or secular
on the period, he
he was ruminating about

had considered switching
said that he
Jewish but had not found any enticing Jewish
"Why
in 1920, of his
not change sex?
It
names
self
feminine
as
alter ego,
and not so
a complete change in identity.

his religious affiliation
to adopt. Instead,
preparing himself for with his star-shaped tonsure. Could
These interpretive
roles
intersect in
the three motifs
body
all
art
details
forms of body-related
its
art,
its
not particularly
difficult,
his female other, the
wonder which
it
cult
have been that age-old

:
through which to contemplate the
surviving documentation. This conceptual matrix does not encompass
however, but rather that performed expressly to be documented
either female to male,
historical instances of this
to
retroactive relationship with art of the 1970s. Together,
whether by photographic, video, or cinematic means

vestism
from Christian
tantalizing elision of binary thought?'
a provocative theoretical constellation
of this period and
Thinking back
the performative, the photographic, and the inversion of gender
and around Tonsure and
compose
its
sect,
he opted to swap genders:
was much simpler," he mused." And thus was born
secret cult of transvestism, with
Rrose Selavy. At the
an inductee into an unspecified
fashionable flapper Rrose Selavy. In light of these recollections, one might
Duchamp was
image sequentially
male
to female, or
and
that
somewhere
convergence between embodied
given the plethora of such
work
art
which entailed some form of trans-
in between.
Beyond
identifying art-
and gender representation
in the 1970s
the
which
is
real challenge lies in
determining what these examples might reveal about subjectivity, sexual difference, gender division,
desire,
158
and
visual pleasure
both then and now.
/<
<
/>// </<<//</////
//
many contemporaneous
and
object
and
_./
wake of Pop and Minimalism
In the
tion"
1/ :
and
its
artists felt
tf////<///(///( // a.,
genres
that each contained the seeds of institutional critique
museum and
on Earth
art,
Process art,
The
gallery system.
emerged by the end of the 1960s
disparate. Variations
/.')/(,
compelled to discover new ways to supplant the autonomous
commodification by the
dispersal that
.//-/ .''</ /// in the
in
body
art
strategies of "dematerializa-
response to this challenge were numerous
art,
Postminimalism, Conceptualism, and
Arte Povera evolved in both the United States and Europe, introducing to the vocabulary of visual art
processes of distribution; elements of time and corporeality; linguistic analysis; and a mythology of
What
materials.
medium
linked these dissimilar
that served to chronicle
As
medium
low cultural
through which
and display
this
practices
was photography, a
otherwise ephemeral work.
long marginalized within the art-historical hierarchy, photography was
embraced during the 1970s

ty, its
and seemingly incongruous
status,
as the transgressive
and
its
to transmit ideas
medium
par excellence."
mimetic capabilities offered
artists a
Its
mechanical reproducibili-
more or
less
debased vehicle
without necessarily creating aestheticized objects." Because fine-art
photography had joined the cultural canon of Modernism by the 1920s and was thus enshrined
collections of such venerable institutions as
were more inclined
New York's Museum
to expropriate the style of
was
itself
considered art photography). 16
The documentary photograph was adapted not only by
"verite"
mimetic systems, but
also
Art," artists of the 1970s
photojournalism as a model for their analytic endeav-
ors (even though, by the 1960s, photojournalism
ally aestheticized
Modern
of
in the
by those
who
artists
co-opted
and instantaneousness to record events enacted primarily
its
wishing to bypass conventionrepresentational codes of
for the camera, particularly those
executed as preconceived episodes or as performances in the privacy of the studio." Formulated
through what A. D. Coleman has called the "directorial mode," the

of
much
artfully constructed
mise-en-scene
conceptually oriented photographic work of the 1970s parodies photography's romance with
reportage and reportage's claims to truth."
Many
of the
artists
who employed
this "directorial" strate-
Vito Acconci, Eleanor Antin,

Klauke, Bruce Nauman, Oppenheim, Adrian
Lucas Samaras, among them structured
work around the presentation of
gy
Jlirgen
Piper,
self in
their
terms, either physically altering their bodies, performing
some predetermined
and
photographic
task, or acting the part
of a fictional character. In order to convey and preserve the notion of time in such work, which was
rendered
used. In a
static
by the photographic freeze-frame, multiple images and descriptive
number of cases,
as in
from photography, shares
its
mimetic
faculties
film,
which, though
and was thus well suited
"(photo)documentation" of performative exercises." In reassessing photo-based body

it is
essential to differentiate
were often
work by Acconci, Antin, Dan Graham, Rebecca Horn, Nauman, and
William Wegman, private performances were recorded on videotape or Super-8

structurally different
texts
between the photographic documentation of
for the
art of the 1970s,
theatrical events staged
Burden, Joan
Paul
examples include work by Abramovic and
McCarthy, Pane, Rachel Rosenthal, and Carolee Schneemann and the purposely choreographed
publicly for an audience
Ulay,
construction of self (or selves) for the camera alone, with the photograph
core of the artwork. This distinction
is
constituting the
being emphasized here in order to foreground the particular
historical matrix in question: the collusion
during the 1970s.
itself
Jonas,
among body
art,
photography, and gender performance
2"
1
-
159
'((.)/<
rni//
'
(/;/</ < ///////'<'/( <///<</>:
not by coincidence that the concept of
It is
struct
came under such
self
movement, and the gay and
lesbian rights
introduced burning questions about
And,
as
involvement
something
was
It
the women's
movement were
social, racial,
/.')/(.,
///<
to construct, reconstruct,
time
and sexual
identity.
least
on the
from communal
surface,
issue of self
self
and
all
and other into
a politi-
nationalistic differ-
embraced the concept of personal

'n' roll,
and
and military passivism
living to ecological awareness
union between
and
Furthermore, the United
transformation, even transcendence, through mind-expanding drugs, rock
Utopian ideals
civil rights
in various stages of formation,
the 1960s counterculture had passionately
finally,
and decon-
the borders between self and
movement, the
liberation
Vietnam War forced the
in the
when
which oppositions were premised on perceived ideological and
cized arena in
ences.
scrutiny during the 1970s.
other were under interrogation from within
States' controversial
( //////
/<////(/
was considered
other, unless that other
free sex. Its
advocated,
at
to be part of the
"establishment."
Despite the acute social and political upheavals of 1960s America

the
Vietnam War, the
battle for civil rights,
Kennedy, Martin Luther King,

In 1969,
the
movement;
women's
the
and Malcolm
the decade ended on
New York's Greenwich Village
Woodstock Music
liberation
movement was
escalation of
and the assassinations of President Kennedy, Robert
American astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin made
the "Stonewall" rebellion in

rights
Jr.,
namely, the
triumphed
Festival
solidified across the
a relatively optimistic note.
their historic
initiated the
F.
walk on the moon;
modern-day gay and
as three days of peace
lesbian
and harmony; and
country through "consciousness raising"
groups, community-based education, and grass-roots politics. The United States Food and Drug
Administration's approval of the birth control
over their
own
pill in
bodies and helped to usher in a
new
i960 granted
women
unprecedented control
age of sexual freedom. During the ensuing
decade, a politics of pleasure emerged that endorsed sexual indulgence as a force to counter domi-
nant modes of oppression. Articulated by the social theoretician Herbert Marcuse as early as
libidinal
economy argued
for a desublimation of instinctive energies as
"anything goes" sensibility of the 1960s, however naive
found desire for
social change,
one
that
upheld
racial
it
may seem
an antidote to social
in retrospect,
and/or sexual equality as
was rooted
1955, this
ills."
'
The
in a pro-
criteria for cultural
renewal. This belief was even reflected in fashion with the emergence of "unisex" dressing, that paean
to
androgyny
as a Utopian state of bisexed being.
The dawn of the
Cambodia during
the
1970s was anything but auspicious, however.
first
over. Previously peaceful
year of the decade,
reality
its
became apparent
that the
fire
on students protesting
faith in the liberatory excesses
check the same year
when two
of
its
at
the United States invaded
Vietnam War was
demonstrations against U.S. military intervention
bloody when the National Guard opened

Youth culture, with
it
When
in
Jimi
from
Southeast Asia turned
Kent State University in 1970.
of drugs and rock music, encountered
cultural icons
far
Hendrix and
Janis Joplin
harsh
died from
drug overdoses. These episodes were not exactly sobering; the emancipatory inclinations that defined
and eventually dated the 1960s continued throughout the
1970s, albeit with a slightly ironic edge.
sexual subculture of the preceding decade, replete with drag queens, butch dykes,
crept into the popular imagination through mainstream films
160
The
and transsexuals,
and rock music. What was
essentially
outlawed in 1960s cinematic representation
take, for
example the censorship of independent filmmaker Jack

Smith's Flaming Creatures (1962)
was embraced during

Myra
the 1970s in such movies as Michael Same's
Breckinridge (1970), Nicholas
CammeH's Performance
Roeg and Donald
(1970), Sidney Lumet's
Dog Day
Afternoon (1975), and Jim Sharman's Rocky Horror

Picture
Show
Granted, Smith's unabashed cele-
(1975).
bration of transvestism and polymorphous sexuality
was
erotically explicit, but the film's confiscation
had more
police
to
do with the
instability
by the
of gender
portrayed than with any frontal nudity." By the
roles
it
time
Tim Curry appeared
mad
as the
scientist sporting a
red corset and fishnet stockings in Rocky Horror and
Chris Sarandon wore a white

in
gown and
veil as a
"bride"
Dog Day Afternoon, audiences had grown more accustomed
ality,
to on-screen references to
homosexu-
Jack Smith
Film
gender mutability, and cross-dressing.
still
from Flaming Creatures,
1962
Rock musicians had long embraced
mode
travesty as a
of performance, but more as a means
to signify (and package) social transgression than to express the radical implications of true sexual
and gender ambiguity. The 1970s witnessed the

Brian Eno, Mick Jagger, the
der indeterminacy.
'
platform heels, and

ences.
On
New York
Dolls,
rise
and Iggy Pop, whose
theatrical personae
embodied genlipstick,
costumes, did not alienate their presumably largely heterosexual audi-
the contrary, their male-to-female travesty
seductive, given their
commercial success, and
it
was
not entirely
relatively unthreatening, if
proved that the Marcusean principle of sexual
desublimation was a highly marketable strategy. Despite the popularity of androgynous rock
however,
it
was
rare to encounter the female-to-male version in
The only example

Mapplethorpe
that
comes
mind
to
is
Patti
for the cover of her Horses
Smith,
album
tie,
Too feminine
punk
perfect
disheveled hair, and pale complexion
made
'n' roll,
mainstream contemporary music.
who was photographed
in 1975.
man, Smith played the part of the androgyne with

open black
New York
of such enigmatic pop stars as David Bowie,
Their performances as feminized males, complete with eye makeup,

fetishistic
Courtesy of Anthology Film

Archives,
in
in
drag by Robert
appearance to "pass"
as a
coolness; her wrinkled white shirt,
a statement against the marketing of
female rock stars as sex symbols.
While the feminized male was

did not (and
still
does not)
fit
men
were
with gender
women who
own
masculine or "phallic" female
body during
experimented with similar strategies were more often
artists
who
fact,
visibility.
the 1970s; while
self-representations, altering appearances at will
dismissed, for self-indulgent or narcissistic behavior. In
work by male and female
Starr the
true for visual artists working with the
free to possess their
roles,
pop
comfortably within the social codes that determine cultural
The same double standard held

the
easily accepted as a
and playing
criticized, if
not
the contradictory critical responses to
dealt with photographic representations of
gender and
its
inherent mutability are quite telling in their division along gender lines and the suppositions they
reveal
about
"artistic" uses
of the body.
5
8<
16]
//)(</!/ ////(</!</ "!/(//</</> ///<
The concept of "body
art"
was
first
///l/c "
articulated (as
"body work") by
Willoughby Sharp
artist/critic
in
the premiere issue of Avalanche, the magazine he founded with Liza Bear in 1970 to cover recent
contemporary
developments
in
parameters of
this aesthetic practice,
sculptural material."
"body
as backdrop,"
25
culture. In his analysis of the topic,
Identifying
and "body
as
which he defines simply
Sharp attempts to delineate the
as the "use of the artist's
"body
four subcategories of the genre
prop" Sharp
as tool,"
insists that the physicality
weighed any expressive or autobiographical content
it
to walk, to
jump, and so
artistic subjectivity
he discusses
artists
Oppenheim
women
artist
and Schneemann,
1960s.
including Acconci, Terry

though he certainly
And by
Sharp
no need
effectively dismisses the possibility

all
for instance,
of the
by gender. The
many
not before. Jonas, Yayoi Kasuma,
had been producing body-based performance work since the mid-
the beginning of the 1970s, a culture of feminist performance art
emerged
in
Southern California with the establishment, by Judy Chicago, of the Feminist Art Program
Fresno State College, where
mance
pieces.
It
such as Suzanne Lacy and Faith Wilding created their
artists
said,
body
art prevailed
cle in
Art
through
much
of the decade. In 1974, feminist
own
Lucy Lippard devoted an
critic
America to an overview of performance work by women,
as
bodies without also using their
Abramovic, Horn, and Pane) were encouraged
early
beings in ephemeral, performance work by the "male establishment,"

tion in the
more
profitable areas of painting
and
sculpture.-
"
feminist Lisa Tickner wrote another essay dealing exclusively with
which
politics, in
she, like
Sharp before
on
selves,
her, divides body-related
that these
women
artists in
to avoid competi-
later, British art
women's body
work
and
to utilize their physical
who wished
Four years
arti-
which she discusses the
in
were impossible to divorce from gender identification. Lippard also notes that
Europe (such
perfor-
first
without overgeneralizing, that a "universalizing" single-sex discourse around
impossibility of female artists using their

selves
at
can be
in
of
Nauman, and
to explain this segregation
in their art at this time, if
as
cut, to skip, to gag, to run,
Fox, Barry Le Va, Richard Long,
feels
body
artist's
has always been presupposed, unless stated otherwise. Nevertheless,
were also using their bodies
artists
~ 7
this explanation,
as
as place,"
of the work far out-
or the presence of psychological content in the work. Furthermore,
are male,
maleness of the
on* With
"body
might have. He considered the
nothing more than a vehicle to perform the action of intransitive verbs: to
own body
art
and
historian
and
its
sexual
into separate categories in
order to encompass the range of conceptual strategies in practice during the decade. In contrast to
Sharp's pragmatic
including
and formalist groupings, however, these
classifications
"Vaginal Iconography,"
work by Chicago, Betty Dodson, and Miriam Schapiro; "Transformations and
Processes,"
including work by Antin, Pane, and Piper; and "Parody: Self as Object," including work by Lynda
Benglis,
Schneemann, and Hannah Wilke
ical facets
of body-related art by
Sharp's exclusion of
ic
practice. But
that,
by
its
it
may
women from
also have
very nature,
is
explicitly recognize the subjective, psychological,
women, not
may have been motivated by
territory
been
to
mention
162
se
is
anatomical aspects.
his roster of avant-garde

a desire to colonize
"body"
crit-
artists
mining new aesthet-
an already occupied realm of
artistic
function of a subconscious attempt to neutralize an art form
inextricably linked to issues of the
not as important as what
is
human body and
its
representation
emphasis on formal concerns "In body works

done with
body"" would have been more
namely, eroticism and sexual identity. Sharp's
body per
its
and
3"
the
the
difficult to
convey
he had included contemporaneous women's body art in his discussion. Throughout the
if
tory of Western
identification.
act, for
art,
the female
The very
male) gaze.
33
Due
seem,
like
through the brush stroke or
language
still is)
itself,
the
mark
desiring (traditionally,
connotatively loaded. In contrast, representations of the male body
universalizing
comments about
Acconci's early
chisel
a libidinous
itself,
assumptions of male-gendered spectatorship, any representation of the
to cultural
female form was (and
as the object of desire, a site for scopophilic
gesture of painting or sculpting has been considered, in
makes manifest
it
body has been rendered
and ideologically transparent."

his
experiments with body-related work advanced the kind of
when he
depersonalized rhetoric expounded by Sharp. In a 1972 interview in Avalanche, he says that
began making
ground
ing a
art,
"the initial attempts were very
for myself,
much
oriented to defining
an alternate ground to the page ground
body he displayed
that the
in
self.
Very recently when
self.
Compare
it
to
as Following Piece (1969)
had
a very "neutralized presence."
use of self in earlier pieces.
see a lot of
some of my
It's
it
seems
always seemed
A generalized
my god,
like,
and
as
self, it
if
he points out
35
his avoidance at the
he admits:
in 1977,
work by women dealing with
and
stuff
kind of male abstracting notion.
And
a space, find-
as a poet."
works such
my
34
had
time of any references to individual subjectivity. In an interview

always wonder about
my body in
In retrospect, Acconci questioned this approach to the presentation of self
his-
mine
a very generalized
like
seems a
is
really specific
a general abstract
almost grandiose self*
Formalizing discourse aside, there are elements in Acconci's performative work from the early
1970s that actually problematize the presentation of the masculine subject as an ontologically coherent being.
When
observed from the theoretical vantage point of today
and feminist concepts of subjectivity
may
practice
be regarded as
own
he performed his
it
introduced the
away
as provisional, sexually ambivalent,
a highly critical,
masculinity
either
possibility that
deconstructive venture.
by overemphasizing
own
sexual identity to question
By acting out sexual difference
artists
and estranged
The embodied
or casting
And
it is
this
it
Acconci's
pieces in
which
into doubt, even casting
component of Acconci's
considered in tandem with coterminous projects by feminist body
performing their
gins.
it
poststructuralist
gendered identity might be contingent, a "theatrical" con-
struction sustained by repetitive demonstration."
may be
informed by
its
socially prescribed,
praxis that
who were
artists,
similarly
purportedly "biological,"
in self-consciously performative situations,
ori-
both male and female
put in motion potentially disruptive play, while underscoring the oppressive reality of always
already existing gender roles.

In thinking together the long-segregated
body
down
al
modes of male and female body
art in the 1970s
and
its
representations
of the binary model of gender, with
its
coercive codes of behavior, visual appearance,
art that involved sexual travesty
orientation.
embodied
It
did not occur to any of the American
art at the
and provocative
critics
it is
possible to detect a subtle break-
who were
analyzing and/or attacking
time to read male and female practices simultaneously as being complementary
in their fusion.
However, in one invective against body
go halfway, asserting that "in that
art area
where sexual and
political
art, critic
is
the other side of the coin: the
Max
Kozloff does
neuroses masquerade, the most
revealing images or presences are of males transposing themselves into females."
mention
and sexu-
number of equally important women
38
What he
fails
to
artists evocatively
transposing themselves by imitating the male gender.
The
piece that best demonstrates the interrogation of gender binarism in Acconci's oeuvre
Conversions (Parts I-III)
(summer
1971), private
performances recorded on Super-8 film and
in
is
pho-
^
>
163
Vito
Acconci
Conversions (Part
I:
Light, Reflection, Self-control),
summer
1971
Black-and-white print from Super-8 film
Courtesy of Barbara Gladstone Gallery,
New York
Vito
Vito
Acconci
Conversions (Part
Acconci
Conversions (Part
III:
Association, Assistance, Dependence),
summer
summer
1971
II:
Insistence,
Adaptation, Groundwork, Display),
1971
New York
New York
tographic/text panels, in which the artist attempted to feminize his unquestionably male body. In the
first
sequence of the film, Acconci spends forty-eight grueling minutes burning off the hair around
each of his nipples, which he then pulls and massages in a
next section shows the artist performing simple calisthenic exercises
bending, squatting,
castrated.'"
etc.
with
his penis tucked
But the charade of transsexuality
Acconci's purposefully handicapped

tasks perfectly, Acconci ends
is
between
always apparent.
his penis as
much
walking, running
hidden from
his legs,
body only approximates
up revealing
female breasts."* The
futile effort to create
The
sight,
visible triangle
metaphorically
of pubic hair on
woman's; unable to accomplish
as concealing
it.
In the third
section of Conversions, Acconci tries to hide his penis once again, but this time in the
woman
explains, "the
out."
41
woman
disappears behind
me and
While Acconci's alleged negation of
been interpreted
lacking)
art
"When
have no penis,
his female partner,
as a classic illustration of the
woman, other
male embodied
Ifi.)
Kathy Dillon) kneeling behind him.
(his girlfriend
in place,
and
all
his
final
mouth of the
I'm seen from the front," he
become
who he
the
woman
I've
canceled
claimed to have become, has
Lacanian phallus inscribing
itself
over the effaced (and
readings are viable. 42 As Amelia Jones points out in her significant study of
from the 1970s, Acconci's willingness to
efface his
own
masculinity, while simulta-
Viio
Acconci
Trappings, October 14, 1971
Performance/installation
photograph
Courtesy of Barbara Gladstone
Gallery,
New York
neously enacting the cancellation of his partner's femininity, foregrounds our understanding of the
ontological instability of
In
all
sexual identities.
another body work dating from 1971 entitled Trappings (which
Acconci played out and parodied,
in
is
recorded in photographs),
an emphatically self-deprecating manner, the sacrosanct and
overdetermined connection between masculinity, the penis, and the phallus. Sitting naked in a closet
filled
with items associated with femininity and childhood
artist
dressed up his penis in doll's clothes and talked to
as if
it
a "location for regressive activity"

it
were
The
a playmate.
the
calculated
absurdity of the situation allowed Acconci to disrupt the seamless integration of masculinity and
phallic privilege.
construct
it
is/
While
identity
No
longer veiled, the penis/phallus was shown, in masquerade, as the psychosocial
it
was not yet theorized during the early
may be
1970s, the notion that subjectivity
and sexual
performative rather than substantive found expression in Acconci's work, even
intuitively. In 1971, the year
he completed
work on Conversions and
his
I'm using art as a means of changing myself, as a means of breaking out of a category.
gorized as male.
Now I'm
trying to change that category, [to] open
female. There are structures that limit

possibilities that these structures
these structures. That's

correct, to
open myself up,
to
make
want
to build
work
The goal
up an idea of life
have
to
be limited by
am
cate-
is
to
as a
to
and examine
break through
means
to
improve,
to
break out of spiritual and
the idea that people can change
roles,
they don't have to be rigidly
45
givings about visual pleasure,
qualms that were expressed
embodied work by women
real identification
to see
an instrument
stressing the idea of an art
Acconci's flagrant libidinalization of performative
critiques of
I use art as
only
up the possibility of being
work might be a means
art
myself vulnerable.
role to another. People don't
enclosed in categories.
An
have eliminated. So
why I'm always
social confines as well. ... 7
from one
tilings.
if
Trappings, Acconci claimed:
artists.
"
work brought
far
more
to the fore art criticism's mis-
aggressively in
Condemned by both Modernism's
and feminism's suspicions of the desiring male gaze,
contemporaneous
disdain for corpo-
art that alluded to the plea-
SS
165
was often marginalized, and then overlooked,
sures of the flesh
in
ensuing histories of postwar
art.
4'
which
Because visual pleasure has been such a taboo subject, specific aspects of Acconci's work
is
being considered here as a case study
are simply not discussed in the critical literature. For
instance, the
scheme he devised
cannot
be thought separately from the heterosexual eroticism
really
in Conversions to hide his penis in the
mouth of a female accomplice

suggests. Also, the kind of self-
it
effacement he enacts cannot be theorized without considering the masochistic side of eroticism
invokes.
The question can thus be posed: why should
across the physical
body
investigations of sexual identity, played out
as a site of shifting, performative personae, not
And, furthermore, why should the gesture of demystifying supposedly

gender not be pleasurable for
artist
and viewer
tivity to
it.
The
artists
who
complicity in
early photographic self-constructions of the
Swiss artist Urs Liithi reveal both

their cameras.
artist's
men
Klauke 's photographic
be libidinal in orientation?
fixed, ontological constructs
of
alike?
Other examples of embodied work by male

such queries about visual pleasure, the
it
its
flaunted gender indeterminacy
elicit
production, and the audience's recep-
German
artist Jiirgen
Klauke and the
independently exploring polymorphous sexual identities for
series
Physiognomies {Physiognornien, 1972-73) shows the
artist
posing in various theatrical guises, which range from intensely female to questionably male, in an
of normative gendered behavior. "The never-ending search for
effort to dislodge accepted ideas
my/our
identity
an underlying theme here," he explains
is
in a recent interview.
"
According to
Klauke, his goal at the time was "to lustfully claim female identity or any form of 'otherness,' and
therefore question 'eternal masculinity'
limited views of
how
and
'eternal femininity';
i.e.
to break
through conventional,
things should be."' Similarly, Liithi deployed travesty in his performative

'
photographs
as a strategy to
portrait" as a
woman
symbolize the transgressive potential of self-transformation. In a
(or highly feminized male), entitled
I'll
Be Your Mirror
"self-
(1972), the artist directly
implicates the viewer in his transposition of genders, suggesting that the fluid state
depicted
may
reflect the
ambivalence
at
the core of
all
subjectivities.
While not
as
works
aggressive or farcical as Acconci's play with masculinity, Klauke 's
and
problematize gender binarism with equal passion. The
elements employed
in the
photographs
from
veils
and flowers
to
makeup
fetishistic
Luthi's
are seductive tools used to
The
lure the viewer into identification with (or desire for) the figures portrayed.
pleasure offered
seen,
and what
is
located in the dizzying gaps between what
efforts to
is
emulate the feminine other in order
to create a truly liberatory art reflect theories of transvestism
Marjorie Garber in her 1992 book, Vested
which she
represented, what
known.
is
Both Klauke 's and Luthi's early
in
is
visual
Interests: Cross
advanced by author
Dressing
states, rather idealistically, that cross-dressing
& Cultural Anxiety,
can actually abolish the
binarism behind cultural representation by causing a "category
crisis"
through
its
disruption of established gender boundaries. Transvestism, in Garber's view,

introduces into the system the prospect of a "third term," which, as a
lation," creates a
Urs
/'//
refuses to
He Your Minor, 1972
(7
inches
Private collection,
the artist
Id 6
of possibility." " Accordingly, the cross-dressed body
Liithi
Photograph on canvas,
(V
new "space
"mode of articu-
Kin
-,
conform
social resistance
9
111
to the social dictate of either/or,
through the confusion
it
man
woman, and
thus acts as a
site
of
causes. In Garber's view, the visual codes of gender differ-
ence are thereby obscured and frustrated. However, there

<
or
is
a fine line
between subversion and
oui tesy oi
reinvestment. Transvestism
lately
appropriated by the fashion industry as
a titillating, yet
marginal,
Jiirgen
Klauke
Physiognomies Physiognomien
(
19/2-73
Eight gelatin-silver prints,
each 23 % x 19
(60 x 50
% inches
cm)
Courtesy of Galerie Rudolf

Kicken, Cologne
*
*
^
&
167
mode
of countercultural defiance
simply
recirculates
and
reinstates pregiven signs.
The polemics of pleasure,
desire,
and
libidinal
when
identification in art intensified during the 1970s
work
in
question was
exploited her
made by
own body
woman,
particularly
the
if
she
women
in the process. Because
have been traditionally inscribed as objects-to-be-seen,
Hannah Wilke
"unrepresentable except as representation,"
Portrait of the Artist in
His Studio, 1971
cases
when
the presentation
even
51
female-authored displays of the feminine body
transgendered
is
were
in
particularly threatening to the (male) art estab-
Performalist self-portrait with
lishment. Even
Claes Oldenburg
Courtesy of Ronald Feldman

Fine Arts,
the
New York
some
feminist critics found that supporting
work equivocated between being
celebration of female sexuality.
52
a parodic critique of sexual objectification
representation.
For instance, Wilke, an
woman from
artist
caricature, also utilized the codes of drag to further
gender difference.
One
of her
initial
her
comment on
own
the
man
in black shirt
the difference between complicity

in her hands.
The
title
camera-cum-viewer
and parody
femininity to the point of
tie
her
long,
54
is
of the photograph, Portrait of the Artist
fixed
in
on the
in
composed
wavy
for
hair
In place of her
which she repeatedly exploited
her attention
to
woman-as-
(an attribute she often flaunted in her "feminine" guise) clipped back, out of sight.
distinctively seductive gaze at the
"essentialist"
power structure inherent
and patterned
when
was conceivable
it
"performalist self-portraits," which displays a self
the camera, shows Wilke dressed as a
difficult
and an
the patriarchal construct of
who performed
was
art
The conundrum they encountered was whether
disengage the actual, physical body of a

55
women's embodied
to
obscure
art journal she
holds
His Studio (1971), indicates that
Wilke, at this formative stage in her career, fully intended to claim for herself the artistic authority so
indelibly linked to masculine privilege. In 1976, Wilke crossed genders again to tackle
called "the construction of a highly invested 'father' figure of
Duchamp
at
in a
practice"
Marcel
performance and subsequent film entitled Through the Large Glass." Presented
the Philadelphia
Museum
of Art, where Duchamp's The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even
housed, Wilke staged a measured and deliberately slow striptease
(The Large Glass) (1915-23)
is
behind the
Wearing the signature
vest,
postmodern
what Jones
glass "painting."
white fedora, and white
onanistic, self-contained,
and
the
silk scarf
infinitely
attire
of a gentleman dandy
artist visually identified herself
white
suit
with
with both the
productive "bachelor machine" in the lower realm of The
Large Glass and the ever-virginal bride in the upper. Filmed directly through the glass panes of the
Hannah Wilke
Through the Large Glass,
197ft
Film siilK from a performance

Philadelphia
'
168
Museum
of Art
ourtesy of Ronald Feldman

ine Ails,
New
York
.11
from dapper man
work, Wilke's striptease
to alluring
woman
can be read
and eroticized joining of the forever separated domains of bachelor and

marriage ceremony symbolically reclaimed for
by male
women
the
rite
as a
metaphoric
Her
bride.
striptease-as-
of (pro) creativity long appropriated
artists.*
Sculptor and video
Lynda Benglis
artist
employed transgender codes
also
to challenge the
equation between masculinist authority and creative agency. In Document, a video from 1972,
Benglis draws a moustache
on
photograph of her
and
writes copyright notices, which she then traces

screen. Raising issues of originality
gesture that
would rock the
and
in a tradition
in overtly
invitations to three one-person
Jack Glenn Gallery in
taped to a blank video monitor and
retraces, across the
bottom of the monitor's
macho
shows
at
Corona Del Mar,
complete with white leggings and

attire that
advertisements
of mostly male
scenarios,
artists
which she
posing for their exhibition
first
parodied in 1973 in her
own
the Portland Center for the Visual Arts, in Oregon; the
and The Clocktower,
California;
in
skirt. Benglis's
New York. On
Greek evzone
each invita-
outfit,
recuperation of this photo, in which she posed in
for an exhibition at the Paula
Cooper
Gallery, in
New York,
inaugurated
the series labeled "sexual mockeries," which were intended to investigate gender ambiguity
lampooning the art-world
jeans, man's shirt, black jacket,
to
back
to the viewer,
jeans
down around
star
system/ Posed
and aviator sunglasses
Porsche with close-cropped hair and
Annie Leibovitz
self-
today appears quite feminine, reveals an interest in gender masquerade.
Her ensuing advertisement
role playing, while
for a
which featured her own constructed photographic
tion she reproduced a childhood snapshot of herself wearing a traditional
male military
warming up
art world. In 1974, Benglis placed a series of self-produced
These ads followed
announcements, often
is
entitlement here, she was only
artistic
for one-person gallery exhibitions, each of

portrait.
face that
photograph her
a smirk.
Benglis
is
in quintessentially
shown leaning
butch
and sexual
attire
against an old
For the invitation to this show, Benglis commissioned
in a classic, Betty Grable cheesecake pose
with her nude
arms folded behind her head, and

her high-heeled ankles.
The
cs
culmination of the "sexual mockeries" was an advertisement run in the
showed Benglis
November
entirely oiled
1974 Artforum,
up and naked,
a pair of glamour-girl sunglasses
and
1
plastic dildo held at genital level."
which
save for
a gigantic,
Her brazen
expropriation of the penis, albeit an exceptionally

fake one, served to ironically deflate the organ's
alleged alignment with the "phallus"'"
and
her access to masculinist authority and the
agency associated with
it.
to grant
artistic
Hermaphrodite par
excellence, Benglis appears in this
photograph
as a
Lynda Benglis
metaphoric fusion of the Duchampian bride and bachelor, claiming for herself the authorial rights
Advertisement
enacted by the self-enclosed, self-satisfying bachelor machine/"
The media outrage generated by

defensive the critical
attacks
on
its
community
authority.
Benglis's advertisement
(November
is
indicative of
including both mainstream and feminist
group of Artforum editors thought
it
in
Artforum
13
1974)
how profoundly
writers
was about
necessary to publish a letter express-I
ing their chagrin over Benglis's gesture, stating that the ad was an "object of extreme vulgarity"
and
169
Katharino Sieverding
Transformer, 1973-74
Photographs,
each 59
(
151
(151
in five parts,
x 24 inches
x 61 cm); 59
1-
x 120
'L
inches
x 305 cm) overall
"shabby mockery of the aims" of the women's liberation movement.'
11
And Cindy Nemser
attacked
Benglis in an issue of The Feminist Art Journal, declaring that her gesture was anything but liberatory:
True her organ
may
be the most majestic in size but
only plastic. Her image
it is still
smack on
tough and forbidding but look where she places
it
may
page (and at her own
the first
of the most establishment of art magazines thus making a frantic bid for male attention.
may
convince herself and other naives that she
is
using her lovely woman's body to say "Fuck me,"

those
who
like their sex
served up with
The numerous other responses
saying "Fuck you"
men
to the
and thereby making
constructed herself as "an active female subject in wild abandon"
woman
in control of the critical gaze.""'
as desirable body,
In addition to Wilke
and
own
instance, used her
with penis,
Benglis, in the 1970s,
work
der themes in their performative
expose the masquerade
woman
woman
many
just
She
is still
only
how dangerous was

comments, Benglis
who became
with phallus,
other
women
"that
woman
artists
which should not

as self-producer,
explored transgen-
as a strategy to symbolically invert sexual binarism
the heart of gendered identity.
at
S&M overtones."'
the territory that Benglis defiantly explored in this series of self-portraits. As Jones
woman
but she
cost)
herself doubly tantalizing to
both derogatory and supportiveproved
be seen:
be
The German
photographic self-portrait to create
series
artist
upon
and
to
Katharina Sieverding, for
series
of large-scale, masklike,
solarized images. In Transformer (1973-74), gender boundaries were completely blurred by the artist,
who manipulated photographs
of herself and her partner so that one cannot be distinguished from
the other; the female image intimates the male,
convey the arbitrary division between
any
"roles, repressions
and
other, suggesting that
approached transvestism
individual."' Sieverding
expose
self
and the male the female. The
and
self-extension."
as a
resulting "portraits"
both genders
may be
means of "communication"
that could
"The conquest of another gender," she
explains,
"takes place in oneself."'" Beginning in 1973, the Conceptual artist Eleanor Antin created a
dramatis personae
ic
including
a black ballerina
live, as
well as in a series of videos
Approaching both the objectivity of history and the

used her fictional characters to
Conceptual
artist
comment on
whose obsessional autobi-
and antique-seeming photo albums.
infallibility
of identity as myths to debunk, Antin
the provisional (and gendered) nature of "reality."
Adrian Piper also created transgendered performative personae, which she
deployed during the early 1970s to disrupt cultural stereotypes of both sexual and
1970, she executed a series of
performance works, entitled
racial difference. In
Catalysis; dramatically altering her
by wearing stench-ridden clothes and assuming other codes
170
number of
formerly with Sergey Diaghilev's Ballet Russe, a hero-
nurse from the Crimean War, and a seventeenth-century bearded king
ographies she performed
present in
for the economically
person
downtrodden, she
inserted herself into the social environment to confront the disen-
franchisement of those perceived as other. Then,
five years later,
Piper posed, complete with Afro and moustache, as a streetwise
known
black male
as the
munity and experience
Mythic Being
life
as
order to enter the com-
in
an African American
encing both the liberation she
in the
felt
man
empowered male
experirole
and
the racist fears her presence provoked in the whites around her.
Documented
in a series
of photographic and painted posters,
some
of which utilize comic-strip "bubble" thoughts, one portrait of the
Mythic Being
is
accompanied by the phrase:
you most hate and

thought,
fear."
embody
"I
everything
Another photograph bears the floating
hate you for doing this to me, and myself for allowing
"I
to happen."
In this
it
work, Piper ripped open the gender dichotomy
that preoccupied feminist representation in the 1970s, interjecting
mix
the problem of racial difference into an already inflammatory
of divergent ideologies, sexualities, and class-based issues that has
plagued the modern-day women's movement from
The advent of performance-based
its
inception.
"self-portraiture" in the
1970s anticipated the critical impulse, so popular in the 1990s, to
proclaim
all
identity as performative rather than natural, stable, or
ontologically determined. Fueled by poststructuralism's concept of the decentered subject,
postmod-
ernism's distrust of master narratives, and feminism's skepticism about essentialist ideologies, perfor-
Adrian Piper
Mythic Being: Getting Back
#2,
1975
Courtesy of John Weber Gallery,
mativity has evolved as a significant critical tool today.

Butler's pivotal
work
in the field
identity or locus of agency
has fostered an understanding that gender "is in
from which various
ty tenuously constituted in time
Philosopher and gender theorist Judith
an
"acts" are bodily functions, gestures,
acts proceed."'
no way
Rather, as she explains,
"it is
an identi-
identity instituted through a stylized repetition of acts." These
and movements
image of an immutable gen-
that generate the
dered subjectivity, which adheres to socially and politically determined codes of behavior. This
sionary gendered self
is,
social audience, including the actors themselves,
not, however, just a theatrical convention to
means,
words, that gender identity
in Butler's
be acted out
is
"real
tion of already repetitious acts
own
ciousness of the entire enterprise.
body
it is
art, in
the
clear that artists
performative, which
it is
performed."
which both male and female

is
in turn, their
the artists' carefully crafted photographic

rehearsed,
if
that decade
art criticism.
its
emphasis on time,
trenchant again in the 1990s.
repeti-
artists
that the
much
However, one can
recent
infer
from
mimetic "performativity" of gender was
not foregrounded, in the body art of the 1970s. Perhaps this
with
The
such as Acconci, Benglis, and Wilke could not
impact on
documents
71
struck by the preco-
have predicted the contemporary theorizations of performance that are informing so
and queer thinking and,
Gender
like.
genders as well as that of the other, one
It is
to believe.""
on the self-conscious and subversive
the use of mimicry, parody, and
In thinking through the issues of 1970s
emphatically performed their
at will; rather,
come
only to the extent that
potential for disruption in this delusional system relies
feminist
illu-
according to Butler, just a "constructed identity, a performative accomplish-
ment which the mundane

is
New York
a stable
liminality, shifting identities,
is
why
the art and culture of
and sexuality
has become so
3S
171
Notes
1.
2.
Michael Fried, "Art and Objecthood,"
Artforum
5,
Art
and
critic
no. 10
theorist
des Musees de Marseille, 1996),
Douglas Crimp points
6.
produced throughout the
radical art
which invoked the
that
7.
dencies. Such artistic strategies of the 1970s
included, but were by

real-time systems of
based
no means limited
Hans Haacke; the
Nancy
Holt, Dennis
De Maria,
Oppenheim, and Robert
(Milan:
may have been
that
market
the case during the
for "conceptual
photogra-
phy" has emerged during the past few years

that has proven quite challenging to dealers
1971), p. 39;
and curators
Editore, 1974); Ira
Museum
alike.
Photographs by
such
artists
as
Acconci and Oppenheim were not necessar-
ily
issued in editions, nor were they conceived
were made
of Contemporary Art, 1975), unpaginated; and
on demand
Francois Pluchart, LArt corporeal, exh.
the rare sale, and were usually dated to the
and Rudolf Schwarzkogler;
Nitsch,
social confrontations of
Adrian
Piper and Martha Rosier. See Crimp,
(Paris: Editions
"Pictures," October, no. 8 (spring 1979),
unpaginated.
8.
Reading Position for a Second Degree Burn
Ann
Goldstein and
1965-19/5, exh. cat. (Los Angeles:
Contemporary
MIT
Art;
Anne
"performative
open across
to the
Museum
Oppenheim
his chest, the five-hour
"embodied
to
Oppenheim
means
number
art,"
body
art," for instance.
My
durational
work created
camera from
painted.
9.
The
1919
Gallery in Santa Ana, California.
unpaginated); the photo dated 1921 was taken
(Newport Harbor,
Museum
work can be found
this
Twenty-Year Survey, exh.
10.
Newport Harbor
Calif:
of Art, 1988). Because of
tional character, Shoot
by
in
cat.
sensa-
its
was perhaps the most
Man
arm with
wound. For many, the violence inherent

piece
came
general,
performance
to exemplify
art in
which tended to be associated with
brutality, self-mutilation,
11.
For an examination of performance
masochism,
<>/
see
Kathy O'Dell, Toward a Theory
Performance Art: An Investigation of Its
(I'll. I), diss.,
New
City University of
and Ann Arbor, Mich:
UMI
Sites
York, 1992;
Research Press,
This action
was part of
the
lalleria
iina Pane's perfor-
which was staged
Diagramma,
in
graph from the performance

(
latherine Millet, "L'Espace
an
corps: Le corps expose de
Milan.
is
du
A photo-
reproduced
in
corps," in L'Art
Man Ray a
nos
eds., October:
The
First Decade,
MIT
1976-1986 (Cambridge, Mass.:
Press,
1987), pp. 257-93; originally published in
16.
(fall 1983),
pp. 27-63.
Wall, "'Marks of Indifference'," pp. 248-58.
My
indebted to Wall's pivotal essay on the subject.
it
was during the 1970s that
artist
in the
United States
with his
first
at
17.
ordained into the cult
officially
of the
Dibbets,
Museum
of
Modern
Smithson
their
See Pierre Cabanne, Dialogues with Marcel
and
trans.
Ron Padgett (New
(1796).
Matthew
Lewis's
Her discussion about
feminization of the Jewish male
larly
claims to mimetic truth
its
They did
not, however,
staged or "theatrical" photograph
The
the historiis
particu-
provocative in light of Duchamp's
is
The
one sub-
genre of Conceptual photography.
between the Judeo-
vestments and cross-dressed saints to

as
work from
aesthetic value.
constructing their photographic imagery.
Christian tradition and transvestism, from

liturgical
also utilized the pictorial codes of
turn routinely to performance as a strategy for
York:
p. 64.
literary correlations
as Ian
Huebler,
photojournalism to parody and thus distance
Marjorie Garber has investigated the historical
and
during the 1970s such
Dan Graham, Douglas
is
Gordon Matta-Clark, Ed Ruscha, and
major retrospective
the
Artists active
New York, in 1973, and the Philadelphia

Museum of Art, in 1973-74 (p. 415, note 15).
cal
sentiinentale,
Joan Copjec, Douglas
in
phy's critical relationship to reportage
Monk
mance Azione
whole
ideology of the star system considered in con-
Gothic novels such
1996).
.it
12.
oj that
junction with Duchamp's Tonsure. She also
Viking Press, 1971),
art,
medium
negation
argument here about Conceptual photogra-
Duchamp,
and intemperance.
thought through the psychoanalytic model of
Michelson,
Art,
in this
to the
Art, pp. 374-75, for a brief discussion of the
Duchamp was
graze his
bourgeois, collectible
See Christopher Phillips, "The Judgement Seat
October, no. 22
points out that
marksman merely
led
Crimp, Rosalind Krauss, and Annette
Ray.
Although Burden had apparently requested

that the
autonomous,
virtue of insisting that this
of Photography,"
(in Pluchart, L'Art corporeal,
See O'Dell, Toward a Theory of Performance
infamous performance work of the 1970s.
the bullet, in actuality he suffered a deep
15.
photogra-
to a
by
"unifi-
idea. (Ibid., p. 252.)
that presented to a live audience.
photo was attributed
aes-
its
be undergoing a
a complete acceptance of photog-
might be privileged
specifically for the
pher named Bacci
to
medium. Photoconceptualism
way toward
raphy as art
art
choice of the
Burden's Shoot was staged in the F Space
Chris Burden:
the
and
art,"
used "performance" differentiates ephemeral,
likened allowing his skin
change pigment to the process of being
Documentation of
cation" of the
"body-
ot ways:
"body
moment when
seemed
any further acstheticization or
foreclosing
and sculptural medium has

in a
photography could emerge
withering radical critique apparently aimed at
but
Time-
that involves the
thetic presuppositions
art,"
art,"
codified.
socially as art only at the
word "performative" over the more commonly
save for the expanse of skin covered by the
book.
"body
and
for exhibitions, publications,
time of inception. As Wall succinctly explains:
refer to the corporeal
and "embodied
works," "performance
exposure
from the 1970s
been categorized
reclined
him sunburned
leaving
art
cat.
Stadler, 1975),
in this text as
art,"
as subject, object,
hardcover book
a large,
summer sun
based
of
as "original" objects. Rather, prints
Paradoxically
note on terminology:
these terms are by no
and Cambridge, Mass.:
Press, 1995), p. 189.
on the sand with
Rodolphe
artwork discussed
is
Rorimer, Reconsidering the Object of Art:
172
Conceptual
Hermann
illustrated in
5.
as,
Licht, Bodyworks, exh. cat. (Chicago:
pp. 75-88.
4.
Giampaolo Prearo
While
early 1970s, a
Henry Martin
e storie simili), trans.
or
the Object of Art, pp. 247-67.

14.
corpo come linguaggio (La
//
in,
and Rorimer, Reconsidering
Smithson; the orgiastic theater of GUnter Brus,
and the staged
3.
"Body-art"
Art," in Goldstein
Art," Arts
Magazine 46 (September-October
Lea Vergine,
'"Marks of Indifference':
Aspects of Photography
during the 1970s: Cindy
art
For a detailed examination of photography's
1970s, see Jeff Wall,
discussed in at
is
& Cultural Anxiety (New York:
relationship to Conceptual art during the
documented
Abramovic
Nemser, "Subject-Object Body
task-
Nauman;
the excavations in nature of Walter
It is
four of the major texts dealing with the
emergence of body
the
of Abramovic and Ulay, Vito
activities
Acconci, Chris Burden, and Bruce
ed.,
Marcel Duchamp's Tonsure

least
to:
13.
(Stuttgart: Edition Cantz, 1993), pp. 56-63.
theatrical
involvement with time and bodily ten-
in its
Meschede,
in Friedrich
2,
of Contemporary Art
in Zagreb, Yugoslavia, in 1974.
decade following Fried's "Art and Objecthood"
was precisely
in the Gallery
Cross-Dressing
Routledge, 1992), pp. 224-33.
p. 179.
Abramovic's performance, entitled Rhythm
was staged
out, in his pivotal essay "Pictures," that the
most
(Mac: Galeries contemporaines
jours, exh. cat.
June 1967), pp. 12-23.
18.
A. D. Coleman, "The Directorial Mode: Notes
Toward
a Definition,"
Artforum
15,
(September 1976), pp. 55-61. Wall
Nauman's photographs, such
no.
cites
Bruce
as Failing to
Levitate in the Studio (1966), as an
example of
Conceptual photodocu mentation:
and
com-
remarks regarding religious conversion and
The photographer's
geiuler identification. See the section "Jew,
plex of "studio photography," was the antithesis
Woman, Homosexual,"
against which the aesthetics of reportage were
in the
chapter
"Religious Habits," in Garber, Vested Interests:
elaborated.
studio,
Nauman
the generic
changes the terms. Working
within the experimental framework of what was
23.
art,"
Christophe
the self-con-
is
modern
"'Marks of
19.
who have moved "beyond"

new
fine arts into the
hybridities.
included
Indifference'," p. 254.)
became
United States
in the
in 1965,
one of the leading mediums

involved with bodv art and
of the
late
1960s and
early. 1970s, see
John G. Hanhardt, "Beyond
Illusion:
Film and Video Art, 196S-75,"

Sculpture: 1965-75, exh. cat.
New

Hanhardt claims
The
in
Andrew
L'p to
and Including Her
Contemporary
Art, 1996), with essays
Cameron, David Levi

Stiles.
The same holds
true for the 1980s and 1990s,
29.
See Lucy Lippard, "The Pains and Pleasures of
and American Women's
Rebirth: European
Michael lackson, and George Michael, have
Body
been embraced by the music industry. Even
Feminist Essays on Women's Art
"heavy metal" bands, which caricature tropes
E. P.
From
Art," in Lippard,
the Center:
America
personae
lished in Art in
hair,
pp. 73-81. Lippard points out:
Nauman
skintight clothing,
all
body
articulated the
in their art-
Camp,"
For a theoretical analysis of video

etiological"
mode
a*,
"ps)
Rosalind Krauss, "Video:
The
1
in
No
Ross,
Popular Culture
of reproduction, see
Narcissism," October, no.
and platform
heels. This
and
Respect: Intellectuals
New
chance
Aesthetics of
25.
patronizingly
Avalanche
women working
(fall
1970
pp. 14-17. Describing
1,
what he christened "body work," Sharp writes:

Variously called actions, events, performances,
medium through
pieces, things, the
body (ego)
posits the
as the critical third
term
ties,
It is
important
to note,
however, that
the artists discussed in this essay

still
work)
mance
in
art"
many
of
artist's
worked (and
and performative self-representa-
ings
on
liberation
ticular, his Eros
enced
art
Herbert Marcuse's writ-
and desublimation
and
its
1960s
New
York: Harper
&
and
the
to the
of
body
ticularly in discussions
Flaming Creatures
art.
Rubble, and 'Secret
Flix":
all
in
less
common
Drag Queens,
work
into
investigation of the
Superstars:
Avant-Garde, Mass Culture and Cay Identities
on body
two
Underground Cinema
investigation of the
33.
body
as a closed
body
as
it
in
Feminist Art
et al., eds.,
(Ann Arbor, Mich.:
Mira Schor discusses
UMI
Research
its
interacts with
and the penis

can only play
role as veiled." Historical representations of
nude were conceptualized or
ideal-
ized through geometric canons of proportion:
"Man
the measure of
is
Rather,
system to
around the Lacanian
fact that the "the phallus
or
all
things."
But the
vis-
the penis was rarely privileged.
its
"lack"
was rendered
in
image
after
women as goddesses, nymphs,

prostitutes. And if woman's "lack" (of the
image of nude
change, or the
phe-
this representational
as revolving
distinction between the phallus
ibility ot
art,
categories: the
effect physical or psychological
as phallus,
Erotic Art," in Arlene Raven,
the male
follows Sharp's formal approach,
dividing the
in
Modern
p. 17.
Duncan, "The Aesthetics of Power
see Carol
nomenon
of Process and Earth
In a subsequent article
Nemser
lack Smith's Avant-
Garde against the Lucky Landlord Empire,"
Press, 1988), p. 62.
Sharp employs
vocabulary that was more or
chapter "Drag,
June 1978), pp. 236-47.
For an analysis ot the paint brush
pho-
parlance in art-critical circles of the 1970s, par-
in the
Art History
and the
art,
Female
32.
public
appeared
Politic:
Artists Since 1970,"
Sharp, "Body Works,"
exe-
and other media,
art" first
faces, (p. 123)
Women
Criticism
See Juan A. Suarez's discussion of lack Smith's
in the 1960s
is
lasciviously) of
Sexuality and
Cassandra Langer,
26. In his analysis of
1989),
world
in the art
31.
object
the Art Index in 1971.
pp. 12-13, 61-62.
Suarez, Bike Boys,
and
object
and
"The Body
works are mostly communicated
The category "body
association with
Row,
The
with strong immediacy of impact, (p. 14)
the counterculture, see Maurice Berger,
little
with their own, preferably
cuted in the privacy ot the studio. Individual
tographs, films, videotapes
(in par-
Labyrinths: Robert Morris, Minimalism,
the subject
through the strong visual language
Civilization, 1955) influ-
of the 1960s and
is
of the action. Generally the performance
tion tor the camera.
how
body becomes both the subject and
of the work. The artist
both publicly staged "perfor-
For an analysis of
ordinary bodily functions and other usual

of physicality.
and perhaps
attractive, bodies
30. Lisa Tickner,
works present physical activi-
and unusual manifestations
between camera and monitor.
has
still
market main-
women's participation
thetic to
See Willoughby Sharp, "Bodv Works,"
video's use by artists, Krauss's text reads the
psychoanalytic model and
into the
as equal competitors, has approved (if rather
50-64. Written in the relatively early years ot
it
stream, while the male establishment, unsympa-
p. 164.
(spring 1976), pp.
making
of
(May-June),
64, no. 3
made by women
"Neutral" art
is
pointed out bv Andrew Ross in "Uses of
a space conceived specifically for
(New York:
Dutton, 1976), pp. 121-38; originally pub-
with layers ot heavv makeup, teased
that artists such as
by Dan
and Kristine
Strauss,
during which performers such as Boy George,
Art, 1990),
Limits,
(New York: New Museum of
exh. cat.
American
the video camera.
22.
Schneemann:
New Y'ork
of masculinity, construct their stage
works within
21.
career, see the recently published Carolee
Acconci, Lynda Benglis, loan Jonas, and
pp. 29-39.
20.
America 1970-1980
in
Sew
York:
Moira Roth,
see
Women and
long-awaited examination of Schneemann's
Warhol.
24.
more
(Los Angeles: Astro Artz, 1983). Also, for a
Gockettes, Brian
Dolls, Luigi Ontani, Walter Pfeiffer,
The Amazing Decade:
Performance Art
in
Sherwood, Katharina Sieverding, and Andy
documentation.
as sources for the
America.
For an overview and detailed chronology of
ed.,
Marco, Werner
Liithi,
in
women's performance work,
musicians: David
The
Alex Meyer, Pierre Molinier, the
For a discussion of video's role in American

art
Castelli,
Eno, Mick Jagger, Urs
video
for artists
its
artists as well as
Bowie, Luciano
"new perceptual instrument" and
28.
organized the exhi-
Kunstmuseum Luzern,
body work
recent
Switzerland. Participants in the exhibition
After the portable videotape recorder was
introduced
on curator Jean-
Ammann, who
1974, tor the
the
Wall,
Beuys and Yves Klein
and
during
bition "Transformer": Aspekte der Travestie, in
scious, self-centered "play" taking place in the
studios of artists
transvestite rock
in the visual arts
the 1970s was not lost
he carries out photographic acts of
reportage whose subject matter
The analogy between

gender performance
beginning at the time to be called "performance
penis/phallus)
is
foregrounded, then man's
is
hidden, even forgotten. Thus, the phallus, as
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996),
various aspects of the empirical world as
power, language, and law,
pp. 181-213. Suarez points out that other films
sculptural material or tool; see Nemser,
Schor, "Representations of the Penis,"
"Subject-Object Body Art," pp. 38-42.
M/E/A/N/I/N/G, no. 4 (November
There were also a number of European male
pp. 35. Jacques Lacan's quote
is
"The Meaning of the Phallus"
(1958), cited in
of the time, such as Kenneth Anger's Scorpio

Rising (1964), Barbara Rubin's Christmas on
Earth (1963), and Carolee Schneemann's Fuses

(1967),
were censored for sexual explicitness,
but none received the
by
official
condemnation
congressional hearing conferred
Flaming Creatures.
upon
27.
artists
working with the body during the 1960s
who were
not mentioned in Sharp's
such as the Viennese Aktion

text
is
artists.
article,
While
his
oriented specifically to work by
American
artists,
Sharp does
refer to Joseph
Juliet
is
his to claim. See
1988),
from
Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose, eds.,
Feminine Sexuality: Jacques Lacan and the

frcudicnnc, trans. Jacqueline Rose
W W. Norton,
(New
ecole
York:
1982), p. 82.
3}
173
34-
Acconci, quoted in "Excerpts from Tapes with

Liza Bear" (interview), Avalanche 6
tall
This special issue of Avalanche
p. 71.
In ,\n
devoted to Acconci's work.

35.
Ibid., p. 72.
36.
Interview with Bruce Barber, dated January
would
37.
gender
Critical
Garber, Vested
The phrase
social interaction
1969-1975 (M.A. thesis, University of
in
Washington, 1990), pp. 104-05.
Goddesses: Feminist Performance Art of the
43.
Amelia (ones, "Dis/playing the Phallus: Male
ing the appropriate dramatic role. In 1972,
History
could be related
And
on
breaking work, which
draw
remainder of
tion, for
metaphor
theatrical
ling
is
he
all
talks
done
Acconci
about people
book The Presentation
(New
Max
Everyday
of Self in
(November
no. 3
it
pulling at
attempt
making
it,
to
The breast
it
is
my
(fall
develop ease
era
I'm
walking
up
lo
to the
in that
my new
an attempt
to
(static
font
of
it
it
Gallery, in
controversy. Although
cam-
or Tin
forced to
handle, control, personal informa-
Retrospective: 1969-1980, exh. cat. (Chicago:

p. 15.
Schor completely dismisses Acconci's

1
onversions as a display of narcissistic male
all signs oj
maleness:
first
the hairs off his breasts, then the penis from Ids
body. Hut he bus a penis
place
in a
and must put n some
disappeared woman. So the phallus
reinscribes itself over the erased/lai king
even us die penis
is
woman,
hidden, us usual. (Schor,
"Representations of the Penis,"
p. 8.
seems
garter
do what she
it
may
be
own
will
(March
with them, bul

ol
the significance of
feminism's militant
a right
a subtle
women
for sex-
women
to
(Lippard, "Pains and
p. 159.
and was the
self-portrait"
is
originally given to her
title
tographs shown
at the
Wilke's
pho-
Washington Project
for
the Arts in 1979. She continued to use the term

to "credit the
many
people
who
assisted her in
her self-portraits, her performances, and other
conceptual works
Acconci mas-
in
which she posed and
Quoted from Thomas H.
directed herself."
Hannah
Wilke:
Retrospective,
exh. cat. (Columbia: University of Missouri
in
She argues that feminism's
Press, 1989), p. 167.

55.
[ones, "Postfeminism," p. 32.
was held on June
codes associated with
15,
1976.
was included was part
effectively dismissed
call to
is
The term "performalist
did not involve any
women's
11
54.
her study of women's performance art from
male visual pleasure
and body has
face
Schneider, "After Us the Savage Goddesses,"
Kochheiser, ed.,
1970s.
but the
53.
caused great
examines the issue of visual pleasure
Pleasures ot Rebirth," pp. 124-25.)
1971),
beyond the
false floor,
insult.
belts,
and coy come-
to get the last laugh.
abyss that separates men's use
walking above him.
and
a personal lack of
to
in black stockings,
using her
expose that
on Duchamp
art that involved
for
disown representa-
tions oi bodily desire in Laura Mulvey's
away
to
it).
the performance of the body. She situates
empowerment:
//c seeks to strip
to talk to
turbated while fantasizing about the visitors
refusal to perpetuate the
Judith Russi Kirchner, Vito Acconci:
of Contemporary Art, 1980),
woman
of its
daily activity for the duration of the
show: hidden under a
47. Jones
must admit
artist rarely
gender transference, the piece entailed the

artist's
to
it
Quoted
Museum
self-
to
necessarily complicated by social
hither glances. Parody
to
words
Avalanche 6
New York,
the 1960s
life
is
photographed
infamous perfor-
tion. (Ibid., p. 28.)
in
my
own
approach
artist's
ual titillation from women's use ol
scope of this essay, for

.
A woman
boots, with bare breasts, bananas,
mance/installation Seedbed (1972) at the
Tin
piny
my performance depends on
away from
it
camera
in
this text, see
body's
Cindy Nemser, "An Interview with Vito
critical
my new conditions
appearance
one position
in
has a
enough away from me
46. In particular, Acconci's
Acconci writes:
m my appearance,
using one's
ol
sympathy with women who have themselves
1972), p. 57.
Sonnabend
lime to persist
(it
pp. 21-23.
an
my
me
Acconci," Arts Magazine 45, no.
supple, flexible
body, adapting myself to

neeil
far
to
burning
develop a female breast. {Avalanche
this section,
world:
its
herselj
stereotypes.
toy houses, toy
by side with them
side
p. 157.
in 1974:
exploitation.
my penis
smoothness. I'm talking
color,
Politics
and women have not always avoided
body,
in
Diamond,
in II in
Lippard expressed her concern with this
dilemma
turn on
two turn my
am
breast,
Extending the sex change: exercising
45.
1972], p. 26.)
About
it functions
it:
my words are addressed

it's
52.
states:
can dress
scaled to
For the entirety of
hairless:
Acconci
myselj in
can throw myself into
own,
1975), p. 37.
action, Acconci describes his efforts:
the hairs.
is
Staged, Uneasily, Across
There are ways and ways
are addressed to the penis
published with photographs of the
I'm lopping the candle at
the space
draped with
Life
"Pygmalion Reversed," Artformn
Kozloff,
(New
artists in
the Savage
Lis
Performance and Cultural
ed.,
throughout the
work with
to
I'm dividing
animals
p. 71.)
York: Doubleday, 1959).
39. In a text
[fall
here
set-
referring to Goffman's influential
is
by male
cited
this piece,
have only myselj
myself
is
penis into another person.
kind of
in a
up "performance areas" when they meet.
("Tapes with Liza Bear,"
14,
Erving Goffman's work on interac-
example, which
My
1994), p. 566.
this essay.
about
44. Writing
range from
pieces,
concrete methodology to getieral systems people,

sociologists:
(December
no. 4
Body
Modernist Dreamscapes,"
the 1970s are indebted to Jones's ground-
to actor's rehearsal techniques.
at least for notes
from,
17,
Rebecca Schneider, "After
Explicit
Perform Their Masculinities," Art
ideas about performative art
that a lot of my stuff
obvious why. But the sources
it's
11.
who
Artists
me
Interests, p.
Theresa de Lauretis's, quoted
is
was
with protagonists and antagonists each adopt-
recently occurred to
Munich:
1994). P- 35-
51.
of Erving Goffman,
cat.
49. Ibid.
50.
It's
174
See Brunsman,
in Jiirgen
Goetz; and Stuttgart: Cantz Verlag
Narcissism in his Tody and Performance Works:
Acconci stated:
42.
Sammlung
toward increasing interaction with
identity."
Baker and Harrison,
Klauke/Cindy Sherman, exh.
Study of Vito Acconci and the Psychology of
premised on the paradigm of performance,
41.
character of his work, indicating an interest
all
Klauke
Jiirgen
trans.
Early on, Acconci acknowledged the theatrical
in the writings
40.
Quoted from an interview with
the "mirror-stage," suggesting that Acconci
an Other and ultimately to the development ot
with me.
proposed that
38.
48.
by Peter Weibel, "Self-Identity and Otherness,"
that leads
thank Bruce Barber for sharing
like to
this material
1994), pp. 16-41 (hereafter referred to as
"Postfeminism").
all
Conversions (Parts I-III) through the model of
was enacting the "metaphorical castration
7,
unpublished manuscript, unpaginated.
1977,
Laura A.
thesis,
Lacanian reading of
for a
of Acconci's early performance work. She reads
entirely
is
unpublished M.A.
Brunsman argues
1972),
German
The performance
The
film in
which
it
ol a larger film project
titled C'est la Vie Rrose,
directed
television by Hans-Christof
Sten/el.
56.
Lippard expresses her concern over the
criti-
highly influential article from 197s, "Visual
cism wielded against Wilke, while also manag-
Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." See Jones,
ing to criticize the artist as well:
"Postfeminism, feminist Pleasures, and
Embodied Theories
with
Frueh, Cassandra
Raven,
eds.,
New
Identity, Action
ol Art," in
1
Joanna
anger, and Arlene
Feminist Criticism, Art,
New
York: HarperCollins:
must say that
tion
less
and become
criticism,
10
admire
the courage of
women
than beautiful bodies who defy convenparticularly vulnerable to cruel
although those
women who do happen
be physically well-endowed probably
come
in
more punishment
for
Hannah
right
Wilke, a
who
ered a
in the long run.
glamor
sees her art as "seduction,"
good
too
little
61.
life.
Masheck, and Annette Michelson. For the
Since the women's movement.
has begun
she
to
do performances
tion with her sculpture, but her
her roles as beautiful
and
own
woman and
contusion
artist, as flirt
and Pleasures
level (Lippard, "Pains
63.
kind of
his
writing
critical
Granted, Lippard
the double standard
65.
p. 125)
good exam-
is
embodied
Mythic Being
that Acconci's self-
woman
considered
artist are
was
acts of narcissism, but she
67.
of
Lynda Benglis's
advertisements can be found
of'
Krane, Lynda Benglis: Dual Natures,

Atlanta:
58.
Museum
High
p. 128.
You
Her) (1974-75), see Jane

S.
Sims, Adrian Piper:
Museum,
New
York:
1987).
See Flin Diamond's "Introduction," in

(
ritical
Theory,
pp. 4-5, for a discussion of performativit) as a
and reproductions
Details
series
Lippard,
of the ten-part series The
Diamond, Performance and
selective in
what she would approve.

57.
in
Reflections 1967-1987, exh. cat.
Alternative
artist in
1996.
2,
Farver and Lowery
does point out
no. 4
author on
Katharina Sieverding, quoted
66. For a description
indulgent antics are considered art while those
by an attractive
was provided by the
his explanation
"Pains and Pleasures of Rebirth,"
ple ot Feminism's discomfort with

art.
November
artistic
3,
lones, "Postfeminism," p. 34.
64.
Rebirth," pp. 125-26.)

I
A Case of Sexual
p. 7-
a conversation with the
ot
text
see
it,
pp. 59-60, note 9s.
Nemser, "Lynda Benglis
winter 19-4-75),
that exposed her to
on a personal as well as on an
criticism
commentary about
Nostalgia," The Feminist Art journal
ol
feminist, has resulted at times in politically
ambiguous manifestations
ibid.,
62.
conjunc-
in
Lawrence Alloway,
editors were
Kozloff, Rosalind Krauss, loseph
of the letter and
flaunts
her body in parody of the role she actually plays

in real
The Artforum
Max
own
consid-
is
when she
be true
to
her
[sic] girl in
"crucial critical trope" at the 199ns.
Susan
in
68. ludith Butler,
Constitution:
exit. cat.
"Performative Acts and Gender
An
Essay in
Feminist Theory,"
of Art, 1991 )
in
Phenomenologv and
Sue-Ellen Case, ed.,
pp. 39-46.
Performing Feminisms: Feminist Critical Theory
Benglis produced this image in dialogue with
and Theatre Baltimore: lohns Hopkins
Robert Morris,
who was
her lover
should, therefore, be read
It
made on
self-portrait poster
one-person exhibition,
Sonnabend
in
the time.
the Castelli-
present and
71.
surrogate tor the penis
itself.
New
York: Routledge, 1990
1.
and Gender
onstitution," p. 270.
Ibid., p. 278.
E\ er
always veiled, the phallus asserts
here within acceptable visual codes, for
the
<
Morris's greased and muscular torso
appears as
is
See also Butler,
-o. Ibid., p. 271.
spiked dog collar, heavy chains, and milium
itself
of Identity
69. Butler, "Performative Acts
York. Clad in the
p. 270.
Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion
the occasion of a
vestments associated with S/M sexuality
helmet
University Press, 1990),
concert with his
in 1974, at
New
Gallery, in
at
man who
invokes
it
For further details
it.
of the Morris-Benglis collaboration, see

ibid., p. 42.
p. 40.
its
Morris's poster
For a discussion ot
is
this
reproduced on
image and
relation to the veiled phallus, see Schor,
"Representations of the Penis,"
"Postfeminism,"
59.
p. 9;
and Jones,
p. 34.
lones, "Postfeminism," p. 33.
comments on
60. Benglis
the "hermaphroditic"
character of the image:

/
was alluding
something: mocking art and
to
the sexual "hype" advertising.

to
mock
male
either a
My
intention
the idea of haying to take sides
involved with
artist or a female.
how
to
was
be
was
could mock both sexes. The
idea of the hermaphrodite
is
ideal because then
you employ and embody without contradicting.
The condition
embody
state. I
is
a contradiction in
itself.
You
the perfect condition in a neither/nor
had
to take
glasses because to
a mocking stance with the
me
it's
an impersonal
state
not to reveal anything. (Quoted in Krane,
Lynda
Benglis, p. 42.)
175
Delia Grace
Jat k's
Back, 1994
Gelatin silver print, 24 x 20 inches (61 x 50.8

(
176
ourtesy of the
artist
cm)
JUDITH HALBERSTAM
Bathrooms, Butches, and the Aesthetics of Female Masculinity
Recently,
on
my way to
need
airport. Feeling the

I
give a talk in Minneapolis,
had
to
make
to use the facilities, to freshen up, to relieve myself,
strode purposefully into the
women's bathroom. No sooner had
was knocking on the door: "Open up, security here!" As soon

their error,
again,
mumbled
On
security.
that
same
Needless to
port,
and took
apologies,
had been mistaken
trip,
where people are
man
for a
in Denver's
new
literally
as
at
Chicago's O'Hare
and other euphemisms,
entered the
stall
spoke, the two guards realized
some woman
airport, the
what
(fearing
bathrooms
is
in
ways that cause them to want
many androgynous
room
masculine women. Indeed,
so frequent that one wonders whether the category
used to designate public functions
no accident
It is
that travel
is
and
tion, "You're in the
gender seems
at
and brings us
of
all
is
up
participants aware of otherwise invisible gender standards
against the laws that bind
really says
two
women
to femininity.
different things. First,
it
odds with your sex (your apparent masculinity or androgyny

it
"woman" when
merely an intensified version of a larger "bathroom prob-
all its
wrong bathroom,"
supposed femaleness); second,
suggests that single-gender
bathrooms
The frequency with which

suggests that a large
announces that your

is
at
odds with your
are only for those
and others
know
are mistaken for
number of feminine women spend
a large
men
in public
in
who
fit
more
likely to
become
bathrooms
amount of time and energy
masculine women. Something very different happens, of course, in the men's public
is
The accusa-
one category (male) or the other (female).
clearly into
space
or
hubs become zones of intense scrutiny and observation. But gen-
The bathroom problem makes
their violation
in the lives
completely outmoded.'
der policing within airport bathrooms

lem."
occurrence
to
However, having one's gender
challenged in the women's rest

it is
called
intensified in the realm of the air-
as they traverse others (state).
a frequent
had
exactly?)
same sequence of events was repeated.
moving through space and time
is
than someone
understood immediately what had happened. Once
or a boy, and
some boundaries (gender) even
stabilize
off.
the policing of gender within
say,
connection
policing
toilet,
where the
a sexual cruising zone than a site for gender repression. Lee
Edelman,
an essay about the interpenetration of nationalism and sexuality, argues that "the institutional
men's
room
charge."'
constitutes a site at
Noting the significance of the juxtaposition of public urinals with private
comments: "Indeed, the

that
which the zones of public and private cross with a
would
still
effort to provide a space of privacy interior to the
in other
stalls,
men's room
Edelman
itself,
a space
be subject to some degree of public regulation and control, had encouraged by 1964
the increasing popularity of the coin-operated toilet
room,
distinctive psychic
stall
within the public washroom." The men's
words, constitutes both an architecture of surveillance and an incitement to desire, a
space of potential homosocial interaction and homoerotic interaction.

*.
i~
may
Sex-segregated bathrooms
also
produce and extend
society.
The bathroom
or a parody of
it,
outdated notion of a public/private
a rather
is
women from
be necessary to protect
domestic space beyond the
home
between male and female
split
comes
that
male predations, but they
to represent
out in the world. The women's bathroom accordingly becomes a sanctuary of
room"
which one
powder
enhanced femininity,
a "little-girl's
The men's bathroom
signifies as the extension of the public nature of masculinity
to
retreats to
one's nose or fix one's hair.
domestic even though the names given to the sexual space of the bathroom
"tearoom"
suggest
bathroom
are primarily gender codes; in the men's
it is
such
room
Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing
home
on the pro-
take
the liminality of the
bathroom
and females," and she observes that the
room
rest
is
both female-to-male (FTM) and male-to-female (MTF) cross-dressers and

the men's
room
FTM
represents the
most severe
test
cultural paranoia of being caught in the ultimately
same
place,
depends
for cross-
a "potential Waterloo" for
For the
transsexuals.''
of his ability to pass, and advice frequently
communities about how to go unnoticed
pleasure of 'passing' in that
in
& Cultural Anxiety in a chapter on the perils and privileges of cross-
Garber discusses the very different modes of passing and cross-dressing
identified genetic males
culates within
as "cottage" or
they are sexual codes. Private gender versus
comments upon
portions of a gender factory. Marjorie Garber
dressing. Here,
precisely not
it is
parody of the domestic. The codes that dominate within the women's
public sex, discretely repressive versus openly sexual, bathrooms beyond the
FTM,
domestic order,
wrong
in part
in
place,
cir-
male-only spaces. Garber notes: "The
which may be inseparable from the
on the same
cultural binarism, the idea that
gender categories are sufficiently uncomplicated to permit self-assortment into one of the two
'rooms' without deconstructive reading."
not) that the perils for passing
MTFs
in the
women's room.
nized because
men
other hand,
caught, the
him, and
if
it is
On
will
it is
worth pointing out here
men's
the one hand, the
room
FTM
FTM may face some

and
only because Garber does
(if
from the
are very different

in the
are not quite as vigilant about intruders as
men's room
women,
for
is
FTM
likely to
version of gender panic from the
fear violence in the
of passing
perils
be
less scruti-
On
obvious reasons.
wake of such
be more scrutinized in the women's room but possibly
caught. Because the
over his head,
It is
in the
quite reasonable to expect
by comparison,
if
FTMs
man who
a discovery.
less
open
the
discovers
The MTF,
punishment
to
ventures into male territory with the potential threat of violence hanging
crucial to recognize that the
machinery of gender segregation and
is
bathroom problem
is
much more
than
a glitch in the
better described in terms of the violent enforcement of our
current gender system.

Garber's reading of the perilous risks of using rest
out of her introductory discussion of what Jacques Lacan

recall,
calls
for
both
FTMs and MTFs
develops
we may
"urinary segregation."" Lacan,
uses the term to describe the relations between identities and signifiers, choosing the simple
diagram of the rest-room signs "Ladies" and "Gentlemen"

ual difference,
primacy
naming confers
is
to
show
granted to the signifier over that which
rather than reflects meaning. In the
ates the very functionality of the categories
and
rooms
it
that,
within the production of sex-
signifies; in
more simple
terms,
same way, the system of urinary segregation
"men" and "women." While rest-room
ratify distinctions that already exist, in actual fact these
signs
seem
cre-
to serve
markers produce identifications within
these constructed categories. Garber latches onto the notion of urinary segregation because
it
helps
her to describe the processes of cultural binarism within the production of gender; for Garber, transvestites
and transsexuals challenge
and "Gentlemen." Garber uses the
178
this
system by resisting the
figures of the transvestite
literal
translation of the signs "Ladies"
and the transsexual
to
show
the obvious
and gaps
flaws
binary gender system; the transvestite as interloper creates, for Garber, a "third
in a
space of possibility" within which
become
binaries
all
unstable." Unfortunately, as in
attempts to
all
break a binary by producing a third term, Garber's third space tends to stabilize the other two.
Edelman
uses Lacan's diagram to

desire
term "urinary segregation"
also turns to Lacan's
and about the
difference.'"
mark
heterosexual anxiety "about the potential inscriptions of homosexual
knowing or recognizing whatever might
possibility of
While for Garber,
the transvestite
it is
"Ladies" and "Gentlemen," for Edelman,
it is
who marks
the passing
of these various destabilizing performances. As
drama of the men's room avoids
the
am
constitute 'homosexual
the instability of the markers
homosexual who does
Both Garber and Edelman, interestingly enough, seem to
the
of the "tearoom," but he
in his discussion
fix
upon
so.
room
the men's
as the site
arguing here, however, focusing exclusively on
much more
complicated theater of the women's room.
Garber writes of urinary segregation: "For transvestites and transsexuals, the 'men's room' problem
really a challenge to the
way
in
which such cultural binarism
is
read.""
She goes on to
list
some
is
cine-
matic examples of the perils of urinary segregation, discussing scenes from Tootsie (Sydney Pollack,
Cabaret (Bob Fosse, 1972), and Female Impersonator Pageant (1975). Garber's examples are odd
1982),
illustrations of "the
men's-room problem"
demonstrates gender policing
in the
women's room.
"In fact, the urinal has appeared in a
or studied
only because
room while
der policing happens in the men's
'difference'
if
indifference."
the
Garber makes
Also,
women's room
number of fairly
IJ
one of her examples,
at least
sound
as if vigorous gen-
more benign
is
it
Tootsie,
zone. She notes,
recent films as a marker of the ultimate
Obviously, Garber
is
drawing
a parallel here
between the con-
ventions of gender attribution within which the penis marks the "ultimate difference"; however, by
not moving beyond this remarkably predictable description of gender differentiation, she overlooks
the
main
in the
distinction between gender policing in the men's
women's room, not only the
men
the men's room, biological
(as
fifth, sixth,
opposed
to the
but
are rarely
third space of possibility occupied
fourth,
MTF
all
room and
in the
women's room. Namely,
gender-ambiguous females are scrutinized, while
deemed out of place. Garber's
insistence that there
is
in
by the transvestite closes down the possibility that there may be a
or one-hundredth space beyond the binary. In
"men's-room problem") indicates
fact,
a multiplicity of
the
"women's-room problem"
gender displays even within the
supposedly stable category of "woman."
What
gender, then, are the hundreds of people born female
female in the women's room?
we not begun
answer
this
as a society
to
count and
And
name
question in two ways:
we
are
committed
since so
many women
who
clearly fail the
women's-room
the genders that are clearly emerging at this time?
On
the one hand,
we do not name and
to maintaining a binary gender system.
also say that the failure of "male"
are consistently not read as
and "female"
to exhaust the field of
On
notice
and female, the categories gain power and currency.
why
have
One could
new
genders because
the other hand,
we could
gender variation actually
ensures the continued dominance of these terms. Precisely because virtually

tions of male
test,
Finally, as
nobody
I
fits
the defini-
suggested in relation to
Garber's arguments about transvestism, "thirdness" merely balances the binary system and, further-
more, tends to homogenize

It is
many
remarkably easy in
parison, to not look like a
different gender variations
this society to
not look
why
is
woman;
it is
relatively difficult,
man. So another question posed by the bathroom problem might
makes femininity so approximate and masculinity so

spin,
like a
under the banner of "other."
precise?
Or
by combe,
what
to pose the question with a different
femininity easily impersonated or performed while masculinity seems resistant to imita-
".
179
tion?
Of course,
opposite:
this
Why is
it,
formulation does not easily hold and, indeed, quickly collapses into the exact
in the case of the
masculine
woman
bathroom, that one finds the
in the
femininity so quickly while the limits of masculinity in the men's
We
might tackle these questions by thinking about the
room seem
effects, social
fairly
and
limits of
expansive?
cultural, of reversing
gender typing. In other words, what are the implications of male femininity and female masculinity?
Male Body," Susan Bordo laments
In "Reading the
"when masculinity
that
gets symbolically 'undone'
in this culture, the deconstruction nearly always lands us in the territory of the degraded, while
femininity gets symbolically undone, the result
terms of gender
irreversibility slightly; here
male masculinity while
sullies
example proves that
this
is
not
all
is
an immense elevation
Bordo seems
changes the
in status."" This
to suggest that even a hint of the feminine
masculinizations of femaleness are elevating.
so.)
when
think
(I
my bathroom
Her examples of elevated masculine females include the heroines
of Thelma and Louise (Ridley Scott, 1991), Linda Hamilton in The Terminator (James Cameron, 1984),
and Sigourney Weaver
in Aliens (Ridley Scott, 1986).
performances of female masculinity quite tame
is
It is
not
their resolute heterosexuality.
female masculinity conjoins with possibly queer identities,

is
difficult to see that
important when thinking about gender variations
like
it is
far less likely to
what renders these
When and where

meet with approval.
male femininity and female masculinity not
simply to create another binary. In Bordo's reading, masculinity everywhere and always
power; in alternative models of gender variation, female masculinity

female femininity nor
a female version of
is it
It
is
signifies
not simply the opposite of
male masculinity. Rather,
as
we
some of the
shall see in
artwork and gender performances discussed below, very often the unholy union of femaleness and
masculinity produces wildly unpredictable results.
AU
J
<
/<\,
Many theorists
have observed that gender
by which gender
is
is
one
a technology,
that
works
rendered natural. In other words, the apparent "givenness" of gender
nology, and while femininity often manifests as technical effect or simply as
draws
its
Monique
power from
its
seeming
Wittig, writes in
to be 'sexed'; to be 'sexed'
stability
and organic
is
always a
way of becoming
artificial,
qualities. Judith Butler, for
Gender Trouble: Feminism and
system participate in the form of the universal person."
14
and
The systems
relative,
is its
tech-
masculinity
example, following
the Subversion of Identity:
particular
mechanisms
to obscure the
"To be male
and males within
is
not
this
that sustain the conflation of
maleness and universality are various, of course, but can generally be described as compulsory heterosexuality within capitalism. While Garber, as
binarism of gender
is
either thirdness or the Utopian
mances within parodic
and
yet,
resisted. Butler,
ungendered space, arguing
repetition. In a project
sense to go with Wittig's
bility";
saw, feels that the only
way out of the
cultural
to valorize a disruptive third term, Wittig believes that the very categories
"man" and "woman" must be refused and
make
we
call for
on
on the other hand,
refuses to invest in
for the proliferation of
gender perfor-
alternative masculinities, such as mine,
all
does not
the abolition of gender or with Garber's "third space of possi-
while the notion of parodic performance as theorized in Gender Trouble
obvious starting point for
it
attempts to cast masculinities without men,
we need
may be
more
the
descriptive
account than Butler's of the places within representation where corporeality and performance conspire to
i8o
produce masculinity with
a difference.
One might
begin by pointing out that
it is
relatively
simple to expose the mechanisms of even
dominant male masculinity; indeed, the most masculinist of

does so
all
the time. For example,
we could look
film genres, the action-adventure film,
most recent James Bond
to the
film,
Goldeneye
(Martin Campbell, 1995), for a representation of the technology of masculinity. In Goldeneye,

battles the usual array of
femme
type.
He
bad guys: Commies, Nazis, mercenaries, and a superaggressive, violent
puts on his usual performance of debonair action-adventure hero and has his usual
supply of gadgetry to aid him
and so on. But there

line
tises
a retractable belt, a
is
a noticeably
for being a misogynist
and
a sexist.
charms
bad
suits
and
lots
little if
Bond
woman who
flick,
calls
namely, credible mascu-
Bond
dinosaur and chas-
him of sexual
His secretary, Miss Moneypenny, accuses

calls
him
of sexual innuendo
gadgets. Masculinity, in this rather actionless film,
other action films, has
disguised as a pen, a laser-weapon watch,
in this latest
butch older
harassment, his male buddy betrays him and

for his
bomb
something curiously lacking
is
power. Bond's boss, M,
him
Bond
is
dupe, and, ultimately,
which seem
as old
women seem
and
as ineffective as his
primarily prosthetic and, in
anything to do with biological maleness.
and countless
it
signifies
It
not to go
more
often as a
M who most convincingly performs masculinity, and she

does so partly by exposing the sham of Bond's own performance.
M who convinces us that sextechnical special effect. In Goldeneye,
it is
It is
ism and misogyny are not necessarily part and parcel of masculinity even though historically
become
difficult, if
embody an extreme
find that excessive masculinity turns into a
gender
to manifest as natural
ly
itself,
is
the action
flick,
campy and almost queeny
agent
as a perfect
It is
who
no accident
Bond
it
extends his masculinity. So, in Goldeneye,
his
up
to pick
brand-new
that the science nerd
his
newest
accessories
is
called
set
of gadgets, a
and demonstrates each
Agent Q.
and the female masculinity of
We
might read
is
indeed an
M provide a remarkable representation of the
upon minority
masculinities.
Minority masculinities and femininities destabilize binary gender systems in
fy as
embodiment but
exposes the workings of dominant heterosexual masculinity. The gay
absolute dependence of dominant masculinities
locations.
we
emphasis on prosthetic extension, actual-
model of the interpenetration of queer and dominant regimes.
queer subject
masculinity of Agent
as
its
which Bond goes
science nerd gives
one with great enthusiasm.
with
linked not only to a profoundly unnatural form of masculine
also to gay masculinities. In the scene in
Agent
version of normative masculinity, but, instead,
parody or exposure of the norm. Since masculinity tends
undermines the heterosexuality of the hero even
Bond's masculinity
women. The
not impossible, to separate masculinity from the oppression of
action-adventure hero should
has
it
As many feminist and
antiracist critics
many
different
have commented, femininity and masculinity signi-
normative within and through white, middle-class, heterosexual bodies. Richard Fung, for
example, writing about gay male porn, suggests that pornographic narrative structures assume a
white male viewer
this scopic field,
as passive
and
who embodies
normative standard of male beauty and male
porn characterizes black
asexual.
13
Films by
artists
men
as excessively sexual
and wholly
desirability.
phallic
hierarchic relations between

nize masculinity
and Asian men
of color that disrupt this representational code
Langston (Isaac Julien, 1988) and Tongues Untied (Marlon Riggs, 1989), for example
dominant and minority
sexualities.
They
Within
Looking for
can undo
also have the
power
the
to reorga-
itself.
Other assaults upon dominant gender regimes come from queer butch
which might include drag king shows, butch
art
and performance,
theatrical roles, or art featuring gender-variant subjects.
In terms of drag king performances, stars like Elvis Herselvis or
Tony Las Vegas (performed by
Julie
4
v^
K
181
Wheeler) turn dominant masculinity around by parodying male
superstardom and working conventional modes of performed sexism
and misogyny
comedy
into successful
routines.
As Tony Las Vegas,
example, Wheeler manages to parody masculinity by performing
most unnatural and obviously staged
women
its
aspect: sexism. Exhorting the
audiences in dyke clubs to "show us yer

close to other
for
tits"
and standing
far
too
onstage with him, Tony reeks of the tricks of
misogyny. Tony's manipulations of a stagy and theatrical masculinity
draw attention not simply
to the performative aspect of masculinity
but also to the places where nonperformativity has ideological impli-
by exposing smarmy male attentions to
cations. In other words,
females as staged, the drag king refuses any construction of misogyny

as the natural order of things.
one of the very few
In
kings, Sarah
Murray
articles in print
asks provocatively:
into a distinct theatrical genre
own
She answers her
among
on the
"Why
topic of drag
hasn't drag developed
lesbians in the United States?"
question by drawing
upon conventional notions
of lesbian invisibility and by remarking on the "naturalization of the

masculine." She states correctly, "A
doing individual
Elvis Herselvis
Obviously,
1990
Photographed by
Phyllis
Murray's analysis.
my argument
I
drag."'
about the apparent
also agree with her that the
woman
has
less to
grab on to
when
stability
of male masculinity concurs with
forms of masculinity available for parody tend to be
Christopher
either working-class masculinities (the construction worker, for example) or explicitly performative
middle-class masculinities like the lounge lizard. Furthermore, the masculinities that offer up subversions of recognizably
dominant male masculinity tend
to be nonwhite.
on the topic of lesbian masculinities themselves. Murray

redefining masculinity and
marker of lesbian
torical
Where we
more about appropriating male power. She reduces butchness
visibility that
men
would respond
culinity does not belong to
patriarchy.
longer project of which
it is
specifically
What
it is
may
is
am
a part)
is
false
that
to position masculinity as
play with but not a quality they
what we
who
inaccurate and indeed regressive to
show
it is
crucial to recognize that
as either
in this essay
call
mas-
an appropriation of
that
is
demonstrated
all
and often
lesbians. For this
into a general term for "behavior
women do
something separate from
(and what
"masculinity" has also been produced
make masculinity
Murray does,
may
it
are gender deviants
not
lesbian
feel free to
women,
as
play with mas-
something they
express or embody. Second, in relation to Murray, butch
identity has a complicated relation to notions of lesbian
182
that
consciousness in which the butch simply lacks
trying to
masculine women,
associated with males." To argue then, as

culinity
play with the
men, has not only been produced by men, and does not properly express
strong models of lesbian identity.
reason,
first,
popular misunderstanding of lesbian butchness depicts
by women, by
feel free to
Ifi
arguments by saying,
dominant male masculinity or an instance of
in the
to an his-
belongs to 1950s lesbian communities but not to contempo-
play with the feminine."
to these
is
finds butch iconicity to be less about
rary queer dyke culture, and she suggests that lesbians, ultimately, "don't
masculine the way gay
diverge, however,
community and
lesbian visibility and, partic-
Betsey
ularly, to lesbian drag.
Since so
little
has been written on lesbian masculinity that does not reduce
to a stereotype of the lesbian or a pathetic
parody of maleness, we have
yet to
determine what
it
Murray
L. A.
Hill
as John Travolta
its
Gallagher
and Penelope Tuesdae
and
Olivia
relaNewton-John, 1996
tions might be to either lesbian or transgender definition. Furthermore, butches
appropriate
women
to
may
not be the most
do male drag. Murray avoids any substantive discussion of transgenderism
in
16
x 20 inches (40.6 x 50.8
cm
Photographed by Tanya Braganti
her article because she cannot account for what happens

part of an identity effect.
ly
When
identities.
male clothing
mances may
To be perfectly
as drag
actually
is
not a costume but represents
she does mention transgender figures like Billy Tipton, she incorrect-
and imprecisely characterizes them
formed
when drag
as "female"
clear,
and uses feminine pronouns
to talk
about their per-
butches, and transgender butches in particular,
they embody masculinity. For

come from femme drag
this reason,
some of the
do not wear
best drag king perfor-
kings like Shelley Mars, performers
who
maintain a dis-
junctive between gender and performed gender.

In a slightly different kind of butch theater, a queer performance-art piece called You're Just
Like
My Father (1995),
that
is,
restaging
masculinity
is
Peggy Shaw represents female masculinity as a pugnacious and gritty staging
of family dynamics
via the butch daughter.
There
is
no question here
part and parcel of her lesbianism rather than a drag identity.
that Shaw's
Shaw becomes her
mother's substitute husband and her lovers' substitute fathers and brothers and constructs her
own
masculinity by reworking and improving the masculinities she observes around her. She moves
easily
back and forth between various personae: she
is
the fighter, the crooner, the soldier, the bread-
winner, the romeo, the patriarch. In each of these roles,
Shaw makes
bodied person inhabiting each role and that each role
part of her gender identity. In order to
play
among
a variety of
masculine identifications, Shaw, furthermore,
father or to appropriate his maleness; she

exist
on
is
it
is
clear that she
is
is
a female-
not forced to become her
already "just like" her father and their masculinities
parallel planes.
1^
4
g
183
The
ic
fleshing out of female masculinities has not been limited to theatrical arenas. In the photograph-
work of artists
like
culine in stunning
gender, and
Catherine Opie and Delia Grace,
and powerful ways. Opie's lush photographic
S/M communities put
early projects, entitled Being
bearded faces
we can watch
set against startling
members of
portraits of
a particular version of female masculinity
and Having, Opie created
a series of
body becoming mas-
the female
on
dyke, trans-
display. In
one of her
framed portraits of mustachioed or
yellow backdrops. In each shot, the camera
zooms
on the
in
model's face (often even cropping the top of the head), bringing the spectator right up against a face
that, despite its proximity,
macy between model and

In
ficiality
many
of the
remains gender ambiguous. The close-up articulates what

artist,
an intimacy, moreover, that
facial hair; in others,
the facial hair appears to be
Opie's work, in fact, critics insist that

sciously take place
at
its
at a
male or
complexity
when we determine whether we
real, setting
a female face. In
relies
inti-
not readily available to the viewer.
of the portraits, the camera comes close enough to the model's face to reveal the
pause to wonder whether we are looking
look
is
an
feels like
upon
up
many
a visual trap:
arti-
we may
of the commentaries on
the "operations that almost uncon-
man
are looking at a
or a woman."
'
But,
if
we
her photographs within a larger context of productions of female masculinity, the ambiguity,
or binarism, of gender seems spectacularly irrelevant. Indeed, in this context, these portraits are not
simply ambiguous
they
are resolute images of female masculinity, in which, as
cross-dressing models take their performances "both into the
They
are,
bedroom and out
Opie puts
visual aesthetic of alternative masculinities.
While Opie's work
is
often
her
to public spaces.
suppose, exhibitionists, and their scene has become a public spectator sport." 2
Opie's images of bearded, pierced, and tattooed dykes and transgender
it,
men
compared
'
create a powerful
to
Diane Arbus's
because both take as subject so-called misfits and freaks, she vigorously denies such a comparison:
/ try to
stared
present people with an extreme
at,
hut
I try to
make
amount of dignity.
the portraits stare hack. That's
Diane Arbus or anything
mean,
what
Some
mean,
think they have this distant gaze but they are never pathetic.
it's
not
like
like that.
they're always going to he
the relationship
is
all
ahout.
of the portraits look very sad,

2
'
Opie's insistence that her portraits "stare back" creates an interesting power dynamic not only
between photographer and model but also between image and spectator. The power of the gaze
Opie portrait always, and
own
literally, rests
sense of gender congruity, even of
model probably
faces every
day in the
in
an
with the image: the perpetual stare challenges the spectator's

self.
Indeed, this gaze replicates the hostile stares that the
street.
One
reviewer of Opie's 1994 show, Portraits,
that the isolation of each subject within the stylized frame of the photograph, with
its
commented
brilliant color
backdrop, transforms them into "abstract signs" and leaves the spectator free to be a voyeur." But
such an assessment ignores the disorienting
in their
effect
of these pictures
the subjects are positively regal
opulent settings, and their colorful displays of tattoos and body markings single them out for
photographic glory. The stare of the spectator
is
forced to be admiring and appreciative rather than
simply objectifying and voyeuristic. The tattoos, piercings, and body modifications that mark the
Opie model become
in her portraits far
more than
the signifiers of outlaw status.
confronted with the hormonally and surgically altered bodies of transgender

pierced and scarred skin of the butch dyke,
fications,
184
adding
we look
at
men
Whether we
are
or the tattooed and
bodies that display layered and multiple identi-
gender dimension unassimilable within the boundaries of "man" or "woman."
Catherine Opie
Wolfe,
from the Being and Having
series, 1991
Grace's images of gender-ambiguous bodies are, like Opie's, stylized portraits in the
Mapplethorpe
tradition.
However,
in
many
Chromogenic
of Grace's photographs an action defines gender ambigui-
17
print,
framed,
x 22 inches (43.2 x 55.9
cm
Courtesy of Regen Projects,
ty in relation to a set of sexual practices.
we
Her photos often feature two or more bodies
in play,
and
Los Angeles
thus see gender as a complex set of negotiations between bodies, identities, and desire. In
Catherine Opie
Triad (1992), for example, three shaven and bald female bodies are intertwined in a three-way
/.,
embrace. The pallor of the bodies and the smoothness of the shaven skin turn skin to marble, refusing the traditional softness of femininity. Grace frequently affords her subjects an almost mythical
Chromogenic
17
treatment, photographing
them
in classical
costume or
subjects, and, as does Opie, she always grants her
titling the
models
photographs
dignity, power,
after
mythological
and beauty even
from the Being and Having
series, 1991
print,
framed,
x 22 inches (43.2 x 55.9
cm)

Los Angeles
as she
exposes them to the gaze.

In her
photographs of butch bodies, Grace borrows from gay male erotic imagery to construct
a context for an unself-conscious female masculinity. In Jack's Back (1994),
back toward
us.
He wears white
is
closely shaven, the shoulders are
could have been plucked from Paul
cled butch
whom
erotica.
Cadmus
or Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Querelle (1982) or the
However, the back belongs to
Jackie, a beautifully built
and
"woman," but they
is
tightly
now see
and pulling an army T-shirt over her head. While the model's
partially obscured, her torso (Jack's front)
Jackie as a
broad and manly. This image
Grace has photographed repeatedly. In jack Unveiled (1994), we
on, wearing khaki pants
mark
see a sailor with his
Navy-issue pants and a white cap and has a hand tucked into his
waistband. The back of the head
image bank of gay
we
face
mus-
Jackie
head
is still
exposed. The breasts are just pronounced enough to
are small
enough and the torso
is
muscular enough to keep
the ambiguity intact.
Opie
also uses
back shots to make gender unreadable. In Dyke (1994), we see
against an elaborate backdrop.
of a head of very short

the
body
lesbian, but
has produced, the
hair.
The word "DYKE"
On
is
a torso set
tattooed in Gothic script just below the neckline
the one hand, the inscription dispels gender ambiguity by declaring
on the other hand, given the many multigendered images of dykes
word "DYKE"
gives very few clues as to
that
Opie
what the front of this body might look
like.
^
185
Delia Grace
Jack Unveiled, 1994
Gelatin-silver print, 24 x 20 inches (61 x 50.8
Courtesy of the
186
artist
cm)
Catherine Opie
Dyke, 1992
Opie's and Grace's "back art"
They want gender
literally to
is
engage with the all-too-easy game of gender ambiguity.
a refusal to
Chromogenic
print,
40 x 30 inches
(101.6 x 76.2
cm
be a surface for inscriptions, words and drawings, art and desire. In
Los Angeles
another back shot,

childlike
Self- Portrait (1993),
image of two
Opie exposes her own back
stick figures in skirts
reveal.
Turning the back into
As the
artist
a canvas,
Cut into the skin
is
holding hands, standing in front of a stick house, below a
bubble cloud. The picture, seemingly etched

tattoos.
to view.
in blood, sits
Opie
uncomfortably close to one of Opie's arm
dispels curiosity about
notes about this self-portrait:
"It says a lot
what the front of the body might
of different things.
One
of them
Catherine Opie
Self-Portrait, 1993
Chromogenic
print,
40 x 30 inches
(101.6
x 76.2 cm)

is
that
Los Angeles
have
my back to
stares, the
you."
23
While so many of Opie's photographs
literally
back shots circumvent the question of the gaze, allowing
return the gaze with piercing
a space to
open up
for
both gen-
der variation and different inscriptions of the sexed body.

Opie's cuttings
and the
tattoos
and
scars
on the bodies of both Opie's and Grace's models
stand in direct opposition to another recent and popular image of gender bending created by the
photographer Annie Leibovitz. Demi Moore appeared on the cover of the August 1992 Vanity
naked but
for a painted
man's
suit.
Inside the magazine were further pictures of
the painted suit and leaning over the
body of
a sleeping
tographs were considered innovative and challenging
Moore,
man, her husband, Bruce
when
they were
first
still
Willis.
published, but
Fair,
wearing
These phoif
we
juxta-
pose Leibovitz's images of Moore's painted body with the gender art of Opie and Grace, we will be
reminded of how
body
it
fiercely heterosexual
suit precisely fails to suggest
and gender invariant popular culture tends
to be.
Moore's
even a mild representation of female masculinity precisely because
so anxiously emphasizes the femaleness of her body. While Opie's
and Grace's
portraits often
make
187
no
effort to
femininity
make femaleness
upon even
the
visible, the
Moore images
represent femaleness as that which confers
most conventional of masculine facades
(the suit).
By
contrast, the female
masculinity in the work of Opie and Grace offers a glimpse into worlds where alternative masculinities
make an
In this essay,
art
of gender.
have tried to chart the implications of gender policing and gender performances with-
in public spaces
and
By making such
to
map them onto
move,
do not wish
to suggest that
we can magically wish
properly descriptive genders that would put pressure on the
mean
female.
Nor do
tion of
dominant genders within heteropatriarchal
to suggest that
some very obvious spaces

work and
that the
in
outmoded
by simply desegregating public
which gender
breakdown of gender
cultures.
However,
excessively strange.
188
It is
FTM
sexualities.
into being a
categories of male
toilets
it
we
will
seems to
new
set
of
and
change the func-
me
that there are
difference, as conventionally described, simply does not
as a signifying
system in these arenas can be exploited to
hasten the proliferation of alternate gender regimes in other locations.

gadgets, from butch bodies to
and
a Utopian vision of radically different bodies
bodies, gender
and sexuality and
simply a matter of keeping them that way.
From drag
kings to spies with
their technologies are already
Notes
An
earlier,
and substantially
this essay, entitled
of
different, version
"Techno-Homo: Bathrooms,
Butches, and Sex with Furniture," was published in
Melody Calvert and
eds., Processed Lives
7.
Ibid. pp. 13-16.
9.
Although Garber never uses
Jennifer Terry,
(New York:
in
Routledge,
The continued
"woman"
viability of the category
has already been challenged in a
Monique
variety of academic locations:
most notably, argued
women"
in
Wittig,
that "lesbians are not
relations to
Wittig
p. 121.
another philosophical chal-
In
12.
Ibid.
13.
Susan Bordo, "Reading the Male Body,"

Michigan Quarterly Review 32, no. 4
14.
the Subversion of Identity
Routledge, 1990),
15
Object Choices,
Video and Film
male and female; see
Women?" Hypatia
11,
no. 2
l6
Calhoun suggests
that the category
no. 2
1;
Ibid., p. 356.
18.
Ibid., p. 360.
Feminist Studies
19.
(spring 1995),
Lee Edelman, "Tearooms and Sympathy
The Epistemology of
Homographesis: Essays
Cultural Theory
or,
20.
the Water Closet," in

in
Gay
(New York:
Literary
Bay Press,
1991),
Public Culture
David Pagel, "Catherine Opie," Art
Issues
p. 45.
Anna Maria Smith, "The Feminine Gaze:

Lesbian Daddy/Boy Subculture," The Advocate,
November
Routledge, 19941,
19, 1991, p. 83.
Feminine Gaze" seems
Ibid., p. 159.
are currently writing about the
ninitv ot
gender within the oper-
face
ation of sex-segregated bathrooms. Barbara
Cruikshank, for example,
is
presently working
a project, called "Flushing
Toilets
and Public
This
is
a great early
expand
in public toilets
Fausto-Sterling,
"The Five
Sexes:
things produced by
is
women.
nothing feminine about
Russell Ferguson, "Catherine
Opie with
Ferguson" (interview), Index
1,
Let's
this
Russell
no. 2 (April
Michael Cohen, "Catherine Opie

Projects," Flash
For an examination of differing notions of
Anne
all
there
"The
1996), p. 29.
22.
to think about other exclusionary public space.
genetic and biological gender, see, for example,
it,
title
on the femi-
to insist
work.
21.
Gender: Public
Life," that tries to
upon gender-based exclusion
6,
p. 344.
review of Opie's work, although the
Some people
Bad
Photographer Catherine Opie Documents
and
H8.
social construction of
The
How Do I Look? Queer
(September-October 1994),
PP- 7-34-
Penis:
Porn," in
on Gender, Drag and
winter 1994),
Disappearance under the Sign "Woman,"'

1
My
Gay Video
Seattle:
Reflections
Calhoun, "The Gender Closet: Lesbian
no.
p. 113.
ed.,
1
Feminism and
New York:
Homosexual Communities,"
actually "operate as a lesbian closet"; see
21,
1993),
Sarah Murray, "Dragon Ladies, Draggin' Men:
Some
"woman"
Richard Fung, "Looking for

Eroticized Asian in
(spring 1996), pp. 94-121. Elsewhere, Cheshire
5.
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble:
pp. 145-68.
Hale, "Are Lesbians
(fall
p. 721.
"woman," transgender
that exceed
p. 160.
Interests, p. 14.
embodiments
on
(ibid.,
For a discussion of the "third" in more
claim to theorize the possibility of gendered
p.
index
Edelman, "Tearooms and Sympathy,"
philosopher Jacob Hale uses Wittig's radical
may
term
this precise
in the
Garber, Vested
men, they cannot occupy the posi-
"woman."
lenge to the category
4.
does appear
10.
and Other Essays
Boston: Beacon Press, 1992),
3.
it
11.
claims that since lesbians are refusing primary
2.
text,
p. 441).
her essay "The Straight Mind," in
Wittig, The Straight Mini!
tion
her
general terms, see ibid., pp. 9-13.
1997).
1.
Ibid.
8.
Art
27, no. 179
Regen
December
1994), P- 98.
23.
Ferguson, "Catherine Opie,"
p. 30.
Why
Male and Female Are Not Enough," The

Sciences 33 (March-April 1993), pp. 20-24.
6.
Mariorie Garber, Vested

Dressing
&
Interests: Cross-
Cultural Anxiety
Routledge, 1992),
p. 47.
(New York:
Obviously, Garber's use
of the term "Waterloo" makes a pun out of the
drama of bathroom
pun
is
bling.
the
clever
While the
surveillance.
and even amusing,
it is
also trou-
The constant use of puns throughout
book has the
overall effect of
der crossing sound
like a
game
making gen-
or at least
alizes the often life-or-death processes
in cross-identification.
This
is
trivi-
involved
not to say that
gender can never be a "laughing matter" and
must always be treated
seriously but only to
question the use of the
pun
as a theoretical
method.
189
have to take you elsewhere, with an image of me, age seven.
sitting
on the back porch of our brownstone
waiting for a father
but
remember
that
in
the Bronx,
who would never
arrive. It's
mother
reading, staring with a
is silent,
vague now;
resolute familiarity through her glasses at another book, as if
si.si
she had been here before and was seeking refuge there, again.
think
my
brother was reading too, or maybe we were both
running around playing. And
my room where
if
wasn't playing,
spent an increasing amount of time.
getting ready to go to the park, or
down south
somewhere, and our bags were packed,
ready since eight a.m.
terrible sense
was hiding
am
It
in
We were
to Charleston,
sitting
by the door.
was now two. He never came, and
in a
maybe we each
are.
still
waiting for him,
busying ourselves with exteriors, trying to figure out
manage absence. Now
waiting for father,
how
to
understand that not only were we wi
we were
resisting the idea of him.
and
D utc H
PACJHS
<H
weM
u
Or
Bonds "Love
Tl
C9L&
1
4"
in tne mi<
iggles in
I
New
Baltimore. Wli
of her where*
died of a crao
it
fucked
Idn't
even
Idy to
ke one.'
me
cry,
man.
show me the
1 telt 1
ropes,
needi
and
I di<
/TV
<
/ f.
'
<'
was
* * *,
* * *
j
-crr^f^*rKVfKj
j
^\
<
b^c/J
\
^
Zt.L
R*M
1> K ia-vt
tence
yina
nerve
}
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.-.,
S^Mt6^
'
c/6 log ?âh/tie^
TRACEY BASHKOFF,
SUSAN CROSS,
VIVIEN GREENE,
AND
The biographies that follow are for the

exhibition. For
discussed
notes
and
J.
FIONA RAGHEB
artists featured in the
more information about them
as well as other artists
illustrated in this book, see sources listed in the
accompanying each
essay.
Janine Anioni
(b.
January
19,
her dye-soaked hair, recalling Mierle Laderman Ukeles's
Maintenance Art
Bahamas)
1964, Freeport,
from the mid-1970s. Like
series
this earlier series,
Antoni's performance confuses the distinctions between art and

Janine Antoni began working on process-oriented pieces that take
work. By also interjecting notions of feminine beauty, Antoni
physical activities as their point of departure while a graduate
able to interrupt conventional equations concerning the female
student
at
the
Rhode
Island School of Design, Providence. Since
receiving an M.F.A. with honors in sculpture in 1989, she has con-
how
body and
to reveal
mined by
a host of societal forces.
the experience of that
Whether sculpted with her
tinued to invest her projects with both a temporal and corporeal
teeth,
body
is
is
overdeter-
modeled with her tongue, or
element, creating work that makes manifest otherwise ephemeral
painted with her hair, Antoni's art operates in the space between
processes and reveals the ways in which our experiences of the
object
body have been
meanings. Her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions
upon intimate
washing
socially
rituals
and
culturally conditioned. In
such
whose meanings
sphere, she positions her
drawing
as eating, bathing, sleeping,
are constituted in the
work on
and
Gnaw, Antoni's
Museum
communal
of
Modern
numerous group
the border between private
Art, Dublin,
solo exhibition, in 1992,
first
engage her
the body. While the
art
is
emblematic of
with the experiential realm of
600-pound cubes of lard and chocolate
comprised the
installation
evoke ready associations with
the traces of an act both critical and
marks of Antoni's
humorous.
teeth,
Yet the artist's
them
to the highly
physical world. This association
the
Arts, Glasgow,
Crudo
Biennial; Cocido y
in
at the
Museo Nacional Centro
at the Institute
of Contemporary Art,
Philadelphia, in 1995. In 1996, her achievements were recognized
the Irish
for
IMMA/Glen Dimplex
Museum
of
The Hugo Boss
Museum. Antoni
a display
iii/i/i ,/( it
Modern
Prize,
lives in
Artists
Award, administered by
Art, as well as with her
nomination
administered by the Guggenheim
New York. -
r.
f.
r.
/n
u ill
11 if
Up My
Relationship
and the heart-
lipsticks
to Art History." Interview with Janine Antoni. Flash Art 26, no. 171
in
which chocolates are frequently
(summer
objects of
in
Irish
of the Venice Biennale; the 1993
Cottingham, Laura. "Janine Antoni: Biting Sums
sold
and the
and has been presented
housing the masticated remains of lard and chocolate, which had
shaped vacuum packaging
of contested
gendered spaces of the
was reinforced by
been transformed, respectively, into
site
de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, in 1994; and PerForms: Charles Ray,
with The
choice of materials distances these cubes from their Modernist

lineage while linking
'93
Jana Sterbak, Janine Antoni
that
the industrially fabricated forms of their Minimalist forebears,

their geometric lines bear the disfiguring
Whitney
is
exhibitions throughout the United States and
Europe, including Aperto
artist's efforts to
partially
Contemporary
1995 at the Centre for
and public realms.
the
and performance, where the body
consumer
1993), pp. 104-05.
desire that also mediate one's relaJanine Antoni/Matrix
129.
Exh. brochure. Hartford, Conn.: Wadsworth
tionship to the body.
Atheneum,
rich tissue ot art-historical precedents
is
1996.
woven through
Slip of die Tongue.
Antoni's work, reflecting her acute awareness of history and
and Dublin:
patriarchal constitution. In
niques through the body,
its
ure by
means of a rigorous
own body
on which she draws, Antoni
sented
r
20
in 1992, in
is
recalls
Eleanor Antin's Carving:
which the
artist
"sculpted" her
fig-
diet regimen. Indeed, in the use of her
as a source of art
the 1970s. This lineage
reinterpretation of artistic tech-
Gnaw
Traditional Sculpture (1972), in
making and the

is
private experience
most indebted
clearly
evoked
in
to feminist art of
Loving Care,
first
Exh.
cat.
Glasgow: Centre for Contemporary Arts;
its
pre-
which Antoni "mops" or "paints" the floor with
Irish
Museum
of
Modern
Art, 1995.
Matthew Barney
March
(b.
25, 1967,
Barney has been included
exhibitions,
San Francisco)
Matthew Barney graduated
New
from Yale University,
in 1989
for
performance and video. His singular vision
foregrounds the physical rigors of sport and

rents to explore the limits of the
work
artist's
reflects his
own
body and
its
j.
f.
93,
lives in
third
r.
erotic undercur-
sexuality. In this, the
'U </'/<
<
ft I'
'
" </' n
tf
body evident
in the
in
Hypertrophia." Interview with
work of
Matthew Barney. Artforum
once
at
Barney
33, no. 9
(May
1995), pp. 66-71, 112, 117.
Barney's ritualistic actions unfold in
artists.
hybrid spaces that evoke
Prize.
at the
Aperto
past as an athlete, while also being
politics of the
many contemporary
New York, and
work on Cremaster 5, the
currently at
is
international
installment of his video cycle to be produced.-
Goodeve, Thyrza Nichols. "Travels
new
attuned to a
Art,
which he was awarded the Europa 2000
New York and
Haven. Since then, he has created work that fuses sculptural

installations with
many
in
and 1995 Biennial exhibitions
exhibitions, such as the 1993
a training
Parkett 45 (1995). Issue devoted to
camp and medical
Roman
Matthew Barney, Sarah
Lucas, and
Signer.
and
research laboratory, equipped as they are with wrestling mats
Saltz, Jerry.
"The Next
Sex." Art in
America
(October 1996
84, no. 10
),
blocking sleds, sternal retractors and speculums, and a range of

pp. 82-91.
props often cast
in,
or coated with, viscous substances such as

Wakefield, Neville.
wax, tapioca, and petroleum
jelly.
"Matthew Barney's Fornication with
the Fabric of
Indeed, his earliest works, creSpace." Parkett 39 (1994), pp. 118-24.
ated at Yale, were staged at the university's athletic complex.
Within
this alternative universe, Barney's protagonists
including
an actor dressed as Oakland Raider Jim Otto, and the

self
naked or cross-dressed
engage
artist
him-
metaphoric dance of
in a
Cecil Beaton
sexual differentiation.
January
(b.
Barney's exploration of the
body draws upon an
14,
1904,
London;
d.
January
22, 1980,
Broadchalke,
athletic
England)
model of development,
restraint: the
in
which growth occurs only through
muscle encounters resistance, becomes engorged

Cecil Beaton attended private schools before enrolling at
and
is
broken down, and
in
healing
becomes
stronger. This trian-
Cambridge University
in 1922.
There he concentrated on photog-
gulated relationship between desire, discipline, and productivity
raphy and theatrical endeavors,
activities
he would pursue ener-
provides the basis for Barney's meditation on sexual difference.

getically
These
athletic
and sexual references converge
throughout
"00,"
which becomes a leitmotif
life.
to execute
photographic portraits of that
him
society. Beaton's theatrical inclinations led
Woven
marking elapsed time

gle oblong,
motif variously appears as
in his videos,
resembling
oblong represents "the
this
and
a football field.
and
orifice
self-imposed restraint."
its
Homonymic
in altered
For the
closure
city's
high
to orchestrate lux-
cipherlike
uriant portraits that fuse reflective surfaces
throughout Barney's work,
London
to
ongoing
for the artist's
exploration of a polymorphous sexuality.
moved
In 1925, Beaton
in Otto's jersey
and began
number
his
form
artist,
and rococo costum-
if
sometimes emerging
ambiguous
ing, his
posed
figures.
Appropriating conventions from Victorian and
sitters
as sexually
as a sin-
however, the
which he
Edwardian photography
or the body and
collected
from childhood
its
as well as
Modernist photographic trends, he devised
style that
was simultaneously romantic and innovative.
a signature
with the word "auto," Otto
also suggests autoeroticism, or a closed, self-sufficient system.
Barney's Cremaster project
named
Beaton's success in creating glamorous images ushered

for a testicular
into the worlds of film
transports these concerns to an Arcadian realm populated by

faeries, satyrs,
and chorus
girls.
him
muscle
and
fashion;
American Vogue were among
by
1928,
his clients.
both British and
Not only well-received
in
Broadcast on Dutch television

the commercial realm, Beaton was the sole British photographer
and screened
at several film festivals,
Cremaster 4 (1994) and

to
Cremaster
(1995) are the first
two videos produced
be shown in the 1929 avant-garde Film und Foto exhibition,
in a projected
organized by the Deutsches
Werkbund
in Stuttgart.
He
also
series of five that allegorize the stages in the sexual differentiation
achieved recognition for a
number of photographic
publications,
of an embryo. Blending athleticism and choreography with an
beginning
ineffable
symbology of sexuality, these elaborately
styled videos
entertainment
create an alternative
cosmology of sexual
with a collection of portraits of the social and
in 1930
elite,
The Book of Beauty.
In 1937,
he photographed
differentiation that pre-
the
Duke and Duchess of Windsor's wedding
portraits as well as
sents "a million different zones of sexual articulation."
royalty
In 1991, at the age of twenty-four,
Barney was honored with
and the aristocracy
for the coronation of
George VI.
Beaton continued to portray the British royal family over the next
solo exhibition at the San Francisco
Museum
of
Modern
Art.
The
four decades. During World
Museum Boymans-van
engaged Beaton
exhibition of his
work
that toured
Europe throughout 1995 and

abroad.
1996. In addition to
War
II,
the Ministry of Information
Beuningen, Rotterdam, organized a solo
The
to
photograph the war both
resulting images were in a
in Britain
and
more documentary
style.
Documenta /Xand numerous other group
<
20>
Notwithstanding his diverse photographic undertakings,
degree, for these portrayals. In 1933, Brassai's pictures of Paris
Beaton's interest and professional involvement in theater did not
were published as Paris de Nuit (Paris by night), a book subse-
wane, and he extended his talents beyond the stage to include
quently distributed worldwide in numerous languages.
designing costumes and scenery for films. The result of Beaton's
one foray
The Gainsborough
as a playwright,
but received
in Brighton,
embarked upon
cinema icons such
Beaton maintained
Kelly.
Hollywood, and his designs for the costumes
won him
(Vincente Minnelli, 1958)
designed the costumes and

sion of
My Fair Lady (as
sets for
in the film Gigi
He
Academy Awards. A renowned
many
own
Beaton curated his
of
artist
its
celebri-
Andy Warhol.
retrospective at London's
National Portrait Gallery and in 1972 was knighted by
on
of Beaton's
Brassai'
was
also a sculptor,
a prize at the
Cecil Beaton:
New York:
<
(I
1920-19/0.
Retrospective. Edited
Little
Brown,
New York:
Modern
Art,
September
by David Mellor. Exh.
Brassai:
cat.
9, 1899,
his family
He
.A
<
11
the
in 1968,
has been hon-
most important of
at
which traveled
the
Museum
to Australia,
r/i 11 </ j
Vom
New York: Museum
Surrealismus
Claude Cahun
Hungary [now Brasov, Romania];
Brasso,
(b.
October
Jersey,
later deriving his
He
moved
pseudonym from
the
forged an early connection with
there in 1903 for his father's year-
studied art at the Kepomuveszeti Foiskola in
25, 1894,
Oskar Kokoschka, and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy.

to Paris in 1924
and worked intermittently
German and Hungarian newspapers. By
as a
1930,
he had started photographing Paris by night, recording solitary

views of abandoned streets as well as the bohemian
halls
Art, 1968.
Informel. Exh. cat. Barcelona: Fundacio
and
its
life
4,
no.
of the
demimonde of criminals,
Nantes;
December
d.
8,
She studied
1914),
at
(spring 1981),
majoring
graduated.
in literature
and philosophy, although she never
A photographer and
a writer, she
began
Mercure de France
at the
the last
name
taken from her maternal grandmother. She visited Paris frequently,
finally
moving
there in 1922 with her stepsister, lifelong part-
ner, and sometime-collaborator Suzanne Malherbe (who signed
herself Marcel Moore).

In Paris,
Cahun
briefly
engaged
in theatrical pursuits,
while
continuing to contribute to literary journals. In 1930, she pro-
poetry and photomontages
some
pho-
first article
age of twenty. In approximately
pseudonym Claude Cahun,
duced Aveux non avenus (Avowals not admitted
were
to create
tographic self-portraits around 1912 and published her
photographs appear to be completely candid,
his subjects
intellectual fami-
Oxford (1907-08) and the Sorbonne (around
homosexuals, transvestites, and prostitutes. Though Brassai's
generally aware of his presence and frequently posed, to
1954, Saint-Helier,
Lucy Renee Mathilde Schwob was born into an

ly.
1917, she adopted the
and dance
Modern
English Channel Islands)
in the
moved
zum
of
[Lucy Renee Mathilde Schwob]
Charlottenburg (1921-22), where he received his degree and met
correspondent for
206
New York,
Budapest (1918-19) and the Akademische Hochschule, Berlin-
Vasily Kandinsky,
among
PP- 33-38.
of his native town, Brassai was the son of a university pro-
long sabbatical.
Si
Festival. Brassai
Krauss, Rosalind. "Nightwalkers." Art Journal
Nice)
fessor of French literature.
Cannes Film
and Clowns)
Antoni Tapies, 1994.
Stewart, Tabori and Chang, 1995.
Born Gyula Halasz and
city's cafes
set designer, writer,
Zealand, and South America. -v. g.
/ 1/ i/i/i'J te (/
1986.
(Gyula Halasz]
d. July 8, 1984,
Brassai'
draughtsman,
fit III/ >
Garner, Philippe, and David Mellor. Cecil Beaton: Photographs
when
his
film Taut qu'il y aura des betes (So long
those held during his lifetime was a retrospective
Brassai. Exh. cat.
Paris
as
photographic projects include a series
as there are animals; released in English as Lovers
name
books such
to publish
g.
I fit/ rf e /' </
(b.
him
and documentary images taken during
and filmmaker. His 1956
New
Brassai
Picasso. His contact with these
artistic figures later led
Parisian graffiti
London's Barbican Centre organized
and Pablo
travels to foreign countries.
of
oeuvre.-v.
and
Miller,
Brassai's other significant
with his art until his death in 1980. Most recently, in 1986
a retrospective
Henry
ored by several major exhibitions;
Despite a stroke in 1974, he recovered and persevered
II.
he portrayed
in the 1930s,
Conversations avec Picasso (Conversations with Picasso, 1964).
earned
Queen
photographer for a wide variety of
a free-lance
such twentieth-century cultural icons as Salvador Dali, Henri
literary
also
was
magazine Harper's Bazaar. Beginning
Matisse,
George Cukor's 1964 film ver-
including rock idol Mick Jagger and Pop
Elizabeth
Marilyn
as
with
Brassai
publications, from the Surrealist journal Minotaure to the fashion
was esteemed by the extravagantly styled
himself, Beaton
In 1968,
ties
an Academy Award.
generation of the 1960s, and photographed

ties,
in 1951
he did for the original 1956 stage pro-
duction), this time attaining two
dandy
opened
acclaim. In 1956, the photographer
little
a series depicting
Monroe and Grace
Girls,
Cahun espoused
made
leftist politics
),
book of prose
in collaboration with
and played
Malherbe.
a role in the Surrealist
movement, probably joining the Association des Ecrivains

Artistes Revolutionnaires
by the end of
1932.
Marcel Duchamp
et
Her pamphlet on the
possibility of revolutionary poetry, Les Paris sont ouverts (Place
your
bets),
Georges
a
appeared
Bataille, she
group established
founding
Cahun
tumed, made up, or masked

life-size "doll"
and
member
of Contre-Attaque,
in 1935 in response to the threat of Fascism.
In her self-portraits,
known
made
There
is
chiefly for her
own
artistic career,
Nude Descending a
nal Cubist work,
dent un
likely
personal use. She
Raymond Duchampgoing
escalier,
Though
working
Staircase, No. 2
initially a painter,
Duchamp soon became
he could find and recontextualizing them,
photographs of
still-life
1937 children's poetry
household
objects).
nary props of modern
Cahun's
cance
tableaux served as illustrations for a
book by
Lise
Deharme, he Coeur de
Cahun and Malherbe moved
where both had summered
to the Isle of Jersey,
and mounted
as children,
their
captured and
condemned
to
death
in
Duchamp's
They were eventually
Jersey until her death in 1954.
It is
only recently, through such
noire:
Le Surrealisme
et la
C,
chambre
that Cahun's virtually
tographs were rediscovered. -
v.
complex
love for
enterprise, the
unknown pho-
exclusion of
logic
of
is
many extended
de Paris and Jean-Michel Place, 1995.

1918,
et la
metamorphose.
sometimes mechani-
at least as significant as its
intensive thought to
also evidenced
by
for his pieces. His
his other lifelong
to the
and
War
I,
Duchamp made
the
New York, where he developed

artist Man Ray, with whom he would
trips to
collectors Katherine Dreier
and Walter and
la
Louise Arensberg,
Claude Cahun: L'Ecart
mathematics
art.
later collaborate,
Leperlier, Francois.
work
Following the outbreak of World
cat. Paris:
for,
game of chess, which he sometimes played
steadfast friendships with
Claude Cahun: Photographe. Exh.
and aptitude
to experiment with the construc-
embodiment, Duchamp dedicated
Corcoran Gallery
'aaaestea zh eaai m/
Ville
him
and made copious notes, drawings, and plans
first
.
until 1923,
incomplete.
it
intense interest in,
ered the conceptual aspect of his
g.
of his most
which he intermittently worked on
scientific studies led
tangible
photographie and the 1985 exhibition
VAmour Fou: Photography and Surrealism at the

of Art, Washington, D.
la
renowned
Duchamp began work on one
creations during the course of his career. Because he consid-
cal,
Cahun remained on
publications as Edouard Jaguer's 1982 Les Mysteres de
and
often incongruous signifi-
tion of a multiplicity of three-dimensional,
1944 by the Gestapo, but
the war ended before they could be executed.
Glass),
new and
gave ordi-
The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even
deliberately leaving
own
propaganda campaign against the Nazis, anonymously dispersing

written messages throughout the island.
The Large
life
Duchamp
that led to the creation of his
1913,
significant pieces,
Pic
(Pic's heart).
In 1937,
experiments
"readymades." In
interested
dimensions. Selecting the most banal objects
In conjunction with this exhibition, Cahiers d'art published her
regarding the premise of the show, "Prenez garde aux
descen-
Show.
in
in three
(Nu
which caused an uproar when exhibited the
2),
New York's Armory
next year at
is
to have exhibited her assemblages of objects in the 1936
objets domestiques" (Beware of
1904 to study for a
in
year at the Academie Julian in Paris. In 1912, he painted his semi-
no evidence
it is
his siblings Jacques Villon,
Exposition surrealiste d'objets at Charles Ratton, a gallery in Paris.
article
1968,
and Suzanne Duchamp, Marcel (Henri-Robert-Marcel)
Duchamp embraced an
frequently presented herself cos-
a Turandot-like figure.
Along with
Villon,
as various personae, including a
that she ever exhibited any of these photographs, so
that they were
2,
Along with Andre Breton and
in 1934.
was
Blainville-Crevon, France; d. October
(b. July 28, 1887,
Neuilly, France)
Duchamp
who became
joined the
lifelong patrons.
Dada group.
Back
in Paris in
In 1920, he returned to
Paris:
the United States and engaged in constructing visual and written

Jean-Michel Place, 1992.
puns.
Lichtenstein, Therese. "A
Movable Mirror: Claude Cahun." Artforum
One consequence
of this practice was the fashioning of his
30,
female alter ego, Rrose Selavy. This alternate identity was phono. 8 (April 1992), pp. 64-67.
Man
tographed by
Ray, appeared in
some of Duchamp's own
work, and was the pseudonym by which he signed a number of

pieces. In 1921, together with
of
New
In the 1930s,
Paris.
Man
Ray, he
produced the only
issue
York Dada, which also contained an article by Tristan Tzara.
Among
Duchamp became
involved with the Surrealists in
other endeavors, he designed publications for
works by fellow
artists
and
writers. In 1936,
he was included
the Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism exhibition at the
Modern
Art,
New York. The
following year, he had his
Club of Chicago. Duchamp
show,
at the Arts
mark
collectors such as
exhibitions. In 1942, he
in
Museum
first
of
solo
also assisted land-
Peggy Guggenheim
in the
made New York
permanent home, and
his
organization of
1
3
207
from 1946
making
given up art
for chess,
known
large-scale work,
As an
time when
to 1966, at a
was believed
he secretly worked on his
cultural arbiter,
1959 English translation of Robert Lebel's

a
Duchamp
played a
With the
monograph Marcel
generation of emerging artists became acquainted
major retrospective devoted
first
it.
Exhibition, organized
by Walter Hopps
at the
and
sleeping, having sex, lounging around,
living their lives
suggesting
volatile narratives of
most frequently
frustration, played out
For
in bed.
Goldin, the juxtaposition of slides with a soundtrack that has
included such songs as
"You Don't
"My World
Own Me" serves to
dynamics of relationships. The

in
Empty Without You" and
Is
clarify
her interest in the sexual
show has
slide
also
been presented
videotape format and was published in book form in 1986.
Whether exhibited
which he was
was the 1963 Marcel Duchamp: A Retrospective
alive to witness,
Museum.- v.
to the artist,
men and women
and otherwise
last
with Duchamp's oeuvre and was significantly influenced by
The
affected
desire
pivotal role in the shaping of twentieth-century culture.
Duchamp,
had
that he
as Etaiit Donne's.
and
artist, writer,
it
shows, Goldin's pho-
as prints or slide
tographs reveal her milieu with a directness and immediacy
in
keeping with her personal relationships with her subjects. They
Pasadena Art
spring directly from her
g.
life
and her obsessive need
to record
it,
constituting a self-described "diary" rather than a programmatic

.
I irrft/<
,/iy/./|(
(/( ,11/
,/
The Other
study.
Side: 1972-92, a
body of work published
in 1993,
evolved from photographs she began taking in the early 1970s

Marcel Duchamp. Edited by Anne d'Harnoncourt and Kynaston
while living with drag queens in Boston and frequenting the
McShine. Exh.
cat.
Philadelphia: Philadelphia
Museum
of Art; and
Other
New York: Museum
of
Modern
and transsexuals, these unstudied, brightly
ships of drag queens
Marcel Duchamp. Exh.
cat.
Capturing the unconventional relation-
Side, a drag bar.
Art, 1973.
Milan: Palazzo Grassi and Bompiani, 1993.
hued photographs share the same concerns
The
that inform
English edition.
Thames
Schwartz, Arturo. The Complete Marcel Duchamp. London:
Ballad of Sexual Dependency.
on
ships are predicated
and Hudson; and
New York: Abrams,
1969.
and dependency
as
If,
a struggle that
tion of gender roles
Goldin maintains, relation-
a universal struggle
then
is
between autonomy
complicated by the construc-
the ultimate
autonomy comes from
redefining such distinctions. As evidenced in these candid pho-
tographs of the "third
Nan Goldin
can be enlisted to
(b.
September
12,
1953,
is
a malleable construct that
and unconventional relationships
Goldin's
Goldin's interest in photography began as a
She
details of her daily existence.
work has been included
in
alike.
numerous
exhibitions
means of
both
remembering the
gender
dynamics that characterize conven-
Washington, D.C.)
tional
Nan
sex,"
alter the
left
her
in the
United States and abroad, including Pleasures and
home
Terrors of Domestic
Comfort
at the
Museum
of
Modern
New
Art,
in her teenage years to escape the lingering effects of her older
York, in 1991, and the

sister's suicide,
moving
Whitney Biennial
1995.
She has
and attending an
in with foster families
been the recipient of the Camera Austria Prize

alternative school outside Boston. There,
and
in 1993
Goldin was given
for
Contemporary
Photography
in 1989, the
Brandeis Award in Photography
in 1994,
Polaroid camera and began photographing friends and acquain-
and numerous other awards.
memories of them, much
tances in an effort to secure
sister.
work was
persisted,
and
in 1977, she
and Fifth-Year Master's
Museum
Certificate
The
slide presentations for
known began
The Ballad
oj
in
to turn to slides.
track.
become
when
the
These shows were
Sexual Dependency, the
of several
as,
work
and remains,
for
which she
Chronicling the gritty
lives
is
per-
a constantly evolving
hundred images accompanied by
"re-created family," the
'(((/(/(,/((/ ,'A
New York. -j.
f.
r.
(1(11 /((/.,
Goldin, Nan. The Ballad of Sexual Dependency. Edited by
Marvin Heiferman, Mark Holborn, and Suzanne
music
The Other
Side: 1972-1992. Edited
Nan Goldin, and Walter

Kozloff,
Keller.
of dis-
Fletcher.
Goldin,
New
by David Armstrong,
Zurich: Scalo, 1993. In English.
Max. "The Family of Nan." Art
in
America
75, no. 11
(November
1987), pp. 39-43-
Nau
Goldin: Til Be Your Mirror. Edited by
Nan Goldin, David
Armstrong, and Hans Werner Holzwarth. Exh.
and relationships of her
work provides an intimate glimpse
Nan
York: Aperture, 1986.
from the bars where she
Mudd Club and other underNew York, where she relocated in the late 1970s.
haps best known, began
show
later
Provincetown to the
ground venues
slide
lives in
the age of nine-
of necessity during her art-school years,
darkroom forced her
in
at
which she would
presented in various environments
worked
Goldin
of Fine Arts in Boston.

.
lack of a
New
that takes the
from the School of the
Goldin began exhibiting her photographs

teen.
show
earned
artist herself as its sole subject.
a B.F.A.
Art,
Goldin's
York, which included All By Myself, a slide
engagement with photography
the subject of
as she
a solo exhibition at the
struggled to preserve recollections of her dead
In 1996, her
Art;
cat.
and Zurich:
New York:
Scalo, 1996.
Lyle Ashlon Harris

(b.
February
6, 1965,
pornography,
New York)
self-portraits,
and handwritten notes alluding
exploitation and self-destruction, racism
and redemption,
lence and pleasure. In addition, Harris and collaborator

Lyle
Ashton Harris grew up
moved
to
Dar
Bronx, but as a teenager briefly
in the
mother and older
es Salaam, Tanzania, with his
brother, filmmaker
Thomas
until his
undergraduate years
Middletown, Connecticut,
Thomas
nomics
in
Amsterdam,
to art.
Wesleyan University
at
it
During that time, the
artist
brother
body of
first
photographs, The Americas (1987). Harris received an M.F.A. from

the California Institute of Arts in Valencia in 1990. In
New York,
he completed the National Graduate Photography Seminar
New York
University in 1991 and the
Whitney Independent Study Program

In 1989, Harris
tled Constructs,
completed
a series
which portray the
the
at
own
WESTAF/NEA
American
Portraits, a traveling
Enigmas of Race,
premiered
Fellowship in 1991, and has exhibited
group exhibitions of note include Face
Difference,
at the Institute
and
in 1995; Mirage:
Desire, a traveling exhibition that
of Contemporary Arts in
and Persona, presented
1995;
show organized by the
Museum, Southampton, New York,
Parrish Art
at
subjectivity.
has been awarded numerous grants and fellowships,
internationally. Recent
Value:
major from eco-
created his
artist
including a
was not
in
after a liberating visit to his
that Harris switched his
Tisch School of the Arts of
The
Allen Harris. Influenced by a family
phers, Harris also experimented with the camera, but
vio-
Tommy
Gear created kaleidoscopically repeating images of "Narcissus"

the watering hole, giving the object of desire his
of what he has called "fanatically devoted" amateur photogra-
to
at
London
in
the Renaissance Society at the
University of Chicago, and the Kunsthalle Basel in 1996. Harris

lives in
Los Angeles.
He
has been a
member
of the faculty of the
Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles, since 1994. -s.
c.
in 1992.
of gelatin-silver prints enti-
artist in a
fa </'/<> te (/ /A
e a (ii
mi
sequence of poses
Cohen, Michael. "Lyle Ashton Harris." Flash Art 29, no. 188 (May-June
between genders. This
that challenge the tenuous distinctions

series
was presented
New York,
at the
1996), p. 107.
Art,
Cotter, Holland. "Art after Stonewall: Twelve Artists Interviewed," Arf in
in the exhibition
Black Male: Representations of
Masculinity in Contemporary Art, in 1994; and the
Armand Hammer Museum
UCLA
America
82, no. 6
(June 1994), pp. 63-64.
at
Face Value: American Portraits. Exh.
cat.
Southampton,
N.Y.: Parrish Art
of Art and Cultural Center, Los
Angeles, in 1995. In 1994, the artist was given his
Museum; and New York: Flammarion,
New York
first
1995, p. 31.
Lyle Ashton Harris. Exh. cat. Caracas: Centro de Arte Euroamericano;
solo exhibition, The
Good
Jack Tilton Gallery. This instal-
Life, at
and Coral Gables,

lation integrated enlarged family
photographs
Fla.:
Ambrosino
Gallery, 1996. In English
and
in vintage
Spanish.
ektachrome by Albert Sydney Johnson,
Jr.,
Harris's grandfather,
Mercer, Kobena. "Dark and Lovely: Black
Gay Image Making."
with oversized color Polaroid portraits created by Harris in colIn
laboration with friends and family. Using as subjects Renee
(with
whom
Kobena Mercer, Welcome
Cox
Cultural Studies.
New York:
to the Jungle:
New Positions
in
Black
Routledge, 1994, pp. 221-32.
he shared a studio), his brother Thomas, Margaret
Nelson, George Rush, Dread Scott, Ike Ude, and himself, Harris
created portraits of real and imagined figures of American and
African-diasporic culture. Throughout his work, Harris questions

fictions of race, sexuality,
and gender
as well as of family
and
Hannah Hoch
cul(b.
tural history. In 1995, a
November
1,
1889,
Gotha, Germany;
d.
May 31,
1978,
comprehensive selection of Harris's phoBerlin-Heiligensee)
tographs was exhibited in Masculine Masquerade

Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
at
The
the
MIT
List
selection
Hannah (Johanne) Hoch
included works from Harris's 1994 collaboration with his brother

at
Thomas, Brotherhood,
Crossroads,
and
Etcetera,
mirrorlike images of the artists embracing,
makeup with
guns.
Black Power icon
left
Gotha
in 1912 to
study applied arts
the Kunstgewerbeschule, Berlin-Charlottenburg, for two years.
which depicts
Her education was interrupted by World War

nude and
I,
but she resumed
in full
her studies in 1915 at Berlin's Staatlichen Lehranstalt des

reflection
on
Huey Newton,
well-known photograph of
this series, Harris states,
Kunstgewerbemuseums, where she met Raoul Hausmann, who
engages
became her
artistic
collaborator and
companion
until 1922.
"the ambivalence around desire, envy, compassion and death that
To support herself
we
are dealing with as
two brothers who love each other
in Berlin,
1916 for the publishing

Harris's
most recent work, an
installation called
Hoch began working
company
Ullstein Verlag,
where she
The Watering
remained for ten years making handicraft patterns,
Hole (1996), explores interracial desire and consumption

serial killer Jeffrey
brochures and magazines.
Hoch produced
her
Dahmer and
first
his victims. Harris presents elegiac
and
lettering,
in
illustrations for
American culture by focusing on
part time in
critically."
collage in 1916,
and two years
later started
fashioning
photographic images of "bul-
photomontages
that utilize clippings taken
from the type of
illus-
letin-board" collages that consist of cutouts of sports, entertaintrated
women's magazines published by
Ullstein. Rather than
ment, and fashion advertisements, news clippings, vintage

r
Si
209
"New Woman," Hoch
depicting the
constructed images that con-
fronted the ambiguities inherent in that notion of the
woman
Through her
peripheral
association with
member
performances
it
tion, held at the
Hausmann, Hoch became
Graphischen Kabinett of
B.
I.
Dada-Messe exhibition
social
its first
Weimar
and
political
Republic.
Hoch
Neumann
in 1919.
a poster in the
that address
persisted in this vein of

1923 to at least 1934,
From
1920 until 1931,
Dada group, Hoch became
Hoch
contributed paintings to
to 1929, the artist lived in
Hague, The Netherlands, where,
in 1929, she
show before returning
That same
to Berlin.
had her
year,
The
by the Deutsches Werkbund
first
Czechoslovakia, in 1934, but
brought to
a halt
Two
until 1945.
held at the
by
at this
Hoch
Nationalgalerie, Berlin.
Most
mounted
Center, Minneapolis,
Museum
of
was
de Paris and the
Walker Art
major Hoch exhibition, which
Modern
Art,
New York,
new
academ-
favored
a prac-
For Klauke, photography

territory.
While
his early publication I
Sequences) (Ich
combined
& Ich
drawings and
erotic
titles
form
&I
(Daily Sketches
and Photo
[Tageszeichnungen und Fotosequenzen], 1972)

diaristic
commentary with pho-
became Klauke's main means of givand
to his subjective impulses
erotic obsessions.
of Klauke's early photographic series
such
as Self-
(i974)
all
convey a sense of negotiation and symbiosis of the
Self-Performance, a twelve-part work, shows Klauke undergo-
self.
ing a transformation of sexual identities, appearing at times vir-
Brno,
did not exhibit again
recently, in 1996, the
uality.
The
signif-
years before her death, in 1976, a retrospective

la Ville
to represent
directly.
this
rejecting the
Performance (1972-73), Transformer (1973), and Masculin/Feminin
point her artistic career was
a thyroid illness.
traveled to the
in
come
more
in the
identity apart
Since the early 1970s, Klauke has been engaged in a continuous
solo
Hoch was
in Stuttgart.
photomontages was held
icant exhibition of her
real life
provided a means to negotiate
ing objective
included in the international photography exhibition Film and

Foto, organized
engaged
tographs, photography soon
various annual Berlin exhibitions, such as that held by the
Novembergruppe. From 1926
tradition that painting had
artists
apogee
its
new
student demonstrations of 1968. Seeking a
ic
und
exploration of identity outside the conventional accounts of sex-
with International Constructivism and befriended Kurt
Schwitters.
der Mosel,
the Fachhochschule fur Design
artist at
period of cultural upheaval that had reached
themes of "otherness," notably
After the dissolution of the Berlin
Cochem an
Cologne, Jtirgen Klauke graduated in 1970, during
in
tice that
those of female identity, androgyny, and ethnography.
affiliated
Kunst
from bourgeois conventions, many
in Berlin in 1920.
commentary and, from
made photomontages
Kliding, near
6, 1943,
Trained as a graphic
exhibi-
of her works, along with the majority of those exhibited,
satirized the
September
of the Berlin Dada group, participating in
staged and contributing works to
Erste Internationale
(b.
Germany)
She then showed photomontages, sculptures, and
Many
modern
propagated by Weimar society.
Klauke
Jtirgen
in 1997. -v. g.
and
ginal
S/M
others debauched. Accessorized with the trappings of
at
rituals
and appendages that mimic both male and female
genitalia, these sexually transgressive poses
coolly straightforward
manner
suggest
photographed
a fluid
in a
and multidimen-
sional sexuality. Klauke's use of the sequence further underscores
the performative aspect of the work. In 1975, the artist presented

the
first
of several related performances, which were a logical out-
growth of the photographs.

.
' II
t/l/l ,/i
if
V|
ill/I
11
In
probing the mutable nature of
work
identity, Klauke's
refutes facile notions concerning photography's ability to capture
Hannah Hoch
1889-1978: Ihr Werk, ihr Leben, ihre Freunde. Exh. cat.
both the "truth" and a fixed identity

Berlin: Berlinische Galerie
and Argon,
Maud. Cut with
the Kitchen Knife:
Hannah Hoch. New Haven:
were promul-
German photographer August
gated, in part, through

Lavin,
beliefs that
1989.
The Weimar Photomontages of
Sander's
early twentieth-century series of representative types based on
Yale University Press, 1993.
social
The Photomontages of Hannah Hoch. Exh.
cat.
backgrounds and occupations. In contrast, Klauke's oeuvre
Minneapolis: Walker Art

suggests a tacit endorsement of
more contemporary
theorizations
Center, 1996.
that gender
is
not an innate biological
construction that
more
recent
work
is
trait
but instead a fictional
"performed" and may be modified
reveals a shift
at will.
His
toward an exploration of identity
within a broader social context, abandoning a highly individual

eroticism in favor of an almost depersonalized assessment of the
subject in society.
Klauke's
work has been
Museum Boymans-van
Museum
Ludwig, Cologne,
Baden-Baden,
Klauke
I
i
210
fur
in 1992;
lives in
Medien.-
|.
the subject of solo exhibitions at the
Beuningen, Rotterdam,
in 1987; the Staatliche Kunsthalle,
and the Kunstmuseum Diisseldorf
Cologne, where he teaches

f.
r.
in 1987; the
at
in 1992.
the Kunsthochschule
fu </
te >i /'i e a
' -
tit
ng
involved in pursuing his personal photographic projects and grew

increasingly dissatisfied with commercial work.
Jiirgen
Klauke/Cindy Sherman. Exh.
cat.
nudes Lynes continued

and German.
Ostfildern: Cantz, 1994. In English
work
that
is
erotic
sional stature
An
Performances 1970/86 (Jiirgen Klauke,
to create in private constitute a
because of
unique
Eine Ewigkeit ein Lacheln: Zekhnungen, Fotoarbeiten,
Jiirgen Klauke,
The
male
Munich: Sammlung Goetz; and
body of
especially given the photographer's profesits
positive portrayals of
homosexuals
Eternal Smile: Drawings,
and
in
adherence to male nudity
its
as subject matter. Lynes's
Photographical Works, Performances 1970/86). Edited by Andreas
work would become

Vowinckel and Evelyn Weiss. Exh.
Cologne:
cat.
a role
model
for later
photographers such as
DuMont
Robert Mapplethorpe.
Buchverlag, 1986. In English and German.
moved
In an effort to revitalize his career, Lynes
to Los
Fotosequenzen 1972-1980: Die Schwarz-Weiss Sequenzen.
Jiirgen Klauke,
Angeles in 1946 to assume the position of Chief Photographer for

Frankfurt: Betzel-Verlag, 1982. In English and
German.
Vogue magazine's studio in Hollywood. However, financial
Jiirgen Klauke: Sonntagsneurosen. Edited
by Jochen Poetter. Exh.
culties obligated
Ostfildern: Cantz;
and Baden-Baden:
diffi-
cat.
him
to return to
New York
in 1948.
Although
Staatliche Kunsthalle, 1992. In
Lynes was unsuccessful in resuming his former career due to

English and
German.
changing
tastes in
photography, his work was of great interest to
Dr. Alfred C. Kinsey,
who began
collecting
it
around 1950
in con-
junction with his research on gay-male sexuality. After his death
George
(b.
April
Plait
1907, East
15,
photographs were largely forgotten except for the
in 1955, Lynes's
Lynes
Orange,
i960 portrait exhibition George Piatt Lynes, Portraits 1931-1952
New
Jersey; d.
December
at
6, 1955,
the Art Institute of Chicago. In
New York)
fact,
it
was not
until the early
1980s that his oeuvre began to receive critical attention, with an

exhibition at Boston's Institute of
George
Piatt
Lynes benefited from
attended Yale University,
New
a private
Lynes: Photographic Visions,
Haven, for
Contemporary Art, George
Piatt
education and
and the publication of George
Piatt
semester in
a single
Lynes: Photographs 1931-1955.- v. c.

1926. His earliest
during his
ambition was to be
first trip
a literary publisher
and,
he developed a friendship
to France, in 1925,
'uaqeited zrieaainai
with writer and arts patron Gertrude Stein. She supported his
aspirations
and provided him with an entree into the sphere of
the intellectual avant-garde. Lynes originally took
phy
secondary
in 1927 as a
pal occupation.
On
activity,
subsequent
tographed eminent cultural
and saw the work of

In
New York,
movement,
figures,
Surrealist
Lynes was
but
it
visit to
soon became
among them
Julien Levy,
established Surrealist photographers.

significant exposure,
who
to
Man
Brown,
1993.
cat.
Boston: Institute of Contemporary Art, 1980.
Woody,
Jack.
Pasadena,
George Piatt Lynes: Photographs 1931-1955.

Calif.:
Twelvetrees, 1981.
Ray.
with the Surrealist
endorsement of the
Man Ray
represented several
Through
which allowed him
as
Piatt Lynes. Boston: Little
Prokopoff, Stephen. George Piatt Lynes: Photographic Visions. Exh.
Jean Cocteau,
photographers such
initially identified
Crump, James. George
his princi-
France, in 1928, he pho-
particularly since he received the
prominent gallery owner
up photogra-
Levy, Lynes gained
open
(b.
August
[Emmanuel Radnitsky]
27, 1890, Philadelphia; d.
November
18,
1976, Paris)
a professional
New York,
studio by 1932. His reputation burgeoned and by 1934 he was exe-
Emmanuel Radnitsky grew up
cuting portrait and fashion commissions, the latter often
ied art at the National
informed by Surrealist principles. In these compositions, Lynes
League, and the nontraditional Ferrer Center, where George
made
Bellows and Robert Henri taught. In 1914, by which time he had
use of backdrops, props, and poses to suggest a dreamlike
world, blurring the boundaries between commercial and fine-art
abbreviated his
photography. Lynes also photographed ballet dancers and, in
writer
make promotional images
was hired
to
American
Ballet Theatre in
New York.
for
1935,
George Balanchine's
Adon
full
in BrookJyn. In
Academy of Design,
name
to
Man
he stud-
the Art Student's
Ray, he married the Belgian
Lacroix; the union lasted four years, during
time Lacroix influenced his intellectual development. In
which
1915,
nudes, sensual images that are occasionally explicit in their depic-
Man Ray was introduced to Marcel Duchamp, newly arrived

from Paris, who became a lifelong friend and collaborator. That
same year, he had his first solo show, at the Daniel Gallery, New
tion of gay sexuality.
York, and
In
many of his
fine-art
images, Lynes explored homoerotic themes by focusing on male
Lynes's popularity reached
its
apex
held at the Pierre Matisse Gallery,
in 1941
with a retrospective
New York, which
featured
than two hundred portraits. At that time, he became more
more
ed there.
first
used photography to document the works exhibit-
Man Ray subsequently
form and,
mastered the
medium
in 1917, created his first cliche-verre, a
image derived from drawing on
a glass negative.
as
an
art
photographic
%
<
Man Ray executed the first of several

artful photographs of Duchamp posing as his feminine alter ego,
Rrose Selavy. In the summer of 1921, Man Ray moved to Paris and
In the winter of 1920,
met the members of the proto-Surrealist

In his
and
first
he presented work
paintings, "aerographs," collages,
Man Ray
and
mediums:
During the
1920s,
photographed the denizens of Montparnasse, the
ing artistic quarter of Paris in which he lived.
were the notorious

his lover
Dada bookstore
in several
objects.
and the
artists'
model
earn his livelihood in Paris,
Among
Kiki (Alice Prin)
transvestite trapeze
thriv-
his subjects
who became
performer Barbette. To
Man Ray turned
to
(b.
November
4,
1946, Floral Park,
New York;
Robert Mapplethorpe
Institute,
ture
and received
artist,
left
for
Brooklyn and
numerous
in the
During
Man
and contributed images
more
and musicians
to 1974,
combined
own images
Warhol's Interview magazine.
mented
sometime
in the
winter of 1921-22.
extensively with this particular technique,
Man Ray continued
"rayography."
adding film to his repertoire
to
in 1923
work
He
light-
experi-
which he
called
in multiple genres,
with Retour a
la
Tzara. In 1929,
Man Ray
entered into a collaborative relationship
with the photographer Lee Miller,

student,
and lover
until 1932.
It
who was
his assistant,
was with Miller that
model,
Man Ray
socialites
Two
Museum
bought Mapplethorpe
Man Ray
of the collectors
triate artist
was included
in
in 1936 the expa-
both the landmark International
Surrealist Exhibition at the Burlington Galleries,
London, and
Museum of Modern Art,

New York. Wartime exigencies forced Man Ray to repatriate in
1940, but rather than remain in New York, he moved to Los
Angeles, where his work was well received. Man Ray returned
Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism at the
permanently
to Paris in 1951.
He
received the gold medal in
recognition of achievement in photography at the 1961 Venice

Biennale,
and
in 1976
was awarded the Order of Artistic Merit by
the French government. -v. g.
photographer for Andy
produced album covers
at
the
for
same time pho-
such as John Paul Getty
celebrities
III
means of art making. He met
John McKendry, Curator of Prints and Photography

Metropolitan
up photography
in Paris.
in por-
of Mapplethorpe's friends were influential in his continu-
the
was published
and
ing exploration of photography as a
graphic print). In 1934, his now-celebrated book Photographs by

1920 Paris 1934
also
his
photogra-
and Carolina Herrera.
devised the process of solarization (tone reversal in the photo-
Garnering further international recognition,
as a staff
He
Smith and the group Television, and
raison
(Return to reason), realized for his friend Dadaist poet Tristan
Mapplethorpe worked
tographed
to
SX-70 camera. Interested
phy, initially using a Polaroid

traiture,
sensitive paper)
men from pornographic
Mapplethorpe turned
for these collages,
photogram
photograph produced by placing objects on
be a photogra-
to
he mainly made assemblage con-
with a fortuitous darkroom accident, led to his discovery of the

(a
in the early 1970s.
magazines with found objects and painting. In order to create
to Surrealist journals.
Ray's innovative approach to photography,
work
lived together in
was not Mapplethorpe's original intention
and from 1970
he met
this time,
when they
pher,
concurrently produced photographs in a
at the Pratt
Smith. She encouraged his
Patti
portraits
structions that incorporate images of
He
and enrolled
Chelsea Hotel in Manhattan, a gathering
place for artists, writers,

It
in 1962
his B.F.A. in 1970.
and musician
poet,
and posed
commercial pho-
home
portraying the cultural and aristocratic circles he had begun to

frequent.
9, 1989,
Brooklyn, in 1963, where he studied painting and sculp-
tography, accepting commissions from fashion magazines and
strictly artistic vein
March
d.
Boston)
Cafe Certa.
circle at the
Parisian solo exhibition, in 1921 at the
gallery Librairie Six,
Robert Mapplethorpe
of Art,
his first
time.
full
New York,
at the
The curator
in 1971.
camera and persuaded him
Mapplethorpe traveled
to
Europe
time with McKendry, where he was introduced to
first
who
and photography
later
collector
became Mapplethorpe's
became
Sam
friend
sitters for portraits.
Wagstaff,
who
and eventual
for
many
Curator
he met in
lover,
to take
1972,
encouraging
the photographer's development, gallery associations, and career

course.
They remained
Mapplethorpe had
New York:
close until Wagstaff 's death in 1986.
his first substantial
shows
in 1977,
an exhibition of photographs of flowers
at
both
in
the Holly
Solomon Gallery and one of male nudes and sadomasochistic

imagery
at
portraits,
his
homo-
work
the Kitchen. Mapplethorpe's diverse
erotic images, floral
still lifes,
pictures of children,
mixed-media sculpture
is
commissioned
united by the constancy of
approach and technique. The surfaces of his prints offer
seemingly endless gradation of blacks and whites, shadow and

light,
and regardless of subject,
his
images are both elegant and
provocative. In the mid-to-late 1980s, returning to the sculptural

Foresta, Merry, et
al.
Perpetual Motif: The Art of Man Ray. Exh. cat.
Washington, D.C.: National

Institution;
and
Livingston, Jane.
In Rosalind
New York:
Museum
created sensual diptychs and triptychs of photographs printed
1
1
on
Abbeville Press, 1988.
"Man Ray and
fabric
and luxurious cloth
of his
work were organized: by
panels. In 1988, four
major exhibitions
Surrealist Photography."
Krauss and Jane Livingston, L'Amourfou: Photography
and Surrealism. New York: Abbeville,
Man
use of photography seen in his early assemblages, Mapplethorpe
of American Art, Smithsonian
198s, pp. 115-47.
the Institute of
Ray. Self Portrait. Boston: Little
Brown,
1963.
the Stedelijk
Museum,
Amsterdam; the Whitney Museum of American
Contemporary
Art,
New York;
Art, University of Pennsylvania,
and the National
Philadelphia;
Mapplethorpe died due
The
Contemporary
Institute of
to travel after
wing objections
to the
Art's retrospective
at its first
D.C., to cancel the
show two weeks before
instead traveled to the
in
continued
cled records manipulated into visually stimulating
right-
Washington,
scheduled opening.
its
Washington Project
Arts (W.P.A.), Washington, D.C., where
for the
received record atten-
it
humorous
sculptures. Marclay 's later
album
featuring collaged
,/it/.'\<
!/</</<
rir/i
""
and often
Body Mix (1991-92)
series,
jackets, questions the fixed nature of
identity as well as the object.
With
their exquisite-corpse-like
combinations of male and female body
parts, his overlapping,
sewn-together album covers refashion stereotyped images of

race
and gender into strange,
ously
Skin
B.
in the early 1980s
mounted groupings of
Mix /and
commercial
Marclay had previ-
erotic hybrids.
on boxy, wooden
covers
skeletons.
(both 1990) are styled into totemlike
//
sculptures, highlighting the hollow

'
were made of recy-
blages. His first
two venues, the threat of
Corcoran Gallery of Art
works done
in 1989.
photographs of S/M and homoerotic acts
officials at the
The exhibition
dance.-!'.
forming familiar objects into unexpected, Duchampian assem-
London.
from AIDS
Mapplethorpe's death. Although the exhibition had
sparked no controversy
prompted
Portrait Gallery,
to complications
and
artificial
aspects of these
objects.
Like these theatrical unions, the artist has at times "fashioned"

Barrie, Dennis.
(fall 1991),
"The Scene of the Crime." Art Journal
50, no. 3
himself into a chameleon
a compilation of
consumers'
dis-
pp. 29-32.
parate desires. In 1994, Marclay depicted himself in a series of five
Germane
Celant,
Mapplethorpe. Exh.
cat.
Milan: Electa, 1992.
concert announcements installed in the streets of Geneva. In each

In English.
poster, the artist
Kardon,
Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Moment. Exh.
Janet. Robert
is
type of musician
Philadelphia: Institute of
Contemporary
Art, University
dressed in the stereotypical garb of a certain
cat.
(jazz, classical, rock).
series, called False
group of individuals, each of
Advertising, attracted a diverse

Pennsylvania, 1988.
New York: Whitney
Marshall, Richard. Robert Mapplethorpe. Exh. cat.
The
(it
whom
was surprised
to discover not the particular concert
she had expected but an exhibition of the posters.
Museum
of American Art in association with
New York
he or
The group was
Graphic
compelled to confront
its
preconceptions and to rethink the stan-
Society Books, 1988.
dard visual clues that had manipulated them.
Marclay 's work has been exhibited nationally and internationally since 1983.
Examples of
Whitney Biennial
Christian Marclay
in 1991,
his sculpture
and
were included
in the
in 1995 the artist represented
Switzerland at the Venice Biennale. Marclay has had notable solo

(b.
January
11,
1955,
San Rafael, California)

exhibitions at the Hirshhorn
Museum and
Sculpture Garden,
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.,
Though born
United
in the
States, Christian
in 1990; the Fri-Art
Marclay was raised

Centre d'Art Contemporain Kunsthalle, Fribourg, Switzerland, in
in
Geneva, Switzerland, where he studied
at
the Ecole Superieure
and the Musee
1994; the Cleveland Center for the Arts in 1995;
d'Art Visuel. Returning to the States in 1977, Marclay attended the
d'Art
et d'Histoire,
Geneva,
in 1996.
The
artist will
be given a solo
Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, where he earned a B.F.A.

exhibition at the Kunsthaus Zurich in
in 1980.
While
in school,
fall
1997 in conjunction
Marclay became interested in perforwith the Preis fur Junge Schweizer Kunstgesellschaft. Marclay
mance
art as well as music,
and was particularly inspired by the

in
liberating
the defining charac.
of Marclay 's career ever since. Like his objects and
specific installations,
which often combine and juxtapose
parate elements of art and musical culture, Marclay 's
mance
pieces at such venues as the Kitchen
New York and
and La
cultural institutions throughout
dis-
DJ perfor-
Mama
found objects he orchestrates
in
Europe use
in his visual art,
Tuaaeitea zh
<
</</'
n>q
site-
"mixing" techniques to create unusual fusions of music. Similar

to the
c.
punk-rock scene.
The marriage of art and music has been

teristic
New York.- s.
Marclay
Christian Marclay: Amplification. Exh. cat. Bern: Office Federal de
Culture, 1995. In English, French,
and German.
Smithsonian Institution, 1990.
fresh perspective in
both his music and visual
art.
In his sculp-
Marclay recontextualizes the paraphernalia of musical cul-
ture such as speakers, audiotape,
and instruments, often
trans-
Italian.
and Fribourg: Fri-Art
Cruz, Amada. "Directions: Christian Marclay." Exh. brochure.
Washington, D.C.: Hirshhorn
Shuttling between these different arenas, Marclay maintains a
la
Centre d'Art Contemporain Kunsthalle, 1994. In English, French,
reuses existing recordings as well as everyday sounds to produce
music.
German, and
Christian Marclay. Exh. cat. Berlin: Daadgalerie;
new
ture,
lives
Seliger,
no.
Museum and
Sculpture Garden,
Jonathan. "Christian Marclay." Journal of Contemporary Art

1
5,
(spring 1992), pp. 64-76.
Vogel, Sabine. "In Record Time." Artforum 29, no. 9
(May
1991),
pp. 103-07.
,
213
Annette Messager
(b.
November
'
.
u r/ </ c ff 1/ /A
r a r/i /nf
30, 1943, Berck, France)
Annette Messager: Comedie tragedie, 19/1-1989. Exh.
Musee de Grenoble,
Annette Messager's early
artistic interests
were encouraged by
1989. In
Annette Messager: Faire des histoires/Making Up

father she has described as a
Influenced by the
many
Sunday painter and
trips to
Stories.
Exh.
cat.
collector.
museums
churches and
Grenoble:
cat.
French and German.
she
Toronto: Mercer Union and Cold City Gallery, 1991. In English and
made
French.
throughout Europe
as a child,
Messager moved to Paris
in the
Conkleton, Sheryl, and Carol

early 1960s to attend the Ecole des Arts Decoratifs,
Los Angeles: Los Angeles County
Museum
of Art; and
cat.
New York:
atmosphere of the
greatly influenced by the radical intellectual
Museum
May 1968
Annette Messager. Exh.
S. Eliel.
where she was

of
Modern
Art, 1995.
rebellion.
Gourmelon, Mo. "Arbitrated
Dissections:
The Art of Annette
Inspired in equal turns by the subversive qualities of

Messager." Arts Magazine 65, no.
Surrealism and an early attraction to Catholicism, Messager
(November
1990), pp. 66-71.
Rowlands, Penelope. "Art that Annoys." Artnews 94, no. 8 (October
began
keeping
to create reliquarylike objects in art school. In
1995), pp. 132-35.
with her interest in "secret objects," she began making eclectic

personal diaries in the early 1970s that include collections of her
own
signature, needlework, expense records, as well as pho-
tographs satirizing women's tortuous beauty rituals and other
Pierre Molinier
Deriding the separation of art and
social conventions.
life,
(b.
Messager signed these works, made
in her
April
13,
1900, Agen, France; d.
March
3,
Bordeaux)
1976,
bedroom, "Annette
Messager Collectionneuse" to differentiate them from the works
grew up
Pierre Molinier
made
in her studio,
which she signed "Annette Messager
went
Over the
Messager has assumed several
years,
titles,
to the local art school
Woman," "Trickster," and

prolific
and diverse
maintained an interest
between
and death
life
augment the limited
career,
him, he apprenticed with his
artistic training available
in the dual nature of things.
mediums
can be seen
named
and with
Pierre Augustin de Fumadelles. After a brief
Her use of
interlude in Paris, Molinier
moved
to
Bordeaux
in 1923
and estab-
suspend objects
that
permanent residence
lished his
as a
father, a painter,
Messager has
sculptor
taxidermy and photography
the Ecole
at
"Peddler."
to
Throughout her
and took evening courses
including
des Beaux-Arts. To
"Practical
town of Agen, where he
in the small
Artiste."
metaphor
there. Molinier
was
a painter for
for the gaps
most of his
career, first creating landscapes in a Post-
the artist tries to close between other accepted dichotomies. In
human
referencing the
Impressionist
style,
then delving into abstraction, and, in 1936,
form, for example, Messager uses ambigu-
adopting a more Surrealistic idiom. Photography was merely a

ity to free
gendered bodies from fixed meaning, allowing them to
means
for
him
to
document
his
work
until
about 1950, when he
speak for themselves.

In
many
began
series
made during
photographs of isolated body
the 1980s, Messager manipulated

In 1955, Molinier approached Surrealist leader
Andre Breton,
parts, enlarging, fragmenting,
who
painting,
to execute self-portraits.
and drawing over them
to
consequently gave him a solo exhibition
at his
new
Parisian
form strange monsters, imaggallery, l'Etoile Scellee, in
January 1956. Following
the artist
this,
inary landscapes, and fantastic identities. Messager also began
contributed to Breton's periodical, Le Surrealisme, meme, and
adding
text to
her works, writing repetitive mantras
down
the
showed
wall in colored pencil, or weaving threads of
arrangements.
Memory and menace
words
encounter with Surrealism proved to be a creative catalyst for the

coexist in Messager's dualisartist,
tic
universe.
his paintings in several Surrealist exhibitions. Molinier's
in weblike
The Pikes (Les Piques, 1991-93),
who
dedicated himself in 1964 almost exclusively to pho-
garden of spikes
tography and to photomontages that concentrated on sexually
and impaled
dolls,
at
is
once ominous and carnivalesque, while

transgressive themes.
Penetration (Penetration, 1993-94), a forest of brightly colored
Primarily for his

internal organs
made
own
pleasure, Molinier crafted photographic
of stitched and stuffed cloth, mediates

scenarios that depict himself and other models wearing copious
between funhouse and slaughterhouse, impishly perverting the
makeup
viewer's notions of the hideous
and the
ings,
In 1989, Messager
had her
first
or female masks and costumed in leather corsets, stock-
divine.
and
stiletto heels
while employing props such as
touring retrospective, which
nequins or handmade dildos.

originated at the
Musee de Grenoble. Most
Los Angeles County

Art,
New York,
Museum
constructing his virtually
recently, in 1995, the
of Art and the
Museum
seamless photomontages, Molinier obfuscated the gender and
of
Modern
identity of the figures through repeated technical manipulations.
organized a major retrospective of the
artist's
In 1967,
work, which also traveled to the Art Institute of Chicago

lives in
Malakoff, France. -s.
Molinier met and collaborated with Hanel Koeck,
affiliated
with the Vienna Actionists, and his little-known
c.
photography soon become popular with European
214
who
in 1996.
was
Messager
When
man-
artists
of the
As
early 1970s.
Kunstmuseum
a consequence,
Travestie in 1974-75. Molinier

until his death
he was included
by suicide
remained
active as a
in 1976. In 1979, the
women
ing Japanese identity, satirizing upper-class Japanese
in the
Luzern's exhibition "Transformer": Aspekte der
photographer
Musee National
obsessed with Western status symbols in the photographs of him-
Chanel and Louis Vuitton, from the
self,
costumed
in
The
artist also
began reworking documentary photography
Sister series.
at this
d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, held a retro-
time,
spective of his work.-v. g.
with his Psychoborgs, various incarnations of Michael Jackson and
and again expanded
his use of pop-culture
imagery in 1994
Madonna. Morimura elaborated on the theme of the

'
'"'/'/< itt >/
entertainer
with his Actress series of 1996, in which he faithfully restaged
eaainqi
from various American, European, and Japanese
stills
film classics.
Durant, Mark Alice. "Lost (and Found) in a Masquerade: The
Whether he
Photographs of Pierre Molinier." Exposure
is
playing Marilyn
Monroe
in
The Seven Year
Itch
29, nos. 2-3 (1994),
(Billy Wilder, 1955) or the Infanta

pp. 27-35-
Meninas
1656),
Margarita in Velazquez's Las
Morimura undermines
the colonizing gaze of the
Molinier: Peinture, photos et photomontages. Exh. cat. Paris: Fondation
historical Western, white
male subject by corrupting accepted
Aquitaine and Musee National dArt Moderne, 1979.
"truths" of gender, race, beauty, culture,
and the
self
with his
Molinier, Pierre. Pierre Molinier. Exh. cat. Winnipeg, Canada: Plug in
impeccable
Editions, 1993. In English
illusions.
and French.
Morimura had
Petit, Pierre. Molinier:
Une
his first solo
show
museum
at a
in 1992 at the
Vie d'enfer. Paris: Ramsay/Jean-Jacques
Museum
of Contemporary Art, Chicago, which subsequently
Pauvert, 1992.
Museum
traveled to the Carnegie
icant solo exhibitions have
of Art, Pittsburgh. Other signif-
been organized by the Fondation
Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain, Paris, in 1993; the Hara
Museum, Hara, and
Yasumasa Morimura
(b.
June
1951,
11,
the Ginza Art Space, Tokyo, in 1994; and
the
Yokohama Museum of Art
-s.
c.
in 1996.
Morimura
lives in
Osaka,
Osaka
Yasumasa Morimura received
a B.A.
from Kyoto City University

.
I iifffi ,/,
<
'/'/'
/'
of Art in 1975 and studied visual design there in 1978. Since 1985,
he has been using photography to investigate the complex cultural
and economic exchanges between East and West
that have
25, no. 163
influenced contemporary Japanese identity. Reacting to the profusion of Western images in Japan's visual vocabulary,
re-creates, as
knew
as a youth.
works
Morimura Yasumasa: The
Using methods that
(1863),
Exh.
The Third of May, 1808

a
European
As early
drawing
(1814), inserting
(1632),
Morimura,
between
Ray's portrait of Marcel
which gender
race invoked through

as natural or
consummate drag
fictions
Duchamp's female
July 1996),
Sickness unto Beauty
Self-Portrait as Actress.
1996. In English
J.
Options 44: Yasumasa Morimura. Exh. brochure.
Museum
of Contemporary Art, 1992.
and Goya's
artist,
is
alter ego,
began
work has become even
identity as performance, his imperson-
photography the most elaborate
theatrical
tions. (His brightly colored tableaux
rivaling in
still
and cinematic produc-
can measure up to eight by
April
14, 1961,
Sandusky, Ohio)
her teenage years in
hood on
moved
of thirteen, Catherine Opie spent
Rancho Bernardo,
California, a neighbor-
the outskirts of San Diego. Following high school, she
San Francisco and began
to
interest in
Institute,
at the age
photography. Enrolling
to explore her
at the
also addressed the
economic
factors shap-
childhood
San Francisco Art
Opie focused on documentary photography,
a prefer-
ence influenced early on by the work of Lewis Hine and later by

the
work of
artists
such as Bernd and Hilla Becher, Walker Evans,
and Dorothea Lange. After receiving her
feet.)
Morimura
(b.
Moving from Ohio
makeup, Morimura denies these categories

artist's
Catherine Opie
Man
Rrose
indicated by costume and jewelry and
and props have become more extravagant,
In 1991,
84, no. 7
Yokohama: Yokohama Museum of Art,
Chicago:
of race and gender. In works
predetermined. As the
more concerned with
eleven
America
an Asian subjectivity into
such as Doublonnage (Marcel), his 1988 interpretation of
ations
in
narrative.
as 1986,
parallels
Selavy, in
cat.
Wright, Beryl
Rembrandt's
The Anatomy Lesson of Professor Nicolaes Tulp
Art
and Japanese.
transports himself into the center of such iconic
Edouard Manet's Olympia
as
Girls."
pp. 62-65.
include photography, over-painting, and computer imaging,
Morimura
(March-April 1992), pp. 82-83.
Gumpert, Lynn. "Glamour
Morimura
both homage and critique, the masterpieces he
through reproductions
Bonami, Francesco. "Yasumasa Morimura: Double Exposure." Flash Art
B.F.A. in 1985,
Opie
returned to Southern California, earning an M.F.A. from the

I
215
Though
California Institute of Arts in Valencia in 1988.
her mas-
ter's
degree show and other early work were documentary pro-
jects
on planned communities, Opie had already begun taking
though not exhibiting
members of the
photographs of her
and
leather
fetish
In 1948, Lucas
West
community.
Being and Having, Opie's earliest series of intimate portraits

intended for a public audience, were included in her
New York,
exhibition in
women
in 1991.
first
These head shots depicting
times allow the viewer to see the
the masculine masquerade. Opie's
more
artifice
behind
colorful Portraits of 1994,
S/M community. These formal
and dignified bust- and
Whitney
artist's
mother moved from Greece
where they joined
in the
New
to
Studying with
Jersey.
Segal until 1959, Samaras experienced
timedia performance events, which came to be
known
Happenings. In 1959, he entered Columbia University,
Reuben
Gallery,
in a
number of Happenings
at
New
where he met Jim Dine, Red Grooms, and
show with other pioneer Pop
New Forms exhibition
second
as
New York,
under Meyer Shapiro.
art history
Samaras participated
New York's Martha
at
Jackson Gallery in i960. The autobiographical content of his
work
vision of these
to
who had
development of Kaprow's junk-filled environments and mul-
artists in the
community
his father,
same year was admitted
Brunswick,
Claes Oldenburg, and proceeded to
in 1994. Like
her portraits, which focus a fresh lens on the queer
and standard definitions of gender, the
the
New
Kaprow and George
Allan
York's
photographs of the Los Angeles freeways
his
and
citizen in 1955
and studied
Biennial.
Expanding her investigation of community, Opie began

series of
Jersey,
emigrated to the United States in 1939. Samaras became an
Opie consid-
full-length portraits gained
erable attention at the 1995
Kastoria, Macedonia, Greece)
Samaras and
Rutgers University in
however, are straightforward homages to individuals and couples

in the little-represented lesbian
14, 1936,
New York, New
American
solo
with mustaches and beards were intended as performa-
tive pieces that at
September
(b.
and other
friends
Lucas Samaras
differentiated
Samaras from the Pop
artists.
He expanded
contemporary
thoroughfares challenges expected notions of landscape and
his interest in the performative aspects of
beauty and again brings into view what
attending the Stella Adler Conservatory of Acting and continued
panoramic black-and-white platinum
monuments
a series
Opie imbues these
devoted to Hollywood Hills house
The photographs capture
often seen
often excluded. In her
of industrialization with a surprising romanticism.
Opie began
In 1995,
facades.
is
prints,
up
and cropped,
close
a variety of
homes, which are
Opie
by
producing work that embraced diverse mediums such as paint-
and
ing, sculpture, assemblage,
he gave an advanced
film. In 1969,
sculpture seminar at Yale University and completed a short film,

Self,
with
Kim
Levin.
He
taught in the art department of
Brooklyn College from 1971 to 1972.
formal approach similar to
that of her earliest portraits. In this series, however,
art
Samaras's
inverts
first
explorations into photography, in 1969, were
her previous critiques of perception and hints at the perversion
his AntoPolaroids,
of the seemingly ordinary. Opie's images reassess attitudes toward
depict
and representation of various "fringe" and familiar communities.
ing and mugging. In 1973, he discovered that the image could be
The
artist's
work has
recently been represented in
group exhibitions, including,
Museum
Girl, at
of
Modern Art
the Kunstverein
at
in 1994,
Munchen, Munich, and
Pompidou,
and Persona
Boy,
It's
the Kunstraum,
the Centre Georges
at the
lives in
Los Angeles. -s.
/'"/"/'
/"/ A
.
eaat
after
ullerton,
Renaissance Society
who
b>y
possibilities for
incorporating double exposures into his oeuvre.
photography
identity
//</
new
used the swirling, rippling, scratched, and pat-
continues to experiment with
cat.
emerged from the camera. These
the mid-1980s, Samaras further pushed the boundaries of pho-
tography
c.
Kim, and Sky Gilbert. Fabrications. Exh.
it
terned surfaces to give psychological dimension to his work. In
and
to
new technology and formats
He
in
rework questions about the nature of
portraiture.
In 1983, a retrospective
I
camera nude or costumed, vamp-
and distorted by manipulating the emulsion of the unique
Samaras,
instant
for the
pioneering Photo-Transformations opened up
University of Chicago, and the Kunsthalle Basel in 1996.
at the
Opie
Paris, in 1995;
I'art, at
Oh
altered
him performing
photograph immediately
Persona Cognita, at the
Heide, Australia, and
Vienna; femininmasculin: Le Sexe de
numerous
black-and-white Polaroid self-portraits that
of Samaras's photographs was present-
Toronto:
ed
at the
Paris; the Frankfurter
Toronto Photographers Workshop, 1996.

Persona Cognita. Exh.
cat.
Heide, Australia:
Museum
of Modern Art
at
and the Serpentine

I
leide, 1994, pp. 18-19, 41-43-
Rugoff, Ralph. Transformers. Exh. cat.
New York:
Modern
Incorporated, 1994, pp. 22-24.
Anna Marie. "The Feminine Gaze: Photographer Catherine
Opie Documents
November
216
a Lesbian
19, 1991,
Daddy/Boy Subculture." The Advocate,
pp. 82-83.
Art,
New
Gallery,
York,
London. In
1992, the
showed an extensive
collection of the
Independent Curators
artist's
Smith,
New York;
Museum of
Kunstverein; the International Center of Photography,
photographs. Samaras
lives in
New York.- t.
b.
' in/t/<
,/(
J A
.
na
"<ii
<
Disasters series
Lifson, Ben. Samaras: Photographs, 1969-1986.
New York:
from the mid-to-late
1980s.
market for her photographs also prompted
The
ever-increasing
this turn, challenging
Aperture,
her to attempt to create
work
that
was "unsaleable" due
to
its vis-
1988.
body
ceral depictions of vomit,
Lucas Samaras: Objects and Subjects, 1969-1986. Exh.
cat.
New York:
parts,
and grotesque
fairy tales.
Simultaneously, she instilled the works with a heightened sense of

Abbeville Press, 1988.
artifice created
Lucas Samaras: Photos Polaroid Photographs 1969-198). Exh.
by garish colors and gaps that reveal the
behind the
illusion.
1983.
Throughout her
In English, French,
fiction
cat. Paris:
and German.
visual genres
career,
including
Sherman has appropriated numerous
the film
still,
centerfold, fashion photo-
graph, historical portrait, and soft-core sex image
while
dis-
rupting the operations that work to define and maintain their

respective codes of representation. In addition to
Cindy Sherman
(b.
January
Glen Ridge,
19, 1954,
New
at
Jersey)
the Stedelijk
Cindy Sherman emerged onto the
numerous
group exhibitions, her work was the subject of solo exhibitions
Museum
New York
Museum, Amsterdam,
of American Art,
art scene in the early
in 1982;
and the Whitney
New York, in 1987. Most recently, a retMuseum Boymans-van Beuningen,
rospective organized by the
1980s as part of a
new generation of artists concerned with
the
Rotterdam, traveled throughout Europe in 1996 and 1997.

codes of representation in a media-saturated
era.
Having gradu-
Sherman
ated from State University College, Buffalo, in 1976, she
moved
horror film.-
New York
the following year, at a time
when
New York and
lives in
is
at
work on
a feature-length
to
j.
f.
r.
the authority of the
Amid
Modernist paradigm was coming under increasing scrutiny.
debates surrounding authorship and the role of originality, the
condition of the photographic image, and the increasing cornmodification of

early 1980s
Sherman's work was quickly embraced
art,
Cindy Sherman. Exh.
in the
and framed within the contemporary feminist critique
cat.
Rotterdam:
of American
Museum Boymans-van
Beuningen, 1996. In English and Dutch.
Cindy Sherman: Photographic Work 1975-1995. Edited by Zdenek
Sherman's reputation was established on the basis of her

Stills,
the late 1970s in
a series
which the
the guises of cliched
tograph,
New York: Whitney Museum
Art, 1987.
Cindy Sherman. Exh.
of patriarchy.
Untitled Film
cat.
of black-and-white photographs from

artist
depicted herself dressed
B-movie heroines.
Sherman was
In
photograph
and Martin Schwander. Exh.
Felix
Munich: Schirmer Art Books,
1995.
In English.
in
after
cat.
pho-
Krauss, Rosalind. Cindy Sherman: 1975-1993.
New York:
Rizzoli, 1993.
ever present, and yet never really there
her ready adaptation of a range of personae highlighting the
masquerade of
identity.
Her appropriation of the space on both
sides of the lens destabilized the traditionally
tion between artist
gendered opposi-
and model, object and subject
been theorized by film
critics in
one
that
terms of spectatorship and
had
the Untitled Film
(b.
November
16,
1944, Prague)
its
After spending one year (1963-64) at the Hochschule fur Bildende
gendered codes of looking.

It
Kathctrina Sieverding
Stills elicited
debate concerning the con-
Kiinste,
Hamburg, Katharina Sieverding enrolled
at
the Staatliche
struction of woman-as-image, the photographs
Sherman made
Kunstakademie, Diisseldorf, where she studied until 1967 with
throughout the mid-1980s served to perpetuate
this discourse.
Teo Otto. While
Her Centerfolds
(1981)
and Fashion (1983-84)
series elaborated the
at school,
and construction
Sieverding also worked
for theatrical
performances
at
on
set
codes of what film theorist Laura Mulvey termed the "to-be-
the Burgtheater, Vienna, the Schauspielhaus, Diisseldorf,
looked-at-ness" of female representation. Emulating the signifiers
Deutsche Oper, Berlin. She continued her studies
of the centerfold, the closely cropped photographs reveal a body
Kunstakademie through 1972 under the
that
is
available to the
camera and bathed
and the
at the
direct tutelage of Joseph
Beuys. Beuys's emphasis on the creation of the
in a vivid light.
designs
venues such as
artist's
persona
is
Sherman's choice of gendered genres compounds the voyeuristic
evident in Sieverding's early photographic work, which features
impression established in the works.
large-scale, close-up self-portraits that vary endlessly as she
Feeling pigeonholed by the feminist discourse that surrounded
her work,
Sherman gradually dispensed with
representations of
the female, often removing herself from the picture and
toward more
fantastic
and
moving
lurid imagery, as in her Fairy Tales
and
changes makeup, lighting, and focus.

In the mid-1970s, Sieverding
began making monumental pho-
tographic tableaux that combine images and
New York
in 1976 to participate in the
text.
She came
to
Whitney Museum of
<
217
American
Manhattan
to
become
member
Inez van
in
of the Graduate Faculty of
New
and Social Science of the
Political
in 1977.
Independent Study Program and remained
Art's
September
(b.
25, 1963,
performing, and creating installations
tions such as the Minneapolis College of Art
in
at institu-
and Design, the Los
Inez van Lamsweerde studied fashion at the
Vogue
(1983-85)
New York
University, Montreal.
Contemporary
Sieverding returned to self-portraiture in the early 1980s, cre-
and abstracted works
that are connected to
and photography
Akademie (1985-90), both
Angeles Institute for Contemporary Art, and Concordia
ating close-cropped
Amsterdam)
School for Social Research
She traveled throughout the United States and Canada
1977, lecturing,
Lamsweerde
women
in
at
the Gerrit Rietveld
Amsterdam, and
for a one-year residency at PS.
Art. Since her
dressed as
sites scattered
Mode Akademie
1,
moved
in 1992
to
the Institute of
first series in 1991,
which depicted
posing for pin-ups in unremarkable urban
if
throughout the northern Dutch
city of
Groningen,
the masklike images she produced in the 1960s and early 1970s.
van Lamsweerde has mimicked the glossiness of fashion maga-
From 1990
zines
to 1992, Sieverding
Hochschule
a
work
that
fiir
was
visiting professor at the
Bildende Kiinste in Hamburg, where she created
was chosen by the jury organized
to
fill
monumental
Reichstag in Berlin. Memorial (Mahnmal, 1990), a
photograph of
eruption
a solar
to the persecution in 1933 of
parliament
the renovated
Sieverding's proposed
memorial
non-Nazi members of the German
provocatively explores
the country's political past
and present.
moved
In 1992, Sieverding
to Berlin to teach at the
Hochschule
project for Kunstwerke, a Berlin arts
complex
face
port for projects since 1992,
surrounded by knives, arranged
tograph of a sensuously posed
when
thrown by
is
superimposed on the image was a
becoming more German). Many
bill-
boards were defaced or removed.

Sieverding's
work was shown
She has had solo exhibitions
at
Eindhoven, The Netherlands,
what
accusing the
flat
since
it
of sexism
artist
it
to be defaced with
a critique that fell
body
series
hair, genitals,
models by using
body
in
Documenta
5,
Kassel, in 1972.
Abbe Museum,
in 1979; the Stadtische
Kunsthalle
at the
Thank You Thighmaster, she has removed
and feminine
and
series
The Forest subtly examines gender iden-
that
is
women
men
portrayed have
a subtle blurring
emphasized by the models' carefully
Van Lamsweerde works concurrently
as a successful
commer-
fashion photographer and has shot, in collaboration with

the collections of John Galliano,
Helmut Lang,
Herve Leger, Veronique Leroy, and Vivienne Westwood. Here,
fetaaeitea z/teaainaa
too, she alters the

Garrels, Gary. Photography in
Contemporary German
appearance of her models
elongating body
Art: i960 to the
parts, eliminating blemishes, or duplicating figures.

Present. Exh. cat. Minneapolis:
She has been
Walker Art Center, 1992.
showing and publishing her work

Sieverding. Exh. cat. Ostfildern: Cantz, 1992. In English
"The Face of
in
Amsterdam
since 1990,
and
and German.
in 1992
Abigail.
of mascu-
faces.
Vinoodh Matadin,
Solomon-Godeau,
dis-
and eroticism. Van
In these works, parts of the bodies of the
been replaced with those of
cial
b.
to
and nipples from the images of nude female
Quantel paintbox computer program. The
Lamsweerde's 1995
tity.
styled hair
been chosen to represent Germany
own
quieting plasticized figures that are the result of these complex
line
1997 Venice Biennale. She lives in Diisseldorf. -t.
some-
works that
parts. In the four
alterations suggest a loss of individuality
the Stedelijk Van
The pho-
confronted motorists
has always been van Lamsweerde's tactic to
comprise her 1993
Diisseldorf in 1980; the Kasseler Kunstverein, Kassel, in 1987;
woman
purposes.
Artspace, San Francisco, in 1988; and the Nationalgalerie, Berlin,

in 1992. Sieverding has
she produced a controversial
the bridge was raised, leading
seamlessly alter her models'
German newspaper: "Deutschland wird
headline taken from a
deutscher" (Germany
as if
when
and sup-
Van Lamsweerde often employs high-tech working methods
exhibition and studio space. Installed in 500 locations around
circus performer. In large text
received public commissions
city-funded billboard for a drawbridge in Amsterdam.
critical
image of
catalogues in order to target myths of beauty and
to question assumptions about gender roles.
subvert the vocabulary of commercial photography for her
that houses
Berlin, the billboard depicted a black-and-white
retail
and
Van Lamsweerde has
graffiti
der Kiinste and a year later executed a controversial billboard
woman's
and
eroticism
was awarded the Photography Award of the Netherlands
Difference." In Katharina
(PANL) and
Sieverding: Eine Installation. Exh. cat. Regensburg:
Museum
the European
Kodak Awards
for the categories of
Fashion and People/Portraits. Her work has been seen in exhibiOstdeutsche Galerie, 1993, pp. 11-24. In English and German.
tions at the Centraal
Museum
in 1994;
218
Utrecht, in 1993; the Stedelijk
and the Musee d'Art Moderne de
Van Lamsweerde
Museum,
Bureau, Amsterdam, in 1993; the Kunstverein Salzburg,
lives in
la Ville
de Paris in 1994.
Amsterdam and New York.-T.
b.
-A
/' lli/rfi ./ II
ni/l
II r/
which he dictated over the phone to an
detailed diary,
He
usually
up
in his studio to capture staff
had
camera
a stationary
film
(first
assistant.
and then video)
set
Inez van Lamsweerde. Exh. cat. Zurich: Kunsthaus Zurich, 1996.

In English
and
performing daily
visitors
and German.
activities.
Around
1970, the Polaroid Big Shot
became Warhol's
Schorr, Collier. "Openings: Inez van Lamsweerde." Artforum 33, no. 2
primary camera, and with

(October 1994), pp. 96-97.
it
he took a gargantuan number of
Polaroids that encompass nudes, self-portraits, and portraits.
The
Turner, Jonathan. "Inez van Lamsweerde: Vanity Fear." Artnews 93,
portrait Polaroids were often the source for the

no. 9
(November
1994), p. 75.
silk-screened works of
also
August
(b.
Pittsburgh; d. February 22, 1987,
6, 1928,
New York)
and wealthy society
personalities
From
until his death.
1976 to 1986, he
produced stitched photographs, which consist of multiple
identical pictures
[Andrew Warhola]
famous
Warhol created
figures that
Andy Warhol
commissioned
sewn together
prolific artist,
to create a single image.
Warhol experimented
ad methods of reproduction during
successfully with myri-
his lifetime, also generating
books, apparel, Interview magazine, and cable-television shows.
Andy Warhol attended
Pittsburgh's Carnegie Institute of
He
Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University), enrolling
in the
Department of Painting and Sculpture. Upon graduating
in
died prematurely in 1987, following gallbladder surgery.
Warhol's legacy has been recognized in

1949,
Warhol moved
and
successful
to
New York, where
lucrative career as a
wide. In 1989,
he embarked upon a
commercial
artist,
Museum
Andy Warhol: A
Modern
of
dedicated to the
Pittsburgh.
Warhol
gained
resentations of the
and sculptures
artist,
The Andy Warhol Museum, opened
large-scale interdisciplinary exhibition,
in
Andy
for spring 1998 at the
Guggenheim
the
hi i/,/i
crte a 111 a
,/, </
i/
as well as images of idolized celebrities such
Marilyn Monroe. These works,
like the
majority of Warhol's
Andy Warhol: A
artist's interest in seriality,
utilized
mechanical means,
photographic silk-screen process, to create his
like
of
Andy Warhol Photobooth
but also his enthrallment with
popular culture, stardom, and mass production. In keeping with
Warhol frequently
Retrospective. Edited
New York: Museum
oeuvre, were done in multiple versions that not only exemplify
latter,
the
that feature iconic rep-
the
Warhol: A Factory, is planned

Museum SoHo.-v. g.
critical attention as a fine artist in the
mundane products purchased by
American consumer,
the
at
an institution
in 1994
he shortened his name.
first
early 1960s with paintings
as
New York, and
exhibitions world-
was held
executing
advertisements and illustrations throughout the 1950s. During

this period,
Art,
many
Retrospective
the
Pictures.
by Kynaston McShine. Exh.
cat.
Art, 1989.
Exh.
cat.
New York:
Robert Miller
New York:
Pace/MacGill
Gallery, 1989.
Andy Warhol
Polaroids 19/1-1986. Exh. cat.
Gallery and
art.
Warhol's studio, appropriately dubbed "The Factory," was the
Modern
The Andy Warhol Foundation
for the Visual Arts, 1992.
Koch, Stephen. Andy Warhol Photographs. Exh.
locus of convergence for notorious characters belonging to the
New York:
cat.
Robert
Miller Gallery, 1986.
counterculture of the 1960s and early 1970s. Warhol proclaimed

the
more glamorous and outrageous of these
"Superstars."
Ranging from
Candy Darling (James
socialite Edie
Slattery), they
and photographs from
this period.
photography occurred
in
individuals
Sedgwick to transvestite
appear in Warhol's films
Warhol's
first
true foray into
he simply prompted subjects to pose in
where
their
photo booth,
photographs were automatically taken. Sometimes
Warhol would employ the
film
camera
as
one would
camera, producing film portraits, called Screen
duration of a
reel
sit
a regular
Tests, in
which a
motionless for the three-minute
of film. The Screen Tests were sometimes
next Superstar in a Warhol movie. In 1968, Warhol was shot and

a
January
5,
1893,
d.
December
22, 1975,
woman who had
appeared
in
one of
his films.
Warhol was obsessed with recording everything around him,

finding the most banal actions mesmerizing.
and tape recorder with him
constantly,
He
carried a camera
and eventually kept
Yevonde Cumbers attended boarding schools

Belgium, completing her education
at the
seventeen, she joined the suffragette
London)
in
England and
Sorbonne
in Paris.
At
movement, marking the
beginning of her commitment to women's causes.
On
an impulse,
she decided to study photography and apprenticed with the portrait
intended to reveal whether the subject had the potential to be the
almost killed by
(b.
[Yevonde Cumbers Middleton]
London;
1964 with the Photobooth pictures. For
these,
person would be asked to
Madame Yevonde
photographer
Cumbers
Lallie
Charles from 1911 to 1914.
established a studio of her
and, taking the professional
own
in
London
in 1914
name of Madame Yevonde, proceed-
ed to earn a living as a portrait photographer, contributing to

society magazines such as The Sketch
married playwright Edgar Middleton.

cally lectured
on photography and,
and The
Tatler. In 1920,
Madame Yevonde
in 1921,
was the
first
she
periodi-
woman
Congress of the Professional Photographers
to address the
Association, London, with her lecture "Photographic Portraiture
from the Women's Point of View." Around
1925, she
extended her
commercial endeavors to include advertising.

Tiring of black-and-white photography,
Madame Yevonde
began experimenting with the Vivex color process
in the early
1930s, ingeniously placing colored cellophane and
filters
camera
and modulating the
lens
over the
lighting to obtain specific tones
and vibrant hues. She exhibited her celebrated Goddesses

in
her studio in July 1935. The "goddesses" were society
costumed
as
Greek and
Roman
deities
series
women
and posed against back-
drops of imaginative props in fantastical and artful compositions.

Influenced by the Surrealists and especially
became known
also
in Britain in the mid-i930s,
began creating
still lifes
Man Ray, whose work

Madame Yevonde
in 1936 that depict
unusual juxtapo-
sitions of objects.
Though
grief stricken
Madame Yevonde
by her husband's death
in 1939,
did not curtail her artistic activities. Her auto-
biography, In Camera, was published in 1940. In the same
Photographic Society (of which she had been
year, the Royal
member
since 1921)
named
her a Fellow for her work
Madame Yevonde
photography.
in the late 1950s
for her eightieth birthday, a
and
1 1/1/1/1 ,/ci/
'/|
libson, Robin,
,11/1 /ii/
life,
producing solarized
early 1960s. In 1973, as a tribute
major retrospective
Sixty Years a Portrait Photographer,
Photographic Society. -v.
color
continued to explore diverse
photographic techniques throughout her
photographs
in
in
London,
was organized by the Royal
g.
and Pam Roberts. Madame Yevonde: Colour, Fantasy,
and Myth. Exh.
cat.
Salway, Kate. Goddesses
London: National Portrait Gallery, 1990.
and
Others: Yevonde,
Portrait.
London:
Balcony Books, 1990.
[Madame] Yevonde.
In
Camera. London: Women's Book Club,
1958.
eft j'oaucticmA
7jta<<\r o
The Phenomenon
Acconci
Vito
oj
Ecstasy {Le Plienomene de
Heart (Do
I'extase), 1933, 140
Conversions (Part
summer
Barbara Kruger
Salvador Dali
Reproduction* arc lined by page number.
Light, Reflection, Self-control),
I:
have
up
to give
me
to
be loved by you?),
1988, 131
Untitled (Your gaze hits the side of my face),
Marcel Duchamp
1981, 126
1971, 164
L.H. O. O. Q., 1919/1930, 21
Conversions (Part
Insistence, Adaptation,
II:
Groundwork, Display), summer
Urs Luthi
Marc Eemans
1971, 164
/'//
Conversions (Part
Association, Assistance,
summer
Dependence),
Trappings,
III.
October
1971, 164
The Sawed-up
Max
Woman
<
La
femme
Be Your Mirror,
1972, 70, 166
sciee), n.d., 142
George
Ernst
Lynes
Piatt
Untitled, ca. 1941, 14
14. 1971, 165
vanity hair, 1920, 136
Eileen Agar
Betsey
Angel of Anarchy (second version), 1940, 143
Man
lie
and
Dress, 1920, 136
Sell
Dressed i'p as
isth, 1891,
Length with Fan, Monday,
9th, 1892, 1N92,
NYC,
Parade,
David
drove
at
Jimmy
Gay
at the
Paulette
1973.
Viol), 1934, 142
1991, 100
Barbette, ca. 1920s, 30
Street. Boston, 1972, 9
Barbette
and Tabboo!
Making Up,
Belle Haleine,
in the
bathroom, ,YV<
'ine-sketch:
Naomi on
the street, Boston,
1928, 56
Eau de
Voilette, 1921,
Adam and
Duchamp Tonsured
Marlene. Colette and
1994.
ield,
laforet),
Barbette, 1924, 29
Pride
1991, 10J
54
Matthew Barney
4: Faerie
in the Forest
[femme] cachee dans
Man Ray
Ivy with Marilyn, Boston, 1973, 97
September
[Woman] Hidden
la
Aurelien, 1944, 60
David ami Mistress Formica
Martin, Julia Bredt and
20
Eve, 1924-25, 12
(by Georges de Zayas),
1921, 158
Jean Cocteau, 1922, 28
99
s'<s
'
Pat
4:
1961, /46
Nan Goldin
1891, 55
CR
CR
The Rape (Le

1
1993, 112113
Portrait, Full
See the
ne voispas
Olivia Newton-John, 1996, 183
performance of The Blacks Les Negres),
Men, 4:40 pm. Thursday, October
Selj
Do Not
as John Travolta
Jean Genet
Alice Austen
lulia
and Penelope Tuesdae
1929, 137
Diamond
with the
ami Dad,
Hill
(Je
Janine Antoni
Mom
Rene Magritte
A. Gallagher
Murray
Anonymous
I
L.
and Dcninc
111
the Profile
Room, Boston,
1973, 98
Loughton Manual, 1994, 89
Marcel
Delia Grace
Cecil Beaton
Kiki of Montpamasse, 1924, 37
Duchamp
as Rrose Selavy, 1920-21, 18
Surrealist Chessboard (L'Echiquier surrealiste),

Jack Unveiled, 1994. 186
'ountess
astega, 1927, 6
1928, 134
Baba Beaton, Wanda
Debutantes
Hamilton and lady Bridget
Jack's Back, 1994, 176
Baillie-
Poulett, 1928, 43
Robert Mapplethorpe
Guerrilla Girls
Self-Portrait, 1980, 102
Gary Cooper,
Confessions of the Guerrilla Girls, 199s. '49
1931, 8
Gertrude Stem,
1935.
40
Lyle Ashton Harris
Gertrude Stem and Alice
B.
Toklas, 1935, 41
Construct io, 1989, 14'

Igor Markevitch, 1929,
44
Lady Lavery,
42
Mick
lagger
ca. 1930,
on the
set
Lyle Ashton Harris and Hence Cox
of Performance, 1968, 156
The
Christian Marclay
David Bowie, from the Body Mix
luld, 1994, 110
Magnetic
Portrait of Stephen Tennant, 1927, 38
Lyle Ashton Harris and
Lynda Benglis
advertisement
(November
in
Alex and
13
1974), 169
Female Couple,
Homosexual
Messager Collector (Les
1972,
photograph
1933,
34
Pierre Molinier
Roberta's Construction Chart, 1975,
I.O.U. (Self-Pride), 1929-30,36
Clown, 1924, 25
Self-Portrait, 1927,
The Strong
Men
Tamer (Dompteuse),
ca. 1930,
Self-Portrait, ca. 1928,
37
Training (Ertiichtigiing), 1925,
ca. 1970, 62
27
late 1960s,
64
Self-Portrait with Top Hat, late 1960s, 63
The Spur of Love (L'Eperon d'amour), 1966-68, 63

1924, 25
Yasumasa Morimura
13
Doublonnage (Marcel),
Vagabonds
Jiirgen
Fuckface Twin, 1995, 120
1931,
26
The Tragedienne (Die Tragoedin),
Chapman
The Doll (La Poupee),
Grand Melee (Grande Melee),

(Die starken Manner),
36
Dinos and Jake
77
Effigy (Effigie), 1970, 50
Self-Portrait, ca. 1921,
Untitled, 1928, 59
11,
78 (details of album photographs),
79 (installation detail)
Hannah Hoch
Self-Portrait, ca. 1928, 58
et les
of, 1990, 182
Claude Cahun
Self- Portrait, 1929, 10
Annette
Hommes-Femmes
Elvis Herselvis
Lynn Hershman
series, 1992, 93
Femmes-Hommes, Annette Messager
Ball, 1933, 35
he Monocle, Montpamasse,
from the Body Mix
92
series, 1991, 91
Collectionneuse), Album-collection No.
13
1932, 33
Quarrel, 1932, 32
tit
Ude
Sisterhood, 1994. 109
"Bijou" of Montmartre, 1932,
series, 1991,
from the Body Mix
Annette Messager
The Men-Women and the Women-Men,
Lyle, 1994, 108
Lyle Ashton Harris and Ike
Brassai
Woman
Slide Easy In,
Alexandra Epps
Artforum
Fields,
1988, 87
Vagabunden), 1926, 24
Klauke
Marlow Moss
photograph
of, 137
Physiognomies [Physiognomien), 1972-73, 167

Transformer, 1973, 68-69
Lorraine O'Grady
Nefertiti/Devonia Evangeline, 1981, 148
i5
Andy Warhol
Catherine Opie
and Having series,
Chicken, from the Being
Chief,
Ethel Scull 36 Times, 1963, 73

Self-Portraits in Drag, 1986, 71
1991, 205
1991, 104
Dorothy Wilding
Dyke, 1992, 187

/.,
Jake,
Cecil Beaton, 1925, 39

1991, 185
1991, 104
Hannah Wilke
Portrait of the Artist in His Studio, 1971, 168
Mitch, 1994, 106
Papa Bear, from the Being and Having
series,
1991, 10$
Through the Large
Glass, 1976, 168
Madame Yevonde
Self- Portrait, 1993, 187
Lady Bridgett Poulett

Wolfe,
from the
as "Arethusa,"
1991, 185
Goddesses series, 1935, 47
Orlan
Lady Dorothy Warrender
Orlan Before Saint-Orlan (Orlan avant Sainte-
Goddesses
series, 1935,
Lady Michael Balcon
Orlan), 1988, 150
Goddesses
Roland Penrose
(Portrait of Valentine), 1937, 143
Pierre-Louis Pierson
Countess de Castiglione,
Goddesses
Goddesses
Mythic Being: Getting Back
#1, 1975, 171
Hans Anton Prinner

of, 137
Niki de Saint-Phalle
The Death of the Patriarch (La Mort du patriarche),
1962/72, 144
Lucas Samaras
Auto Polaroid, 1969-71, 74-75
Cindy Sherman
Untitled, #112, 1982, viii
Untitled, #17$, 1987, 127
Untitled, #193, 1989, 85
Untitled, #201, 1989, 84
Untitled Film
Still,
Untitled Film
Still, #11,
Untitled Film
Still,
#14, 1978, 82
Untitled Film
Still,
#56, 1980, 61
#6, 1977,
80
1978, 83
Katharina Sieverding
Transformer, 1973-74, 66, 170
Nicholas Sinclair
Fabian, 199s,
151
Jack Smith
film
still
from Flaming Creatures,
1962, 161
Gertrude Stein
"Rose
is
a rose
is
a rose
is
a rose" letterhead, 121
Raoul Ubac
Mannequin by Marcel Duchamp,
Inez van
The
Forest.
Lamsweerde
Andy, 1995, 95
The
Forest. Klaus, 1995, 9$
The
Forest. Marcel, 1995,
The
Forest. Rob, 1995,
94
94
View
images reproduced
(Queen of the
series, 1935,
as "Medusa,"
series, 1935,
from the
from the
Mrs. Richard Hart-Davis as "Ariel," from the
Adrian Piper
photograph
as "Penthesilea"
Edward Meyer
from the
49
Amazons), from the Goddesses

Mrs.
ca. 1855, 52
as "Minerva,"
series, 1935,
Lady Milbanke
Winged Domino
as "Ceres,"
46
in,
1946, 143
1938, 22
series, 1935,
45
48
Contributors
Jennifer blessing
R.
is
Assistant Curator at the
Guggenheim Museum, where she
and postwar European
art.
Solomon
specializes in Surrealism
Her publications include
lection, paparazzi
(Surrealism, Fashion,
and Photography),"
exh. cat. (Skira, 1997). She
in Art/Fashion,
which appeared
on
is
nineteenth-century fiction, queer theory, and cultural studthe author of Skin Show: Gothic Horror
and
Lesbian Theories,
Gay
Theories, ed.
book on "female
currently finishing a
and Mark A.
at Otis
is
a lecturer in twentieth-century art his-
specializes in
Georges Pompidou
masculinity." She
a lecturer
is
postwar European
art.
Since 1981 she
has collaborated on major exhibitions with the Centre
is
French
art
and Visual Culture
(University of Michigan Press, 1990).
sarah wilson
where she
writes film reviews for Girlfriends Magazine.
ashton Harris
Diana
tory at the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London,
the
Technology of Monsters (Duke University Press, 1995) and
lyle
the author of
Associate Professor of Literature
University of California, San Diego, where she teaches
is
is
Authority, Vision, Politics, ed. Martin Kreiswirth
judith halberstam
She
She
liter-
Fuss (Routledge, 1991); and Theory between the Disciplines:
Cheetham
ies.
literature.
in differences: a journal offeminist cultural
studies; Inside/Out:
Gina Pane.
at the
and modern
Female Impersonation (Routledge, forthcoming); portions of
Discourse
currently writing an essay
is
Associate Professor of English at
the University of California, Riverside, where she teaches
ary theory,
col-
photographs, Gypsy Rose Lee, and most
recently, "'Eros, c'est la vie': Fetishism as Cultural
is
courses in film and visual culture, gender and sexuality,
essays
on Claude Cahun, Marc Chagall, Peggy Guggenheim's
carole-anne tyler
on Autobiography
and
art,
Max
politics,
and abroad. She
College of Art and Design, Los
Art and the
Angeles, and Art Center College of Design, Pasadena. His
in Paris, contributing texts
Ernst, Kurt Schwitters, art
and
on postwar
sexuality,
and
while also publishing extensively in Britain

is
Politics
the author of
When Modernism
Failed:
of the Left in France, 1930-1956 (Yale
University Press, forthcoming).
writings and interviews have appeared in international journals,
including Flash Art, Art
in
America, aRude, and
Afterimage, and will be published in The Passionate Camera:
Photography and the Bodies of Desire, ed. Deborah Bright

(Routledge, forthcoming). Harris
Tilton Gallery,
is
represented by Jack
New York, and Margo
Leavin Gallery, Los
Angeles, and has completed several editorial photography

projects for The
New
nancy spector
is
York Times Magazine.
Associate Curator at the
Guggenheim Museum, where she

rary
art.
specializes in
Exhibitions she has curated at the
retrospectives of Felix Gonzalez-Torres
She
is
currently co-curating the
scheduled for
in
summer
contemporary
1998.
first
Solomon
R.
contempo-
museum
include
and Rebecca Horn.
Berlin Biennial,
which
is
She writes frequently on issues
visual culture for the
museum and
interna-
tional art publications.
1
J
223
Photo credits
Photo credits are

x'iii,
6,
and Metro
artist
courtesy of Sotheby's London;
The
by page number.
listed
courtesy of the
Detroit Institute of Arts;
8,
7,
Samaras;
Pictures;
Marcel Duchamp;
22,
Musees de
de
la Ville
photo by Phototheque des

Paris.
1997 Artists Rights
New York / ADAGP,
Society (ARS),
top, 25,
bottom,
(ARS),
New York / VG
Paris; 24, 25,
89,
Bild-Kunst, Bonn; 26,
94, 95,
York;
102, 103,
Museum
Berggruen, Paris;
London;
39,
38,
Mr.
courtesy of Galerie
Tom
Hustler; 40-44, courtesy of
Yevonde
Archive, England; 50, courtesy of

d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges
courtesy of
Historical Society; 56,
Musee National
Pompidou,
Paris;
Jean-Claude Planchet.
Art,
Man Ray Trust;

Paris.
57,
Photo by
1997 Artists Rights
New York / ADAGP / Man Ray
Trust, Paris; 58,
photo by A.G.
de Nantes; 60,
Ville
1997 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York /

ADAGP Man Ray Trust, Paris; 6), courtesy of the
/
and Metro Pictures;
62,
courtesy of
Musee
National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges
64,
Paris; 63, left,
photo by
Bill
photo by
Orcutt; 66,
Bill
Orcutt;
Katharina
Sieverding. Photo by Ms. Seitz-Gray; 68-69,
Galerie
Bugdahn und Kaimer;
Warhol Foundation
New
York; 73,
American
Art.
for the Visual
71,
for the Visual Arts
1997
/
Andy
ARS,
1996 Whitney Museum of

1997 Andy Warhol Foundation
Arts ARS, New York; 74-75, 1997
/
223,
1988
Catherine Opie;
Lyle
106,
Ashton Harris;
The
112-13,
Estate of Robert Mapplethorpe;
photo by Zindman/Fremont;
126, 131,
134,
S.A.D.E.
Archives, Milan; 136, top, courtesy of William A.
Ewing;
courtesy of Courtauld Institute
137, right,
of Art Witt Library;

142, left,
141,
photo by Ellen Labenski;
courtesy Courtauld Institute of Art Witt

left,
Estate of Eileen Agar; 143,
143,
bottom, courtesy of Courtauld
View photos by
Institute of Art Witt Library,
Roger Schall and Francis Lee;

Laurent Condominas;
Lousada;
147,
Lyle
1995;
156,
>5'<
photo by
144,
photo by Sandra
149,
148,
photo by
photo by
Teri Slotkin,
Nicholas Sinclair. Outfit by
courtesy of Sotheby's London;
158,
E.
Garbs;
photo by
1997 Artists Rights Society
New York ADAGP / Man Ray Trust,

photo by Adam Reich; 170, Katharina
(ARS),
;6y,
146,
Ashton Harris;
Freda Leinwand, 1981;
Sieverding, photo by Ms. Seitz-Gray;

Phyllis Christopher; 185, 187,
182,
Paris;
1990
Catherine Opie.
drag racing credits:
Designer, Jody Zellen; Production manager,

Gil;
Production
Ashton Harris
in collaboration
of Southern California, page

13-14,
Video
and Ike Ude.
still
text, Lyle
with
pages 7-8, courtesy of Black Care
Hopp, pages
courtesy of the
facilities
Banff Centre for the Arts; opening
(1994), a collaborative
Society (ARS),
Pompidou,
AIDS Research and Education
Staten Island
1928
artist
New
Estate of Robert
Janine Antoni; 120, Sulkin Winters Partnership;
Alexander
Portrait
The Metropolitan Museum of
All rights reserved; 54, 55,
The
courtesy of Sotheby's
Sotheby's London; 45-49,
52,
Nan
County Museum
Associates, Los Angeles

37,
1980
Angeles; 108, 109, no,
Ellen Labenski,
Metropolitan
1997 Artists
Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP Man
Ray Trust, Paris; 32-35, 1996 The Museum of
Modern Art, New York. Gilberte Brassa'i; 36, top,
photo by Ellen Labenski; 36, bottom, 1996
rights reserved.
of Art. All Rights Reserved;
92,
Catherine Opie, Courtesy Regen Projects, Los
Ray Trust,
all
New York;
Inez van Lamsweerde; 97-101,
Mapplethorpe; 104-05,
88,
top right, courtesy of Courtauld Institute of Art
Paris; 30, courtesy ot the
New York;
Goldin, courtesy of Matthew Marks Gallery,
Witt Library;
of Art,
Pictures; 87, cour-
Christian Marclay; 93, photo by Ellen Labenski;
1996 Kunsthaus Zurich. All rights reserved.

VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn; 2/, 1997 Artists Rights
Society (ARS), New York VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn;
28, 1922 The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
ADAGP / Man Ray Trust, Paris; 29, 1997 Artists
Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP / Man
Museum
Lucas
80, 82-85,
photo by Michael James O'Brien, courtesy of
Barbara Gladstone Gallery,
New York.
and Metro
artist
Library; 143, top
1997 Artists Rights Society
Art,
Lynn Hershman Leeson;
Luhring Augustine Gallery,
tesy of
9,
courtesy of the
1996
courtesy of
Nan Goldin, courtesy

Matthew Marks Gallery, New York; 10, Museum
Boymans-van Beuningen; 11, Yevonde Portrait
Archive, England; 12, 1997 Artists Rights Society
(ARS), New York ADAGP Man Ray Trust, Paris;
13, 1996 The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Gilberte BrassaT; 14, George P. Lynes II; 15,
photo by Ilona Ripke. 1997 Artists Rights Society
(ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn; 18, 20,
Philadelphia Museum of Art. 1997 Artists
Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP Man
Ray Trust, Paris; 21, 1997 Artists Rights Society
(ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris Estate of
Sotheby's London;
77,
B. E.
Myers,
(Community
Project) University
9,
photo by Maggie
from
work by
Lyle
Sites
of Beauty
Ashton Harris

Rrose Is A Rrose Is A Rrose

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PHOTOGRAPHY

Organized by Jennifer Blessing

Self- Portrait, ca.

Guggenheim Museum, New York

tor the Arts

ISBN 0-8109-6901-7 (hardcover)

Guggenheim Museum Publications

New York, New York

Hardcover edition distributed by

100 Fifth Avenue

New York, New York

Designed by Bethany Johns Design,

Printed in Italy by Sfera

30 x 40 inches (76.2 x 101.6 cm)

All rights reserved.

9>s inches (30

Musee des Beaux Arts de Nantes

bathroom, NYC, 1991

id'emt nut files - KyMxUcuo&wuieS

Bathrooms, Butches, and the Aesthetics

TRACEY BASHKOFF, SUSAN CROSS,

///,.. /</<< tin

The Right Honorable

Mary Sharp Cronson

The Museum of Modern

Cecil Beaton Archive, Sotheby's

National Portrait Gallery,

Galerie Berggruen, Paris

Galerie Nierendorf, Berlin

Bugdahn und Kaimer,

Michael James O'Brien

Robert C. Conn, California

The Philadelphia Museum of Art

Deutsche Bank AG, Frankfurt

Ehrlich and Ruth Lloyds

Projects, Los Angeles

M. Anthony and Anne

The Royal Photographic

Beverly and Harris Schoenfeld

Barry Friedman Ltd.,

Ronnie and Samuel Heyman,

Jack Tilton Gallery,

Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and

Los Angeles County

Richard and Ronay Menschel

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Musee d'Art Moderne de

Musee des Beaux- Arts de Nantes

x 30 inches (114.9 x 76.2

salad, cinnamon, cheese, pimento, marzipan,

the smell of new-cut

hay (why doesn't someone with

a "nose" make such a perfume), roses, peonies, lavender,

champagne, loosely held

Glenn Gould, too-cold