Body Identity

Let us consider the power of art to construct body identity, be it gender, political, or individual identity. Usually, the analysis leaves one with a general distaste for the apparent abuse of arts. I would like to explore a few aspects of this recurring theme.

Neutrality

There is an implied desire to have body references be neutral. However, neutrality doesn’t seem to be an option in art, since the very construction of art is shot through and through with value associations… and in the context of art, neutrality is the equivalent of not choosing. But in not choosing, nothing gets made… and art is something that must be made.

A similar notion to neutrality is freedom. We hear writers refer to the body being freed from body images.  But I wonder, what would the body look like if it were free… and free of what? I think this idea of freedom is simply the idea of a neutral, nude body.

If no particular body can be neutral, can we at least have a generalized notion of a neutral body? Oddly enough, since every separate body is unique, to even speak “of the body” is to speak of a concept of the body. But to conceive of the body, we have to first observe several bodies, and then abstract from them certain characteristics that are (to us) relevant. So again, we are in the position of having to impose meaning on bodies even to form a concept of them.  How can bodies be free, if in the very thinking about them we have already conformed them to essentials?

Neutrality seems like a pervasive desire… the desire for freedom… but the desire for freedom can never be satisfied. Yet it comes up over and over again in the essays. I suspect that, ultimately, concerned writers are not interested in neutrality… but rather positing neutrality as a placeholder virtue, which when combined with the apparent evil of imagery full of non-neutral bodies, will buy them enough time to substitute their preferred imagery for the current status quo. Meet the new boss…

Private Body VS Social Body

I think another approach to body image neutrality is to define it in terms of a private body image, where a socially defined body image is seen as non-neutral… but that which we create from our own body is neutral.

This is intriguing, because it raises the questions of where body image comes from. As was stated above, body image (being a conception of the body), must obey the rules of any conceptual knowledge. That means, it’s creation is ruled by three things… first, perception of several bodies… secondly, the full context of what we already know about bodies at any point… and thirdly, the purpose we have for pursuing the knowledge in the first place.

Knowledge is purposeful; it is a means to an end. We don’t pursue knowledge for it’s own sake; we pursue it for our sake... as a means to some end we provide. Even intellectuals, who seem to read for no apparent purpose, actually have a purpose in mind. After all, even the absent minded philosopher doesn’t read just anything… but reads that which attaches to some pre-existing interest.

So if all knowledge begins (at least) with purpose… and purpose must be of value, then what is the purpose (or value) of a private body image? What would be the basis for a private image of the body? What would be the purpose?

I suspect that conceptions of the body are really of two sorts… public and private. It is tempting to say that conceptions of our own body is the primary conception… and that public body images are grafted over top of this at a later date as part of the general socialization we experience.

However, does awareness of our own bodies count as a conception of it… or as an image of ourselves? We don’t see ourselves as multiple, but as a singular self… and singularities don’t require conceptualization. In fact, the idea of singularity is a more advanced concept.

I suspect that our idea of the body is really the idea of bodies other than our own; since that is the thing we are always looking at, especially when we are young. And other bodies are multiple, and require conceptualization in order to be dealt with. Of course, we understand other bodies because we have our own body… we have a reference point.

I could argue that it doesn’t matter that we have a body or not, since we could still form the idea of bodies. After all, I understand the concept of “chair” despite not being a chair. Couldn’t I understand “human bodies” in a similar way… whereby the things about it I comprehend don’t require my own humanity?

But, I suppose that since we do have our own bodies, that our conception of bodies draws upon our awareness of that body. I suppose too that we end up including our own body into the collection of bodies that we consider when we form conceptions of bodies. In this way, I think our idea of self is inevitably drawn into sync with our ideas of others.

Along the lines of public body image… I wonder, what was the status of appearance in pre historical society? The analysis of prehistoric art typically yields insights into the anthropological sources of imagery.  In prehistoric art in which bodies are basically stick figures, seems to suggest that the human body was seen as irrelevant. I wonder if this argues for a public conception of the body as being the primary one.

If prehistoric thought is meta-social thought, then wouldn’t the lack of identity of the human body argue for the primacy of external reality as the fundamental focus of human thought? Since these prehistoric societies were not very socially sophisticated, wouldn’t the emergence of body image (as related to the development of figures in images) be tied to the emergence of society? Would the body become gain in significance as a locus of conceptual focus only when other bodies had social survival value to us? And if this is so, it would seem to tie body image into social forces, and in fact would make body image a function of culture.

I think that when we speak of public or private body images, we are speaking of two very different things. Body image, as it is most commonly referred to in critical writing, seems to be the public body image. As such, it cannot be neutral, and it cannot be outside the grasp of cultural forces. In fact, it will mirror the nature of cultural forces, and must necessarily do so. Private body image seems like a more advanced conception of the self. Its existence is implicit in self-awareness, but doesn’t exist as a conception until such time as we conceive of other bodies, of ourselves as similar to other bodies, or ourselves in opposition to other bodies. In either case, it is other bodies that frame the full awareness of ourselves. 

The Naked and the Nude... some thoughts

Kenneth Clarke’s essay The Naked and the Nude asserts what it will with such directness and clarity, that one could be excused for responding with a simple “I agree completely”. However, since complete agreement is boring, and complete disapproval is presumptuous, it might be better to explore a singular point of interest, so as to avoid being either dull or boorish.

The essay is chock full of observations, which are worth summarizing below in order to hold before one the sum total sum total of Clarke’s insights.

Nakedness and nudity
Nude as form of art, not subject of art
Nude as perfection
Aristotle’s concept of art bringing nature to a finish
The Classical Greek Mind
Mathematical perfection, harmony, order
Cult of nakedness, conquest of inhibition
Human wholeness, mind and spirit are one
Matter and form are one
Theories and difficulties with ideal proportions
Impossibility of the photographic nude
The nude as representing ourselves
Animal representations vs. Human representations
The desire for human contact in our reaction to the nude
The absence of nudes in Asian art
The nude as dependent on abstract view of body
Classical desire for figure gone forever

Such a thorough analysis of any subject matter will tend to produce respect for the subject, if only a begrudging respect. However, one suspects that Clarke’s respect for the nude is not so begrudging, and that the depth of his analysis equals his reverence for the subject. Given that, it seems unexpected that he should wrap up his essay with the following statement.

“Such an insatiable appetite for the nude is unlikely to recur. It arose from a fusion of beliefs, traditions, and impulses very remote from our age of essence and specialization.”

One can imagine modernists heaving a collective sigh of relief, and traditionalists feeling betrayed. But no one should feel vindicated or eradicated by Clarke’s remark. For just as the nude is not a subject of art, but a type of art… so too could we should see Clarke’s remark as asserting that the nude is not an simply a product of culture, but that nude is a type of culture.

What type of culture would that be? Well, a culture of nudity, of course. In the simplest terms, the nude stems from nudity, with which the Greeks were familiar and comfortable, and in which they exalted. 

The difference between this Greek attitude and our own can be measured by noting how odd it sounds to relegate the exalted category of The Nude to the term nudity… a term which connotes a kind of campy silliness… images of nudist colonies, flaccid penises, butt cracks showing above towels, and cartoon caricatures of women desperately covering their breasts and naughty-bits when the bathroom door accidentally slides open to reveal their pale flesh to a gentleman caller.

Nudity to us is silliness… a silliness at one end of the spectrum of our collective body image. The other end is pornography. And there we are, stuck in the middle… turning away in laughter from the one end, and shame from the other… and in the end requiring the exalted category of The Nude to even see ourselves. Alienated to that extent from our bodies, the mirror is not good enough.

The very differentiation between the naked and the nude serves to define this distinction to a modern western mind that needs to dress up nudity (nakedness) in order to make is socially acceptable. Would the Greeks have held this distinction? Greek pottery reveals endless images of nudes men and women in countless arrangement…. all of them would be totally ridiculous in our culture… but the Greeks wouldn’t bat an eye.

Imagine going to department store and buying a vase covered in drawings of contemporary people running naked through the country. If one could hold up a scientific instrument to measure how absurd that would feel to us, then THAT would be the difference between our world and the Greek world.

Would the Greeks even understand the distinction between the naked and the nude? For Clarke, the need to distance the naked from the nude derives the need to correspond his thought to the general mind/body dichotomy that dominates western philosophic thought. The Greeks originated philosophic thought on these matters, but don’t seem to be subject to this particular duality.

Clarke alludes to both of these conditions ( culture of nudity and absence of mind/body duality) in the following paragraph, in which he also frames the issue of the cultural relativity.

“Greek confidence in the body can be understood only in relation to their philosophy. It expresses above all their sense of human wholeness. Nothing related to the whole man could be isolated or evaded; and this serious awareness of how much was implied in physical beauty saved them from the two evils of sensuality and aestheticism.”

Mind/Body Duality

In  the last sentence above, Clarke equates isolation with sensuality, and evasion with aesteticism.


Cultural Relativity:

“Greek confidence in the body can be understood only in relation to their philosophy.”

The use of the word confidence seems innocent enough, until one considers that it is not as assertive as a term such as belief, which might just as well have been used here.  Confidence is an empirical notion… the idea of a reasonable expectation, not an absolute awareness. To use the stronger word belief would require one to argue more formally. This would require a formal philosophic system. It would also imply that cultural ideologies are somehow contained in formal systems, which is not generally the case.

So instead we are given the term confidence, which means we don’t have to jump down the philosophic rabbit hole, and can instead simply accept that whatever the Greeks were, that they were the product of whatever came before them, that led to their particular evolution.

A parallel situation can be seen in the evolution of animals, where the identity of the mutation (the new species) is contained in the scientific analysis of the mutation. However, the identity is not the cause of the new species. The new species is a mutation of an old species.  If we apply this thinking to Classical Greek culture, then we can say that the identity of Classical Greek culture is contained in the historical analysis of those times, but that the cause of Classical Greek culture is not.


I can more easily imagine a great cosmology springing forth from a young child staring intently into the heavens, than I can imagine a great cosmological theory stoking the desire to explore. Theories may explain natural inclinations, but they do not give rise to them. Mostly, theories give rise to other theories, and theorists.

Body references in art

The claim that all art refers to the body is odd at first. After all, it seems we search in vain for the bodily reference in things like Ad Reinhardt’s (nearly) solid blue canvases, Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings, or Kazimir Malevich’s squares.

But however odd this appears, the various explanations of how these artworks refer to the body actually make perfect sense. After all, who can deny that Pollock’s drip paintings captured the gestures of his body as he laid the paint down… or that Malevich’s squares were coded by their size and color to represent social groups (of bodies)… or that Rheinhardt’s (nearly) solid blue canvases somehow challenge the visual acuity of our bodies. 

There are other examples. Bodies can be referenced due to their absence, such as when we interpret a bed not simply as a bed, but as being an empty bed, that is, a bed without a body.  Performance art uses the body as a medium. Depicting any object that humans create or utilize is also a reference to the body, and so any still life painting probably refers to the body as well. We also require bodies to make or view art… and of course, there are always actual depictions of bodies (yawn).

This type of analysis is gratifying. By expanding the concept of body reference beyond simply representations of bodies (as subject matter), we are able to explore the non-obvious relationships that the body brings to the production of art. The body as the subject matter becomes a subset of body references within art, multiplying the power of art to reference bodies. Given the crucial role that the body plays in life, it appears that the ability to consider its expanded presence in art is of considerable value to artists and viewers alike.

HOWEVER… When we scratch the surface of all this newfound wisdom, things start to get weird.

The general idea behind expanded body references in art is the awareness that anything man creates or affects will bear evidence of the man… and since the man is a body too… all things created or affected by man are references to the body. The difficulty here is that this includes not only convenient things like paintings, artistic constructions, and performance art… but also less convenient things, like lead pipes, shoehorns, and cornflakes. It might strike on as disturbing to have vested so much significance in the ability of art to reference bodies, and then to turn around and find out that cornflakes share in this virtue, perhaps even more than Malevich’s squares.

If we take our time, and are not too dismissive, we can deconstruct the simple cornflake, and discover literal and symbolic references to the body. Corn flakes are not naturally occurring objects. Cornflakes are created by man. Cornflakes are made to the scale of the human body, so that they can be readily ingested. The energy they provide allows one to conduct the business of their life… and multiplied across the many boxes of cereal that power America, these simple flakes take on not only the literal meaning of providing energy to run the country… but also ascend to the symbolic importance inherent in every Kellogg’s Cornflakes television commercial… the sociology of convenience, the decline of nutrition, and the marketing of consumer foods. This exercise only scratches the surface of what body references can be inferred from a box of corn flakes.

All sarcasm aside, the point here is to show that underlying the expansion of body references in art seems to push art closer to cornflakes than previously thought possible… a situation (let’s assume) that most would want to avoid.

Whether this cornflake conundrum is relevant requires that we examine the nature of body reference more closely. This analysis will examine body reference using the following sets of parameters;

1. Intended vs. Unintended

2. Perceptual vs. Conceptual

INTENDED VS. UNINTENDED BODY REFERENCES

Previously, the only similarity between a painting and a cornflake would have been that both are composed of matter and both take up space. To spend time talking about a painting as composed of matter and taking up space tells us nothing about the painting as an art object.  Existing and taking up space are not seen as necessary or sufficient properties of a painting, but rather, are an inevitable requirement of their physical existence… a condition they share with all paintings, all art, all man-made things, and all matter existing in the universe. There is nothing artistic about the temporal and spatial aspects of a painting.

In general, any characteristic of an art object that is a precondition to its physical existence, or its existence as a man-made object, is not necessarily a property of its artistic identity.

Body reference is just such a characteristic. As has been argued and conceded, it is inevitable that any man-made object has a body reference in it (as we have seen)… and this does not rely on the maker of the object either intending it, or even being aware of it. 

Given that art requires intention, unintended aspects of its construction do not necessarily have artistic relevance. Therefore, though all art objects inevitably contain a body reference, it is not necessarily true that those references have any artistic relevance. For instance, any body reference that results only from the physical requirements of constructing or viewing the art object can be considered unintended, and therefore not necessarily relevant.

PERCEPTUAL VS. CONCEPTUAL BODY REFERENCE

Of those body references that we grant intention to (and therefore artistic relevance) there are those that are perceptual, and those that are conceptual.

Conceptual body references are such things as empty beds, still life objects, and canvas size. They are conceptual because their artistic import is a function of inferring a relation to an absent body, rather than reacting to a body directly. They are indirect, which is the nature of concepts.

Perceptual body references are such things as actual images of bodies contained in the art object. They are perceptual because they are perceived. Perception is an automatic function of the mind, whereby the visual field is integrated into a coherent collection of things that we see as distinct objects. This perceptual awareness feeds subconscious processes, including emotional reaction. Art exploits this automatic functioning to arrange and represent objects, allowing perception to feed the subconscious.

The difference between perceptual body references and conceptual body references is that the former evoke emotional response from the nature of the image, where the latter requires an inference from the image. Inference is an operation of the conceptual mind, and its presence indicates (in the case of a conceptual body reference) that the perceptual mechanism has not necessarily been engaged.

This distinction between the perceptual and the conceptual leads to the following idea… that although a body reference may be found in a work of art, it does not mean the work of art is about the body. Only perceptual references can be about the body. Conceptual references are not about the body. Empty beds are about the absence of a body. The about-ness of a work of art is a function of what is perceived in the work… and only the perception of a body can make an artwork about the body. Conceptual references, being indirect, are (at best) about being about the body.

In fact, perceptual body references are not references at all… they are perceptual bodies. They don’t refer to anything. They are the thing itself. One can argue that all images are simply signs, and therefore references to other things… and this is generally true… but the context of art IS the context of visual signs… in which the distinction between a painted figure and a body is non existent. A painted figure is not a reference to another body… it is a body considered unto itself. A painting of an empty bed is a conceptual reference… not to a body (a particular body that is perceived visually).. but to the body (the body in general, which is conceived of  in the conceptual mind).

FINAL THOUGHTS

Whether these arguments and distinctions are correct (and even matter) depend on one’s view of the nature of art, the nature of the mind, and the nature of concept formation. But then again, everything we say about art depends on such distinctions, or (the usual case) their absence.

It is disturbing to consider that so much is spoken about art with so little foundation. We live in a world where it is totally acceptable to say things like “everything is art”… or “who can know what art is”… or “art is what artist’s make”. These statements deny any meaningful identity to art, and provide no foundation for critical analysis of the issues that arise there.

It doesn’t take much prodding to drive most people to claim, “Everything is art”. After all, to deny artistic identity to a cornflake requires the radical act of judging and excluding… both anathema in our  “I’m Ok, You’re Ok” world. The moral relativism inherent in this point of view… this refusal to identify and judge... is an aspect of a more general skepticism, which I refer to as the  “Everything is Everything” mentality. Deny identity and everything is the same, and everyone is right, and everyone is good… and we don’t have to judge or be judged, and we can never be wrong.

The idea that all art contains references to the body seems generally correct, but as this analysis has shown (hopefully), it is not so cut and dry. Distinctions exist that might allow the rejection of certain references, and that differentiate perceptual references from conceptual ones.

The claim “All art contains body references” is potentially a variation of the general claim “Everything is Everything”. It all depends on who says it, and why, and what they mean by it. When I see others accepting body reference as the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth… and do so without critical debate… I suspect a motive beyond reason… I see the emotional motive of embracing yet another variation of “Everything is Everything”… and the relief that brings them…. which gives yet another sad meaning to the oft cited conjunction “Art and Fear”.

Figure identity... drawing vs. formal means

A funny thing happened with a painting I was working on. I had developed a figures head with a simplified profile eye that was cloaked in shadow (you could not see the eye itself). Without an eye, the figure isn't even animate... not even a person... it's just a human body with no soul. It had no unique identity. As a consequence, I think the figure doesn't command psychological attention from the viewer. In this case, it just melted into the background like a piece of furniture (albeit maybe slightly more interesting than furniture)... and made worse because it was the same tonality as the background.

So I was trying a bunch of tricks to bring this identity-less figure forward. I tried to contrast it with the background, making it brighter and/or using complementary colors in the background. In other words, I was trying to use formal devices. But what was needed in this case was actually the psychological device of depicting a real person. So I developed the head to a greater degree, including an eye. Now the figure separates from the background, and NOT because of formal qualities, but because of the psychological quality that comes from the figure having an identity.

Despite the modernist assertion that formal qualities are sufficient for picture making, it seem they are not sufficient when the picture contains figures. Or at least I can say, that they can come up short on our intentions. In my case, I wanted that figure to command attention as a unique person. But without particularity (and eye), it stayed in the realm of formal abstraction, and didn't register psychologically.

This seems related to the issue of abstract (geometric) logic vs. representational logic. I had asserted that geometric logic can define interesting formal relationships when the objects being so arranged are themselves abstract, but that those relations may make no sense vis-a-vis the objects represented. So it would seem with formal qualities of painting (color, value, chroma, etc)... that they cannot not necessarily imbue the figure with meaning.

Here's a further bit of theorizing. The particularity that is required to make a "figure shape" become a unique figure is uncertain. I'm not sure where the line is... but you know it when you see it. I knew that my figure needed an eye to become real. So here's a cool question... is the insertion of an eye a "formal" act? Certainly one has to use some formal device to place the eye, but the eye could be inserted in many ways and would have the same (general) effect of making the figure particular. Therefore, the formal manner in which the eye is painted might affect many things, but I don't feel correct in saying that the eye is a formal device. What I want to say is that the eye is a drawing device, which means I'm considering drawing apart from any formal issue.

Putting aside all the counter arguments to the idea that drawing isn't a formal device, I can instead just consider drawing as something like... "The placement of intended components"... or something like that. I wanted an eye, and so I painted it... and though painting is a formal means... the formal means was controlled FUNDAMENTALLY by the intention to "place an eye"... which is drawing.