Hello, I’m #1MarmadukeFan.

As I’ve reread Visibly Female: Feminism and Art: An Anthology to

prepare for this series, there have often been times where I’ve wondered how relevant these
articles and statements might really be. Every time I’ve wondered this was when I was
skimming through to get the general idea. When reading the third chapter in the Personal
Statements section of the book, Penny Woolcock’s “Statement from Pandara’s Box Catalogue” I
experienced this again. What seemed somewhat inconsequential on the first read-through
seemed significantly more important on the second careful reading.

Woolcock’s biography in the contributor’s section at the end of the book gives the reader a
good idea of her relation to painting [311]. Woolcock writes that she works ‘long hours for
Trade Films in Newcastle, England.” She writes that although sometimes she stops painting and
doesn’t believe the world cares that much about painting, she feels like she misses something
about herself when she stops painting [311]. This gives us an idea of who Woolcock is as an
artist: she primarily worked on films for her career, but was originally a painter at heart. As
we’ll see, her rejection of painting is closely connected with her politics: when looking at art
through a feminist lens, Woolcock sees painting as antiquated.

Woolcock’s statement opens with a quote from a poem by Adrienne Rich titled “Paula Becker
to Clara Westhoff.” I am not knowledgeable of poetry, but as I understand it, Rich’s poem is an
imaginary letter which projects a feminist political idea backwards onto two real-life women
artists. The quote which Woolcock included is expressing the idea that male artists are
protected by women and feed upon women. “…But he feeds on us, like all of them. His whole
life, his art is protected by women. Which of us could say that? Which of us, Clara, hasn’t had to
take that leap out beyond being women to save our work? or is it to save ourselves?”
Rich’s poem goes on to describe the isolation Paula Becker felt in marriage.

What is the significance of this poem Woolcock chose to preface her statement? I think it is
twofold: first, it expresses a sort of personal, emotional struggle with art and loneliness,
something Woolcock may be empathizing with personally. But second, Rich’s poem also seems
to cast aspersions on men, blaming them for the emotional grief of Paula Becker and Clara
Westhoff and perhaps implicitly blaming male society for Paula Becker’s premature death as a
result of childbirth.

Woolcock’s personal statement is divided into five parts. I would describe part 1 as florid prose
where Woolcock is trying to introduce herself and her relationship to painting. She uses
abstract mental pictures to describe how at age 14 she would daydream about what she might
look like as a grown woman, either as an elegant lady, or as a messy painter. Though she failed
O-level art class twice, she chose the path of a painter. She describes leaving her painting for “A
son, lovers and what I can only describe as an unrecognized desire to be the subject of a great
painting…” Years later she would return to painting, but her approach was different, creating
“fragmented images, using scrap materials which reflected how I lived rather than some
romantic notion.” Let’s underscore a connection: just like in the previous chapter Sex on Film –
Lesbians, where some lesbian filmmakers either embraced or rejected romantic fairy tale
imagery, there was general agreement that beautiful, aesthetic styles of filmmaking were
associated with patriarchy. Real lesbian film was associated with something more raw, more
personal, and often less pretty and fairy tale like (or if the film used fairy tale imagery, it was to
deconstruct the patriarchal themes of fairy tales, taking out Prince Charming).

As I understand it, Woolcock is making a parallel argument in painting that the lesbian
filmmakers made about film: traditional, pretty forms of painting are associated with
patriarchy, while new, raw, personal forms of painting are seen as rejecting that tradition [19].

Woolcock goes on in part II to describe her personal animosity towards wealthy patrons of
gallery paintings, and in my opinion, she projects immorality onto this group of people she
dislikes [20]. In her words, “It is not incidental to how I breathe, talk, earn money or anything
else that I am a woman who has become a mother, a feminist, a revolutionary socialist but
neither is the way I do these things prescribed by my politics. Art is not above gender or class
and can serve reactionary or progressive ends but it is also specific to itself and not a substitute
for other forms of action. There are more effective ways of sharing a vision than spending
months painting an image to hang in a gallery patronized by obnoxious Tory connoisseurs who
would buy canvases stained with the blood of peasant women if the proportions were right.”

In my own words: Woolcock is saying that painting isn’t an efficient way of advancing politics.
The Tories are the traditional center-right party of British politics, and Woolcock is saying that
even if she spent months on a painting expressing her politics, she hates the idea of her art
being displayed in this conservative, traditional environment for beautiful painting. Notice how
Woolcock ascribes a murderous tendency to these Tory patrons. She doesn’t want to make art
for them.

Woolcock makes a fascinating historical argument about the relationship between art and
politics: essentially what matters most isn’t the artist but the political group which appropriates
the art for their own purposes, whether the artist likes it or not. For example, Frida Kahlo and
Diego Rivera painted the human figure along with socialist themes in Mexico, but in contrast,
Traditional Russian painters who supported the Tsar were also admired by Lenin during the
Russian revolution. Avant-garde painters supported the Bolsheviks and “expanded into popular
culture with unparalleled vigour.” [20] The New York art establishment rejected abstract
expressionist painting as Marxist until Staling also condemned abstract art and endorses social
realism. Only then did abstract art “become the epitome of the capitalist dream.” She also
points out that art by the Proletkult, a group of revolutionary soviet artists, now sell for high
prices in the art market.

Woolcock is interested in these complex social factors and how they affect art. When it comes
to feminism, “A constant factor has been a deliberate blindness to the work of women and a
patriarchal bias in the images produced of us, the old fascist favorites, the mother and the
whore overshadowing the silent presence of daughters and sisters and wives [20].” In other
words, in addition to blaming patriarchy for women artists being ignored by history, Woolcock
believes fascist tropes in painting. These tropes include representing women as mothers like a
portrait of the Madonna or as whores in sexualized classical nudes. Woolcock wants more types
of representations of women, and argues that it is the feminist artist’s task to shoulder this
burden, which also gives an intimate quality to their work.

In Part III Woolcock gives a general description of her return to painting in 1975, and her
collaboration with Kassandra Pardee and Sarah Ainslie. She found figurative work restrictive
and began collecting little bits and pieces like bus tickets to use as art materials. She describes
feeling unhappy after some professional exhibitions and changes in her style over time. She
took some inspiration from Les Geurrilliers by Monique Wittig and Artemesia Gentileschi’s
painting Judith.

Part IV describes her paintings of Pandora, presumably featured in the exhibition this catalogue
was for. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find Woolcock’s paintings on Google, or the
original catalogue on Amazon. Unless I can find a copy of this catalogue or images of the
paintings she is discussing, I don’t think a discussion of her paintings would be very helpful
because we’d have to guess what they look like from a brief description. Suffice it to say that
Woolcock viewed her paintings as a challenge to the male myth and the types of classical
paintings created by male gaze.

Part V is a single sentence, closing her statement by saying writing this was like pulling out a
bad tooth.

What can we take away from Penny Woolcock? She is clearly knowledgeable of art history,
making an argument that feminist artists must do more than merely create art in order to
conform the culture. Just as we’ve seen in past chapters, she is so concerned with patriarchy
and male gaze, it affects the kind of art she wants to make and where she wants her art
displayed. Though I have not been able to find images of her paintings yet, I can tell from her
verbal descriptions that she takes inspiration from the avant-garde movement of the 20th
century, and if you’re familiar with postmodern art from Marcel Duchamp onwards, you
probably have a mental picture of the kinds of materials and techniques that Penny Woolcock is
describing. When I read her description of patriarchal themes in painting, it is as if I can draw a
direct line from her to contemporary, popular feminism, you might say from “Tropes vs. women
in classical painting” to “tropes vs women in video games.”

The final personal statement in this anthology is Marie Yates’ “Statement from Sense and
Sensibility Catalogue” originally published in 1982. It includes a new introduction, presumably
by Yates, written in 1987 which says that she has evolved in her views since the original
statement was written, argues that a whole new statement would have to be written to make it
relevant to 1987, and encourages the reader to view it from a historical perspective only, as
something feminists should be glad to have moved on from. I have to confess that I am deeply
confused by what this final statement is and what it is trying to say, in part because of the
unusual way it has been written. Both Yates’ original statement, and her new introduction use a
kind of dialogue between two people, one identified as “her” and the other identified as “you”
having a conversation. This is only a guess, but my theory is that Yates’ writing is informed by
feminist semiotics. This is an aspect of feminism I know is important but have no knowledge of.
Essentially, it is a field of language-studies which is interested in deconstructing the English
language seeking meanings and ideas which reinforce patriarchy and the oppression of women,
and would write in a way which would upend traditional use of the English language.

Yate’s writing style is not straight-forward and easily digestible, and this problem is
compounded since the Visibly Female anthology includes a picture of one art work created
after the 1982 exhibition and nothing from that exhibition.

I have tried to find the original catalogue in hopes of understanding the context of this
statement better, but apart from some citation information in Google books I’m not only
unable to find a digital edition of this book, I can’t even find a used edition of the original at this
point. I would appreciate any leads or help finding the original catalogue for a future video, and
will share links to what I found in the description below. For now, I have NO clue how to tackle
this final personal statement without knowing more about the art from the exhibition. I have a
vague sense that Yate’s is using this dialogue to work through ideas of the male gaze in
pornography and its degrading effect on women. The introduction suggests that since writing
the original statement, she became more open to gender identities not being defined by the
biological gender binary and that her views on pornography had changed significantly, meaning
that most of what she wrote originally in 1982 was antiquated to her new thinking. I am not
going to try to tackle Yates’ personal statement at this time, unless I can find some way to read
the original catalogue. Thus, for now, I am moving past this last statement and onto the next
segment of the Visibly Female anthology, the collection of interviews with feminist artists.

This might be a good time for me to remind you that, as you listen to my series summarizing
this book, it might be a good idea for you to look this book up and read it for yourselves. Trying
to read Yate’s odd prose was a strange experience, not one I can easily describe beyond saying
it was confusing, and it underscores just how complicated feminist theory can be outside of my
narrow interest in feminist art theory. What I hope we will continue to show in this video series
is the cultural aims of radical, Marxist-informed feminist art theory and it’s remarkable
relevance to daily life and popular culture. Thank you for listening. If you like the work I’m
doing, please consider liking this video, leaving a comment with your observations, subscribing
to my channel, and clicking the bell icon to be notified when future installments of this series
are published. Until next time, I am respectfully yours, #1MarmadukeFan.