The Centre Pompidou claims to be one of the most important and influential museums in the world, housing both the National Museum of Modern Art and the Centre of Industrial Design. With over 6 million visitors a year and a total of 190 million since its opening in 1977 this would appear to be a fair declaration. The Centre also stands by a strong mission statement: “to spread knowledge about all creative works for the 20th century and those heralding the new millenium”
It would seem fitting then, that the museum would be the first in the world to attempt to spread knowledge about all creative female works by embarking on a re-hanging of the permanent collection which is entirely devoted to women artists and designers from the 20th century to the present day, in the form of Elles@CentrePompidou. This bold move towards equal gender representation is the third thematic exhibition of the National Modern Art Museum’s collections, preceded by Big Bang in 2005 and Image Movements in 2006 and displays an innovative and progressive approach towards representing the achievements of contemporary women.
The exhibition itself seeks to remove the traditional categorisation by chronology and/ or art movement and instead offers seven thematic sections which are open to individual interpretation by the viewer. The sections are entitled: ‘Pioneering Women’, ‘Fire At Will’, ‘The Body Slogan’, ‘Eccentric Abstraction’, ‘A Room of One’s Own’, ‘Words At Work’ and ‘Immaterials’ and stretch over two floors, encompassing everything from painting and sculpture to film, installation, architecture and product design. Large fluorescent orange entrances mark, yet not entirely divide the collection from that of male artists such as Matisse and Picasso. This subtle division alludes to the Pompidou’s sensitive handling of the gender subject and helps (yet perhaps does not completely succeed) in dispelling accusations of ‘ghettoising’ the female artwork.
Veronique Vienne, renowned female graphic designer, art editor and critical writer (who has always taken a strong stand concerning the position of women within the design world) best describes the viewer’s experience in her recent review for issue 73 of Eye magazine:
‘You wander, lost in a labyrinth of contradictory manifestos, unable to comprehend it all but in a delicious state of “alert stupor”... Though disconcerting, it is the closest thing to an Alice in Woman-land experience.’
Vienne succinctly describes the astounding diversity of the work on show and the almost surreal experience of so many women’s individual voices being heard at once. Every section or turning seems to display another facet of female art, from Rebecca Horn’s aggressive ‘Whip Machine’
(which it must be noted, is strategically placed in the very entrance to the collection, thus allowing the whip’s crack to immediately alert some of the more lethargic viewers) to Elisabeth Ballet’s strong graphic ‘Lecia’ installation which compels you to run the length of one gallery space alongside her monstrous emergency exit sign imprinted on a huge piece of green plexi-glass..
It is true to say that the collection is perhaps a little overwhelming, this is primarily due to the fact that most viewers are conditioned to expect a chronology or discipline categorisation in an exhibition’s curation, especially in an institution such as the Pompidou. The effect is slightly bemusing on entrance, but it is an undeniably forceful presentation which manages to intrigue and excite the audience.
This intrigue is compounded by a strong graphic identity and clear signage which helps facilitate the visitor’s journey. There is also an extensive presentation of quotations from the artists on display and important events within the mobilisation of female art and design in the twentieth century. This not only helps to inform the audience with regards to the artists as individuals but also contextualises works within terms of social and political events. Through these texts the artists are also able to clearly convey their own philosophies concerning gender and sexuality in a way which may not be universally interpreted through their work. One such philosophy is presented by the performance, installation and sculpture artist Marie-Ange Guilleminot, whose video piece ‘Mes Poupees’ (My Dolls)
was displayed in ‘Eccentric Abstraction’ and embodies the ethos of the curation through her featured statement:
‘The individual is a subtle mix of masculine/ feminine. This internal relationship and the relationship to the other fascinate me. I don’t get the impression I need to struggle with regard to my sexual identity. I exist as a woman, but above all as an individual. I would like to talk about an ideal of “difference”, but not as a synonym for rejection.’
The decision to use an unorthodox method of categorisation can also be seen as a strategy to present an alternate feminist approach to exhibition categorisation. By ignoring the confines of traditional gallery and museum paradigms, which of course were constructed and upheld by a distinct and rigid fraternity, Elles reflects the very nature of the work it is showing; that being a collection which provides an alternative take on what is deemed important and influential in contemporary art.
Comparisons can be drawn with another all-female exhibition entitled And She Told Two Friends which show cased a network of female designers at Woman Made Gallery in Chicago in 1996. The exhibition thrived on a form of ‘self-curation’ in which Kali Nikitas invited two designers to submit work and in turn asked them to do the same. This resulted in a system which subverted hierarchical values of curation and allowed the women to not only showcase their own work but highlight and explain the merits of other designers. This ‘matriarchal’ system promoted a theory of mutual support as well as nurturing the talents of others, thus subverting the traditional dominant and patriarchal curatorial process. Such a system is clearly promoted by Lupton and Makela in their collaborative essay ‘Underground Matriarchy’ (1994):
‘Good design is not simply the product of individuals graced with a miraculous talent - designers are stimulated by schools, clients, companies, studios, colleagues, competitors, and other social networks... For me, to chart the family tree of an ‘underground matriarchy’ is not to recast the traditional Olympiad of individual genius with a new set of shining stars but rather to shift the focus of design journalism from the individual as creator ex nihilo to the individual as actor in a social context.’
Both of the exhibitions in question have used their subversive form of curation to compound the fact that they are all female shows. Regardless of whether the work in question is outwardly political in it’s nature or taking a strong feminist stance, the fact that this shift from traditional formats has taken place presents an alternate form of female thinking which could be applied to the broader context of the creative industries. Once again this view is shared by Lupton (1994):
‘Matriarchy invokes the values associated with feminine culture - gathering instead of hunting, cultivating instead of conquering, nurturing instead of self-promotion. These values are not strictly tied to sexual identity, but have been linked in our society to the worlds of women.’
For an industry which has upheld an ‘every man for himself’ approach and has remained consistently male dominated it would seem unlikely that any form of matriarchal subversion would be accepted. However an alternative strategy of ‘everyone for one another’ would seemingly be a more sustainable approach in a future which apparently wishes to promote social responsibility within design.
On returning to ‘Elles’, when analysing the curatorial structure the sheer amount of work on display must also be considered.This is an aspect which the curator Camille Morineau wishes to emphasis. With 500 pieces in the collection, 40% of which has only been acquired in the last four years she claims (2009 p.19) ‘the Mnam (National Modern Art Museum) has embarked on this project because there is finally enough women artists to rewrite history’ and also stresses that all of the artworks displayed were already in the collection, nothing has been borrowed or loaned.
This is a very important factor in considering the aim of Elles. Through presenting a large scale and diverse collection the Pompidou aims to present what is described by the president of the Pompidou Centre Alain Seban in the exhibition catalogue (2009 p.9) as:
‘The entire history of twentieth and twenty-first century art (...) re-written from a female perspective, tracing an alternate image of a period during which women acquired full status as artist.’
By displaying works that the museum already had in it’s possession it manages to avoid any accusation of being a sensational ‘feminist’ exhibition (examples of which are discussed later) or a half hearted attempt to approach issues of gender which have rather alarmingly become distinctly unfashionable in recent years. Morineau (2009 p.15) goes further to explain:
‘The works are already here, the choices have already been made. The updating and explicating of history - which is what the selective display of any permanent collection really entails - is the primary, and highly difficult, role of museums.’
This argument would prove difficult for sceptics to discount. By stating that the ‘choices have already been made’ due to the selections the museum has undertaken Morineau seeks to explain that the collection is not another temporary gesture towards ‘woman artists’ but is instead an accurate portrayal of recent history which is well evidenced. If this collection is so vast, as well as diverse and all encompassing, then the lack of female representation in non- gender specific shows is surely still an issue that need to be addressed and brought to the forefront of contemporary debate.
Despite a largely positive response and a very well considered stance of almost every aspect of gender debate (the collection catalogue has an extensive amount of critical essays covering everything from 1970s feminist theory to the implications of gendered product design) there are critics even from within the collection’s featured artists. For example Sigalit Landau, whose video piece ‘Barbed Hula’ involving a bare torso hula-ing with a barbed wire hoop in Tel Aviv, has reservations about the implications of an all female exhibition. She states (2009 cited by Tariq, 2009):
‘There is such a thing as woman art. And I’m not sure having it all together in one place is right for today. It is a touch artificial, and maybe creates an imbalanced experience.’
Such an opinion is one that has been a common point of criticism. It is argued that by excluding men the very objective of creating gender equality is negated. However Morineau (2009 pp.16-17) disagrees, maintaining that:
‘The goal is neither to show that female art exists nor to produce a feminist event but to present the public with a hanging that appears to offer a good history of 20th century art. The goal is to show that representation of women versus men is, ultimately, no longer important. Proving it is another matter.’
This is a strong statement, especially considering the lack of representation women endure in other artistic institutions. For example the Louvre holds 35,000 artworks and yet does not have a single female artist in its permanent collection. Further more in the UK the National Gallery contains only 2 female artists amongst its 2,300 pieces and female artworks represent a pitiful 12% of the Tate Modern’s entire collection.
These figures are quite shocking, but the under representation of women is not a new revelation. In fact very similar figures are actually displayed in Elles in the form of the infamous Guerilla Girls posters from the 1980s, such as the 1985 typographic poster ‘How many women had one-person exhibitions at NYC museums last year?’ and the 1989 poster ‘When racism and sexism are no longer fashionable what will your art collection be worth?’
Therefore the question must be asked: what, if anything, is different almost three decades on? This is where the significance of the Elles collection must be considered. Unfortunately Morineau is correct, a gender divide should no longer be important and yet it is undeniably still present. However a shift is apparent in the Pompidou’s rehanging. The museum has addressed the issue and has produced an extremely successful alternate representation. In this way it has also set an example to other institutions, encouraging the importance of acquiring artworks by women as a permanent feature and thus helping work towards establishing the artists as individuals in their own right. Only through this process can women truly begin to be appreciated for their work and not just for their gender, and the marginalisation of so-called ‘women art’ can finally cease.
The very title of the collection also portrays alternate presentations of women artist and designers through the use of the french plural ‘elles’. In 2007 we had WACK: Art and the Feminist Revolution; Global Feminisms and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Each title portraying an aggressive and hostile stance towards the opposite gender, as well as reactionary element towards an alleged oppression. In Elles@CentrePompidou the anger is not there and neither is the reaction. The word ‘elles’ translates as the feminine gender of ‘they’, the direct masculine comparison being ‘ils’. Therefore a differentiation can be drawn, whereas both would form ‘they’ in an English translation. The feminine word is immediately identified and yet is viewed as equal to the masculine despite the difference. Again I can allude to Guilleminot’s ‘ideal of difference’ and the existence of an individual first and a woman second; this is true of the philosophy of the exhibition itself. An English equivalent of, say for example ‘TheWomen@CentrePompidou’ does not express the same intent.
The use of the modern typographic connector ‘@’ must also be considered in terms of the exhibition’s intentions. The thoroughly 21st century symbol highlights the modern and forward thinking nature of the rehanging, but also represents a look towards a future where hopefully such a gender specific stance would no longer be necessary. It also alludes to the extensive investment that the museum has placed on the interactive communication with the viewer via the internet. As well as a well sourced website, which is an expected communicative device for any major exhibition, Elles has an extensive (and entirely separate) blog, set up as a forum for discussion in terms of the exhibition and many related issues. This allows the audience to not only share their experience of the exhibition itself, but also increase it’s longevity by enabling the viewers to draw on their own experiences and associations as well as informing others on associated subjects that one exhibition could never fully explore. This form of communication could be compared to the matriarchal process of And She Told Two Friends as it allows the audience to expand on the traditional didactic museum approach and promotes active discourse between a variety of viewers.
If other institutions are able to take note of the Pompidou’s strategy of addressing difference, promote communication and display such an assured alternate representation then perhaps the place of women within contemporary art and design can finally move forward towards a more equal standing, and we can finally be our very own ‘elles’.
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