“I am a glossy photograph
I am in colour and softly lit
Over exposed and well blown up
Carefully printed and neatly cut
You can look at me for hours
I won’t mind, I let you dream
From the page of a magazine”
This verse from the song I Am a Photograph from the album of the same name by the model, singer and muse Amanda Lear gives voice to the usually quiet image of the beautiful woman who appears as an object of desire in the world of fashion. In this case, Lear speaks of photography in the way one previously would have done of painting, as a medium that not only captures beauty but also youth and the moment, for all time. The image that endures by means of these media does not grow old, nor does it complain, cry, love, or suffer, which makes it better than reality, as the song goes on to say.
As images and sculptural objects, female portraits and nudes have a broad presence and a long history in art. Classically used as studies or displays of sexuality, vitality, and power, the image of the woman –whether her profile, face, her body as a whole or details of it– has also been utilized since modern times in decorations, collectible figures, advertising, cinema, pornography, and fashion.
In recent decades, this history, along with the causes that have made it happen with femininity rather than masculinity, has become an object of study and debate within Western culture. Nevertheless, the way in which the female image is used has changed; now, woman, too, creates images of her own body, critiquing or rectifying this availability.
The Isabel and Agustín Coppel Collection holds works that serve to undertake an exercise in understanding this trajectory of the modern image of the woman, beginning with traditional portraits, lacking a critical connotation, of woman as a vision to be treasured, emanating a particular aura. These same images represent the object of desire as much as an intrinsic beauty, as in the cases of Women Are Beautiful (1981) by Garry Winogrand and Winter Terrace by David Salle, among others. The Collection also holds portraits of tough women, set apart from standards, such as Portrait of a Student, Jardins du Luxembourg, Paris (1960) by Thomas Höpker and Painter’s Wife (Helene Abelen) (1926) by August Sander. The latter shows the wife of the German painter Peter Abelen, wearing pants and a tie in response to the changes in gender roles and in the rights extended to women after World War I, such as the opportunity to work in offices outside the home –something that had previously been carried out only by men– and the right to vote. Together with the rejection of the tradition of staying at home and raising a family, these were characteristics of the new woman of the Weimar Republic, whom Helene Abelen represented.
Pieces such as those by Lee Friedlander, Umbo, and Nico Vascellari show the mediation of women’s images on television, in advertising, and in fashion, respectively. Friedlander has a series of images of television sets in hotel rooms on which he portrays moments when women appear onscreen, as well as a piece in which there appears a billboard for Pepsi Cola with a drawing of a young woman drinking the soft drink together with a slogan: “Look smart.” Umbo’s photographs show parts of mannequins, such as legs and faces, while Vascellari’s piece consists of a collection of photographs of Kate Moss that appeared in different fashion magazines.
Pieces by artists like Valie Export, represented here with the piece Body Sign (ACDE) (1970), for which she tattooed a garter belt on her leg as a non-self-determined attribute of femininity, Cindy Sherman, Sylvie Fleury and Sophie Calle, which are also part of the Collection, critically show the use of the woman as an object of desire and the consumption associated with it, beauty standards, as well as the uses of her image and the problematics related to it.
Another set of works, which includes Nu endormi, The New Painting (2003) by Elina Brotherurs and Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, USA 24 June 1992 by Rineke Dijkstra, play directly with classical painting, but using contemporary women who take control of the history of women’s poses and female nudes. Thus, rather than showing typical portraits of woman, the pieces in this exhibition make reference to the trajectory of her image.
In his book Ways of Seeing, originally published in 1972, John Berger wrote:
But the essential way of seeing women, the essential use to which their images are put, has not changed. Women are depicted in a quite different way from men –not because the feminine is different from the masculine– but because the ideal spectator is always assumed to be male and the image of the woman is designed to flatter him. If you have any doubt that this is so, make the following experiment. Choose from this book [or exhibition, in this case] an image of a traditional nude. Transform the woman into a man. Either in your mind’s eye or by drawing on the reproduction. Then notice the violence which that transformation does. Not to the image, but to the assumptions of a likely viewer.
One can feel the conclusion to which Berger arrives by transforming most of the images in this exhibition, as well as its title. Although woman has indeed taken charge of her image, we are still bound to a way of seeing that image that comes from understanding it from a male, heterosexual vantage point.
Thomas Höpker
Silver gelatin print
11.50 x 8.74 in
Stephan Balkenhol
Carved and painted wood sculpture
65.98 x 10.98 x 10.98 in
Marlo Pascual
Digital print. conch shell, pedestal
20.47 x 15.98 x 20.00 in
Sophie Calle
Photography and text
66.93 x 39.37 in
VALIE EXPORT
Black and white photograph
14.75 x 10.75 x 3.75 in
August Sander
Gelatin silver print
17.24 x 12.99 in
Rineke Dijkstra
Color coupler print
23.62 x 20.00 in
Sylvie Fleury
Dimensions variable
Cindy Sherman
Black and white photograph
7.99 x 10.00 in
David Salle
Oil and Inkjet print
63.98 x 84.06 in
Elina Brotherus
Chromogenic color print
31.50 x 39.37 in
Lee Friedlander
Gelatin silver print
11.00 x 14.00 in
Nico Vascellari
5 pieces with magazine pages
15.75 x 13.78 in
Vanessa Beecroft
Performance detail color photography
38.58 x 50.00 in
Garry Winogrand
13 Impresiones plata sobre gelatina
8.66 x 12.99 in
Umbo
10 gelatin silver prints
19.69 in
John Baldessari
Archival digital prints with crayon and tape on graph paper
17.99 x 16.97 in
Shirin Neshat
Ink on silver gelatin print
10.35 x 14.80 in
Seydou Keïta
Silver gelatin print
32.01 x 24.65 in
Bruce Davidson
Gelatin silver print
7.99 x 10.00 in