Dressing a sublime carcass
and other of Rebecca Fontaine-Wolf’s oxymorons
It is only time taken in shedding clothes which makes voyeurs of the public: but here, as in any mystifying spectacle, the décor, the props and the stereotypes intervene to contradict the initially provocative intention and eventually bury it in insignificance: evil is advertised the better to impede and exorcize it.
Roland Barthes, Mythologies, Striptease
The word “dress” originally means prepare (dresser). This is why it still can be applied to a dead animal, referring to the procedures required for its consumption, as well as to putting on clothes. It means removing parts of a dead animal and adding layers to a living person, which is quite interesting if we think of the iconic primitive clothes made with animal hair.
Rebecca Fontaine-Wolf’s work is deeply rooted in the following elements, many of which were mentioned above: death, carcasses, preparation, dressing the nude body, the performative, the gaze wrapped up in erotic desire, the integration of different types of “cultural makeup”1, paint as a diagrammatic picturesque action defacing subjects and, also, the digital (photo, collage and print) simulating to perfection the serendipity of painting… If this seems somehow promiscuous and confusing rest assured each of these issues will be further investigated, articulated and explained in this text… however this is just a glimpse of a much larger myriad of subtle (re)combinations2 of opposites implied in this artist’s dialectic oxymorons.
The contradiction identified by Barthes in “Striptease”: “Woman is desexualized at the very moment when she is stripped naked” is alluded to in this body of work but it never actually applies since the body remains eternally dressed with mirrors and reflections of itself. The same negation of Barthes’ thought happens regarding his description of the “French striptease” quoted above since there is no time in Fontaine-Wolf’s work as far as the observer is concerned. As Lessing famously declares time is absent from painting (in a broad sense) since there is a fundamental difference between the instantaneous nature of a portrait and the narrative dimension of poetry (time based). Even if this thought goes against more than two thousand years of history of merging poetry and fine art it is extremely helpful for us to understand the
1 This expression was used previously by Fontaine-Wolf regarding myths, archetypes and their contemporary nature. If we take myths as being cultural makeup interesting questions arise. If makeup hides imperfections and enhances strong features… does that mean myths are inspiring exaggerations? Could these hyperboles help question the hidden forces manipulating our beliefs and behaviours? Do they make the underlying forces visible instead? Do they express some prevailing sensation turning the anecdotal and the individual experience into universal systemic structures?
2 Recombination as in genetics.
disruptive difference between the description of “Striptease” above and Fontaine-Wolf’s art. We can easily understand now why the observers are not voyeurs, why the performative is not striptease, why stereotypes are replaced by archetypes and finally why in the end it is significance which prevails. In a way what is proposed is an inverted striptease, dressing instead of undressing. Still erotic, still an exorcism but making use of only one instant, only a contradictory combination of body parts dressing our imagination with new perspectives of themselves which are almost as unrevealing as those photographed directly.
“At the moment my art is situated between the pornographic tendency to reveal everything and the erotic inclination to hide what it’s all about.”
Dumas, Marlene3
The question of the limits of desire and how art can use, participate or be based on eroticism or pornography is extremely complex. This contemporary aporia4is probably a semantic issue as Wittgenstein would put it5. How each person uses these words (erotic or pornographic) varies from person to person and that’s why defining them is practically impossible. However, for the purpose of this text it is enough to notice how our gaze is wrapped up in erotic desire and how that implies the postponing of what is being suggested.
In some of the more recent photographs there is a male presence. This is a relevant development bringing the defaced other to the merging of fragmented bodies. This may indicate the non-toxic, empathic, helpful male is coming through Fontaine-Wolf’s art. A Merlin or a Mordred in the Mists of Avalon? Anyhow an exceptional male feminist empowering the “dangerous woman’s gaze”6 or maybe even the “Goddess”.
Based on the information available and a long interview with Rebecca Fountaine-Wolf in her Lisbon studio7 a bold statement claims to be made: until now no one has considered (in writing) the deep implications of Deleuze’s thought on the recurring tensions and themes present in her work. Fontaine-Wolf is a Deleuzean artist since she integrates his thoughts as premisses and expands on them using visual means. However, many may be completely unaware of how much that adjective
3 Pornographic Tendency, 1986. Sweet Nothings. Notes and Texts, 2014, p. 33.
4Irresolvable set of conflicting views on the same issue which actually make perfect sense on their own. 5" The world is my world: this is manifest in the fact that the limits of language (of that language which alone I understand) mean the limits of my world. ", 5.62 in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 1922. “Now what do the words of this language signify? What is supposed to shew what they signify, if not the kind of use they have?” or “Meaning it is not a process which accompanies a word. For no process could have the consequences of meaning.” Both in Philosophical Investigations, 1953. 6 Rebecca mentions the “dangerous woman’s gaze” in some of her previous interviews referring to how the woman’s gaze has been perceived historically by the patriarchal system.
7 One of the first references mentioned by the Rebacca was the previous quote by Marlene Dumas.
applies to her artistic endeavours and how his production of concepts may unfold dimensions of her work neglected until now.
Conveniently artists do not speak of the unconscious but let the unconscious speak instead… In a similar fashion they frequently avoid speaking about aesthetics but allow their artistic practice to reflect the unconscious or intuitive knowledge of those issues revealing an awareness they are often unaware of. Let us consider two major works by Deleuze and some strong connections one can easily establish with Fontaine-Wolf’s art: Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation and The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque.
The book on Francis Bacon is centred on sensation, which is obviously crucial for this exhibition, but Deleuze also proposes the body without organs relating it to a specific kind of antisocial (non-functional) artistic emancipation achieved namely by Artaud. In this respect the recurrence of the carcass in the artworks being exhibited in Woman, Flesh and Mirrors is quite literally a “body without organs” bringing themes such as: the abject, death, the existential but also aesthetics denying the functional aspect of the body and applying all that to visual creations. In that same book Deleuze also defines the figural as a nonfigurative fragmented body in tensional balance. This is achieved by making use of the diagram which is related to the lack of control and the abstract which is deeply rooted in invisible forces. In Fontaine-Wolf’s work the figural is transduced into the fragmentation and bodily repetitions of incomplete reflections on broken mirrors and the diagram becomes brushstrokes underlying the digital print as well as abstract elements of paint, drips and splashes which are actually digitally scanned and printed, but are just as real as a psycho-somatic illness. This is what I call the perfect digital simulacrum8 of serendipity. Other non-simulated fortunate accidents actually also occur but in other ways which are not mediated by the digital such as the partial tearing of a large-scale print while it is being mounted on metal. Finally, we should also mention defacement and what Deleuze describes as the perfect balance of all these painting related facts achieved by Francis Bacon on his canvas. In Fontaine-Wolf’s “physi-digital” works defacement takes a literal turn since there are almost no faces in her work. This painting related apparatus9 Deleuze proposes is sometimes described by some academics as another form of contemporary sublime10
8Jean Baudrillard defines it the following way: "Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being, or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal.... It is no longer a question of imitation, nor duplication, nor even parody. It is a question of substituting the signs of the real for the real", just as in Disneyland as he illustrates.
9 Elements establishing a network of relations of power according to Foucault, Agamben and Deleuze (who later on makes this concept evolve into his famous Rhizome).
10 such as David Johnson states in “Postmodern Sublime” (chapter 8, The Sublime: From Antiquity to the Present, Cambridge University Press).
(way beyond but still inspired by Lyotard’s inhuman). Others, such as myself, prefer to establish parallels with Nietzsche’s grand style described in his aesthetics where both Apollonian (order/beauty) and Dionysian (chaos/sublime) contribute to achieve a picturesque and oxymoronic beautiful sublimity much more powerful than any single aesthetic category.
Deleuze’s other book on the Fold describes the Baroque’s most repeated element as being structural to the world and the origin of the extreme contrast between the reflection of light on a bent, shiny metal surface and the shadow/darkness generated by the unilluminated gap in the midst of each fold and counterturn. This can generally be justified by the counterreformation of the Roman Catholic church which intended to oppose the Protestant movements by exerting a profound fascination on ambivalent souls. But Deleuze’s perspective on Leibnitz takes the omnipresent “folds”, “unfolds” and “refolds” to convert his “Monads”11into contemporary Deleuzean “Nomads”12. This is how one may perceive contemporary art as echoes of Baroque strategies. The fascination and intense contrasts are stimulating and seducing but instead of bringing someone closer to the religious, they advertise commodities and consumer goods instead. The market rules everything through the myth’s13“invisible hand” (a myth in itself14). In Fontaine-Wolf’s oeuvre we have this same contrast between the reflection of light on metal (aluminium) and some deep dark backgrounds. This is why Fontaine-Wolf fits perfectly in Agamben’s definition of contemporary: belonging both to the current time but also to another time back in the past. Therefore, being contemporary implies being anachronistic and Fontaine-Wolf’s neo-Baroque15 does that perfectly. This baroqueness is even more apparent in her work through the Vanitas and Memento Mori represented by the contrast between the worldly pleasures of food/sex and the awareness of death which is persistently suggested. This oxymoron is present in each dead animal and white cloth reminiscent of a clinical
11 Concept developed in The Monadology (1714), one of Gottfried Leibniz's most famous works. It is a short text which presents a metaphysics of simple substances, or monads (which means that which is one, has no parts (indivisible) and lacks spatial extension, hence being immaterial).12 Concept developed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in Mille Plateaux (1980). The origin of the word ‘nomad’ is not a romanticized image of actual nomadic peoples, but rather Immanuel Kant's claim that “outside of philosophy is a wasteland fit only for nomads”. The nomad stands for the power of the virtual and is a tendency towards deterritorialization, that can be found to some degree in all phenomena. They freely admit that “nomadology” creates structures that collapse, they also celebrate its ability to open a creative line of flight.
13 As Roland Barthes defines it in Mythologies.
14 “Invisible hand”: an expression used by Adam Smith in his book The Wealth of Nations explaining why each individual searching only for their own security of investment can have good effects on others. This expression is extremely popular and is taken as a central concept of his book: its meaning has been completely distorted and has been used as synonym of “markets self-regulation”. 15 There is even a reference to the fold in a title: “Enfold”.
sudarium waiting for a bloody ritual. Vanity is central to this type of Baroque still life paintings and this is definitely enhanced by the focus put on the transient nature of everything commonly valued by man… Fontaine-Wolf recombines the archetypal portrait of the nude woman with the carcass and other foods considering carefully the underlying symbolisms and myths. On one hand, all of these elements can generally be considered worldly pleasures, however it is also true that the awareness of death implied by the carcass is extended to the white skin and aging body which will inevitably die along with every other organic element. This oxymoron resulting from the recombination of Vanitas and portrait is not common16 especially if it is based on a self-portrait of a partially undressed woman. Therefore Fontaine-Wolf’s “physi-digital” still-lives actually imply the performative and are just momentarily alive in our imagination. Where does this Baroque resonance take us? It reminds us that only the spiritual is meaningful, the beyond, the afterlife and the other worldly. This is the only possible answer to the shallowness of pleasure.
Where else could this spiritual dimension be in Fontaine-Wolf’s work? Mirrors have actually been considered gateways for the prepared gaze. If “dressed” properly the mirror can be used for the occult art of divination called Scrying17 allowing access to visions of the future and other dimensions. This is the mystical side of this body of work which is alluding to the archetypal, the Jungian synchronicities and the occult. This neo-Baroque does not bring in the lost souls back to the one and true religion. It does quite the opposite. Similar to Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals it inverts the status quo inviting spectators to forget their beliefs and get lost in the darkness while being seduced by bright, sharp reflections of mirrors and aluminium. The witchcraft behind the artwork proposes the inversion of hierarchies and values, the empowerment of women, their sexuality, their agency and their gaze. Just as Nietzsche points out that philologically the good was the brave, strong, rich and powerful. He also defines the bad as the opposite of what Catholicism proposes: the obedient, weak, poor and charitable. This is what this philosopher calls the “moral of the sheep”, proposing the creation of individual ethics instead of values imposed by others. The sheep are slaughtered in Fontaine-Wolf’s work to propose a similar rethinking of the role of women, and go against the conservative values which repeatedly deny them equality.
Faceless universal18 bodies imply new feminist ethics and this means taking Hanna Arendt’s “banality of evil” as a given and suggests an inverted reinterpretation of many ancient myths. The danger comes from complacency and obedience to the roles,
16 I can think of Holbein’s Ambassadors but it is quite uncommon.
17 Mentioned by the artist during the studio interview.
18 Since it could be anybody.
personas and interpretations imposed on us by society. Medusa for example has been seen throughout the ages as a monster and yet she was an actual victim since she was raped by Poseidon. Some of her extreme actions may be better understood if we bear that in mind instead of seeing her as an incarnation of pure evil... The centrality of gaze is evident since her power forces her killer Perseus to see her only through his mirrored convex shield to be able to behead her. We can identify some similarities with the use of Claude’s glass during the 18th century which was a dark mirror which enabled tourists to see the landscape as a “painting by Claude Lorrain”. This is inextricably connected to the emergence of the picturesque and how a mirror can change the way we see the world. This artistic scrying in Fontaine-Wolf’s art is the transposition from the picturesque to a defaced portrait structured by a woman’s gaze upon herself and the external pressures and aggressions she is forced to endure:
She possessed a wonderful mirror, and when she stepped before it and said, “Oh mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of us all?” it replied: “Thou art the fairest, lady Queen.” Then she was pleased, for she knew that the mirror spoke truly. Little Snow-White, however, grew up, and became pretty and prettier […]
Brothers Grimm, Snow White
Tragedy is according to both Schiller and Nietzsche announced by the sublime chorus in Greek drama and comes with the arrival of the inevitable: death and the divine. Bear in mind that the same capabilities which allowed the human species to prevail against all competitors are the same aptitudes forcing us to face the existential anguish inherent to the awareness of the end of our lives. As mentioned before, this Memento Mori is enhanced by the recurrence of the carcass which we are dressing by conceiving our foreseeable decay and eventually our final fall into the void of oblivion. This fear may well be the origin of our search for creation namely through art or religion. This existential tragedy is the gap no one ever managed to fill permanently which Lacan believes to be between the self and its mirrored image: “I see myself seeing myself”. This is the emptiness no one can run away from, this “apparition”19 of otherness…
This mirrored otherness described above can take many shapes even within the same subject. Through the interaction with different apparatus, as defined by Foucault and Agamben, the self (which was never whole to start with) undergoes subjectification. This becomes clearer if we realize that the same person using a phone or a computer is never really the same subject. We can even suggest a subjectification associated to
19 Reference to Vergílio Ferreira’s book entitled Aparição.
each app, almost an “appification” of the subject’s inherent multiplicity. What is being suggested is that subjectification also happens through the artist’s interaction with each artistic media. This is particularly relevant for Fontaine-Wolf since she still perceives herself as a painter who decided to integrate the digital in her process. This is described by herself almost as an inevitable consequence of the relevance of her digital life enhanced by pandemic abrupt behavioural changes. In order to remain authentic these experiences had to come through her work. In this process of wrapping her work with the digital originated what she now describes as the “physi-digital” process. This oxymoronic neologism implies a dialectic cycle of physical/conventional painting and the processing of those elements through scanning, printing and physical reworking which will then be scanned again… the repetition of this cycle allows for the simulacrum of serendipity mentioned above but it also has consequences on Fontaine-Wolf’s subjectification. By using diverse artistic media subjectification originates otherness and multiplicity. Variations of Fontaine-Wolf associated to each medium come up and an actual “pack of Wolves” starts “losing identity gaining an undefined quality”20. Probably this implies the acculturation art aims to achieve, as in old colonial dynamics, actually happens both ways: neither the artist nor the spectator remain the same. Attitudes, behaviours, processes and sensibilities are mutually affected, the artist through the process and the spectator through the work. Some deep questions remain regarding the digital… is it equally changing or altered by this process? Will it evolve becoming more and more human? Maybe the real danger is the human (artist and spectator) becoming less human and more artificial… A very poignant and uncomfortable statement comes to mind when thinking about AI and how pervasive the digital has become and I’ll simply quote it here because these issues are inevitably open-ended:
We are all cyborgs, we need to know how the computer sees, to learn to recognize its gaze and then to imitate it.
Nicholas Mirzoef on Donna Haraway, Visual Culture Reader
20 Quoting Rebecca and applying her thoughts to this multiplicity and subjectification of the artist using multiple artistic media.