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Jan. 18 - Jan. 25, 2004 |
A naked exchange
New exhibition at AGO bares uncharted art territory
By Natalie Henry
Originally Published: 2003-12-14
A woman shadowed by chauvinism and a sidelined Aboriginal. Both hamstrung, contemporary artists Robert Markle and Joyce Wieland shared more then opposite ends of the spectrum on their ideas concerning the female nude.
These similarities weren't linked until York University adjunct art history professor Anna Hudson had "a moment of epiphany" while looking at Markle's Denim suit - a work featuring a jean jacket embroidered with a corseted siren straddling a chair.
"A macho guy did needlework,' I thought and then wondered, 'Is there a connection there?' The correspondence between two artists looking in as Other from the avant-garde: a woman and a Mohawk - there was some common ground there," Hudson explains.
Now the two artists share the same ground at the Art Gallery of Ontario's exhibit Woman as Goddess: Liberated Nudes by Robert Markle and Joyce Wieland until February 29, 2004.
"It's a delicate ground though because the goal was to free their work from being stereotypically categorized or limited in a way," says Hudson, curator for the AGO exhibit. "Both were so intense... they almost needed to be countered or leavened by one another."
In the midst of the 1960s, Markle (1936-1990) and Wieland (1930-1998) experienced the period's "make love, not war" ideology first hand. Although both focused on the nude as an expression of beauty, they conflicted on the subject of sex.
"Whereas Markle poked fun at desire, Wieland examined the nude as a symbol of Art and how she compared as a woman to the female forms," Hudson says.
A type-casted chauvinist and a "women's libber," as Markle coined feminists of his day, the two artists carved new terrain in Canadian art history with their depictions of women. Whereas Wieland painted pastel-coloured fantasy-like images of naked goddess skipping in forests or fallen angels throttling men, Markle's nudes were darker, more shadowy images of reclining burlesque dancers and strippers.
Despite the controversy Markle and Wieland stirred with so-called exploitative and previously unexplored images, the exhibition - laid out in six acts - follows a story resulting in the artists' participation in an artistic tradition.
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