Pixley
Young
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September 1997
Charcoal on paper, 72" x 42"
December 1997
Charcoal on paper, 72" x 42"
December 1996
Charcoal on paper, 45" x 45"
Depicting the figure in art has always been a way to discuss issues of humanity, society, identity, and sexuality. Fetishizing, deconstructing, and symbolizing the figure have all been a part of the artists search for "self".
The female figures in my drawings and paintings emerge from the shadows as psychic disasters, mutations, hybrids. Their human bodies share physical traits with animals, consequences of mythic couplings or genetic abominations. Thinly veiled hostility and sullenness emanate from the animal-women and confront the viewer. The hybrid figures explore issues of identity and transformation. Some of the figures have grown hooves from their "animalrexic" legs. Others wear or carry the head of a horse. They are depicted flying from trapezes, slung up in the slaughterhouse, giving birth to animal children, or traipsing around in Degas-like tutus--a staple of pink, frilly fantasies, both innocent and predatory. These figures illustrate subjugation and dominance in the duality of their identities: the child and the whore, the animal and the woman, the mortal and the mythic.
The hybrid figures in my work deal with the link between the domination of women and the domination of Nature by Man. Specifically, "Nature" is symbolized in my work by images of animals. My personal connection with horses has led me to use their images in conjunction with my own image. Historically among Man's beasts of burden, horses have symbolized freedom. Yet it is Man's mastery over the horse rather than the creature's freedom or independence that is most commonly depicted. This is seen in the Marlboro Man ads in which an iconic cowboy conquers and subdues a rearing horse. It is also evident in popular fiction, such as Nicholas Evans' best-seller The Horse Whisperer, in which the protagonist mystically controls horses with words. Also in art, Rosa Bonheur's painting, The Horse Fair, depicts man and beast battling for freedom or enslavement. But Bonheur's depiction is with a twist. At the center of her whirling composition, like the eye of a hurricane, is a selfportrait of the artist astride a horse. There is no struggle between the woman and animal, only harmony. Bonheur's image looks right out at the viewer, as if to acknowledge her bond and synthesis with her horse and the link between all animals and women verses the brutality animals (and also women) face at the hands of men.
At the same time that Bonheur's work gained wide acclaim in Britain in the mid to late 1800's, a movement that opposed experimenting on animals was waging a battle for freedom. Women especially seemed to take the plight of the animals personally. "By 1900 women supported the anti-vivisection movement in numbers exceeded only by their numbers in suffrage societies." (1)
Women joined the anti-vivisection campaign because they could relate to the cruelties visited upon the animals. As midwifery waned, many women found themselves victims of overzealous gynecologists who addressed menstrual problems by cutting out healthy ovaries. "Elizabeth Blackwell, the first American female doctor, noted that the popular operation...was akin to 'spaying'."(2)
In the introduction to Animals and Women, Josephine Donovan and Carol J. Adams sum up a history of linked oppression,
| Historically, the ideological justification for women's alleged inferiority has been made by appropriating them to animals: from Aristotle on, women's bodies have been seen to intrude upon rationality. Since rationality has been construed by most Western theorists as the defining requirement for membership in the moral community, women—along with nonwhite men and animals—were long excluded. Until the twentieth century this "animality" precluded women's being granted the rights of public citizenship.(3) |
In my own work, I link the physical aspects of herbivores (horses, deer, cattle) with the female figure to add the dimension of predator verses prey. The animals that Man has traditionally domesticated and/or slaughtered are the metaphor for the domestication and oppression of women. "The role of women and animals in post industrial society is to serve/be served up; women and animals are the used."(4)
The visual linkage of woman and horse in my work was gradual and took place over a period of years. At first I used the image of the horse as a metaphor for myself because of the deep spiritual connection I feel toward horses. Using the image of the horse was also a protective device. I did not feel comfortable putting "myself" in my art work. I thought that if I used my own image in my art, my work would be labeled as "feminist" or "body art", and would not be given serious consideration. I was aware that work done by women about women was (and still is) compartmentalized into a genre of "Feminist Art", while art by men which depicts women still moves easily through all the genres. By using the animal as metaphor, I could speak anonymously without any direct reference to myself, escaping being branded: "Feminist Art".
The slip from horse form to woman was an incredibly natural one. One day it just seemed right to push the horse identity into the female one. The horse had always been female to me in my mind, and I had drawn and painted it in an increasingly figurative way. In my 1996 painting, Sling, the cropped image of a horse's front legs and chest slipped for the first time into the legs and lower torso of a human figure. The spindly legs and hooved feet are tied upside down to a line used to string up deer after a hunt or horses at the knackers. A pool of blood and gore congeals in the body's genital area, confirming the violence of the act as well as the human quality of the victim. A row of stylized black hooves run along the line that is holding the body up. They could easily be a ghostly chorus of black birds waiting for their turn. Using the hybrid image of woman and horse magnifies the brutality of this piece. It transcends the vision of animals in the slaughterhouse and becomes the visual documentation of women who have been murdered, raped, molested, beaten, or tortured.
In the 1996 work Tightrope, the legs appear in motion—the body is alive, swinging. In this charcoal drawing, the figure is positioned diagonally, and the hooves appear to be shackled or hobbled to a taut line or pole. Bruise-like marks appear on the thighs of the figure, and her knobby knees and animalrexic legs are ready to snap. In this piece the line is transforming itself into another visual element, the trapeze.
The trapeze is a "lighter" image, carnival lights and excitement are part of its baggage, although I focus on the danger and uncertainty in the act of the trapeze artist. In my paintings and drawings, the horse-women seem barely to hang on to the trapeze, or to be in the act of falling from it. There is a feeling of sacrifice/suicide as these legs fall out of these brightly colored picture planes. In Circus of the Fallen Angels, a horse and a horse-woman seem to fall out of the sky and through the picture plane. There is a swinging trapeze between them— they have missed it in their flight to earth. In Icarus, the figure has missed the trapeze which is placed over a great orange sun, and dives through sky and water. The figure is Ophelia, Virginia Woolf, Edna Pontellier.(5)
Sacrifice is again addressed in The Broken Trapeze, the first human-sized charcoal drawing of a female figure with animal attributes. In the image, a female figure emerges from a pitch-black ground. She is wearing a horse's head and her feet are hooved. In her hands she holds out a broken trapeze bar like an offering or a challenge. The drawing,
She, is an image of a woman with her back turned wearing a long skirt that disappears into the shadows at the edge of the paper. In her hand she holds the head of a horse. It is her identity—she carries it like a suitcase. The mood and image are dark. The figure seems about to dematerialize into the blackness, dragging along this head as a talisman.
Figures in other works don a tutu, as in Degas' Girl, The Dance Never Changes, and The Lesson. The horse-women wearing these tutus incite fantasies of both the innocent and the predatory. Enticingly bent over, they moon the viewer while showing off their panty-clad buttocks. This image was taken from Degas' little bronze dancer. In Degas' piece, the pre-pubescent dancer brazenly asserts herself to the world, thrusting her flat chest forward and throwing her chin up in the most studied of poses. Much like the child-models of today who smile alluringly at the camera while selling their wares, the tutu-clad horse-women play at childhood while displaying their sexuality in wanton fashion. The figures in Degas' Girl, The Dance Never Changes, and The Lesson explore the boundary between adult and child sexuality.
By putting the panties and the tutu together, the image corrupts childlike innocence. We are left with a sick feeling that something "Bad" is revealed. Other pieces such as Hang Up take this theme farther. Two figures are placed together and strung upside down; each wears a wrinkly, dingy pair of underwear. This image resonates with horror and sexual violence. Only a rapist or a molester would debase a victim so. The fact that the figures are clad in underwear is somehow visually even more disturbing than if they were naked. The vulnerability embodied in this small piece of cloth, which is the last protective layer between the figures and complete shame and degradation, suggests the violence no one wants to see or think about.
The themes of humanity, society, identity, and sexuality are all touched upon in some form or another in my work. By using the hybrid figure, I am able to talk of the subjugation of women and animals and ideas of transformation and identity, as well as a more personal affinity with the image of the horse. There is a long history of art imagery that combines the physical attributes of humans and animals, and it continues to be a potent source of symbolically powerful imagery for women artists, writers, and activists today. By placing hybrids in different contexts, I can use the imagery both as a descriptive device for personal narrative, and to speak more broadly of social issues. By raising the ideas of transformation and identity, the hybrid figure expresses the subjugation of women and animals. Not only are women and animals linked historically, many women identify metaphorically with animals. As victims of crime and economic oppression, many women may feel "like a deer caught in the headlights," out of control with no hope in sight.
My work is about the construction of identities (the child and the whore, the animal and the woman, the mortal and the mythic) that enables Man to dominate women and Nature. It is the combination of these identities, the hybrids, that we find impossible and taboo. Women of mythic status, such as Eve or Pandora, are blamed for the Fall of Man. It is through these identities that we experience the roots of our "punishment". The physical and emotional degradation that women and animals experience are the consequences of Man's continued cruelty and control. Addressing the relationship between women and Nature, and the negative manifestations of that socially constructed connection, we are better able to understand the role of women and Nature, and to combat the stereotypes of subjugation.