Heather Boon

Essay Three

Contextual studies

Identity

Word Count 983

Choose two artists whose work addresses identity.  Discuss a single work by each artist.  Explain the ideas each artist is trying to represent and how they are expressed.

I have chosen to write about artists who work with identity. The word ‘identity’ means a set of behavioural or personal characteristics which are individually recognizable. Identity in Art means the art can be geopolitical, ethnic, class, gendered, generational, institutional, or personal. I’ve decided to write about Tracy Emin and Sarah Lucas.

Emin’s work shows a lot of confessional art and Lucas’s work shows sexual fantasies with deformed objects. I think they match the topic ‘identity’ well.

I’m looking at a piece of Emin’s work called ‘My Bed’ which she created in 1998. It was set up as a installation at the Tate Modern in London. She redesigned her own bed showing her personal space in all of its embarrassing glory. She shows a story to engage with her viewers. The story tells of her personal living habits and the shame she lives with. It expressed Emin's sluttish personality, the detritus of a life which reflected her own. It was, above all, confessional. It consisted of her own bed; stained sheets, fag butts, empty alcohol beverage bottles, tampons, a pregnancy test, blood and worn knickers. She shows feminine power and stereotypes in today’s society. This shows a relationship between Art and Politics. Viewers thoughts were mainly of shock when confronted by this piece of work. Her work was inspired by not getting up from her bed for several days due to suicidal depression brought on by her own relationship difficulties.

Emin falls under identity because she wants to show her viewers her feminist art work to show female power and influence that is relative to the here and now but which has always been there in the past, waiting on the sidelines to come forward and be recognised.. The viewer can see Emin has been influenced by people such as Edvard Munch and Egon Schiele because of the gender and sexual preferences and their meanings within nationality, ethnicity, politics, and religion.  All these seem to have some impact on the meaning of art.

Lucas’ art is based on self portraits. I’ve been looking at one of her portraits called ‘Self Portrait with Fried Eggs’. In this photograph, as in all her self-portraits, Lucas adopts a typically masculine pose. She looks confident and in control, staring straight into the camera. The two fried eggs on Lucas's chest are a crude parody of the female body. The artist has used a similar tactic in the objects she makes, representing male and female genitals using everyday objects in a humorous manner.

Lucas’ work falls under identity because her work shows feminist sexuality showing the power of women, like her self. The approach of feminists is constantly changing. This can be compared to that of the image of womankind. Women are not static beings. Women, like men, are being molded through each experience. She shows that women are composed of many faces such as class, sexual preference, race, and religion and that stereotyping them as the mother and nurturer is wrong and does not explain fully what it is to be a woman. Hence she uses the breasts as a parody of a purely female part and uses eggs to represent fertility in a humorous and somewhat scathing manner.

Her typical masculine poses give the viewer a full in the face slap of the feminine against the alpha male. Using her facial expressions, props and masculine body positioning she displays the typical male sexual aggressive genital display which most men, particularly younger men, primitively use to attract the opposite sex and show their virility. This could be because she is struggling personally with inner demons, indicated to me by her work as a whole and perhaps she feels her life would be easier if she was a man.  Role playing in this way allows her perhaps to express her innermost feelings and desires.  Alternatively, she could just be portraying the suppression females have had to endure over the years and is indicating a woman can be viewed as just as aggressive, important and viable as a man if they take on a masculine persona and ‘walk the walk’.  I feel she is a vulnerable person because viewing her work gives me the impression I am looking at someone who is not happy with who she is and who is struggling to find her meaning for existence.

Although Lucas portrays genitalia in a humorous way, I feel there is more to the message than that.  I think she is trying to portray that the difference in genitalia is all that is different between a man and a woman and that possession of a penis does not make for a superior human.  She is trying to show women are just as capable and important as men and is making fun of the assumption that a woman is less of a person and the ‘weaker’ sex.  Food is organic and eventually rots away if left and I feel Lucas uses food to portray genitalia because once the difference between the sexes has rotted away then what is left becomes the true human, equal in all other ways.

Perhaps another reason for Lucas using food could be she feels the male viewer may be less offended by the concept of a woman being an equal if there is a humorous element to her work.  However, it could simply be she chooses to use food in its hidden ‘toilet humour’ way, such as using fried eggs which are used in British humour to insult a woman with small breasts.

Lucas parody outlook on sex, violence, deformities and sensationalism between the sexes and the pieces of art themselves is a unique and thought provoking way of expressing the difference between the sexes and underlining the similarities between the two.  It challenges the concept of femininity and masculinity identities and says what really lies beneath is the same once those preconceptions have melted away.