Privilege of the female gaze

On Wednesday evening (23.01.19) I went to a talk put on by the Royal Academy’s Adult Learning Programme, as part of the interpretation programme of the Klimt/Schiele exhibition. The talk was entitled ‘Gatekeepers of censorship: contemporary erotic art in a digital age’ and while I was unfamiliar with most of the speakers until that evening, the one I was familiar with was artist Celia Hempton. And I am not going to lie, she is the reason why I purchased the tickets for this event back in September! Here and now is probably the only time you are ever going to hear me say this: I am 100% a teenage “fanhuman” (yes, that what it shall henceforth be called) of Celia Hempton (and serious collector of her work). Celia was joined in the conversation by Julia Farrington (Associate Arts Producer at Index on Censorship) and Adam Phillips (described on Wikipedia as "perhaps the best theorist of the modes and malfunctions of modernist psychology”, which I wholly agree with).

The talk was hosted by a very intent Kirsty Wark (journalist and broadcaster), who managed brilliantly to tie all the panelists together and make sure no one in the audience was lost among some very expert language and concepts.
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Side note: While this talk touched upon many interesting issues on censorship, artificial intelligence (AI), the digital, and many more, this article is focusing on the discussion of Celia Hempton’s artistic oeuvre in relation to the digital and this talk.

Some thoughts about the digital and censorship from Adam throughout the talk provide a great framework for this discussion. He talked about how nobody knows beforehand what will upset them, excite them and so on. Even that everyone has moments that they can’t or couldn’t even anticipate how they will react or respond to visual materials. Adam raises an interesting idea, that everyone who censors other adults - and this includes different social media platforms’ AI algorithms - is in the process claiming to know what’s best for other adults and that we just cannot know what is best for adults in the same way we can have an understanding about what is best for children. He asked: ‘What do we fear would happen if we didn’t have the censorship?’

Side note: a new episode of ‘The Guilty Feminist’ asked the audience to go through the room and name the items they look at in different ways. Starting with calling each item the name of the item you looked at before, up to the round where they asked the audience to look at something and call it anything, except for what it actually is. The point of this exercise was to make everyone aware that we have a tendency to make up rules and limitations in our head without them actually existing. No one said that you couldn’t call everything you looked at ‘dog’’. As long as you are not looking at an actual dog, you win the game. But that’s too easy. That’s too unimaginative, we tell ourselves. Hence making up limitations that weren’t there to begin with. ​

Julia Farringdon’s work consists a lot of thinking about how we can push against any limitations that are set by gatekeepers of the arts, such as museums and other institutions, rather than telling the artists not to push the boundaries and go beyond. I got to thinking about whether social media already has influence on artists and their work. If an artist’s work were to be continuously censored on online platforms, could it have enough power to make the artist reconsider their work and potentially censor themselves in the process to make sure they can profit from online exposure, which has become an important way for artists to make sure they are being seen.

But what does all of that mean for an artist like Celia Hempton. Part of her practice involves being active on the internet as an individual and connecting with others through platforms such as Chat Random and producing works of an explicit nature about images that were on her screen. Celia said that the reasons behind these works for her are not of an erotic nature (she actually pointed out that she does not like the term ‘erotic art’, since she doesn’t differentiate much between eroticism and pornography). The intent behind her work is to put herself in situations that make her feel uncomfortable, to push herself, looking for extreme feelings in everyday life. At the beginning of these series, Celia thought that she would flip the power dynamics by being the one in control since she was turning people’s privates into paintings while they stripped naked in front of her, but it turned out that the relations and dynamics were much more complex. She mentions how the works ended up being about a reflection of her own identity as much as they are about what the depicted genitalia. She emphasises how her intent is not to make provocative work. And the internet is a platform that allows her to experience images and interactions that she might not have access to without it.

This whole conversation about Celia’s work lead someone to theorize that Celia might be privileged as a female artist ‘to be allowed’ to look at genitalia in that way, while generally women might not have the courage to do so. Oh oh / Ugh - can you feel me cringe!? I’m going to be honest here, this sent me down a long train of thought and I might have missed a few minutes of the talk at that point. The concept of the talk was a moment that felt so empowering. An institution such as the RA giving a female painter with explicit content a space in which to be seen and heard. And while it was meant to be exactly that and all the panelist were definitely on the equality track, some concepts are so deeply embedded in our thinking, that somehow the idea that there is a different censorship for women crept its way into the conversation.

Is it true? Is Celia’s artist persona giving her a privilege that somehow erases the shame she should feel as a woman looking at random people’s genitalia? Is she giving up part of her female identity just because she addresses the subject so freely? And suddenly (and finally) the power dynamics changed. No, her privilege is not tied to her being an artist. No, she is not giving up any part of her being a women. If anything, her womanhood is what allows her to look at genitalia on a random online chat. It occured to me that a male artist would not be allowed to connect with other people of all genders the same way that it is open to women (yes, Celia’s work includes female genitalia). Gender and sexual orientation matter to the guys on the web who are partly using it as a power tool but also expose themselves and make themselves vulnerable to their counterpart. I don’t think a male artist could move as freely on chat rooms and be allowed to gaze. I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume you have all spent your fair share in various chat rooms and on social media platforms. The internet - or rather the users - doesn’t give the same rights to men to explore and interact with others. I think it’s fair to say that most guys on Chat Random (and similar pages) would not allow a man to watch and paint them. No matter their artist persona. So the internet is not a tool that has glitches, which allow women to temporarily forget that they are women, but in fact, it favours their gender.
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Any takers? Could it actually be that the internet’s anti-male behaviour privileges the female gaze and subsequently female authorship?

by Lynn S. Battaglia