Erika Myers-Bromwell
condition
My
work is centered on the embodiment of emotions such as pain, worthlessness,
helplessness, entrapment and isolation.
In the work I am attempting to make emotions both aesthetic and
physical. In the scenes that I
have depicted the forebodingness, and the generality of both the scene and the
figures allow their emotion to remain universal. I work with paint, wire, nylon, rope and wood to create
physical conditions of emotion.
Similarly, I manipulate these materials and utilize them in
non-traditional ways. One of the
ways I manipulate materials is by cutting, stretching, and sewing nylon
stockings around wire armatures for example create my sculptural figures.
The physical characteristics of objects
including their structure, their general use, and the stigmas that categorize
them are important in my work. Nylon
stockings, for instance, create a sense of constriction and insecurity about
one’s body. Made from translucent,
thin, elastic material, stockings take on similar characteristics of skin.
Skin is a natural constraint.
Not only does it constrain the muscles, bones and organs inside of
us it is one of the physical attributes that describes beauty. In this manner beauty is constraining. Women are considered beautiful only if
their skin is flawless. Earlier ideas of beauty found African women with dark
skin to be erotic. Though my
work is not about beauty or eroticism, skin, like only a few other physical
characteristics, is the determining factor as to how people are treated, accepted
or segregated in society. Moreover,
this too is a constriction that often alienates to make people feel worthless
and alone.
Conversely, wire is strong, malleable,
and definitive. The steel wire
I use as the armature for my figures takes on the anatomical characteristic
of bone in my figures. It defines
the body’s shape and gives it strength.
It interacts with the nylon, connecting it at joints and crevices. Not only is this representational of an
anatomical human, it is also suggestive emotion. Emotional strength consists of many things and depends on our
weaknesses.
In this way the materials I use both juxtapose with each other
while working together. The translucency
of the nylon is a metaphor for the figure’s weaknesses. When the nylon and wire are combined they create a strength
that neither do alone. Like both body and mind that collaborate in order to
disperse strength and weakness. On
parts of my figures nylon takes over the bodies, emphasizing the ability of
weakness, helplessness, and isolation that can overtake the mind.
The viewer is also important in my
work because each viewer brings different emotions to the work. I assume that each viewer, when viewing
my work, has experienced these negative emotions towards himself at one point
in his life due to many different experiences. Many people have lived through
personal tragedies others have undergone simpler experiences that evoke the
same emotions. Therefore, I think people empathize, not because they have experienced
similar situations, instead because we somehow organize the images we see as
reality, even our own reality.
Therefore, by representing these emotions I am also suggesting an
abstracted reality, a world in which certain residual emotions are evoked by
the figures and their materiality.
I have created these alternate events in two ways: by painting large,
mural size paintings that portray human senses of loss and desperation; and by
creating sculptures that evoke feelings of entrapment, helplessness, and
loneliness.
I began this year by painting figures
that embodied these emotions. My painting Love is Lost II (2001) illustrates an unclothed woman
being lifted or dragged by a man through a street. Originally, in Love
is Lost II, I wanted
the image to present more of a struggle, as if the woman was resisting the
man’s grasp. However, I
decided that the action was not important in the piece. If her lifeless body, instead, were being
pulled out of the picture frame the viewer would recognize that she has been
overwhelmed past the point of exhaustion. The viewer cannot see her face,
however her body and sense of weight and unconsciousness reveal her weakness.
Behind her are two fragments of figures.
One figure stands behind the woman decapitated by the framing of the
picture. The other is simply
a fragment of a head and neck cut off by the leaning figure. The importance
of these figures is their amputation.
By avoiding the scene they too are being alienated aiding in the helplessness
of the figure that is being dragged. This use of the picture plane resembles
the composition of photographs.
Much of the reason my work is so profoundly
influenced by photography is that I use images from photography and photojournalism.
I use faces that are grief stricken, torsos that are lifeless, hands and fingers
that are clenched. This allows
for the emotional portrayal to seem more lifelike because many of these original
figures are fraught with grief, pain, or anger. I also incorporate photojournalism indirectly
by surrounding myself with stories and photography that has to do with people
who are grief stricken and helpless.
Both paintings Love is Lost I and Love is Lost II (2001) have an important relation to photography
and photojournalism. These paintings are similar in terms of composition to
photojournalism because they each illustrate part of an event that has been
cropped to only reveal the most important aspects of it. As a painting, or
construction, they have been created with abstracted reality in mind, not
to refer to a real event. The figures are not painted naturalistically and
the setting, while foreboding, is not naturalistic either.
Both are abstracted, in order to seem especially foreboding to the
viewer. This forebodingness amplifies the feelings of isolation and
helplessness that all of my work is supposed to illustrate.
Spanish painter Francisco Goya captures
similar senses of forebodingness in his painting The Third of May (1808). In this painting Goya captures a moment from the French occupation
of Spain. The painting comes
from a time when French firing squads worked day and night murdering Spaniards.
For me, his portrayal of the Spaniards’ surrender to French troops
is one of the most gripping political instances ever painted.
The troops are in no particular uniform, acting out an aggression by
an unknown higher power; they are disassociated from the scene (Wight, p 32).
Goya places himself and the viewer in the middle of a massacre; one can almost
feel the heart beating of the figure standing, arms outstretched, in front
of the firing squad. In this
way Goya’s work captures the emotions of the figures and himself during
this troubling time, transcending notions of realism. Unlike traditional realism, which often attempted to depict
events as they are or would look like in a photograph, Goya wasn’t concerned
with depicting the event as it was. Linda Nochlin explains The Third of May in these terms:
“For
Goya, meaning unfolds, within the pictorial world, in time and space,
progressing from the gray undifferentiated background of ‘before’
to the stark, light-revealed climax of the men being executed
-‘now’- to the lumpish, blood-encrusted fallen figures at the very
boundary of the pictorial world –‘afterwards’. This progression in time – emphasized
by light, by intensification of colour saturation, and by the degree of
materiality of the paint surface itself – is bound to an underlying moral
conviction of senselessness and bestiality of such events.” (p. 32).
Nochlin's point is that Goya's painting
transcends realism because it defies time and historical fact. Goya’s painting illustrates
different times during this event and the feelings of the figures portrayed.
The men portrayed are in different stages, some lie on the ground dead, others cower
defenselessly in front of the firing squad; one man stands defiantly in front
of them, as if defending his country.
Nochlin finds Goya’s work to be metaphysical rather than an exact
depiction of this event. It is
based less on Spain’s history than it is on a general sense of
overwhelming emotion. (p. 32)
My intentions in Love is Lost I were to engage the viewer in emotions similar to those in Goya’s work. Two of the figures in the painting are kneeling with bowed heads towards a dead figure that is sprawled across a puddle of blood. Reflected in the blood, one mans hand reaches out to the shoulder of the corpse. I imagine this reality as something that could be seen anywhere, at anytime in a damp, dark alley in present day America. Like his work, the space is blank and dark. There is no mention of time; this scene could have lasted for minutes or hours. This idea of time alludes to loneliness, isolation and helplessness. The figure in the middle lies alone untouched by everyone, but the hand in the suggested puddle. The two figures on either side of him are also alone; they are both grieving separately, there is no dialogue between them. Each figure is isolated in a different part of the picture.
In this way the figures remain universal;
their emotions are their only identifiable characteristics.
Many of my ideas regarding painting stem
from the tradition of public mural painting. The art of mural painting has played an important role in communicating
events to society artistically. Murals are recognized as a community art, they are not created
for placement on a wall of a gallery or museum. Instead they are constructed as beacons
of hope or empowerment to a community.
They are most often political in nature explaining a society’s
history, such as their greatest struggles or greatest achievements. Mural paintings are specific to a time
and place, but meant to be understood universally. Though many murals are
meant to empower, encourage or inspire they are to no effect private or personal.
My work resembles that of contemporary mural painting, because it is
meant to be universal. However, the generality that exists in
my work and the fact that it is ambiguous makes it more universal than many
murals. Neither Love is Lost I nor Love is Lost II (both 2001) refer to
a specific time or place. Privacy of emotion does not exist in mural painting.
Similarly, my work is not meant to empower; it is not a statement for or against
any political or social cause, it is strictly about emotion.
Mural
painting has a unique relationship with sculpture and installation; connected
by the large scale and the exterior location of both murals and sculpture.
However, many sculptures, like sculptures by artist Juan Munoz (1953-2001)
are not always exterior, they exist in more private spaces. Still, his work remains universal; it
deals with developing a theatrical tension between viewer and figure. (http://hirshhorn.
si.edu/exhibitions/description.asp)
Juan Munoz was interested in allowing
the viewer to enter the private space of the figure. Relying on perspective, Munoz created intricate spaces that
provided a different way for the viewer to see the figures. He was concerned with the way the figures
interact with the viewer in the space provided. His figures often peer at the viewer engaging
in an unspoken dialogue so the viewer is forced to make assumptions on their
relation to the space and the figure. In his installation Wasteland from 1986, Munoz creates tension between
the viewer and a small man seated in the opposite corner of the room.
On the floor are visual queues leading the viewer to look at this figure,
however, the queues also abstract the space.
This abstraction confuses the viewers association with the figure as
if he is physically and mentally unreachable.
Like the figure in this work, most of Munoz's figures seem troll-like,
often ominous due to their small size and odd glaring stares. From them the viewer is left with a sense
of awkwardness because they are neither invited into the space, nor rejected
by it because of the figure and the environment they inhabit together.
My work is similar to Munoz's because
I too consider the mood of the figure in the space to reveal emotion to the
viewer. In my installation Ups
and Downs (2002)
a single mangled figure, torn and bandaged in stockings lays at the bottom
of an unreachable staircase. The figure is ambiguous, only slightly resembling
a woman by a slight shape and the nylon that is wrapped around her. Mostly she resembles a lump of something,
like laundry, that has just been thrown down the staircase. Because she is so abstracted the viewer
would probably not be compelled by her alone. However, her deformations, including
her lack of defined facial features, hands and arms, collectively allude to
loss and alienation.
The dark staircase in this installation
intensifies the emotion in the work. The stairs represent an unattainable goal, someone striving
for a sense of peace. Their height
is awkward, and the steps are not inviting. The figure lies motionless at the bottom of the looming staircase,
blocking the stairs and turning away from the viewer, isolating herself from
the viewer and isolating the viewer also. Her mangled steel frame is bandaged in
constrictive nylon, symbolizing both constraint and healing. She exists in many aspects of the world, an altered physical
reality of possible emotions from anyone’s mind. It is her physical structure and alterations
that give this figure its emotive qualities.
Magdalena Abakanowicz creates sculptures
out of burlap, wood, and metal. Her sculptures are sometimes representative
of human figures. Others, such
as the War Games series are physical metaphors for war and the atrocities
that she has witnessed throughout her lifetime. When discussing the beginning
of her War Series
and her use of fallen trunks as figures Abakanowicz says “Some years
ago, suddenly I discovered inside an old trunk its core, as if a spine intertwined
by channels of juices and nerves. I
found the carnality of another trunk with limbs cut off, as if amputated…”
(Rose, p136). Abakanowicz recognizes
the physical aspects of a dying tree as resembling a war amputee.
Clearly, the materiality of Abakanowicz’s work is essential. She entitles this series War Games because of the use tree carcasses and
old tools that incorporate the forms of weapons “—of spears, of
swords, and of scythes—and of the wounds inflicted by these instruments
bandaged with ragged burlap and mended with iron” (p136). The work Booby Trap (1987) looks as if it was the remains
of mangled, torn, yet also bandaged lower half of a human corpse. The tree trunk resembles bone and skin,
the iron a seemingly strong form of bandage. She intends for the viewer to be outraged by the victimization,
dismemberment and carnage she depicts.
My sculptural figures, though not as
large or rough as that of Abakanowicz’s are intended to embody more
metaphysical qualities of amputation and bondage, alienation and isolation.
The figure in Ups and Downs,
for instance, lies at the bottom of the stairs in a lump, bound by the strange
elastic nylon and a rough armature of steel, both of which are mangled and
twisted. She is the victim of
a different struggle, not as large and encompassing as those of Abakanowicz's
figures. She is physically and
emotionally scarred and isolated. Her
feet and hands are held together, by what seems to be an invisible force,
her body is abstracted as if it was slumped and contorted because of physical
pain and dismemberment. The nylon,
though constricting her, also plays a similar role as if it was her skin or
the muscles underneath. Torn
and separated she has undergone the same struggle physically as she has emotionally.
The rope in Victim #1 relates similarly to Abakanowicz’s Rope Installation (1970). To
Abakanowicz rope had many metaphoric and physical associations including an
association with the body, specifically muscle and the strength it carries
through all of the intertwined elements it consists of, having it’s
own story, and the movement and changes that it goes through in a life time. (p 41) I am using nylon and rope as a reference to both the body and
to strength. The nylon is strong
and constrictive, like muscles and skin, but it is also torn and fragmented
emphasizing loss of this strength. The constraints that hold her resemble the strength that she,
herself, has lost. They seem
to be engulfing her, sucking every ounce of strength she has, out of her. She is hanging almost, unnaturally, as
if weighed down from the strength that is no longer there.
Abakanowicz's work in particular utilizes
the physicality of materials, tree trunks, burlap and iron to essentialize
feelings of entrapment, helplessness and isolation. Her figures inspired me to do the work
I am doing. Her notions of physicality
versus metaphysicality have also helped me to understand my own work.
The major difference in our work, I think, is that I place my abstracted
figures in settings that help illustrate their meaning.
Abakanowicz, while placing her figures in purposeful settings, depends
more on her figures and the multiplicity of them to define the mood of the
work. Victim I depends highly on the structure that
encloses it and the elements that exists separately within the piece.
My inspiration for the figure in Victim
#1 resembles those
figures in George Segal’s sculptural piece The Execution (1967). Segal
made this sculpture/installation as social protest to the Vietnam War. Segal
uses plaster, wood, metal and rope to display a scene in which one figure is
hanging by his feet while three lay on the ground in front of him. A figure hangs in front of a wall that
shows evidence of gunshot “wounds.” The other figures resemble humans more than my figures
because Segal cast his figured elements from human models. Segal’s interest was in depicting
the tortures of war and physical death. Depicting the essence of a dead body
seemed to be an ordeal to Segal. “He knew that the look of a corpse, limp
and lumpy like a pile of dirty laundry, was almost impossible to achieve, but could
he capture death in his lifelike plaster casts” (Van Der Mark, fig
85). Segal ended up using
models, and demonstrated the poses and the looks he wanted. The figures are strewn about,
resembling laundry, lifeless as possible.
I intend my figures to have a similar
sense of emptiness to them. The
feelings they embody represent a metaphysical or more emotional type of death.
They are bound as if they have been constrained and left alone for
a long period of time. The translucency of them, also, adds to
their weightlessness and lack of volume.
This translucency comes from the combination of thin wire and women’s
nylons that I use to construct the figures, neither of which are bodily materials.
These characteristics are imperative to the figure’s emotional substance.
Weightlessness could be a person’s sense of relief after a horrible
situation has ended, or in even grimmer terms, finding death a way of relief.
I have used the artists listed above,
Francisco Goya, Juan Munoz, Magdalena Abakanowicz, and George Segal to refer to
specific elements of my work that intensify the emotions that I am trying to
depict. I was initially drawn to
most of these artists because of their interpretations of violence and war.
However, I found another common thread in this work; these artists, with the
exception of Munoz, all attempt to evoke feelings of these events. Goya and Abakanowicz use dying or
cowering figures to illustrate the horrors they have witnessed. Impossible to avoid in this type of
work is the personal element that exists by simply making the work about such
subjects. I began by thinking about wanting to portray victims of war and
violence. However this empathy
diverged onto too many paths to remain a clear portrayal. The politics of language and society
became problematic because I was working only with figures who were mourning or
dead, I did not want to depict actual violence. Additionally, the figures I was depicting were too universal
to be considered victims of any specific historical event though their
materiality evoked unusual metaphysical ideas. My work has ended up embodying the feelings of pain,
worthlessness, helplessness, entrapment and isolation that one could feel at
many parts of his/her life.
Works Cited
Nochlin, Linda. “Realism.”. Penguin Books, New York, 1981.
Rose,
Barbara. “Magdalena
Abakanowicz”. Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York, 1994.
Wright, Frederick S. "Great Art of the Ages: Goya". Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York, 1954.
http://hirshhorn.si.edu/exhibitions/description.asp?Type=past&ID=2,
"Past: Exhibition Description: Juan Munoz", 2002.
Annotated Bibliography
Baigell,
Matthew
Jewish
American Artists and the Holocaust
Rutgers
University Press, New Jersey 1997.
N 6538 .J4
B35 1997
Barnitz,
Jaqueline
University of
Texas Press, Austin 2001.
N6202.5 .B36
2001
The author
speaks about several Latin American artists and how many of the artists
retained a nativist style despite the both European influences and the Mexican
Muralist movement. Artists
included in this book art are Antonio Berni, Eduardo Kingman, Oswaldo
Guayasamin, and Francisco Goya.
Though many of these painters focused on religious content they also
addressed the hardships occurring throughout Latin America.
Bird, Jon, Jo
Anna Isaak, Sylvere Lotringer
Phadon Press
Limited, London, 1996.
Spero uses
painting, printmaking, collage, and often explicit material to express her
views about women and modernity.
She draws from many sources, including true stories; explain the
repression and the history of women.
Castedo,
Leopoldo
A History
of Latin American Art and Architecture: From Pre-Columbian Times to the Present
Frederick A.
Praeger, New York, NY 1969
N 6502 .C3213
1969b
Castedo
discusses the work of the Mexican Muralists and that of Oswaldo Guayasamin, one
of the most controversial Latin American painters.
Cockcroft,
Eva, Pitman Weber, John, and Cockcroft, James
University of
New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1998
Talks about
the evolution of the contemporary mural movement. Includes its beginnings and historical backgrounds.
Edelman,
Murray
From Art
to Politics: How Artistic Creations Shape Political Conceptions
The
University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1995.
N 8236 .P5 E3
1995
Eckhart,
Gillen
Yale
University Press, Berlin, 1997.
N6868 D.39613
1997
Among the
many artists featured in Eckhart’s book Max Beckmann, Ludwig Meidner, and
Emile Nolde have similar reactions to the events of WWII and the Nazi
regime. Eckhart mostly
speaks about the lives of the artists and their careers, however, the book
includes color photographs.
Lucie-Smith,
Edward
Latin
American Art of the 20th Century
Thames and
Hudson, London 1993.
N 6502 .L83
1993
Lucie
Smith’s book explains the lives and works of the three major Mexican
Muralists Jose Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, and David Alfaro Siquieros as
well as many other contemporary Latin American artists. He reveals the artists political
associations, especially with communism and socialism, and the artists
international ties despite political beliefs.
Nochlin,
Linda, “Realism”
Nochlin
explains the constraints of realism, its inability to be either historical
fact, photography or to capture the mood of an event.
Rose, Barbara
Harry N.
Abrams, Inc., Publishers, New York, 1994.
NB995.P63A2237
1994
Magdalena
Abakanowicz has become one of the most important sculptor/installation artists
of the 20th century.
Originally from Poland, much of Abakanowicz’s work is based off of
the Russian occupation and war. A
lot of her work is loosely figural, invoking ideas of growth and change as well
as more hostile feelings of dehumanization and constriction.
Sandler,
Irving
Art of the
Postmodern Era: From the Late 1960’s to the Early 1990’s.
Westview
Press, Boulder, Colorado 1998.
N 6512 .2553
1998
Sandler
discusses the work of the German Neoexpressionists including A.R. Penck, Jorg
Immendorff, and Anselm Keifer and their return to painting. Sandler also
explains the artists varying reactions to WWII and the horrors of the Nazi
period from Penck’s interest in primitivism in relation the modern man to
Keifer’s examination of German history and myth.
Von Blum,
Paul
The Art of
Social Conscience
Universe
Books, New York, NY 1976.
N 8217 .H78
V66
www.flashpointmag.com/suecoe.htm
Brody, Judith
Brody
explains the controversy that occurs within and because of Coe’s
work. She quotes those that both criticize
and compliment Coe’s didactic works especially that of Porkopolis,
Coe’s series on the slaughter industry.
www.culturevulture.net/Artand
Arch/Golub.htm
Lazere,
Arthur
Lazere speaks
about the evolution of Golub’s work, the development from a subdued
palette to using thick paint and textures. He also speaks about the causes Golub addresses in his work,
the sources of the violence that occur. The author also mentions the manner in
which Golub uses pornographic images to exaggerate violence.
Wight, Frederick S.
Goya (Francisco Jose de Goya y Lucientes)
Harry N.
Abrams, Inc. Publishers, New York, 1954
ND 813 .G7535
Francisco
Goya is Spain’s most important painter of the 18th
century. Though much of the work
he did during his lifetime was created for the court his later work illustrates
the somber and dark psychological side of both the artist and the country at
the time.
Zigrosser,
Carl
Prints and
Drawings of Kathe Kollowitz
Dover
Publications Inc., New York, 1969.
One of
Germany’s most prolific female artists, the first woman elected into the
German Academe, Kollowitz’s drawings and prints suggest human suffering
caused by having to endure war and tragedy. Her Weavers and War cycles are probably her most well known
works.
Van Der Mark, Jan,
George Segal.
Harry N.
Abrams, Inc., New York 1975.
Van Der Mark
talks about Segal's movement from drawing to sculpture as a means for more
lifelike figures. Segal focuses
on sculpting everyday events in plaster.