Hannah Wilke

Does the body really provide a “solid foundation, a causal locus, of the meaning,” of what it is to be female or male (Laqueur, p. 163)? Are women more “malelike” because their genitals look different, or when they are missing ovaries or breast?  


Hannah Wilke (Before getting sick with lymphoma) 
& 
Mother 

Figure 1. Portrait of the Artist with her Mother, Selma Butter (So Help Me Hannah series), 1978-81.
© 2007 by Donald Goddard. Courtesy Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York.

What relationship do we have with specific images of the body, knowing that the backbone of our anatomical history was dominated by a distorted language, and corrupt interpretations of women? Although very different than the images presented in both of the articles this week, I wanted to show two very contrasting photos of the female body. Hannah Wilke, the artist and women on the left, is shown with her mother Selma Butler, who is struggling with breast cancer. Butler is wearing a wig to hide her baldness, able to achieve a “normal” appearance from the neck up. “Breasts, consequently, are comparable to masks in that they veil the complex subject (or subjects) behind them, and, like hair, they are largely accepted as constituent parts of a woman’s normative femininity” (Skelly, 2007).  A female body that has two breasts is looked at and interpreted very differently than a body with only one. By removing a breast, the female body is viewed as being less feminine, and lacking sexuality. Wilke herself looks healthy, confident and beautiful, although when she  becomes very sick the “mask” comes off and our relationship with her body changes. While watching her mother die, she talked about how the medical procedures took her away, hiding her as if death were a personal shame.  She was not going to let this happen to her as she faced her own struggle with illness.

Hannah Wilke dying from lymphoma

Figure 2. Intra Venus Series #4, July 26 and February 19, 1992.

©2007 by Donald Goddard. Courtesy Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York.

 These photographs represent and challenge what it means to be “whole” and female, along with how we “see” the body through our own lens. “Distance from gender and sexuality norms allows us to assess them critically because this distance permits us to suspend or defer our need for them” (Skelly, 2007). What happens when the body is disrupted with disease, and the feminine qualities that we are familiar with disappear? Hannah Wilke used her body as a way to express a message about being a women, and to sometimes critique the "male gaze." While dying from cancer, her performance art and photography took the public closer into the reality of what death looks like. Even though cancer is winning, her photos depict a body still in control, speaking to her audience with power and truth.  Her work opened up conversation about identity, gender and sexuality, challenging once again the way women are "objectified by society" and thrown out when they are ill and old. Our history gives insight into the many distorted frameworks created around anatomy, sexuality and gender.   

 With the “endless new struggles for power and position in the enormously enlarged public sphere of the eighteenth century,” the explanations, and illustrations around the body continued to demonstrate a culturally bound visual (Laqueur, p.152). In chapter 5, Discovery of the Sexes, Thomas Laqueur describes how definitions around the plausible reasons found in the sexual differences between men and women are changing into a new model. “Distant sexual anatomy was adduced to support or deny all manner of claims in a variety of specific social, economic, political, cultural or erotic contexts” (Laqueur, p. 152).  As the scientist of this time period began to explore how gender was expressed in reference to biology, the same ideologies around the body succeeded, simply showing the differences in power between men and women. As anatomists begin re-producing illustrations of what the female anatomy should look like, new “complicated constructions,” of the body unfolded (Laqueur, p. 164). The foundations for creating such gender roles seemed drenched in unfinished male dominated observations. Although some photographs are accurate in many ways, the female anatomy carries a sense of presentation with it, marking the time in history and artists responsible for marking their territory. These illustrations are seen through the “varied reality" of the many scientist and artistic interpretations of what the female body should feel and look like (Laqueir, p. 164). The “map” of the body then shows specific features of the female anatomy that they feel are socially acceptable, and suggest a “transcendent norm” (Laqueur, p. 166).  Ultimately, this exploration of biological sex has demonstrated ways in which culture has influenced science. With this privileged group of men, making further ideologies around the female body, the cycle of dehumanization continues. Science has been a tool to oppress and legitimize the differences between sex, religion, race and class, only to benefit the most powerful. It has been used to distinguish a “hierarchy” of anatomy, deciding what form is naturally more superior in an attempt to cover up discrimination. By understanding how a certain society of people define what is considered “natural,” and normal, a better knowledge of how this could affect other views on relationships, love and life are seen. Just as the female body was made to look a certain way, so were the ideas around sexual behavior in the late eighteenth century.  

By having physicians positioned as “scientific authorities uniquely suited to solving problems confronting the modern world,” acts of sexual behavior were now placed in categories (Terry, p. 40). They were medicalized, and seen as urgent problems to take care of. In Jennifer Terry’s article, Medicalizing Homosexuality, she talks about some of the very same philosophies as Laqueur does concerning sex and gender. Once again it’s easy to see how certain ideas around the body and behavior can, and have led to oppression and inequality. Similar to the explanations of women being inverted men, homosexuals were viewed as having a “condition of inborn sexual inversion,” considered to be unfinished people, and somehow curable (Terry, p.43). With the growing number of medical professionals in the nineteenth century being wealthy, white, comfortable men, the developments around sex grew more powerful only in one direction. This specialization in medicine led to a new language around science that formed even more boundaries and authority around sexuality. Some anatomist in the eighteenth century avoided drawing parts of the body that were “distorted, shriveled, torn or dislocated,” because they failed in meeting the “highest aesthetic standards” (Laqueur, p.167). Visions and illusions of how a particular body part should look like, or what it represents, created a system of power that attempted to contain people that were seen as “abnormal.” By looking back at these perceptions of sexuality during the eighteenth and nineteenth century, many things are revealed that help to breakdown the complex layers of the body and mind. 

 

Works Cited: 

Laqueur, Thomas Walter. “New Science, One Flesh.” Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1992. 63-148.

Terry, Jennifer. “Medicalizing Homosexuality.” IN As American Obsession: Science, Medicine and, Homosexuality in Modern Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. 40-73.  

Goddard, Donald. So Help Me Hannah series1978-81. Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York, 10 Feb. 2011 <http://www.thirdspace.ca/journal/article/viewArticle/skelly/48>.


Goddard, Donald. Intra Venus Series # 4 1992. Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York, 10 Feb. 2011 <http://www.thirdspace.ca/journal/article/viewArticle/skelly/48>.