Friday, November 7, 2014

Will Art Change Anything?

Reserving the right to always change my mind...and I know I said I wouldn't but I have anyway because I feel I have to.  It is just too much for me to write about people I can't find much information about to even think about how I feel about their art.  I am not apologetic, and instead encourage any of you who know about any of the following artists to contact me so you can write guest posts about them.  I welcome you to this task.  They are:

Kirsten Dufour, Lili Dujourie, Rose English and VALIE EXPORT.

I'm sure as I go along down the list of artists in the show that there will be more.  But right now I am only to the F's.

Today I will talk about New Zealand artist, Jacqueline Fahey.  She is a painter and a writer.  And, regardless of the fact that she was in the WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution show in 2007, she doesn't consider herself to be a feminist.

She is, at the age of 85, very outspoken and direct about how she feels about art and humanity and most everything.  I watched an interview on the New Zealand Cultural Icons website with her and have quoted some of that interview.

Painting and writing are equal in their power of addressing social issues she believes and says that they can be powerful as long as you "communicate in a way that is patently sincere."

She is asked about why she paints domestic scenes (her critics will describe her art as "domestic art" sometimes apparently) and she says:
"My belief was at the time I was at art school woman artists would go to a great deal of trouble to get out get in the car and "do landscape", you know?  And not paint what was their own reality because that reality was so diminished.  I mean.  A man could paint that and it wasn't called 'domestic art' . . . . But when I did it - it was called 'domestic art' which was a put down."
©Jacqueline Fahey - Last Summer
 She was asked why she paints the way she paints, that it is often described as "flamboyant" (a term that "pisses her off").
"The use of paint is a powerful language in its own right and that is what I am looking for. . . . that flat filling in type painting is amateur really . . .(interviewer prompts "so the paint has to be really alive - resonant?") Yes and how you make the strokes has an energy to it and implies something, you know? it is - in itself - doing that." 
©Jacqueline Fahey - Emily as the Archangel Gabriel
 The interviewer asks; "Would you call yourself a "feminist" painter?"
"No.  I don't think you should separate "feminist" in that sense.  I don't like it.  I think it gives a lot of women who say they're feminists a hero - when in fact they shouldn't have - because.  Look.  They don't give a shit about some poor bloody Asian immigrant working with sometimes nasty Indian management who have no "real" rights, who're paid a pittance - you know?  Do they have any interest in that?  No.  . . . . Feminism [for some feminists] has no meaning because they only meant it for them - they didn't mean it for anyone else.  And [if you were to point this out] . . . . they would look at you as if you were speaking a foreign language."
She is asked will there always be painting?  "I think there will always be painting because painting communicates and anything that communicates will last."
©Jacqueline Fahey - Will Painting Change Anything?
 If you want to read more about Jacqueline Fahey there is this from the New Zealand Listener and this from The Arts Foundation in New Zealand.

Hope you are having a lovely day!

'Til tomorrow!

~Alex
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