PAINTING and DRAWING THE NUDE A Search F PDF

PAINTING & DRAWING THE
NUDE
a search for a realism of the body
through phenomenology & fine art practice
Karen Wallis
A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the

University of the West of England, Bristol
for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Faculty of Art, Media and Design

University of the West of England
February 2003
PAINTING & DRAWING THE NUDE:
a search for a realism for the body through phenomenology & fine art practice
Karen Wallis 2002
Abstract
The thesis presents the findings of a practice-based research project in fine art, supported by
a study of specific philosophical discourses. The practical element, in painting, drawing and
installation, examines the possibility of re-presenting the painted nude in a manner that avoids
a possessive gaze. Informing the practice is a parallel investigation into the nature of Realism
in painting. The illustrated dissertation is supported by a CD-ROM of moving images.
Part 1 is an introduction: which outlines the research questions, explains the origins of the
project in my own practice as an artist and teacher, and presents the methodology for the
research. The latter looks in particular at my use of reflexivity and the relationship between
practice and theory, seen as two individual lines of investigation that are mutually
interdependent.
Part 2 is a text that traces the journey made during the research. It begins by questioning the
problematic position of the naked model in the life room, that is indicative of the relationship
between the image of the nude and the viewer of the painting. Using myself as the model in
my own fine art practice, and informed by the writing of primarily Maurice Merleau-Ponty,
Emmanuel Levinas and Maurice Blanchot, the project develops into a dual investigation. One
strand is a practical search for strategies to represent a nude that can be perceived by the
viewer as an-other person. By employing Brechtian methods, as defined by Walter Benjamin
on Epic Theatre, the work develops into site specific or site sensitive drawing and painting,
installed outside a designated art environment. The other strand is an attempt to situate a
realism defined in terms of the viewer, rather than as a stylistic school or approach to painting.
This aesthetic concern finds that Realism as an ‘event’ cannot be reduced to a fixed theoretical
position, but lies between concepts such as the Kantian Beautiful and Sublime, or the ‘here’
and the there is (il y a) according to Levinas, and between genres such as portraiture and
narrative painting, or the portrayal of the naked and the clothed.
Part 3 is a commentary on the whole project, which reflects on the positive nature of
indeterminate findings, and looks at issues for further investigation. The research indicates that
an open and challenging approach to the nude in painting can now be taken, which could
influence more general concerns of the perception of body. The primary issue remaining is the
need to reintegrate both practical and aesthetic findings back into the environments of
contemporary fine art and art education.
Contents
Author declaration i
Acknowledgements ii
1 Introduction 1
2 In search of a realism for the nude in painting

I 7
Life drawing introduced, as a form of art allied to the traditions of the past; but
bewildering in the light of feminism and current art practice. A structure that
offers a pleasurable activity, as a distinct discipline,removed from the
difficulties of nakedness.
II 11
Life drawing’s reaction to 20th century modernism - the objectification of the
nude as a formal component of the painting. The effect of the ‘gaze’ on the
model leads feminism to repudiate life drawing, and to prefer a conceptual
approach to the body.
III 15
Although the nude in painting throughout art history is also problematic for
feminism, life drawing and exhibitions of the painted nude persist -
maintaining the separation of the nude from reality. The example of Lucian
Freud is an exception, which proves the rule that realistic nakedness is
difficult; raising the question of whether it is possible for any painter,
including women, to avoid objectification of the outward appearance of the
naked body.
IV 21
Introducing the question of how a middle aged, female artist, conditioned by
European culture, can address the problem of studying perceptions of aging
and the ordinary body, by painting the nude.
V 25
Establishing a position, from which to proceed with the research, in relation to
the work of Jenny Saville and other contemporary women artists. I
eventually find an empathy with the work of Jo Spence and Eric Fischl.
VI 31
Early attempts to integrate the reading of aesthetics into my visual practice.
The discovery of phenomenology, as a both a philosophy and a research
method, leads to realising the need to use myself as a life model.
Contents: text
VII 35
Hindsight shows the extent to which aesthetics were unconsciously
absorbed in the early stages of the research. The establishment of
phenomenology as a research method in both visual practice and theoretical
reflection. The affirmation of my difference to Jenny Saville; and the
articulation of my position as a female, feminist artist researcher, benefiting
from the freedom from outside influence that phenomenology provides.
VIII 45
The proposal that life drawing should be radically reconsidered as a
phenomenological experience. A deconstruction of both the word ‘drawing’
and the physical activity of life drawing, in line with Merleau-Ponty’s writing
on the body, reveals that the spatial relationship between artist and model is
crucial - leading to a respectful partnership, as the Other is faced, according
to Levinas.
IX 59
The effect of phenomenology on my visual practice, developing perceptions
of my identity in mirror reflections. The introduction of a third person as an
observer, intended to counteract a tendency for self-portraiture, proves
effective through disruption.
X 69
A first exhibition demonstrates that phenomenology, in the making process of
painting the nude, is insufficient on its own for the viewer to perceive an
autonomous naked person.
XI 73
The discovery that phenomenology needs the explication of hermeneutics in
order to be effective, initiates a search to define an appropriate form of
Realism, which could inform the visual practice. Finding that art history
cannot provide an answer to satisfy my requirements for Realism, I turn to
the social and political background of 19th century Realism.
XII 81
A study of Courbet, in the writing of T. J. Clark, Linda Nochlin, and Michael
Fried, reveals the diversity of opinion in art history but fails to show why he
is the ‘Father of Realism’. However, a visit to see his work in Paris reveals,
through a dialectical image in the manner of Walter Benjamin, the effect that
Courbet’s ‘breakthrough pictures’ had on his contemporary public. Realism
is discovered to be an event for the viewer, rather than a style of painting.
Contents: text
XIII 93
Gadamer’s hermeneutics are used to examine the ‘Event of Realism’ - which
is the moment when a viewer perceives Realism in a painting. However,
Realism is found to disrupt cathartic, hermeneutical play, by causing the
viewer to recognise a connection between their own existence and the
image portrayed.
XIV 103
Gadamer shows that the manner of presentation affects the viewer’s
construction of meaning - but only for an original work of art. However, if the
image connects to the viewer’s existence, then an Event of Realism can
happen in any form in which the image is presented. A parallel is found here
with the Kantian process of judgement, which raises the question of whether
an Event of Realism is Sublime.
XV 113
Brecht’s particular method of presenting Realism is examined as a potential
strategy for representing the painted nude - through a comparison between
Benjamin’s description of epic theatre and my visual practice.
XVI 123
Brechtian methods of presentation are explored in two exhibitions, of site
sensitive and site specific installations using painting with mirrors and
photographic prints. Comment is collected, but the range of response is
limited and the feedback is inconclusive.
XVII 131
In analysing the feedback, the absence of comment and the difficulty in
obtaining it are both revealed as a significant part of the viewers’ reactions -
in that their judgement is an effect of perception - like the Kantian Sublime.
But an Event of Realism is not Sublime, because it is not cathartic, being
grounded in the viewer’s existence.
XVIII 139
The practical problems are reviewed and a tutorial with Eric Fischl provides
sound guidance; by emphasising the importance of content over potentially
distracting presentation, and recommending a direct confrontation, to assert
the visibility of the nude, through portraiture rather than narrative painting.
XIX 149
In attempting to put Fischl’s advice into practice, I introduce a performative
element into images of myself, by referencing the experiences of other
Contents: text
women; and staging the work in situations that blur the boundaries between
art and ‘real life’
XX 157
An examination of the Realism in Rembrandt, Hopper, Freud and Fischl, to
analyse the process that makes their work ‘perform’, finds that their common
ground lies in a relationship between phenomenological experience and art
practice - manifest in their determination to bridge the gap between art and
life.
XXI 167
Realist art shown to be an attempt to represent a moment, not in linear clock
time, but the instant of the present suspended in concrete time, which
constantly renews itself while always slipping away - for Levinas, a
hypostasis. Effective Realist art allows the viewer to connect to the
awkward state of the instant.
XXII 173
In my attempt to fulfil Fischl’s advice to become irrefutably visible, I reach my
limit in terms of exposure; and begin to explore the clothed body that
appears naked underneath, by undertaking a short residency in a clothes
shop. An analysis of Rembrandt’s Woman Bathing in a Stream and Lucian
Freud’s Louisa reveals the possibility that they are each midway between a
portrait and a narrative.
XXIII 185
The Event of Realism appears to exist in the gaps between established
positions, where a resonance of what Levinas calls the there is can be
glimpsed. The sense of the Real being persistently wakeful, without
purpose, in a responsible passivity, like Blanchot’s ‘disaster’.
XXIV 191
The findings of this research show the problems of indeterminacy when
attempting to make work that ‘speaks’ of the alterity of Realism to a viewer.
While some achievements have been made in my visual practice, further
research is required to create areas of absent meaning in the work and to
paint outside ‘art’ in order to stimulate an Event of Realism. Two examples
of recent work indicate potential directions for such future practice.
3 Commentary 199
Contents: text
References & notes 203
Bibliography 211
Appendices contents
A Texts
I On Rembrandt’s painting The Artist in his Studio: Karen Wallis, February 1996 217
II A written analysis of practical work: Karen Wallis, November 1999 223
III Extracts from the text of a collaborative book of an exhibition 235
In House Twice by the In House group
Appendix B: Comment
I Extract from a studio visit report: Karen Wallis,14/2/96 245
II Bath Central Library selection policy 247
III Comment on Work arising from research - solo exhibition at UWE, 1998 249
IV now you see me... - solo exhibition at The Black Swan Guild, Frome, 1999 250
figures on comment & groups of opinion 250
comment - by individuals 252
group discussions 260
Appendix C: Transcripts
I Interview with Eric Fischl at his studio - 16 April 1999 264
II e-mail from Eric Fischl - Fri, 12 Mar 1999 281
Contents: images
List of images in the text
page/s
Fig.1 Laura Knight Self-portrait with nude model 6
1913, oil on canvas
Fig. 2 Euan Uglow The Diagonal 10
1971-77, oil on canvas
Fig. 3 Mary Kelly Interim - Corpus 12/3
Fig.4 Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres La Source 14/5, 19
1856, oil on canvas
Fig. 5 Helen Chadwick Self portrait 16/7, 19
1991
Fig. 6 Ken Howard The Emma Triptych 16/7, 19
oil
Fig. 7 Lucian Freud Naked Girl 16/7, 19
1966, oil on canvas
Fig. 8 Lucian Freud Painter Working, Reflection 18/9
1993, oil on canvas
Fig. 9 David Bailey Jean Shrimpton 5, 20/1, 197
1965, photograph
Fig.10 Benedict Phillips Karen 5, 20/1
2001, photograph
Fig. 11 Rembrandt van Rijn Naked woman seated on a mound 5, 20/1,
1631, etching 164/5
Fig. 12 Jenny Saville Plan 24/5
1993, oil on canvas
Fig. 13 Jenny Saville Plan (detail) 26/7
1993, oil on canvas
Fig. 14 Ana Maria Pacheco Trust Betrayed 28/9
1987
Fig. 15 Paula Rego Dancing Ostriches 28/9
1995
Fig. 16 Barbara Kruger Untitled 30/1
1989
Fig. 17 Mary Kelly Interim - detail from Corpus 30/1
1989
Contents: images
Fig.18 Jo Spence & Exiled 30/1

Dr Tim Sheard undated
Fig.19 Eric Fischl Birthday Boy 30/1
1983, oil on canvas
Fig. 20 Karen Wallis Belinda 32/3, 115
1993, oil on acetate and paper
Fig. 21 Karen Wallis Belinda with herself 34/5
1993, charcoal on paper
Fig. 22 Karen Wallis Artist and model 36/7, 59,
1995, oil on canvas, 91.4 x 121.9 cm 60/1
Fig. 23 Jenny Saville Hybrid 40/1
1997, oil on canvas, 274.3 x 213.4 cm
Fig. 24 Karen Wallis Bathroom painting 40/1
1999, oil on paper, 63,5 x 63.5 cm
Fig. 25 Rembrandt van Rijn Woman Bathing in a Stream 42/3,
1654-55, Panel, 62 x 47 cm 178-185,
National Gallery, London 190/1
Fig. 26 Karen Wallis First nude ‘self-portrait’ 46/7
1994, charcoal on paper, 59.2 x 84 cm
Fig. 27 Karen Wallis Second nude ‘self-portrait’ 48/9
1994, charcoal on paper, 84 x 59.2 cm
Fig. 28 Karen Wallis Study 1 50/1, 58/9,
1994, charcoal on paper, 84 x 59.2 cm 62/3
Fig. 30 Karen Wallis Study 3 54/5, 58/9
Fig.32 Karen Wallis Me myself and her 64/5
Fig.33 Karen Wallis Feely drawing 65
Fig.34 Karen Wallis Mother & daughter study 64/5
1996, charcoal & paper collage
59.2 x 84 cm
Contents: images
Fig. 35 Karen Wallis Mother & daughter I 66/7, 70/1

1996, oil on canvas, 63.5 x 76 cm
Fig. 36 Karen Wallis Mother & daughter II 66/7, 70/1,
1996, oil on canvas, 121.9 x 91.4 cm
Fig. 37 Exhibition 4 views: on the phenomenological world 68/9
UWE Bristol, October 1996
Fig.38 Philip Pearlstein Female Nude Reclining on Bentwood 76/7
Love Seat,
1974, oil on canvas, 122 x 152 cm
Fig. 39 John Everett Millais The Knight Errant 76/7
1870, oil on canvas
Fig. 40 Edgar Dégas After the bath, woman drying herself 76/7
c.1890 - 5, pastel on tracing paper
Fig. 41 George Grosz Circe 76/7
1927, pencil, pen, ink and watercolour
Fig. 42 René Magritte Le Viol (The Rape) 77
1934
Fig. 43 Alexander Deyneka Freedom (detail) 77
1944, oil on canvas
Fig. 44 Allen Jones Curious Woman 77
1964-65, oil on wood panel
with plastic falsies
Fig. 45 Max Beckmann The King 78/9
1934 - 37, oil on canvas
Fig. 46 Pierre Bonnard Bonnard with Marthe in the Bathroom 78//9
1938 - 41
Fig. 47 Rembrandt van Rijn Bathsheba with King David’s Letter 78/9, 158/9,
1654, oil on canvas, 142 x 142 cm 168-171
Fig.48 Éduoard Manet Olympia 78/9, 84/5
Fig. 49 Edward Hopper Hotel Room 78/9, 158/9,
1931, oil on canvas, 152.4 x 165.1 cm 170/1, 186/7
190/1
Fig. 50 Lucian Freud Blond Girl on a Bed 79, 158/9
1987, oil on canvas, 41 x 51 cm 162/3
Fig. 51 Eric Fischl Bad Boy 79, 158/9,
1981, oil on canvas, 167.6 x 243.8 cm 188/9
Contents: images
Fig.52 Gustave Courbet The Bathers 80/1

Fig.53 Éduoard Manet Le déjeuner sur l’herbe 82/3
1863, oil on canvas, 208 x 264.5 cm
Fig.54 Gustave Courbet The Stonebreakers 84/5
1849-50, oil on canvas, 190 x 300 cm
Fig.55 Jean François Millet The Gleaners 84/5
Fig. 56 Gustave Courbet The Painter’s Studio 84/5
Fig. 57 Thomas Couture Romans of the Decadence 88/9
Fig. 58 Gustave Courbet Burial at Ornans 88/9
1849-50, oil on canvas, 315 x 668 cm
Fig. 59 Thomas Couture Romans of the Decadence 88/9
in the Musée d’Orsay
Fig. 60 Gustave Courbet Burial at Ornans 90/1
Fig. 61 Karen Wallis Manet’s Olympia with text 92/3
Fig. 62 Gustave Courbet The Origin of the World 96/7
Fig. 63 Gustave Courbet The Source 97
Fig. 64 Eric Fischl Sisters 98/9
1983, oil on canvas, 274.3 x 213.4 cm
Fig. 65 Eric Fischl Grief 98/9, 166/7
1981, oil on canvas, 152.4 x 165.1 cm
Fig. 66 Paul Klee Angelus Novus 100/1
1920.
Fig. 67 Helen Chadwick Self Portrait 102/3
1991
Fig. 68 Leonardo da Vinci The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne 102/3, 105
and Saint John the Baptist
Leonardo cartoon in The National Gallery
Fig. 69 Leonardo da Vinci The Virgin on the Rocks 102/3
in The National Gallery, London
Contents: images
Fig. 70 Karen Wallis Visiting the Leonardo cartoon 104/5

in The National Gallery
Fig. 71 Eric Fischl The Old Man’s Boat & the Old Man’s Dog 107
1982, oil on canvas, 213.4 x 213.4 cm
Fig. 72 Théodore Géricault The Raft of the Medusa 106/7
in the Louvre, Paris
Fig. 73 Rembrandt van Rijn The Artist in his Studio 108/9
1629, panel, 25 x 32 cm 216-221
Fig. 74 Karen Wallis Studies for Triptych 114/5
charcoal on paper
Fig. 75a Karen Wallis Triptych: left panel 118/9, 121
1998, oil on paper, 92.7 x 68.7 cm
Fig. 75b Karen Wallis Triptych: centre panel 120/1, 121,
1998, oil on paper, 92.7 x 68.7 cm 142/3, 222/3
230/1
Fig. 75c Karen Wallis Triptych: right panel 121, 122/3
1998, oil on paper, 92.7 x 68.7 cm
Fig. 76 Karen Wallis Hand Towel in the Women’s toilets 118/9
UWE, 1998
oil on paper mounted on mirror
Fig. 77 Karen Wallis Triptych - installation at UWE, 1998 120/1
Fig. 78 Karen Wallis Wash Basin in the Women’s toilets 122/3
UWE, 1998
oil on paper mounted on mirror
Fig. 79 Karen Wallis Installation in a corridor at UWE 124/5
1998
Fig. 80 Karen Wallis Installation in the women’s toilets 124/5
UWE, 1998
Fig. 81 Karen Wallis now you see me... 126/7
photographic computer print
Café: Black Swan Guild, Frome, 1999
installation in Women’s Toilets
Black Swan Guild, Frome, 1999
installation in the Round Tower
Contents: images
Fig. 84 Karen Wallis Installation in Women’s Toilets 128/9

Fig. 85 Karen Wallis Installation in the Round Tower 128/9
Fig. 86 Karen Wallis comments box in the Round Tower 130/1
1999, Black Swan Guild, Frome
Fig. 87 Karen Wallis Installation in the Round Tower 135
Fig. 88 Karen Wallis montage of Triptych left panel details 134/5
& photographs from Round Tower
Fig. 89 Karen Wallis Installation in the Round Tower 140/1
Fig. 90 Karen Wallis Installation (detail) in the corridor 140/1
UWE,1998
Fig. 91 Karen Wallis Café exhibition 140/1
Fig. 92 Eric Fischl Noon Watch 144/5
Fig. 93 Lucian Freud Standing by the Rags 146/7
168,25 x 138.5 cm
Fig. 94 Eric Fischl The Bed, The Chair, Dancing, Watching 148/9
2000, oil on linen, 175.3 x 198.1 cm
Fig. 95 Anne Morrison & In House 1st time 150/1
Karen Wallis Collaborative installation
Bath Fringe Festival, 1998
Fig. 96 Karen Wallis Lipstick at Widcombe 152/3, 240/1
In House Twice
Fig. 97 Karen Wallis On the landing at Widcombe 152/3, 240/1
In House Twice
Fig. 98 Auguste Renoir Nude woman drying her foot 153
British Museum
Fig. 99 Karen Wallis Bathroom at Foxcombe 153, 238/9
In House Twice
Contents: images
Fig. 100 Karen Wallis Rebecca’s room at Foxcombe 152/3, 222/3

In House Twice 230/1
Fig. 101 Elizabeth Adeline & Rebecca’s room: 154/5
Karen Wallis Absent hangers & Wall drawing
In House Twice
Fig. 102 Karen Wallis Moving On 156/7, 224/5
1999, Conté chalk & charcoal on paper 228-231
59.2 x 84 cm
Fig. 103 Eric Fischl Sleepwalker 160/1
Fig. 104 Eric Fischl Anger, Remorse, Fear or Incontinence 160/1
1996, oil on linen, 249 x 261.5 cm
Fig. 105 Edward Hopper Nighthawks 160/1
1942, oil on canvas, 84.1 x 152.4 cm
Fig. 106 Rembrandt van Rijn Susanna and the Elders (detail) 162/3, 196/7
1636, oil on panel, 47.2 x 38.6 cm
Fig. 107 Eric Fischl The New House 168/9, 190/1
1982, oil on canvas, 172.8 x 243.9 cm
Fig. 108 Karen Wallis Looking Back 172/3
Fig. 109 Melanie Manchot OUT, look at me loving you 175
1998, bill board poster installation
Fig. 110 Melanie Manchot OUT, 1998, Installation 174/5
in South Kensington, London
Fig. 111 Melanie Manchot OUT, 1998, Installation 174/5
in South Kensington, London
Fig. 112 Karen Wallis Jackpot: Worksight residency 177
Fig. 113 Karen Wallis Jackpot, clothes store, Bath 176/7
Fig. 114 Anne Morrison & Jackpot residency, photoshoot 176/7
Karen Wallis
Fig. 115 Karen Wallis Jackpot residency, shop window studio 176/7
Fig. 116 Karen Wallis Jackpot residency, pillar drawing 176/7, 192/3
Fig. 117 Karen Wallis The Rembrandt room 180/1
in The National Gallery, London
Contents: images
Fig. 118 Rembrandt van Rijn Hendrickje Stoffels (?) 180/1

c. 1654-9, oil on canvas
101.9 x 83.7 cm
Fig. 119 Karen Wallis diagram made from notes 180/1
in the National Gallery, 2000
Fig. 120 Lucian Freud Louisa 182-5, 190/1
1998, oil on canvas, 91.4 x 71.1 cm
toilet installation detail
Fig. 122 Karen Wallis Lipstick 192/3, 222/3
1999, oil on paper 230/1
Fig. 123 _eak. _eak. 2001, gallery picnic 194/5
Collaborative installation at ‘in theory’
Fig. 124 Karen Wallis _eak. Rubens figure 194/5
Fig.125 Karen Wallis _eak., cherub 195
Fig. 126 Karen Wallis painting out _eak. 195
Fig. 127 Karen Wallis Mixing Paint 196/7
exhibition, Bridport Arts Centre, 2002
Fig. 128 Karen Wallis Susanna 196/7
site specific wall painting at Mixing Paint
Fig. 129 Karen Wallis & Shrimp, performance at Mixing Paint 196/7
Simon Poulter
Author’s declaration
According to the regulations I declare that during my registration I was not registered for
any other degree. Material for this thesis has not been used by me for another
academic award.
i
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank my Director of Studies, Dr Suzette Worden DipAD, PGDip, PhD, and my
supervisors Iain Biggs BA, MA and Dr Gary Peters BSc, MA, PGCE, PhD, for their invaluable
support and encouragement during this research; and for enabling me to utilise my practical
and intellectual resources, not only for this thesis but for my future artist’s practice.
There are a number of institutions and a great many people, including anonymous individuals,
who have participated in this project, with contributions of expertise, access to facilities, and
by engaging in debate and feedback. It is impossible to name everyone but to all who
assisted me I give my appreciation and thanks.
To Eric Fischl, I owe special thanks for becoming more than a subject of study in the research,
by giving his time to discuss the issues and provide constructive guidance on my painting
practice.
Also specific thanks to :
Timothy Hymen, for his lecture on Bonnard and informative tutorial.
The art galleries and museums who provided information, granted access to works not
on public view and allowed photography: in London, the National Gallery, Tate Gallery
Library and V & A Print Room; in the USA, the Whitney Museum of American Art and
Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Cincinnati Art Museum; in Paris, the
Pompidou Centre. In addition, I appreciate the facilities and freedom to photograph work
in the Musée d’Orsay, which meant that special arrangements were unnecessary.
The artists of the In House group, my collaborators in _eak. and at PVA.
The models, especially Belinda Haag, who posed for me in the early stages of the
research.
ii
All those who facilitated exhibitions: Sheran Hemming (Drawing Centre Manager) at
UWE; Caroline Prosser and Ann O’Dwyer at the Black Swan Guild; the In House
householders - Mannie Burn, Richard Sale and their family, Chris and Andrew Pearce,
and Jain Bishop; Andrea Guy, Tania Orgil and the staff at Jackpot clothes store; Peter
Dickinson and the BANA artists at ‘in theory’, Julie Penfold at PVA with Bridport Arts
Centre; and Fay at the Art Works, Frome for providing unusual framing.
All staff in the Faculty of Art, Media and Design at UWE, who provided essential
administrative and technical support, in particular: in the Projects Office, Sue Matheron
and Angela Cooper; in the EPI Centre, George Coulsting (Technical Manager), Keith
Jones (Senior Technical Instructor) and David Smith (Senior Technical Instructor); in the
Media Centre, Bob Prince (Senior Technical Instructor); and all members of the Print
Centre, especially John Brennan (Technical Resources Manager), Dave Fortune
(Senior Technical Instructor), Lizzie Cox (Senior Lecturer), and Paul Thirkell (Research
Assistant); and all the staff in the Library, who were tireless and patient in their support
throughout my years of study.
All those who attended workshops and seminars, including: the A level students from
Writhlington School, Radstock; the U3A art group; the two builders; and my post
graduate peers at UWE
Finally my family, for their support and tolerance over this extended period of distraction.
While this research has depended for its completion on those who assisted me, I would like to
emphasise that the responsibility for any failure or success of the outcome is entirely mine.
iii
PAINTING & DRAWING THE NUDE
INTRODUCTION
Painting or drawing the nude and the subsequent action of looking at paintings or drawings of
the nude, are both currently problematic activities. Feminism disapproves of a possessive
gaze that reduces the nude body to an object of delight or desire for the viewer.
Consequently, feminist practitioners (both female and male) have tended to move away from
traditional figurative practice in painting and drawing and towards an approach that values the
concepts expressed in the work of art above the formal skill in its making. Does this therefore
indicate that it is now impossible to paint or draw the figurative nude in a manner that avoids
the possessive ‘male’ gaze?
This research is an investigation, through specific philosophical discourses and fine art
practice, that sets out to ask why feminism finds the outward appearance of the body difficult
and whether it is possible to portray the nude, in drawing or painting, to suggest the presence
of an autonomous being, capable of resisting the gaze. If the figurative nude is to be freed
from the aura of its traditional representation, in order to become the subject of a painting
instead of an object in the eyes of the viewer, the nude or naked body has to achieve the
autonomy of a person in the world. Therefore the attempt has to be made to portray the
corporeal body - a phenomenological appearance of the ordinary human form, neither ideal nor
grotesque, which incorporates the person who simultaneously sees and is seen.
The investigation outlined above rests on an issue which is problematic for me in that it
specifically affects my practice as a female artist. Consequently, although the problem is not
gender specific, the research will concentrate on the female nude. Painting and drawing in a
figurative tradition that involves the nude is, as a woman, a complex and confusing situation.
As a woman, do I want to be an object in art? As an artist, do I want to make art from this
object? These questions, which arise from my own current practice as a painter and teacher of
life drawing, originally stem from my art education in the 1960’s - a transitional period when a
“professional craft-based training was to shift towards a liberal education in art.”1 Having been
trained after the Coldstream report but before the implementation of Dip AD, my interest was
aroused by a brief introduction to Complementary Studies, which failed to supply the
theoretical grounding that might have satisfied my curiosity or given substance to my artwork.
After a gap of nearly thirty years, the opportunity occurred to address the questions left
unanswered by my art education, through a part time practice-based PhD developed
alongside my professional art practice.
At the beginning of this project, practice-based PhDs in Fine Art were relatively new to the
Part 1 Introduction
research culture, and there was much debate on methodology, the integration of theory with
practice, and the suitability of research in a ‘subjective’ practice like art. The subject matter of
this research being specific to my situation, my own visual practice is a central component in
the practice-based investigation. The visual work is not an illustration of a theoretical analysis.
The use of my own artwork, and also my own body as the model, is a form of reflexive
practice integral to the research. This ‘subjective’ position is in line with feminist methodology
in the social sciences, which seeks to avoid an ‘objectivist stance’ that denies the existence of
the researcher. Sandra Harding writes:
The best feminist analysis ... insists that the inquirer her/himself be placed in the same
critical plane as the overt subject matter, thereby recovering the entire research process
for scrutiny in the results of the research. That is, the class, race, culture, and gender
assumptions, beliefs, and behaviors of the researcher her/himself must be placed within
the frame of the picture that she/he attempts to paint. ..... Thus the researcher appears
to us not as an invisible, anonymous voice of authority, but as a real, historical
individual with concrete, specific desires and interests.2
Although learning from a feminist approach in social science, I am not following the
psychoanalytic approach of feminist art practitioners who reference Lacan and Freud. This is
not a rejection of feminist art, in which women speak of their own mental and physical
concerns, but a recognition that the problem to be addressed lies in the phenomenological
relationships between bodies in the material world. My concern in this research is with the
outward appearance of the naked body (the nude in a painting), as it is seen by another
body (the viewer who looks at the picture), both of whom exist in the physical space of the
phenomenal world. So while I am aware of psychoanalysis as an approach to the body,
phenomenology has proved to be a more appropriate method for this particular project.
Phenomenology, as employed here, is an approach that encompasses three areas of

reflexive activity. As a philosophy, phenomenology allows me to reflect on, and learn from,
my perceptions of a world that ‘already exists’.3 As a research method, phenomenology
recognises that an examination of my perceptions can provide the basis for an analysis. As
artist’s practice, phenomenology is a manifestation of reflexive activity, where I observe,
record, analyse and express my perceptions of the phenomenal world.
At the start of this research, my customary artist’s practice, based in observational drawing,
already closely resembled phenomenological investigation. Initially, I used a life model to
investigate the relationship of the painted nude to the viewer - regarding her as an ‘alter ego’.
2
However as work progressed, I realised that it was necessary to enter the picture myself, not
in order to represent my ‘inner feelings’ but to express the twofold phenomenological position
of seeing and being seen.
An engagement with philosophical discourse not only informed my practice and clarified the
distinction between a psychoanalytic and phenomenological approach, it also introduced a
second strand of theoretical investigation not envisaged in the initial research questions. The
nature and structure of realism in painting emerged, from my phenomenological investigation,
as a concern that would influence the whole project.
While searching for a form of realism, which would inform the representation of a nude that
could avoid the male gaze, it became apparent that realism here is not a school or style of
painting. Rather it is something perceived by a viewer while looking at an image. This
occurrence, which I refer to as an ‘Event of Realism’, is a recognition of a connection that
momentarily bridges the phenomenological gap between the viewer and the image. It is in this
fissure, which maintains the alterity of the image, where the search takes place for an
understanding of realism that could reveal strategies for painting a corporeal nude. Although
the findings are indeterminate, the situation is eventually sufficiently clarified to allow further
work to proceed in the future.
The theoretical examination of the Event of Realism and the practical search for strategies for
painting the nude have co-existed throughout the project as two separate strands - each
resonating with and informing the other. Specific philosophical discourses have informed both
these parallel investigations; but being a phenomenological, reflexive, artist’s approach to
research, the utilisation of theory has been pragmatic. When a particular line of inquiry has
proved more effective than another, then a shift has been made to accommodate the better
strategy. The presentation of the research in Part II resembles a journey, which negotiates
each problem as it arises, and finds a way round the obstacle in order to continue. This
progression towards the aims of the research has been sustained by certain key concepts,
which have been adopted from a range of writers and artists - here listed in alphabetical order:
Roland Barthes: the capability of images to represent myth; the reader’s power over
the author.
Georges Bataille: unavoidable erotic otherness being integral to existence.
Walter Benjamin: the past seen through a dialectical image in the present.
Maurice Blanchot: the cadaverous resemblance of the fascinating image; the disaster
as a threat that never materialises.
3
Part 1 Introduction
Bertold Brecht: epic theatre as an anti-cathartic method of presentation.

Norman Bryson: the ‘glance’ as an antidote to the ‘gaze’.
T. J. Clark: the relevance of social history in understanding art history.
Jacques Derrida: although not directly referenced, Derrida provides an underlying
commitment to deconstruct through affirmation.
Eric Fischl: a role model for tackling difficult issues, in particular the engagement with
awkward moments - caught in the instant of the present.
Lucian Freud: a persistence in representing flesh through paint.
Hans-Georg Gadamer: hermeneutical play, through which the viewer constructs
meaning.
Edward Hopper: representation of the phenomenological presence of alterity.
Immanuel Kant: the Beautiful and the Sublime defined by ‘reflective judgement’ not by
‘determinate judgement’.
Emmanuel Levinas: facing the other in order to respect alterity; the evanescence of the
present instant.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty: the corporeal body, which is of space rather than in space, is
always in the dual position of seeing and being seen.
Laura Mulvey: the cultural pervasiveness of the ‘male gaze’.
Linda Nochlin: 19th century realism as the attempt by art to escape from literary
schema - which eventually leads to 20th century modernism in art.
Rembrandt: the strength of realism used in place of classicism.
Paul Ricoeur: phenomenology requires the explication of hermeneutics
Jo Spence: a role model for ‘putting myself in the picture’ - combining defiance with
vulnerability.
In the later stages of the project, a further problem was the practical issue of presentation -
how to make a dual presentation of visual and written research for the PhD thesis that does
not privilege either. After considering various formats, including hypertext on CD-ROM, I
decided to remain faithful to the phenomenological approach in which the project is grounded.
The research is a narrative that is best expressed in the form of a book. This text should
therefore be regarded as another piece of art practice, an artifact that mediates the thesis - with
the accompanying digital media, of moving images, being an extension to the visual element of
the book.
Following the main text, a brief commentary reflects on the whole project. Additional texts, in
the form of primary sources that are outside the word count, are provided in the appendices.
4
PART 2: In search of a realism for the nude in painting
6
Fig.1
Laura Knight
Self-portrait with nude model
1913, oil on canvas
6
Part 2 In search of a realism for the nude in painting
To take part in a life drawing class is to enter a space that maintains an oblique
connection with a form of art rooted in a long-standing tradition. 1 To sense such an
affiliation with the past does not require specialist knowledge of the life room’s aesthetic
history, nor of the obstacles encountered by women artists such as Laura Knight. 2 (Fig.
1) While drawing from the life model there may be a recognition that the activity is based
in a classical study from nature and the antique, or a sense of nostalgia for a romantic
view of an artist’s studio, or simply a vague feeling that there was once a clear purpose
to this practice. The response might also be one of discomfort and bewilderment that life
drawing should still exist at all, in the face of feminism 3 and the decline of perceptual
drawing as part of fine art practice. 4
Perhaps part of the attraction, for those who enjoy life drawing, lies in its structure - in the
manner in which the class is staged. Like a play in the theatre, a potentially difficult
situation is managed and kept in order. The players know their parts and the audience
knows how to behave. While the model is the physical centre of attention, the focal point
is artistic practice. The two parties are kept apart by a series of distinctions. The model
is placed at a discreet distance from the drawing activity, perhaps on a rostrum, s/he
remains still while the rest are active and is naked while the rest are clothed. The act of
being displayed means the model’s body is no longer ‘naked’ but ‘nude’. As John Berger
said:
To be on display is to have the surface of one’s own skin, the hairs of one’s own
body, turned into a disguise which, in that situation, can never be discarded. The
nude is condemned to never being naked. Nudity is a form of dress. 5
In fact nudity may not reveal anything about a person other than that they are unclothed.
According to Levinas:
The bare nudity of a body, which we may encounter, does not affect the
universality of clothing. In it nudity loses its significance. For recruiting examiners
human beings are treated like so much human material; they are clothed with a
7
8
form. Beauty, perfect form, is form par excellence; the statues of antiquity are
never really naked. 6
With this the clothing of nudity and formal presentation, the life room is made safe.
Pleasure, central to Kantian aesthetics, 7 can be found in engaging with a potentially

dangerous subject in a safe environment. With this in mind, drawing from a naked model
in a life class can be compared to watching tragedy in the theatre. The experience, of
stimulating the mind to become creatively involved in an activity, simultaneously exciting
and safe from danger, is cathartic. The Aristotelian notion of katharsis is one of calming or
healing - a pleasurable relief - for those prone to excitement during certain experiences,
like listening to music or watching tragedy. Within the closed circle of the experience,
katharsis can counteract the tendency to an excess of pity and fear, allowing feelings of
enthusiasm to alleviate the situation. 8 In a life drawing class the activity is carefully
regulated, allowing the potentially charged atmosphere of the presence of a naked person
to become an acceptable mode of study. Enclosed in its own meaning the naked body is
transformed from its everyday reality into ‘the nude in art’.
On one hand, drawing in a life class has the stimulation of a risky activity made safe, and
on the other hand, there is the trace of its association with a significant element of past
fine art practice, still visible in public art galleries. Together these two properties
contribute to the pleasure of participating in a form of study that is complete in itself. Life
drawing for the artist is similar to a musician practising scales and arpeggios. It is an
exercise, a straightforward discipline that clears the mind, stretching it in preparation for
further action. The musician will proceed to play musical compositions, but what is the
artist preparing for? Finished pictorial compositions featuring the nude are a relatively
small proportion of the current output in fine art today; and the fundamental skill in
‘accurate’ portrayal of the human form lost its traditional significance as far back as the
nineteenth century, with the introduction of photography. 9
If we put the end product to one side and concentrate on the process, life drawing may
appear to have more relevance. To draw objects in the world is an excellent way to
learn hand eye coordination, but the question remains - why should the object be a
naked human body?
9
Fig. 2
Euan Uglow
The Diagonal
10
II
If an established practice loses its sense of purpose, it will usually try to find an
alternative raison d’être to ensure its survival. One of life drawing’s attempts to retain a
function in fine art during the twentieth century has been to rank form over content. While
retaining the academic view of a body as an ideal for art, the emphasis shifts from literary
schema to the body as pure form. Instead of a measure of classical beauty, the body is
now a measure of beauty in the painted surface. The natural fascination, for the beauty
found in a certain exactitude of proportion in the human form, seems to become more
important for an artist, such as Euan Uglow (Fig. 2). He subordinates the reality of the
body to the reality of the work of art.
Here the naked life model has become part of the process of constructing the painting as
an object. As a merely passive element in the composition s/he has become part of the
surface of the picture. No matter how the nude is situated in the image, the model’s body
is offered as part of an art object for anyone to look at. Whoever or whatever s/he
represents has been constructed by another person, to speak in the mind of yet another
person - the viewer. It is the viewer who has the power in their gaze - a possessive
‘male gaze’ that observes undisturbed by any reaction from the passive nude. 10 The
viewer can put words in the mouth of the silent image - or deny it speech altogether.
There is no doubt that the naked human body offers an endless source of visual
fascination - with or without erotic intent. But what is it like to be inside that body, which
is under scrutiny as an object? Imagine yourself as the model. When looking out from
inside your body, you cannot see much of it - unless you look in a mirror, and even then
you will only see one aspect. You cannot see yourself as others see you - but you can
feel what it is like to be looked at. When the results of that looking become a drawing or a
painting, your body is no longer your own. When that picture of a naked body is looked
at by others, your body is taken even further away from you.
Recent contemporary art practice has sought to address this issue, of becoming an
object for the gaze, in many cases by endeavouring to portray the inner feelings of the
person portrayed through Lacanian / Freudian psychoanalysis. However, in this project,
I am not concerned with analysing the psychological reasons why people desire to make
and look at paintings and drawings of the nude. 11 My interest lies entirely in the
perceived relationships in the phenomenal world. Just as my interest is not in the art
11
Fig. 3
Mary Kelly
Interim - Corpus
12
history of the nude but in how the nude is perceived today, so the concern of this project
is not in a psychological reading of art that seeks to inform practice, but in the actual
events that occur in the making and viewing of a picture, whose subject matter is the
naked body.
When an artist looks at a naked person in the real world in order to make a picture, the first
physical act in the process is to stare at their body. The possessive gaze, which will
eventually be taken up by the viewer of a picture, begins when the artist looks at the
model. The model has the status of a laboratory specimen being examined. When the
model is female and the artist is male, feminism finds the imbalance of power
unacceptable. Being a woman, my interest is naturally in the female point of view and,
being middle-aged, my interest is also in the aging body. But, just as aging is relevant to
all of us sooner or later, to be the subject of the gaze applies to everyone - the gaze is
about power not gender.
The male gaze is not confined to men, as Laura Mulvey makes clear in her arguments
concerning the male gaze and trans-sex identification. In her essay ‘Visual Pleasure and
Narrative Cinema’ 12 she deals specifically with “the eroticism and cultural conventions
surrounding the look” in order to define the active masculine and passive feminine roles in
the male gaze. In her subsequent essay, ‘Afterthoughts inspired by Duel in the Sun’,13
she readjusts her position to include the occasions when women identify with the active
masculine position. Quoting Freud on stories and daydreams from 'Creative Writers and
Day Dreaming' she demonstrates that a woman’s Ego can feel the same invulnerability
that the hero possesses in a narrative, and adds that:
... as desire is given cultural materiality in a text, for women (from childhood
onwards) trans-sex identification is a habit that very easily becomes second
nature. However, this Nature does not sit easily and shifts restlessly in its
borrowed transvestite clothes. 14
This last sentence has particular resonance where the naked body is concerned.
It is inevitable that feminism should object to life drawing where the female nude is
perceived as an object of desire for others. It follows that female artists will naturally
seek alternative methods of expressing the body. For instance, in Mary Kelly’s
semiological approach (Fig. 3), the body is referred to by association and its absence
13
Fig.4
Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres
La Source
1856, oil on canvas
14
from a work is used to reveal the body’s situation. The signifier of a person is seen rather
than the actual body, which would be a sign complete in itself.
The perception of form is no longer the primary interest, the concept underlying the work
takes precedence. The appearance of the body gives way to the thoughts and ideas
that concern the person inside the body portrayed. In placing the ideas that stimulate the
work at the forefront of the practice, the conceptual approach shifts the thinking process
away from the formal act of drawing as a method of visual investigation. In conjunction
with feminism, conceptual art privileges an approach that denies validity to life drawing.
III
The approach to life drawing practice already described, indicates that there are formal
habits of operation that keep the reality of nakedness under control and thus maintain a
distance between the nude and the real world outside the studio. Consequently, when
conceptual methods demand that the reality of a naked person as a thinking human
being be recognised, the suggestion is that the traditional structure of life drawing is
undermined. It would seem that when life drawing is confronted by the reality of human
response to nakedness, the careful relationships between model and artist and artwork
cannot be sustained.
Structures, similar to the methods of constraint seen in life drawing, can be found
throughout the history of painting the nude in Europe. In both allegorical and genre
painting, the nude, which begins as a study from life, is even further removed from the
reality of the naked model - once the artwork has left the studio and gone out into the
world of the art gallery. The sensitivity of its position, on view to the general public,
demands more care in presentation than work in the studio. In Ingres’ La Source for
instance (Fig. 4), his neo classical nude represents a mythic figure. She stands like a
statue, the sexual areas of her body are minimalised in flat, hairless smoothness,
echoed in a painting technique that denies brush marks - more like marble than flesh.
A brilliant illusion presenting a version of nudity acceptable to the Victorian viewer -
nakedness as purity in an idealised environment. The manner of portraying the nude,
although apparently representing a ‘real’ body, is quite unnatural compared to an actual
15
Fig. 5
Helen Chadwick
Self portrait
1991
Fig. 6
Ken Howard
The Emma Triptych
oil
Fig. 7
Lucian Freud
Naked Girl
1966, oil on canvas
16
human form; and this distinction, as in life drawing, is an intrinsic part of the formal
structure of the work.
The result of this tradition is that the very act of drawing and painting can be seen by
contemporary practitioners as a component in a restrictive patriarchal practice, where
the power of the gaze dominates the image of a nude figure. 15 In an effort to avoid
conventional readings of the body, artists informed by feminism tend to reject painting.
Instead, they seek different methods of portraying the body and favour alternative
media free from association with the classical traditions of Western painting. A Helen
Chadwick self portrait for instance, (Fig. 5) is an illuminated cibachrome transparency
presenting intestines entwined with blond hair on a piece of wood resembling a
chopping board.
Despite such recent shifts in thinking life drawing has survived, continually adapting to
its changes in status, to the point where it finds itself in its current peculiar position.
Peculiar, not only because it appears odd and isolated in relation to contemporary fine
art, but peculiar in the sense that it is quite distinct from other forms of practice. Keeping
to its particular structure, life drawing has continued as a separate discipline. Life drawing
classes are still enthusiastically attended in adult education. Artists like Ken Howard (Fig.
6) still paint and sell post impressionist pictures of the painted nude in studio settings.
Life drawing is still used in the first stages of art education to teach hand eye coordination.
However, none of these activities have anything to do with the reality of nakedness.
There are of course artists who are exceptions, for example Lucian Freud (Fig. 7), who do
succeed in portraying nakedness, although this accomplishment attracts controversy and
diverse critical opinion. For instance, take the range of response to the exhibition Lucian
Freud: recent work shown in London, New York and Madrid in 1993-94. The essay by
Catherine Lampert in the catalogue naturally regards him as an artist of considerable
stature, comparable to Rembrandt and Degas; and in referring to adverse interpretations
as “highly subjective”, promotes the idea of equality in the “compact” between artist and
sitter. 16 Donald Kuspit, in his review in Artforum, describes Lucian Freud as Manet
without irony, as “Ingres without a utopian fantasy of pleasure” and questions the
relevance of his form of realism. 17 Linda Nochlin, in a parallel article to Kuspit’s, says that
his achievement “rests on a traditional and complacent belle peinture” that never
challenges stereotypes and his work “embodies the rappel à l'ordre at its most
authoritarian and patriarchal”. She points out that:
17
Fig. 8
Lucian Freud
Painter Working, Reflection
1993, oil on canvas
18
Freud's patronizing view of gays and women is of course descended from the
gender stereotyping that marked earlier recalls to "order". Women - young women,
that is ("girls," I imagine Freud and his circle would call them) - are often blonde,
almost always nude, deployed in passively splayed poses, pinkish about the
cheeks and the genitalia.... 18
In each of these responses, the issue of depicting nakedness is viewed as a problem.

Lampert excuses it in the bond between artist and sitter, Kuspit regards the “trauma” of
his realism as irrelevant, and Nochlin finds his attitude repugnant. My own reaction to the
same exhibition was to be fascinated by a disturbing beauty. Lucian Freud has a
particularly intense gaze that is unsettling in itself. His voyeuristic scrutiny of other
people’s naked bodies exposes their vulnerability, making them appear as slabs of meat
- corpse like rather than living beings. He seems to suggest that being naked in the
presence of the clothed goes beyond the fact of being unclothed, to be exposed as
utterly mortal. As an exception, Lucian Freud’s excessive representation of nakedness
proves the rule that for the nude to be acceptable it must avoid reality.
The four illustrations above (Figs. 7 > 4), despite their diverse approaches to the nude,
all represent the body in a vertical position in the image. Rather than demonstrating any
connection between them, this accentuates their differences, in particular the artist’s
position in relation to the body portrayed. Ingres frames the nude in another world, Helen
Chadwick is close in and visceral, Ken Howard suggests a distant intimacy for the artist
only, and Lucian Freud is physically on top of his model. It is interesting to compare
Freud’s Naked Girl with his Painter Working, Reflection (Fig. 8) where, armed with his
palette knife, he defends the space between his reflection and where he - and ultimately
the viewer - stands. Even if in exceptional circumstances the artist is naked when
painting, the assumption is that the viewer in a gallery will be clothed when they look at a
nude. In this series of examples, Helen Chadwick’s conceptual body fragment alone
avoids the sense of the clothed gazing at the unclothed, thus emphasising the range of
problems for the other more realistic representations. Ingres’ other worldliness, Ken
Howard’s shop window, and Lucian Freud’s aggression in the first instance and defence
19
Fig. 9
David Bailey
Jean Shrimpton
1965, photograph
Fig.10
Benedict Phillips
Karen
2001, photograph
Fig. 11
Rembrandt van Rijn
Naked woman seated on a mound
1631, etching
20
in the second, all suggest that the clothed are in a superior position over the naked. This
clothed / unclothed imbalance together with trans-sex identification in the male gaze, puts
female artists in the same position as male artists. Despite the magnitude of meaning in a
man’s gaze at a woman, if a woman attempts to portray nakedness she too will be open
to accusations of voyeurism.
These circumstances underline the difficulty for any study of the outward appearance of
the naked / nude body. The problems will affect work made in both the life drawing class
and the artist’s studio - regardless of the age or gender of the model and the age or
gender of the artist. It does seem that a conceptual approach, in which the dilemmas
associated with the physical appearance of the body can be avoided, may be the only
‘safe option’ for attempting to portray the body.
If this is the situation, what is the position of a female artist curious about her own aging
body? Can conceptual art facilitate a reconciliation between her physical reality and the
feeling that she is still a girl inside? How will she be able to examine the appearance of
her own middle-age without looking at her own physical nakedness?
IV
If I wish, as a middle aged female artist, to make a study of the aging female body, what
are the precise problems for me as a researcher, an artist, and a woman? 19
As a European woman, my culture has encouraged me to be constantly conscious of

being seen. My outward appearance has taken precedence over any other qualities I
may possess. This has led me to identify with representations of other women - no
matter how unlike them I may be. (Fig. 9) As well as being conditioned to attempt the
emulation of the contemporary media’s feminine ideal, I have developed a feeling of
kinship with portrayals of women throughout western art history. Knowing that I would
never look like a super model, I sought and found a closer resemblance in Rubens or
Rembrandt. (Figs. 10 & 11) While this helped me in coming to terms with feelings of
inadequacy, it also instilled a sense of my inevitable position as a passive object for the
gaze of others. Conscious that the image of a woman signifies something different from
the person who owns the body represented, I have always been perplexed by the
discord between image and reality.
21
22
As my body has aged, it has become increasingly difficult to recognise myself in the
mirror. My reflection is of an outer shell that bears little or no resemblance to the person
inside. Although I have lived 56 years, I still have many of the same sensations that I
had at 16. When I look in the mirror, I feel like saying “who’s that?” - it is hard to
remember that that is how I am seen in the world. In attempting to come to terms with this
disparity, my curiosity as an artist has prompted me to consider the problem through
visual exploration.
As an artist, I was educated in the western figurative tradition before the arrival of
feminism in the 1970’s and the development of conceptual methods for making art.
Having learned the pleasures of life drawing as a method of visual investigation, it seems
natural to examine the problems of the aging body by studying it from life. Such a project
could be one instance where life drawing has a genuine sense of purpose. But this is
not a piece of private research, the results of the investigation will be seen in public. Do I
want images of my body to be subjected to the male gaze? Is there any way of
avoiding voyeurism? How can my ideas be expressed without my paintings and
drawings being read in a regressive, traditional manner and interpreted quite differently
from my intended meaning?
As a painter and teacher of life-drawing, my ‘traditional’ approach and preference for

working with the body has led to a sense of being ‘outside’ the forms of contemporary art
practice that are regarded as serious by critical and academic discourse. The implication
is that my work would find a natural home where ‘objective’ drawing and painting skills
take priority. My goal should be election to the New English Art Club, for whose
members “a painterly touch has always been predominant” and who still find an “impetus
and satisfaction in commenting on aspects of the life around us, and doing it with
enjoyment.” 20 The difficulty for me is in that last phrase. It is not that life is not
enjoyable but that the reality of existence is complex and difficult; and I am not at ease
working in a tradition of painting more concerned with beauty than reality - that takes the
view that art is not the place to show the awkward aspects of life. 21 Occupying a
position between schools of thought, naturally reveals several conflicting points of view.
While understanding the implications of the male gaze, the popular generalised
interpretations of its position appear to be simplistic - a black and white view of a
complex, ‘grey’ situation. Having no wish to undermine the work of the feminist
movement, I fully support “a critical concept of artistic practice and cultural politics”. 22
On the other hand, I do not want to be forbidden to look at and paint the female body.
23
Fig. 12
Jenny Saville
Plan
1993, oil on canvas
24
There seem to be areas that are not fully resolved. I am an artist, I am female, I have a
body - am I not allowed to investigate these concerns? Is it really necessary to accept
that both the nude and painting can no longer be used in a visual investigation of feminist
concerns? Might there not be some unfinished business here?
With these factors voiced if not understood, the research project begins. Setting out in
hope of a solution but realistically expecting no more than the opportunity to clarify my
position.
In looking for a way to begin a project on the nude in painting, from the point of view of an
aging female artist, it would seem practical to examine the work of contemporary female
artists engaged with issues of the body. An obvious first choice must be Jenny Saville
(Fig. 12). Here is an artist not only working with her own naked body and engaged with
female concerns, but working in paint and influenced by Lucian Freud - already identified
as an artist working outside the safe area of acceptable nudity. 23 Although both these
artists address the outward appearance of the body, they differ in intention. Where
Lucian Freud appears fascinated by the pure fleshiness of flesh, Jenny Saville is tackling
women’s issues on perceptions of body size - and she is not just “Lucian Freud with
feminism”. Retaliating to such a comment, Linda Nochlin wrote:
... that is just what Saville’s work is not. Despite the lush gouts of paint and the
evocations of Rubens, Saville is at heart a conceptual artist, whereas Freud is a
traditional painter trying to make it look as though he has a concept. Saville’s
work actually has more in common with feminist performance art and imagery of
the photographed body-object than with that of an old-time paint slinger like
Freud. 24
Her position between painter and conceptual artist has not been comfortable for Saville.
She has felt under pressure to abandon painting but has resisted, because she finds the
call of the medium itself too strong. Her attraction to painting is in the quality of the medium
itself - according to an interview with David Lee.
25
Fig. 13
Jenny Saville
Plan (detail)
1993, oil on canvas
26
She struggles, she admits, to striking the right balance in the painting between the
lusciousness of the medium, which she finds seductive in itself, and the need to
retain some contact with the subject without becoming enslaved to illustration “I
need to balance the playfulness of the paint with the illusion,” she tells me, putting
her finger on precisely the quality that makes a painter rise above the journeyman
ranks. “I want to play with paint more than I do and exploit that secret dialogue
which exists between the paint and the viewer. 25
It is worth noting the different positions of the two authors involved here. David Lee’s
article is unashamedly in support of painting and against what he calls the “Serota
Tendency” who would wish painting to be dead. 26 Linda Nochlin on the other hand,
while defending Saville against the “smart friend who hates painting”, 27 nevertheless
speaks from a feminist / conceptual point of view. Jenny Saville elicits loyalty from both
sides; and it seems that her work generates an individual connection for every interested
critic or writer.
Alison Rowley, in her essay on Saville, 28 admits to an autobiographical association in her

position, which may extend further than she intended. To begin with she is angry that
Saville (just young enough to be Rowley’s daughter) has been set up by the media to
be a painter first and a feminist second and sees this as the reason why her work
receives greater attention than the photography of Jo Spence (old enough to be
Rowley’s mother). 29 Then towards the end of the essay, Rowley argues for painting to
be explored in support of women’s art. However, although she situates herself between
the two artists in terms of her generation, she echoes this in terms of her own art
education. Having drawn attention to the similarity between being lost in the pleasure of
paint and the tactile sensations of flesh, Rowley admits to a fascination for paint as a
“substance”. Although she uses psychoanalytic arguments based in the writing of Lacan,
30 prevalent in current feminist readings of art, she also reveals her preference for a close
up interest in the surface plane of a painting that relates to the modernist tendency of the
period when she was at art school.
My own first encounter with the work of Jenny Saville was at the Saatchi Gallery in 1994,
before any of the texts mentioned above were written. Since then, I have followed her
progress and my current opinion of her work is informed by the journey I have made
through this project. My first reaction, intuitive and comparatively ignorant, provided
direction in the early stages of my research. Standing in front of those towering female
bodies reminded me of being a tiny infant up against my mother’s knees. (Fig. 13) When
27
Fig. 14 Fig. 15
Ana Maria Pacheco Paula Rego
Trust Betrayed 1987 Dancing Ostriches 1995
28
you are that close to a body, you are aware of a presence that you can feel and touch,
but not speak to. But while the figure towered over me, the area in focus in front of my
eyes presented no more than paint marks. Saville’s paint quality is not luscious enough
to give the illusion of flesh; and I am in agreement with Nochlin, that the concept is
effective rather than the quality of her painting. Dominating the viewer through sheer size,
these enormous painted figures, with little or no background visible around them, sit on the
surface of the painting as if trying to exist in the gallery space rather than the world of the
picture. To see a whole picture means standing at a considerable distance, which
prohibits any dialogue with the person represented - let alone a “secret dialogue” with the
paint. But then her figures have no wish for conversation. They seem to exude silent
anger and embarrassment at the position they find themselves in - the abject misery of
being so large, or perhaps of being trapped in a woman’s body and made to feel that big.
Jenny Saville’s images of women did not say anything more to me when I first saw them
than that the person portrayed was unhappy - and I was looking for dialogue. I did not
want to see ‘Look at me miserable inside my body.’ I would have preferred ‘Here I am,
what do you say to that?’
Although Jenny Saville employs figurative painting mainly to make a conceptual point, the
issues that concern her are different from my own. She is concerned with impressing on
the viewer the internal abject feelings of the naked figure portrayed, while I am looking for
an acceptance, by that same viewer, of the external appearance of a naked body as an
equal to converse with. In the search for visual reference to guide my project, it was not a
technical question of finding painters who could show me how to make a conceptual point
in paint, but a theoretical question of finding artists whose concerns were close enough to
mine to provide guidance in conceptual orientation. It was necessary to put aside old
preferences for certain painters and to broaden the search to include any artist working in
any media - and not necessarily those with feminist concerns - where the approach to, or
content of, the work had some real connection with the ideas in my project.
Figurative painters like Ana Maria Pacheco (Fig. 14) and Paula Rego (Fig. 15) address
issues on the female body, but they do so through personal social narratives, which are
not pertinent to my project of re-viewing the nude in painting. However, in putting them to
one side with Jenny Saville, they are not abandoned completely but kept in reserve - to
be considered as fellow painters, with parallel rather than similar interests. Meanwhile,
other artists who put feminist content above formal method, but whose approach is
different to mine, were studied and noted. Barbara Kruger’s political drive and her use of
29
Fig. 16 Fig. 17
Barbara Kruger Mary Kelly
Untitled 1989 Interim - detail from Corpus 1989
Fig.18 Fig.19
Jo Spence/Dr Tim Sheard Eric Fischl
Exiled , undated Birthday Boy, 1983, oil on canvas
30
public venues might be useful even if her stereotypical images (Fig. 16) do not relate to
my wish for interaction with an individual body. The powerful expressions of desire in
Mary Kelly’s Interim (Fig. 17), although revealed entirely through the trace of an absent
body, might have some effect on my intentions, when considering the relationship
between viewer and picture.
Two particular artists aroused immediate empathy - even though their connection with my
project was not initially obvious. Their approaches and intentions in their work are
distinctly different but they share a common interest in the uncompromising manner in
which they view both the world and themselves.
The first is Jo Spence (Fig. 18), whose approach to problematic personal issues shows
an honesty where others would not dare expose themselves. In presenting an ordinary
body suffering from circumstances beyond her control she allows anger in place of self
pity - outrage rather than abjection. She attacks the subject without inhibition and, while it
may have been for her own therapeutic benefit, the results show the beauty of her body
despite its infirmity. Here is a method worth learning, it was just a matter of finding a way
to do it through painting.
The second artist is Eric Fischl (Fig. 19). On first seeing his paintings in a book, the
subject matter appeared to border on the offensive and the paint quality seemed inept.
But a closer look revealed that my repulsion was not based in distaste at his gaze but in
the sense of reality that the images triggered. What is more this repulsion demanded
attention. The effect has not been achieved by naturalistic representation but by a
rawness in the manner of painting; due partly to a lack of technical ability and partly
through an unnatural distortion in the image, deriving from photographic source material.
The result produces an emphasis on content rather than form - a significant achievement
for a figurative painter depicting the nude or, in this case, naked body.
VI
Parallel with the search for visual reference, was a programme of reading to inform my
own visual practice. The first books studied were general texts on feminism and post
modernism. This was followed by more specific reading on aesthetic concerns: from
Kant, the ‘Analytic of the Beautiful’ and ‘Analytic of the Sublime’ in The Critique of
31
Fig. 20
Belinda
1993, oil on acetate and paper
background layer
background and middle layer
background middle and front layers
32
Judgement; Nietzsche - The Birth of Tragedy; Georges Bataille - Eroticism; and Roland
Barthes - Mythologies and Image Music Text. Although making every effort in studying
these texts, my reactions at that time were similar to my examination of feminist art - an
apprehension of potentially helpful information rather than a comprehension of how to
make direct use of the material. In hindsight, knowledge must have been absorbed
unconsciously, from both the visual and the literary sources. Fundamental points have
consistently reemerged, which have influenced the whole project - in the visual practice,
the thinking that underpins it, and in my writing.
In a first attempt to use reading as a support to painting, I set out to counteract the
perception of a nude as an object of desire for others by trying to portray her inner erotic
self - taking ‘eroticism’ to mean the innate and excessive human desire for life, rather than
sexual appetite. Georges Bataille describes the difference thus:
Human eroticism differs from animal sexuality precisely in this, that it calls inner life
into play. In human consciousness eroticism is that within man which calls his
being into question. 31
Although eroticism is extremely difficult to define and “the problem of problems” 32 in

language, let alone figurative painting, my hope was that in concentrating on this potent
‘otherness’ that animates the body, it might be possible to divert attention away from
nudity as the first object of interest. Working closely with a model as my alter ego, using
a pose similar to the nude in Manet’s Le déjeuner sur l’herbe, 33 but as if seen from
behind, I made studies from life. However, straightforward paintings on a solid surface
proved ineffective, because her ‘thinking’ head would not relate to her ‘erotic’ body; so I
tried a version of the pose in three layers (Fig. 20). At the back on the solid surface is her
inner person painted in monochrome, looking straight at the viewer; in the middle in hot
colour on a layer of acetate, is the erotic subject, head bowed downward avoiding eye
contact; the front layer, again on acetate, shows her outward appearance, a fleshly body
with the head turned to one side. When assembled, the head became a blur while the
body remained static.
Although interesting as an experiment this method of making a picture had its limitations.
My project is concerned with traditional painting methods and working on transparent
layers was a departure from that aim. Also, while the nude figure gains some solidity
through the depth of the layers, the rest of the image is empty - her body floats in a void,
with no connection to her surroundings.
33
Fig. 21
Belinda with herself
34
Having attempted to use Bataille’s writing to inform a painting directly, it was a significant
development in my art practice that two other texts should reveal a way out of the
difficulties encountered. First, Merleau-Ponty’s writing on the body explained how
inextricably the mind is part of the body that exists in the phenomenal world. By saying,
“Whether it is a question of another’s body or my own, I have no means of knowing the
human body other than that of living it” 34, he throws doubt on the validity of any attempt
to portray another individual’s inner character. It would be more relevant to acknowledge
the other as utterly different and unknowable; and a better strategy might be to examine
the space between one body and an-other - defining the physical positions that both
occupy in the world. Second, Norman Bryson’s writing on the ‘Glance’ as an antidote to
the ‘Gaze’ 35, demonstrated that it is the denial of dialogue between image and viewer - or
‘deixis’ - that supports the Gaze. 36 Where the image is fixed in a frozen moment of action,
“the Gaze takes the body and returns it in altered form, as product but never as
production of work; it posits the body only as content, never as source.” 37 But if the
ever shifting Glance, that “can never be sated”, denies the Gaze, the viewer has an
active rather than passive engagement with the image.
By combining an understanding of Merleau-Ponty’s corporeal body-in-the-world with

Norman Bryson’s recommendation to “willingly enter into the partial blindness of the
Glance and dispense with the conception of form as con-sideration, as Arrest”,38 a
significant shift began in my painting. Moving away from the portrayal of the single
individual, I began to engage with the phenomenological space that exists between
people, in which appearances are fluid and perceptions constantly shift and change.
Realising the limitations in my layered painting of Belinda - both its failure as a statement
of her personality and the need to situate her figure in an environment - I made another
drawing of Belinda clothed sitting beside herself naked. (Fig. 21) But this still did not offer
a dialogue between the portrayal of her body and its perception by another person
looking at the picture. It became apparent that in order to explore the twofold position of
seeing and being seen, I would have to ‘put myself in the picture’ and place my own
body in a spatial relationship with both the model and the viewer.
VII
Looking back at this early period between 1993 and 1995, when the ideas for the project
were being formed, it is now possible to reflect on the factors that influenced and shaped
35
Fig. 22
Artist and model
1995, oil on canvas, 91.4 x 121.9 cm
36
my methods for the research. A range of basic ideas was absorbed from the mixture of
reading and visual investigations into my own, and other artists’, practice. Some
concepts were consciously seized and used immediately. The encounter with pluralism in
post modernism had already provided the necessary courage to question difficult issues
where my own position seemed unclear; making it possible to face the dilemma of
wishing to investigate the appearance of the nude body while maintaining a feminist
perspective on the gaze. It supplied the confidence to influence a viewer’s perception of
the painted nude, in an attempt to re-balance the ‘authority’ given when it is said that “the
birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author”. 39 There were also
concepts which developed slowly as they became relevant, in particular the notion of
otherness (alterity); intriguing from the start but not fully grasped until it was clearly an
essential part of the research. Finally some concepts appear to have slipped into my
thinking unnoticed, to emerge later as having been in use throughout the project. Kant’s
writing on the Sublime in relation to the Beautiful has become a recurrent theme in the
research, although not initially appearing to be of key importance.
The most influential philosophic methodology has been phenomenology. As soon as the
concept of phenomenology was understood as a reflexive engagement with the world, it
connected directly with my visual practice. It not only stimulated new work but provoked
the realisation that my artist’s method of learning, from an observance of the world, has
always been a form of phenomenological investigation. Reading Merleau-Ponty had
already shown me that, in my search for a corporeal nude, it was necessary to put myself
in the picture; to explore the experience of simultaneously seeing and being seen,
through my existence both inside the picture and outside in the world. (Fig. 22) Placing
myself within the image as the artist (both naked and clothed), in the act of making work,
not only provided the basis for analysing perception but also confirmed my use of
drawing and painting as the actual material for working out the problem. Merleau-Ponty
identifies phenomenology as:
...a philosophy for which the world is ‘already there’ before reflection begins - as
an inalienable presence; and all its efforts are concentrated upon re-achieving a
direct and primitive contact with the world... 40
Not only does this illustrate the manner in which artists draw from the world but, as if in
recognition of the primary nature of artists’ practice, he adds:
37
38
...the opinion of the responsible philosopher must be that phenomenology can be

practised and identified as a manner or style of thinking, that it existed as a
movement before arriving at complete awareness of itself as a philosophy. 41
Phenomenology offers alternative methods of investigation to those established by

scientific positivism. Where science will determine facts from the categorical results of
repeatable experiments, phenomenology allows discoveries to be made and asserted
through an analysis of the perceived world. In addition, for the reflexive investigator,
perceptions of the world will disclose unknown factors, which must be acknowledged in
terms of 'difference' and 'otherness'. These attributes make phenomenology particularly
suited to an examination of perceptions of the body inhabited by a human being, one
who will always remain unknown to another person. In his introduction to Cartesian
Meditations, Husserl speaks of the necessity in phenomenology for:
... anyone who seriously intends to become a philosopher must ... withdraw into
himself and attempt, within himself, to overthrow and build anew all the sciences
that, up to then, he has been accepting. 42
To begin afresh, in this phenomenological manner, is again similar to the artist’s approach
to a new subject - by learning from pure, rigorous observation. To be permitted to take
an artistic rather than a scientific approach, and to benefit from a post modern tolerance of
differing points of view, offers the opportunity to explore a seemingly untenable position,
through visual perception. Without consciously knowing at the start that I was applying
phenomenological method, I have learned to study the problems of the painted nude,
without undue influence from art history, art theory or even radical feminism.
By using a knowledge based on experience of the phenomenal world, the extra

knowledge acquired from reading texts has tended to confirm and clarify thoughts already
“there before reflection”; whereas information that was completely unknown before has
not been so useful. For instance, the Lacanian reading of Freudian psychoanalysis,
which informs much of feminist art, stems from a scientific source beyond my experience -
and therefore requires acceptance on trust of its authority. This is an added reason to
prefer a phenomenological approach, which requires the researcher’s own empirical
perception. To question all aspects of the project, from a phenomenological point of view,
gives the confidence to open the mind to everything on offer, without being either
overwhelmed or pressured by outside opinion to use material that is irrelevant. In terms
39
Fig. 23
Jenny Saville
Hybrid, 1997
oil on canvas
274.3 x 213.4 cm
Fig. 24
Bathroom painting
1999, oil on paper, 63,5 x 63.5 cm
40
of artistic influence, it means understanding the thinking behind the work without imitating a
style of practice.
For example, compare the work of Jenny Saville (Fig. 23) with my own (Fig. 24). On the
surface it would seem we have similar interests, but that may simply acknowledge that
we are both painters of the nude who have looked at the work of Lucian Freud. It does
not take into account the difference in our methods of presenting the body to the viewer.
Saville dominates the viewer through the enormous scale of nudes in the foreground of
the painted surface. My interest is in trying to stimulate the viewer into conversation with
a naked image, a method closer to Mary Kelly’s determination to “engage the viewer,
because there is no point at which it can become a deconstructed critical engagement if
the viewer is not first ... drawn into the work.” 43 The content of our work is also different.
In common with many other feminist artists, Saville’s relationship with the body is based
in hostility. 44 Her nudes express the abject, internalised feelings of a woman who feels
herself to be bigger than society finds acceptable. Such sadness naturally elicits
sympathy; but if the viewer wishes to consider the matter further, the confrontational
presentation of the images prevents interaction. Their huge size pushes the viewer
away, preventing a discussion with the image by making it difficult to establish a position
from which to view the painting. To appreciate the person in the body, you have to
stand too far away for a ‘conversation’ but if you move closer, you are engulfed by the
painted surface. My concern has been to attempt a dialogue with the viewer by defining
the space between our respective bodies, in which there can be interaction. The content
is not a portrayal of my inner feelings but is questioning the perception by others of my
body, which to me is an ordinary body showing the normal results of being alive for a
certain length of time. I do not feel abjection for the ‘horrors’ of my body. I do not find my
body ‘horrific’. It may no longer be young and it may never have fulfiled my desire for
beauty but it is the only one I have got and it is - as Merleau-Ponty says - my way of
being in the world.45 Finally this difference in content can be linked to the theoretical
underpinning in our respective practices. Appearances would suggest, given the variety
of critical opinion, that Jenny Saville has dual interests. On one hand, she is involved
with matters relating to form - of paint as a substance for expression - and on the other,
she has conceptual concerns based in feminist readings of psychoanalysis. My
theoretical support comes from phenomenology - investigating perceptions of the
appearance of the physical world; the relationship between two bodies rather than the
internal feelings of a single body.
41
Fig. 25
Rembrandt
Woman Bathing in a Stream
1654-55, Panel, 62 x 47 cm National Gallery, London
42
In defining where I stand in terms of this research, it is clear that my thinking is not located
in any established area of theory but situated somewhere in the margins of several
different approaches to the nude in painting. Rather than engage in a negative dialectic
with these established schools of thought, I will attempt to articulate my position through
an affirmation of the positive elements in my situation.
***
First, I am a painter for whom drawing from ‘life’ is an integral part of a practice that
interrogates the world around me. I am a figurative artist looking back to Dutch genre
painting, especially Rembrandt. (Fig. 25) This cultural background from Northern
European art, together with my technical expertise in figurative painting is not seen as a
limitation in this investigation. On the contrary, the practical facility can be used in the
manner of a tool, which enables the freedom to be radical with content; and in what
Kenneth Clark refers to as “The Alternative Convention”, “defiant honesty” 46 is a sound
antidote to the classical academy rooted in Italy, which ranks the ideal above the
perceptually given.
Second, as a woman investigating the painted nude, it is a logical step to use my own
body as the subject of the visual practice element of this research. However, the use,
not only of my own painting but also my own body, raises the question of subjectivity -
in a discipline which is traditionally ‘objective’. My research should be understood in
terms of reflexive practice, seen in a context indicated by Janet Wolff’s observations on
Walter Benjamin’s use of memoir:
the interplay of the autobiographical and the critical in his work accords well with
contemporary tendencies to integrate these two modes of writing; at the same
time, the analytics of the concrete are very much in tune with the current rejection
of abstract theory and the desire for specificity. 47
In fact, my position as both ‘subject’ and ‘object’ is quite straightforward. By taking on the
roles of both artist and model (as the body that simultaneously sees and is seen) I am
able to affirm both points of view. In so doing, I take on the additional role of the
researcher who deconstructs each position through a process of affirmation. Given that
we are all flawed in our subjectivity, it is better to affirm the personal involvement in a
situation and then use what that reveals.
43
44
Third, my position on feminism is that its concerns are a socially determined ‘given’. While
reading a passage on prostitution in Eroticism by Georges Bataille, 48 my feminist anger
at patriarchy was put in perspective when I realised that he is simply describing a
situation which exists. In recognising the facts involved, it is possible, through the
affirmation of their existence, to see the situation clearly - and thus to be able to consider
what may be done to make a shift towards social alternatives. So although I have an
innate dislike of a “masculine discourse conjuring up the fetish of a female bodily presence
and vocal absence”, 49 I prefer to deconstruct the issue and to investigate the nude in
painting by painting the nude. By fighting fire with fire, I am following the example of
Mary Kelly in the Post Partum Document where she addressed the issue ‘Women and
work’ through presenting documentation and objects that related directly to the subject
matter.
Phenomenology has allowed me to identify an individual position (as a painter and a

woman) in relation to an established area of research (the question1 of the nude in
painting); and to determine a suitable, if unconventional, methodology in experiential
learning. The knowledge gained from authoritative sources has provided clarification in
my thinking, rather than guidance in direction. In this phenomenological research my
thesis does not attempt to re-invent the wheel but rather, in proceeding from my own
practical experience, seeks to emulate Jane Austen’s method of examining situations
through an uncompromising observance of the society she knew at first hand.
VIII
The discovery of phenomenology as the ‘natural’ method for my practice fundamentally

changed my attitude to the body; not only in my painting and the way I approached
drawing but also in my teaching in the life room. A radically phenomenological approach
to life drawing offers the opportunity to reappraise the relationship between artist and
model - and thereby to affect the portrayal of the nude or naked human form.
Before this research project, in earlier attempts to address the paradox of life drawing
through my own practice, I had considered depictions of the art school life room.
Drawing the people who were drawing led to thinking about reversing the roles of artist
and model - where the naked drew the clothed - but this seemed too illustrative and not
45
Fig. 26
First nude ‘self-portrait’
46
powerful enough to express the dilemma of portraying nakedness. When the introduction
of an awareness of phenomenology led to the inclusion of my own body in the situation,
a radical attitude to life drawing began to emerge.
To summarise the situation described in sections I-III, the institution of the art school Life
Room has suffered in recent years from a reputation for being fixed in a tradition rooted in
academic art practice of the past. In a development from the old tradition - where form
takes precedence over content - it became recognised as a laboratory for experiment in
visual exercises. The nude, in both the life room and in western figurative painting, has
become entirely separated from the naked body through which we exist in the world.
This state of affairs is unacceptable to anyone in sympathy with the naked person
depicted. To find a method where life drawing can allow the corporeal body to reemerge,
there must be a radical challenge to the notion of the nude as a pure object for study,
represented frozen within a frame. By employing a phenomenological approach, it is
possible to put aside our assumptions of the past and start afresh (Fig. 26) - to explore
the positions and connections of the artist to their subject matter (the naked model) and to
their work (the drawing as the result of the activity).
In Husserlian terms, we should attempt to “begin in absolute poverty, with an absolute

lack of knowledge” 50 of past practices. The problem, in practical terms, is to ascertain
where that ‘beginning’ begins and how much we can recognise or ignore our existing
knowledge of the world. A first step is to understand the difference between an initial
perception (there is a person in front of me) and the subsequent reflection (I am looking at
that person).
...we must distinguish “straightforwardly” executed grasping perceiving,

remembering, predicating, valuing, purposing, etc., from the reflections by means
of which alone, as grasping acts belonging to a new level, the straightforward acts
become accessible to us. 51
Once reflection begins on the perception from a subjective point of view, it is necessary
to move beyond subjectivity. Husserl describes the difference between natural
reflection and transcendental reflection. Where natural reflection is conscious of looking
at something, transcendental reflection makes an effort “not to repeat the original
process, but to consider it and explicate what can be found in it.” It is this intentional
reflection that is conscious from the very first perception through all of the stages in
47
Fig. 27
Second nude ‘self-portrait’
48
subsequent reflection. In that intention lies the possibility of “experiential knowing”, 52

where we achieve a disinterested observation of our reflection. To distinguish between
interested perceptual reflection and disinterested phenomenological reflection, Husserl
speaks of splitting the Ego.
If the Ego, as naturally immersed in the world, experiencingly and otherwise, is

called “interested” in the world, then the phenomenologically altered - and, as so
altered, continually maintained - attitude consists in a splitting of the Ego: in that
the phenomenological Ego establishes himself as “disinterested onlooker ”, above
the naively interested Ego. That this takes place is then itself accessible by
means of new reflection, which as transcendental, likewise demands the very
same attitude of looking on “disinterestedly” - the Ego’s sole remaining interest
being to see and to describe adequately what he sees, purely as seen, as what
is seen and seen in such and such a manner. 53
In this phenomenological manner, it is possible to deconstruct life drawing, (Fig. 27)

through affirmation - not only of what exists before my eyes and around my body, but in
a disinterested view of past practice and the language that describes it.
While the practice of life drawing is normally based in stillness, the words ‘life’ and
‘drawing’ both suggest action. ‘Life’ is naturally always associated with living breathing
action but the conventional function of a living model is statically unnatural. (Any life
model will describe the physical pain of remaining still for any length of time.) The
dictionary definition of the word ‘drawing’ is, to quote: “The action of DRAW v. ... That
which is drawn, or obtained by drawing.” The definitions for the word ‘draw’ are listed as:
“Of simple traction ... to pull”; “Of attraction, drawing in or together”; “Of extraction,
withdrawal, removal”; “Of tension, extension”; “Of delineation or construction by
drawing”; “Of motion, moving oneself”. 54 All variations in meaning for the words ‘draw’
and ‘drawing’ refer to some form of movement. Even the marks on a piece of paper,
which is called a ‘drawing’ and is regarded as a static object, remains the consequence of
an act. These marks being the traces of the movement made by a person ‘pulling’ a
drawing instrument across a surface. To understand this paradox, of life drawing being a
static activity, it is necessary to deconstruct the act of making a drawing from the
phenomenological point of view of the artist. From this position the mechanics involved in
the execution of a drawing, the nature of looking, and the space in which drawing takes
place, can all be examined.
49
Fig. 28
Study 1
50
There are several diverse elements involved in the making of a drawing. To begin with,
the initial perception of the subject matter forms a mental vision of how the finished
drawing might appear. During the physical act of drawing, optical and mental visions are
combined with the body’s motor capability - working with the limitations of
coordination between hand and eye plus the independent character of the materials in
use. Gradually, as the work emerges, it becomes an autonomous object with the power
of articulation, which asserts its own presence in contention with the original conception.
The execution of the drawing becomes a series of negotiations between artist and work
in progress; in an attempt to pull the disparate elements together into some form of
agreement. (Fig. 28)
Next, the nature of looking needs to be examined, to compare the mode of seeing
optically with the mode of seeing presented by a picture. The picture plane is seen with
a clarity similar to any flat object of comparable size. If the picture is not too big, the
whole plane is in focus - it offers a complete image in which all aspects are equally
visible. Whereas when looking at the actual world, either our eyes flit to and fro in a
continuous movement to appraise our surroundings or else they come to rest on a
particular object. In focussing on one place we “become anchored in it”; we concentrate
on that point to the exclusion of its surroundings, which recede into peripheral vision. 55
To illustrate this, try looking at a particular point in front of you and then attempt to ‘see’
what is in your peripheral vision without moving your eyes; notice how all shapes blur
and shift - in contrast to the consistent focus on a picture plane.
Now, imagine the life room from where the artist is standing and consider how it feels to be
situated in that specific place in the world. The model and the easel bearing the paper
occupy the same space as the artist’s body, and all that is observed, all knowledge of
the surroundings, is seen from inside that body. Merleau-Ponty shows how our being in
the world is entirely integrated in the vehicle of our body:
... if it is true that I am conscious of my body via the world, that it is the
unperceived term in the centre of the world towards which all objects turn their
face, it is true for the same reason that my body is the pivot of the world: I know
that objects have several facets because I could make a tour of inspection of
them, and in that sense I am conscious of the world through the medium of my
body. 56
(my emphasis)
51
Fig. 29
Study 2
52
It follows that from where I stand looking out from my body, the distance my eyes travel
from my body to another person is a part of that person, just as the journey to a holiday
resort is part of the holiday. In a similar manner, the space which surrounds me is a
part of the attitude of my body - not “a spatiality of position, but a spatiality of
situation”.57 Therefore: “To be a body, is to be tied to a certain world, ... our body is not
primarily in space: it is of it”. 58 Both artist and model occupy the double position of
seer and seen; and the slightest movement of either will shift the shape of the space
between them. The fluidity of that space demonstrates the impossibility, in this context,
to insist upon absolute stillness in the life room.
The shifting movement shown by each of these three aspects - in making, seeing and
being in the space - indicates primarily that the process of life drawing is active rather
than static; but of equal significance is the fact that it opens up the consciousness of
bodily presence. I become conscious of the relationship between one body and
another; of the sensation that my sight emerges from the black hole of my head to be
anchored in an object outside the body; and of the effort of coordinating my mental and
motor intentions. Apart from the recurring issue of movement it becomes increasingly
difficult to regard another body as a subordinate object - the body of the model is like
mine, we are equal in the world. The relationship between artist and model becomes
the spatial relationship between two people; where both bodies belong to that space
and - as each one sees the other - neither can be defined as a subject or an object.
(Fig. 29) In Merleau-Ponty’s words:
...It is ...not enough to say that the objective body belongs to the realm of ‘for
others’, and my phenomenal body to that of ‘for me’,...[they] exist in the same
world, as is proved by my perception of an other who immediately brings me back
to the condition of an object for him. 59
If the spatial relationship between artist and model is fundamental for a process of life
drawing based in a phenomenological understanding, it follows that other spaces will
have equal importance. Each of the following spatial relationships are important, both
individually and in relation to each other: the space between one figure and another in the
picture; between any figure and its horizon; and, eventually that between the picture
plane and the person who views it. In this last instance the situation is more complex.
The first viewer will be the artist during the making process but ultimately, the picture will
be viewed by another person in a separate context; one whose function will be to
interpret any meaning the picture may hold.
53
Fig. 30
Study 3
54
In a drawing from life, any object in the world existing beyond the artist’s body is
potentially part of the subject matter for the picture. What the artist sees of that world is a
personal perception from their bodily position (Fig. 30); while it can be known
superficially through sight, to have full knowledge of it is impossible. Outside the
boundaries of one’s body everything is strange and retains some mystery - it remains
other. Drawing can be regarded as a method of reaching out to the otherness of the world
- in an attempt to understand, or at least acknowledge, the strangeness of reality. As an
artist, I interrogate the visible world and endeavour to transform my perception into marks
on paper. The search for knowledge to facilitate the drawing is like seeking an
acquaintance with another person; it is even comparable to the problem two people
encounter when they fall in love and desire to be united as one being. Levinas,
describes the ‘pathos of love’ as:
... a relationship with what always slips away ....... The pathos of
voluptuousness lies in the fact of being two. The other as other is not here an
object that becomes ours or becomes us; to the contrary it withdraws into its
mystery. 60
In the same terms, the contact which the hand makes with the paper could be described
as a ‘caress’ - as my hand struggles to understand through drawing some object which is
in the world beyond my body:
....the caress does not know what it seeks. This ‘not knowing’, this fundamental
disorder, is the essential. It is like a game with something slipping away, a game
absolutely without project or plan, not with what can become ours or us, but with
something other, always other, always inaccessible and always still to come. 61
Eventually, I have to accept that my drawing will never succeed to my expectation of the
subject I perceive. But in the act of drawing, the drawing itself remains after the ‘caress’ -
as a manifestation of the attempt.
While otherness is always apparent in the body of another, it is also exists in my own
body; not only in the difficulty of interpreting its internal workings but in acknowledging its
outward appearance. Although mind and body are inextricably merged together - the
body being the vehicle through which the mind exists in the world - it is often difficult to
recognise the body we see in the mirror as our own. It is a useful, but not obligatory,
55
Fig. 31
Study 4
56
exercise for anyone who uses the life room to find a suitable opportunity to take their
clothes off and draw themselves. The concern, in making a drawing of one’s own naked
reflection, is not to reflect on personal bodily defects but to examine the phenomenological
situation of the nude. In looking at myself as I draw myself, I see far more than is
possible when using a model as an alter ego. By observing my outward appearance as
an other and simultaneously observing, from inside my body, the activity of drawing as I
participate in it, I experience being both subject and object. (Fig. 31)
In the shifting attitude to the consciousness of another body and in the increased
awareness of one’s own body in the world, there exists an opportunity for what Levinas
calls ‘facing the other’. In contrast to the unattainable otherness defined by Georges
Bataille as “the supreme moment of [silent] eroticism” 62, Levinas maintains that, instead of
otherness being absolutely beyond the reach of our comprehension, we are capable of
acknowledging its existence even if we do not know what it is; and therefore we can
accept and respect its absolute difference. Whether, in arguing for an ethical position, it is
possible for the ‘other’ to reciprocate and ‘face’ us is not our concern here. My suggestion
is that, in the somewhat one-sided relationship between artist and model - where it is only
the artist who makes a drawing - otherness, which is usually seen as absolutely beyond
reach and totally erotic, can here be recognised as something to be respected in its
complete strangeness. The artist ‘faces’ the model and the rest of the world as ‘other’;
the respectful partnership being maintained by the constant movement in the spatial
relationships. It becomes unnecessary for the model to remain static or to pose in a
sequence of actions. By allowing voluntary movement within the basic position of a
pose the model is permitted to become a person - neither object nor automata. This
natural movement is not only more comfortable for, and respectful of, the model, it also
releases the artist from the inclination to make a blind copy of the pose - which would
return the nude to the status of an object.
The use of these methods in the life room will inevitably affect the work that arises from
them. By resisting traditional academic working practices, the artist is encouraged to see
pre-judicially, which facilitates their attempt to draw the world as it actually appears. In
coping with the distortions of shifting focus, perspective is questioned and seen to belong
to geometry rather than phenomenal vision. In actively drawing - out, together or from -
the perception of bodily space and vision, the process leads toward a felt experience
that is independent of received pictorial concepts. The word ‘felt’ will seem less
ambiguous if we take ‘feeling’ as the Kantian sense of a mental faculty midway between
cognition and desire. 63 Feeling - of either pleasure or displeasure - is instrumental when
57
Fig.28 Study 1
Fig.29 Study 2
Fig.30 Study 3
Fig.31 Study 4
58
we form a judgement - which in its turn is midway between our concrete understanding of
phenomena and our mental reasoning on the unknown “supersensible”, or noumena. The
felt experience in a phenomenological approach to drawing is also midway between a
physical act and an intellectual act. The process of drawing is between, and ‘draws’ from,
the physical experience of being here and now in the objective world, (working with
materials and optical vision) and the sensation of an aesthetic engagement (making an
image from subjective and imaginative vision). Sensation here, in Levinas’ terms, having
a function distinct from perception - being “the hold that an image has over us, a function
of rhythm.” 64 Thus a phenomenological act of drawing, is quite different from the classical
approach. Instead of the drawing emerging from a ‘spiritual’ perception of an ideal, the
artist is rooted in the physical perception of being here and now in this world, while
simultaneously being caught up in the rhythmic sensation of the image they envisage.
The resulting picture is therefore linked to the reality of the life world - rather than received
historical knowledge.
IX
Fig.22 Artist and Model
The impact of phenomenology on my approach to life drawing had a simultaneous effect

on my own work. Artist and model (Fig. 22) was painted while reading Merleau-Ponty,
which revealed that using Belinda as an alter ego was insufficient to investigate the
twofold position of seeing and being seen. Subsequently it would be necessary to use
myself as the life model. Following this decision the next series of drawings, Studies 1 - 4
(Figs. 28-31) addressed the issue of my various positions - woman, artist and model,
teacher and student. These were the first images in this project to be shown publicly, in
a group exhibition entitled Artist as Teacher (City of Bath College in 1995). Although I
was not utilising the full radical method outlined above in my teaching, the effect that
Merleau-Ponty was having on my own work was inevitably present in the discussion
with students about their work. Our concerns were the same - developing the ability to
59
Fig.22 Artist and Model
60
see the lived phenomenological world in order to translate it into marks on paper. The
problems of negotiating between perception, reflection and the physical object of the
drawn image are the same for everyone; and drawing from what you perceive in the
world presents the same problems wherever you are. In particular we shared the
problems of the life room, where the aura of tradition meets the attempt to take a fresh
look.
Three fundamental points learned from Merleau-Ponty made a phenomenological

approach to drawing useful for both the students’ studies and my own investigation.
First, being aware that any individual body and its gestural movement exists as an
inseparable part of the surrounding space, and not ‘in space’. Second, being conscious
of how optical vision differs from the constructed vision in a picture - thereby allowing the
physical structure of optical vision to disrupt perspective. Third, regarding the space
existing between the artist and the object perceived in the world as an integral part of the
whole perception.
In Artist and model (Fig. 22), I made use of these principles and introduced several
elements that became significant to the work that followed: myself as a nude figure, the
presence of mirrors, a point of focus with peripheral vision, and the use of fiction within
fact. In each element, I was attempting a conscious break with past representations of
the nude. Although there are instances where artists of both sexes have painted
themselves nude, these are mainly self portraits - here I stand, the artist - whereas my
intention in Artist and model, was to portray the relationship between two people. By
explicitly showing that mirrors provided the method of seeing the figures, I hoped that the
situation would be seen as ‘truthful’. Similarly, I made the distant, nude artist the point of
focus and progressively fragmented the image as it moved outwards from her, in an
attempt to portray an optical ‘fact’. I used transparent fiction in the interchange of dressed
and undressed figures, not only to let the figures ‘speak’ but as a method of emphasising
the reality of the painting as an object playing its part in representation.
With Artist and model the first hurdle of taking my clothes off was accomplished. Although
I had worked as an artist’s model in my youth, being the model for myself was quite
different. It was not merely the problem of getting used to the look of my middle-aged
body, nor the contradiction between its appearance and my inner feelings. There are
physical difficulties in drawing oneself naked. Taking the active role of drawing as well as
the passive role of model can be messy without an overall, and it is physically tedious to
maintain a pose while drawing. My reflected image, in showing me how I appeared to
61
Fig.28 Study 1 Fig.29 Study 2
Fig.31 Study 4
Fig.30 Study 3
62
others, became an object of curiosity, almost another person. Rather than attempt to join
the outward seen body with the seeing person inside, I began to examine differences in
how I might be perceived by other people. In Study 1, I am a model being drawn by the
artist reflected in the background mirror; in Study 2, this is reversed and I am the artist in
the foreground drawing myself in the mirror; in Study 3, I become naked as the artist; and
in Study 4, I am a naked artist drawing myself as I appear clothed in the everyday world.
In ‘performing’ both roles, dividing myself into me and an-other, I was getting away from
the literal copying ‘from nature’ that is the burden of so much figurative art. Just as the
telling of a story does not require factual accuracy, because the mind needs to concentrate
on the substance of the tale, so in the making of a picture, adherence to irrelevant detail
can distract from the subject matter. When attempting to make a serious point in a picture,
attention to the rationality associated with the ‘real’ world can deceive rather than disclose,
whereas an intuitive approach can ‘play’ directly with seriousness. As Picasso said, “We
all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realise the truth ...” 65 Telling ‘lies’
relieves the concern with accuracy, and therefore allows my drawing and painting
technique to become looser - to concentrate on putting across my intentions for the work
by whatever means is most appropriate. The combination of observing my own naked
appearance and making fiction makes it difficult to take refuge in a familiar style or
technique. Other artists have told me that they need to eliminate thought as they paint,
whereas facile mark making can occur in my work if I am not concentrating hard on the
thought behind the act. 66 In tackling work rooted in a concept, the form of concentration
required must be intense enough to drive out extraneous thought - rather than eliminate
thought altogether.
This is relevant here because the study of texts not only informs the visual practice, it
actively adds to the content. This does not mean that the visual work illustrates the
theory but that the reading stimulates the thinking that drives the work. For instance, the
necessary introduction of mirrors when using myself as the model, revealed a fluidity in
reflection through my repeated actions, in moving in and out of the pose while
simultaneously drawing. The edges of the mirror frames kept moving both through the
movement of my body and in being out of focus in my peripheral vision. In making a
drawing under these circumstances, the Gaze is disrupted. Here Norman Bryson’s
writing on the Glance that, in opposition to the Gaze, “proposes desire, proposes the
body, in the durée of its practical activity” 67 directly encouraged me to overcome my
tendency to maintain a tight control on my technique - in allowing the fluidity of the drawing
process to show in the “course of the trace” 68 . By the time Studies 1 - 4 were complete,
63
Fig.32
Me myself and her
Fig.34
Mother and daughter study
1996, charcoal & paper collage
59.2 x 84 cm
64
the accumulation of knowledge from all the reading so far accomplished was imperceptibly
influencing my drawing and painting.
To pursue the relationship between the nude artist drawing and the clothed reflection
posing, I made a large version of Study 4. Although Me myself and her (Fig. 32) at 36 x
43 inches stood out well in an open exhibition, it was not a satisfactory progression. An
increase in size was not enough to develop the content, and my drawing technique had
not adapted to the larger scale. In my concern to preserve the effect of the first version, I
had inadvertently reverted to copying the detail - a further instance of rationality being
less effective than intuition. The result was that my technique tightened up, thus losing
instead of gaining impact, and the second version became simply an enlargement of the
original study.
For the technical problem, I continued to make studies on a normal scale while consciously
loosening up my drawing style, in pursuit of a greater intensity in content. However
repeated drawing of my nude back view in the same pose, inhibited rather than enlivened
the work and made the body appear stiff. Taking a suggestion from a colleague, I tried to
draw the sensation of standing in that position by making marks to correspond with
feelings of weight and pressure on different parts of my body. (Fig. 33)
Fig.33
Feely drawing, 1995,
charcoal on paper, 84 x 59.2 cm
I did not regard these abstract ‘felt’ drawings as an advance in pictorial terms; on the
contrary, by indicating where the tensions were in my body, I was able to use them to
improve the figurative drawings. With the information they provided, I tore up three
drawings, amalgamated the strongest parts of each and continued to draw into the one
study. (Fig. 34)
65
Fig. 35
Mother and Daughter I
1996, oil on canvas
63.5 x 76 cm
Fig. 36
Mother and Daughter II
1996, oil on canvas
121.9 x 91.4 cm
66
To improve the significance of the content, I needed to utilise the mirror’s ability to create
ambiguity and upset the gaze. Another figure was required to move the image away from
self-portraiture and emphasise that the nude in the picture is simultaneously seeing and
being seen. At first, I tried to put my husband in the background but that changed the
subject matter and made it a picture about marriage. The juxtaposition between male and
female was too strong, the additional person needed to be no more than an observer of
the nude. While my intention is to reconsider the female nude and to affirm that the body
can be individual, it is not simply a feminist concern to do with ideals of beauty in the
eyes of men. As stated previously, the concerns are neither gender specific nor age
specific but affect anyone who feels, under pressure from our culture, that their body is
not perfect. My daughter at the time was fourteen and full of adolescent anxieties - so I
put her into the picture. Her presence as a youthful figure retained the ambiguity lost with
the introduction of a male presence - allowing some fluidity in the perception of her as my
daughter or as my younger self. In addition, this uncertainty helped to avoid any
tendency to moralise and made it possible to maintain a light touch - even to introduce a
little humour through suggesting teenage attitudes to older people.
While making the first painting of this series (Fig. 35), it was difficult to achieve the right
balance for the shadowy daughter in relation to my clothed reflection against the light -
they were too similar and too weak beside the nude. I did not want a chorus of two
observing the nude but a single observer viewing my double presence. Unable to
resolve this when working from the photographs I had taken of my daughter, I made her
pose for me. She was most unwilling - but the result from fifteen minutes of hurried
painting made her a powerful presence with her own ‘other’ agenda. She disrupted all my
previous careful study and removed my control over the relationship between us in the
picture. I hoped that anyone viewing the painting would feel themselves to be a third
individual involved in the same scene.
In both Mother & daughter I and the second version, Mother & daughter II (Fig. 36), there
is a continuance of the play between the figurative illusion, the painted surface and
peripheral vision. In the first, my naked back is in sharp focus on the left but breaks up
into the marks of the painting behind on the right, emphasising the loss of focus as well as
the body as paint. In the second larger version the studio space is represented - from
the uneven black mirror framing the whole painting, with the foreground blur of my
shoulder, across the scatter of drawings to the distant reflections in the mirror, with the
focal point around my left naked elbow. Having put phenomenology into my visual
practice, the next step was to test the results on a viewing public.
67
Fig. 37
4 views: on the phenomenological world
Exhibition, UWE Bristol, October 1996
68
The Mother and Daughter paintings and drawings needed to be shown publicly; to test
the effectiveness of my phenomenological approach to the nude by finding out what
meaning the images had for the viewer, and whether my intentions were in any way
apparent. I therefore initiated a small exhibition with three other artists engaged in post
graduate study, each with their own interest in phenomenology. We presented
4 views: on the phenomenological world. in the Drawing Centre on the Bower Ashton campus
at UWE Bristol, in October 1996. Janette Kerr showed landscapes of the night, Sandie
Macrae made an installation around perceptions of space, and Judith Rosenthal showed
still life paintings associated with familiarity. My Mother and Daughter pictures were
shown together with one earlier painting and three preliminary studies for my next series
of paintings.
Our choice of venue was dictated by availability and cost, which necessarily constrained
our methods of presentation. The Drawing Centre is a working studio, used mainly for life
drawing. While this posed problems for the other artists - whose concerns were around
the lack of flexibility in lighting levels and the physical shape of the space - I felt the
venue to be appropriate to my work on the painted nude. But I was mistaken in thinking
that an association, between the content in my pictures and the everyday activity of the
life room, would be sufficient to reveal my intentions to a viewer. It seemed that by
hanging a few framed paintings and drawings on a white wall, they were perceived to be
in an ‘art gallery’ - no matter how physically close they were placed to the furniture of a
working studio. (Fig. 37)
With the work held firmly by an ‘art’ context, the tendency was to perceive the nude in its
traditional position as an object for the viewer, separate from actuality. A division
between the physical perception - the act of seeing a picture - and the manifestation of
that perception - responding to the content of the picture - prevented the viewer from
connecting personally with the subject portrayed. The picture remained separate as a
piece of art. Blanchot describes an object perceived in this manner as a fascinating
image. He explains this in terms of the situation when a tool is broken and loses its
function, or a person dies and the living body becomes a corpse. In losing their function
as a useful tool or a living person in the world, the remaining object “begins to resemble
itself”, taking on a “cadaverous resemblance”; and, in surrendering its connection with the
person using it, becomes an art object removed from reality. 69
69
Fig. 36 Mother and Daughter II
Fig. 35 Mother and Daughter I
70
The fact that the pictures were being seen in a traditional mode, separate from the world
around them, became evident during a seminar held in the exhibition. Apart from some
incidental interest in the novelty of exhibiting figurative painting, the main concerns for
those attending were to find out what I wanted my pictures to convey and to obtain a
definition of phenomenology. No one, particularly in the public arena of a seminar, was
prepared to offer an unmediated response. This difficulty in eliciting reactions, other than
a conventional perception of the painted nude, was also evident in the answers to the
questionnaire offered to visitors to the exhibition. In an attempt to keep the questions
simple, I had asked whether each picture had any meaning and if so, what single words
might describe them. 70 Two thirds of the questionnaires returned gave answers that
followed my format, and the most revealing were the single word descriptions. However,
there was no reference to the proximity of the painted nude to the life room and, with one
exception, no one identified personally with the images. The descriptions of meaning in
the pictures referred mainly to the subject matter and sometimes to its therapeutic value.
The remaining third of the returned questionnaires were either unable to give answers, or
put question marks at the end of their answers, or asked direct questions such as “Is this
about vulnerability?” These responses indicated that the questionnaire was seen as a
challenge to guess my intentions, rather than an opportunity to express a spontaneous
response to the pictures.
There was one exceptional and spontaneous reaction to the work, which took me quite
unawares. A friend, and fellow artist, visited the show and we met immediately
afterwards. She was very upset, because the Mother and Daughter paintings reminded
her vividly of particular circumstances in her life. She even felt that the images were
hers rather than mine - not in the sense of possession but as if she had made them
herself. Apart from not wishing to deliberately manufacture such a reaction, this was a
situation that was impossible to foresee. Very occasionally I have had a similar
response to an image; but its rarity, strength of emotion and singularity put it beyond
the category of a standard response, which might be aimed for when making a picture.
However the nature of reaction was noteworthy, because it held such a powerful sense
of the real world for the viewer - a significant point that would eventually emerge later in
the research. 71
The overall feedback from the seminar and questionnaires suggested two points. In
terms of research method, my procedure for gaining feedback was not satisfactory, the
control imposed had misfired and the actual information gathered had been too vague.
71
72
In future, it should be carefully targeted but still leave scope for unbiased and
spontaneous response. The major practical and theoretical finding was that although the
making process had advanced, the relationship between the picture and the viewer
remained unsatisfactory. No matter how radical the thinking behind the making process,
the viewer would need some assistance concerning the manner in which the picture is
seen.
A phenomenological approach offers radical strategies for making images of the body,
with the potential for conveying a different meaning from a reading based in a possessive
gaze. But if the resulting picture is unable to articulate its content to a viewer, then that
possibility is unfulfilled. A picture does not complete its function until it is seen by another
person after the artist has made it. It is not enough for the artist to see the nude anew;
the work produced must be effective in making the viewer do the same. In terms of the
life room, the interaction established between artist and model 72 must also occur between
the drawing and the person who views it. The painted nude will not be seen in terms of
another (naked) person capable of dialogue, if the viewer tries to deduce the intentions of
the artist who made the picture - who is by this time a third and absent person. The
dialogue must be in the present - between a body in the world facing an image in the
world - just as the artist stands before the model. Ultimately, the interaction between
picture and viewer is where the fate of the nude is decided. A phenomenological
approach to painting the nude will not be effective until the artist addresses the problem
of how the viewer can perceive a phenomenologically real body.
XI
The exhibition 4 views: on the phenomenological world revealed that, with one exception,
I had not been able to generate interaction between my portrayal of the nude and the
viewer. Phenomenology was clearly insufficient, when applied to the making process
alone. My practice needed to be analysed, in order to understand what was required
for the viewer to be able to relate the image to a real body. The question of how the
work was interpreted had to addressed.
Although I had begun to study hermeneutics, I did not immediately make the connection
between the theoretical ‘art of interpretation’ and its practical application in relation to
Realism. Taking a more direct, and perhaps simplistic, approach to the problem, I decided
73
74
to try and compare the interpretation of my paintings with that of other work portraying the
realistic nude. Believing that I needed to situate my phenomenological approach in
relation to other ‘Realisms’, I set out to gain an understanding of how realism has
functioned in the past. I therefore attempted a search in art history for examples of
Realism, which not only appear real to me, but were seen as real by their contemporary
viewers. If a comparison could be made, between my sense of the real in the image and
the acknowledged art historical reasons for its Realism, I could then identify common
factors to inform a strategy for Realist painting. A further series of paintings could then be
made specifically to appear real to a viewer. The work would be exhibited to a broad
sector of the public, including at least some people unaccustomed to visiting galleries;
and an effective method of gaining feedback would be organised to suit the
circumstances.
This procedure for defining an effective Realism seemed straightforward, but depended
on the happenstance of matching examples of art historical Realism, with my subjective
selection of Realist images. Although not expecting the task to be a simple one, due to
the wealth of material to be examined, I underestimated its complexity and elusiveness.
The unexpected difficulties encountered not only led my investigation along a different
route, away from art history and into hermeneutics, but opened up a significant shift in my
thinking process. I eventually realised that if the Realism I sought could not be found in
established texts, then I would have to develop and articulate the particular concept of
Realist art required for this research.
During this uncertain, and at times confused, period of the research, two initially disparate
lines of investigation gradually converged. On the one hand, from the beginning, was the
realisation that a phenomenological approach to making work requires explication and is
therefore, as Ricoeur indicates, involved in hermeneutics.
All phenomenology is an explication of evidence and an evidence of explication.

An evidence which is explicated, an explication which unfolds evidence: such is
the phenomenological experience. It is in this sense that phenomenology can be
realised only as hermeneutics. 73
On the other hand my attempt, to connect Realism in art history with my conception of
Realist art, revealed the first major problem in defining Realism - described by Linda
Nochlin thus:
75
Fig.38
Philip Pearlstein
Female Nude Reclining on Bentwood Love Seat
Fig. 39 John Everett Millais Fig. 40 Edgar Dégas Fig. 41 George Grosz
76
A basic cause of the confusion bedevilling the notion of Realism is its ambiguous
relationship to the highly problematical concept of reality. 74
However, on one point I felt certain: if Realism has any connection to reality, then it
should not be confused with Naturalism. Exemplified in a contemporary form by the work
of Philip Pearlstein (Fig. 38), Naturalism is often considered to be the same as Realism
but, in a fastidious copy from nature, detail is given a false importance that does not
correspond to optical vision, 75 and is likely to draw attention away from content that
conveys reality. 76
While exceptional mimesis can be marvelled at, it can also put up a
veil of brilliance that keeps the viewer at a distance, which leaves no room for imagination,
participation is not required, and in the ‘fascinating image’ 77 presented there is nothing for
the viewer to do except admire the illusion. Eric Fischl identifies the initial separation of
Realism from Naturalism in the work of Cézanne, who introduced the idea that a work
could be complete before it was ‘finished’ in the academic manner. By allowing the
expression of an idea to govern the point when an image is complete, and resisting the
idea of perfection in portraying an object, the focus shifted away from dazzling illusion,
with the result that “when doubt enters the picture the nature of realism changes.” 78 For
my project on the nude, Realism should reach beyond naturalism to give the viewer a
sense of actuality, in which there is room for doubt.
The search for an effective Realism began among the many schools of European painting
that have emerged since the mid 19th century, each claiming an agenda for Realism (Figs.
39 - 44): the Pre-Raphaelites - a devotion to contextual truth; Impressionism - optical
phenomenology; Expressionism, Futurism and the various movements within Neue
Sachlichkeit, 79 together with Surrealism’s playful ‘extra’ realism; the ‘proletarian culture’ of
Fig. 42 René Magritte Fig. 43 Alexander Deyneka Fig. 44 Allen Jones
77
Fig. 45 Max Beckmann
Fig. 46 Pierre Bonnard
Fig. 47 Rembrandt van Rijn Fig. 48 Éduoard Manet Fig. 49 Edward Hopper
78
Socialist Realism, which also reappears in the high verisimilitude of Photorealism; and the
Modernist view in the 1960’s New Realism of the solid artifact in front of the picture plane
- still evident in the found object and contextually relevant materials in conceptual work
today. None of these art historical movements offer the consistent sense of actuality that
I seek. While a small number of individual paintings do achieve Realism, these are not
confined to one school, nor are they restricted to the Realist movements of the last two
hundred years, being found in the 17th century and even earlier.
I attempted to narrow the search by looking at artists whose subject matter is similar to
mine. Although using myself as the subject I am not aiming to portray my physical
likeness in self-portraiture; instead I make use of my appearance to explore a concept. A
better description would be ‘self art’ - a term adopted by Timothy Hymen in his book on
Pierre Bonnard, originally used by German critics in the 1920’s to describe artists such as
Lovis Corinth and Max Beckmann. 80 Here, however, we differ stylistically in our
approach. My work is not the dramatic narrative of ‘circus Beckmann’ nor does it have the
child-like innocence of Bonnard, which hides sadness in the brilliant and the beautiful.
(Figs. 45 & 46) The Realism I seek is not a theatrical presentation that makes a colourful
play of sadness, but has a dark side that relates to the difficulty of living in the world; and
even when such a darkness is lightened by irony or humour, it is grounded in the
uncertainty of real day to day existence.
There are very few examples of a Realism, specifically for the nude, that work for me;
but these will be found in the work of Rembrandt, Manet, Edward Hopper, Lucian Freud
and Eric Fischl (Figs. 47 - 51). My choice appears to be based entirely on subjective
Fig. 50 Lucian Freud Fig. 51 Eric Fischl
reaction; but then who is to say what constitutes Realism when there is such diversity
in Realist art - as Nochlin points out:
79
Fig.52
Gustave Courbet
The Bathers
80
Many writers and artists have imagined they were realistic. Nietzsche said that all
good artists always have done so - and that realism in art is just an illusion. 81
If Realism is only an illusion and there is no consensus of opinion, where can a Realism
be found that will be effective for making a Realist painting, which can be perceived by
more than one viewer? Some link has to be found between events in art history and
individual subjective experience.
Leaving aside the investigation into different styles of Realism in art history, I turned to
the social and political background of 19th century Realism; being an identifiable
movement, particularly in France where the arts were involved with continuing issues
arising from the French Revolution. There was a major shift away from the classical
academy towards an empirical Realism throughout Europe at this time, linked to
developments in philosophy and science coming out of the Enlightenment. 82 In a study
of Courbet, the problem with art history was brought into perspective through the
juxtaposition of his work, as it is seen today, with the reaction that it caused when first
exhibited - coming together in the manner of Walter Benjamin’s ‘dialectical image’. 83 This
historical connection, defined by Ricoeur as distanciation, places the subject of the work
of art (or text) as the “basis for communication in and through distance”. 84 Consequently
the interpretation of the work shifts away from a concern with the artists intentions to
focus on the interaction between viewer and image. Eventually, with the aid of
Gadamer’s writing on hermeneutics, I formed the concept of Realism as an event for the
viewer.
What follows, in the next three sections, is the journey made to discover that definition of
Realism. Beginning with a study of Courbet, it proceeds through a hermeneutical
analysis of the encounter with Realism and the phenomenological circumstances of the
viewer, to end by questioning where an ‘Event of Realism’ can be situated in aesthetics.
XII
Gustave Courbet, the ‘Father of Realism’, (Fig. 52) is a notable omission in my personal
choice of Realist artists. He is such a key figure in the French Realist movement that the
question of his absence must be answered and his position in this project established.
81
Fig.53
Éduoard Manet
Le déjeuner sur l’herbe
1863, oil on canvas, 208 x 264.5 cm
82
My initial ignorance of 19th century French history and concurrent developments in art,
meant that Courbet’s painting did not at first appear radical to me, compared to
innovations in the art scene today - so his work did not stimulate a sense of the real.
However, throughout my search for an effective Realism for the viewer, Courbet has
been a continual presence; and the range of points of view reflected in studies of
Courbet provides an analogy for the problem of defining Realism.
T. J. Clark, in Image of the People: Gustave Courbet and the 1848 Revolution, situates
Courbet historically and demonstrates that his Realism was closely associated with, and
made effective by, the social and political situation of the time. In referring to the impact of
Courbet’s pictures in the Paris Salon of 1851, he writes:
... art is sometimes historically effective. The making of a work of art is one
historical process among other acts, events and structures - it is a series of actions
in but also on history. It may become intelligible only within the context of given
and imposed structures of meaning; but in its turn it can alter and at times disrupt
these structures. 85
In a social history of art Clark is not interested in art that portrays history, but in the
complex relationship between history and art, and the effects each has on the other.
Having established that Courbet’s key Realist works known as the ‘breakthrough’
pictures were astonishing to his contemporaries because of their contemporary social and
political relevance, Clark’s concern does not extend to Courbet’s later work, after 1855,
because it is no longer engaged with politics.
Linda Nochlin also regards Courbet’s significant contribution to Realism as ending in 1855;
and in addition, when it comes to the crucial break with the past in terms of Realist
painting, she rates Manet above Courbet. Although acknowledging that Courbet
“rescued painting once and for all from its bondage to literature”, it is Manet who
accomplishes the “making of art about art”. (Fig. 53)
... despite the undeniably innovating quality of Courbet’s achievement, if one

were forced to draw the boundary-line between the past and the present in the art
of the nineteenth century, one would inevitably draw it in 1863 with Manet’s
Olympia or his Déjeuner sur l’herbe rather than in 1850 with Courbet’s Burial at
Ornans. 86
83
Fig.55
Jean François Millet
The Gleaners
Fig.54
Gustave Courbet Fig. 56
The Stonebreakers Gustave Courbet
1849-50, oil on canvas, 190 x 300 cm The Painter’s Studio
Fig.48
Éduoard Manet
Olympia
84
The difference between Manet and Courbet is most apparent in the approach of each
artist to the nude. Courbet’s most effective Realism is in his engagement with
contemporary concerns of class and labour. His ability to represent an uncompromising
view of real rural poverty in Stone-breakers (Fig. 54), set a standard for the Realism of
his time that outshone more pictorially pleasing images such as Jean François Millet’s The
Gleaners (Fig. 55) who have an additional glow of “pathos and nobility beyond sheer
descriptive actuality” 87 But in his portrayal of the nude Courbet did not adhere to his
Realist principles. Even if his contemporary public may have found his nudes too
lumpen and realistic, the context in which he situated them reverts to the traditional
settings of nymphs in woodland - as in The Bathers (Fig. 52). As Kenneth Clark
comments:
Courbet, for all his defiant trumpetings, continued to see the female body through
memories of the antique. 88
Manet on the other hand, was far more radical in Le déjeuner sur l’herbe and Olympia,
both considered “bizarre and immoral”, at the time. 89 The latter causing such a stir that
Manet complained in a letter to Baudelaire, “... they are raining insults on me, I’ve never
been led such a dance...” 90
Today, Courbet’s images of the nude appear at best sentimental 19th century naturalism
and at worst to be indulging the male gaze. While the nude in The Painter’s Studio (Fig.
54) may seem to Michael Fried to be “the bearer rather than merely the object of the look”,
91
to an ‘uninformed’ viewer - particularly a 20th century female conditioned to identify with
the female in the picture - she will be read as a naked woman in a subservient position, in
a room full of clothed people (21 men, 4 women and a small boy). Manet too is
sometimes regarded today as sexist but, in portraying Olympia as a prostitute (Fig. 48),
he can also be seen as making a social comment on the position of girls in certain sectors
of his society. Neither Courbet nor Manet are seen as innovatively Realist today, and it
seems that when a contemporary Realism is shown out of its time, it loses its impact.
The question remains as to whether being contemporary is sufficient for an effective

Realism. On the issue of making contemporary work, Linda Nochlin demonstrates that
there are three potential methods for ‘contemporaneity’ but that only one of them will be
valid for Realists; this being:
85
86
... an actual confrontation with and serious, unidealized embodiment of, the
concrete experiences, events, customs and appearances characteristic of one’s
own epoch, whether this be with a spirit of moral urgency or of phenomenological
indifference to the social and human values involved. 92
The other two less relevant approaches are: to use contemporary subject matter but
represent it in traditional forms of allegory and symbolic expression; or to declare
contemporaneity through the implication of being avant garde. I am in agreement with
Nochlin in that neither of these methods would be effective for the type of Realism
required for this project. Both the alternatives rely on an informed viewer; thus excluding
anyone who does not either have a knowledge of traditional iconography or is not au fait
with the latest developments in art. While the recommended approach offers sound
guidelines for making Realist work, the strategies of being contemporary and avoiding
abstraction do not address the problem of the viewer who comes afterwards - who is not
contemporary with the production of the work.
There is no doubt that Courbet made a considerable contribution to the move away from
‘literary schemata’ to the ‘empirical investigation of reality’. Michael Fried, in his book
Courbet’s Realism, is concerned that this side of his work should be fully appreciated.
While acknowledging the work on Courbet by historians and art historians such as
Timothy Clark and Linda Nochlin, Fried feels they do not recognise the revolutionary
inclusion of the ‘beholder’ within the image. In a strongly interpretive account of the artist’s
intentions, Fried develops a phenomenological analysis of Courbet’s entire oeuvre - not
just the ‘breakthrough’ pictures. However his step by step explanation, of the position of
the artist’s body seen integrated into the composition in each picture, can only be
disseminated through the mediation of Fried himself. He offers a single subjectivity as a
potentially ‘universal’ truth. 93
Fried’s subjectivity is significant here because it highlights the problem for this project of
the relationships between established knowledge and a phenomenological encounter. 94
Established knowledge here means the artist’s intentions as well as received art historical
or philosophical information. A phenomenological encounter refers to both the artist’s
approach to the nude and the viewer’s meeting with the image of a nude. Fried’s
interesting, albeit prescriptive, readings of Courbet’s paintings demonstrate the depth
possible in a phenomenological approach to an image. In my role as an ‘artist beholder’,
I too study both my own and other artists’ work phenomenologically, as a way of
87
Fig. 57
Thomas Couture
Romans of the Decadence, 1847, oil on canvas, 472 x 772 cm
Fig. 58
Gustave Courbet
Fig. 59 Thomas Couture
Burial at Ornans,1849-50, oil on canvas, 315 x 668 cm
Romans of the Decadence, in the Musée d’Orsay
88
constructing meaning in order either to continue the making process or to understand the
work. But I do not expect other people necessarily to agree with my intentions in making
work, nor to find my reading of other works significant. There is a difference to be
determined between what can be found in an image and the process of reading it. A
phenomenological reading will always be subjective, but the hermeneutical process of a
phenomenological reading can be identified as a valuable approach for looking at works of
art. It is worth remembering that, as Wollheim points out:
The spectator will always understand more that the artist intended, and the artist
will always have intended more than any single spectator understands. 95
Perhaps it should also be noted that different accounts of art history can be as variable
as individual reactions to a work of art.
The investigations of T. J. Clark, Michael Fried and Linda Nochlin seek to define
Courbet’s Realism - through social/political, theoretical and art historical means - in order to
understand the disturbance it caused. But they do not look at the event, the actual
experience of Realism - what happened to the individual members of the public as they
stood in front of the pictures and felt their own reactions. It is only by understanding how
the pictures affected the viewers that a Realism can be found that may overcome the
restriction of contemporaneity.
As part of my investigation into Courbet, I went to see his work in the Musée d’Orsay in
Paris. Hanging opposite to the Courbet side gallery is a large painting by Thomas
Couture called Romans of the Decadence (Fig. 57), painted in 1847. Both the Couture
and Courbet’s Burial at Ornans (Fig. 58) were exhibited in the same Salon of 1851. Both
paintings are constructed in the monumental form of history paintings, and both carry a
political message. Couture was a Republican and the Romans of the Decadence is a
critique of Louis Philippe and contemporary society; 96 but, being presented in academic
form, the meaning would not necessarily have been understood by the general public.
The juxtaposition of these two paintings in the same exhibition must have had a
significant effect on the public reaction to Burial at Ornans.
Imagine walking through the Musée d’Orsay today as if you are entering the salon of
1851, to see the Courbet and the Couture hanging in the same gallery. Having walked
by Romans of the Decadence (Fig. 59) and turned left to enter the bay where the
89
Fig. 60 Gustave Courbet

Burial at Ornans, in the Musée d’Orsay
90
Courbet hangs, the first sight of Burial at Ornans is from the side and against the light - all
that is visible is shiny black paint on strips of canvas sewn together horizontally. (Figs.
60) It is difficult to see any image unless you are far enough away and facing the centre
of the picture. The first impression of Burial at Ornans is that it is truly monumental in
size; so is Romans of the decadence, but the Courbet is so dark and the people in it so
different. The gathering is haphazard, the assembly has the chaos of a real crowd;
every individual contemplating the occasion in their own way - in contrast to the Couture
where all participants appear to be focused in the subject of the painting. Burial at
Ornans is a history painting of an everyday event but it is also monumental because it is
about death - everyday death. Religion is portrayed as a group of people in control -
they are dominant visually as well - ordinary human beings not at all godly. The social
hierarchy is unclear - not only do the officials show human frailty but the crowd is not
particularly humble, neither clearly peasant nor clearly bourgeois.
At the time of the original exhibition in 1851, the distinction between the classes was
blurred by the rapid rise and fall in individual economic circumstances, which caused a
general feeling of social and economic uncertainty - not unlike the ‘boom and bust’ years
of Margaret Thatcher’s government. While some viewers would have enjoyed the
recognition of people like themselves in the picture; others of another, probably higher,
class would have found the ambiguity of the bourgeois peasant disturbing. The painting
was so relevant to the existences of those who saw it that most of them probably had an
experience of Realism.
The circumstances which earned Courbet his position as the ‘father of Realism’ were
formed as much by the public reaction to his paintings as by their style or content. In
1851 the public would have expected images like Couture’s - history painting, in
academic style with or without a political message - not like Courbet’s Burial at Ornans,
which is as big as a history painting but portrays an everyday occurrence recognised by
everyone who saw it. Since Courbet, the term Realism has been applied to many
different schools of painting; but each of these Realisms refers to the style of painting
method, they do not indicate an event which could arouse a sense of actuality in the
viewer.
Realism, for this project, is an ‘Event’, not a style. While looking at some paintings,
there occurs, on some occasions, an instant recognition of actuality. Usually that
moment occurs to an individual but occasionally there is a collective reaction - as in the
reception of Courbet’s ‘breakthrough pictures’. Neither the content of the moment (be it
91
Fig. 61
The background is all darkness . The
black shape in the centre between
Olympia and her maid forms a
Manet’s ‘Olympia’ is downward arrow - emphasised by the
beautiful ‘in the flesh’. Her edge of the screen - pointing directly at
skin, which seems so Olympia’s crotch. She is sandwiched -
pallid in reproduction, in her body and her silks - between
glows with a youthful dark background, with arrow to crotch,
firmness; a faint pink and the bottom triangle of mattress.
blush here and there - The metaphor of dark and light hints at
lower leg, heel, near Olympia’s actual situation. A
forearm and hand, neck suggestion of her possible existence,
The humour in her face, which
and chest, and most read through the formal qualities of the
is only really evident quite
subtle of all her near composition. Her possible reality, with
close, is surprising. Her
nipple. The sheets are all its excess of being, nevertheless
mouth is about to move - to
silk - very rich.The Thepaleness of her flesh - on her rightgrounded in the reality of the painted
pout or smile or speak.
mattress, which breast,
shows near
as her torso, near her leg and surface.
There is a vital tension in her
a dark triangleknee at the- where detail disappears in the cheeks and chin. Her maid is
bottom is rich lightness,
dark red is dazzling as if blinding the almost smiling too - are they
brocade and as viewer exposed
thick as a to it. Her face, has a
sharing a joke? The cat has a
modern interiorlittle more
sprung colour being enriched by
Although she has all the trappings of a Venus,familiar, like Titian’s - sensuality; a
casual
mattress. The features,
pillows and
are is separated from her
reclining on silk drapery, with attendants - heryoung embroidered
cat with big paws
huge, the body
whole bedby her
is neck ribbon. It is
silk shawl looks like a cheap oriental import and only her she ison the silk, its body
planted
hugefingering
- holding, body which dazzles.
it self-consciously. Her attendants are a black girltail disappearing
and waving
supporting her; it makes
and a black cat - hardly traditional cherubs. The intogift of flowers
darkness.
her look tiny ..........
held by her maid are still in their wrapping paper - a tight
Olympia is very young - mid-
bunch symmetrically arranged - straight from her lover’s,
teens? She oris not a hard little
keeper’s, florist. Olympia is not so much reclining
tartas leaning
she is like any number of
back ; not exactly relaxed, more firmly planted fifteen
- the hand
yearonold girls. She is
her crotch and thigh in defiant command. Her footfingering
could kick her silk shawl with
her slipper off any moment - the slipper, well wornone withhand
a and holding her
dirty sole. Venus would not wear slippers - or jewellery for her crotch with
thigh across
that matter. She is both goddess and prostitute. the other. She is all self-
consciousness.
92
memory or revelation, fact or myth), nor the manner of its arrival (by stealth or like a
thunderbolt), is relevant at this point. It is the structure of that experience that is of
concern here.
XIII
Gadamer’s hermeneutics offer a way to examine a viewer’s encounter with a painting,

which indicate the circumstances that may stimulate what I will refer to as ‘an Event of
Realism’. At first glance his concept of the experience of art appears to resemble an
Event of Realism - but the latter is more radical in its effect on the viewer. For Gadamer,
there are three key elements in the encounter with a work of art: play, symbol and
festival. 97
Realism in painting also operates through these qualities - up to a certain
point, where it then disrupts Gadamer’s concept by making a direct connection across the
gap that separates the picture from the world of the viewer.
Play: is the actual interaction between object and viewer - the movement to and fro of
showing, seeing and thinking - during the spectator’s engagement with the work of art. As
the intellect comes into play, we read the work and construct meaning. For Gadamer, this
must be a continuous play involving the entire work. (Fig. 61) If the work is to have
meaning - or ‘hermeneutic identity’ 98
- it has to speak to the spectator and provide
something which can be understood in the context of their world. Introducing the viewer
to the world of the picture does not provide an escape from reality but leaves the viewer
transformed - i.e. it has a lasting effect on the viewer because by demanding something
from them - ‘making a claim’ - their subsequent interaction with the painting becomes part
of the viewer’s actuality and will therefore become part of their life experience - their
‘continuity’. Gadamer describes this play which flows to and fro as being ‘without any
purpose and without strain’. Realism, in this project, has two areas affected by ‘flow’. In
one - the physical act of looking - it is true that there is no strain; but in the other - the
perception of a meaning which appears real - here, contrary to Gadamer, there is a strain
caused by disruption.
In the physical act of looking, where the initial play occurs, it is true that there is no
purpose or strain. One cannot prevent oneself seeing and then perceiving something.
Merleau-Ponty says the act of looking at a painting is carnal, that ‘to see’ is to place
oneself in the object, whilst remaining inside the body:
93
94
Vision is not a certain mode of thought or presence to self; it is the means given
to me for being absent from myself, for being present at the fission of Being from
the inside - the fission at whose termination, and not before, I come back to
myself. 99
The motion in the act of looking is like the movement to and fro in play. The pictorial
image, which facilitates the movement and causes a heightened attention in the viewer, is
the place to which the self travels before returning to connect with it’s own existence. In
providing this aesthetic experience, it “takes the person experiencing it out of the context
of his life, by the power of the work of art, and yet relates him back to the whole of his
existence”. 100 If the viewer, during the act of looking at a picture, recognises a direct
reference to their own existence, then the image will seem to convey a sense of purpose.
Whether or not this purpose is clearly defined, the continuous play is disrupted by the
intrusion of added meaning, which cuts into the free flow of interaction bridging the fissure
between viewer and picture. Here a strain inevitably occurs, because the viewer is
unable to resist the interest in a connection that links their own existence to the world of
the picture. Their attention oscillates precariously across the gap, as the power of the
added meaning transforms the experience into an Event of Realism.
Symbol: The picture shows itself and offers us an opportunity to discover what it may
reveal. For Gadamer, a symbol is like a picture, being a representation that is also
present as itself. The original classical meaning of a symbol - the token of remembrance
broken in two - indicates that the symbol only represents a part of the whole meaning.
This also applies to an image which both reveals and conceals meaning, maintaining an
excess which cannot be grasped. In Realism, the direct connection, made by the viewer
with the image, suggests the possibility of complete revelation - but it remains out of
reach. We glimpse both presence and absence, in a disruption that elevates us into
excitement but at the same time grounds us in reality.
Festival: For Gadamer, festival celebration is a form of representation and therefore

resembles art. The same festival - for instance 5th November - will be celebrated time
and again and each time the experience will be different. Similarly, a work of art is viewed
repeatedly. In the performing arts every production will be different; and it is the same for
an exhibition of pictures, which is an event of representation. While a festival is in
progress or a spectator is viewing a work of art, it is as if time is arrested, brought to a
standstill for the duration of the event - the period of the play. Gadamer calls this ‘fulfilled’
95
Fig. 62
Gustave Courbet
The Origin of the World - in the Musée d’Orsay
Courbet painted ‘The origin of the world’ after Manet’ painted

‘Olympia’ - is this significant? Instead of making a picture of a Read as any other
female nude with a substance similar to ‘Burial at Ornans’, he has picture in a gallery,
opted for a plain confrontational approach which is pornography ‘The origin of the
not realism. It was no doubt commissioned as an erotic piece and world’ evades a
therefore intended for a small private audience; hardly surprising complete encounter
that it reads differently in a large public gallery. Nobody lingers with the viewer; it
before it; women look at it in pairs and the seats in front of it are reads most
nearly always empty. comfortably as a
landscape. There is
no personality or
even human
presence other than
the beholder of the
picture. As a
landscape of an
entrance to
somewhere it works,
as a person it does
not - being
anatomically
unsound. Courbet
appears to have
trouble connecting
the parts of the body
internally - the thigh
An alternative reading is as a bunch of flowers in does not fit into the
white paper; certainly some treat or a present - pelvis.
presented in the white cloth - which is definitely
wrapping not clothing. The nipple is just visible
promising more to unwrap. The gold frame is like a
chocolate box - over elaborate, frilly, brassy and out
of proportion to the picture and its contents.
96
or ‘autonomous’ time. If Realism occurs it will happen at some point during the
autonomous time of playing. For Gadamer, the spectator can only succeed in a proper
experience of the work of art if they listen with their ‘inner ear’; which indicates an
individual response different from the actuality of the event. But if that individual
response is the discovery of a moment of Realism, the viewer will ‘fall into a private,
subjective experience’ - thus disrupting the unity of the public ‘festival’ experience. 101
In an Event of Realism there is a significant moment of perception that reveals Realism.

This moment can occur at any time while looking at a painting. The picture, as an object,
is immediately visible to us. We also have immediate knowledge of a possibility of
meaning. But a perception of Realism will depend on how we view the painting;
whether we are susceptible to an intrusion upon our constructed interpretation of the
image - that is capable of both bridging the gap and holding us at a distance from the
picture. We need to engage in a particular form of attention when viewing the image.
Gadamer warns of the danger of “aesthetic differentiation”, which can prevent the
spectator from perceiving meaning in a work of art. Aesthetic differentiation is to see the
work in abstract terms, to make a “purely aesthetic” evaluation of the quality of individual
parts and therefore fail to perceive the work in its entirety. 102 It therefore appears that in
order to perceive Realism the viewer must resist aesthetic differentiation and commit their
attention to the picture as a whole. For instance, instead of finding The Origin of the
World (Fig. 62) erotic, it appears to me fragmented and incomplete, thereby allowing me to
slip into aesthetic differentiation - to notice the
technique and see its limitations. Traditions in
presentation, technique, styles or mannerisms in
painting can all induce aesthetic differentiation and
are therefore capable of obstructing the perception
of meaning by the spectator. For instance when
Courbet reverts to a classical setting for the nude -
even if the body is real compared to the academic
model - the style becomes familiar, so that we
accept received meaning without questioning the
work for ourselves. (Fig. 63)
Fig. 61
Gustave Courbet
The Source, 1868, oil on canvas, 128 x 97 cm
97
The skin colours and brush

work are tacky; but they do
look like real girls - doing what
girls do in the bathroom.
Wait a moment;
the girl on the left
is looking out of
the window; and
she is drying her
crotch - which she
has just washed - Maybe she is
at the same time. telling her sister
what she can see
- whatever that
may be. Yes,
Fig. 64 that is what girls
Eric Fischl do in the
Sisters bathroom -
1983, oil on canvas, 274.3 x 213.4 cm
really.
Fig. 65
When I first saw this painting, in the book I Eric Fischl
passed it by. I was only looking at female Grief
nudes and it is a rather unattractive dark 1981, oil on canvas, 152.4 x 165.1 cm
grey image.
Going through the book again, I noticed
the title ‘Grief’ and paused. What grief
was there for a man on a stony shore?
And then I saw the colour - or lack of it - in
the limp figure he is holding, and to a
certain extent, is masking from view. He
is holding the body of his drowned child.
In his underpants - wrinkled and sodden,
Now I can hardly water and tears pouring down his face
bear to look at the and off the end of his nose - he has just
picture. It is too dragged the boy out of the water; and
real, it conjures up hugs him knowing it is all over.
a parent’s worst
nightmare.
98
Whereas, Eric Fischl can stimulate effective Realism despite his so-called lack of technical
ability. (Fig. 64) Instead of being fascinated by painterly achievement, the viewer has a
tendency to dismiss or demote the work because of the supposed lack of skill. In this
unguarded moment, the image can unexpectedly pull the viewer’s attention across the
fissure between them and create an Event of Realism. It is as if the lack, or absence, of
technique exposes the fact that something is concealed - and therefore suggests the
possibility of glimpsing what is hidden.
The perception of Realism is a recognition of actuality by the viewer - albeit a shifting and
precarious recognition. When we recognise something we are seeing it for the second
time - we already know it - and our recognition of it strengthens our knowledge of it. In
recognising Realism, we are simultaneously recognising something connected to our
existence outside the work of art and recognising an affiliation in the work of art. These
two elements join together in Realism; each strengthened by the ‘second seeing’ nature
of recognition, thereby making a doubly powerful sensation of the real.
The joy of recognition is ... that more becomes known that is already known. In
recognition what we know emerges, as if through illumination, from all the chance
and variable circumstances that condition it and is grasped in its essence. It is
known as something. 103
For Gadamer, the arena of the work of art provides a safe place where the spectator can
observe the tragic without stress. Tragedy in a work of art is a ‘closed circle of meaning’
where katharsis will allow the spectator to empathise in self-forgetfulness. The potential
danger - the shock of something disturbing - is made accessible and safe, while still
retaining its excitement. 104 But if the viewer perceives Realism in the tragedy, the closed
play is disrupted and the tragedy will extend beyond the image and reach out to touch
the viewer’s actual existence. For the viewer experiencing a moment of Realism in their
perception of a picture, the tragic affirmation of seeing that ‘this is how it is’ provides a
dual knowledge. One part is the meaning of tragedy in the picture, the other part is an
instant apprehension of something which connects to the viewer’s existence - an
understanding of their own mortal presence in the world. This dual knowledge in Realism,
situated both inside and outside the image, means that tragedy is no longer a safe place
to play - katharsis is disrupted. There are plenty of pictures depicting death by
drowning, in which we share the tragedy without being affected; but Fischl’s Grief -
because it makes me recognise the fragility of my own children’s mortality - makes this
tragedy unbearable. (Fig. 67)
99
A Klee painting named ‘Angelus Novus’ shows an angel looking as

though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly
contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are
spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned
toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one
single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and
hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the
dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing
from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the
angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into
the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him
grows skywards. This storm is what we call progress.
Walter Benjamin
From Theses on the Philosophy of History in Illuminations
trans. Harry Zohn (London: Fontana, 1992)
100
Every Event of Realism, although occuring in the gap between viewer and picture, is
rooted in the existence of the viewer. It is the viewer’s continuity - their life experience
and sense of finitude - which allows the recognition of Realism. While looking at a picture,
the viewer’s inner knowledge of their own continuity may cause them to stumble on a
connection with their own existence, which creates the rupture that makes an Event of
Realism. The rupture in the Event of Realism cannot occur without the viewer’s
continuity. For instance, I would not have had such a strong reaction to Grief before I had
children.
Walter Benjamin speaks of the ‘past charged with the time of now’ and of the flashes of
recognition which erupt to illuminate moments of history.
Fig. 66
Paul Klee
Angelus Novus,1920.
Benjamin’s description of Klee’s Angelus Novus (Fig. 66) not only describes the angel’s
recognition of the reality of the past but is obviously an Event of Realism for him.
On the one hand, our cultural tradition is bound to influence how we construct meaning;
on the other hand, we can only see the past from the present moment. For Gadamer,
tradition is a transmission; which is a translation of tradition into our own language - not
preserving blindly, nor ignoring how we see things, but affirming how they are
We let the past be for us as we are now, not by repeated experience of it, but through
an encounter with it. 105
101
Fig. 67
Helen Chadwick
Self Portrait
1991
Fig. 68
Leonardo da Vinci
The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne and Saint John the Baptist
Fig. 69 The Virgin on the rocks in The National Gallery, London
102
XIV
In the light of the encounter with the past from the present - both from the positions of
Gadamer and Benjamin, and my own experience of recognition at the Musée d’Orsay - to
what extent can the situation in which a painting is seen affect its representation and
therefore influence the possibility of an Event of Realism?
The method of presentation can be used to disrupt a normal expectation of a work of art,
in order to shock the viewer into a recognition of meaning. This obviously has
implications for the body and there are many examples in contemporary fine art. (Fig. 67)
However there are pitfalls. It is possible for an innovative concept to fail to make its point
if the shock tactics used in its presentation outweigh the intention in portraying the
concept. We tend to marvel at the shockingly new in a work of art if it has been achieved
in a brilliant, clever manner - using dazzling technical expertise to present the image. This
comes back to aesthetic differentiation and the creation of a ‘fascinating image’; not only
does the technique involved dazzle with its brilliance but, if the artist has intentions
beyond the innovative use of methods or materials, then the manner of its presentation
as ‘art’ can appear more important or interesting than the intended concept.
Traditional presentation can both aid and prevent an Event of Realism. Our initial
expectation of a painting is that it is art: i.e. here is an image, which is offering more than
mere appearance, mere empiricism. The viewer expects, and therefore seeks, to
recognise something in the image. However, traditional presentation of a painting can
easily lead to the acceptance of received meaning; and if the meaning is not obvious to
us then we turn away from the work to seek an explanation given by experts.
For Gadamer the presentation is part of the ‘play’ through which the spectator reads
meaning in the artwork. One should not be aware of the details in the presentation of the
work - which would be aesthetic differentiation. It is therefore possible for a work to be
presented in such a way as to elevate or otherwise shift its meaning.
Take for example the Leonardo da Vinci cartoon in The National Gallery, (Fig. 68) which is
exhibited by itself, in a small room situated off a larger gallery. (Fig. 69) The entrance is
through doorways either side of his Virgin on the Rocks - it is rather like going behind the
103
Fig. 70
visiting the Leonardo cartoon in The National Gallery
104
altar. The room is dimly lit to preserve the fragile drawing, with a small bench opposite
the picture between the two entrances for spectators to sit and contemplate the image.
(Fig. 70) It has the all the characteristics of a small chapel. Would we experience the
same sensations if we were to see this old piece of paper lying on a table or pinned on a
wall - not to mention reduced to six inches high on a post card?
Can a reproduction of a work of art stimulate an Event of Realism? Gadamer, in saying

“The unique event that characterises the work of art is not present in the reproduction”,
implies that the reproduction lacks power - it is a replaceable commodity and is not
“present in sensuous abundance”. 106 While not wishing to deny the particular qualities of
physicality in an original work of art, I would argue that it is possible for a reproduction of
an artwork to have an effect on the viewer - especially if it is a first encounter with the
image. It is a question of the manner of presentation - like a performance of a play.
105
Fig. 72
Théodore Géricault
The Raft of the Medusa in the Louvre, Paris
106
Before seeing his work abroad, my introduction to the paintings of Eric Fischl was through
a book. 107 When I looked at a reproduction, I saw his painting in the only way available
to me at the time. Although I thought of it as the reproduction of a painting which I could
not for the moment see, it was nevertheless seen by me as a representation of the image
he had made - in the same way as I might see a particular performance of a play. In the
case of The Old Man’s Boat and the Old Man’s Dog (Fig. 71) a reproduction became the
representation of the work of art for me - and as with Grief, it evoked a sense of the real.
Fig. 71
Eric Fischl
The Old Man’s Boat and the Old Man’s Dog
1982, oil on canvas, 213.4 x 213.4 cm
If an image has become familiar through a reproduction, an adjustment has to be made

when it is eventually seen in the original - in a ‘new’ situation. The location of the original
painting is different to the location of the reproduction. For instance, viewing the work in a
crowded gallery is a different experience to looking at a small reproduction on the white
page of a book in peace and quiet. Looking at Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa in The
Louvre can be like trying to read the departure board at a railway station. (Fig. 72)
107
Fig. 73
Rembrandt van Rijn
The Artist in his Studio
1629, panel, 25 x 32 cm
108
A reproduction in a book can give a misleading impression of the scale of the original
painting; which makes the meaning of the painting, familiar through reproduction, change
completely on seeing the original. In the following instance, an Event of Realism occurred
on seeing the original but only because of such a shift in meaning.
I first saw The Artist in His Studio (Fig. 73) by Rembrandt as a reproduction and, at that
time, assumed that the subject of his painting must be the same as the image in the actual
painting. In other words, the ‘window’ of the picture is a mirror and the artist is painting the
exact reflection that we behold. If this is the case, we are participating in an immediate,
physical, day to day experience - we are present in the artist’s studio as he paints; and
his picture, hidden from view, will represent him painting exactly as we see him in the
actual picture. My assumption was based on an image reproduced in a book; and
without thinking to question the size of the original, the sight of a large picture on the easel
instantly suggested that the original was the same size. I was amazed to find, in an
exhibition, that the actual picture is small - 25 cm x 32 cm, or 10 inches by 12.5 inches -
small enough to be made from one of the floorboards or the plank of wood on the left side
of the door, smaller than the palette he is holding. My misapprehension was assisted by
the fine detail in the execution of the painting; in comparison with the broad brush work of
Rembrandt’s more familiar, mature works - this is in fact an early work (he was only 23)
when his technique was tighter and on a small scale. The realisation that the large picture
on the easel is not the small painting we behold, dismisses any previous interpretation
and opens up a wealth of new possibilities - no longer a painting about this painting but
a painting about the process of painting. 108
Realism has to grab our recognition in an unguarded moment. This is not to say that
acquired knowledge of the work does not also lead to an Event of Realism. When looking
at the work again after receiving information about the image, or simply returning to look
again after a period of time, Realism can occur at any moment and with work of any age
and under any circumstances - but only when the viewer is receptive to making the
crucial connection. If the circumstances under which a work of art is seen can influence the
viewer’s interpretation of meaning, then the manner of presentation may dictate whether
or not an Event of Realism occurs.
A question arises, that if an Event of Realism depends on the viewer and the particular
circumstances in which they experience the work of art, can an Event of Realism ever be
anything but subjective; and therefore is it possible for an artist to intend Realism when
making a picture?
109
110
Having constructed a meaning for a picture through play, the individual mind will make a
judgement about that meaning. According to Kant, such a judgement can be of the
Beautiful or of the Sublime. In a judgement of the Beautiful the mind, desiring order or
unity, searches for a system; and the process of the mind operating arouses a feeling of
pleasure. Any unity perceived will be something recognised by the mind, but it will not
necessarily exist outside the mind. So, for Kant, the Beautiful is not an attractive or
perfect object presented by the outside world, but the process of how the mind makes its
judgement, through the faculties of imagination and understanding, and the satisfaction
that arouses. 109
There is a parallel here with an Event of Realism: it is something that happens that gives
a sensation of the ‘real’, not an object with a realistic appearance. For Kant, the process
of such mental activity is common to all minds; and therefore the mode of satisfaction is
possible for all. What we have in common is our desire to seek unity; so it is not what
we individually recognise as beautiful, or real, but the process we go through as we look
for satisfaction in seeking order.
Achievement, on the other hand, depends on the individual; we can all go through the
process but the results will ultimately be governed by personal taste. Any artist wishing
to make an image which has the potential for an Event of Realism, must offer the
possibility of an appropriate mental activity - which might achieve a sense of the ‘real’.
The sublime is also concerned with a mental activity but the satisfaction we find is in the
effect on us of what we perceive rather than in the act of perception.
If this is the case, can we describe an Event of Realism as Sublime? Is an experience of

realism also the desire for a ‘transcendent reality which we should like to believe was
really there’? 110
At this point the project divides into two parallel investigations: the search for strategies
for the painted nude continues; and in addition an inquiry begins into the problem of
uncertainty as to where the sensation of the Real should be situated - in relation to the
duality of the Beautiful and the Sublime. Although the two lines of investigation appear to
be defined in terms of theory for one and practice for the other, nevertheless they are
inextricably committed to the same fundamental concern - of a radical reconsideration of
perceptions of the body and the effect this could have for anyone who looks at, or makes
111
Phenom
both in it
is
The he
picture is
therefore
of
112
work about, the nude in painting. Therefore the best way to express this dual
investigation, without giving precedence to either, is to summarise the findings so far,
thus:
PRACTICE THEORY
Phenomenology is essential for making work, The study of realism in painting showed a
both in its construction and presentation, but it confusion of styles and intentions but a study of
is not enough in the attempt to create a Courbet revealed (through the dialectic
sensation of the real. between the reaction of his contemporaries and
his style as it is perceived today) that realism is
The hermeneutical play between viewer and an event for the viewer and not a style of
picture is where an Event of Realism will occur; painting.
therefore the emphasis shifts from the content
of the work to the subsequent reaction it Hermeneutics plays an essential role in the
stimulates. viewer’s achievement of realism - in the
recognition of the connection of their
Phenomenology needs to work with phenomenological world to the picture.
hermeneutics.
XV
With the emphasis shifting towards the manner of presentation, and a specific
engagement with the viewer, the suggestion is that the Event of Realism may share
common ground with other radical forms of presentation - for instance Brecht’s epic
theatre. This does not mean that I seek agreement with Brecht’s aims; but rather that his
particular approach to Realism, in contrast to Lukács for instance, may offer a potential
strategy for presenting the nude in this project.
Both Brecht and Lukács believed that Realism in the arts was an effective weapon in the
Marxist fight against Fascism. However their methods for achieving an effective Realism
are quite different, and offer another example of the diversity of approaches to Realism.
Lukács’ Realism is Russian Socialist Realism, which is concerned not only with the
making process but also the end product. While the process appears convincing, the
requirements for the product are unlikely to stimulate an Event of Realism. For example, in
making Realist work, the practitioner is expected to draw on their own experience; then
he or she should intellectually investigate the hidden relationships and situations,
113
Fig. 74
Studies for Triptych
charcoal on paper
114
artistically manipulate all the elements, and by a process of abstraction produce a new
‘immediacy’ which represents life as it really is. 111 Initially this appears to be sound
advice to the practitioner - it is a process I can recommend. Most of my visual practice is
developed through these methods: beginning with drawings, notes and photographs,
the elements are studied and manipulated through a series of experiments to develop the
initial idea, until some satisfactory method of articulation is achieved. (Fig. 74) However
the recommended method of presentation is to portray the intellectual argument
allegorically through stereotypes. The image is isolated in its totality, without the
distraction of immediate experience. The method of dissemination is not considered
important, because Realism is an historical mission to provide truth for the future (not
necessarily the present) and to create universal types to represent all mankind. An
Fig. 20 Belinda, 1993, oil on paper & acetate
example of my work in this category would be Belinda (Fig. 20), where the intellectual
content outweighs the visual product and, due to her containment inside the image, offers
no possibility for an Event of Realism.
In contrast to Socialist Realism, Brecht believed the method of dissemination to be crucial

for Realist work, and regarded the attitude of Lukács, and his colleagues in Russia, as
dictatorial:
They are, to put it bluntly, enemies of production. Production makes them

uncomfortable. You never know where you are with production; production is the
unforeseeable. You never know what’s going to come out. And they themselves
don’t want to produce. They want to play the apparatchik and exercise control
over other people. Every one of their criticisms contains a threat. 112
Brecht argues that radical experimentation was necessary at such a time; and that the
artist should have the right to fail in any attempt to put across new ideas to the public. To
accept that failure is allowable is to acknowledge that there is a continuing struggle.113
Any mixture of methods should be tried; and understanding by a working class audience
115
116
could be achieved through experimentation - as long as it was an honest attempt at the

representation of a relevant situation and not mere stylistic device. He thought Lukács
had sound principles but was out of touch with reality. For Brecht, the solution was “not
linked to the good old days but to the bad new ones” 114 - and he regarded Lukács’
recommendation to look back to the classical formulas in Balzac and Tolstoy as Utopian
idealism.
Realism is not a question of form. Were we to copy the style of these realists, we
would no longer be realists. ... New problems appear and demand new methods.
Reality changes; in order to represent it, modes of representation must also
change. 115
This is not a modernist ‘shock of the new’ for the sake of newness, but a pragmatic
approach to elicit understanding from the audience.
Brecht’s approach to Realism aims to disrupt old methods of presentation in order to

substitute new ideas - to replace the construction that is Fascism with the new
construction of Marxism. In seeking to stimulate an Event of Realism (by presenting the
nude to the viewer as another person) I am not attempting to substitute an alternative
structure. On the contrary, my aim is to reveal the impossibility of an alternative structure
by presenting the nude as an other person, facing the viewer across a space beyond
the control of either. The Event of Realism is an effect experienced by the viewer, which
leaves them in a state of uncertainty. It is unsettling because it does not offer solutions.
This is where Brecht’s purpose in epic theatre differs from my aim in Realism. My interest
in Brechtian methods is restricted to his process, it does not extend to his specific political
objective.
In Walter Benjamin’s account of Brecht’s epic theatre 116 it is possible to identify equivalent
strategies for the process of representing the nude in a manner that could stimulate an
Event of Realism. The following is Brecht’s concept of epic theatre paraphrased under
the same eight headings used by Benjamin - together with the corresponding potential
tactics for my project - in italics.
THE RELAXED AUDIENCE

The audience needs to maintain contact with its own world; rather than being
absorbed into the action, it should be relaxed and ‘have an interest in the matter’.
The performance should be clearly ‘a performance’ so that the audience is aware of
its own existence while the action takes place. Epic theatre is intended for people
117
Fig. 75a
Triptych: left panel
1998, oil on paper, 92.7 x 68.7 cm
Fig. 76
Hand Towel
1998, oil on paper mounted on mirror
in the Women’s toilets, UWE
118
who ‘do not think without reason’ - it would seem that Brecht means that they have
reason to think, rather than a particular level of intellectual capability.
The viewer needs to be aware that the picture is a painted object. This can be in
pictorial style - a contrast between detail in focus and loose brush marks showing
the support under the paint (Fig. 75a); or through presentation - by showing the art
object in a non-art venue. (Fig. 76)
THE PLOT
The subject matter should not be sensational - a familiar story will not absorb the
audience. It is a good idea to ‘warm up’ the audience before you stretch its
understanding - Brecht acknowledges the influence of Chinese theatre here.
Labelling events in the action is ‘intended to purge them of the sensational’. Time
within the play can be a montage of incidents rather than a continuous flow.
The image should be a familiar, everyday situation, presented in an accessible
manner. For instance a mother and daughter reflected in a bathroom mirror,
portrayed in figurative painting; or an everyday action such as drying one’s hands.
THE UNTRAGIC HERO

Brecht attempted the use of a thinker or wise man as the hero. A ‘non-participating
third part’, a figure who is attached to the action only as an observer. A reference to
French classical theatre, when ‘persons of rank’ would sit on the stage amid the
action.
A connection should be made to enlist the viewer as an involved observer: either
pictorially - through ‘eye’ contact, or a compositional device such as a basin in the
foreground at which the viewer stands; or in the presentation, where the viewer is
aware of their own presence - as in seeing their reflection beside the painting.
(Fig. 76)
THE INTERRUPTION
Brecht’s drama is non-Aristotelian. The audience is prevented from identifying with
the characters; instead, it is encouraged to recognise the situation - to feel
‘astonishment rather than empathy’. Interruptions disrupt the flow of actions, to dis-
cover - or alienate - the conditions represented.
An interruption can be in the subject matter - the blurred glance of a moving figure
(Fig. 75b); or in the in the manner of painting - abstract marks on paper beside an
illusionistic image; or in the manner of presentation - where mirror reflections collide
with painted images.
119
Fig. 75b
Triptych: centre panel
1998, oil on paper, 92.7 x 68.7 cm
Fig. 77
Triptych
installation at UWE, 1998
120
THE QUOTABLE GESTURE

To quote within a play causes an interruption - or, to quote Benjamin, ‘To quote a
text involves the interruption of its context.’ The quotation does not need to come
from outside the play; it can refer to itself - to an earlier gesture. The quotable
gesture can be made by the actor quoting himself - every interruption makes
another gesture.
Quotation in painting can be a stylistic reference or the repetition of certain elements
in an image (Fig. 75); or in multiple images seen through mirrors. (Fig. 77)
Fig. 75 Triptych
THE DIDACTIC PLAY

The play is based on an experience for all, rather than the absorption of the
audience in a thrilling sensation. Brecht intends that the people participating in the
play should learn as much as the audience.
The artist responds to the viewer’s interaction, in hermeneutical play with the image,
to inform future work.
THE ACTOR
In epic theatre fragments collide to create intervals which disrupt illusion - and
prevents the audience empathising. The actor should show that he is ‘cool and
relaxed’; and should be able to step in and out of character to show not only
himself but his subject. Do not ask the audience to identify with the individual
portrayed; instead, ask them to identify with the experience.
The viewer should be conscious of the presence of the artist. This could be
through the trace of a gestural mark; or in a performative element - the use of my
121
Fig. 75c
Triptych: right panel
1998, oil on paper, 92.7 x 68.7 cm
Fig. 78
Hand Towel
1998, oil on paper mounted on mirror
in the Women’s toilets, UWE
122
own body, conscious of being observed, as I turn round to take hold of the frame
and face the viewer. (Fig. 75c)
THEATRE ON A DAIS
Epic theatre is concerned to reduce the distance between the action onstage and
the audience; ‘filling in the orchestra pit’, symbolically gets rid of an ‘abyss’
between the two and brings the stage down to a dais.
The method of presentation should disrupt the normal expectation of a picture in a
gallery; either through exhibiting in an unusual location or in the method of
displaying the work - for example, in the Ladies toilets, where the image is used to
disrupt the viewer’s expectation of their own reflection. (Fig. 78)
The process of epic theatre is less dramatic than classical theatre - but more radical; it
aims to alienate the audience in a lasting manner, by stimulating thought, from the
conditions in which it lives. The Event of Realism can be seen as a form of Brechtian
alienation, in its radical impact and lasting effect on the viewer. However, there is an
interesting balance between Brecht’s concern to prevent absorption - in order to see the
individual events rather than the outcome - and the avoidance of aesthetic differentiation
according to Gadamer - which prevents the perception of meaning by seeing the work in
aesthetic fragments. This may be a crucial distinction that could reveal a position where
an Event of Realism might occur.
XVI
In the comparison above, between Brecht’s epic theatre and potential strategies for
exhibiting the nude, two installations have been used as illustration. To put Brechtian
principles into practice, I attempted to disrupt the aura of the painted nude through its
presentation in unusual locations - by presenting ‘art’ in the ‘wrong’ place. Instead of
disrupting an art space with a ready-made object - an everyday environment was
disrupted with art objects.
The choice of venue was prompted by the rejection of an earlier plan to show work in a
public library, where the aim had been to reach a broad section of the public. The reason
for refusal was that the nude was not a suitable subject for a public space where my
work would be seen by an unsolicited audience, including children, people from differing
religious groups and tourists. 117 Unable to aim for a broad public response through a
conventional exhibition of painting in a ‘non-art’ space, the immediate solution was to
123
Triptych
Fig. 79
Installation in a corridor at UWE, 1998
Wash Basin
Hand Towel
Fig. 80
Installation in the women’s toilets at UWE, 1998
124
switch the emphasis and show the work where it would not cause offence but, in doing
so, ensure that its presentation was radical. This decision informed my siting of an
exhibition in two venues at UWE’s Faculty of Art, Media and Design, during April and
May 1998. One part was Triptych, situated in a busy corridor between the porter’s office
and students’ union shop, where a constant stream of people could not help seeing
themselves in the mirrors - on either side of each frame and opposite each picture. (Fig.
79) The other part consisted of two site specific paintings on paper mounted on mirrors,
installed in the nearby Ladies toilets (Fig. 80): Wash Basin positioned so that a person
standing at the basin would see a painted nude in the mirror instead of their own
reflection; and Hand Towel mimicking the actions of a person drying their hands.
Learning from the lessons of 4 views, comments sheets for feedback asked no questions
but simply requested a reaction; and confidentiality was preserved by posting the
response into a sealed box. The option to give a contact number was offered if the
viewer was willing to give a tape recorded interview or attend a discussion group. Useful
feedback was obtained from a dozen written comment sheets, plus sound recordings of
two interviews and a seminar. 118 There was a high proportion of women to men (6:1),
which might seem to give a one sided view, but the quality of response was an
improvement on 4 views. It was also satisfying to note that men were not barred from
the Ladies toilets but frequently asked to be escorted in to see the installation. Unforced
and spontaneous reaction to both installations showed the painted nudes were regarded
as the viewer’s equal, rather than an object for a possessive gaze.
Being in an art institution, I had anticipated as much comment on form as on content. But
although some objection was made on the combination of painterliness with installation,
the majority of interest was around the content (the presentation of nudes with mirrors) in
relation to the contrast in contexts (the corridor compared to the toilets). The venues and
manner of installation had clearly influenced the way the figures were perceived. The
images in the toilet were regarded as friendly, which was unexpected - as I had feared
they might be confrontational; on the other hand the work in the corridor was felt to be
uncomfortable. This appeared to be influenced by what the images asked of the viewer.
In the toilet I put myself into the space the viewer was occupying - offering a direct
engagement and allowing myself to appear vulnerable; whereas in the corridor I was at a
greater distance in ‘another’ mirror, asking the viewers to come into my place of nakedness
in the picture.
125
Fig. 81
now you see me...
photographic computer print
Café: Black Swan Guild, Frome, 1999
Fig. 82
now you see me...
installation in Women’s Toilets
Fig. 83
now you see me...
126
Following this positive response to the UWE exhibition, similar strategies were developed
in a larger solo exhibition now you see me... at the Black Swan Guild, in Frome during
February 1999 - where I hoped to reach the broader public denied to me by the rejection of
the public library. The Round Tower Gallery is a difficult venue in terms of attendance. In
order to attract visitors to the main exhibition, some abstract computer prints of acceptable
nudity were shown in the Café (Fig. 81) and two site specific paintings on mirrors were
installed in the Ladies Toilet. (Fig. 82) The public were guided by signs from the Café and
the Toilets, up to the Gallery where another version of Triptych was installed (Fig. 83),
together with more explicit computer prints from photographs taken looking down my body
in the bath. Thus, in addition to the exploration of Brechtian techniques in terms of
presentation, the exhibition developed an overall concern with the type of nude images
appropriate for specific settings.
The same comment system as UWE was used, with anonymity if wished and the added
option of e-mail. In a pro-active move to engage with different sectors of the public, free
workshops at the exhibition were offered to local secondary schools, colleges, WI’s, U3A,
the Round Table, and a naturist group. But, disappointingly, out of 68 groups and
institutions, only two took up the offer - an Art A level group, and a U3A art class. Two
more discussions were therefore arranged; with three men, and with a post graduate
seminar group from UWE. 119
Although all feedback is welcome, a large proportion of comment was incidental to the
primary concern of whether the viewer sees the nude as an equal. Frequently, they were
observations of polite praise from people who felt they could speak positively; and there
was a noticeable tendency to show more interest in ‘how’ the work had been made rather
than in ‘what’ was on show. 120 Many supportive comments came from middle aged women,
who also often had daughters. 121 In particular they identified with the installation in the
Ladies toilets; and it was evident that here too, men gained access to the work. 122 The
ambiguous photographic images of my body in the Café were often interpreted as
landscape. Not everyone recognised them as nudes. 123
In amongst the general comments were some interesting and useful points, particularly from
the group discussions. The youngest group, of Art A level students, found the aging body
hard to discuss. Having assumptions about the expectations of the perfect body, they did
not wish to expose aspects of themselves that they would not want to look at. 124 By
contrast a group of women over 60, from a life drawing class at U3A, were interested in the
fact that I wear my glasses when posing - and discussed the potential impact of partial
clothing on perceptions of nakedness. One of them ‘in her hey-day’; had been persuaded
127
Fig. 84
now you see me...
installation in Women’s Toilets Fig. 85
Black Swan Guild, Frome, 1999 now you see me...
128
to pose nude for a photographer, who afterwards superimposed high heels and sold the
pictures abroad - which she had found most disturbing. 125 Three men invited to discuss the
exhibition threw a new light on the images in the toilets. They could not see the ‘mirror
image’ and had to be shown how it worked. (Fig. 84) It looked to them as though the
pictures were posters stuck on mirrors as advertisements. This is now common in men’s
toilets, where adverts are placed on the wall over the urinals - with an ideal focal length of
18 inches - “used to be VD, now its Nintendo” 126 At a seminar held in the exhibition for
researchers from UWE, one colleague arrived late and in a hurry. She went straight to the
Ladies toilet, not realising the pictures would be there. Her reaction disrupted her dash into,
and out of, the toilet - she found them very disturbing and curious, as if my presence was
there. 127 This last instance resonates with my own growing awareness during the
exhibition that I was part of the show - through having to be present, to invigilate and for
workshops. I felt exposed - not because I was seen naked in the pictures but because my
work was exposed and I had to be there with it. This feeling increased as feedback came in
that included reference to my presence: “visiting the show with you there makes you-as-
artist part of the whole show; if you had not been there it would have been different.” 128
No objections to the exhibition were registered with the management of the Black Swan
Guild and the adverse comment that I collected was confined to the issue of my formal
methods of working - being either for or against painting as a medium. Criticism, in defence
of painting and against its use in installation, came mainly from practising painters. Here the
installation (Fig. 85) was seen as an unnecessary distraction from the painted image and the
use of mirrors considered pointless. It was suggested that the method of presentation was
a prop to bolster the work - “Is it a tactic to push paintings which cannot go any further?” 129
In a contrary argument, against the use of figurative painting, its surface texture and links to
traditional attitudes were seen as inappropriate for a critique of the nude. The photographic
prints were preferred. The suggestion would seem to be that it is a more powerful medium -
the smooth surface and allusions to advertising would be more effective than painting, in a
stance against modern images of the body. 130
The feedback obtained through voluntary comment, from the exhibitions at both UWE and
Frome, is limited. It does demonstrate that in certain individual cases the paintings gave a
sensation of a real presence of my nude body; but also that for many, the work was either
unsatisfactory in certain formal aspects or not a subject they wish to engage with. It was
possible to achieve a better understanding of the work through the mediation of discussion;
but this is contrary to the aim of stimulating the spontaneous reaction necessary for an
Event of Realism.
129
Fig. 84
comments box in the Round Tower
1999, Black Swan Guild, Frome
130
This then was the apparent response to now you see me... at Frome. While being
mostly encouraging and positive, there was not the quantity nor the breadth of reaction
that I had hoped for. Over and above the offer of workshops, a large amount of effort
had gone into reaching the potential audience. Not only were there plenty of signs
throughout the Black Swan Guild, but there had been a substantial mailing to both
national and local media. Although coverage in the press was modest, we managed to
get an item into the local BBC news programme. On the basis that any publicity would
attract visitors, I consented to be interviewed sitting in a cubicle in the Ladies toilets; and
was rewarded by hearing the interviewer thwarted in his effort to get an adverse reaction
from women who had just used the facilities - they all refused to say anything
unfavourable. Being on the television did bring more visitors, but while they were willing
to say why they had come, they were not keen on giving further comment.
Is this the full extent of feedback that can be obtained for the research, or can more be
discovered by other means? CCTV surveillance might have been more effective than
the overt methods employed. This had been briefly considered as a possibility, but
dismissed as too expensive. It might also have been ineffectual if the visitors had known
it was in use. While there is no doubt of its potential interest in terms of observing body
language, to be effective it would have had to remain covert, which to my mind is
unethical. The question remains, are there any other methods for finding out why people
are reticent and what their real reactions are?
XVII
Given that “The future is what is in no way grasped”, 131 the reality of an experience
cannot be anticipated and will always differ from the expectation of it. In a situation where
Realism is under question, that difference is compounded in a confusion between the
anticipation of any sense of Realism perceived in the work by the viewer, and their
behaviour in responding to the work. Where I had hoped, somewhat naively, that
viewers would respond spontaneously, providing comment freely (Fig. 86) on their
relationship with the nude figures represented, there were instead various reactions on
unexpected secondary issues, together with an evident reluctance to speak at all. So the
question here is whether the reaction by the viewer can be implied in either alternative
comment or a lack of response.
In a seminar reflecting on both the work and the feedback after the exhibition, it was
suggested that the manner in which feedback was obtained was haphazard and
131
132
unrepresentative and did not fit established research methods. This in turn raised the
question of how I could eventually ‘prove’ my thesis in terms of the analysis of such
information. In answer to the question of methodology, the situation of an art exhibition is
not suited to a scientific method of sampling, it is not possible to select a number of
people representing certain sectors of society and make them give their opinion on the
work - especially when a spontaneous reaction, like a sensation of Realism, is sought.
The fundamental method of this investigation is phenomenological. Therefore it should be
possible for the evidence that is apparent to yield further information - through an
examination of the entire situation, including the difficulty of obtaining comment. The same
phenomenological approach needs to be used regarding the final outcome of the research.
The initial question being investigated is: is it possible to make paintings of the nude that
resist a traditional reading as an object of desire for the viewer? Out of this arises a
further question: can strategies be developed, through an understanding of the form of
Realism, that will enable a radical perception of the painted nude? While it is relatively
easy to ‘prove’ the first part of the problem - in that the paintings in the Ladies toilets
have succeeded in resisting the possessive gaze - the phenomenological reality of the
structure of an Event of Realism is as elusive as the instant of the present in which it
occurs. 132 In this case, a conclusive answer to ‘prove the thesis’ may not be possible,
and it is more likely that questions will arise that require further research beyond the limits
of this project.
To pursue the phenomenological investigation, there are two significant elements in the
feedback that suggest the possibility of ‘reading’ comment. One is the diversity of
opinion on my formal artistic approach and the other is the silence of those unwilling to
comment. Examples of the latter are found in the refusal of a naturist to discuss the work
because it did not illustrate his idea of naturism as a social occasion; or in the overheard
remark of a mother with small children turning back at the entrance to the exhibition, saying
that there was too much flesh on show; and in the following report from the eldest of three
women visitors:
These comments are just from me, and as we had talked - probably less useful to
you. My two younger friends were sadly embarrassed by your pictures and to
bully them into writing or talking - would have been a mistake. Maybe
embarrassment is to do with “identifying”. If one is less than comfortable within
one’s own body - perhaps it is difficult to look at nakedness. Me? I’m comfortable
- saggy tummy and all - but being comfortable within oneself would be a by-
product of getting older. 133
133
Fig. 88
134
While evidence of a reluctance to speak is easily recognised, the reasons for not
speaking remain unknown - we know the younger women to be embarrassed but only
have the speculation of the older woman as to a possible reason. In the same vein the
reasons for the various opinions on artistic form are not necessarily apparent in their
expression. In stating a preference for a particular school of thought (the point of view
that supports painting; or the point of view that believes painting to be dead; or the
opinion that feminist issues should remain a primary concern) the arguments are given as
to why a particular stance should be upheld but there is little or no indication as to why
that opinion has been adopted. The only useful evidence is in the fact that the opinion
needed to be expressed. Something in the exhibition was sufficiently irritating to warrant
a reaction.
Fig. 87 Installation in the Round Tower, Black Swan Guild, Frome, 1999
In adopting a radical method for presenting conventionally framed art works, the emphasis
on presentation may have dominated the content of the paintings. The work in the Round
Tower Gallery appears to have been the most contentious. (Fig. 87) The relatively large
number of ‘abstract’ photographic prints on the wall juxtaposed against the three
figurative paintings as a free standing construction in the middle of the room, may have
given the impression that the photographic work was equal, if not superior, to the
paintings. My original intention was based on the irony of figurative painting beside
‘abstract’ photography, as an argument for figurative painting having potential in
contemporary fine art - instead of the other way round. (Fig. 88) This imbalance proved a
valuable mistake, because in stimulating the debate on form, it showed that a number of
people were unsettled by some elements in the presentation.
135
136
The evidence indicates that, while it is possible to make work that stimulates an Event of
Realism, the outcome can never be predicted or quantified. Despite this inconclusive
outcome, the diversity in response, including the strength of feeling in ‘silent’ reaction, implies
that the exhibition succeeded in at least touching a sensitive nerve in many of the visitors.
The discomfort or threat felt suggests a disruption in their expectations - in the process of
their judgement. Here we have a judgement that is an effect resulting from perception.
As already stated, the Event of Realism is not an act of perception, as in Kant’s concept of
the Beautiful, but is an effect of perception, possibly with some connection to the
Sublime.134 Although the sensitivity to disruption of expectation cannot be taken to mean
that an Event of Realism occurred, the process of being affected by something which is
disruptive is analogous to the process of an Event of Realism - in that it is an event which
has an effect. Therefore examining this process could reveal properties in the structure of
an Event of Realism.
The effect experienced in an Event of Realism is a sensation of the real, where the viewer
recognises a connection to the reality of their own existence. The similarity in the way the
mind acts when confronted by a sensation of the real - or the disruption of expectation - and
the way it responds when confronted by the Sublime suggests some connection between
them. There is a simultaneous attraction of interest and repulsion or fear in the disruption.
However the Sublime is essentially uplifting and transports one out of one’s existence - like
the absorption in Aristotelian tragedy - whereas reaction to these exhibitions, like an Event
of Realism, appears grounded in and focussed by the existence of the viewer. In epic
theatre, Brecht specifically works against the cathartic effect of tragedy; he is concerned
that his audience should maintain contact with its own world. Rather than being absorbed
into the action - as in tragedy - the audience should be relaxed and “have an interest in the
matter”. The use of Brechtian strategies in the presentation of these exhibitions has proved
effective as a disruption and, in some instances has stimulated an Event of Realism. The
viewers who have experienced an Event, which might be called a sense of the real, clearly
remain in touch with their world - as an interested audience - as opposed to being absorbed
in tragedy or elevated into the Sublime. In fact this sensation of the real is closer to the
experience of a tragic event that engulfs a person in actuality, rather than tragedy that can
be observed at a distance in the theatre. On one hand the Event is grounded in the
viewer’s existence, on the other, it is a sensation that is disruptive and can never be fully
understood - it will always slip beyond the reach of comprehension, remaining completely
other. The suggestion is therefore that the nature of an Event of Realism is neither Beautiful
nor Sublime but is situated outside this Kantian duality.
137
138
To summarise this further development in both strands of the project:
PRACTICE THEORY
Brechtian techniques of presentation are The Event of Realism, as a reaction in the

shown to provide useful strategies for mind of the viewer, occurs in a similar manner
disrupting expectations in representation. to Kant’s description of the reaction of the
The dialectical relationship between elements mind when confronted by the sublime.
creates a situation where the viewer becomes But the result is different because it does not
interested in the subject; but at the same time lift the viewer out of their world, like
remains sufficiently in their own world to Aristotelian katharsis in tragedy; but brings
recognise something real which bridges the them back to a consciousness of mortality in
two existences. their own material existence.
XVIII
Although beginning to understand the way in which an Event of Realism lies outside the
Kantian duality of the Beautiful and the Sublime, many questions remain. For instance:
What does the event consist of?
How does the event function, as a process in the mind of the viewer?
How can this knowledge be harnessed in making Realist paintings of the nude?
These theoretical problems appear overwhelming in their complexity and beg a further
question as to whether they are answerable at all, within this project. In addition there are
outstanding issues in the visual practice. The sense of the real, which simultaneously
carries the viewer into the image while keeping them grounded in their own world, has
only been achieved by exhibiting the work in conjunction with devices outside the
painted image. If the original problem for this research is concerned with the relevance
today of the nude in painting, is it a matter of concern that elements other than paint are
used to achieve a result? Given that the circumstances in which the painting is viewed
will affect its interpretation, is it possible to stimulate effective Realism from inside the
painted image alone? Also, how much is my artistic ability affecting the findings? By
beginning to address these practical questions, I hope some light may be thrown on the
major theoretical concerns.
139
Fig. 89
Installation in the Round Tower
Fig. 90
Installation in the corridor at UWE,1998
Fig. 91
Café exhibition
140
First a necessary review of my own practice. Is it merely a question of determining the

most effective relationship between painted image and additional elements, or does the
practical problem stem from my artistic ability, either as a painter or in constructing the
presentation? The extent to which the installations have proved effective needs to be
assessed, together with an examination of my ability to express the intended content.
My first explorations in radical presentation at UWE and Frome, through playing with
hermeneutical relationships, inadvertently gave precedence to the manner of showing the
work rather than its content. The juxtaposition of paintings and photographic work was
clearly out of balance in now you see me... (Fig. 89) and raised the painting versus
photography debate, which although not central to this project, showed that the conflict
between the two media was negative rather than positive. However the use of mirrors,
while perhaps too dominant in the circular Frome version of Triptych, did enhance the
paintings in the linear corridor installation at UWE (Fig. 90). This implies that the gallery
venue was less effective than the non-art venue. In line with this matter of context, the
combination of mirror and painting in the Women’s toilets was successful at both
exhibitions. Mirrors are a natural occurrence in this environment, and the viewer’s
relationship to the painted image was parallel to a contemplation of their own reflection.
Perhaps in the use of Brechtian strategies there is a good enough reason to employ extra
materials, where they are relevant to the context and support the painting rather than
distract from it. Nevertheless for this research, it is preferable that the content of the
painting should be the primary stimulant for Realism.
Eric Fischl, an artist noted for the strength of content in his paintings, 135 gave his opinion
on seeing photographs of the installations at UWE and at Frome. 136 He felt that my
paintings were playing a subsidiary role, that something in the way I paint was not
connecting to the content. Fischl was viewing visual documentation of my exhibitions,
and therefore saw the content of the work contained in the photographic representation of
the installations. The photographs invited a voyeuristic reading of the circumstances in
which the work was viewed - a certain curiosity, the difficulty in telling what is going on in
the context. So for instance the content became, for him, the poignancy of people
ignoring the parts of female nude displayed on the wall as they eat in the café (Fig. 91).
While this is interesting as a reaction, it is not about images of the nude in themselves.
He suggested that a practical choice has to be made: either acknowledge that the content
lies in the installation and let the paintings of the nude remain at the service of the
installation; or strengthen the content in the painted nude, so that any context provided
by its installation serves the image in the painting. For example, recognising the
141
Fig. 75b: detail

Triptych: centre panel
1998
142
significance of the scale of an image, as it is experienced by the viewer on meeting the

painting for the first time. 137
To pursue the original research question means taking on the weakness or lack of content
in the painted image, rather than submitting to the power of installation. Eric Fischl
advised tightening up not just my intentions but my painting technique. For him
personally, the paintings are vague (Fig. 75b: detail). Where I had intended the blurred
parts of the painting (the head and peripheral objects) to allow other parts (the aging
body) to gain more attention, the lack of focus in these areas seems tentative. He read
the ambiguity in broken brush marks as imagistic on the surface but, more significantly,
they revealed to Fischl my fear in exposing my body - and he acknowledges how difficult
that is.
You’re asking for an emotional and psychological response to something you’re

emotionally and psychologically attached to - and they’re vague. ... You’re looking
at yourself through your body, through age, through all the things that that
represents - and you have to give the viewer the chance to do that as well. I
mean, I can’t do it with myself - yet - I’m not brave enough to look at myself - I can
look at the world that way but I can’t yet look at myself. Your being very brave in
doing that. It’s more like you’ve set up this heroic project for yourself but your
scared out of your wits. ... That’s what the paint tells us. It’s telling us you’re
looking but you still don’t want us to see. 138
Using my own body as the model, while informative in the early phenomenological stages
of the research, was becoming problematic as the visual practice engaged with
hermeneutics. During now you see me... I had recognised the distraction caused by my
personal presence becoming part of the work. When I am observed beside paintings in
which I feature as the model, the interpretation of the work inevitably inclines towards
self-portraiture - whereas my intended role is as a performer playing out an idea. I had
also become aware of my dislike of this exposure. It requires a determined strength of
mind to maintain the interests of the research above the feelings of vulnerability arising
from my cultural conditioning. After now you see me... my inclination was to become
physically invisible in person - even though invisibility is a problem that aging women
need to address. My avowed motive was that this would allow the continued visibility of
my own body as the performer in the painting, while giving me the confidence to be more
adventurous in experimenting with the unpredictable nature of Realism. While these
143
Fig. 92
Eric Fischl
Noon Watch
144
reasons appear valid, are they letting my self consciousness in using my own body
interfere with research that concerns the nude in general? Should I allow myself to be
seen in person to emphasise the imagery? On the other hand, given the usefulness of
the phenomenological play of simultaneously seeing and being seen, is it possible to find
a method of painting myself naked that can express my intentions clearly without
compounding my feelings of exposure?
Eric Fischl felt the ideas in my work still had some way to go. As a viewer, he wanted
to know more about what I was attempting to say but had not been able to articulate.
He offered some practical advice. Realist painting, which Fischl refers to as
psychological painting, has a different structure to formal painting - it is intuitive and
uneven. He describes the working process:
... if you submit yourself to the painting, there’ll be parts of it which you handle
this way, and parts of it you handle this way, and parts of it have this kind of
detail, and parts of it you don’t care about - as you move through the meaning
of this to you. 139
Fischl’s answer to one specific problem demonstrates a major hermeneutical issue in

the reality of observation and recalls Merleau-Ponty’s description of vision. 140 He
pointed out that I should not care if there is an imbalance between the head and the
body in a painting, because they will never be seen in unison and it does not matter.
(Fig. 92) To try and make them work together as one for the sake of the painted
composition, is to revert to a formal, academic manner.
Looking is not about seeing the whole at once. ... If you paint yourself naked
we’ll see the breast, we’ll see the head, we’ll see the breast - then we’ll start to
see ... You perceive the whole but you don’t look at the whole. ... The reality
is we look at things in parts - and we look at them for all the reasons that we
know we look at them for. 141
In discussing my fear of exposure through the use of my own body, I suggested that I
might attempt to use narrative painting to engage with the invisibility of aging women.
In response, Fischl recommended that I consider a physical confrontation in the manner
of portraiture, rather than through narrative. He sees the strength of British painting in
portraiture and landscape, rather than narrative painting - and says our audience is too
145
Fig. 93
Lucian Freud
Standing by the Rags
1988-89, oil on canvas, 168,25 x 138.5 cm
146
sophisticated, through its familiarity with verbal narrative in theatre and literature, to
tolerate the intellectual construction of visual narrative. For instance he feels that Lucian
Freud’s attempts at narrative painting are not effective but that his genius is evident when
he presents a non-verbal portrayal of a person - a character that simply stands before
you. 142
(Fig. 93) So Fischl’s advice to me was to make a painting in which I am irrefutably
not invisible - a painting that confronts the viewer like a portrait. Jenny Saville uses this
strategy in her portrayals of obesity - particularly effective in America, where there is
enormous prejudice against weight. Fischl pointed out that:
... you know that you’re not invisible - and have every right to be there and be
there as a physical being and a sexual being. Right? So you just have to insist
that somebody sees that - and then it becomes an issue with them. So then
you’ve engaged the dialogue, because they’re going “Do I want to see this? I’m
not sure. 143
In the light of the original research question, the visual practice has to give priority to the
content of the painting. Any additional elements, in presentation or installation, must
serve to assist the stimulation of an Event of Realism, and not dominate the content. But
although having played with hermeneutical relationships at the cost of the actual content,
the experience of now you see me... provided valuable insight into the problems of
audience reaction discussed in sections XVI and XVII, which underline Fischl’s reaction to
the work. His recommendation to tighten up the painting, is an exhortation to sharpen the
impact of the image on the viewer and not just a request for less blurry brush work. The
issue for consideration is the method of confrontation - the manner in which I want the
content to assert itself.
At this point, whether the practical issues revealed anything for the major theoretical
concerns was not yet clear. But even if the Event of Realism remains unknown and
possibly unknowable, Eric Fischl offered encouragement to pursue understanding through
practice, rather than trying to find an answer.
I don't think about the viewer. That is I don't think about the public. I make a
distinction between those people that I know and those I have no way of
knowing. The public I ignore and don't, at all costs, try to second guess them. My
audience is all the voices in my head made up of people, dead or alive, historical
or contemporary, whom I respect and admire and whose approval is important to
147
Fig. 92
Eric Fischl
The Bed, The Chair, Dancing, Watching
2000, oil on linen, 175.3 x 198.1 cm
148
me. They are the voices of influences, both good and bad, who offer to me a kind
of clarifying resistance. It is in dialogue with these voices that I am able to make
decisions that ultimately determine the quality of the finished work of art.
Sound complicated? It isn't really. Think of it like a tennis match. You have two
audiences there. The primary audience is your opponent on the other side of the
net. This opponent will feel the full weight of your intentions and will resist them
causing you to make adjustments in order to achieve your desired result, which is
to win. The other audience is the public who has come to see a good match.
They are fickle and not to be counted on for help or loyalty. They will simply see
the result of your battle and decide whether they were completely entertained or
not. A great match, like a great work of art, is determined by the quality of your
opponent and the way you overcame them. 144
In view of the effectiveness of his Realism, (Fig. 94) Fischl’s advice to concentrate more
on the work is worth following. By putting the content first, the engagement with the
viewer becomes how they meet the work rather than their actual response.
XIX
Following on from now you see me... my next exhibition had already been planned, and
was to take place immediately after the meeting with Eric Fischl. Although the decision
had been taken to pursue site specific work in a non-art environment, it also offered an
opportunity to put Fischl’s advice (literally) into practice - by not allowing the context to
dominate the content.
A year or so earlier a colleague had suggested that my work on the nude should be seen
in a domestic environment and, finding five other artists who were interested in the same
idea, the In House group was formed. After unsuccessfully searching for an empty
house, we were offered three rooms in the home of another artist, where three of us
installed our first group exhibition - In House 1st time - during the 1998 Bath Fringe
Festival.
Showing work in an occupied dwelling had two unexpected but significant results. First
the distinction between the art works and household artifacts was blurred - mainly
149
Fig. 95
In House 1st time
Collaborative installation with Anne Morrison
150
because the art referenced the domestic surroundings, but also assisted by the occupier
displaying her own work in the rest of the house. Second, we had decided not to take
one room each but to disperse the work across the available space - and we found that
where two In House artists showed work together in one room, the whole installation
merged into the work of one two-headed artist. (Fig. 95)
The In House group decided, in the light of this first exhibition, to look for occupied
dwellings where the householders were willing to host a larger exhibition for all six artists.
In 1999, the group found two families willing to have artwork installed in their homes for a
two week exhibition - and the outcome, In House Twice, was the exhibition that
immediately followed my meeting with Eric Fischl.
Would this be the right context to make a painting where I was irrefutably visible? Did I
have the nerve to do such work in somebody else’s house? The circumstances, being
similar to a residency, meant the occupants were partners in the venture and their feelings
needed to be considered. With this in mind, and to allow myself a little distance from the
personal relationship with my own body without avoiding the issue, I decided to take a
step away (not back, but sideways) and look at issues for others while using my own
body as the model (or performer). My aim was to engage with the woman in each family
instead of the house itself - a shift of context from the place to the people in it. To attempt
the maximum impact, in potentially invisible circumstances, I would pay heed to the
position and scale of the work - to know where the viewer would be when their attention
is seized. 145
151
In House Twice
Fig. 97, On the landing at Widcombe
Fig. 96, Lipstick at Widcombe
Fig. 100, Rebecca’s room at Foxcombe
152
Through consultation with the families during the production process the images of my
body became portraits of the women in each house. I made four pieces of work - two for
each family. In one house, they both referenced the wife, who had just turned forty. The
painting in the bathroom (Fig. 96) responded to the row of lipsticks I found in an alcove -
she was exploring her femininity by experimenting with lipstick for the first time. The
drawing on the stairs (Fig. 97), a life size charcoal drawing ‘looking out of the window’,
was a significant step forward. First it is a departure from using mirrors, but also more
crucially, its position and scale worked. I knew that, working with nude images, it would
be inappropriate to install work lower down the house below this particular landing. As
the viewer climbed the stairs, they encountered a life size naked figure when they entered
the private part of the house - already marked by a picture of women in underwear hung
on the other side of the window.
The couple at the other house were naturists and their bathroom had a definite
celebratory feel. I made a painting based on one of the postcards displayed on the wall
of a Renoir nude (Fig. 98) but, referencing the wife, portrayed myself getting into their
bath. The painting was installed on a mirror, to be viewed when seated on the edge of
the bath - as if beside the painted image (Fig. 99). For the second picture in a spare
bedroom, I referred to the daughter who had left home by recalling the younger figure in
Triptych - drawing directly on to the wall beside the mirror as if the reflection was leaving
the mirror and making its way to the door. (Fig. 100) This image picked up on another
piece of work in the same room, by Elizabeth Adeline, which already referred to the empty
Fig. 96
Renoir
Nude woman drying her foot
Fig. 99, Bathroom at Foxcombe
153
Fig. 101
Rebecca’s room
Absent hangers, by Elizabeth Adeline
Wall drawing by Karen Wallis
154
nest with a ‘spine’ of skeletal coat hangers lying on the bed. (Fig. 101)
The attempt at collaboration in ‘Rebecca’s Room’ was not as successful as the

happenstance of In House 1st time, due to the shift in scale to an exhibition involving six
individual artists all with different agendas.
This way of working with colleagues and context has its strengths and
weaknesses - the inevitable interaction of six viewpoints converging and
diverging. There is the risk that the contrast of aims and ideologies will result in a
difference of aesthetic that will be confusing, uncomfortable, even unacceptable to
some people. 146
However, being part of the In House group offered an excellent, supportive environment
and provided me with courage to experiment (with drawing on the wall), to try and maybe
fail (in a collaboration), gaining experience and confidence to try again in the future. Most
significant for this research, was the element of Brechtian theatricality that developed in
my images of the nude. This was not “high drama” 147 but a re-presentation of ordinary
and overlooked instances in the lives of the women of the houses, which through using
my own body, made the paintings and drawings into a form of performance.
The exhibits in In House Twice were installed without labels and situated throughout both
the houses, in amongst the families’ belongings. There were no clear boundaries
between the art and ‘real life’. The exhibition was open to the general public, by
appointment, and visitors to both houses had a good variety of reactions. They tended
to enjoy the permission to be nosy; but while some liked having to ‘hunt the art’, others
found it frustrating. One of the aims of In House was to reveal the connections between
our art and its origins in everyday existence - and thereby to stimulate considerations of
what might be, or become, art. Therefore for me the ambiguity and blurring of art and its
context was part of the experience. I did not mind that visitors believed that I had
installed the row of lipsticks as part of my intervention, because in referencing them, I had
‘placed’ them in the work.
Subsequently we produced a book of the exhibition. By making the book start at both
ends - one for each house - and putting our artists’ statement in the middle, we managed
to retain the element of hide and seek. For me, this blurring of boundaries is appropriate.
It reflects the shifting positions that occur in this research. In the search for solutions, the
odd glimpse is attained but appears so closely situated beside other concepts, that it is
155
Fig. 102
Moving On
1999, Conté chalk & charcoal on paper, 59.2 x 84 cm
156
either difficult to distinguish or slips away into another idea.
As a postscript to In House Twice, and an attempt to return to the original research

question, I developed one of the pieces of work from In House Twice into a separate
picture that was not site specific. Taking the image from the drawing on the wall of
‘Rebecca’s Room’, I made another study on paper, Moving On (Fig. 102), this time
moving the young figure through a central transitional section into an older figure. 148 I was
interested in the subject of age remembering youth, through involuntary memory as a
potential component of an Event of Realism - the flash of memory that comes out of the
blue, compared to the conscious effort of remembrance. 149 Walter Benjamin, in a complex
string of references to Bergson’s philosophy in Proust’s fiction and the psychoanalysis of
Reik, defines the difference as: conscious remembrance being a construction of the past
aimed at protection of the unwanted stimuli of actual memories; and involuntary memory
coming from outside consciousness and being the stimuli which break into the mind in
response to some object in the present. 150 Although the latter appears, in its
spontaneous appearance and evasiveness, to have a link with Realism as an Event for
the viewer, in the light of further reading of Levinas and Blanchot, a sense of the Real is
more likely to be discovered in between memory and remembrance. Parallel to this, my
development of the idea in Moving On not only realised that to look back at one’s youth
will involve both remembrance and memory, but in the central indeterminate section of the
drawing I was attempting to express confused memory in a metaphor of chalk marks.
Instead of the hoped for progression to a concept expressed within a drawing, I had
reverted to - or moved across into - formal mark making and an allegorical association with
academic art. Clearly, this was not the best approach to putting the content back into the
picture.
The site specific work at In House Twice showed some progress in strengthening the
content. The performative element had arisen from content rather than presentation; but
there was still a dependency on being site specific. To ascertain if it is possible to make
paintings of the nude that can stand alone, a further study of effective Realism is required
to find out how Realist painting itself ‘performs’ - in a Brechtian sense - to engage the
viewer by pulling them into the picture.
XX
Through a study of four individual Realist painters, the aim is to gain an understanding of
how a sensation of the Real is evoked. In later sections I will look closely at individual
157
Fig. 45 Rembrandt Fig. 47 Hopper Fig. 48 Freud Fig. 49 Fischl
158
examples of their work in relation to specific aspects of the research, but here I will look at
their overall approach to making work. It must be remembered from the previous
investigation of Realism 151 that it will be the process of making, and not the end product,
that will provide information. Just as Kantian beauty is not a quality which can be
universally attributed to an object, but is the common feeling of subjective pleasure in
aesthetic judgement, 152 so the disruption which stimulates Realism will not be some object
or element found in a picture, but the manner in which it causes the viewer to perceive
Realism.
In order to learn about the process that stimulates Realism, it is necessary to experience
it. It is therefore appropriate to look at artists whose work frequently appears Real to me
(causing me to recognise a connection with my own existence) than to study artists, such
as Courbet, whose work is considered Real by others. But in doing so, this investigation
must be a phenomenological reading of how a picture creates such an effect upon me and
not a description of my subjective response to an individual image. 153 This process,
which creates a sense of the real through the making of a picture, does not refer to the
style used in the physical act of making painted marks on a surface, but to the manner in
which all elements in a picture are brought together. The relationships between content,
painting style and connections with the viewer - including prior knowledge of references
both in and outside the image - will all contribute to the effect created by an image.
For this study, I shall restrict myself to the work of four artists, in order to search for generic
qualities in their making process. To find some common elements in the approach of four
particular artists, should provide some indication of why their work succeeds in being
Realist for me - a better validation than mere empathy with certain paintings. From the
five artists named in section XI, as effectively Realist for me, I shall leave aside Manet
and study the other four, who are unconnected with the 19th century Realism. (Figs. 47,
49, 50, 51) Two who are primarily narrative painters, Eric Fischl and Edward Hopper; and
two whose strength lies in an approach based on portraiture, Lucian Freud and
Rembrandt. Apart from their obvious similarities - figurative painting and a predominant
interest in people - they share a disjointure between their mature work and the
established methods of their contemporaries. Each of them has chosen to position
themselves at a distance - sometimes a literal geographical distance - from the
established culture in which they work.
Eric Fischl’s view on a Realist (or to him, psychological) approach to painting and its
difference to the academy has already been noted, 154 and in our conversation he
described his own problematic relationship with the “imagistic culture” of American, middle
159
Fig. 103
Eric Fischl
Sleepwalker
1979, oil on canvas
176 x 267 cm
Fig. 104
Eric Fischl
Anger, Remorse, Fear or Incontinence,
1996, oil on linen, 249 x 261.5 cm
Fig. 105
Edward Hopper
Nighthawks
1942, oil on canvas
84.1 x 152.4 cm
160
class suburbia, which fails to connect with the reality of family life. 155 In addition to these
points, his unusual career development after his art education is significant in taking him
further away from an academic approach. He trained at CalArts during its free thinking
avant garde period in the early 1970’s, where painting was entirely abstract and no one
was taught to draw. Nevertheless Fischl has become a notable figurative artist, by
applying an art educated intelligence to an initial lack of technical expertise. In his early
work, in which he depicts an uncompromising view of suburban America, he deliberately
employed powerful iconography as a substitute for painting skill. 156 (Fig. 103) As his
painterliness has developed he has maintained a non-European realism that can critique
the academic tradition while learning from it. (Fig. 104) For Fischl, there are two kinds of
painter: those whose work exudes an energy that leaves the viewer with an overall
sense of authentic power; and those whose individual paintings “burn on the brain”. In
the first category he includes “a lot of Rembrandt” and in the latter he names Edward
Hopper. 157
Although I would argue from my own experience, and subsequent remarks
made by Fischl, 158 that certain images of Rembrandt are individually powerful, I am in
complete agreement regarding Hopper and include Fischl in the same category.
After a traditional training in New York, Edward Hopper made three visits to Paris during
his twenties between 1906 and 1910. He admired Manet and Courbet but did not
appreciate Cézanne. He was shown work by the Impressionists, and allowed himself to
be temporarily influenced by them, but on returning home he reverted to a more sombre
palette. Turning away from all contemporary movements, including the New York based
Ashcan School formed by his teacher Henri, he proceeded to develop his own individual
style. 159
However, his memories of Paris stayed with him and throughout his life he
described himself as an Impressionist. 160 Despite his claim, Hopper’s work is not readily
associated with a French Impressionist style - except perhaps with early Manet. On the
contrary his distinctive mature paintings, have come to be regarded as essentially
American. (Fig. 105) It seems that instead of employing Impressionism’s painting
technique, he adopted its method of phenomenological observation to scrutinise his
immediate environment. For as Fischl says of the French ability to look - “Impressionism
could not have come out of any culture.....that wasn’t involved in staring.” 161
Fischl and Hopper are both primarily narrative painters - although Fischl’s interest and
practice in portraiture will be seen to have significance. While it is not a direct concern of
this research it is perhaps interesting to note, in view of Fischl’s remark on British narrative
painting, 162 that being American they are both at a distance from European history and
the ensuing weight of that influence. The other two Realist painters selected here, Lucian
161
Fig. 50
Lucian Freud
Blond Girl on a Bed
1987, oil on canvas
41 x 51 cm
Fig. 104
Rembrandt van Rijn
Susanna and the Elders
1636, oil on panel
47.2 x 38.6 cm
162
Freud and Rembrandt (both European), have a mastery in portraiture that is dominant,
even in their other narrative based work.
Like Hopper, Lucian Freud has pursued his own individual approach to painting
throughout his working life, without any apparent reference to activity in the contemporary
art world. However, the heavy impasto of his later work, which gradually emerged out of
his early hard edged, flat surfaced, neo classic realism, is an interesting stance on the
modernist concern with surface. Instead of coming forward from the picture plane he
pushes back behind it to ‘see in’, while simultaneously making the flesh of the body into
the surface. Where Auerbach - his friend and colleague in the London School - keeps his
figuration in the material surface and, like Giacometti, completely reworks it repeatedly to
catch the moment, Freud’s version of this phenomenological anxiety is to persistently and
painstakingly work over the surface, building it up as he pushes into the image. Being a
refugee from Nazi Germany must have some bearing on the fact that Freud’s painting of
flesh is sometimes seen as corpse like; but for me it has a fragility of living mortality that
resonates just as strongly with the holocaust. To read a painting like Blond Girl on a Bed
(Fig. 50) in terms of human frailty, goes against the feminist position that sees such work
as victimising women. However, while acknowledging the connotation of Freud’s
enactment of power, what makes his work Real for me is his portrayal of the
helplessness of living flesh that is proceeding towards death. It is his ability to embody
flesh in paint that distinguishes him, for me, as a Realist painter and distances him from his
contemporaries.
In the case of Rembrandt, living nearly 400 years ago, the critical distance is found in the
divide between northern and southern Europe. Like other Dutch, Flemish and German
artists - from Dürer and Cranach to Rubens - his manner of portraying the body remains
rooted in observation from nature, with quite different proportions from the classical ideal.
Rembrandt is part of what Kenneth Clark designates as ‘The Alternative Convention’
(thus demonstrating the academic preference for the classical); in which even the erotic
nude in ancient mythology, fails to achieve the ideal of “divine perfection”, but retains an
element of the earlier Christian view of the body as “an object of humiliation and shame”.
163
But where Rembrandt stands out from his fellow northerners, is in his tenacity in
favouring the natural over the ideal. (Fig. 106) Unlike Dürer or Rubens, he chose not to
visit Italy as part of his training - to learn at first hand how to bring his style nearer to the
classical. Instead he was content to stay in Holland and make do with studying works by
Italian painters, 164 presumably as they passed through nearby auction houses.
Whatever the reasons for this decision (perhaps national loyalty during the war with
163
Fig. 11
Rembrandt van Rijn
Naked Woman seated on a mound
1636, etching
164
Spain 165
) the same independence of action is evident in the later self-portraits, where he
portrays himself as the working artist instead of a gentleman, and seems to go
deliberately against his contemporaries’ shift towards classicism (coincidentally when the
Netherlands finally gain their independence in 1648).166 ‘The Alternative Convention’ had
previously shown a certain innocence in their attempts to emulate the values of
classicism; but Rembrandt turned those values upside down by demonstrating a
sophisticated mastery of painting to show the natural beauty that can be found in a strict
phenomenological realism. Many found this reversal of standards difficult to appreciate;
which is evident in Rembrandt’s unpopularity at the end of his life, through his refusal to
join his contemporaries’ move towards classicism, and the subsequent denigration of his
work after his death. In 1681 - 12 years after Rembrandt died - the poet Andries Pels
wrote, on seeing Naked Woman seated on a mound: (Fig. 11)
He chose no Greek Venus as his model

But rather a washerwoman or treader of peat from a barn,
And called this whim “imitation of nature.”
Everything else to him was idle ornament. Flabby breasts,
Ill-shaped hands, nay the marks of the lacings
Of the corsets on the stomach and of the garters on the legs,
Must be visible if Nature was to get her due:
That is his Nature, which would stand no rules,
167
No principles of proportion in the human body.
Rembrandt and Freud, Hopper and Fischl share a concern with uncompromising honesty
in what they see. Each of them has moved away from the established method of picture
making used by their contemporaries, in an effort to represent their observation of
actuality. They have not abandoned the art education they received alongside their
contemporaries, but have added to it a particular experience from another environment to
form their own method of working: Rembrandt - painting Northern European realism with
an Italian sophistication; Freud - representing human flesh as the surface in place of a
modernist picture plane; Hopper - portraying American life by observing it in a French
Impressionist manner; Fischl - placing content above form in figurative painting. 168
These four artists are not alone in attempting to represent a phenomenological reality but
they each demonstrate a particular quality that, for this research, sets them apart from their
contemporaries. The difference lies in their determination to bridge the gap between the
construct that is a painting and phenomenological experience of the actual world.
Rembrandt paints himself standing before us as a working artist, or presents
Bathsheba’s dilemma by showing an ordinary woman reading a letter. Freud brings us
165
Fig. 65
Eric Fischl
Grief
1981, oil on canvas, 152.4 x 165.1 cm
166
face to face with vulnerable human frailty. Hopper subjects his native surroundings to
the scrutiny of French impressionistic voyeurism, to reveal the yawning spaces that
surround people. And Fischl faces the self consciousness of awkward moments:
It’s always within the awkward moment that one senses this split between how
we want to look like and how we feel about ourselves - or what we think we’re
doing and what we’re actually doing. 169
XXI
Having looked at the subject matter of Rembrandt and Freud, Hopper and Fischl, and
speculated on the reasons for their choice, is it possible to establish why it is effective
Realism? How do these artists proceed in their endeavour? What is it that makes their
work ‘perform’?
When discussing with Fischl the Event of Realism that I experienced on seeing his
painting Grief (Fig. 65), he affirmed that its impact relies on the shock of a direct reference
to a particular kind of death - “The one where nature reverses its orders is the most
frightening.” However he also questioned whether this tactic can be called art:
... it’s actually incredibly clumsy in the way it’s painted ... If there were a lot of
artists doing scenes like that, it may turn out not to be the best one. But, when it
was inserted into the culture, it was the only one and that’s why it achieved some
resonance. 170
His doubt is predicated on the assumption that art must be skillfully crafted and not merely
opportunistic. Having made the comparison in a New York gallery, between some of
Fischl’s ‘unskilled’ but nevertheless highly Realist work and more accomplished paintings,
that seemed to me polished and ‘finished’ in an almost academic manner, I would argue
that a specific quality is not the issue - there are different kinds of art which elicit different
reactions.
The distinction here is that Realist art in stimulating an Event for the viewer, grants access
to the work - which Fischl describes as “connectivity”. Realist painting makes direct
contact with the viewer, bypassing the need for a sophisticated literary knowledge
required for the high art of the academy, asking for an engagement beyond the pure
aesthetic of non literary art for art’s sake, and even side stepping the irony and cynicism
of recent conceptual art that, as Fischl points out, is concerned with disconnection. 171
167
Fig. 107
Eric Fischl
The New House
1982, oil on canvas, 172.8 x 243.9 cm
Fig. 47
Rembrandt van Rijm
Bathsheba with King David’s Letter
168
In Fischl’s painting The New House (Fig. 107), it is night and a light shines through a
doorway on to a young woman. She is standing naked in a kitchen, alone in her new
home among the packing cases. To comfort herself in her new and strange surroundings,
she is talking on the telephone and simultaneously watching television. The painting
appears to be, and most probably is, constructed from photographs, 172 the figure stands
awkwardly and her shadow falls heavily across the floor. But although the picture is
unsophisticated in composition and painting style, the subject matter is instantly
recognisable to anyone who has moved house. The feeling of disorientation is
compounded by a new twist on the traditional painting device. Where a mirror might be
used to open up the space of the picture to show more of the surroundings, the
television, together with the telephone, links us and her to a world outside the painting. A
modern idea that Fischl says shows “how truly bizarre our lives are”. 173
Fischl’s Realism may work against painterliness, and to a lesser extent this can be said of
Hopper (whose idiosyncrasy lies in composition rather than in painting technique) but this
is not the case with Freud and Rembrandt. The element that provides connectivity in
Realist painting is its precise attempt to bridge the gap between art and life. Apart from
showing a situation that the viewer can recognise from their contemporary world, they
endeavour to represent a moment of existence.
This moment is not a frozen frame like a film still, which would be Naturalism. That is
abstract time, clock time, spatialised and homogeneous and has as Levinas says “an
order of instants but no central instant”. The moment for Realist painting is the present
suspended in concrete time - “a halt, not because it is arrested, but because it interrupts
and links up again the duration to which it comes, out of itself”. 174 This does not refer to
the phenomenological static representation within the frame that is the picture’s own
density. 175
The image of Bathsheba (Fig. 47) reading a letter as her foot is being dried by
her waiting woman is a pause that could last forever - not because it is an object that is
Rembrandt’s painting but because it is the kind of incident that feels as if it would continue
indefinitely - the decisive moment, the endless dilemma...
Nevertheless the painted object that contains a Realist image, being held in the present
but at the same time leading us “to the hither side of it”, does achieve a resonance with
the presence of the present, that adds to the portrayal of the instant. Phenomenologically
the picture itself is static but, unlike artists constructing images in the classical academy,
Realist painters make no attempt to show what came before the incident represented nor
what may happen in the future, 176 they show one instant alone - the same as the image
169
Fig. 47
Edward Hopper
Hotel Room
1931, oil on canvas
152.4 x 165.1 cm
Fig. 47
Rembrandt van Rijm
Bathsheba with King David’s Letter
170
in the frame. The Realist painting’s complete lack of a past or a future grips the image in
the present - and we are doubly aware of this because the painted object is static.
For instance, in Edward Hopper’s Hotel Room (Fig. 49) there is very little information to tell
us anything outside the moment shown. The only indication of past activity is that the
woman has travelled, with her bags, to arrive in the hotel room, where she has
undressed. Although we can presume that she is on her own, much of the room is
hidden, and the size of bed is ambiguous - it could be a small double or a large single.
The room is anonymous - it could be any hotel room. We cannot tell whether she is
reading or thinking. It is a single sheet of folded paper, not a book - so she would not be
reading a great deal - and the paper is blank. If we turn to Hopper’s journal we find out
little more than that the paper is a ‘timetable’ and confirms that it is night time - the
remaining notes describe the room we see. 177 We know nothing, except that it is a
moment of stillness - a pause in the movement of travelling. The woman exudes
thoughtfulness within the anonymous environment. Her body is composed, focussed in
the paper. Whatever she is thinking about needs all her concentration and will take time.
The intensity of her contemplation fills the stillness.
Returning to Rembrandt, (Fig. 47) if we forget the biblical tale and look again at the scene
in Bathsheba, what does it tell us? Like Hopper’s traveller, Bathsheba is a woman
shown in the intimacy of being undressed, while engrossed in thought. Vulnerable and
naked, she too holds a letter whose contents are causing the rapt expression on her face
- and whose arrival has caused the inscrutable discretion on the face of her waiting
woman. The moment is held in the present both in paint and in the present moment of
being seen by the viewer - who will understand the situation but can never know what
has happened to lead to this moment nor what consequences are to come. The situation
is both understandable and incomprehensible - we can empathise without knowing why.
In showing an instant of reality, a Realist painting offers a feeling of revelation that is

never fulfiled but slips away while constantly renewing and insisting on its presence - in
the same way that we exist in a repeated instant that only reveals the limitations and
otherness of the present. Levinas defines the particular quality of the present as its
achievement in simultaneously being both existence (being in general) and an existent
(being a subject). This results in an evanescence that is not so much a joining together
as the sacrifice of both, in the transmutation of the verb ‘to be’ into a substantive - for
Levinas a hypostasis. 178
Realist painting is an attempt to represent the presence of the
present - to materialise hypostasis by creating an impression of evanescence.
171
Fig. 108
Looking Back
162.5 x 79 cm
172
The evanescence of the instant constitutes its very presence it is the condition for
the fullness of a contact with being, which is in no way a habit, is not inherited
from a past, but is in point of fact present. The absolute character of the present
is not the negation of the destruction which time brings about, nor the affirmation of
something durable. 179
When Realist painting performs effectively it allows the viewer to gain access, through
the recognition of existence shown in the representation of an instant. The ‘connectivity’
is in an event which joins the viewer to the picture in the presence of the present. The
sense of the Real lies in slippage between past and future that is the evanescence of the
present moment - as Fischl says:
The reality is that we’re always in a state of becoming, and it’s always an
awkward state. We’re always a little behind how we are physically in the world -
or we’re not quite ready to meet the moment to come. I love that. To me there’s
such truth there, that that’s really where one should look for inspiration, because
it’s irrefutable. There’s almost no moments when we come together - that outside
and inside - and it sort of reflects our spiritual quest. 180
This awkward quality of existence in the present, is evident in the most effective Realist
works of Rembrandt, Hopper, Freud and Fischl. Having begun a shift of emphasis in my
own practice, to place the content of the image at the heart of the hermeneutical
relationship with the viewer, the next step is to attempt the representation of an instant
that can embrace the viewer in the image.
XXII
Out of Eric Fischl’s observation on the awkwardness of our position in the world, came
his advice to counteract my invisibility by portraying myself as undeniably visible. 181
In
an effort to follow his suggestion, I drew Looking Back (Fig. 108) The image is life size
and designed to ‘stand’ on the floor against a wall, like a full length mirror. The reference to
looking in the mirror alludes to self-portraiture while emphasising my own self
consciousness - and, it is hoped, presents an instant of the present that the viewer can
share with the image.
In terms of the “heroic project” - using my own body to investigate the nude - this drawing
marks the limit of my ability to be exposed naked as myself. To continue the
173
Melanie Manchot
OUT, look at me loving you
1998, bill board poster installation
South Kensington, London
Fig. 111
Fig. 110
174
investigation on these lines would prove too problematic and it was therefore necessary,
for completion of the research, to find the other strategies which were not so personal -
such as portraiture through performance and the veiled nude.
Melanie Manchot, between 1996 and 2000, made a series of photographic works with her
mother, celebrating the aging body. A poster project OUT, look at me loving you was an
installation on advertising hoardings in London in 1998. (Figs. 109 & 110)
Being in a public location, they were not allowed to portray Mrs Manchot naked so she
appeared in underwear. Despite the modest clothing, as an older woman nearly three
metres high on a hoarding in the street, she was essentially naked. A young woman with
firm flesh would not have seemed so exposed in vest and pants, because in our culture
we are used to seeing the bare flesh of youthful bodies in advertising. Whereas the
unaccustomed sight of flesh belonging to an older woman brings to notice the fact that she
is showing more of her body than usual - and being partially dressed is tantamount to
being naked. (Fig. 111)
Fig. 109
175
Fig. 113
Jackpot , clothes store, Bath
Jackpot residency
Fig. 114 Fig. 115 Fig. 116
176
The offer of a brief residency in a clothes shop provided an opportunity for me to

experiment with this type of veiled nudity - by portraying my body, untransformed and
visible inside clothes usually displayed on a size 10 model. (Fig. 112)
Fig. 112
Jackpot: Worksight residency
The store involved was Jackpot, part of a high street chain selling ‘everyday clothing’,
which enabled me to make a statement on cultural issues concerning the size and age of
women used in advertising. The aim of the project was to celebrate the ordinary body
wearing the clothes sold in the store. (Fig. 113) My colleague, Anne Morrison,
photographed me in a wide range of the stock (Fig. 114) and I then set up my ‘studio’ in
the shop window and proceeded to make coloured chalk drawings from the photographs.
There were mirrors beside me so that I could refer to my live reflection - and through which
I could see people in the street, as they watched me and saw themselves reflected
beside my drawings. (Fig. 115) The choice of medium was dictated by the venue - the
smell of oil paint would have been too strong but colour was essential for representing
the clothing. In the event, the pictures in colour Conté chalks had an interesting echo of
fashion drawing. The project became a performance as I drew in the shop window and
had discussions with members of the public keen to share their views on issues around
clothing, age and size. Although the residency was most successful for both the shop
and my work, I would have preferred a longer period of time. In five days, I could only
achieve representations of myself as a ‘fashion’ model. A longer residency would allow
an element of portraiture to be gleaned from the discussions with the public - an extension
of the performance.
Working with the clothed body, that reveals the figure underneath, gave an implication of
nakedness where nudity would have been difficult. Not only did I get a respite from
exposing myself naked but the issue of showing nudity in public was overcome. The
body was clearly visible in a situation where nudity is unacceptable. (Fig. 116) Just as
177
Fig. 25
Rembrandt
Woman Bathing in a Stream
1654-55, Panel, 62 x 47 cm
178
the naked body can be clothed in nudity, so the partially clad body can appear naked. A
ploy often used for titillation and innuendo in soft pornography. Even the floating gauzes
in Titian or Rubens can be suggestive; and one of Rembrandt’s most erotic and Realistic
paintings is of a woman in a shift - the only flesh visible being her arms, legs and a deep
cleavage..
Woman Bathing in a Stream is in the National Gallery in London. (Fig. 25) Like many of
Rembrandt’s mature works, it is broadly painted with variations in paint thickness and
works best as a whole image when seen at a distance of about ten feet - where it can
“sparkle at its best”. 182 It is a small painting and one person standing in front of it can
obscure the whole picture, which heightens its intimacy as an artifact - suggestive of the
bedroom. The composition is highly erotic, with many elements in the painting leading the
eye down towards the woman’s private parts. First her eyes glance downwards. Then
there is the deep V-shaped neck of her shift, showing the dip between her breasts while
still hiding them. Below that the crescent shape swag of her shift as she holds it up,
shapes a shadow that suggests hidden pubic hair. Her forefinger extends to hook back
the cloth, and together with a gleaming fold of fabric on the other side, they point at her
crotch. There is an inverted V of shadow between her legs, a reflected shadow on her
inner right thigh, an edge of gold cloth sweeping in from the left echoing the sweep of her
arm and swag of her shift - and so on. Everything moves downward provocatively to
end in the darkness of shadow - indiscernible, mere suggestion. Although I feel as if I am
intruding on Rembrandt’s rather than her privacy, I also empathise with the touch of her
cotton shift, loose and soft over her naked body, allowing air to caress skin; and the
delicious feeling of water half-way up the calves when paddling. The consciousness of
being naked with a potential for exposure, coupled with the protection of a veil, offers
some sort of choice - the power of teasing.
Rembrandt’s intentions for this painting are unknown and its meaning is ambiguous. The
label in the National Gallery states:
The model seems to have been Rembrandt’s mistress,

Hendrickje Stoffels, who is probably also shown in a half-
length portrait in this room. The richly coloured robe on the
bank suggests the painting was intended as a study for a
mythological or religious work such as Diana Bathing or
Susanna and the Elders, which was however, never
carried out.
179
Fig. 117
The Rembrandt room
The National Gallery, London
Fig. 118
Rembrandt van Rijn
Hendrickje Stoffels (?)
c. 1654-9, oil on canvas, 101.9 x 83.7 cm
Fig. 25
Fig. 119, diagram from notes made in the National Gallery, 2000
180
The painting displays a spontaneity and freedom in the

handling of paint which have few parallels in Rembrandt’s
work. It appears unfinished in some parts but was clearly
finished to Rembrandt’s satisfaction as he signed and
dated it in 1654.
Why is this picture initially considered to be a study? The written notice implies surprise
that there is no subsequent, ‘complete’ work - and notes not only that Rembrandt did not
make preparatory oil sketches but that he regarded this as a finished piece of work. Can
the position of the figure offer any information? The woman is placed centrally in the
picture, facing more or less full front, which for the period indicates a portrait or figure
study. As mentioned in the label, the same room houses the Rembrandt portrait of a
young woman in a fur wrap - also thought to be of Hendrickje Stoffels. (Figs. 117 & 118)
This too is a sensual and erotic painting, full of intimacy - her left hand rests inside her
wrap - apparently touching herself but you cannot see where. There are striking
similarities between the two paintings: both are broadly painted and the light from the left
casts similar shadows on each figure; the women wear white garments that reveal a
similar cleavage - the V motif pointing towards sexual parts with dark shadows that
suggest but do not reveal. Although the portrait of Hendrickje is not dated, both pictures
are believed to have been painted around the same time. Their difference lies in their
context: Hendrickje sits at a table looking at the viewer and is clearly a portrait, while
Woman Bathing in a Stream stands in water looking down, which indicates a narrative.
Could Woman Bathing in a Stream be Susanna without the Elders - a portrait taken
from a narrative? She has all the accoutrements: her rich clothing lies on the ‘river’ bank
and she is in the act of entering the water. If this is the case, why would Rembrandt
paint a portrait of Susanna? Perhaps he has cast himself as an Elder. He was 48
when he painted this picture - an old man with a young mistress. The image is not
only erotic but voyeuristic. (Will the water act as a mirror and reveal a reflection that
looks up her shift?) The eye line of the viewer is directly opposite - neither above nor
below her. Could Rembrandt / an Elder / the viewer be on the other side of the stream,
crouched down looking through a gap in the bushes? (Fig. 119) The space between
the viewer and the figure in the image is tangible. As we look we know how Rembrandt
looked - intimately - and thus would an Elder look at Susanna. The background melts
back into itself - the focus rests on her body. This could be Rembrandt’s innovative
approach to a biblical subject. In identifying with the Elders, rather than paint himself
as an Elder in the picture, he places the Elder where he, Rembrandt stands to paint.
181
Fig. 25, Rembrandt
Fig. 120
Lucian Freud
Louisa
1998, oil on canvas, 91.4 x 71.1 cm
182
He has turned the painting around (literally by 90 degrees) to encompass the viewer in
the image - no longer an observer of the scene but a participant.
This blurring, in the distinction between portraiture and narrative painting, finds a
contemporary equivalent in Lucian Freud. His portraits do not originate in the usual
manner of contemporary portraiture, through being commissioned. His stature as an artist
allows him to choose his sitters rather than the other way round, thus shifting the status of
the portrait towards a painting that stands alone, without reference to the person
portrayed. To illustrate this ambiguity, a comparison can be made here between Woman
Bathing in a Stream (Fig. 25) and Louisa painted by Lucian Freud in 1998 (Fig. 120)
Freud has said that he visits the National Gallery “rather like going to the doctor for help”
when seeking to re-affirm some element in his work.183 In this instance he seems to have
found a particular affinity in Rembrandt. The formal similarities are clear: the V-shaped
cleavage, the position of the arms, the broadly painted, loose fitting white garment, and
the overall colouring with a darker background predominantly brown. However, although
these qualities drew my attention to the parallel with Woman Bathing in a Stream, it is the
implication that both women are conscious - perhaps even enjoying - being watched, in
the knowledge of their veiled nakedness. In Louisa, this is heightened by the shadow of
a black bra under her shirt and the position of her hands resting over her crotch - both
protective and suggestive. The painting reverberates with the tension of a young
woman closely observed by an older man. Is Lucian Freud another Elder here gazing at
his ‘Susanna’?
In meeting either Freud’s or Rembrandt’s ‘Susanna’, the suggestion is that we, the
viewers, are not only positioned where the artist stands to paint, but that we are made to
observe her as if we were a voyeuristic Elder. In the same manner we look through
Hopper’s eyes, in at windows to spy on private scenes, and with Fischl we catch
glimpses of secret moments as if we had just walked unexpectedly into the scene. The
movement of the viewer’s vision has been shifted. Instead of their attention moving from
side to side or up and down over the picture surface, the line that connects the viewer to
the picture runs forward and back between them.
However this line is not an unbroken thread. In each movement to and fro, it has to cross
a gap into which meaning can slip and fall, thus preventing the desired union. During
these erratic and unpredictable journeys an occasional connection is achieved amongst
the endless slippage, which causes an Event that is a sense of the Real. Although the
gap is physically manifest in the distance between the viewer in the picture, it is more
significantly a space, in Blanchot’s terms, that prevents complete understanding. 184 The
183
Fig. 120, Lucian Freud Fig. 25, Rembrandt
184
space defines the separation and otherness of both the image for the viewer, and the
viewer for the artist’s intention. On one side is the picture, physically static, repeatedly
re-presenting an image, and on the other side is the viewer reaching blindly for meaning.
XXIII
The shift of angle, seen in Rembrandt’s Woman Bathing in a Stream and Lucian Freud’s
Louisa (Figs. 120 & 25), is indicative of the viewer’s phenomenological and hermeneutical
position, in an Event of Realism. In moving away from formal portraiture towards - but not
quite reaching - a narrative, there is a severance of the aura that in the case of the portrait
belongs to the sitter, and in terms of narrative painting is rooted in traditional academic
structures. The accustomed position is changed in each case - the forward and backward
line between portrait and viewer is confused with the side by side position of characters
in a narrative. In between the genres a presence of the present is revealed and creates
a sense of the Real. Here is another instance of the Real appearing in the gap between
positions. Having ascertained that the Event of Realism is neither Beautiful nor Sublime,
we now have neither portraiture nor narrative - and what is more neither the naked nor the
clothed. There seem to be indeterminate areas between concepts, which should be
examined. As a first step, we could look at the gap between picture and viewer.
If, as discussed in section XXI, a Realist painting represents the evanescence of the
present - through its material insistence of an instant - how does this manifestation relate
to the viewer’s experience of their own hypostasis in the present moment? When a
picture is viewed, attention is given to it as an object, by a thinking person, in full
consciousness of their position as an existent ‘here’. 185 The materiality of a painting is the
paint and support of the picture itself - also positioned ‘here’ in front of the viewer. The
picture presents an image and through hermeneutical play the viewer constructs meaning.
This process applies to any representation. But when an Event of Realism is
experienced, an unknown element intrudes into the viewer’s consciousness. They feel
an emotion that disrupts their aesthetic contemplation - that interferes with their
subjectivity, while they continue to look at the image. Levinas describes emotion’s
impact:
Emotion is a way of holding on while losing one’s base. All emotion is fundamentally
vertigo, that vertigo one feels insinuating itself, that finding oneself over a void. The
world of forms opens like a bottomless abyss. The cosmos breaks up and chaos
gapes open - the abyss, the absence of place, the there is.186
185
Fig. 47, Edward Hopper
186
For Levinas the there is is the “anonymous rustling of existence”. This is not
unconsciousness, which is non-participation in consciousness. On the contrary, it is
wakeful, the vigilance of insomnia:
One watches on when there is nothing to watch and despite the absence of any
reason for remaining watchful. The bare fact of presence is oppressive; one is
held by being, held to be. One is detached from any object, any content, yet
there is presence. This presence which arises behind nothingness is neither a
being, nor consciousness functioning in a void, but the universal fact of the there
is, which encompasses things and consciousness. 187
Although persistent emotion in an Event of Realism may seem like insomnia - being
condemned to live, to continue to exist at a time when existence is unbearable - it is
nevertheless grounded in an object, the picture. The viewer, while in pursuit of a
disclosure, hinted at but never fulfilled, remains in touch with consciousness, positing the
picture on the other side of the space - the space that prevents full understanding. They
are aware of themselves positioned ‘here’, seeking the answer as to why the picture
reverberates with the there is. (Fig. 49)
This situation appears to be analogous with the distinction made by Sigmund Freud
between the neurotic and the artist (where for the neurotic the fantasy remains in their
head but the artist makes it manifest in the world through the artwork). 188 Instead of the
there is being entirely without any object, the experience of Realism brings the emotion
that constitutes the there is, out into the world through the manifestation of the picture in
front of the viewer. This does not mean the disturbing sensation of an Event of Realism
is diminished by being grounded in the real world. The disruption experienced through
the phenomenal substance of the picture is just as disturbing as the concept remaining in
the mind of the viewer. Yet in a way it does remain based in thought, like an insistent
idea in the wakefulness of insomnia that circles round the mind without settling; added to
which, the experience of Realism in a picture returns whenever the viewer returns to look
at the image. Caught between the artifact that is untouchable and the idea that persists,
it is like Blanchot’s ‘disaster’ - a threat that “ruins everything, all the while leaving
everything intact”. 189
When a viewer senses the presence of the present in a Realist painting, they see an
existent that expresses existence - a painted simulation of hypostasis - that reminds
187
Fig. 51
Eric Fischl
Bad Boy
1981, oil on canvas, 167.6 x 243.8 cm
188
them of their own being. A connection forms between the two, which suggests the
possibility that whatever is in the painting could, or maybe once did, happen to the
viewer. This can never be a complete perception or remembrance, but always
resembles an involuntary memory - a fragmentary suggestion - that denies conclusion.
The ‘threat’ lies in being caught between ‘here’ and the there is. Aware of the instant in
the picture, the viewer realises the inevitable separation from their own existence. They
persistently desire to make the connection complete but are unable to do so - a
helplessness resonating with Blanchot’s passivity that is “bereft of the present”. 190
In the viewer’s relationship with the picture, the sensation of the Real stimulates anxiety
or care for an idea expressed in paint. (Fig. 51) They sense an intense involvement in
something utterly separate and untouchable. In the same passivity faced in Blanchot’s
disaster, the connection to their own existence makes them feel as if they should take
some action to heal the disruption; but they cannot do so, being rooted on the other side
of the space from the cause of the disturbance. The viewer feels an obligation, despite
being gripped in a helpless passivity in the face of (disastrous) Reality. Oppressed by
an otherness, brought into unusually close ‘proximity’ by sensing a connection to their
own existence, the viewer finds themselves caught in a contradiction - described by
Blanchot as:
... this highly significant paradox: when passivity idles and destroys me, I am at
the same time pressed into a responsibility which not only exceeds me, but which
I cannot exercise, since I cannot do anything and no longer exist as myself. Such
responsible passivity would be Speaking. 191
In a disastrous encounter through a tenuous connection across a space, Realism appears

to ‘speak’:
between
picture & viewer
but also between

the Beautiful & the Sublime
portraiture & narrative
artifact & idea
the 'here' & the there is
an existent & existence
action & passivity
and for the painted nude between

the naked & the clothed
189
Fig. 120, Lucian Freud
Fig. 25, Rembrandt
Fig. 49, Edward Hopper
Fig. 107 Eric Fischl
190
If this in any way represents an Event of Realism for the viewer, what are the
implications for a visual practice that hopes to stimulate a sensation of the Real in a
painting of the nude?
XXIV
Given the indeterminacy in all areas where a sense of the Real can be found, how is it
possible to target a viewer’s response when making an art work? More specifically, what
is required in a painting of the nude to elicit a sense of a Real body? Although there have
been some achievements during the practical projects in this research, nothing conclusive
has been discovered. Any success in visual practice has been as indeterminate as the
findings - in fact unexpected reactions have become the expected response. In the light
of these results, how should my visual practice proceed in future work?
When attempting to make work that ‘speaks’ of Realism to a viewer, the artist has to
accept the uncertain nature of the viewer’s reaction - which may ‘succeed’ or ‘fail’ in terms
of the artist’s intentions. The offer of dialogue with the viewer comes from the work after it
has left the artist’s control. Just as the viewer is held in passivity across the gap in front
of the picture, so the artist has to accept passivity in letting the viewer react to the image.
In this ‘disastrous’ situation, the artist has to make work in the knowledge that it will fail.
However, failure is not an excuse for nihilism, on the contrary it is, as Brecht reminds us,
evidence of the continuing struggle. 192 Failure provides experience - it allows the
unexpected to happen.
The artwork itself, independent of both artist and viewer is capable, through the spaces
in between them, of not only generating meaning for the viewer, but of expressing
intention for the artist. The artist has to create the gaps in which the experience of
Realism can be found. These areas of “absent meaning” are not, according to Blanchot,
“absence of meaning, or potential”, but “lacking sense”. 193 Not art for art’s sake with no
meaning beyond the painted surface’s phenomenal presence, nor allegorical meaning to
be revealed through further knowledge, but a space where there is a want of
understanding - a paradox that “welcomes passive pressure”. Absent meaning is the
ambiguity in the viewer’s relationship to ‘Susanna’ in Rembrandt or Freud; the intensity of
a stranger’s unknown thoughts in Hopper’s Hotel Room; or the intermingling of
connectivity into and out of The New House by Fischl. (Figs. 25, 120, 49 & 51)
191
Fig. 121
now you see me...
Women’s Toilets
Fig. 122
Lipstick
Widcombe
In House Twice, 1999
Fig. 116
Jackpot
Worksight residency
192
When it comes to applying this process to painting the nude, to make painting that
‘speaks’ of the body, one must escape - from the classical nude of the literary academy
and from the nude subsumed into a modernist academy of the painted artifact - in order to
paint outside ‘art’. The effort should be “not to paint” in the way that Blanchot advocates
“not to write”:
... negligence, carelessness do not suffice; the intensity of a desire beyond

sovereignty, perhaps - a relation of submersion with the outside, passivity which
permits one to keep in the disaster’s fellowship. 194
In the practical projects of this research, I have endeavoured to shed the inhibitions of the
conventional painted nude. Phenomenology and hermeneutics have provided a structure
for working methods; and although Brechtian techniques in presentation are shown to be
effective, they can also be a distraction from content, which has to take priority. Alterity
that is the substance of Realism as an Event for the viewer, has suggested possibilities
as infinite as itself and will ensure that a pursuit of the Real will continue. The attempt to
paint outside ‘art’ has added installation and performance externally, in the presentation of
painting, but this does not constitute “not painting”. This must be tackled in the content of
the image and there is still some way to go to achieve “intensity without mastery, without
sovereignty, the obsessiveness of the utterly passive.” 195
By invading the viewer’s space in women’s toilets (Fig.121), performing in real space at
In House (Fig. 122), and exposing the nude publicly in veiled nakedness at Jackpot
clothes store (Fig. 116), I have been appreciated by women on issues of age and body
size, and caused annoyance in some areas of art practice on issues of method. There
have been no reactions that could provide conclusive answers but nevertheless
sufficient encouragement to persevere.
In terms of the original concern for the painted nude, the journey of the research has
ended some distance away from the starting point in the life room and art gallery. For
instance, the Jackpot project, although highly successful in bringing the issue of the
appearance of the ordinary body to the attention of the general public, was moving into
the gender politics of fashion and advertising. This is a perfectly valid course to pursue in
future work but is moving away from my original investigation. The question remains:
how can I re-address the issue of the painted nude in its traditional context? Images of
the body exhibited in a gallery space are seen in the context of visual culture - both past
and present - and speak through an art educated vocabulary. The research has shown
that an Event of Realism is achievable when the work is site specific and in a non-gallery
193
Fig. 123
_eak. 2001
Collaborative installation at ‘in theory’
Fig. 124
194
situation. The challenge remains, to get back inside a designated art space and see if the
same strategies will work in that context.
Fig. 125
Two further practical projects have begun to explore a return
to the gallery space. The first is a collaborative site specific
installation _eak. (Fig. 123) with Elizabeth Adeline and Anne
Morrison, shown in an artist led group exhibition, ‘in theory’.196
Our piece was installed at the end of a long ‘white space’
gallery showing large abstract paintings, and reflected our Fig. 126
feelings as middle aged female artists when visiting art

galleries. My contribution consisted of two nudes modelled
on myself but referencing The Judgement of Paris by
Rubens (Fig. 124) and a Tiepolo cherub (Fig.125). Both
were a little over life size, and had escaped from their picture
frames on to the wall, to interact with the other elements of
the piece. At the end of the exhibition, both figures were
painted out - as if the performance was over and the actors
had gone home. (Fig. 126)
195
Fig.127 Mixing Paint, Bridport Arts Centre,2002
Fig. 128 Susanna
Fig. 106
196
The second project was a solo show, Mixing Paint (Fig. 127) at Bridport Arts Centre, and
included some drawings from this research, with another installation of Triptych in a
constructed corridor. There were also two new site specific pieces. A wall painting,
Susanna, (Fig. 128) continued the theme from ‘in theory’. Again using my own body. a
figure on the ground referenced Rembrandt’s (named) Susanna and the Elders (Fig. 106)
and another Tiepolo cherub, who was trying to expose Susanna by tugging on a long
piece of muslin. The second piece, Shrimp, was a departure from previous work, being
generated by a live performance at the preview (Fig 129). Posing against a projection of
a David Bailey photograph of Jean Shrimpton (Fig. 9) I was ‘re modelled’ in Photoshop,
by my collaborator Simon Poulter, then, coming out of the pose, I drew myself directly on
the wall over the image of the model. The performance was recorded on video, which
was then projected beside the drawing for the remainder of the exhibition. Both the
drawing in Shrimp and the figures in Susanna were painted out at the end of the show -
again to indicate the end of a performance.
Neither of these pieces have been analysed for this research, but both indicate the
direction for future artwork that will attempt to put the findings of this project into practice.
Fig. 129 Shrimp
Fig. 9
197
Part 3 Commentary
COMMENTARY
This research began when I found myself in the paradoxical situation of being a female
artist and feminist wishing to make figurative paintings of the female nude. I did not wish
to ignore current thinking, in contemporary art practice and feminism, but nevertheless
decided to maintain my practice in painting and to take on the problem from my
established position as an artist.
The original research question stems from the problematic issue of the outward
appearance of the nude - an area that feminism was finding difficult despite a resurgence
of interest in the body. Feminist art practice in general has tended to turn away from
traditional media associated with a patriarchal position, and in particular when that practice
concerns the nude or naked body. My initial aim therefore was to find out if it was
possible to make paintings of the nude, which did not subscribe to the male gaze.
Despite the apparent contradictions in my position, it seemed to be an appropriate field of
research. As a middle-aged female artist, my experience placed me in a suitable position
for this investigation - as a technically proficient painter and previous subject of the gaze,
whose body might no longer invite that attention. In addition, my art education and
working life, in various areas of both fine and applied art, had situated me at a distance
from institutional practices in art education and contemporary art practice. This critical
distance meant that I had no agenda other than the wish to be allowed to make the work I
found interesting; and was therefore free to pursue the problems with optimism.
To locate an appropriate methodology, I began by interrogating my own artist’s research

method, and this showed that my approach was phenomenological. A study of Merleau-
Ponty’s account of the phenomenology of the body, revealed that the issue, for the
outward appearance of the painted nude, lies in the space between bodies - rather than
with the internal feelings experienced by an objectified body. Instead of finding obvious
sources of reference useful - for instance the work of Jenny Saville - unexpected
influences emerged in the work of artists whose concerns are with the phenomenological
appearance of the world - in particular the work of Eric Fischl. I therefore moved away
from the psychoanalytic approach favoured by many feminist art practitioners, based in
199
Lacan’s reading of Freud, in favour of a reflexive phenomenological practice grounded in

the writing of Merleau-Ponty, Levinas and Blanchot. Situating my position at the centre of
the research - as a female artist who observes while her naked body is observed - this
reflexive activity determined a steady progression through the research. By analysing
each stage in the project, no matter how apparently confusing the findings appeared to
be, I could then make a pragmatic decision on the direction required for each subsequent
piece of the study. In this manner the project proceeded, from the gradual unravelling of
one tangled problem to the exposure of another confusing situation - until the complexity
itself became a form of answer.
An initial series of paintings reflecting on my identity as woman and artist, demonstrated

that phenomenology in making work was insufficient to convey my intentions to the
viewer - or to prevent a traditional reading of the nude in a gallery context. A study of
hermeneutics combined with an investigation into realism in painting revealed a finding of
major significance to this research, that Realism is an event for the viewer and not a style
or school of painting. Through a study of Benjamin’s account of Brecht’s epic theatre, I
developed strategies to disrupt the viewing experience sufficiently for the nude to be
observed as an equal to the viewer. However, problems in obtaining specific information
on viewer’s reactions, together with the realisation that presentation can dominate content
in an artwork, led to a reappraisal of my visual practice and the realisation that a
phenomenological approach could extend to an absence of information and to the difficulty
in establishing conclusive findings. In the final stages of the research I examined the
experience of finding realism in an image, through an analysis of paintings by Fischl,
Freud, Hopper and Rembrandt, informed by the writing of Levinas and Blanchot. It
eventually became apparent that although a sense of the Real can be detected in the
gaps between positions, concepts and genres, the structure of Realism cannot be
defined conclusively because of its inherent alterity. Although results have been
indeterminate, each problem has moved the research forward, step by step towards
discoveries: in method - affirmation instead of negation; in confidence - to attempt the
articulation of unauthorised positions; and in certitude - that indeterminacy is not
necessarily confusing.
Two significant findings have emerged. One is in the practical field of painting, both relate
to the phenomenological, hermeneutical position of the viewer. For art practice in this
project, Realism is an event, in which the viewer is able to bridge the gap between their
position in the world and the image portrayed - although the link made may be intermittent
and indeterminate. While it has not been possible to define the Event of Realism as a
200
Part 3 Commentary
specific structure, the concept has facilitated instances where a painting of the nude has
allowed the viewer to perceive the naked image as an-other person. The other key
finding is that a sense of the Real is a transitory link, made by the viewer, across the
fissure existing between a opposing phenomena. In the first instance the gap is
between viewer and image but on further examination other indeterminate areas were
revealed. These positions include the hypostasis that brings together existence with an
existent, the evanescence of the present between the past and the future, and the
mingling of differing alignments that separate genres in painting - such as portraiture with
narrative, or the naked with the clothed figure.
This productive fissure is reflected in the resonance between practice and theory, which
as parallel engagements have driven this research; and is evident in the final dual
presentation of visual practice (where the thesis was presented as a visual line of
thought) and this written work (illustrated throughout by visual research and the practical
work I have undertaken).
At the end of this research, the importance of answering questions that were posed at the
beginning has shifted. Was I subjected to the ‘male’ gaze as the model in my paintings?
Did I avoid voyeurism in my approach to the nude? Were my figurative paintings read in
a regressive ‘traditional’ manner? The answer to each of these questions is probably
both yes and no; but this is not a cause for concern because, by allowing the possibility
of diverse solutions, the conflict is dissolved and interest in further matters can proceed.
The affirmation of complexity in how the nude in painting is received and understood,
enables further issues relating to the body to be addressed.
Although the findings of the research are indeterminate, the outcome is positive. The
original research questions, instead of being answered, have stimulated further questions;
so the end of this project is not the end of the research. The information gathered
suggests that certain positions can now be taken. The practice of a radical form of
phenomenological life drawing could be proposed. Assumptions relating to the nude, the
clothed body, and perceptions of the ordinary, and aging body can be confronted. The
association of a particular medium with particular forms of art can be challenged.
By locating Realism as an event for the viewer, rather than a style of painting, and
opening up the issue of indeterminacy, there should be opportunities for a more
phenomenologically enriched approach to the figurative nude in painting. This project,
201
together with the above propositions, could broaden and inform current art practice on
both the body and ‘traditional’ methods in painting - and subsequently problematise the
perceptions of the viewer.
The benefit of this research to my own visual practice is substantial. In practical terms, I
have developed sound methods and an ability to analyse my working process, which
will stimulate and maintain my practice in the future. The process of writing as a form of
analysis has proved especially productive. The positive aspect of failure will be most
beneficial in the ‘continuing struggle’ to make work that stimulates Realism as a
phenomenological event, through ‘absent meaning’ in a “passivity which permits one to
keep in the disaster’s fellowship.” 1
The questions that have arisen from this project indicate further research in two distinct
areas: on academic and pedagogic issues; and in my own visual practice.
To return to the original problem of this project, life drawing would benefit from pedagogic
research: in the first instance to ascertain its position in current art education; and
secondly to experiment with a radical phenomenological approach in the studio. The
relationship between contemporary art practice and the body of work on the nude in art
galleries and museums could be researched; analysing the hermeneutical aspect that
affects the viewing public. In addition, for gender politics there are still issues on how the
body is perceived in the high street and in the media.
Meanwhile, in my own visual practice I shall continue to portray the painted nude. This
may be an attempt to return it to its place in the art gallery: by investigating the
relationship between image and picture frame (_eak.); or exploring the image within the
gallery space (Susanna); or by experimenting with old and new materials and methods
(Shrimp). Alternatively, outside the gallery, I shall continue to undertake residency work
in non-art venues: such as clothes shops (Jackpot); and any other situation that seems
to invite painted or drawn images of the nude.
202
References & Notes
Bibliography
203
Notes
Part 1 Notes
1 FIONA CANDLIN, ‘A Dual Inheritance: Practice-based PhDs and the politics of educational reform’,
International Journal of Art & Design (iJADE) Vol 20 Number 3, 2001, p. 303 - 4
2 SANDRA HARDING, Feminism & Methodology: social science issues, ed. Sandra Harding
(Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1987) p. 9
3 cf MAURICE MERLEAU-PONTY quotation on page 37 - Part 2, note 40
Part 2: In search of a realism for the nude in painting
1 KENNETH CLARK, The Nude, (London: Penguin Books Ltd, 1960 - first published 1956) p. 3 “... a
short answer to the question ‘What is the nude?’ It is an art form invented by the Greeks in the 5th
century B.C., just as opera is an art form invented in 17th-century Italy. The conclusion is certainly too
abrupt, but it has the merit of emphasising that the nude is not the subject of art, but a form of art.”
2 My intention is to examine the existence of the life room today rather than its history. For a well
referenced overview of the practice of working from the live model in Britain and women artists’
problems of exclusion, see MARTIN POSTLE and WILLIAM VAUGHAN, The Artist’s Model from Etty to
Spencer (London: Merrel Holberton, 1999)
3 See for example, LYNDA NEAD’s ‘counterblast to Kenneth Clark’, The Female Nude (London:
Routledge, 1992) in particular the sections “The lessons of the life class” p. 46, and “Redrawing the
lines” p. 70
4 ERIC SHANES, ‘Bucking and setting the trends: old and new disciplines at the Royal College of Art’,
Apollo (London, England) no 134 (Oct. 1991) p. 266-9. Includes the shift of interest in drawing from
fine to applied arts and the growth of new technology in art education.
5 JOHN BERGER, Ways of Seeing (London: BBC & Penguin Books, 1972)
6 EMMANUEL LEVINAS, Existence and Existents, trans. Alphonso Lingis (The Hague: Martinus
Nijhoff, 1978) p. 40
7 IMMANUEL KANT, The Critique of Judgement, trans. James Creed Meredith (Oxford: Clarendon
Press 13th impression 1991) p. 29
8 MALCOLM HEATH’s Introduction to ARISTOTLE’s Poetics, trans. Malcolm Heath (London: Penguin
Books 1996). Heath points out that katharsis is a “much discussed and probably insoluble problem”.
It is only mentioned once in the existing text of Poetics. Although katharsis appears again in the
Politics, Aristotle refers to it only briefly, saying that it is described fully in the Poetics. The full
explanation is therefore presumed to have been in the missing part of Poetics.
9 E. H. GOMBRICH, The Story of Art (London: Phaidon Press Ltd, fifteenth edition 1989) p. 416
10 See LAURA MULVEY, ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, Visual and Other Pleasures
(London: Macmillan, 1989)
11 cf. Part 1, p. 2
12 MULVEY, op cit. p. 19-21
13 ibid, p. 29-39. Mulvey’s quotation from Sigmund Freud (p. 32) is cited as: S.Freud, 'Creative
Writers and Day Dreaming', Standard Edition, vol.IX (London: The Hogarth Press, 1964)
14 ibid, p. 33
15 cf. section II on the male gaze
204
16 CAROLINE LAMPERT, Lucian Freud: recent work, Exhibition Catalogue (London: Whitechapel Art
Gallery, 1993)
17 DONALD KUSPIT, ‘Fresh Freud’ Artforum International Vol 32 no.7 (March 1994) p. 54-59
18 LINDA NOCHLIN, ‘Frayed Fraud’ Artforum International Vol 32 no.7 (March 1994) p. 54-59
19 See Part 1, p. 2
20 BERNARD DUNSTAN RA (1994) New English Art Club [online] Mall Galleries
http://www.mallgalleries.org.uk/neac/neac.html [Accessed 29 October 2001]
21 ERIC FISCHL interview at his studio in April 1999. For a full transcript see Appendix C.I Fischl
comments on the use of modern utensils in painting. p. 270-1
22 GRISELDA POLLOCK, Vision & Difference: Femininity, Feminism and the Histories of Art
(London: Routledge 1988) p. 156
23 cf. section III on Lucian Freud
24 LINDA NOCHLIN, ‘Floating in Gender Nirvana’ Art in America v.88 no.3 (Mar. 2000) p. 97
25 DAVID LEE, ‘Jenny Saville’ Art Review (London, England) v.49 (Dec.1997/Jan.1998) p. 62
26 ibid.
27 NOCHLIN, Art in America 2000, op cit., p. 97
28 ALISON ROWLEY, ‘On viewing three paintings by Jenny Saville: rethinking a feminist practice of
painting’ in Generations and geographies in the visual arts, ed. Griselda Pollock (London & New York:
Routledge, 1996) p. 88 - 109
29 ibid, p. 90 Here Rowley compares Saville’s Branded (1992) with Spence’s Exiled (earlier but
undated), where both artists have written on their breasts. She is angry that Saville has not publicly
acknowledged the influence of Spence - preferring to ally herself with Lucian Freud. It is interesting to
note that this is not the only instance where Saville echoes an image from Spence. In her painting
Trace (1993/94) she paints the back of a torso that bears a remarkable resemblance to a Jo
Spence/David Roberts photograph Untitled (1988) from their series on class.
30 ibid, p. 96 - 97 on “The space of desire: how close can you get”
31 GEORGES BATAILLE, Eroticism, trans.Mary Dalwood (London: Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd,
1987) p. 29
32 ibid, p. 273
33 cf. Fig. 53, p. 82
34 MAURICE MERLEAU-PONTY, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, 1962) p. 198
35 NORMAN BRYSON, Vision and Painting: The Logic of the Gaze, (London: The Macmillan Press
Ltd, 1983) in particular Chapter 5 ‘The Gaze and The Glance’ and Epilogue ‘The Invisible Body’
36 ibid, p. 88/89: “Deixis is utterance in carnal form and points back directly (deiknonei) to the body of
the speaker; self reflexive, it marks the moment when rhetoric becomes oratory: ... Western painting is
predicated on the disavowal of deictic reference, on the disappearance of the body as site of the
image; and this twice over: for the painter, and for the viewing subject.”
37 ibid, p. 164
38 ibid, p. 131
39 ROLAND BARTHES, Image Music Text, trans. Stephen Heath (London: Fontana Paperbacks,
1990) p. 148
40 MERLEAU-PONTY, op cit., p. vii
41 ibid, p. viii - Merleau-Ponty’s emphasis
205
42 EDMUND HUSSERL, Cartesian Meditations: An introduction to Phenomenology, trans. Dorion
Cairns (Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1995) p. 2
43 MARA R. WITZLING, Voicing Today’s Visions: writings by contemporary women artists (London:
The Women’s Press Ltd, 1995) p. 204 Mary Kelly’s words referring to Post-Partum Document
44 FISCHL interview, op cit. Fischl comments on the curiously negative view of the body in feminist
art. p.266
45 MERLEAU-PONTY, op cit., p. 82
46 KENNETH CLARK, op cit., p. 325
47 JANET WOLFF, Resident Alien (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995), p. 45
48 BATAILLE, op cit., p. 130-134
49 POLLOCK, Vision & Difference, op Cit., p. 159
50 HUSSERL, op cit., p. 2
51 ibid, p. 33. Husserl’s emphasis.
52 ibid, p. 34
53 ibid, p. 35. Husserl’s emphasis.
54 THE SHORTER OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY,Third revised edition (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1973)
55 MERLEAU-PONTY, op cit., p. 67-69 - on the modality of vision
56 ibid: p. 82
57 ibid: p. 100
58 ibid: p. 148
59 ibid: footnote, p. 106
60 EMMANUEL LEVINAS: Time and the Other, trans. Richard A.Cohen, (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania:
Duquesne University Press 1987) p. 86
61 ibid, p. 89
62 BATAILLE, op cit., p. 275
63 KANT, op cit. p. 38/39
64 EMMANUEL LEVINAS, ‘Reality and its shadow’, in The Continental Aesthetics Reader, edited
Clive Cazeaux (London and New York: Routledge, 2000) p. 120
65 Picasso’s Statement made in 1923, in ALFRED H. BARR JR., Picasso: Fifty Years of his Art, (New
York: Arno Press for The Museum of Modern Art, New York, reprinted edition 1966) p. 270
66 Appendix B: studio visit report 14/2/96
67 BRYSON, op cit. p. 122
68 ibid, p. 117
69 MAURICE BLANCHOT, The Space of Literature, trans. Ann Smock (Lincoln: University of
Nebraska Press, 1982) p.254-264
70 Hindsight has shown the questionnaire to have been too prescriptive and not suitable for
indeterminate reactions.
71 cf. sections XII & XIII, on Realism as an Event
72 cf. section VIII, in particular the artist ‘facing’ the model, p. 57
73 PAUL RICOEUR, Hermeneutics & the Human Sciences, trans. John B. Thompson (Cambridge:
206
Cambridge University Press, 1981) p. 128
74 LINDA NOCHLIN, Realism (London: Penguin Books, 1971) p. 13
75 cf. section VIII, p. 51, on peripheral vision
76 cf. section IX, p. 63, on rationality dominating intuition
77 BLANCHOT, cf. section X, on an object becoming a fascinating image
78 FISCHL interview, op cit. p. 264
79 see PAUL WOOD on Weimar Germany in Realism, Rationalism, Surrealism: Art between the Wars,
by Briony Fer, David Batchelor and Paul Wood (New Haven & London: Yale University Press in
association with the Open University, 1993) p. 283
80 TIMOTHY HYMAN, Bonnard (London: Thames and Hudson, 1998) p. 177
81 NOCHLIN Realism, op cit., p. 51
82 ibid, chapter 1 ‘The Nature of Realism’
83 SUSAN BUCK-MORSS, The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project
(Cambridge, Massachusetts & London, England: The MIT Press,1991) p. 291
84 RICOEUR, op cit. p. 111
85 T. J. CLARK, Image of the People: Gustave Courbet and the 1848 Revolution, (London: Thames
and Hudson, 1973) p. 13
86 LINDA NOCHLIN, Gustave Courbet: A Study of Style and Society (New York & London: Garland
Publishing, Inc., 1976) p. 227
87 NOCHLIN Realism, op cit., p. 117-8
89 T. J. CLARK, The Painting of Modern Life: Paris in the Art of Manet and His Followers (London:
Thames and Hudson, 1985) p. 94.
90 ibid, p. 82
91 MICHAEL FRIED, Courbet’s Realism (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press,
1990) p. 192
92 NOCHLIN Realism, op cit., p. 105
93 FRIED, op cit. p. 105 - here Fried gives the first full example of his argument in relation to
Stonebreakers. His position regarding the political stance of Timothy Clark and Linda Nochlin can be
found in the section ‘Courbet and Politics’ - p. 254
94 HUSSERL, op cit. cf. note 50 - section VIII, p. 47
95 RICHARD WOLLHEIM, Art and its objects (Cambridge University Press, second edition, 1980) p.
119
96 NOCHLIN Realism, op cit., p. 106-7
97 See HANS-GEORG GADAMER, ‘The relevance of the beautiful: Art as play, symbol, and festival’,
in The Relevance of The Beautiful and Other Essays, trans. Nicholas Walker, Ed. Robert Bernasconi
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986)
98 ibid, p. 25
99 MAURICE MERLEAU-PONTY, ‘Eye and Mind’ trans. Carleton Dallery in The Primacy of Perception,
ed. James M. Edie (USA: Northwestern University Press, 1964) p. 186
100 HANS-GEORG GADAMER, Truth and Method, trans, ed Garrett Barden & John Cumming
(London: Sheed & Ward, 1975) p. 63
101 GADAMER, The relevance of the beautiful. op cit., p. 40
102 ibid, p. 29
207
103 GADAMER, Truth and Method, op cit. p. 102
104 ibid, p. 116. Gadamer prefers to describe the Aristotelian effects of tragedy - distress and
apprehension - as a feeling of pensiveness - “a kind of relief and resolution, in which pain and pleasure
are variously mixed.”
105 GADAMER, The Relevance of The Beautiful 1986, op cit., p. 49
106 ibid, p. 36
107 Eric Fischl , with an essay by Peter Schjeldahleldhal(New York: Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 1988)
108 See Appendix A.I, for the full text of ‘The Artist in His Studio by Rembrandt’
109 KANT, op cit., p. 29 - 33, on ‘The Aesthetic Representation of the Finality of Nature’
110 MICHAEL PODRO, The Manifold in Perception: Theories of Art from Kant to Hildebrand;ed.
T.S.R.Boase & J.B.Trapp (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972) p. 11
111 See GEORG LUKÁCS, ‘Realism in the Balance’ in Aesthetics and Politics, Trans. Ed. Ronald
Taylor (London: Verso, 1980)
112 WALTER BENJAMIN, ‘Conversations with Brecht’ in Aesthetics and Politics, Trans. Ed. Ronald
Taylor (London: Verso, 1980) p. 96-97
113 BERTOLD BRECHT, ‘Against Georg Lukács’ in Aesthetics and Politics, Trans. Ed. Ronald Taylor
(London: Verso, 1980) p. 74
114 ibid, p. 69
115 ibid, p. 82
116 BENJAMIN, Illuminations, op cit. ‘What Is Epic Theatre’ p. 144-151
117 See Appendix B.II, for details of correspondence with Bath Central Library, and their selection
policy for exhibitions
118 See Appendix B.III for an example of a comment sheet, and the figures of comment received for
Work Arising From Research at UWE, 1998
119 See Appendix B.IV for details of comment on now you see me... at The Black Swan Guild, Frome,
1999
120 e.g. Appendix B.III, p.260, group A.2.a
121 ibid, p. 258, comment 19
123 ibid, p. 252 - 259, comments 2, 15, 18, 19, 25; and p. 260 & 262, Groups A.1.a & C.1
124 ibid, p. 260, group A.1 d-e
125 ibid, p. 262, group B.3.b
126 ibid, p. 262, group C.2
127 ibid, p. 263, group D.1.e
129 ibid, p. 251, against installation
130 Appendix B.III, p. 263, group D.2.c - and tape recording of seminar
131 LEVINAS, Time and The Other, op cit., p. 76
132 ibid, p. 52 “The present is the event of hypostasis. ... It is a rip in the infinite beginningless and
endless fabric of existing.
133 Appendix B.III, p. 259, comment 21
134 cf. section XIV, p. 111
208
135 PETER SCHJELDAHL, ‘Witness’ in Eric Fischl (New York: Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 1988) p. 20
136 FISCHL interview, op cit. The latter section of the interview became a tutorial see p. 274
137 ibid, p. 276
138 ibid, p. 276
139 ibid, p. 278
140 cf. note 54 - Merleau-Ponty on the modality of vision
141 FISCHL interview, op cit., p. 277
142 ibid, p. 279
143 ibid, p. 280
144 ERIC FISCHL e-mail, Appendix C, p. 281
146 Appendix A.III - In House Twice, post exhibition book (Bristol: Wild Conversations Press, 2000),
Artists Statement.
147 ibid, Bill Prosser speaking in Karen Wallis: Foxcombe
148 see Appendix A.II - A written analysis of practical work, for an analysis of this drawing.
149 ibid, p. 229
150 WALTER BENJAMIN - Charles Baudelaire, trans. Harry Zohn, (London: Verso edition, 1997) p.
111 - 117
151 cf. section XI
152 cf. section XIV, on Kant’s judgement of the Beautiful
153 cf. section XII, Fried on Courbet
154 cf. section XVIII
155 FISCHL interview, op cit. p. 271
156 SCHJELDAHL, op cit., p. 19
157 ERIC FISCHL, video, Figurative painting: open tutorial with Eric Fischl (London: ICA, 1994) open
tutorial at the Whitechapel gallery, October 1993 - speaking to Jennet Thomas.
158 FISCHL interview, op cit. p. 273-4
159 ROBERT HUGHES, American Visions (London: The Harvill Press 1997) p. 422 - 427
160 GAIL LEVIN, Edward Hopper (Naefels, Switzerland: Bonfini Press, 1984) p. 14 - 23
161 ERIC FISCHL, video, The State of the Art: Episode 4 - Sexuality (Channel 4, 1987)
162 FISCHL interview, op cit. p. 278 cf. section XVIII
164 PHILIP RAWSON, Drawing, second edition (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
1987) p. 293
165 H. PERRY CHAPMAN, Rembrandt’s Self-Portraits: A Study in Seventeenth-Century Identity
(New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1990) p. 37
166 ibid, p. 81 - 85 on Rembrandt’s return to self-portraiture, and p. 103 on being out or step with the
shift to classicism.
167 quoted by Perry Chapman, ibid, p. 132 - footnoted as : Andries Pels, Gebruik en misbruik des
toneels (Amsterdam. 1681), 35 36, translated in T.Borenius, Rembrandt, Selected Paintings (London,
1942), 26.
209
168 see FISCHL interview, op cit. p. 268-9 for a detailed description of his method in making every
element contribute to content when painting New House.
169 ibid, p. 280
170 ibid, p. 265
171 ibid, p. 266
172 ibid, p. 268
173 ibid, p. 269
174 LEVINAS, Existence and Existents, op cit., p. 73
175 LEVINAS, ‘Reality and its shadow’, op cit., p. 121
176 seen NOCHLIN, Realism , op cit., p. 31-32, for a comparison between Manet and Goya’s
treatment of an execution, where “For Goya meaning unfolds, within the pictorial world, in time and
space ...”
177 DEBORAH LYONS, Edward Hopper: A Journal of His Work (New York & London: Whitney
Museum of American Art in association with W. W. Norton & Company, 1997) p. 37
179 ibid, p. 77
181 ibid, p. 280
182 PERRY CHAPMAN, op cit., p. 92 - Rembrandt quote - that it should be hung “in a bright light and
so that one can stand at a distance from it; then it will sparkle at its best”
183 LUCIAN FREUD, BBC Omnibus May 20, 1988 - in an interview with Jake Auerbach, during the
hanging of Lucian Freud’s retrospective exhibition at the Hayward Gallery
184 BLANCHOT, The Space of Literature, op cit. p. 37 as an example: “a space violently opened up
by the contest between the power to speak and the power to hear.”
186 ibid, p. 71 - Levinas’ emphasis
187 ibid, p. 65
188 WOLLHEIM, op cit., p. 116 - Freud’s comparison of the artist with the neurotic
189 MAURICE BLANCHOT, The Writing of Disaster, trans. Ann Smock (Lincoln and London:
University of Nebraska Press, 1995)
190 ibid, p.19
191 ibid, p 20
192 cf. section XV
193 BLANCHOT, The Writing of Disaster, op cit., p. 41
194 ibid, p. 11
195 ibid, p. 11
196 ‘in theory’ - an exhibition of work by members of BANA (Bath Area Network for Artists) curated by
Peter Dickinson, at Churchill House, Bath, May 2001
Part 3 Notes
1 MAURICE BLANCHOT, The Writing of Disaster, op cit., p. 11
210
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214
Appendices
Fig. 73
Rembrandt
The Artist in his Studio
1629, panel, 25 x 32 cm
216
Appendix A: Texts On Rembrandt’s painting - The Artist in his Studio
Appendix A: Texts
I. On Rembrandt’s painting - “The Artist in his Studio”

Karen Wallis: 10/2/96
The artist stands in his studio contemplating the work in hand. He is positioned to the left
side of the painting and in the background. The only things behind him (between him and
the back wall of the studio - which is also the back wall of the painting) are his table
bearing some necessary equipment and a large stone on a supporting log; presumably
the slab for grinding pigments with the large muller, just discernible on the table. He
stands on the edge of the heavy shadow that engulfs the table, and its contents, leaving
only the table edge and the table leg visible in detail. The artist himself casts the shadow
across the grinding-stone. The light which falls on him is the edge of the main shaft of
light; it floods the floor and walls from the bottom left corner, across the centre, rising up
the wall, fading towards the top and is arrested by a corner of the studio. Here the wall
turns back, away from the light, and facing us (the spectators) presents a rough wooden
door set within solid wooden beams. Above the lintel the plaster although cracked is held
in place by its supporting structure. In the centre of the painting is an easel carrying a
large panel; it stands in the foreground silhouetted against the light - the object of the
artist’s contemplation.
We can only see the back of his painting on the easel - it bars us from the subject which
he is portraying just as it stands between us and the light. The position of the easel is
reminiscent of that in Velasquez’s Las Meninas but there the similarity ends; for
Rembrandt does not show us what might be the image in the making - there is no mirror
on the back wall, reflecting a subject outside the picture. Instead a couple of clean
palettes hang on a nail - flat, plain, serviceable, revealing nothing. There is nothing in the
studio - apart from his painting equipment - neither people nor objects, which might
indicate his subject matter.
I first saw this picture as a reproduction and, at that time, assumed that the subject of his
painting must be the same as the image in the actual painting. In other words, the
‘window’ of the picture is a mirror and the artist is painting the exact reflection that we
behold. If this is the case, we are participating in an immediate, physical, day to day
experience - we are present in the artist’s studio as he paints; and his picture, hidden
from view, will represent him painting exactly as we see him in the actual picture. My
assumption was based on an image reproduced in a book; and without thinking to
question the size of the original, the sight of a large picture on the easel instantly
217
218
suggested that the original was the same size. I was amazed to find, in an exhibition,
that the actual picture is small - 25cm x 32cm, or 10 inches by 121/2 inches - small enough
to be made from one of the floorboards or the plank of wood on the left side of the door,
smaller than the palette he is holding. My misapprehension was assisted by the fine
detail in the execution of the painting; in comparison with the broad brush work of
Rembrandt’s more familiar, mature works - this is in fact an early work (he was only 23)
when his technique was tighter and on a small scale. The realisation that the large picture
on the easel is not the small painting we behold, dismisses any previous interpretation
and opens up a wealth of new possibilities - no longer a painting about this painting but
a painting about the process of painting.
The panel on its easel rises up in the centre foreground, blocking out the light. The easel
looks unstable, when seen from behind with its structure revealed; it is like a cardboard
cutout, leaning back at an angle, it could be pushed over if the door opened against the
back leg. The pegs supporting the panel are temporary, removable - pull them out and
his picture falls to the ground. Although impressive in size and made rigid by supporting
battens top and bottom, the panel is nevertheless thin and potentially fragile. The line of
light up the edge of the painting, literally highlights its thinness; in contrast to the broad
band of light which rises up the wall - the thick substantial wall indicating a real space
beyond the door. A suggestion that the panel is an echo of the real - a manufactured
reality - compared to the solid reality of cracked plaster and worn timber - the planks of his
table, the worm eaten floorboards; all of these show evidence of existence - they are
worn by time. The artist ignores this solid world around him, rapt in contemplation of this
two dimensional support for a representation.
Here stands the contemplative artist in front of the picture he is painting. He is heavily
dressed in a full length gown, like a long coat. Does he need to keep warm? Is the studio
cold? Is that hat for warmth or show? He could be attired as ‘the artist’ - displaying all the
accoutrements and tools of his trade. But that gown does not ring true; it is too elaborate
to be an overall to protect his clothing - unless it is an old favourite, worn for eccentricity,
even so, the hanging sleeve - dangling in the paint - would be so unpractical to work in.
If he is in fancy dress, maybe he has clothed himself as some dignitary in order to show
his aptitude for painting illustrious citizens. The position of his body could be described
as defensive; perhaps he is dressed to do battle - his fancy coat a substitute for armour,
complete with sash and sword belt, the brush in his right hand a sword ‘at rest’ and his
left armful of equipment (brushes, palette and mahlstick) a shield. He is ready to do battle
with his painting.
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220
Imagine the front of the easel - facing the painter - an imposing plane confronting its
maker, its ‘face’ tilted upwards, sloping back, rising above him like a rock face, the
triangular shape of the easel adding perspective, implying a mountain to be climbed, a
giant to be overcome. He looks serious, lost in thought. Is he confident or anxious? Is
he calm or frightened? Is he standing back to see what he has done, debating with
himself where to put the finishing masterly touch? This is a romantic view, springing
easily to mind, of artistic activity inspired by genius. It is more likely, in reality, that he
would be engaged in a struggle - the picture at a difficult stage, requiring long hard looking
to sort out the problems and how to resolve them - the physical painted surface refusing
to take the shape of the elusive vision of his intention.
What if the panel is new and the artist is about to begin his picture? He is facing a blank
surface trying to decide where to draw the first lines of the image with his brush - which is
turned away, as if pausing, not poised for action. His eyes stare vacantly, trying to
imagine marks not yet visible; wondering where to make the first mark; fearing the mark -
the terror of spoiling the surface, of making it the battleground of his struggle to reconcile
intention with result. How on earth can he cross that space, the pool of light, and touch
the enemy, his challenger? He stands with his seconds (the tools of his trade) behind
him on one side; on the other side, the wooden panel on its wooden easel, seconded by
the door and the beams who endorse its wooden unpainted reality. In the middle
between them, the light like a river without a bridge, a solid barrier - impenetrable.
The light has no edge; it seeps from floor to wall, through orange-tinted bare patches
revealed behind the plaster and the stains on the wall beyond the grinding-stone -
echoes of the red bole ground, these patches of colour may be the actual ground showing
through. Sinking into the floorboards, this light slips between the legs of the easel and
softens the edges of the timber. With an orange-pink, it lightly touches the hem of his
coat, the patterned fabric of his sash and his hands, giving them the blood which has
drained from his anxious face; and scatters flecks across the side of the stone and log
and even faintly across the table top. But the main shaft of light lies heavily between the
two contenders, pushing the artist back against the table and beating up against the front
of the picture, forcing out the thin bright white edge of the panel. This is light as
substance and subject of painting, the impossible medium which seduces and eludes the
artist, simultaneously revealing and hiding itself. Will he ever move across the studio, or
is he frozen in fear as he is frozen in time, a painter made in actuality by painted marks on
wood, representing the uncomfortable dialogue between artist and painting?
221
Fig. 122
Lipstick
1999, oil on paper
Fig. 100 (detail)

Rebecca’s room
Conté chalk on wall
In House Twice, Foxcombe, 1999
Fig. 75b (detail)
222
Appendix A: Texts A Written Analysis of Practical Work
II. A WRITTEN ANALYSIS OF PRACTICAL WORK

Karen Wallis: November 1999
In an attempt to stimulate, in the viewer, the recognition of a connection between a

painted nude and their own body, I have been installing my paintings on or beside
mirrors in non-art environments which are connected to every day existence. On one
hand this strategy has proved effective but on the other the results rely on a device
outside the painting. In order to fulfil my original proposal, I need to explore images of the
nude as autonomous pictures which can be placed in a variety of venues1 . So while
presentation of work in non-art spaces is still relevant, the paintings should avoid being
site specific.
This essay concerns two of my pictures made for the exhibition In House Twice2 and
their subsequent development. Both pieces were site specific to In House; they both
raised questions concerning the direction for the final phase of practical work in my PhD;
and they are both now presented as separate pieces of work.
The first, Lipstick (Fig. 122), follows on from the paintings exhibited in toilets; and was
installed on a mirror in a bathroom at the Widcombe house. I was sufficiently pleased
with the image to try framing it - to test its effectiveness in other situations.
The second piece originated as a drawing on the wall of Rebecca’s room (Fig. 100 -
detail) at the Foxcombe house, and has been developed subsequently as a drawing on
paper. The site was a spare bedroom previously occupied by the daughter who has left
home. In response to the empty nest and to Elizabeth Adeline’s installation of coat
hangers and the empty wardrobe, I made a drawing directly on to the wall beside the
mirror. The image refers back to Triptych (Fig. 75b - detail) to the girl/daughter figure who
is looking back in the left panel and fading out in the central panel .
At In House, she has left her reflection in the mirror and is on her way to the door - her
body blurred by movement. Given more time, she might also have aged into
1 The PhD research is concerned specifically with the nude in painting - not with the nude in general.
2 In House Twice was the second exhibition by the In House group - 6 artists who install work in domestic
environments. The installations were in 2 houses, at Widcombe Crescent and Foxcombe Road, Bath, in
June 1999.
3 An installation of 3 paintings with mirrors: first exhibited at UWE, Bower Ashton campus in April 1998; and
subsequently in now you see me... at The Black Swan Guild, Frome, February 1999.
223
Fig. 102
Moving On
1999, Conté chalk & charcoal on paper
59.2 x 84 cm
224
woman/mother, as she got nearer to the door - and this may still happen. The attempt to
express absence rather than presence, and of using the memory of youth rather than
existence of age, was a departure from my work in the PhD to date - and required further
investigation. I therefore made another drawing, Moving On (Fig. 102) this time on paper,
looking at the potential transition from girl to woman.
***
So here are two pieces of work separated from their original site and resituated as
pictures on their own. They represent two different aspects of the nude / my body and
offer two different routes for development. Given the time remaining for my PhD, it would
be impossible to make a proper examination of both themes before completion. It is
therefore necessary to choose between either a continuing development of the
realistically figurative nude observing and observed by the world of mirror reflections, or
an exploration of new ground in the fluidity and shifting positions of the memories of the
aging body. In order to examine my position it is necessary to ask the following
questions.
• What has been established in the research so far?
• What direction do these findings suggest for the completion of my research?
• Where would the new investigation lead?
• What further development is possible within the subject matter to date?
The following points have been established in the research so far:

• That realism is necessary to disrupt the traditional depiction of the painted nude.
• That realism in this case is an event for the viewer while they are looking at the
picture.
• That strategies suggested by Brecht’s Epic Theatre, as defined by Walter
Benjamin4, have proved effective in stimulating a sense of the real. It has been
shown that, when using Brechtian technique, the viewer tends to see themselves
in the same space as the nude figure in the image - sometimes the nude enters the
world of the viewer and at other times invites the viewer into the world of the
image. In either case the viewer acknowledges the painted nude as an-other
being.
• That this realism is grounded in the existence of the viewer, while at the same time
offering a sensation close to the Kantian sublime.
4 Walter Benjamin - Understanding Brecht, trans. Anna Bostock, (London: Verso 1973)
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226
The last of these findings offers the possibility for establishing an original contribution to
knowledge; in the suggestion that there is an uncertainty as to where the sensation of
the real should be situated. This indicates the need for a further examination of the
existing discourse on the Beautiful and the Sublime; to look for the possible inclusion of
the alterity of realism - an experience which is not yet part of discourse. In my PhD
transfer report, I said that the practical element to correspond to this theoretical
investigation would be: A further exploration of embodiment in painting; looking at
expressions of otherness, self consciousness and desire in the nude.... and I added that:
This practice will be informed by an analysis of alterity in the work of Rembrandt, Goya,
Hopper and Fischl; and a study of the writing of Blanchot, Bataille and Levinas.
The proposed practice in painting - ‘looking at expressions of otherness, self

consciousness and desire in the nude’ - appears to be appropriate for either of the routes
these two pictures suggest. However, the pictorial references - to paintings by artists
who are concerned with narratives about human relationships with the world - assume a
continuation of my accustomed approach; using images of my body, as it is here and
now, reflected in a mirror, and engaged in observations of my position in the world - my
body for me and at the same time my body for others.5 Finally, the writers to be studied
may well guide any decision made, as they offer a range of texts on different aspects of
alterity: Georges Bataille is concerned with the erotic, uncontrollable other; Emmanuel
Levinas with ‘facing’ the other; and in the writing of Maurice Blanchot there are interesting
texts on the ‘fascinating image’ and ‘the disaster’ - the otherness of existence.
***
First, mention should be made of the technical and formal aspect of making new work.
Would an investigation into a new direction be a technical challenge or an aesthetic
diversion? I am always aware of the need to watch for complacency in technique. My
facility in life drawing can prevent a rigorous pursuit of content and it is sometimes
necessary to make the process more challenging. However, it has been pointed out that
in this case I would have to begin again technically in the research already underway; to
develop methods of employing gestural mark-making in the theoretical investigation. It
should be noted that my ability can be put to use in allowing the freedom to push the
5 Merleau-Ponty: Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd,
1962) footnote, page 106 “...It is ...not enough to say that the objective body belongs to the realm of ‘for
others’, and my phenomenal body to that of ‘for me’,...[they] exist in the same world, as is proved by my
perception of an other who immediately brings me back to the condition of an object for him.”
227
228
boundaries of academic drawing and thereby to disrupt the tradition. In practical terms
there is an argument for a continuation of my method to date - but what of the theoretical
development?
In the drawing Moving On the girl on the left, with a glance towards the viewer, is moving
into a central, darker and chaotic area of indeterminate marks; while an older woman
emerges from the other side of the same area, looking back over her shoulder as she turns
away from the viewer. There is some sort of third figure hidden in the central area. The
marks indicate perhaps pregnancy, certainly a breast, and a blur of hair colour and
shadow where a head should be. The merging of figures suggests memories of a life; a
self conscious contemplation of aging, an awareness of the otherness of flesh as it
deteriorates, the desire for lost youth - so far so good. The image is of feelings in the
body, of looking inward. The outward glances of both girl and woman pull the viewer
back inside, asking for an engagement with the unknowable mess of memories between
them. Moving On is about remembering and looking back rather than the recognition of a
moment remembered.
It is relevant here to distinguish the difference between the conscious effort to remember
and the flash of memory that comes out of the blue. Although the following references
appear to take a complex route, they emphasise through the variety of connections, the
interest taken in this field of thought.
Walter Benjamin, in ‘Some Motifs in Baudelaire’, speaks of Proust’s critique, in A la

recherche du temps perdu, of Bergson’s writing on memory’s relationship to experience in
Matière et mémoire.6 Proust identifies the difference between voluntary memory as:
... one that is in the service of intellect ...
and involuntary memory where
... the past is “somewhere beyond the reach of the intellect, and unmistakably
present in some material object (or in the sensation which such an object arouses
in us), though we have no idea which one it is...” 7
Benjamin goes on to refer to Freud and his theory in Beyond the Pleasure Principle that:
... consciousness as such receives no memory traces whatever, but has another
important function: protection from stimuli.8
This informs the theory of memory by Freud’s pupil Reik, who in agreement with Proust,
6 Walter Benjamin - Charles Baudelaire, trans. Harry Zohn, (London: Verso edition, 1997) p.111
7 Ibid - page 112 - Proust “quoted” by Benjamin
8 Ibid - page 115
229
Moving On
Lipstick
Fig. 75b Triptych: centre panel
Fig. 100 Rebecca’s room
230
says that:
“The function of remembrance is the protection of impressions; memory aims at
their destruction.”9
So conscious remembrance is a construction of the past aimed at protection of the

unwanted stimuli of actual memories. Whereas involuntary memories come from outside
consciousness and are the stimuli which break into the mind in response to some object in
the present. Here in the latter, we have the link to Realism as an event for the viewer; in
its spontaneous appearance and evasiveness - its ability to always slip away beyond
recall. As Benjamin says:
... in Proustian terms, ... only what has not been experienced explicitly and
consciously, ..., can become a component of the mémoire involontaire’10
Is the centre section in Moving On an attempt to represent what cannot be remembered?

I think not. Is this because I made the drawing and recall the difficulty of working on that
central area? It seemed to me a random process, fumbling towards an acceptable
outcome; whereas in a drawing like Lipstick, I can tell when to push the marks in this
direction or that - I can see as I look at the person in my drawing, how they appear to be
feeling and react as if to another person Again, no - although relevant in practical terms,
our concern here is with content and not form.
Perhaps it is because when I look at Moving On, I see nothing but marks on paper. The
figures exist solely in the mark-making. The transition is from mark to mark - they are
trapped and cannot get beyond the gesture. Yet the image worked at In House; and the
reason is that it was part of the installation. This image requires to be drawn on the
bedroom wall surrounded by the mirror and bedroom artifacts. Compare it with the figure
of the girl in the central panel in Triptych. She is sliding away in a blur of gestural marks,
similar to those in Moving On; but she is in relation to the ‘real’ figure of the older woman -
and both of them are in a space created by a mirror frame above a basin, in front of which
the viewer stands. It was my intention, by positioning the viewer so that they could feel
involved with the reflections in the mirror, that Triptych might stimulate a moment of
involuntary memory in a viewer.
In fact, the In House drawing on the wall and Triptych are looking at the same issue. But
Moving On does not look beyond the bodies shown in the picture to another body here
and now in the world outside the picture. It shows the sorrow of abjection in bodiliness.
9 Ibid - page 114 - Reik’s words in “ ”

10 Ibid - page 114
231
232
It is not looking out from inside the body to place itself in the utter unknown real world,
which always remains other - and to thereby consider ‘the disaster’ of existence.11
Abjection in the body alone is not appropriate in this project; expressions of otherness,
self consciousness and desire in the nude, which seek to stimulate a sense of the real,
are to be found in portrayals of existence in the world, here and now.
The event of realism occurs in the involuntary memory - a glimpse of something known
but at the same time out of reach - across a space - between an object in the picture and
the person who is looking at it. When the object in the picture is a nude, it will occur in the
space between one body and an-other. The momentary recognition, is a sensation
which connects the two for an instant - but slips away and can never be recalled in
conscious remembrance.
***
While making the next series of paintings and in my attempts to create situations where
realism may occur, I shall continue to explore the relationships between the viewer and a
realistic painted nude. Recently, at In House, I have begun to relate to other people
when making a picture - there is a portrait element developing. This is extending the cast
of characters for me to work with. I am also beginning to introduce other significant figures
- a husband, a son - which I believe can heighten the sense of otherness, self-
consciousness and desire.
So I will look to Rembrandt for humanity, fleshly sensitivity and sensuality; Goya for fear
in the everyday; Hopper and Fischl for scenarios; moments and events which jar,
between people, between person and place - like feeling furious or depressed on a
sunny day in beautiful surroundings. Bataille’s erotic, uncontrollable other will inform the
desire in the nude; Levinas will inform the relationship between the bodies involved; and
Blanchot will inform the dark reality which grounds the viewer in their own existence, as
they experience an Event of Realism.
POSTSCRIPT
In articulating the process of my practice through writing, the analysis has been taken
much further, than it would have through contemplation in front of the pictures alone.
11 Maurice Blanchot - The Writing of Disaster, trans. Ann Smock (Lincoln and London: University of
Nebraska Press, 1995)
233
234
Appendix A: Texts In House Book
III. In House Twice Book
Extracts from the text of a collaborative book of an exhibition In House Twice

by the In House group: Elizabeth Adeline
Iain Biggs
Janette Kerr
Anne Morrison
Bill Prosser
Karen Wallis
pub. Wild Conversations Press, Bristol. ISBN 1 902 595 03 3
Statement by the Artists
In House is a group of painters, sculptors and makers who install their work in ordinary
domestic houses. The six artists, Elizabeth Adeline, Iain Biggs, Janette Kerr, Anne
Morrison, Bill Prosser and Karen Wallis, share an interest in exploring and making explicit
the possible relationships and ambiguities between the 'domestic' and 'art'. The
underlying aim behind our projects has been to examine the relationship between the
artist, their work and a viewing public; to ask how this is affected by the installation of
work placed in, and made in response to, the ready-made environment of domesticity.
We are also interested in considering ways of presenting work to the public outside the
conventional art gallery environment.
In House-1st time, our first project, in 1998, involved three of the artists working in a flat.
The following year, In House Twice marked a major expansion and commitment to
exploring questions of contextualization and co-operation. Houses were found through
advertising in local newspapers for homeowners willing to host us and open their homes
to the public. Two families responded, both attracted to the idea of being actively
involved in a local visual arts event and meeting local artists. Widcombe, a Georgian
terrace house on six floors on the south side of Bath, is the home of a couple and their
four young children. This family had moved from London in 1997 and saw the project as
another way to integrate with their community. Foxcombe, situated at the end of a
Victorian terrace on the north side of the city, with two floors, attic and basement, is the
home of a couple with two grown-up children. This family has lived here for over 25
years and many of their extended family still live locally. Their involvement was due to a
joint interest in the visual arts and a desire to engage with art and its makers 'first hand' as
it were.
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236
Funding for the project came from South West Arts and the Faculty of Art, Media and
Design at the University of the West of England. Practical support was also provided by
Bath Fringe'99. The houses were open to the public for the two weeks of the Festival.
In House Twice was not so much an exhibition as an event, the homes becoming stages
for the art and the life styles of the families. The project had no prior set agendas, but
was constructed through an ensuing dialogue between the artists and householders.
This exchange varied in terms of intensity and distance. The artists arrived, they
occupied the homes and developed their work in response to the space itself and, in
different degrees, to the people who lived there.
This way of working with colleagues and context has its strengths and weaknesses - the
inevitable interaction of six viewpoints converging and diverging. There is the risk that
the contrast of aims and ideologies will result in a difference of aesthetic that will be
confusing, uncomfortable, even unacceptable to some people. However, such
interventions and ambiguity - the blurring of art and its context - stimulate consideration of
what might be and what might become art. For many viewers this was exciting, a kind of
'hunt the art'; for others, frustrating. However, the context of the houses themselves and
the Fringe Festival Art Tours, provided a unifying quality, the frame which held the event
together. Maybe it was not homogeneous, not aesthetically co-ordinated, but because of
this offered a more complex reflection on everyday life.
Artists tend towards a working process that is, by its nature, introspective and self-reliant.
In general, the artist works in the studio alone where dialogue is focused exclusively on
their own concerns and interests, or alternatively with a client, where work is produced to
a predetermined brief. In House sits somewhere between these two traditional polarities.
We are a disparate group of individuals brought together initially by one person. Such a
group is formed as a result of implicit, rather than explicit, assumptions; on selection
based on mutual trust and experience of each other built up over a period of time - rarely
talked about, defined or shared - trust constructed and developed through ongoing
conversations. We did not have long debates about our individual work or our ideologies,
we did not sign a manifesto, we came together for 'pragmatic' reasons. Yet there was
almost an implicit contractual understanding between the group as a whole and the
householders.
As well as documenting what occurred during the project, this book seeks to pick up some
of the threads that ran through the In House installation. In this way it is a form of
237
Fig. 99
Bathroom
at Foxcombe
Fig. 100
Rebecca’s room
at Foxcombe
238
conversation and exploration referring both to the individual artist and their work. At the
same time, it seeks to engage with social and ethical debates on a more political level - to
muddy the waters, blurring the distinctions between personal and collective, and
renegotiating tensions between them.
Karen Wallis: Foxcombe

In the bathroom, the starting point was a response to a Renoir in their collection of
postcards. The chalk drawings are studies on the way to the painting. The painting was
made specifically for nudists - I knew I would be addressing Chris and Andrew’s
naturism. It would appear obvious in the bathroom because they had all those pictures
there already. I thought, during the making, that it might seem bizarre that it was me
getting into their bath and not Chris. Before making the picture, I talked to Chris about her
feelings towards her body - they are very positive. In the light of that discussion, this
picture doesn’t feel like me at all - just as the picture at Widcombe is about Mannie. In
some ways I think of it as a portrait.
Rebecca’s room was a total experiment - I drew directly on to the wall. I liked the
idea of the reflection of a person leaving the mirror and making their way to the door. This
image only works in that room, with that mirror, on that wall and with Elizabeth’s
coathangers.
Bill, I think for me, you take their place, you inhabit their space, in an incredibly intimate
way - with such an intimacy that, in a sense, you take over the space - you transcend
their usage of the space.
Iain, You theatricalise it.
Bill, Yes, but it’s a theatricality which is not based on an overt dramatisation of the
space. Because what it does is it picks up on - you know it’s a Mike Leigh dramatisation
- because it takes those things that are normally not used. It’s not high drama in any way
is it? It takes those things that are ordinary.
Karen, Well I’m trying to make realism.
Iain, But in the terms of the kind of anxiety about the redundancy of a particular kind of
painting - what the painting has become is, in a particular sort of way, a performance -
which is quite radical. I think you’ve found a way of using a quite traditional approach to
painting that is highly performative.
Bill, But also the way that the materials have got a clear physicality to them in the same
way as the corporeality of your body - and by association, or by empathy, or by
displacement, their body - in environments and situations which as I said are
239
Fig. 96
Lipstick
at Widcombe
Fig. 97
On the landing
at Widcombe
240
astonishingly intimate. I think for me that’s the linkage, that’s the connection; and
because of its intimacy thereby lies its potency and also its threat.
Karen Wallis: Widcombe
Iain, I think that what was really interesting about what you did, was that on one level,
paintings of nudes in that kind of household, would be entirely acceptable. They would
have been nice, neat and tidy and aesthetic and hung in appropriate places.
Karen, Like the ones on the landings.
Iain, Yes, but because of what you did, you took that possibility out of the frame and did
something quite different with it. If it had gone wrong, it would have gone spectacularly
wrong; and they would have been horrified and they would have not wanted their
parents and the neighbours in and so on.
Karen, In a way, Lipstick is the image I had most fun with and it happened very
comfortably. I was at a loss at Widcombe. I knew I was going to put something in the
bathroom but I felt quite awkward with Mannie and the children - quite inhibited compared
to Foxcombe. So I talked to Mannie and had a very interesting conversation about
femininity and the problems of sometimes denying it. Then afterwards I went upstairs to
take photos and found all these lipsticks - so of course...
This is the picture which shows most clearly that I don’t see the figure as me - it is
on the way to looking like Mannie - something to do with the scale of the head - it’s a bit
small and makes her look taller.
Iain, The Lipstick shrine. I’ve got this thing about Indian culture, and in that little bathroom
shrine there’s a whole series of little lingams in front of the goddess. It’s absolutely
wonderful and I’m not in the slightest bit surprised that at least part of the family wanted to
keep it there.
Karen, The drawing on the stairs is a step forward for me. I like working on that scale -
life size; and it was also a departure to do something which didn’t refer to mirrors. There
was this sensation that clearly I couldn’t go further down in the house. There is a picture
on the other side of that window - it’s of women in underwear - Mannie said that it marks
the start of the private part of the house.
I just feel that I’ve taken my clothes off in more senses than one.
241
242
Comments
Karen, For me, working as part of a group and exhibiting in a domestic situation is about
letting outside influences change the work I make as an individual. I like the uncertainty of
an ‘other’ input .
I know that just on a personal basis I've done work I would never have done, had
I been working on my own; it could have been a total disaster, but you don't mind taking
the risk if you've got a few people around you. I think that’s quite important.
Elizabeth, What interested me was whether any of that energy actually came over to the
visitors. It felt like quite difficult work for visitors to access. I wanted ... I didn’t ... I wanted
to tell people how amazingly Iain had interacted with Mannie and Richard.
Iain, Well ... One of the things I had thought of doing was a little drawing, like a Tantric
diagram, with a little bit of text, quite crudely done, that explained the structure. But in the
end I thought: ‘That’s bloody patronising, I’m not going to do that’. Maybe I should have
done.
Karen, But when one of the actual agendas that we have is ... you’re going to question
whether this is domestic or it’s art , especially in a place like Widcombe. In fact I thought it
was much clearer than I’d feared. It’s the political side of me that wants people to have to
look at the world around them. I don’t want them to just go to a gallery and see something
that somebody has designated as art. I want them to find it ...
Elizabeth, You’d have to be pretty blind ...
Karen, ...and I bet the family told their friends how they’d been involved.
Elizabeth, Yes.
Karen, In a sense that offers an explanation ...
243
Appendix B: Comment
Appendix B: Comment Studio Visit Report
I. extract from a STUDIO VISIT REPORT:

Karen Wallis: 14/2/96
Iain asked where the element of celebration might be in my painting. I said I enjoyed the
act of painting and the sensuous quality of the painted mark. This led to a discussion on
the dangers of facile mark making - which can occur in my work if I am not concentrating
hard on the thought behind the act. Judith and Iain both said they need to eliminate
thought as they paint. On reflection, the form of concentration I need is more like pushing
myself to the edge, rather than calculated thought.
The reading I am doing helps to sort out my thinking and has given me the sense of
purpose which enables me to concentrate. In other words, working towards a research
degree provides a structure and a support system for my investigations in painting.
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Letter of rejection, with added notes from a telephone conversation
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Appendix B: Comment Bath Central Library
II. BATH CENTRAL LIBRARY
Bath Central Library regretted that they were unable to offer me an exhibition. In a
telephone conversation, I was told that some members of the selection panel liked my
work. It was suggested that if I submitted again, offering a more varied show with
perhaps one or two subtle nudes, then that might be acceptable. They felt that in a non-
gallery space with an unsolicited audience, the work should be “fairly neutral” and
preferably “colourful and attractive”.
Further discussion with staff at the library during research for BANA (Bath Area Network
for Artists) on exhibition venues confirmed their policy of caution in selection:
The selection committee (from library staff) sits in May / June and selection is based on
council policy: which fundamentally states that work must be suitable for viewing by all
members of the public - irrespective of age & religion.
The gallery room is extremely accessible at all times due to the (ex staff) toilets off the
gallery room now (since 1999) being available for public use. Therefore it would not be
possible to create a ‘door’ in the entrance to restrict public access to those who could
make a choice to see an exhibition.
These findings were confirmed by an article in the Bath Chronicle on two other artists who
experienced a similar problem, when trying to exhibit paintings of the nude that were not
as explicit as mine.
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Example of comment sheet
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Appendix B: Comment UWE exhibition, 1998
III. WORK ARISING FROM RESEARCH AT UWE, 1998
Figures of comment received:
12 of the comments sheets + 1 postcard providing = reaction from 13 women, 2 men and
1 anonymous person
2 tape recorded interviews = 1 group of 5 women + a single woman
a tape recorded seminar attended by 10 women and 2 men.
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IV. now you see me...

The Black Swan Guild, Frome, 1999
figures on comment received

RECORDED COMMENT: from an approximate total of 57 people
21 written comment sheets
7 e-mails
2 recorded interviews - including 1 follow up to letter
4 recorded group discussions (approx numbers: 8, 9, 5,3)
2 phone conversations
GROUP DISCUSSIONS at The Black Swan:

• A level Art: A mixed group of about 8; 16-17 year olds.
• U3A: 9 ladies from a life-drawing group, mostly over 60
• 3 MEN: 2 builders and a colleague who is familiar with my work
• UWE post graduate seminar: 5 women
INTEREST:
Stated preferences identified
11 for the paintings
5 for the photos
12 interested in both (of these 7 are familiar with the project)
29 no indication either way
pros and cons

for painting:
• What I most like about all your work is the way you use paint to create an image which
is almost tactile.
• The painting gives the image presence. That is why I think your placing work in
bathrooms and lavatories, and in the bedroom In House works so well, because the
unframed painting kind of evokes a presence in the room which makes me look again.
against painting:
• I feel your technique is getting in the way. There are some fine things in the paintings,
but its getting lost in the extraneous paraphernalia. You need to get yourself out of your
painting so that you can really paint yourself.
for photos:
• Liked the segmentation of the body.
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Appendix B: Comment now you see me...
• When I look at the photos I see sexy landscapes!

• I do feel I need to be enveloped by these prints... four times the size maybe....
• These photos can become what the viewer relates to. They also say that the body is
only part of a whole - the whole being ‘the world-landscape-universe’.
against photos:
• I rather actively don't like the photographs, certainly in this context. There is something
about them, kind of the diffuse focus and pale blue tone which I find rather sweet-sickly
and (forgive me) makes me think of soft porn trying to be arty.
• Less emotional, more cerebral impact.
• After the initial shock I became aware that I disassociated the image from the reality of
bodies.
for installation:
• I thought the two pictures in the ladies Toilets was very clever. There was a certain
intimacy, viewing in that place. Alongside the mirror, the images allow us to be
conscious of how our bodies are kept hidden from the public gaze.
• The loos - feeling of invaded privacy somehow legitimised by authenticity.
• I could live with the mirror paintings in my bathroom.
• “Does my bum look big in this mirror?”........
• Mirrors, mirrors, mirrors - no getting away from it.
• In the Round Tower I walked round and round, facing in and facing out.
• Really liked the lay-out of the show in the Round Tower and the effect of the reflections
- both from the point of view of the work itself, and the way it made you interact with
you fellow viewers.
• In another painting the viewer went back into the distance with the painter but was still
aware of the step forward that was needed to paint it.
• Enjoyed the playfulness and interaction; looking through to see mirrors in mirrors - the
whole distortion - ‘“oh dear” on first seeing my back’ - then real excitement playing in the
mirrors - seeing the paintings in the mirrors. ‘Interesting to find myself separating the
paintings from the mirrors and photographs’ - i.e. when playing in the mirrors, didn’t play
with the photos, only the paintings.
against installation
• I found the cafe setting cramped & awkward.
• Cafe: never thought this a good display space.
• I didn’t find that having the work in the ladies (...) or the café helpful, it just made them
difficult to see............ I’m not sure about the mirrors either, they produce and illusory
image which I found a distraction.
• Just could not understand why the mirrors were there.....Is it a tactic to push paintings
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which cannot go any further? Research can make you think there are problems when
there aren’t any. A friend said she thought it was on the way somewhere else - if so
where?
• •I found the triptych less satisfying, somehow too small for the space, to complicated to
look at....... I felt held away by all the devices that framed it.
• •A naturist, who sees naturism as a social thing, expected groups of people in my
paintings - therefore not art. [not articulate enough to say any more]
now you see me... Comment
1 soft, focus, out of focus, muted, movement, honesty, part of the picture, depth of field,
spectacles, mirrors: “does my bum look big in this mirror?” nipple distortion, froth,
bubbles, eddies, light, glimmer, glimpse, pink, pink, pink, flesh, milky white. Paint surface
smooth, your surface smooth. Mirrors, mirrors, mirrors - no getting away from it.
Observer watching other peoples reflections in the space. All around
2 Fascinating exhibition, particularly the paintings and mirrors. Someone in the cafe was
convinced that they were really looking at a photo of a chicken leg in a bowl of water -
"look, you can see the vein..." I didn't feel like that about them, but their haziness didn't
excite me as much as the mirrored image repeats of the paintings. I liked the fact that the
ones in the loo really were of the Black Swan ladies loo, and there we were, too, and the
three in the Round Tower I walked round and round, facing in and facing out - loved it.
3 I really enjoyed the paintings. The photographs had a less emotional, more cerebral
impact, their sweet colours and slightly diagnostic look invited me to deconstruct rather
than feel - but the paintings are fantastic. I loved the way they are displayed - the
triangle of 'triptychs' made with mirrors so that the onlooker literally participates in the art.
As a woman and a mother of grown children I felt quite passionately involved in the
emotion of these paintings.
I also enjoyed the paintings in the loos - the setting and display enhanced that
feeling of invaded privacy somehow legitimised by authenticity.
Thanks for a feast of feeling,
4 Just noticed that the nudes seem to arrange themselves into 3 segments
5 My initial reaction to your photographic exhibits -- they reminded me of the picture at the
beginning of television's Tomorrows World - the baby swimming in water. I do not like
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that picture for some reason and always look away from it.
However after a while the pictures grew on me and I found them to be more
abstract. I thought first they would be O.K. individually but now I think better as a
group.
I though the paintings were lovely, the colours wonderful. They reminded me the
old masters paintings of women.
I could live with the mirror paintings in my bathroom.
Good luck with it all must have been a lot of work.
6 Comments on your show - Knowing your work already, I find I no longer have the
surprise factor/double take which occurred with the lav installation at Bower Ashton.
Still a nice moment of recognition with the mirror installation in the ladies though. It seems
to me this moment/jolt/ping of recognition has to do with a sense of solidarity because I
too live in a female body. I'd like to hear comments from a male gaze. The cafe photos
were pale and beautiful. I watched people being completely unaware of their presence
let alone their ambiguity. The ones in the tower were considered much more closely I
think, and this must have to do with the more gallery-like space I expect. The way the
photos in the tower were hung worked well. This doesn't seem terribly constructive
feed back, so lets talk if you like.
7 Thankyou for your invite. The exhibition has been very helpful as I have left the
conclusion to write about it. My project is nearly finished. Thanks for all you help and I
think your piccies look great!
8 We chatted away about your show in the car going home and thought you would like
some comments, so here they are.
What I most like about all your work is the way you use paint to create an image
which is almost tactile - I almost feel the body as I look at it, or rather experience myself
look at a body more than at a reflection of a body. H'mm, this is quite difficult to write.
Maybe I am trying to say that the painting has presence, or the painting gives the image
presence. That is why I think your placing work in bathrooms and lavatories, and in the
bedroom In House works so well, because the unframed painting kind of evokes a
presence in the room which makes me look again.
I found the Triptych less satisfying, somehow too small for the space, to
complicated to look at, having to walk around and find my way through the mirrors and
frames and in-picture frames made it more difficult for me to reach the painting, and didn't
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invite me to reflect on my own image in any way. For me the painting had the quality if
appreciated above, once I had gotten through to it, but I felt held away by all the
devices that framed it.
I rather actively don't like the photographs, certainly in this context. There is
something about them, kind of the diffuse focus and pale blue tone which I find rather
sweet-sickly and (forgive me) makes me think of soft porn trying to be arty. I notice that
I feel differently about this in this show than at In House, where I think you just had a
couple shown... maybe part of the trouble is that having some many leads them to
overwhelm what I see as powerful paintings.
My main response to the content of the pictures is to be fascinated by what it
means for you as artist and subject to be there showing both paintings and your body.
Your personal presence feels contained and you don't dress in a flamboyant manner,
yet your paintings can have a lot of clout. So visiting the show with you there makes
you-as-artist part of the whole show; if you had not been there it would have been
different.
Other than that I just like bodies of (nearly) all shapes and ages and genders, and
having people look and reflect about their bodies, asking young people to paint
themselves naked, talking to elder ladies and all these things you are doing just seems a
wonderfully important enterprise given the amount of shame that people have in our
culture. But that seems more of a therapeutic comment that an artistic one.
Good wishes for the development of all this
9 Comment on Karen Wallis's Exhibition 'Now You See Me...'

A fascinating show, not only for what it reveals, but what it also conceals. The
unspoken part of the title is, of course, 'Now You Don't', and it is the way the artist
disappears from view that provides its most unusual and interesting aspect. It's done
partly by mirrors, as a conjuror might say. The two mirrors on each of the central triptych
of paintings reflect back an image of the spectator so that the artist's I/eye coheres with
the spectator's eye/me. The confrontation is a triple one: the artist with herself, the
spectator with the work and his/her own reflection, reflecting upon the work; it is also
reality intruding upon an artistic representation of it, which in turn is a variation on a
painting within a painting, being an image 'without' (or outside the frame of) the painting.
In these ambiguous reflections, the artist as a self, a presence, almost
disappears, by forcing her spectators to confront their own selves. The tactic is
reinforced by the two mirrored paintings in the toilet, in each of which the artist, although
visible, is on the point of disappearing from view: in one, about to shut a door, in the
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other, to stop peeping round the corner. A mirror on its own would be merely provide a
spectator with a familiar image, one in which to quickly check that appearances were as
they should be; combined with paintings unsparingly revealing the accretions of age and
flesh, they force a more stringent, impersonal assessment, one that is doubly self-
reflecting.
So although these are self-portraits, they engage viewers in an unusual way, not
merely confronting them with an image of another, but also with images of themselves.
(As Andre Gide wrote in his journal 'I rather like the idea that in a work of art one finds,
transposed in this way to the scale of the characters, the very subject of the work.') In
the process, the image of the artist wavers, becomes blurred, and this blurring is carried
further in the computer-generated prints, in which the body becomes less recognisable,
less visible, almost dissolving in water so that it looks little more than a ripple, a brief
disturbance of a still surface.
Some lines of poetry came to my mind while I was looking at the prints; one from
Hamlet in suicidal mood:
'O! that this too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw and dissolve itself into a dew.'
The other was from the Tempest, a song about death by drowning:
'Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.'
Both concern the dissolution of the self; it is this that gives these attractive, misty images
a deeper resonance.
10 I’m not sure whether my comments about your show in Frome have much relevance to
your ‘research’.
I didn’t find that having the work in the ladies (or the gents) or the café helpful, it
just made them difficult to see.
Lautrec thought the best place to hang his pictures was on the back of the bog
door, because there, at least, they were at their most contemplative.
Mind you given the state of French bogs in those days, I would have thought the
main concern would be, to be in and out as quickly as possible. The only thing you
might want hanging behind the door was the torn up copy of some right wing paper
(prompting the philosophical question “Would you wipe you bum on the sun?”)
I’m not sure about the mirrors either, they produce and illusory image which I found
a distraction.
Have we moved away from a skill based activity where ‘artistic’ competence and
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appreciation are measured against a shared notion of nature / reality, to a point where
the measure is artistic ‘expression’ (art as therapy)?
I admire and even enjoy your technical facility, which I think does fit the original
meaning of ‘quick and accurate’. Masaccio had facility but he wasn’t facile.
No, its not the subject matter, either (we can safely ignore the Futurists demand of
‘No more nudes’).
NO, WOT WUD WORY ME is that there is no real edginess in the painting and
messing about with where and how they are shown doesn’t hide the fact.
I’m reading a book at the moment about Harrison Birtwistle’s music or rather the
way he composes, and I’ve included a quote of a quote from Francis Bacon.
I seem to remember sending you a quote from T. S. Elliot years ago. Probably
means I don’t have an original idea of my own. Clement Greenberg (there I go again
quoting someone else) once famously said, that with Manet there had been a rupture in
the art historical continuum. I tend to agree that things changed in the middle of the last
century but for me one of the most important aspects of the 20th century has been
finding ways to incorporate and make use of the idea of disruption in the way we make
paintings. We may not like the results but I thing the idea of the accidental or
indeterminate mark have great resonance.
For me painting is always hit and miss, I lack your technical gifts. I often don’t
know exactly what I want to do, even if I had the technical means to so it. So accidents
play an important part in what I do, I have to adopt strategies in order to proceed and
disrupting them is simple. Just trying to mix the right colour is a chancy business and
needs constant revision.
I think it started with the Impressionists particularly Cezanne who began as
deeply serious if incompetent and ham fisted, trying conventional techniques but unable
to master them. He had to make a technique which allowed him to find out what he could
paint and then learn how to paint it. His second by second self-forgetting meant he
could find himself in his pictures, developing a way of working in which he could stand
aside.
I feel your technique is getting in the way. There are some fine things in the
paintings, but its getting lost in the extraneous paraphernalia. You need to get yourself
out of your painting so that you can really paint yourself.
From Harrison Birtwistle in Recent Years:
Some of the remarks appearing to summarize Birtwistle’s position are: ‘If anything
works for me, I feel it is nothing I have made myself, but something chance has been
able to give me’, ‘I want a very ordered image but I want it to come about by chance’,
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‘I know what I want to do but don’t know how to bring it about. And that’s what I’m
hoping accidents or chance or whatever you like to call it will bring about for me’,
‘What so-called chance gives you is quite different from what willed application of
paint gives you. It has an inevitability very often which the willed putting-on of paint
doesn’t give you’. ‘What I call an accident may give you some mark that seems to be
more real, truer to the image than another one, but it’s only you critical sense that can
select it’, ‘Half my painting is disruption what I can do with ease’, ‘I’m not really trying
to say anything, I’m trying to do something’, I’m working for myself; what else have I
got to work for? How can you work for and audience? What can you imagine that an
audience would want?’
11 Lovely painting. Admire your courage & honesty.

(Note from follow up telephone conversation)
Impressed by left panel of Triptych. Was prepared by his wife. Sculptor and
teacher - tells students to be aware of their own bodiliness. [Does] figure drawing every
week. People and art do reveal themselves - [their sense of body can be seen through
their drawing as well as their body language]. Photos not of high quality. [Belief in] the
importance of looking
12 A bit different from the Still Life you used to set up at Sydney Place!
We enjoyed you New Work and you use of a range of Media - The Mirror images
were very effective.
13 There were some beautiful images Karen and interesting shapes. The settings of the
ladies toilets, & the round house were excellent but I found the cafe setting cramped &
awkward.
14 Really liked the lay-out of the show in the Round Tower and the effect of the reflections -
both from the point of view of the work itself, and the way it made you interact with you
fellow viewers. Liked the segmentation of the body, the focus and shades of colour, all
emphasising fluidity and change. In the cafe - these have less impact - but have never
thought this a good display space. Having talked jokingly about men in the ladies loo,
was most perturbed when bursting to go, and couldn’t because there was a group of
serious male observers of your painting! Did you intend people to confront their own
hang-ups about body / functions in this way???
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15 The photo combinations, when seen with reflections in the cafe, were interpreted as
landscape. H.Moore would not have been surprised!
The paintings (centre display) & photos have a delicate cold & warm colour
contrasts - blue grey & sort of pink to the orange side.
I like the display with mirrors.
Perhaps an exhibition in a swimming pool changing room might make the personal
comparison between viewer & painter more unclothed.
16 An interesting and slightly disturbing exhibition - v. good paintings & photographs -

original & talented artist
17 I like the use of mirrors & that gives an interaction, between the viewers body and the
woman in the painting. I think the especially works in the loo, as the mirror reflects the
washbasin, and your own body in the mirror. It makes you conscious of you own
body.
The painting of the woman and the girl together is a much clearer image of the
woman on her own. I’m not sure why.
I’m currently doing Art A level on the theme of the Body image
18 Wow! honest its hurts! looking in the mirror (which you made me do in the loo. Pride - in
your face! almost - “Stuff it”!) in another painting the viewer went back into the distance
with the painter but was still aware of the step forward that was needed to paint it
(Does this make any sense!)
Thanks - I want to go home and paint.
Photo’s. Thoughts when viewed. Some sexual - the background becomes shy
and dusk - becomes three - Bodies
These photos can become what the viewer relates to. They also say that the
Body is only part of a whole - the whole being ‘the world-landscape-universe’
19 Particularly like and empathise with the painting of you and you daughter - having a
young daughter of my own. Echo feelings I have about myself aging - memories of
myself as a child - and the pride and hope I have for my own daughter. Primarily I see
the knowledge of woman not just being what is seen on the surface but more importantly
the person underneath - who they are when you really get to know them.
When I look at the photos I see sexy landscapes! - very pleasing to look at,
subtle colours, lovely tonal changes.
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20 I like your quality of drawing and use of paint. I am not too sure about the bodyprints
21 These comments are just from me, and as we had talked - probably less useful to you.
My two younger friends were sadly embarrassed by your pictures and to bully them
into writing or talking - would have been a mistake. Maybe embarrassment is to do with
“identifying”. If one is less than comfortable within one’s own body - perhaps it is
difficult to look at nakedness. Me? I’m comfortable - saggy tummy and all - but being
comfortable within oneself would be a by-product of getting older.
I felt you were courageous and that to try to counteract the present culture of the
body beautiful and “thinness” can only be helpful. But it must be an uphill struggle after
hundreds of years of conditioning - with of course some notable exceptions: Freud,
Reubens, Rembrandt - probably lots more.
22 As I came up the stairs the first pictures I saw, I felt embarrassed, as if peeping. As I
went around the exhibition I enjoyed the gentleness / colour of the flesh. Interestingly,
after the initial shock I became aware that I disassociated the image from the reality of
bodies.
23 I thought the two pictures in the ladies Toilets was very clever. There was a certain
intimacy, viewing in that place. Alongside the mirror, the images allow us to be
conscious of how our bodies are kept hidden from the public gaze.
I enjoyed this exhibition a lot.
24 Wonderful exhibition - including the cafe and toilets. Thought provoking - aesthetically
interesting and pleasing - surprising (especially the toilet ones), amusing and challenging
to some deeply held traditions!
25 Fantastic and beautiful prints. Bodyscapes almost “sculptural” and some as expansive
as landscapes. Moving experience!
Thanks for inviting us to your exhibition and for taking a few minutes to enlighten
us a little on you use of computers in some of the paintings (for a technological moron
this was a great help!) The paintings were very moving and, often, peaceful - I thought
HTV’s coverage rather glib and insensitive - but perhaps you don’t agree.
26 Chewable oils - scrumptious!

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I do feel I need to be enveloped by these prints... four times the size maybe....
The pink and bluish photos work best!
Non reflective glass perhaps!
More water, more water, lots more soap suds - I have to say, they gave me a still an
hushed feeling, the sacrosanct domain that is bathtime on your own!
27 I loved the surprise of the ‘loo’ paintings - very clever!

The photos were very different, cool yet soft
Of them all I liked CD29 for the shapes and the ripple water on the left.
You’ve examined the shared experience of bathing and yet retained the intimacy.
GROUP DISCUSSIONS at The Black Swan:
Group A:
A level Art: A mixed group of about 8; 16-17 year olds.
1. Discussion with Elizabeth Adeline:

a They had not recognised the body in the cafe photos
b Some, in particular one boy, preferred the photos and others, in particular one girl, the
paintings.
c The photos were more embarrassing because they knew they were real.
d They held assumptions to do with expectations of the perfect body; and found the older
body hard to discuss.
e When asked if the work should be done at all, they said they would not do it themselves
- they would not show things they did not want to look at; but I can if I want to - and
they did not think I could mind how I look.
f Someone suggested that the exhibition would be good to see before doing life-drawing
for the first time, because they would not then be embarrassed.
2 Then I joined the discussion:

a They questioned me on : the distortion in the mirrors; why the younger figure was
clothed; why I did not paint the photos; why I ‘cut’ the diptych in half
b I asked if they could see a difference between the paintings in the toilet and the Round
Tower. Their answer was “In the toilet, they are putting you in the position you’re in but
up here they are putting you in with the picture.”
c I asked if they ever draw themselves: some had done it from photos and some had
drawn their heads - they talked of the bits they leave out.
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Group B
U3A: 9 ladies from a life-drawing group, mostly over 60
N.B. They viewed in the following order: 1)Round Tower, 2)Toilet 3)Cafe - therefore the cafe
had relatively little impact and was not discussed in any detail.
1. Individual reactions:
a To the paintings in the toilet:
i Would only be shocked first time
ii In a bathroom they would seem like a friend but different in a public loo
iii Like to have them in a bathroom
iv “Quite and experience” not sure about at home; thought the public loo a good
place - more impact, undresses one
v Strips of painting made them like a glance, seen through a slit
vi Nakedness not that important - they would have a similar impact clothed
b To the exhibition in the Round Tower:

i Much more difficult and confrontational than the toilet
ii Liked the one with the daughter
iii “she looks bouncy with lots to go forward to and the rest is disintegrating
iv clothing makes her more beautiful and mysterious
v Mirrors “make me feel overdressed”
vi Looked at the paintings first but then speculated over the photos
vii Concern as to what bits the photos portrayed - thought people would be anxious
to know [if they were safe]
viii 3 ‘pictures’ of my crotch - a sequence on aging.
ix Debated whether the distortion was water or wrinkles
x Obsessed with deciphering which bit until someone said ‘landscape’ and then
switched off and stopped trying to work it out
xi Not like landscape - “something squashy like a cushion but very taut”
2. Questions:
a How objective am I afterwards towards my body?
b On feeling comfortable with an aging or un-beautiful body - should someone with a
distorted body also feel good about themselves?
c On partial clothing being risky (e.g. socks) - should I have taken off my glasses?
3. General discussion:
a All agree we feel 16 inside - and possibly had things to remember
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b One of them had done photographic modelling ‘in her hey-day’; and afterwards the
photographer had superimposed high heels and sold them abroad - which made her feel
it was a form of prostitution. Her innocence had obviously been her attraction, otherwise
they would have got her to wear them at the time.
c Nakedness does not always reveal all - e.g Christine Keeler astride the chair.
Group C
3 MEN: 2 builders and a colleague who is familiar with my work
1 Neither of the builders recognised the body in the cafe photos

2 Neither could understand the paintings in the toilet; they could not see the ‘mirror image’
and had to be shown how they worked; both then thought it was brilliant but that no
one would pick up on it by themselves. It looked to them as though the pictures were
posters stuck on mirrors to advertise something. This is now common in men’s toilets,
where adverts are placed on the wall over the urinals - with an ideal focal length of 18
inches. “used to be VD, now its Nintendo”
3 Both were fascinated by the Round Tower as a building, which was a slight distraction
4 Both (individually) saw Triptych left panel as either Mother & Daughter OR Young Self
& Old Self
5 One did not think the mirrors in the Round Tower at all significant.
6 The other, after the first one had gone, said he thought the Round Tower exhibition was
well designed - the configuration of the space suited the issues, of echo and reflection.
But he felt a bit uncomfortable looking at my nude images and talking to me - not
inhibiting but aware of the ‘revealing’ nature of the work ‘cutting in’, he almost ‘hops in
and out of it’.
7 We discussed whether it was self-portraiture; My colleague felt the paintings could be -
they have an emotional and physical connection through the painted surface - whereas
the photos use a different language with less emotion.
Group D
UWE post graduate seminar: 6 women
1. Reactions:
a In contrast to some of the other feedback discussions, the mirrors were accepted as
given instead of an obstacle to be taken on. In the toilet, the difference between the
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mirrors with the paintings and the one already there was noticed - although both were
used by women checking their appearance. In the Round Tower, the discussion centred
around the content of the works - the mirrors accepted as integral to them.
b The way one ‘came across’ the work around the arts centre was interesting: e.g.
unexpectedly finding another one in the knitting exhibition - “Oh your here as well”.
c There was a range of opinion on the effect of the paintings in the toilet, in comparison
with the previous installation at Bower Ashton. Some felt the Black Swan was more
dramatic - others that the initial shock of the ‘blocked’ view was greater at Bower Ashton;
scale and multiple images were thought to play a part, and possibly the different placing
of the image on the mirror - to the side or in the middle.
d The presence generated changed the space, detained you.
e Tessa had arrived late and in a hurry. She went straight to the Ladies toilet, not realising
they would be there and had a ‘full’ reaction; it disrupted her dash into, and out of, the
loo - very disturbing and curious - as if my presence was there.
2. Discussion:
a We discussed the difference between the two installations of the Triptych: in a line in
the corridor at Bower Ashton and as a triangular structure in the centre of the Round
Tower. I was concerned that I had lost the narrative in the latter. It was thought that he
corridor was more edgy; but there was more to play with in the Round Tower.
b We talked of my use of self and of exposure; of the duality of seeing and being seen;
and of the strangeness of my becoming another image while I was there.
c We also had an interesting debate around the comparative importance of the paintings
and the photos; of surface qualities; fragmentation; of specific location and identity in
the former, to ambiguity in the latter; which was more demanding, more political.
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Appendix C Transcripts
INTERVIEW WITH ERIC FISCHL

at his studio - 16 April 1999
EF What is realism for you?

KW I think it is the reaction between the person and the picture. I don’t think it’s objective
reality or naturalism - there are all different kinds of realities or realisms.
EF I agree, I think that is the essential question in painting in the 20th century. It starts
with Cézanne. I’m always fascinated by how, when I look back historically at art, I
have this fixed idea. I have a reaction to a work of art - Goya, or Michelangelo,
Tiepolo - and I walk away thinking how real it was. Then when I actually investigate
their manner, I see how totally unreal it was. I don’t know when it happened. I say
with Cézanne because he was the one who introduced the idea that something gets
done before it gets finished - or that those two don’t necessarily coincide. A modern
artist stops when it’s done, which is against the idea of the academy - that the whole
thing had to be finished. There was this idea of perfection, that did not come with the
expression, it came with the sense of the object. So yes, when doubt enters the
picture the nature of realism changes.
KW One of the things that has drawn me to your work is that I had a powerful sense of
the real when I first saw Grief. I saw it in a book - with the essay by Schjeldahl. I’d
been flicking through looking at the female nudes, I kept passing this grey picture and
thought ‘what is this?’ When I realised that that child is dead, it was nightmarish. I
was reading an article on Grief that I got from the Cincinnati Art Museum, and it talked
about the voyeuristic thing when people feel they shouldn’t be looking at that private
moment. It didn’t strike me like that - it’s not looking at someone else’s private
moment, it’s actually looking at the fear - for myself. Now that is very real.
EF Right. For me that was the first painting that I gave a title that was direct in its
connection. Actually, it’s funny what kind of restrictions one places on oneself. To
me that was so radical to actually call something what it was - as oppose to some
ironic or glancing reference to the emotional content - to actually say what we are
looking at is profoundly grievous.
KW With Sleepwalker that might have been a bit difficult - to say exactly what it was.
EF Well it’s a different scene too. It isn’t a direct thing, it is ambiguous. I guess that’s
what I’m saying, that with Grief there was no ambiguity to it. I was thinking in terms
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Appendix C: Transcripts Eric Fischl Interview
of the worst. There’s all different kinds of deaths. They’re all terrible in some way.
The one where nature reverses its orders is the most frightening.
But is it Art? I don’t know. That painting - it’s not that it’s well painted - it’s actually
incredibly clumsy in the way it’s painted - certainly the anatomy is clumsy. If there
were a lot of artists doing scenes like that, it may turn out not to be the best one. But,
when it was inserted into the culture, it was the only one and that’s why it achieved
some resonance.
KW I saw three of your paintings and some of your prints yesterday. In the Whitney
store I saw A visit to and a visit from the island.
EF You mean in the store?
KW In the store.
EF Oh you mean in the store room. I thought you meant in the gift shop!
KW I’d have snapped it up!
EF I was going to say are they selling that? Or you saw a post card of it? Oh my God!
KW No. With much negotiation I got to their out of town store and they dug it out for me to
have a look. I saw it at rather close quarters because there wasn’t a lot of room.
That’s not so badly painted - particularly the right hand panel, the visit from the island
is very powerfully painted. Then I went to the Gagosian where they had a couple.
EF Early work.
KW Yes. What was interesting at the Gagosian was that they dug out the two that they
had and just put them in the gallery. So there was one painting - I don’t know who
by - in the middle. On the left hand side was The Visitor and on the right hand side
was Women in Water. Next to that there was a Lichtenstein, opposite there was a
de Kooning and behind was a Jenny Saville photograph. And it was very
interesting looking at those works of yours in that setting with those other pictures.
(The Visitor is one I know anyway, I know what that feels like - that kind of
exhaustion and the strange place, where you don’t unpack you just crash) It was
extraordinary, because the others were art but they were so artified. They were
polished - a bit like the academy really - all done up - finished. What I found really
interesting looking at your work there was that it was about something else. And you
say is it art? If so what is art?
EF Exactly.
KW I think what I prefer isn’t art, if it’s questionable.
EF Well, I think what you want from art is you want access. Not just as a painter, as an
artist, but as the audience, I think you want to feel the object connects you to
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something that’s bigger, that connects you with your culture - and really makes you
feel deeply connected. You know there’s been so much art in the last part of this
century, which is about disconnection. Alienation - through irony and cynicism and
stuff like that - and the way you connect is that you band together in agreement that
you’re all kind of disconnected. They’ve made some very fabulous, sort of elegant
and kind of detached and cold, non-expressive work. That represents that.
KW All the very expressive stuff, which is horrifyingly abject - women’s abhorrence of
their bodies and all that kind of thing as well.
EF You mean like Kiki Smith, that kind of thing? Who were you thinking of?
KW I was thinking of - well Mona Hartoum isn’t that horrific, it’s really quite beautiful.
EF I don’t know her work.
KW Well Damien Hirst, that kind of work. The meat with the flies and all that. It’s terrible,
it’s death but actually it’s not - and when you see it and the killing machine isn’t
actually working, it’s not killing the flies and it’s all sealed so you can’t smell it...
EF He’s kind of a science fair. They’re really benign. They’re meant to be more
disturbing than they are. But yeah that’s true there’s a lot of abject work.
KW I think regarding the body as something awful and sweaty and horrid, in order to say
the body is real, is going too far in the other direction. I know our bodies sweat and
they sag and they are not beautiful and it’s the only one you’ve got - but because
it’s the only one you’ve got, you’ve got to learn to live with it.
EF I have this sort of theory about women and their bodies and their art. It came from
thinking about the way, over the last twenty years or something, we have from time
to time these really intense upheavals in the ghetto. Blacks all of a sudden burning
down the ghetto. I mean lots, in Los Angeles for example, and Detroit or Newark,
New Jersey - when they just can’t take it anymore. They riot against injustice - but
they inflict the pain on themselves, because they burn their houses down, they burn
their stores down. Its not like they mobilise, leave the ghetto and attack directly the
thing that is oppressing. They actually hurt themselves. And I thought, it’s
interesting when you look at women’s art that deals with the body how often times
they take it out on themselves - that’s the feeling I get when I look at women who cut
themselves or humiliate themselves. There’s just this kind of inverted hostility
towards their bodies. I think there must be some relationship to it. It’s not as direct an
expression of their feelings about what’s going on as they think it is, because they
go back on themselves. It’s sort of like anorexia - those kind of things. Which is not
to say it is not powerfully expressed and therefore revelatory in some way. It’s just
curious.
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KW I think it’s noticeable because it comes out of the commercial desire to have something
new and shocking again - it’s a way of shouting - because if you talk reasonably to
someone you’re not often heard.
EF Well definitely. As somebody who got on the radar screen through some kind of
sensational subject matter - I think it’s true in terms of attracting attention. You have to
have something that literally does that - attracts attention - whether it’s shocking, or it
could be something that’s incredibly beautiful that timed right, becomes shocking. It
becomes that thing where someone turns their head because they can’t believe
someone is doing that. You need that. Then of course once you have that attention
then you have to maintain it - and shock in itself isn’t enough to maintain it. Shock in
itself isn’t that interesting anyway - it needs to be connected to something that is - for
me, that is shocking.
KW I’ve just had a recent experience of that because I’ve just put some paintings in the
Ladies loos, in an art centre.
EF You put paintings in the bathrooms - at the art centre?
KW I had an exhibition in the art gallery, and there were three different venues that I
asked if I could infiltrate - because this little gallery is up some stairs and no-one visits
it. They said “You can put some stuff in the café.” Well I couldn’t put my nudes in
the café.
EF Why?
KW Because ...
EF I’m sure you’ll show me examples.
KW If you want to see them. I had to put some really harmless stuff in the café.
EF Why?
KW Because I’d been turned down, when I wanted to put an exhibition in the local library
and they said: “We can’t have this - it will put people off. It’s not a gallery, we have
ordinary people from the public bringing their children in here.” So I said, “All right fair
enough.” But in this last exhibition I did put some paintings in the loos. I’d done it at
the university and it went down OK there - so I did some more. Anyway the local
television came and interviewed me sitting on the loo talking.
EF Nude?
KW No, of course not. The paintings were nudes.
EF Were the paintings of people in bathrooms?
KW No, they were paintings of myself, washing my hands as if I were at a mirror. And I
stuck them on mirrors so that people would see them and see themselves as well - or
they’d have to look round my picture to see themselves.
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EF How big were your paintings? Were they small or mirror size.
KW Mirror size. But the guy from the news - they really wanted to make something tacky
out of it. They wanted people to say they were shocked. But of course the women
said “No no we understand this. We identify.” But you’re right, it takes something
like that - and lots of people did come to the exhibition. But I don’t want to always
work in lavatories just to get them to come.
EF No of course you don’t. But the thing is it’s not putting the paintings in the lavatories
- although that’s what worked - it’s actually what a lavatory is to us. That’s where
the real content is. Do you ever read Gaston Bachelard’s Poetics of Space?
KW Yes.
EF You know it’s true how deep each sense of space is - in terms of metaphor and
psychologically - experientially. I always found, for my art, specially years ago, I
would create a situation, where I would take a body - I don’t want to work from
models, I take photographs of people. Years ago it used to be that I spent a lot of
time in St Tropez beaches where there were a lot of naked people. The body
language was very interesting to me because they were very socialised - the body
language was very socialised but they were naked. So from a kind of puritanical
American point of view, where nudity, nakedness - there’s a lot of discomfort with that
as a public space - you know I was like shocked, and fascinated by it. So I found
that I’d take these photographs and then when I would make a painting I would say
“Here’s somebody doing this gesture - it’s a gesture you would see if they were on a
telephone - or they would do this if they were in the kitchen - or they would do this if
they were in a bedroom. But would they do it if they were in a child’s bedroom or
would they do it if they were in the basement.” You start to feel something else
about that gesture. I found if you just start moving people and what they’re doing
around in rooms, the room itself begins to narrate, to dictate appropriateness or
inappropriateness.
KW Yes. One of your early paintings which I like, is of a youngish girl on the phone just
moved into a new flat, with cardboard boxes.
EF Yes, New House.
KW But one does actually wander around the house without clothes on - in privacy - so it
has a resonance. I do a lot of my best reading and thinking in the bath. I take phone
calls in the bath - there’s that slight frisson of talking to someone when you are
actually naked.
EF Yeah, or doing other activities - I know. With New House - the thing about the point
of view - it’s as much about where the viewer is, in watching this. There’s this thing
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about the television, which in that painting is on. Like she’s hardly unpacked but
she’s unpacked her television. The television is sort of comforting - I think it implies
that she’s alone and therefore she’s got the TV on to have some kind of connectivity.
She’s talking on the telephone, she’s connecting that way - she’s got the TV on,
she’s connecting that way - to fill up this new experience - new space. But the
television is this kind of strange thing in painting because what it does - I’ve talked
about this before - it’s like when Velasquez introduced the mirror as a way of showing
the viewer things that they wouldn’t see. You Know? It’s like giving you a sense - a
holistic view of the environment by saying your looking at this but your also seeing
things that are behind you - that are in the same room - that is the King and the
Queen are there and this and that. So that kind of meditation on reflection - how to
enlarge the space of the painting - to a painter it’s always a compelling one. But
when you put a television in it sort of functions in the same way, in that it enlarges
the space the way a mirror does. But of course what a mirror does is it brings into
that viewing experience things that are in the room. With a television it brings into the
viewing experience things that are not at all in the room - and in fact have nothing to
do with what’s in the room. And if there’s any resonance there, it’s totally coincidental.
It’s such a modern, contemporary phenomenon, that I find kind of fabulous and
hysterical and points to how truly bizarre our lives are. It’s the same with the
telephone, or the Walkman, or any of those things where our sensory perception
thing is taken so far beyond the physical. The idea that you can hear somebody
whose is tens of thousands of miles away - or that you can see something that you
can’t actually see with your naked eye. All of that, the way we’ve extended our
perceptions, exerts an enormous amount of pressure on our lives, in terms of
adjustment. We take it for granted but when you think about it, how can you
possibly take it for granted because it’s a fantastic and strange thing.
KW The first time I sent a drawing through a fax, it was weird. I put this drawing in and
the person at the other end rang back and was discussing this drawing that they had
in their hand. It seemed like the work of the devil to me at the time. It was really
freaky.
EF Well the thing is we’ve all adjusted to it very well. It’s really interesting. I think what it
does is - like in that painting New House - the viewer / voyeur comes as somehow
as foreign to the moment as the television is. I think the painting would feel entirely
differently if that TV wasn’t there to mediate the relationship between you and her - or
if she was just standing in the room. I guess those are all the kind of choices that a
painter, a narrative painter, has to make. That’s why I say I’m not a formalist painter.
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You don’t put a TV there because of its shape. You put a TV there because it’s one
of the strangest things. You don’t put someone on the telephone because of the
shape of the cord going down the arm and across the body. You put them on the
telephone because our lives are that bizarre.
KW I made a painting very early on when I was doing work for a gallery - and they liked
animals, children, still life, beach scenes - it was what they could sell. I did a painting
of a cat but it was asleep on top of a microwave - and it didn’t go down at all well.
EF Really?
KW Because you could see the little ‘Panasonic’ LCD numbers.
EF It was the introduction of a contemporary utensil, or was it the fear of a cat getting
fried - of getting nuked?
KW I don’t know. I thought it was just the introduction of something modern.
EF I can’t imagine what it’s like to be a British painter. Because - I know some and I talk
to some and they all have the same feeling. There’s just an enormous amount of
restrictions that people place on painting and art and expression and things like that.
I remember I was talking to some young painters several years ago. There was one
girl - she was doing really some dreadful paintings on purpose, you know - wilfully
bad - and she was talking about how there was no room because of the London
School - of Freud and Bacon and Auerbach - because there was just absolutely no
place for younger artists to go unless they were going to go that way. So the only
thing they were left with was to do these horrifically terrible paintings - with their
tongue firmly in their cheek. But between that and what you’re just talking about is
actually more sinister, which is a flat out refusal to say that these are things we live
with - this is our world - a flat out refusal to say art is not a place to show where we
live. That’s frightening, that’s sinister. That’s like some kind of weird nostalgia for
painting that’s something that it just isn’t - it’s not interesting for it to be there - and
artists know that.
KW I think that’s more to do with the way people shape their houses - and make their
cocoons. It’s weird, I don’t subscribe to it at all. I mean what you’re talking about is
the problems of British painting - this is why I’m looking at your work - this why I’m
looking at Hopper. Over here you seem free of this.
EF Yes - except we’re not. There are people, essentially conservative types, that don’t
think it’s appropriate for art - and they have a very narrow definition of what art is -
but they’re not the majority so therefore there is this other thing. We have other
problems which are the opposite of restriction. Right?
KW Is that why the ‘French fear Americans’? Is that what that’s about? I meant to ask
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when you were talking about the French beach. Because that made me just laugh.
EF I think that’s hysterical. I think that fairly simplistically the French are absolutely a
bourgeois culture. Everything's about form, and propriety and elegance - they want
all their women to be bird thin and chic. Of course the worst thing that could happen
would be a woman of a certain age exposing herself. I thought it was great.
Anyway, what were we talking about?
KW I’m sorry. You were talking about over here there’s the actual lack of restriction that
goes the other way.
EF Yeah well - that’s sort of an American problem. I grew up in an environment, which
was the American middle class, which was essentially an imagistic culture. It’s all
about the way things look and everybody wants to be connected to it and they don’t
want to be different - they don’t want to be alienated from it. They want to have
what everybody else has, and they want their kitchens to look like everybody else’s
kitchens with some personal touches. Everything’s about personal touches on top of
standardisation. Basically it’s about assimilation and this profound anxiety of
appearances, because if things aren’t the way they seem - if they’re seen to be
what they are, instead of the way they seem to be, then whatever... I came out of a
family that was absolute violence and chaos and stuff like that. You stepped outside
our house and you had no idea that that was going on. All the houses had the same
thing from the outside - you know, yards were kept up, and windows were cleaned,
and cars were washed, and people barbecued and did all this stuff. You had this
kind of sense of serenity and order and things like that. And you just cracked that
door of my house a little bit and there was a whole other world inside.
KW But do you think all the other houses ... possibly not as exaggerated ....
EF Well for most of my friends it was - that’s why we were friends. One house was as
bad as the next, and it was all pretty wild. But that thing of not being able to say -
it’s not even about changing it, it’s about being allowed to say “This is the way it is”.
You know? It causes me profound anger and anxiety to think that you shouldn’t say
“Look, the fact is this is the way things look”. We do live with telephones and
televisions, and we fly in aeroplanes and we have a technological this and that - and
these are part of our lives. We have a certain relationship to it, and this is what we
look like when we have that relationship. Objects affect our lives in profound ways.
You feel very differently towards a telephone when you’re happy than when you’re
sad. We animate a telephone in a way when we’re lonely - it takes on a certain
power. In a sense, if it could ring, it would save us. It could break our feeling of
isolation - if it would just ring. And you look at like it could do that - it could connect
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you somehow. So that’s the stuff that I find absolutely fascinating.

KW Like Bonnard? Is this your interest in Bonnard here? The wonderful sunshine
existence that’s hiding goodness knows what.
EF Yeah. I mean he was a revelation. Because I always took him as just absolutely a
bourgeois painter of domesticity - like Post Impressionist. It wasn’t until I saw the
photographs, where there was no colour, that I realised this guy has a really
perverse and interesting kind of misanthropic vision. You know - gee I wonder if
that’s true - I’ll look at the paintings again and see. Of course, there you see the
figures are the same as the photographs, only now they’re surrounded by all this
fabulous light and colour - which created this split because you feel towards the light
and colour differently than you feel towards the body language. So he was really
wrestling with the two in a kind of profound way. Anyway, that’s when I really
started to look at him and connect to that kind of psychological narrative that I hadn’t
noticed before. And when you piece his life together you see there’s a real
connection - that makes me feel legitimate in reading it that way.
KW I know they say there’s no connection and all that - but the fact that his mistress died
- or cut her wrists ...
EF The first painting he did of that - it’s a sarcophagus for Christ’s sake - all you see
coming out of it are blue legs - it must have been profound. But I mean it’s a
combination, because it’s also apparently Martha, his wife - ultimately his wife. She
was obsessed, sick, always seeking cures - so she was always in baths and taking
baths. When she wasn’t sitting in baths, they would go to spas and stuff, trying to
take the cure. So that was a normal part of his everyday, knowing if he wanted to be
with his wife she was going to be in the bath tub.
KW I think there’s a tremendous horror - I mean it’s like when you say the telephone holds
something when you’re lonely and you think it’ll speak to you and make things better.
I’ve known days when the sun is shining and you feel terrible.
EF Yeah. Don’t you love that? Don’t you love the irony of that?
KW I can remember sitting in my mother’s garden in Hampshire with all this beautiful
sunlight and trees, thinking - you know - wanting to scream.
EF I’m always fascinated - you see I make this distinction between pose and posture.
In that the pose - like we were talking about before - is a formal thing, it’s about
abstraction, about ideas of beauty or grace, line, form, composition. Posture is body
language - it’s about the way our experiences affect us physically. It’s also how we
read each other. So we can tell with very subtle indications, very subtle signals,
whether somebody is a friend or a foe, whether they’re happy or sad, whether
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they’re hiding something or afraid, whether they’re comfortable or awkward, whether

they’re comfortable with themselves. We can see how it’s like - it’s amazing because
of course it’s like whether a nostril flares or there’s a little shift in the eye or a skin
pigmentation - you know there’s all kinds of things that we read like that. So posture
is the thing that interests me the most. And I’m always amazed - like you saying
you’re sitting there and it’s a gorgeous day and you feel terrible - and somebody can
perceive that - somebody actually in that garden with you can see that. Or I have
had experience when I’m walking down the street and somebody on a roller blade or
roller skates passes by - and they seem to be having some great time - and
something about it triggers a profound sadness in me, and I don’t know what triggered
it. But something in that exchange of just watching somebody go by on roller blades
sets something off - you think God it’s so interesting.
KW I’ve just realised in your talk of pose and posture, that I did a series of paintings and
the most recent was based on catching sight of myself as I walked past the mirror -
and not liking what I saw - and I guess I made the shift there, from pose to posture, in
that I decided I had to take that on - what I didn’t like. Because the other ones,
although I’d been painting myself, I’d positioned myself in a way I could take - I could
let the world see me like this.
EF Well that’s very brave of you, to do that. I just did a self-portrait of myself as part of
this group I’m going to show - and I’m in a mask - so...
KW But you also did a Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man.
EF No, but its not me. The difference is ... I mean of course ... Rembrandt’s self-portraits
of him are such a record of aging.
KW Well I’m looking at those pretty closely.
EF I saw at the Museum in Dresden, two portraits that he did of the same man - not self-
portraits they’re of this man. He did them ten years apart. They’re sitting there and
they’re not big - they’re just head shots - and it’s the most powerful incisive there.
The guy’s mid forties and then mid fifties - and the difference between the two. What
happened in those ten years, to change this person so much, is phenomenal. You
know it’s gone from a kind of confidence, a kind of security, a sense of doing what one
wants to do - there’s all this feeling of a strong self contained secure sure person.
KW But you get that in his self-portraits as well, don’t you?.
EF Yeah, I don’t know it’s like - it’s just here they are...
KW I must go to see them.
EF Have you ever been to Dresden?
KW No.
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EF It’s amazing - I’d no idea. It’s like rooms of Veronese, rooms of Giorgione - and there’s
four or five Vermeers - it’s just incredible the stuff they have there. It’s like - who
knew? Of course every museum has rooms of Rubens but - there’s two Rubens,
the identical painting, three years apart - it’s kind of interesting formally - he didn’t
change anything except the paintings are totally different. And then of course there’s
these two Rembrandts - I think that’s what I walked away with remembering most.
How you can measure an entire life experience by putting two things next to each
other - they’re essentially the same but different - there’s something fabulous about
them.
KW I guess I’d better bite the bullet and show you what I’ve done.
EF I think you sent me some stuff a while ago.
KW There’s not a great deal of difference, except I’ve got photos of the later stuff.
EF When did you do these?
KW I’ve been doing them over the last four or five years.
EF You had more hair back then - you’ve had your hair cut.
KW Actually I realised if I didn’t want to look like an old hippy and I wanted to explore
middle-aged woman I should cut the hair. And I’ve just cut it really short now, after
my last exhibition - so I’m not so recognisable - it’s in lieu of the dark glasses.
These are the ones where I said I posed. I was interested in the shape my back
made - the curtains of flesh - but I nevertheless posed myself in a way I could cope
with.
EF Right. Is that your daughter in the background or is it you as a young woman?
KW Well, I’ve used my daughter but I think if people think it’s me, I don’t mind. And I’ve
carried on using her.
That was the first glance that I didn’t like.
EF Is this your daughter as well?

KW Yes. She’s not thin. She has real problems in that she’s not a twig. She’s not fat.
EF She looks quite vivacious.
KW She’s gorgeous. She’s got an hourglass figure - statuesque and a big personality.
She’s still doing ballet, where ...
EF They all want to be thin?
KW Yes. I admire her courage - but I know what it costs her, when she goes to shops
and they don’t have clothes that fit.
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I hung those three pictures in a corridor ...

EF With mirrors across from them?
And this is a bathroom scene?

KW Yes, that’s the first couple I did at college. The ones in the corridor, people felt very
awkward about, but the ones in the bathroom they regarded as very friendly. I think
it’s because I put myself into their space.
Those are photographs.

EF I can tell.
KW I started doing them as a joke - in that I said: “You want formal? I can do formal. I can
do abstract. I’ll do abstract photographs.”
EF And you are going to continue?
KW Well I’ve used them in this exhibition, because they are what I put in the café -
they’re what I could get away with.
EF It’s interesting, the paintings seem at the service of the photograph. In that when I’m
looking at this - or the installation shots here, there’s this - I don’t know how to say it -
it’s like this is the right distance to see this from - this photograph shows the right
distance to see the paintings from. So it’s not really about painting, it’s about an
image that creates a voyeuristic kind of distance, in which you see somebody
walking into the bathroom or something. You kind of want to see - it causes you to
want to look - catch a moment. You don’t know whether to look away or what not - so
you do - and the photograph sort of does that. You look at this photograph and you
say what the hell is going on - somebody’s walking - you can’t quite tell. There are
several photographs in here where you can’t quite tell - where you are seeing you at
the sink or walking into the toilet, whatever - within the context. People sitting around
eating with female nude parts on the wall and they’re not paying attention and that’s
poignant. Obviously, when you paint yourself you have a certain kind of mood - a
weight to your feeling - and then you see someone else ignoring ... and that's actually
the story, that’s the content. But it’s not in the painting. Personally I would say that
there’s something in the way you paint that’s not connected to the content at all.
KW I know. This is where I have to work.
EF Well, they’re coming from two different points - places.
KW Yes. This has become very apparent from this exhibition.
EF I also think that the ones in the hall are not as successful as the ones in the bathroom
or the photos.
275
KW They were dominated - they were over weighted by mirrors.

EF Also, I’m struck to hear you doing something that clearly is a complicated subject for
you - which is why you’re doing it, that’s what’s so interesting about it - right? You’re
actually quite vague in your portrayal of yourself. You’re asking for an emotional and
psychological response to something you’re emotionally and psychologically
attached to - and they’re vague. They’re like you’re sort of blurry and you’re actually
quite far away. That’s the difference. The photo gives you the exact distance that
your paintings are to the viewer - it shows what that is. I imagine if I went into the
bathroom and your painting was in the mirror or whatever - it wouldn’t be the right
experience because it would be blurry. I would think that it wouldn’t create the same
kind of confrontation with that intimacy and that privacy and that psychological
charge. Am I making any sense to you at all here?
KW Yes, absolutely.
EF Because, like here, from the point of view of this photograph, I’m exactly at the right
distance to see you this blurry - right? And to also know exactly what’s going on,
which is that I’m looking at a woman of a certain age entering a toilet - a bathroom - I
can see that - and I’m caught. Do I want to or not want to watch - right? And the
same with this - this photograph gives me exactly the right distance - but if I’m
actually standing there and looking at that, I’m going to see this sort of blurry misty
painting.
KW The paint surface.
EF And I’m not going to get that content from it - I’m going to get something else, which is
more imagistic, I think. And I think that either you start thinking of this as the art, or
you tighten up the painting so that it’s more - when I walk to it, you know exactly the
distance you want me at.
KW Yes. Well I was struck yesterday, looking at your work, on your use of the life sized
figure - and I think I made a note in my book ‘should I be doing this?’
EF You have to know like - I don’t think it matters frankly - but what does matter is you
identify for yourself, not even articulate it, but identify it for yourself through painting,
exactly how far away the viewer is from the experience - from when they first contact
the experience. It’s how are you going to know? I mean there are certain artists -
their paintings will walk all the way across the room to shake your hand, when you
first walk in the door, because that’s how far away they want to grab you - and to
see you - or have you see them. And others like hide - you might almost get past
them before they kind of call you back. But also it has to do with your sense of
scale. It’s part of the whole content of a painting that there’s a scale thing here -
276
which is about how big or small you want your viewer to be. Paintings will change
the size of the viewer - change the distance the viewer experiences the emotion. So
it’s not just about large or small. If this were a life size painting it wouldn’t work.
KW These are done by tracing round acetate on the mirror to try and get the same size of
reflection, standing there - so that it would work.
EF Obviously you got it because they look very real.
KW But - simply because the thesis is about the painted nude, the painted naked body -
I actually want to get away from the mirrors and back to just making a painting. I’m
very acutely aware now, that work lies in the painting.
EF Well then, I’d say it has to do with - especially where you’re trying to pierce the
surface of reality. You’re looking at yourself through your body, through age, through
all the things that that represents - and you have to give the viewer the chance to do
that as well. I mean, I can’t do it with myself - yet - I’m not brave enough to look at
myself - I can look at the world that way but I can’t yet look at myself. Your being
very brave in doing that. It’s more like you’ve set up this heroic project for yourself
but your scared out of your wits. And you’re like ...
KW And I’ve been found out too ...
EF Well that’s the thing. That’s what the paint tells us. It’s telling us you’re looking but
you still don’t want us to see. You kind of blur your eyes so you’re kind of showing
even you’re ...
KW There is a reason for the head being in shadow so much - and that is that when I first
started working on this I found that to get the balance - it’s like a technical thing - to
get the balance between the head and the body. The face is so powerful it will
always obliterate looking at the body. If you want people to look at the body, it
seemed ... you know I couldn’t get the two to join up.
EF But they don’t. It doesn’t matter. Looking is not about seeing the whole at once.
Looking’s about seeing all the ... If you paint yourself in a smock say, people look at
your head first. But if you indicate a nipple, men anyway - I don’t know about
women - men will see the nipple first. - Right?
KW Yes.
EF If you paint yourself naked we’ll see the breast, we’ll see the head, we’ll see the
breast - then we’ll start to see ... you know there are ways that we look. You
perceive the whole but you don’t look at the whole. So trying to make the whole as a
thing, actually takes away from the reality and puts it into the formal - saying I want to
paint a painting of an integrated figure here.
KW I shouldn’t really be trying.
277
EF No - because you’re actually not going to do it. The reality is we look at things in
parts - and we look at them for all the reasons that we know we look at them for. You
look at nipples going “Hmm! nipples - hmm - sex - hmm - I wonder - whoo - nurturing
- this - that - blah blah blah” So what? We also look at the person - “Oh! that’s the
person whose got that thing I want.” You know what I mean?
KW Yes I do. One of the things I was going to move on to, in the next series of paintings
- when I was going to take Rembrandt’s Woman Bathing in a Stream as a starting
point - was what I suppose you’d call the veiled body. It’s the body that’s actually
directly hidden from view but that you know is naked underneath. Because there’s a
lot of painting - Goya does it. There’s a wonderful portrait in the National Gallery - it’s
just a straight portrait - but the light on her, you can feel her breasts underneath the
dress. I’m interested by implied nakedness. But maybe that’s a step too far on?
EF I’ve no idea. I don’t think you’ve used up this thing. Just personally - you know -
tighten it up. The thing that’s interesting about psychological painting versus formal
painting, is that it’s a different kind of hierarchical structure - it’s intuitive for one thing -
and it differs from the academy in the sense that there’s no all-over-ness - there’s no
even thing. You know a psychological expressionist painter cannot make a Raft of
the Medusa - it won’t happen. Because if you submit yourself to the painting, they’ll
be parts of it which you handle this way, and parts of it you handle this way, and
parts of it have this kind of detail, and parts of it you don’t care about - as you move
through the meaning of this to you. You’ve implied that in your painting but you
haven’t quite done it yet - I don’t think. I mean just looking at photographs I can see.
I prefer the ones that are more straightforward than the narrative symbolist thing of
clothed or not clothed. You know these ones where you like glimpsing yourself,
which is a profound revelation for you - that’s a huge moment. I want to know more
about it - as a viewer I want to know more about it. But it’s how you seem to hide ...
KW I paint it out...
EF You paint it out. You paint out the thing that actually caused you to have the
revelation - the computation of the self with the self - you know? ..... It just shows
you how hard it is.
KW Oh I never said it was easy. The whole project is great because it’s something to
get your teeth into.
EF Well, I always look at British painting as like ... that their strength always lay in their
portraiture and landscape - but especially portraiture. Part of the reason for that is
because they’re true strength is in theatre and literature - which is verbal narrative.
Narrative painting can’t compete with it - it’s too sophisticated an audience to tolerate
278
it. Because the audience is so literate, it will ascribe more meaning to the work than
actually might be able to come out of the work. But when you have portraiture, like
landscape, you have basically a form that is essentially non verbal. With portraiture,
the great portraits really create a character that’s there - and its just about that, it’s
about a character, a person. What more can you say about it in that way? It’s not
an intellectual construct. It’s about a person there you have to deal with.
KW Yes.
EF I think that Freud’s paintings - not to use him as an example of British painting,
because he is British but he is not as well, right? But to me, when he gets into the
narrative stuff, which is like he’s sitting on a couch holding a rat , a woman sleeping
with two fried eggs - it’’s just ridiculous. But when he paints somebody who’s just
sitting there or a nude lying on a bed, he’s a genius. Bacon painted narrative
painting, he could do it - but it’s not often. I think David Hockney’s best paintings are
his portraits - or still lives or his dogs - which are portraits.
KW It’s interesting that. I hadn’t really thought of it as a national thing.
EF I could be totally wrong.
KW Well I don’t know. When I think of the narrative painters like Spencer - people like
that I find hard.
EF Yeah - they kind of lapse into corny - or melodrama
KW It is - it’s very hackneyed - scholastic in a way that doesn’t work. I shan’t go into the
different directions I might go in - I’m quite torn about the different things pulling me.
But one of the things I’m interested in is my invisibility as a woman of a certain age -
and I’m quite interested in looking at that - in a narrative fashion.
EF Yes. Well men experience that too - and they experience it at an older age than
women do - but the same thing happens. I spent some time in Rome, in the American
Academy there - I had a group of friends from the Academy. We were all out at dinner
and this guy Doug Hall, whose an artist and friend of mine - slightly older than I am,
like three years older than I am. Somehow he and I got on to this subject - when we
first realised walking down the street that we were not turning the heads of young
girls - that we were invisible. One night we were going on and on, and the rest of the
table was women. There were a couple of younger women there, who were
shocked at the conversation. It was an odd reaction that they had, but they were
offended by it and shocked by it - and had no real sense of why we would think that
or talk like that or whatever. Of course the older women were sitting back kind of
nodding - and knew perfectly well what was being said - it was really funny.
KW I think what I find interesting is that I walk down the street with my daughter and I’m
279
conscious that eyes are focussed just two feet beside me - to the space beside me -
and yet I know how awkward she feels at being looked at. It seems you can never
get it right.
EF I don’t think you can. It’s the one thing that photography has taught me. I was
talking with David Salle yesterday about this. First of all painters were affected by
photography since it started - and now more than ever we have this sense of a
photographic reality. It’s the dominant language in our culture - visual language - and
I include TV and film as part of that experience. But the one thing the camera has
taught me, by slicing life so thinly, is that our reality is made up of an enormous
proportion of awkward moments. Very rarely are we composed. It’s always within
the awkward moment that one senses this split between how we want to look like
and how we feel about ourselves - or what we think we’re doing and what we’re
actually doing. That kind of thing. The reality is that we’re always in a state of
becoming, and it’s always an awkward state. We’re always a little behind how we
are physically in the world - or we’re not quite ready to meet the moment to come. I
love that. To me there’s such truth there, that that’s really where one should look for
inspiration, because it’s irrefutable. There’s almost no moments when we come
together - that outside and inside - and it sort of reflects our spiritual quest. It talks
about that mind body split or soul body thing - you can see it - you can see people
turn inside themselves. You can see the house - you can kind of glimpse the person
that lives in that house, at different times. And it’s through gesture, through look,
through something - in that ... I’ve forgotten what I was going to connect it to. ... I
know what I was going to connect it to. I was going to connect it to some advice -
which is that when you said that you would like to explore in a narrative your
invisibility, I would advise you to just do a painting in which you are so irrefutably not
invisible - that that might be the way - which isn’t a narrative way, it’s a physical
confrontation. If you make a painting and it says “I am here - and you cannot deny
that I am here”, then you are actually talking about that relationship. But you’re
talking about it from a position, because you know that you’re not invisible - and
have every right to be there and be there as a physical being and a sexual being.
Right? So you just have to insist that somebody sees that - and then it becomes an
issue with them. So then you’ve engaged the dialogue, because they’re going “Do I
want to see this? I’m not sure”. I think that’s one of the things that certainly Freud
brought to our attention and it’s something that Jenny Saville has also been forcing.
I’m not sure what it is in Britain, but in America we have this enormous prejudice
against weight. We have a problem with flesh and when there’s a lot of it, it’s like a
280
big problem. So she knows that, so she makes the confrontation.

KW The interesting thing about Freud is that when he paints himself, his self-portrait, is
way back.
EF Mid ground.
KW Absolutely, he’s putting a lot of distance - whereas the women he paints he’s right on
top of.
EF The thing about Freud is his paintings are such a confrontation with flesh and faecal
matter - its so elemental, his thing about it - that your confrontation is you want to be
there, and you don’t want to be there. I think that’s the only way one responds to
conflict, dialogue whatever. It is to go and make something again and say “Look I’m
back, I’m thinking, I’m feeling, I’m here.”
ERIC FISCHL: e-mail
Fri, 12 Mar 1999
Dear Karen, I don't think about the viewer. That is I don't think about the public. I make a
distinction between those people that I know and those I have no way of knowing. The public
I ignore and don't, at all costs, try to second guess them. My audience is all the voices in my
head made up of people, dead or alive,historical or contemporary, whom I respect and admire
and whose approval is important to me. They are the voices of influences, both good and
bad, who offer to me a kind of clarifying resistance. It is in dialogue with these voices that I am
able to make decisions that ultimately determine the quality of the finished work of art.
Sound complicated? It isn't really. Think of it like a tennis match. You have two audiences
there. The primary audience is your opponent on the other side of the net. This opponent will
feel the full weight of your intentions and will resist them causing you to make adjustments in
order to achieve your desired result, which is to win. The other audience is the public who has
come to see a good match. They are fickle and not to be counted on for help or loyalty. They
will simply see the result of your battle and decide whether they were completely entertained
or not. A great match, like a great work of art, is determined by the quality of your opponent
and the way you overcame them.
Best, Eric
281

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PAINTING & DRAWING THE

A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the

Faculty of Art, Media and Design

Karen Wallis 2002

2 In search of a realism for the nude in painting

References & notes 203

List of images in the text

Fig.18 Jo Spence & Exiled 30/1

Fig. 35 Karen Wallis Mother & daughter I 66/7, 70/1

Fig.52 Gustave Courbet The Bathers 80/1

Fig. 70 Karen Wallis Visiting the Leonardo cartoon 104/5

Fig. 84 Karen Wallis Installation in Women’s Toilets 128/9

Fig. 100 Karen Wallis Rebecca’s room at Foxcombe 152/3, 222/3

Fig. 118 Rembrandt van Rijn Hendrickje Stoffels (?) 180/1

Also specific thanks to :

Timothy Hymen, for his lecture on Bonnard and informative tutorial.

The artists of the In House group, my collaborators in _eak. and at PVA.

Phenomenology, as employed here, is an approach that encompasses three areas of

Bertold Brecht: epic theatre as an anti-cathartic method of presentation.

Pleasure, central to Kantian aesthetics, 7 can be found in engaging with a potentially

In each of these responses, the issue of depicting nakedness is viewed as a problem.

As a European woman, my culture has encouraged me to be constantly conscious of

As a painter and teacher of life-drawing, my ‘traditional’ approach and preference for

Alison Rowley, in her essay on Saville, 28 admits to an autobiographical association in her

background and middle layer

background middle and front layers

Although eroticism is extremely difficult to define and “the problem of problems” 32 in

By combining an understanding of Merleau-Ponty’s corporeal body-in-the-world with

...the opinion of the responsible philosopher must be that phenomenology can be

Phenomenology offers alternative methods of investigation to those established by

By using a knowledge based on experience of the phenomenal world, the extra

Phenomenology has allowed me to identify an individual position (as a painter and a

The discovery of phenomenology as the ‘natural’ method for my practice fundamentally

In Husserlian terms, we should attempt to “begin in absolute poverty, with an absolute

...we must distinguish “straightforwardly” executed grasping perceiving,

subsequent reflection. In that intention lies the possibility of “experiential knowing”, 52

If the Ego, as naturally immersed in the world, experiencingly and otherwise, is

In this phenomenological manner, it is possible to deconstruct life drawing, (Fig. 27)

Fig.22 Artist and Model

The impact of phenomenology on my approach to life drawing had a simultaneous effect

Fig.22 Artist and Model

Three fundamental points learned from Merleau-Ponty made a phenomenological

Fig.28 Study 1 Fig.29 Study 2

Fig. 36 Mother and Daughter II

Fig. 35 Mother and Daughter I

All phenomenology is an explication of evidence and an evidence of explication.

Fig. 42 René Magritte Fig. 43 Alexander Deyneka Fig. 44 Allen Jones

Fig. 45 Max Beckmann

Fig. 46 Pierre Bonnard

Fig. 50 Lucian Freud Fig. 51 Eric Fischl

... despite the undeniably innovating quality of Courbet’s achievement, if one

The question remains as to whether being contemporary is sufficient for an effective

Fig. 60 Gustave Courbet

Gadamer’s hermeneutics offer a way to examine a viewer’s encounter with a painting,

Festival: For Gadamer, festival celebration is a form of representation and therefore

Courbet painted ‘The origin of the world’ after Manet’ painted

In an Event of Realism there is a significant moment of perception that reveals Realism.

The skin colours and brush

A Klee painting named ‘Angelus Novus’ shows an angel looking as

Fig. 69 The Virgin on the rocks in The National Gallery, London

Can a reproduction of a work of art stimulate an Event of Realism? Gadamer, in saying

If an image has become familiar through a reproduction, an adjustment has to be made

If this is the case, can we describe an Event of Realism as Sublime? Is an experience of