masquerade
This analysis will follow the production process of a photographic project exploring the surrealist take on masquerade. The result of this project is a series of images that deals with the presentation of the self. The analysis will explain Judith Butlers gender theory with example from artists such as Claude Cahun and Cindy Sherman. It will describe the creative process that led to the final images and analyse the choices I made in relation to the surrealist art movement.
To understand the surrealist attitude towards representation of the self we can look at Judith Butlers, a Professor of Comparative literature and rhetoric at the university of California and a theorist of power, gender, sexuality and identity, gender theory. Butler main point about gender identity is that: “rather than being a fixed attribute in a person, gender should be seen as a fluid variable which shifts and changed in different contexts and at different times”. Butler questions the idea that gender is an essential concept. She regards gender as a form of performance or masquerade people uses in a fluid manner. Butler also rejects feminist conventions, which refers to “woman” as a singular concept. Instead, she refers to Freudian psychoanalytical method of understanding gender as a set of experiences, which lead to a self-constructed identity. These personal experiences do not always fit the biological gender of the person and challenge cultural taboos. (www.theory.org.uk/ctr-butl.htm)
Claude Cahun (1894- 1954) the French photographer and writer focus on the political and personal aspects of gender and sexuality. Cahun’s private and public life as a trans gender challenges the audience understanding of photography as a documentary of reality. Her association with the surrealist movement of the 1920’s diversified the group’s ways of representing woman. She offers multiple identity possibilities for woman, not just the symbol of desire. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Cahun)
Cahun’s work was an inspiration to many artists. Cindy Sherman’s photography work “Film Stills” explores the concepts of woman’s role in the 1970’s Hollywood cinema. In her images Sherman construct the image of herself in order to comment or reflect on the perceived roles of woman in popular culture. She masks herself as a deferent person and uses this person to represent a visual conception about femininity.
To experiment with my own conception of gender I have used the idea that the person constructs its own gender and explored the deferent looks that can be achieved by dressing up as the opposite sex. I started by photographing myself as normal. I also tried images of only certain body parts, which represent my own gender and compared them to similar images of the opposite sex. Next I photographed myself dressed as a man but with deferent hairstyle and an uncharacteristic beard. These images are unusual to me and have masculinity and femininity qualities side by side. Finally I used feminine makeup and straitened my hair as I might have done if I was a woman. I photographed my self gradually becoming a woman and also used deferent clothes and props as part of the experiment. The results were a series of images that contrast my own conception about my gender and represent me in a feminine light,
To develop the surreal influence on this experiment I decided to change the nature of the images from portrait to poster. The complex relationship between the surrealist art movement and commercialism has inspired me to experiment with deferent ways of presentation. By placing number of images together on the same page and change the background colour I tried to transform the atmosphere of the images. These poster images are no longer under the title of self-portrait; they are a presentation of a cultural idea about gender. They reflect on the cultural consumerism we experience through popular magazines that sells images of cultural phenomena’s. The images I created resemble other Images of Transvestite and pop stars.
This surrealist masquerade experiment has been a challenge all the way through beyond the inhibitions to experiment with my own gender. The illusive concept of surrealism and masquerade forces me to engage with this subject on several levels. The experimental stage of dressing up and confronting myself as the opposite sex has been beneficial to me as an artist. I also learnt from the surrealists how to use visual tools in order to challenge cultural and personal conventions. However, as familiar as I am with the concept of self-constructed gender, my own gender transformation experiment reviles aspect, which I did not expect. In some of the feminine images I can recognise masculinity aspects, which do not exist, in my everyday look. I believe that as an artist this phenomenon is related to dealing with inhibitions and the power of masquerade.
