DOI Artikel:
Jakubowska, Agata: Feministyczne interwencje Griseldy Pollock
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.14537#0054
48
AGATA JAKUBOWSKA
GRISELDA POLLOCK'S FEMINIST INTERVENTIONS
(Summary)
This what we cali a "feminist art history" bas already a thirty-year history. A présentée! text is dedicated to one of the female
researchers - Griselda Pollock - who has participated in it almost sińce its very beginning and is nowadays regarded as one of its
most influential représentative.
Pollock perceives her activity mainly in political catégories, treating analytical practices as an element of women's movement
aiming at révolution in social reality. She is interested mainly in the changes within the scope of knowledge - she does not leave
an académie world, for she finds here a chance for interventional actions which would question the hegemony of existing domain
of science. On the history of art she wrote that "as a form of knowledge it makes an articulation of power". She treats it as an
ideological practice and intervenes within its scope in order to debunk the myths accumulated here. As the most widespread of thèse
Pollock regards the beliefs about the exceptionality of an artist-genius and the autonomy of a work of art. То debunk them she turns
to the social art history, "improving" it slightly by including gender related issues to which such scientists as Marx or later Clark
were "blind".
Taking up a topic of female artists Pollock dissociâtes herself from thèse feminist researchers who focused their attention on
expanding the canon. Instead she suggests looking into the canon and the art history as a whole by asking a question why the female
artists were excluded from it. The answer to this question (which she offers among other things together with Rozsika Parker in their
book: Old Mistresses. Women, Art and Ideology) allows us to examine the structure of this domain and analyse the position of
women within it (both female artists and their art and women as an artists' object of interest). Pollock proposes to disrupt the
structure of existing science instead of complementing it: already mentioned debunking of the myths, revealing the areas ignored
by art history (as for instance its "whiteness"), differencing of interprétations. Thus she opérâtes within the art history but to some
extent against it.
The subject matter of her analysis are works of both maie and female artists. Pollock focuses her attention on interprétation
of the meanings unnoticed by the art history, for they belong to the sphères suppressed in the culture part of which the art history
makes. Looking for inspiration, Pollock turns mainly to the texts by maie and female psychoanalysts, initially by Freud then Lacan
and finally by the female authors from the group of the écriture féminine. From here she absorbs mostly the knowledge about the
identity formation processes, suppressed éléments of which she finds in the works of art she interprets. Whether she focuses on van
Gogh, Mary Cassatt or Mary Kelly, she is interested only if in the sphère of représentation there is to be found whatever is
suppressed in the phallocentric symbolic order.
Of particular interest are the interprétations of Mary Cassatt's works, even if only because of Pollock's continuing interest in
this artist and chance to see how Pollock's analytical practice towards Cassatt's works has been changing. Initially Cassatt was
analysed mainly in the context of her social standing as a woman. Later on in the perspective of breaking of the stéréotypes
constructed by the West European culture related to femininity (as, for example, maternity). And finally, her pictures are beginning
to exist as an expression in which we could search for "what-is-feminine" elicited from culture's (and individual) ignorance. This,
however, as Pollock stresses, should not be related with female biology but regarded as an order able to destroy the logic of
patriarchal world.
Although Pollock appréciâtes the value of her relations with widespread women's movement, nevertheless she is becoming
more and more hermetic. Her language is getting denser, filled with the concepts from more difficult to understand than social art
history field of psychoanalysis. We deal with an increasing complexity and rhetorical sophistication (an idea of a text written in
form of collection of letters in Differencing the Canon). Often it seems, however, that Pollock has in mind always the same idea:
to find in the discourse a space for expression of "what-is-feminine" and only searches for other ways of its réalisation. Pollock,
more and more remote from feminist political movement, is becoming a constant element of the académie world of art history -
and being included, to some degree against her will, in the trend of new history of art remains its important personality.
Translated by Grażyna Waluga
AGATA JAKUBOWSKA
GRISELDA POLLOCK'S FEMINIST INTERVENTIONS
(Summary)
This what we cali a "feminist art history" bas already a thirty-year history. A présentée! text is dedicated to one of the female
researchers - Griselda Pollock - who has participated in it almost sińce its very beginning and is nowadays regarded as one of its
most influential représentative.
Pollock perceives her activity mainly in political catégories, treating analytical practices as an element of women's movement
aiming at révolution in social reality. She is interested mainly in the changes within the scope of knowledge - she does not leave
an académie world, for she finds here a chance for interventional actions which would question the hegemony of existing domain
of science. On the history of art she wrote that "as a form of knowledge it makes an articulation of power". She treats it as an
ideological practice and intervenes within its scope in order to debunk the myths accumulated here. As the most widespread of thèse
Pollock regards the beliefs about the exceptionality of an artist-genius and the autonomy of a work of art. То debunk them she turns
to the social art history, "improving" it slightly by including gender related issues to which such scientists as Marx or later Clark
were "blind".
Taking up a topic of female artists Pollock dissociâtes herself from thèse feminist researchers who focused their attention on
expanding the canon. Instead she suggests looking into the canon and the art history as a whole by asking a question why the female
artists were excluded from it. The answer to this question (which she offers among other things together with Rozsika Parker in their
book: Old Mistresses. Women, Art and Ideology) allows us to examine the structure of this domain and analyse the position of
women within it (both female artists and their art and women as an artists' object of interest). Pollock proposes to disrupt the
structure of existing science instead of complementing it: already mentioned debunking of the myths, revealing the areas ignored
by art history (as for instance its "whiteness"), differencing of interprétations. Thus she opérâtes within the art history but to some
extent against it.
The subject matter of her analysis are works of both maie and female artists. Pollock focuses her attention on interprétation
of the meanings unnoticed by the art history, for they belong to the sphères suppressed in the culture part of which the art history
makes. Looking for inspiration, Pollock turns mainly to the texts by maie and female psychoanalysts, initially by Freud then Lacan
and finally by the female authors from the group of the écriture féminine. From here she absorbs mostly the knowledge about the
identity formation processes, suppressed éléments of which she finds in the works of art she interprets. Whether she focuses on van
Gogh, Mary Cassatt or Mary Kelly, she is interested only if in the sphère of représentation there is to be found whatever is
suppressed in the phallocentric symbolic order.
Of particular interest are the interprétations of Mary Cassatt's works, even if only because of Pollock's continuing interest in
this artist and chance to see how Pollock's analytical practice towards Cassatt's works has been changing. Initially Cassatt was
analysed mainly in the context of her social standing as a woman. Later on in the perspective of breaking of the stéréotypes
constructed by the West European culture related to femininity (as, for example, maternity). And finally, her pictures are beginning
to exist as an expression in which we could search for "what-is-feminine" elicited from culture's (and individual) ignorance. This,
however, as Pollock stresses, should not be related with female biology but regarded as an order able to destroy the logic of
patriarchal world.
Although Pollock appréciâtes the value of her relations with widespread women's movement, nevertheless she is becoming
more and more hermetic. Her language is getting denser, filled with the concepts from more difficult to understand than social art
history field of psychoanalysis. We deal with an increasing complexity and rhetorical sophistication (an idea of a text written in
form of collection of letters in Differencing the Canon). Often it seems, however, that Pollock has in mind always the same idea:
to find in the discourse a space for expression of "what-is-feminine" and only searches for other ways of its réalisation. Pollock,
more and more remote from feminist political movement, is becoming a constant element of the académie world of art history -
and being included, to some degree against her will, in the trend of new history of art remains its important personality.
Translated by Grażyna Waluga