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Not-so Silly Putty: three female artists look at the body

© Christine Hamm

Looking for similarities among contemporary artists can be a way to understand them and their art in a whole new way. For example, two of the old guard on the contemporary art scene, Louise Bourgeois and Cindy Sherman, and one recently resurrected op-artist, Yayoi Kasuma, have a similar approach to representing their experience of living in a female body.

In each artist's work, multiples dominate. Bourgeois's sculptures frequently sprout breast-like protrusions (i.e; Blind Man's Bluff). Sherman's photographs (Untitled Film Stills) present many images of a differently and dramatically posed self. And finally, Kasuma's Accumulation sculptures are covered with multitudes of stuffed cloth polyps. These artists' work resonates to an experience of femininity that is no way single, discrete and clearly delineated. Instead, it expresses a sense of self and other as constantly shifting and multiplying, both formed and formless. The polyps and protrusions of Kasuma and Bourgeois speak of a body that is borderline grotesque, terrifying and full of subterranean shifts in matter and substance. Sherman's limitless scenes with the same body also refer to a fearful lack of solidity. Her characters are often caught by the camera in dangerous surroundings or with frightened faces.

The female body, for so long depicted by male artists in its most beautified and tamed form, is revealed to be fierce source of the most un-pretty power. It is able not only to suddenly shift form and chemistry, but also to give birth (making the above referenced multiples). Producing another is the most terrifying and mysterious experience the female body provides. This is not to say that each artist is stating that the ultimate female experience is giving birth. Yet they are aware of the depths of experience made possible by living with such a powerful and uncertain form. In a sense, as Sherman, Bourgeois and Kasuma create a piece of art and thus recreate a piece of their experience, they are giving birth to themselves. Their very creativity is essentially reproductive.

Yayoi Kusama Louise Bourgeois Cindy Sherman

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