The Rokeby Venus

In this rather hilarious report of the incident in the Times, the attack on the painting is described in almost human terms: ‘probably the most serious blow has caused a cruel wound in the neck’; there is ‘a broad laceration starting near the left shoulder’ and ‘other cuts […] cleanly made in the region of the waist’. The Keeper of the National Gallery, meanwhile, describes ‘seven distinct injuries’ and ‘a ragged bruise’ on the painting, in the language of a post-mortem.

Meanwhile, ‘prominent woman suffragist Mary Richardson’ (note that the noun there is ‘suffragist’, not ‘woman’) is said to have used an instrument ‘similar to [those] used by butchers’ – as if that somehow makes it worse than if she’d used sewing scissors or a hat pin. Clearly the writer considers the Venus as much of a piece of meat (albeit a sacred one) as Mary Richardson – who later said she ‘couldn’t stand the way the men visitors gawped at it’.

The Times counters by saying that this Venus is ‘absolutely natural and absolutely pure’ –  a strange claim that implicitly contrasts this ‘marvellously graceful’ women with the ‘woman suffragist’ who attacks her, in the process making this about much more than the destruction of art.

Art Under Attack

Unfortunately, little has changed in the gallery notes to Tate Britain’s exhibition Art Under Attack: Histories of British Iconoclasm. There’s a whole room devoted to women (after several focusing on those other Wanton Destroyers of Art, the Protestants and the Irish), with accompanying hand-wringing notation:

In 1913 and 1914 the campaign to win women the vote became more militant and turned from window-smashing to attacks on art. Paintings in public museums and galleries – the nation’s cultural heritage – were attacked in order to effect to effect political change.  The militant women who carried out these acts of iconoclasm did so in the name of the Women’s Social and Political Union[.]

– Tate Britain, Histories of British Iconoclasm, Room 6 

It’s couched in the language of facts and neutrality but there’s a nasty undercurrent to the emphasis on ‘public museums and galleries’ and the little clarifying clause that this is ‘the nations’s cultural heritage’ (to which we will return). Together with the repetition of ‘militant’ and the rising pitch of hysteria in the movement ‘from window-smashing to attacks on art’, it’s clear that the writer is no friend to Mary Richardson.

‘Iconoclasm’ is, of course, the term used in the exhibition as a whole, although I find its application to the Rokeby Venus little better than the Times‘ assertion that the painting is ‘universally recognised by good judges as […a] masterpiece’ – it implicitly speaks from the perspective of a white, male, artistic elite, which has confirmed that this painting is ‘objectively’ of almost religious (‘iconic’) importance. In the process, the word comes close to justifying Richardson’s claim that an ‘outcry against my deed […] is an hypocrisy so long as they allow the destruction of Mrs. Pankhurst and other beautiful living women’ – the elite cared more for a painted woman than a living one.

Interestingly, that very perspective appears once again in the next room, where we have Carl Andre’s brick sculpture on display. This was attacked by a member of the public who resented his taxes being spent to acquire it for Tate because it wasn’t ‘proper’ art. Whatever you think about the piece, you can see his point. Yet today, we are told in the gallery notes, ‘Carl Andre’s sculpture remains admired by some and misunderstood by others’.

Photograph of Mary Richardson in 1914

Conserving womanhood

I am by no means condoning the destruction of artworks, but the salient point for me is that the Rokeby Venus is ‘alive’ and well in the National Gallery to this day, and the other canvas victims of the suffragettes’ knives exhibited in ‘Attacks on Art’ are similarly unharmed.

In fact, while the gallery notes assert that paintings such as ‘In Prayer’ by George Frederick Watts (exhibited here) were selected for destruction by the suffragettes because of the problematic image of womanhood they presented, the effect of exhibiting them in their restored form is merely to reassert that complete, beautifully conserved image in the service of a narrative of ‘militant women’ attacking ‘the nation’s cultural heritage’.

About that ‘cultural heritage’. The next room but one in the exhibition focuses on Auto-destructive art, with examples from  Gustav Metzger and Yoko Ono, a fragment of whose Biba dress (destroyed during a performance art piece) is exhibited here. She bought that Biba dress, so she’s entitled to destroy it, is the implicit argument here (from this point on the exhibition is all about ‘good’ iconoclasts, such as Gilbert and George, who had the decency to buy the art before they destroy it). The suffragettes, by contrast (like the Protestants and the Irish) were ruining it for ‘the nation’.

Galleries as a model for citizenship

The National Gallery – where the Venus was hanging in 1914 – was set up in 1824 to provide a space for the poor to view art alongside their social betters. In its original conception, there was a moral reform impetus behind it – many spoke of how museums accessible to the broader public would reduce birth rates and crime among the poor (who would now have a gallery to go to instead!), and there was talk of how, through exposure to their ‘betters’ – including middle-class women, for whom the gallery offered a genteel and ‘safe’ public space – the working classes would learn to regulate their passions and behave in a more orderly (quasi-middle-class) manner. In fact, national galleries – set up throughout Europe during the nineteenth century – were described as instruments in which to learn better citizenship.

You know the punchline, right? Yup – the majority of the people museums were trying to entice in and train up as model citizens – working class men, all women – did not have the vote. That’s the problem. These works may have been the ‘nation’s cultural heritage’, but the nation in question was an incomplete one. The Rokeby Venus didn’t belong to the Suffragettes. It belonged to art-loving, nude-gawping middle-class men.

The most interesting thing in this exhibition, for me, is the admission in the Suffragette room that the Suffragettes prompted as much ‘iconoclasm’ as they enacted. A WSPU pamphlet is exhibited on which Mrs Pankhurst’s face has been so violently ‘de-faced’ the paper has torn, exposing the words on the next page. In this age of Caroline Criado-Perez and Anita Sarkeesian, that should make us think.

One should be a painter. As a writer, I feel the beauty, which is almost entirely colour, very subtle, very changeable, running over my pen, as if you poured a large jug of champagne over a hairpin.

Lady Bridgett Poulett as Arethusa by Madame Yevonde (1935)

The above quote comes from a letter between two of my heroes – Virginia Woolf to her sister, painter Vanessa Bell – which always comes to mind when I look at the work of a third: photographer Madame Yevonde.

Madame Yevonde was a British photographer in the early twentieth century, and an early pioneer of colour photography using the complicated and costly Vivex process. It wasn’t just that she produced photos in colour – she broke new ground in special effects and filters, using coloured cellophanes to lend sensuality and symbolism to her work, in particular her most famous series, The Goddesses.

When she shot her famous pictures of aristocratic ladies dressed as classical goddesses in 1935, Yevonde was already a successful society photographer, having set up her own photography studio at the age of 21. Before that, she was involved in the suffragette movement. Her hero was Mary Wollstonecraft, and she remained an outspoken advocate of women’s rights her whole life, saying “if I had to choose between marriage and a career I would choose a career, but I would never give up being a woman.”

Mrs Edward Mayer as Medusa by Madame Yevonde (1935)

Yevonde introduced her 1940 autobiography In Camera as not “the story of a woman’s life but of a photographer who happened to be a woman”. Although in the early twentieth century photography as a profession was open to women, most roles were low-paid and semi-skilled, assistants in photographic laboratories, and Yevonde was the first woman to give a lecture to the Royal Photographic Society.

The first thing everyone says about Madame Yevonde’s photos  is how modern they look. Her influence is difficult to overstate, as new generations of photographers have discovered her work, images which look at home on the walls of an art gallery and the pages of Dazed and Confused. I see the Goddesses series as a hymn to Yevonde’s medium, to colour, and also to the strength and beauty of women, in myth and in the modern age.

Bust of Nefertiti with Flat Iron and Letter by Madame Yevonde (1938)

And it’s not just the Goddesses pictures that have been influential. Bust of Nefertiti with Flat Iron and Letter (1938) reads to me like a comment on women’s elevated position as the subjects of art contrasted with their unglamorous low status in real life, and makes use of the same symbolism as that classic punk work by feminist artist Linder (link prolly NSFW) which graced the cover of the Buzzcocks single Orgasm Addict.

Yevonde’s portraits are beguiling, but what I like best about her work, apart from that devastating, dazzling use of colour, are the tinges of Surrealism. She was clearly influenced by Man Ray and Lee Miller, but also brought in her own sense of humour and playfulness, particularly to what she referred to as her ‘still life fantasies’ such as Bust of Nefertiti.

With her symbolism – and all that colour – Yevonde sits on my ‘favourite feminist artists’ shelf alongside Frida Kahlo, Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo.

Whenever I look at their work, I just want to drink the beauty in like Woolf’s jug of champagne.

Self Portrait with Image of Hecate (1940)

“I used to write for a ‘zine back when there was no internet…”

But to the ‘zines. I used to write for a fanzine, back in sixth form, when I was trying to be as cool as the girl who made the fanzine in question, who wanted to be a music journalist and who didn’t like Kula Shaker so I had to pretend not to like them either (but I did, and I do). I remember getting super excited over the fact that I was holding in my hand something that I had helped to make, and seeing my art in print for the first time. It made me realise that I could actually be creative, that there were things I could physically make outside of the dismal sessions of Art Class where I woefully, grudgingly failed to reproduce any of the techniques of the grand masters. This involved scissors and glue and a photocopier. I could totally do those things! I did pictures for two issues, until teenage bitching meant that no one was talking to anyone and it all got a bit fraught.

My treasure trove

So that was my experience. I’m glad to say that other people are still making fanzines, and that they are varied, beautiful, different and amazing. I spent a tenner on a stack of ‘zines and came home giddy with the fact I owned little bits of art, thought and lovely stuff. Counter culture. I was gobsmacked with the array of fanzines on offer and made even happier when I realised how fucking feminist all of it was. And how diverse that feminism felt. All kinds of people were making all kinds of cool, gender-diverse, body-shape positive, politically forward things. Which were funny. And nice to look at.

Here are some of my faves.

Queer and Feminist ‘Zines

I fell in love with Nancy just from the cover alone, and more so when I read the contents. A series of personal essays, rants and raves on the subject of effeminate gay men and why there is such antagonism towards them both within mainstream AND gay culture. A seriously smart read, which delivers one gay chap’s take on queer theory sliced through with pics of Lady Gaga and Brian Molko. I particularly enjoyed the list of ‘positive femme men’. Shape and Situate subtitled itself as Posters of Inspirational European Women, and it did exactly what it said on the cover. A whole bunch of artists had done different pages, in different styles, giving stories and pictures about women as varied as Jayaben Desai and Liz Ely, so I now have a whole host of new icons, plus lots of links to new artists and new feminist allies I hadn’t heard of before. Girls Who Fight – do NOT google “girls who fight”; you will get bad porn – from Monster Emporium (see the distributors list below) is a good wodge of art, essays, stories, photos and all kinds of feminist goodies. I got all three issues due to being greedy. And I regret nothing. Another of my stellar buys was Miss Moti by artist Kripa Joshi. A stunning and high quality comic, standing out from its photocopied sisters. The rich, lush artwork details the daydream life of Miss Moti:

Pronounced with a regular T this Nepali word means

A Plump Woman

But spoken with a softer T it means

A Pearl

I really liked the curvy, sexy heroine – depicted on the cover in a seashell like Venus, but clothed in a polka dot dress. The simple storylines unfolded into wonderful fantasies: a bit of cotton candy becomes a pink cloud landscape where she sculpts her own David; a piece of apple grows into a new Eden complete with Adam. This was a real change from the lycra-clad hardbodies and explosion-tasms of the usual suspect superheroines I’ve become so used to seeing. This comic focused on her desires, rather than using her as a vehicle for the (assumed straight male) reader.

Distributors and Indie Publishers

Vampire Sushi are ‘zine distributors, so they’ve got their fingers in lots of pies. They specialise in perzines¹, art ‘zines, queer ‘zines, food ‘zines and feminist ‘zines. Which is pretty much all your ‘zine food groups.  Similarly, Monster Emporium Press have ‘zines and artbooks, as well as being monster-themed, which we at BadRep Towers are generally in favour of. Other Asias bring together artists whose work challenges misrepresentations and generalisations of “The East”. One of their cute mini ‘zines comes with a teabag inside, which meant that all my ‘zines now have a delicious scent to them. Finally, Honest Publishing are an independent publisher based in SW London, celebrating authors with unique, alternative voices.

• If you make feminist or feminist-friendly (or friendly feminist) fanzines, please get in touch with us and tell us all about it!

1. Nope, I didn’t know either. But Wiki does. Woo!

Illustration – or, as Wikipedia rather charmingly defines it, art created to elucidate or dictate sensual information – is really important to me. It’s basically what I would do all the time if I had my way. And I’m not the only arty person on Team BadRep, either, as you may know. One of the things I’ve enjoyed most about being part of this site, in fact, is the opportunities it has raised for me to discover new illustrators from around the world, including feminist Gond tribal art and east Indian Mithili art. As I write this, I’m awaiting my copy of Sita’s Ramayana from Tara Books, so I’ll be talking about that on here soon.

This, though, is a quick post about illustrators I’m especially digging this minute. Each of them has done some work that I found interesting and beautiful with the added dimension that it also got my feminist braincogs turning, or straight up made me smile.

I’ll probably come back to this topic every so often, but to start with here’s some people you should check out.

Tiitu Takalo

Based in Finland, and mainly working in Finnish, but her art is powerful enough that you don’t need to be fluent in Finnish to love it. I interviewed her last year about her work and her feminism – read it here. I am fangirlishly proud that this site is on her links page, I can tell you! My favourite thing she’s done is probably Keha (The Ring) which is about growing up, falling in love, and boxing, but her zines are also beautiful.

• Tiitutakalo.net

Howard Hardiman

What Lengths would you be prepared to go to?
So I met Howard at a small press art fair Markgraf and I had a stall at, and I picked up issues 1 and 2 of his comic The Lengths. It’s now on issue 5. In his own words (quoted here), “…it’s a comic based around a series of interviews I did with male escorts working in London a few years ago and tells the story of Eddie, one young escort… who’s struggling with trying to do the job while craving both the adventure it offers him and the prospect of a relationship with an old friend”.

It is also very good. It’s a thoughtful, introspective comic, meandering poignantly through ideas around sex work and attitudes to it, selfhood and masculinities. I really like his decision to portray all the characters as human/dog hybrids. It just works.

On another tack, Howard’s also writing The Peckham Invalids, talking of which, scroll down!

(Oh, and according to his site bio, he’s been described by Simply Knitting magazine as “suave”. This has really only made us dig him more.)

• thelengths.com
• howardhardiman.com
• Buy things

Julia Scheele

There’s a lot about Julia’s work I love – short mini-comics like this and this, for example. I’d recommend following her work generally, but I’d particularly recommend The Peckham Invalids. I have issue 1, and it’s off to a promising start. The entire premise is a Bechdel-busting pile of badass, and features women from a range of ages and backgrounds, y’know, having their stories told, and stuff.
In 1906, as Britain surges on a tide of industrialisation driven by the brave innovations of the boldest and the best, Ms York has opened the doors of her modest home in Peckham. A group of poor, young, ill-educated, disabled and abandoned girls found their way to her and under her auspices are learning about the power they have feared the most in the world of oppression and stark inequality: their own.
So, to recap: a comic about disabled teenage superheroines in 1906 Peckham. My interest is hugely piqued, my hopes are high, and the art is looking great.

• Julia’s Art Blog
• thepeckhaminvalids.com
• Sarah Gordon, who colours The Peckham Invalids – also a talented artist

Cat Mariner

“I’m pretty sure that tiny, irrationally furious, pompously indignant animals are the funniest things on the planet.”

And who are we to argue?

Cat’s just launched her Etsy store this week, which is great, because the image above is surely the greatest alt-Valentines card imaginable (although Snails In Love… Totally Gross is surely a contender). I am particularly jealous of her command of facial expressions, and particularly enamoured of this image of the rainbow creatures that live in puddles.

I am in the process of loudly petitioning her to produce a picture book or a comic. Pray add your voice to the clamour, and purchase a card on your way out.

• Cat on Tumblr
• Cat’s Etsy Store

I’m going to stop there because it’s late and I have to sleep but please do check these people out, gift them your money and tell your friends about them.

There are more people I want to tell you about, but I think I’ll style it out into a second post!

Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies

This exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery looks at the moment immediately after Charles II reversed this rule, and it’s a fun little look at some portraits, caricatures and paraphernalia of women who were allowed on stage, ‘from Nell Gwyn to Sarah Siddons’. It’s focused on portraits, but there are some super little earthenware tiles with different actresses on them in Room 3. There’s also a facsimile of the Yellow Pages-style brothel directory, Harris’ List of Covent Garden Ladies; or, The Man of Pleasure’s Kalendar, illustrating the fall from grace of the once ‘Convent and Garden’ of Westminster Abbey – a bit too close to eighteenth-century Theatreland for PR-comfort. Since its reissue by the History Press this book has now achieved some cult status – the guy next to me, looking at it, said to his companion, ‘You know, Gladys: Harris’ List – that’s the one we’ve got in the toilet’.

Nell (c.1651-87) opens this exhibition – a talented comic actress, although she is popularly most recognised for inspiring Charles II’s last words ‘Let not poor Nelly starve’ (she survived him by barely a year, fact fans). There are two portraits of her here, in both of which she’s got her mammaries out. This exhibition would have these as evidence of her ‘skillful manipulation’ rather than ‘brazen hussydom’; the second portrait shows her naked to the waist and looking directly at the viewer with a gaze at once languid and challenging. You might be reminded of Manet’s Olympia, condemned as ‘vulgar’ and ‘immoral’ on its first exhibition at 1863, mainly because the nude is looking directly at the viewer rather than obligingly turning her head away for better ogling comfort. And indeed, such a tension between looking and being looked at probably underscored a lot of the moral uncertainty about the early actresses.

Later on, we get Sarah Siddons (1755-1831), powerful, tragic grande dame. She appears in Room 3 painted by Thomas Lawrence as public intellectual, tutor to the royal children – and at a vantage point that forces us to look up at her imperious face, rather than to avert our eyes from her naked bosom. This is hung alongside a number of grandiose actress-as-Muse paintings, large as their themes, and also including Muses of Comedy and society amateurs like Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire.

But even in the late eighteenth century ‘actress’ still wasn’t a career you’d want for your wife. Thespiennes like Elizabeth Ann Sheridan (1754-1792) and Elizabeth Farren (1759-1829) – both exhibited here – gave up their acting careers, on request, upon marriage. While the eighteenth-century gentleman was not renowned for being into female careers in general, the issue here seems to be more ‘other men looking at your wife’ than anything else: after all, these men were ‘forward thinking’ enough to marry an actress in the first place. Perhaps they were nervous of the number of early actresses, like Nell, who had affairs with kings and nobles. If so, they had a good few hundred years of uncertainty left: Edward VII was still pretty into actresses at the turn of the twentieth century. ‘I’ve spent enough on you to build a battleship’ he complained to Lillie Langtry (1853-1929), eliciting the tart response ‘And you’ve spent enough in me to float one.’ (It may have been such impertinence that led to her replacement by another actress, Sarah Bernhardt, shortly afterwards.)

Dorothy Jordan in travesti - engraving after the John Hoppner painting in this exhibition

But, as this exhibition shows, one of the primary moral gripes with these early actresses was actually about something a bit unexpected: the travesti roles many of them built careers on. There are some fascinating visual representations in this exhibition of actresses – like Dorothy Jordan (1761-1816), whose bosom apparently ‘concealed everything but its own charms’ – in their famous ‘breech’ roles, both Shakespearean (stalwarts like Twelfth Night and As You Like It) and just… male (Tom Thumb). It seems that, after decades of young boys aping womanhood, the first actresses set themselves the challenge of continuing the noble tradition: it was conscious decision, rather than occasional dramatic necessity, for many of them to adopt the travesti.

The Immodesty here implied resulted in endless caricatures, many of which are exhibited here. My favourite was entitled ‘An Actress at her Toilet; or, Miss Brazen Just Breecht’ – though perhaps even stranger were the portraits of various male actors, including David Garrick, in drag – enormous hoop and all – as a kind of forerunner to the pantomime dame.

Take a feminist friend and thrash it out in the Portrait Gallery café with their superior yoghurt and granola, says this reviewer. And visit John Donne on the top floor, if he’s not gone into cleaning yet.

• The First Actresses runs at the National Portrait Gallery until 8 January 2012.

Her name is Tiitu Takalo. You might not know it yet, but she’s your new favourite illustrator. You’re welcome.

So much stuff is available to English-speaking markets that I reckon the vast majority of us here in BadRep Country have a lot of inertia about discovering non-English language media, from the music of Rammstein through to subtitled films, even.¹ It’s a shame. We’re missing out. And though I’m not currently able to read Tiitu’s books in the obvious sense, her art is that kickass that I just don’t care. I’m willing to muddle through. Muddling is how a great deal of important learning Gets Done. And if you’re interested in feminist art and media from places outside the UK/US over a language barrier, then comic books are, for obvious reasons, an excellent place to have a go at climbing over said language barrier.

If you’re a regular reader you’ll know that at least three of Team BadRep, me included, are budding illustrators ourselves, so I was fascinated to hear how Tiitu approaches her work.

When did you first realise you were a feminist?
“I think I have always been a feminist. Or all the conflicts with the rest of the world have made me one. It started when I was a child. My mother was a career woman in the metal industry. Most of her co-workers and colleagues were men. She drove the car and also fixed it herself and one of her hobbies was carpentry. And my father did cooking, and he did our carpets by hand – I don’t know the word for it, in Finnish it’s same as knitting, knitting carpets – and he still does that as a hobby. He also did some sewing. And my parents never told us (me and my sister) that we couldn’t do something because we were girls, or that we should behave a certain way based on our gender. I never heard anything like “nice girls do not act like that”. Before I went to school I didn’t know that our family was somehow different. I didn’t know that people think there are some jobs for women and others for men. I didn’t know that men and women are not equal in this world.

“When I was six years old in school I noticed that girls and boys are treated differently. Expectations are different for boys and girls. Even as a child I knew it was not OK. I also noticed that all my friends didn’t share this opinion. They were already brainwashed to think that girls are nice and quiet and tidy, and boys are not, and that this was some kind of natural law.

“I started calling myself a feminist when I met other girls and women who were using that word and were proud to be feminists. Before that, I thought that feminism was a dirty word. (That’s what they want you to think!) And yet, still, I was thinking and acting like a feminist.”

I’m in no doubt that some readers will be asking this, so despite my earlier sentiments on it not being a must-do in any way: are there any plans to translate any of your comics into English? (I really love the look of Kehä (The Ring) as I’m really into boxing, and the blurb reminds me of Girlfight, which is one of my favourite films.)

“Kehä has been published in Sweden, but I don’t have the energy to contact more publishers. There was one small press comic publisher in England which was interested, but nothing happened. I have English translations on a leaflet for Kehä and also for Jää… but it’s sold out in Finnish.”

Who are your heroes and what inspires you?

“I get inspired by other people who do stuff, other zine makers and artists. And it’s inspiring to do things together. Organise a gig, or festivals, or protests, or an art exhibition. I don’t have any heroes or idols. Everyone should try to be one’s own hero.”

What are you working on at the moment?

“I just finished a graphic novel about the history of my hometown, Tampere. It’s a collaboration with a scriptwriter and the Museum of Tampere, so it’s different from what I have done before. Maybe more mainstream. But I like the idea. There are nine stories from different periods. For example the 1850s story is about a 14-year-old girl working in a cotton factory – not the story of the factory owner like it usually is in the history books. The book is also published in English as Foster Sons and Cotton Girls. And now I’m trying to start a new comic project about a community living project I’m involved in.”

We’ve had some artists decide they don’t fancy being interviewed on our site because they didn’t want to be identified with a “feminist” site. Have you ever had difficulty getting work because of your feminist reputation?

“No, I don’t think so. Or I just don’t know if it has been an issue somewhere. In Sweden, where my comics have also been published, it’s actually really cool to be a feminist. They have a really cool feminist comic collective called Dotterbolaget (“daughter company”), and the most popular comic artists in Sweden are women and feminists. I have heard that it’s so fashionable to be a feminist comic artist in Sweden that some male artists who are not feminists are calling themselves feminists in order to be cool or increase the sales of their books.

“We certainly don’t have that problem in Finland. The F-word is still something people don’t want to be associated with. I think it’s important that more people are calling themselves feminists. It is not something to be quiet about. We should be proud and we should be loud! After all, we are making this world a better place for everyone. For women and men and children and sisters and brothers around the globe. Feminism is not just smashing patriarchy: it’s making everyone equal.”

How much do you use digital tools to produce/edit your work (if at all!)? Mine is mainly hand done with barely any digital editing because I like marker pens and am still really getting to grips with digital at all! How is it for you?

“I don’t like computers, and I’d rather spend my time painting with watercolours than staring at a screen. I love to see how the colours blend with water or how ink spreads on the wet paper. It’s like magic! If it’s possible, I don’t do anything with digital tools. I don’t even want to scan my work myself. Someone else can do it better, or even find that interesting. Why should I do it? The answer is, unfortunately, money. When I do my own zines or other publications, I don’t have money to pay anyone to do computer stuff for me.”

You created Hyena Publishing to help get your work out there. Being arty types, we have a fair few friends who are often trying to launch self-published projects, and it’s often a lot of work to stay afloat. What advice would you give to young artists starting out?

“Take a small edition of your book or zine. It’s more fun to have sold out than to find 500 copies of unsold books under your bed when you’re cleaning up your place. Try to do something small first. Twenty copies with your home printer or copy machine at your school or workplace.

“Do something together with your friends. It’s more fun and you can split the work and expenses. Do not try to do your best book first. It seems like people have massive ideas for the first book or zine, but they get exhausted by all the work and get nothing done. Don’t think you will get rich by doing zines or even comics. It’s hard work and underpaid.

“Try to contact other self-publishers or small press people. Find out where they are printing and selling and share your knowledge with them too. Go to zine festivals and events. The best thing about being your own publisher is that no one can tell you that your comics aren’t good enough, or that they are too political, feministic, personal or emotional. Do comics you would like to read yourself. Not the comics you think other people want to read!”

Warm thanks to Tiitu for talking to us. Head to tiitutakalo.net and order her books by email – if you ask nicely you might be able to get a translation leaflet…

1. I have never understood this one. It’s BEEN translated! What’s with the anglocentric excuse-making complex? It’s just embarrassing.

Women and art

Waiting for the Train on the Anhalter Bahnhof, Berlin, December 1945 - Mary Kessell

Just to get one thing out of the way before I get stuck in: women artists are not an invention of the 20^th Century, they have been around for a very long time indeed. Just because you may never have heard of them doesn’t mean they don’t exist or they weren’t producing accomplished, arresting and intelligent works alongside male artists. But there are reasons you have never heard of them.¹

Let’s get another old chestnut out of the way: there’s no feminine unity of theme, approach, subject or style in art produced by women, just as there’s no equivalent in the work of men. However in small collections of art by any group you can sometimes see common patterns based on the conditions of production.  For example very few of the works in Women War Artists directly depict combat. This is not womanly squeamishness, they weren’t allowed on the field. Similarly there aren’t many images of chisel-jawed tommies striding forth in a blaze of noble violence, because the government paid their official (and male) war artists to produce most of the top propaganda. Female artists were drafted in for specific jobs, for example Laura Knight’s famous, glamorous portrait of Ruby Loftus.

Unofficial artists

Britain has such a wealth of art documenting the experience of war not only because it was diligently collected by post-war art committees (including the Imperial War Museum Women’s Work Sub-Committee, created in 1918) but also because the government commissioned artists to record the war. The first official war artists scheme was set up in 1916, to create propaganda and to commemorate the national war effort. 51 artists were commissioned, 47 men and four women, and of these four, three had their work rejected and one did not take up the commission. But while there was no “official” female representation, women artists recorded the impact of the war on civilians, what they saw in the factories and military hospitals, as nurses, drivers and auxiliary staff close to the frontline.

In the Second World War over 400 artists were commissioned, of whom 52 were women. Only two were given overseas commissions and only one – Evelyn Dunbar – was given a salary. But again a rich body of ‘unofficial’ work by women emerged during and after the war, and this forms the bulk of the Women War Artists exhibition, documenting everything from queues at the fishmongers (fish was popular because it wasn’t rationed) to shipyards and weapons factories, bombed out streets and army camps and hospitals.

Argh

To my mind the most powerful work in the exhibition, and in fact one of my favourite paintings full stop (because I think it’s brilliant, not because I particularly want to look at it) is Human Laundry by Doris Zinkeisen. Commissioned by the British Red Cross to record their activities, Zinkeisen arrived at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945, soon after it was liberated. Her painting shows a scene in the stable that was nicknamed the ‘human laundry’ in which survivors were washed and de-loused by staff from a nearby German army hospital before being treated in the makeshift hospital at the camp.

Human Laundry, 1945 Doris Zinkeisen

The contrast between the sparkling white uniforms and plump pink arms and faces of the German nurses and the grey emaciated bodies of the camp inmates is full of quiet horror. The ambiguous, unreadable expression of the foreground nurse and the blurred faces of the other nurses and the two doctors also contrast with the realism and detail of the water spreading across the floor, the texture of the metal buckets. What were they thinking, as they washed these half dead creatures? Whatever it is, we have no sign of their emotion. Then there’s the contrast between the tenderness and intimacy associated with washing somebody and the industrial, mechanical nature of this operation, underlining the sheer scale of the task. They found 60,000 sick and starving people at Belsen, alongside 10,000 corpses.

I know you know this, I’m sure you studied it at school just like I did. But that’s one of the main reasons war art is so important – it’s not just propaganda, it communicates the human cost of war more powerfully than the numbers do, or at least it does for me. I can’t imagine 10,000 dead bodies. I can’t really imagine 100. But I look at a painting like Human Laundry and I can grasp it, the horror of it.

However, I think the painting also contains if not hope, then the possibility of hope (or at least I feel it does compared to photographs of the same scene) The hope of a new beginning is present in the symbolism of washing, and in the way that the water spreads like a shadow across the bottom of the painting, but the people are picked out in light.

A woman’s place

Across the way from the exhibition is another gallery, which is just called ‘The Art Collection’ and looks to be part of the museum’s permanent exhibitions. There are some very fine works in there as well (John Piper! Paul Nash! <3) but my companions couldn’t find any by women. I hope that when the Women War Artists exhibition closes in January some of the works will remain on permanent display alongside the works of male artists rather than being returned immediately to the vaults and forgotten all over again.

1. I wrote an article about that here, if you’re interested.

If you’re in East London on Sunday, you should totally swing by the Zine Symposium. For Hodge will be in attendance armed with a selection of Alphabet goodies, including a very few ALPHABET POSTERS.

If you missed the first run (which you probably did, as there were only ten and only one actually went on public sale) these are currently rarer than tyrannosaurus eggs, and there’s no guarantee there will be another run in the near future. For the Hodge thy Hodge is a jealous Hodge, and can’t be dashing to the print shop every five minutes.

There will also be a selection of HAND COLOURED prints (coloured by Hodge’s silken hand), a few mounted images (like the stuff in the shop, only SANS p&p), and whatever else enters Hodge’s hyperactive mind between now and Sunday, including (probably) a selection of stuff not yet seen on the internet.

Affordable, fun and an opportunity to expose Hodge’s true identity. Plus loads of cool zines and fun people. What’s not to like?

Check her out at the bereavement tape table.

…totally just realised this says ‘by hodge’ at the top. i don’t talk about myself in the third person on a regular basis.

But all of them sounded …well, like that. So imagine I’ve written a far sexier, funnier, less isolatingly-esoteric opening paragraph, and we’ll run with it.

REMEMBER THIS

As you all know by now, I’m a transgender man. As you may not know, I’m doing a medical transition on the good old NHS. Another thing you won’t know is that for (disgusting, enraging) reasons I won’t go into here, my beloved NHS are yanking me about something heartbreakingly chronic as regards my embarkation on hormone therapy.

With this development in mind, I’m going to see Dr. Curtis of Transhealth instead, with the hope that he can cajole my own GP into prescribing me MAGICAL MAN JUICES.

But this requires money. Of course it does. So! To that end, I’m going to start selling some art (a selection of which will be right here on BadRep) for your personal delectation. And that’s not all! Ohhh, no. Let it be known I’m not a guy who does things by halves. Halves are for the weak, and I, dear reader, have the strength of SIXTEEN WEREWOLVES MADE OUT OF NUCLEAR SUBMARINES. Figuratively speaking. I was rubbish at P.E. at school. This is purely figurative strength.

Er, yes. The other non-BadRep related things I’m selling are limited edition art prints (running to an stupidly restricted run of one copy each due to costs) of my own work one of my own websites.¹

The relevant link, if you’d like to spend an extortionate amount of money on a single-edition print of some filthy gorgeous pin-up art, is right the hell here. They are vastly more expensive than the things I’ll be selling here on BadRep – but they’re one each, and that’s all there will ever be.

THE CRUSADES ARE OVER NOW

Right here on the good ship BadRep, however, I’m going to be selling wee postcard prints of your favourite film review cartoons and amusing stickers with which you can dazzle and confuse your friends and enemies! And if you’re especially good, I’ll sell off the original pen drawings of the comics, too, for I am a generous god, and have far too much original artwork in my house. Also, it’s on the back of the bulk condom packaging I steal from work. It’s like upcycling! Only with more …sneaky sexual health awareness? I have no idea.

Watch this space for inadvisable BadRep merch like a hawk with nineteen eyes that never sleeps. And then you can rest assured that your money has helped fund some totally inadvisable facial hair.

(Psst: The link I mentioned earlier takes you to my sketchblog. If you want to look at my hip, swanky portfolio, that’s right here.)

1. You heard that right. My real website. Where I really live. With my real actual name. This totally feels like relinquishing my superhero identity. BUT HOW WILL I NOW FIGHT CRIME