Pain and Politics in Postwar Feminist Art by Rachel Warriner;

Author:Rachel Warriner; [Warriner, Rachel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781786725950
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Published: 2022-11-09T00:00:00+00:00

That said, although the paper panels themselves create meaning, it is the interaction between elements that allows the support of Codex Artaud XXX to resound with tortured affect. The crumples and fault lines of their construction echo the angst of the iconography; the message of the texts seeps into the paper support, the puckered edges of the affixed sections reading like channels through which their meaning runs into the paper. In Codex Artaud XXX, the extract of text is surrounded by creases that extend into the paper panel behind it like veins. The buckled material is infiltrated in all directions. The tactility of Spero’s choice of paper – described by the artist as thick ‘art paper’– means that it maintains its status as an object in itself.23 Her use of Higgins’ Vegetable Glue was designed so as to create ‘a puckered look’.24 The weight of the paper hanging from its push-pinned mount made it buckle slightly against the wall. Rather than a still silence, then, this is one resonant with meaning, the slightest instance of signification infusing the totality of the scroll with its dark and brutal message.

The strange temporality of the scrolls creates a stillness that intensifies this sense of a world at odds. Codex Artaud VII [Figure 3.4] provides a good example. To the left of the panel there is a faint line drawing that resembles an eye inscribed into a large piece of silver and gold paper attached to the support. The details that are added to the fragment appear to be lightly traced figures. The paper is similar to that which Spero’s figures are constructed out of: it is marked with smudges of green paint and is curved on the left-hand side but straight on the right. The impression is of an abstracted, iconic head in profile. Crouching to the right, overlapping it, and composed of similar colours is an androgynous figure that points a gun across the picture plane to the right. Although the figure seems to be taking aim with its weapon, targeting something distinct, nothing lies directly in the line of fire. The next cluster of images is topped by a series of heads, insect-like creatures, contorted bodies and figures constructed solely of arms and legs that sit stacked on top of the vignette. It looks almost as though the armed figure is taking potshots at this grouping, but aimlessly and across an abyss. The sense of separation between sections is palpable. Despite the similarly hieroglyphic figure that sits across the void and sticks its tongue out at the figure with the gun, it seems impossible that they would make contact. The space between them, not exactly empty given the crumples and dents that mark the paper support, still reads as vacant and expansive. In an imagery that implies some future narrative – the sniper firing and either hitting or missing one of the figures that sit apart from it – the composition feels entirely fixed. There is no sense of a future here.

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