Before I Forget by Fahey Jacqueline

Author:Fahey, Jacqueline [Fahey, Jacqueline]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Memoir; Art
Publisher: Auckland University Press
Published: 2012-02-14T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

Goya’s Demons

I cannot resist quoting further from my diary–report from New York. It’s all here – my agony of mind, my astonishment at the medieval city, my alarm at the open display of power and money. Reading the report again brings it all back.

When I first visited the A.I.R. gallery I just didn’t get it. They were welcoming and they did accept my work but there obviously was a problem. What that problem was I should have known immediately. I was aware that oil painting was considered a male pursuit by emerging women artists - that a long history of men painting women naked involved the male artist’s perverted games and there was inevitably the Freudian take on this. Something about the male artist flourishing his paintbrush as a stand-in for his penis. The theory went that rather then compete with men, women artists should find their own areas of creativity. Women must elevate time-honoured household skills such as art diaries, sewing, dying of fabrics, tapestries, pottery. Photography was not tainted and videos were fine. In this gallery multimedia was the thing. I myself was not influenced by these theories. I had no intention of giving up what skills I had in painting for somebody else’s theory. I didn’t see anyway why men should have all the fun and I really do believe painting can be a great deal of fun.

However, the women in the gallery did read the ideas in my work and approved of them. Nevertheless, they were uneasy about my expressive paint use as it could be interpreted as an imitation of that rude male flourish. This was their political stance; there was nothing personal about it. However, it all turned out very well. When I was invited to the next opening I was introduced to Joe DiGiorgio. Joe used paint and as a habitue of the Manhattan art scene took me on.

Joe lived with his partner in his studio on The Bowery. His partner was the critic O’Keefe. Actually O’Keefe lived in his own apartment just upstairs on the next floor above Joe, but they shared a life together. It would seem they had emerged from a hippy life experience to plateau in an easeful place. Here they could work and, at will, socialise with like-minded people. Curiously in manner and appearance they reminded me of pilots from the Second World War, with the manner of those who had bravely faced up to the threats to their existence and survived, like those fighter pilots I met after the war at parties in Christchurch. Joe’s casual aplomb and O’Keefe’s immaculate attire encouraged for me this idea, that sense of presenting themselves to the world, like those fighter pilots, bravely with style, and Joe’s tended moustache encouraged that idea.

A.I.R. Gallery is really highly admirable, a sort of AA to keep women painting or whatever. The standard is pretty high too. I certainly have the talent to get in but I don’t know if I have that excellence of organisation yet.

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