Kate Mayne
Woont en werkt in Antwerpen.
Kate Mayne & The Orient
Orientalism is hard not to kick. At least in a critique of its inherent politics. Most revisions and considerations of this vague and unwieldy phenomenon arising in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are heavily linked with Post-Colonial Theory in our contemporary world. Perhaps it is not even too rash to say that a lot of these positions and processes of how we approach the representations of the East – in art and literature- by Western artists is heavily linked with Edward Said’s eponymous book on Orientalism published in 1978.
Said, and generations of subsequent scholars developing on or becoming ever more detailed in studying particular aspects of the phenomenon, rightly draw our attention to the links between the political agendas of nineteenth century Imperialism and its psychological need to view Eastern cultures in certain ways. These views, captured in Western painting, literature and, later, photography, are often denigrating, patronizing or emphatic of the ‘otherness’ of the East, imbuing the observed cultures with qualities that make it easier to justify colonialism and Imperialism. Viewed from developments in psychology contemporaneous to Said’s work –and the development of Post-Colonial Theory- one might link Orientalism to Cognitive Psychology’s notions of congruence: that rather than formulating a belief and then subsequently acting upon this belief, instead human beings develop a set of beliefs that are congruent with their actions after the fact. The psychology necessary to tolerate genocides is often cited as the clearest and most extreme example of this. But of course it applies to thinking about racism and Imperialism that now constitute received terms in historical approaches to Imperialism. For example, that the negative, racist views of those colonized were developed in order to justify the actions –for economic and political gain- of annexation and invasion, after the fact, and not in the initial stages of contact with these cultures in pre-Colonial times.
The work of Said and numerous other academics have played an important role in how we understand that art and literature, too, played their role in feeding a culture that needed to justify its relationship to the East given exactly what it was up to economically and structurally.
The problems with this blanket perception that Orientalism has acquired over the years are numerous. For a start, the very term itself means very different things when used in the context of painting or, for example, nineteenth century scholarly study of other cultures and languages. Furthermore, by its very nature, apart from odd enclaves here and there, Orientalism was never a ‘school’ in art or literature in the sense that we understand it about other art movements. For one thing, its notions and influences are expansive, popping up in the work of artists separated by time and artistic motivations. Delacroix and Ingres, for example, would have little communication about Orientalist tendencies in their work and, indeed, are not necessarily whom we would consider to be prime proponents of the genre, even though it is present in their work. Similarly, numerous Orientalists, by the very nature in which they produced their work, the hardcore travellers to the East working on location, often operated in isolation from other Western artists, especially when making the work itself.
If one of the key issues of Orientalism is that it often involves a (now) naïve over identification with ‘the other’ – the East- on the part of western artists depicting their visions, observed or imagined, of these cultures, then one aspect that has been neglected is the minor cultural forces motivating some of these actions. The major cultural forces – the mechanisms of Imperialism in the nineteenth century state- have been readily dissected; the way in which the official culture needed to draw on appropriate representations to justify its position to itself and further its colonial agenda.
But, the motivations and psychologies of individual artists working in an Orientalist vein have less often come under the microscope, at least in the notion of a cohort rather than as individual biography.
Individual biography is, of course, fascinating and makes for accessible narratives. We like the romantic stories of distinguished gentlemen giving away all their wealth to, instead, paint the desert regions or feisty women, champing against the bit of cloying nineteenth century society and running off to become lady explorers. Ironically, it is also in this biographical detail that Post-Colonial critiques often locate their critical points, frequently highlighting the class and privilege of many of these Orientalists; their membership of the ruling classes of Empire. This done, it becomes difficult for any viewer from a contemporary position to not see the potential hypocrisy and naïve hedonism of many of these artists, completely disconnected from the political realities of colonialism. These artists are made suspect as we have our attention drawn to their predilection for Arab youths, camp narcissistic versions of local dress or the adoption of customs and rituals that we, suspiciously and with the self-confidence of hindsight, assume they did not fully understand.
What is far less frequently postulated, except perhaps in the occasional peripheries of Feminist history or Queer Theory, is that numerous artists engaged with Orientalism –bearing in mind that they were never a homogenous group or school- could also be understood as engaged in a form of resistance to their dominant culture, perhaps driving by personal biographical factors. Whether driven by homosexual tendencies that never had an outlet in European culture, a pre-Feminist rage at the position of women or a general disgust at the way in which the drivers of Empire conducted their business, many, instead decided to identify with ‘the other’. The subversive nature of this mindset, whether for the correct ethical reasons or not, should not be disregarded.
Naïve over-identification and over optimistic wishful thinking, perhaps. But there is nonetheless a certain resistance, maybe even bravery, in going against the grain and refusing to take up one’s rightful place in the ruling classes of Imperial states and, instead, to throw in one’s lot with those of the cultures being objectified and exploited by colonialism. At least partially. Because this is all convoluted. The degree to which privileged artists gave up the protection of their status or economic advantages in order to ‘go native’ is not absolute. There remains a politically questionable aspect to the activities and recorded beliefs of many Orientalists, even if contemporary knee-jerk sweeping negative judgments are unreasonable, particularly in their projection of transhistorical expectations.
Whilst some may have risked ridicule or even punishment, the elevated status of numerous privileged individuals made them more or less immune from any cultural backlash within their own cultures. Not that there was that much of a backlash.
On the contrary, the eccentric antics of various Orientalists were assimilated back into the Imperial culture and instead fed to the publics that were required to support the Imperial agenda as romantic tales and imagery, fashionable modes of dress or desirable decorative arts. Whatever resistance certain Orientalist postures may have encapsulated, they were vulnerable to absorption back into the mainstream that instead sought to seduce publics into consuming certain formulations. And, in more than one case, they seduced certain Orientalists into believing the reflected version of themselves arriving back in the mother culture. Celebrity after all is a powerful intoxicant.
The relevance of all this to the work of the Antwerp artist, Kate Mayne, is that it is these irregular strands – every bit as ephemeral as wafting opium fumes in a depiction of ‘an oriental opium den’- that sit within her painting practice. We are frequently presented with imagery and moods evocative of nineteenth century Orientalist painting.
Informed by the various and advanced developments in painting in the region that is her home, Mayne plays complex games with expectations. Certainly, we can see painting that is informed by various approaches that we understand as connected to Belgian painting that has informed both her eye and her education: scale, cropping, opacity, representation and, perhaps most importantly of all, conceptual practice.
Mayne’s paintings are often constructed through a nomadic process of travel gathering research images as she goes. Often they connect with certain affinities she feels, particularly with women nineteenth century travelers, documenters, diarists. And yet, when these images finally emerge as painting, the affinity with that historical strand -women connecting with and identifying with apparently alien cultures- emerge as images evocative of Orientalism, but with important twists. For a start, there is the challenge to convention as the viewer might be confronted by a painting in a style that is actually unfashionable. She offers something that initially looks like what was convention, but in reality is no longer convention, at least not the kind of convention that receives the immediate approval of dominant art systems. Can it seduce us –the art cognoscenti- when it so clearly offers something that challenges our intellectual notion of ‘taste’? Are we required to reject it for the painting itself or because of the conventions it flouts; the terror of ‘pretty paintings’ with which we now live? We are disorientated by it, uncertain where to place the deeply familiar representations and tones we associate with certain genres of Orientalism.
Furthermore, the meaning of each painting becomes further convoluted and even more opaque when, as is usually the case, it is juxtaposed with other works that we associate with occidental culture and Western traditions. How are we supposed to understand ‘home’ in relation to this ‘foreignness’ that at first glance seems naïve, might perhaps embarrass us in a public place by being politically underdeveloped or unorthodox?
And herein is the most interesting and challenging aspect of the work. Mayne uses the familiar structures of certain Belgian sensibilities in which meaning becomes a pluralism –through juxtaposition- and heads towards opacity – through offering few immediately literal clues in the cropped images as to what they should, specifically, convey. Yet, the Orientalist strand, visible and reoccurring, raises questions about political realties and cultural constructs of the present day that, in fact, are rarely challenged by art except through new conventions that have arisen.
The past decade has seen the emergence on the international art scene of numerous conventions –aesthetic and otherwise- of art from the former colonized regions that were once subject to colonialism’s gaze. Documentary, direct political statement and numerous artistic strategies for addressing identity politics have been prevalent in presentations of work by artists from such regions. In our Western eagerness to move past the colonial era, we have made concerted efforts to give a voice to both artists from those regions and from Diasporan immigrant communities within the West. The liberal intelligentsia rightly acknowledges the centuries of neglect and invisibility except as exotic acquisition.
At a time when there is a crisis about how we formulate East-West identity constructs and transcultural relations and, perhaps more pressingly for Western societies, how we negotiate the complex cultural identities arising within as a result of Diaspora and Imperialism, Mayne’s paintings throw a spanner in the works. Very quietly the discomfort is initiated through playing with aesthetic conventions in contemporary painting. Yet, as we chisel down further, to content, we are challenged by the more complex problems of personal identity in a Global society.
Existing in a world in which we have formulated a set of unspoken rules, evident as political and aesthetic conventions in the realm of art, about whom is entitled to talk about particular identities or who has the right to lay claim to certain belief structures or traditions, Mayne re-introduces us to the problematic notion of Orientalism. Here it is problematic because it does not offer the critique of Orientalists that are part and parcel of these unspoken rules. By contrast, it offers us a personal subjective experience of the endurance of an affinity with ‘the other’, to a culture from which the artist does not come and, according to prevalent conventions, might not even have the ‘right’ to embrace.
Mayne’s subjective experience and personal biography connects with the cohort of suspect Orientalists whose own biographies encouraged them to resist or abandon the positions of relative privileges into which they were born or, through circumstances, to feel always on the outside of the societies to which they officially belonged. In giving this a visual form as painting with a recognizably Orientalist series of references, we are confronted, albeit obliquely, with realities beyond the aesthetic and political conventions we now take for granted. Short of accepting that these existing conventions convey an accurate and the only viable reality for today, how should we process work that reminds us of the complex layers within which the personal and the political actually exist?
Through the simultaneous deployment of strategies that challenge our notions of ‘taste’ in painting together with content, we are quietly asked to ponder not only the historical, but the present. If the delicate, sometimes scrappy, renderings of harems, bejeweled daggers and exotic delicacies seem at odds with how we think we should look at the East now, then they are further thrown into relief by the juxtaposition of works apparently arising from snapshots of Western life; the familiar. And yet even there, a line of thought snakes through: the familiar kitsch of an ornament of three monkeys taken from a Chinese fable long since appropriated into western culture. Is what confronts us any more –or less- a manifestation of a form of naïve neo-colonialism than congratulating ourselves for funding a social documentary by an appropriately ‘exotic’ artist to be screened in a suitably clinical museum hall? If we are culturally fairly constricting about the kind of art we want ‘Western’ artists to make for it to constitute ‘good’ art, we have become rapidly just as constricting in what aesthetics arising from the East we choose to see as valid and worthy.
-- Ken Pratt
