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Following my recent post that featured Laura Mulvey’s take on Allen Jones’s work. I wanted to look at and discuss pieces of his work in relation to my work.

Allen Jones’s work revolves almost completely around the fetish and a stereotypical image of what a fetishist wears and uses.

From the reading of Freud’s Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. The outfits that Jones paints and sculpts onto his women show distinct sadomasochist traits.

“violent attitude to the sexual object’

‘the humiliation and maltreatment of the object’

if we look at the furniture series – a group of three sculptures of women dressed in s&m outfits and posed as a table, chair and hat stand.

these show the sadomasochism traits that I pulled from Freud’s three essays. Violent attitude to the sexual object – trussing and constricting these women in tight fitting pvc and leather clothes and the humiliation and maltreatment of the object – making these woman stand and behave as inanimate household objects.

If we consult Mulvey’s theory on the fear of castration we can see that Jones’s depiction of these women shows Third: woman as phallus. Women are displayed for men as figures in an amazing masquerade, which expresses a strange male underworld of fear and desire.

Suggesting then that Allen Jones’s subconscious was aware of the threat of castration women pose.

From my reading up of the vagina Dentata myth I felt the need to interpret it in a way that I felt to be true and address my fear of women. When I think of women and relationships I associate them with traps and pain. This led me to think about using animal traps as a metaphor for the vagina. I went down to an agricultural store and found two types a mole trap and a gin trap. (see attached photos)

The mole trap when opened has a cylindrical gap with a trigger set in it. This looks as though it would squish and squash the penis and chop it into several pieces.

The gin trap is a much more vicious and snaps with great force, likewise it is hard to pull apart and set.

Thinking about inserting ones phallus into these and setting them off induces an abject feeling. I would like to use this to represent the vagina.

Using a chair as an interpretation of a woman because it suggests human as it’s created to support us. However I would not keep the chair in ‘chair’ shape I would bend and adjust it to hint at a human figure.

I wouldn’t want these traps just welded to a chair, set or unset and used as a static sculpture. I’d like the viewer to be part of the sculpture and participate with it – feeding the vagina.

I thought I would cast a series of hollow penis’s either cast from a dildo or just created in the style of a penis. The thought behind these being hollow would be that when inserted into the set trap they would set it off ad the penis would smashed into pieces causing delight and shock. The thought behind this came from apiece written by Laura Mulvey in ‘You Don’t Know What is Happening Do You, Mr. Jones’ in where she speaks about Allen Jones’s work being a stereotypical view the male subconscious uses to divert its attention away from the lack of the female phallus.

“The fetishist image of women has three aspects, all of which come across clearly in his (Allen Jones) books and art objects. First: woman plus phallic substitute. Second: woman minus phallus, punished and humiliated, often by woman plus phallus. Third: woman as phallus. Women are displayed for men as figures in an amazing masquerade, which expresses a strange male underworld of fear and desire.” (Laura Mulvey, Spare Rib, 1973)

The particular aspect I feel relates to proposed work is the first one. The woman being the animal trap, and the phallic substitute being the plaster penis.

While researching Art work, revolving around the vagina Dentata myth I was shown Fee for Service by Jess Dobkin.

This is a performance piece, where the artist has inserted an electric pencil sharpener into her vagina.

She then invites people to buy a pencil and sharpen it in her very own vagina Dentata.

Although they are inserting the pencil into her vagina an effigy of a vagina conceals it.

The experience is a very intimate one, the inserter, is ushered behind a curtain where only they and the artist are curtained off in a section of the room.

The participator then pulls away her gown to reveal the Dentata, the artist then helps the participant sharpen their pencil, this being a very intimate action.

The artist to me appears to have sexualized this myth and made it seem erotic by the low red light and the one on one behind a curtain. The dialect from the artist is very flirty.

This interpretation of the myth very much reminds me of a quoye I previously used by Ducat: “these myths express the threat sexual intercourse poses for men who, although entering triumphantly, always leave diminished” the artist comes off as the dominant part as she has taken part of you’re pencil and you cannot retrieve it as she has, in essence ingested it.

Fee for Service, Jess Dobkin, WARC Gallery, Toronto, Canada In this video Bark News reporter Ryan Ringer uses Jess Dobkin’s vagina to sharpen his pencil.

Freud’s essay on the Medusa’s Head particularly the virgin Athene wearing it on her armor as a warning set me thinking about direct castration through the vagina itself or Vagina Dentata – toothed vagina in Latin, is a folklore tale that says the vagina contains teeth and the resulting intercourse with it will result in pain or castration.

However, these two contemporary theories by, Camilla Pagila and Stephen. J. Ducat offer a more modern view on the myth. They are both suggesting that this fear exists because the vagina diminishes or emasculates the penis once it has entered it and completed intercourse.

“The toothed vagina is no sexist hallucination: every penis is made less by every vagina, just as mankind, male and female, is devoured by mother nature.”

Paglia, C. (1991). Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, NY:Vintage; p. 47

“these myths express the threat sexual intercourse poses for men who, although entering triumphantly, always leave diminished”

Ducat, S, J. (2004). The Wimp Factor. Boston: Beacon Press. pp. 115-149.

Upon getting a clearer grasp on Vagina Dentata I endeavored to create my own representation upon the myth. Creating a female form out of clay I then cast it in a rubber mold. Into this rubber mold I added water clear resin and imbedded an X-Ray of a pair of teeth. The X-Rays I choose however were not of clean healthy teeth but of diseased, incomplete sets. I wanted to add an element of fear and repulsion. This is contrasted by the tactile smooth resin, which invites you pick it up touch and caress it.

Upon looking at the finished article it struck me that it looked like the poster from the film teeth – It tells the story about a abstinent Christian girl who finds out that she has a set of teeth that offer her an advantage when she is the object of male violence. This takes an aspect of the folklore tale – warning men against rape and uses it to empower the female in the face of adversity.

Trailer for the 2007 film ‘Teeth’

A key starting point in my investigation of the male subconscious was as I’ve stated were the theories of Freud and Mulvey. In particular Freud’s, ‘The Medusa’s Head’

“To decapitate equals to castrate. The terror of the Medusa is thus a terror of castration that is linked to the sight of something. The hair upon the Medusa’s head is frequently represented in works of art in the form of snakes, and these once again are derived from the castration complex. It is a remarkable fact that, however frightening they may be in themselves, they nevertheless serve actually as a mitigation of the horror, for they replace the penis, the absence of which is the cause of the horror. This is a confirmation of the technical rule according to which a multiplication of penis symbols signifies castration.”

Freud goes on to detail the looking into the medusa’s eyes turns one stiff. This has the same origin of the castration theory then transforms into a consolation for the spectator: the stiffening suggests a penis, meaning he is still in possession of a penis.

This particular observation interest’s me the most:

“This symbol of horror is worn upon her dress by the virgin goddess Athene, and rightly to, for thus she becomes a women who is unapproachable and repels sexual desires – since she displays the terrifying genitals of mother. Since the Greeks were in the main strongly homosexual, it was inevitable that we should find among them a representation of woman as a being who frightens and repels because she is castrated.

If Medusa’s head takes the place of a representation of the female genitals, or rather if it isolates their horrifying effects from their pleasure giving ones it may be recalled that displaying the genitals is familiar in other connections as apotropaic art.”

Freud seems to be suggesting that the Greeks (a race as he states were strong homosexual) created the Medusa as a way of repelling men away from women. This too is cemented by Athene, using the Medusa’s head on her armor and her being a virgin. However the Medusa for me seems to be more of a personification of the women or the vagina. She can make you stiff by looking at you – the penis becomes erect when looking at the female form. The snakes in the hair suggest two things for me fear of castration or emasculation from the female, she has replaced him. The fear attached to snakes riding over the underlying fear that she may castrate him. The female may take away from the male what she does not have masculinity, a phallus and this creates fear within the male.

All quotes taken from: Freud, S. (1922) Medusa’s Head. [Online]http://townsendlab.berkeley.edu/sites/all/files/Freud%20Medusa’s%20Head.pdf

Accessed on 21 February 2013