Toxic Titties come to town
I had the pleasure recently of meeting two members of the lesbian art collective Toxic Titties. They attended our seminar on identity politics, an area in which they are heavily invested. They were very entertaining and charming as they discussed their latest projects. Being male and straight put me in a bit of a minority but this was no place for prejudice - this was radical critical theory with a punk attitude. Right on sister!
Naturally they were acquainted with our esteemed Professor Jones - part of the hip side of the Los Angeles art scene. It would seem as though LA divides into high end big bucks art palaces and a subversive bohemian counter culture just like any other big city. Though by their description in LA it is even more pronounced, it is after all the playground for the American super-rich (parts of it anyway). Can’t wait to visit.
There is an artist called Vanessa Beecroft who caters for the extremely rich. Her work seems to straddle a variety of contexts, I first encountered it in a style mag for example, but it has also graced the covers of respected art journals. Toxic Titties have a real problem with her work for obvious reasons. Mainly though it is because for some people, mostly straight men in positions of authority, though perhaps a growing number of women also, her work is designated post -feminist. Now this is a can of worms I don’t intend to open here but I would recommend to anyone to read Ariel Levy’s recent book ‘Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the rise of raunch culture’ for some thoughtful and considered insight into this matter. To cut a long story short though a couple of members of Toxic Titties answered a call on behalf of Beecroft for ’skinny boyish looking models’ and were recruited to take part in a performance at the Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills. This involved standing around in high heels in the nude for punishing hours, both in a studio and in a three hour performance in the gallery itself. The result for the Toxic Titties was a damning indictment in essay format of Beecroft’s working practices. They exposed the exploitative mechanisms behind an image such as the one above. In the process of their stint as models, Toxic Titties also unionised and negotiated a better pay deal for the women involved. They had planned to sabotage the actual performance but I suppose they chickened out. They were apparently unprepared for how exposed and degraded they felt. The only escape from the boredom was to indulge in fantasies about their fellow models, the only real perk in their ordeal. Have a look at their website to find out more. http://www.freewaves.org/festival_2002/artists/toxictitties.htm