Hey! It’s International Women’s Day! So let’s talk about artist Frida Kahlo, and why feminists like her.
Frida Kahlo was a Mexican artist, notable mostly for her graphic depictions of the painful aspects of her life, and for surrealist and colourful self-portraits. Throughout her life she experienced numerous physical and psychological traumas which she documented in her work. She was considerably ahead of her time in a number of aspects of the way she lived her life. Through her skill, she brought women’s issues to the forefront of a male-dominated art world, paving the way for many future female artists. She was also a mad Trotsky-shagging Trot and had an unashamedly revolutionary spirit. Though her physical traumas set her back and haunted her, she still managed to create some incredible art, cope and learn to give as good as she got with an abusive and badly behaved husband (despite her obvious love for him), and leave a lasting legacy in Mexican, female and art history. And that’s what makes her a feminist icon.
She was born in Mexico in 1907, but later in life she went around telling people that she was born in 1910, the year of the start of the Mexican Revolution. Clearly, Frida saw her life as defined by her revolutionary consciousness, and that’s pretty cool. She was of German, Spanish and Amerindian descent.
She grew up surrounded by women, and was one of only 35 women admitted to her fancy school. She wore long, colourful skirts all the time to cover up a leg that hadn’t formed properly as the result of polio, and always walked with a limp. Despite this she excelled at school and wanted to be a doctor. When she was 18 however, her bus crashed, breaking her spinal column, her collarbone, her ribs, her pelvis, her leg, her foot, and an iron rail pierced her abdomen and uterus. This left her permanently unable to have children, resulting in several traumatic miscarriages which she dealt with through her art in later life. She had to spend months in bed in a full body cast, during which time she had an easel fixed to the bed and began to paint. She experienced a lot of pain and constant operations throughout her life, the pain of which is best expressed through her self-portraits:
'The Little Deer'
'The Broken Column'
It is clear from Frida’s paintings that she believed that she was weak and not entirely beautiful, although she was – she exaggerates her facial hair in nearly all of her self portraits, and in portrays herself as incredibly tiny and dainty next to her admittedly large husband, Diego Rivera. She exaggerated what she perceived as her flaws, and at the same time she took ownership over her appearance, her body disfigurements, and her pain, and reclaimed them as something quite beautiful in her art. She did what I’m sure a lot of us would like to do and say ‘fuck you, I don’t care if I have hair where you think I shouldn’t, this is what I look like, I’m a strong Mexican woman, look at what I can create and do’.
Part of that reclaiming was a healing process for herself, in coming to terms with the miscarriages that her bus accident caused her to have. The paintings depicting this might be upsetting for those who have suffered miscarriages or are sensitive to graphic images, so I’ll just link to them here. Frida wanted more than anything to have a family with her husband, so the pain of her injuries served as a constant reminder of the happiness she was denied.
During her lifetime, Frida Kahlo was mostly famous as the wife of Diego Rivera, who was a very successful artist at the time, and the two were well known for their communist activism and turbulent/abusive relationship. Posthumously however, Frida Kahlo’s success has far eclipsed that of her husband, and she is now perhaps the most well known female artist ever. Frida loved Diego very deeply (as her art and writings show), but their relationship was marked with constant arguments, constant adultery on both parts, and some very bad and abusive behaviour from Diego when it came to his intense jealousy over her relationships with other men, and his affair with one of her sisters, which caused Frida to divorce (then remarry) him. What makes Frida very ahead of her time (remember she lived from 1907-1954) was her open bisexuality and affairs with women, including African-American singer and civil rights campaigner Josephine Baker.
Another of Frida’s famous affairs was with none other than the exiled Leon Trotsky, shortly before Stalin’s henchmen set aboot him wi an icepick. Frida had long been a commie, being a member of the Young Communist League and the Mexican Communist Party. Their affair resulted in Diego Rivera falling out with Trotsky, made Trotsky’s wife very upset, and caused Trotsky & wife to move out of Frida & Diego’s house and into another ’safehouse’ where he promptly met his bloody end.
Frida herself died at 47, after yet more pain and further operations, including a leg amputation due to gangrene. She left behind a vast legacy of beautiful paintings, revolutionary spirit, and her former childhood home which she later shared with Diego and Trotsky, the Blue House, is now a museum of her life and art.
There’s a pretty decent film about her life starring Salma Hayek as Frida, which you can download here.
Check out this video by Japanese artist Isao Hashimoto -- it’s a beautiful, time-lapse map of the 2053 confirmed nuclear explosions which have taken place between 1945 and 1998, beginning with the very first test and concluding with Pakistan’s nuclear tests in May of 1998.
Here come the Gards, so put yer half ounce up yer arse
At long long last, SSY’s favourite comedy hip hop outfit The Rubberbandits are getting the recognition beyond their Limerick empire that they deserve. Their single Horse Outside looks set to beat boring X Factor winner Lazy Decorator to the Irish Christmas number 1 spot. They’ve earned the support of Fianna Fail politician and erstwhile hash dealer Willie O’Dea, Minister for Gee. They are no doubt knee deep in fanny as we speak.
But you don’t reach great heights without making a few enemies. Not everyone in Ireland has fallen in love with the charm and wit of the Bandits when they croon that they’d quite like to invite a hot bridesmaid back to a hotel for a finger and a shift.
The Bandits have found themselves subject to *crucial investigative journalism* determined to unmask these plastic bag-wearing, yoke-dropping foes. Irish papers have revealed their names, former schools, and the streets that they grew up on. The Daily Mail even printed pictures of Mr Chrome and Blindboy Boat Club’s lovely faces which you can click through to if you must, defeating the point of the comedy disguises and attempting to ruin a bit of the oul Bandits magic.
In an astounding feat of missing the point, the media have insisted on playing out a false dichotomy argument over whether the Bandits are too middle class to be rapping about drugs n horses, or if they are in fact glorifying the madcap drug-taking n horse-riding based lives of Limerick’s working classes.
Joe Duffy’s Liveline hosted a radio debate on the subject, which got off to a cracking start when Duffy asked Blindboy Boat Club if he could “talk properly” -- apparently Limerick accents don’t make good radio copy. Willie O’Dea was on hand to defend what is after all a piece of comedy and should be treated as such. What ensued was an argument where Blindboy proved himself to be someone who is clever and thoughtful and clearly takes genuine pride in creating art. ‘Antony’, the naysayer, proved himself to be a bit of an idiot, with exchanges such as:
Antony: What’s coming out of that video is the usage and promotion of drugs. It’s a joke!
Blindboy: It is a joke, yeah! You’ve hit the nail on the head there, kid
BANDIT BLASPHEMERS
Blindboy carefully explains that, just like Father Ted repackaged the false images of ‘thick Irish people’ that Brits had in the 90s and sold it back to Britain in the form of comedy, the Bandits’ songs and live shows where they talk about Limerick youth culture and subculture are not promoting a bad image of Limerick like is being claimed, but rather are lampooning the image of Limerick presented in the Irish media. But the point isn’t even that. They’re not doing what they do with the set goal of specific social commentary. They’re creating their art based on what they experience and what strikes them as funny and what they want to create, and as artists it’s their absolute right to define what they do on their own terms. You can’t take a piece of art or a joke or a song in isolation and apply your own meaning to it and then go ranting about how immoral it is. The rules of acceptableness that are placed on society are fucking arbitrary pish, so we love the Rubberbandits for defending themselves in a good natured way against daft conservative humourless wankers.
Here in the Scottish Socialist Youth we’ve taken some amount of pelters in the past for our pish-taking attitude towards serious issues. Take for example our treatment of the serious matter of former Glasgow City Council leader Steven Purcell’s “chemical dependency” and corruption. It’s how we choose to get our message across, because a) sometimes if you don’t laugh you’d cry, and b) we are ordinary young people who are able to see the funny side of things and we shouldn’t fucking have to apologise for that. We’ve also been criticised for not following the conventional rules of behaviour, such as being outspoken with our views on drugs (which shamefully seem to chime with scientific advice, but not government policy) -- that harmful drugs like heroin should be provided safely to addicts on prescription, while recreational drugs should be decriminalised and perhaps even enjoyed from time to time. Crack open a bag o yokes and pass us a big fat J -- we’re OUT OF CONTROL! Our former MSP Rosie Kane got pelters too for wearing jeans to the opening of Parliament in 2003 -- it’s this fucking snobby attitude that you have to respect these ridiculous ‘rules’ invented by rich white guys to keep order or you can’t be sincere in your message. Basically, we understand where the Bandits are coming from and we respect their right to make all the satirical music they want.
Not for the first time, Blindboy has been forced to explain the concepts of ‘the unreliable narrator‘, ’self-mocking’ and ‘having a sense of humour’ to po-faced kneejerk critics. When they put out their hilarious satire on armchair Republicanism, Up Da Ra, they were forced to defend themselves against accusations that they were disrespecting the memory of those who died for Irish freedom. It’s just balls.
At one point in the debate there’s a funny exchange where someone texts in to highlight the line in Horse Outside where Mr Chrome sings “I don’t pay no tax, fuck NCT”, with Willie O’Dea saying that they probably don’t earn enough to pay tax. Blindboy replies “that’s true!” It probably is true yunno, but there’s a spectacular sense of humour failure if you can’t understand that YOU’RE NOT REQUIRED TO PAY CAR TAX ON HORSES.
You can hear the full debate here:
This incredibly stupid argument on the virtues or otherwise of the Rubberbandits in the Irish Herald states that the “so-called band, the members of which remain unidentified but seem to get a kick out of dressing up like sinister masked Provos from the 1970s, extolling the virtues of drugs and the former Minister for Defence,” are basically evil. Lololololol, I don’t think I ever saw a picture of a man with an inside-out Spar bag on his head on TV accompanying an actor’s voice representing Gerry Adams, but maybe I’m mistaken and Martin McGuinness actually struck a six figure fashion advertising deal with Spar throughout the Troubles. The author, Sinead Ryan, is a prize chumpo who attempts to argue that artists aren’t allowed to define their own art, and that because the song wasn’t allowed on the radio unless they changed the word “fuck” to “suck” throughout that this means they are sell-outs who can’t call themselves artists. As Blindboy said “I’m an artist, but I looooove money, like Andy Warhol”. Clearly, Sinead Ryan has never had to worry about money, or wanted her work to reach a wider audience, or seen the comedy value in taking the fucking piss right out of the established channels of promoting pish identikit music. Sinead, chill the fuck out. It’s SATIRE. If you don’t like the “sinister” Bandits, fuck off and listen to Daniel O’Donnell.
Anyone who can seriously watch a funny song -- about using your ownership of a horse advantageously to get yer hole -- shoot up the charts and denounce all its fans as impressionable idiots who are incapable of understanding irony really doesn’t deserve a media platform for their shite views. The Rubberbandits are truly something special. They are intelligent, danceable, singalong-friendly and most importantly, fucking funny. They’re welcome to play to an SSY-filled audience in Glasgow any time, chalk it down.
Three years ago, a group of Muscovite students formed a guerilla art movement with very clear goals – provocation, cultural ridicule and humour. The group, Voina (Russian for War) were inspired by the Soviet dissident artist, Dmitry Prigov. Not dissimilar to the internationally renowned street artist Banksy, (if he kept getting sent polonium sandwiches) these students have staged numerous controversial, and often witty, performances predominantly in Moscow and St. Petersburg and support for their movement began to gain international momentum with their orgy, “Fuck for the heir – Puppy Bear!” in honour of Dmitry Medvedev, Putin’s handpicked heir to the Russian presidency, and his then impending inauguration (President Medvedev’s surname is derived from the word bear).
Their astute social commentary focuses on mocking the most oppressive and powerful features of the Russian federation. As their website states, they exist to encourage the “subversion and destruction of outdated repressive-patriarchal socio-political symbols and ideologies.” A prime example of this can be seen in their 2008 performance when an activist dressed up as half cop half priest strutted around a supermarket.
ManPriestPigPolice
He proceeded to load up a trolley up with vodka, whiskey, biscuits and the pastor’s choice, Maxim. Then, he took his spoils without paying. The staff did not know how to react as they were face to face with a pastiche of Russian impunity, the inseparable Church and State.
Voina also made a very solemn statement against the former Mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov. Luzhkov, infamous for his corruption, homophobia, vulgar taste in art and general xenophobia, was targeted by the group’s performance “In memory of the Decemberists – a present to Yuri Luzhkov.” In a central hypermarket, the group staged a mock execution of immigrant workers and homosexuals, a comment on two of the most vulnerable groups in Russian society which endure frequent violence, something which flourished under Luzhkov.
Thank you for being a friend
Earlier this summer, Voina gave a literal “Go Fuck Yersel” to the FSB (widely regarded as the KGB, rebranded) by painting a 65m high and 27m wide gargantuboab, entitled “Dick Captured by the FSB!” onto the Liteiniy drawbridge, which leads to the FSB headquarters in St. Petersburg (Erofeeva -- Photo 29 anyone?).
Big Boab is WATCHING YOU
Done in the heart of both Putin and Medvedev’s home, the cock satirises “the unconquerable Russian phallus” and the absurdity that ordinary people must cow-tow to the heavily asserted power of the state’s cock n’baws.
Inevitably, Voina has incurred the wrath of the state as activists Oleg Vorotnikov and Lenja Nikolaev were arrested last month in Moscow for political hooliganism by the “anti-extremism” police. Their arrest was in connection with a performance in St. Petersburg entitled “Palace Revolution” where they turned several police cars upside down as a protest against the endemic malpractice of the Russian police force.
Police Fail
They have been in prison in St. Petersburg ever since. Domestic support for the group has dwindled as the majority Russian art circles tend towards glamour and conformism. However, the works of Voina have indeed attracted the attention Banksy, who has vowed to contribute all the proceeds from his next print sale to Voina. This in itself provides a very potent platform for Voina as their cause can now benefit from Banksy’s reputation, casting a spot light on their cutting performances and the state’s handling of its case against them. Voina’s war against state oppression and soulless art is now facing its largest battle to date and international support for their guerilla art tactics is one of their most valuable weapons. Russia may have secured the World Cup, but Voina has secured a world coup.
Bonus : Speaking of soulless art, here’s what Voina are up against.
All quotes taken from free-voina.org where a much more detailed list of their exploits can be found
Last night in the US the latest episode of ‘The Simpsons’ was on telly, featuring an intro storyboarded by the famous graffiti artist Banksy.
Personally I have mixed feelings about Banksy. If you’ve never heard of him he’s an artist who conceals his true identity to allow him to continue painting on walls illegally around the world, which is cool. However, I think it’s a bit unfortunate how he’s become a cause célèbre for the international group of pseudo-radical hipster dickheads. He’s done very well out of his celebrity, making plenty of money from selling pieces and coffee table books. But he’s still capable of moments of pure subversive genius, a bit like the work he did on the Isreali apartheid wall a couple of years ago. And giving him control of the couch gag was inspired.
The result is an incredibly dark picture of working conditions in the Asian sweatshops that produce US mass culture. The Simpsons has joked about the conditions for the workers who produce the animation for the show before, but this gave us a vision of a bleak Dickensian hell where children sat producing individual stills for the show.
As yet I haven’t been able to find much of the inevitable right wing backlash rearing its head (I’ll update the article if any nutters say anything funny), but we’re sure to be soon hearing the inevitable claims that this is a ridiculous depiction of real working conditions for Korean animators, and that actually we’re helping them by giving them jobs etc. etc.
The fact is, this is an extreme, satirical examination of the fact that The Simpsons is outsourced to South Korea. But nevertheless, most of the most popular US animated shows (including Futurama, King of the Hill and Family Guy) are made there for a reason: you can get away with paying people a lot less than they would in the US. Korean animators are doing a very skilled job for low wages. Before The Simpsons (which is often perceived as a left leaning show) was produced there, it was made by the animation firm Klasky Csupo, run by the Hungarian Gabor Csupo who once told the LA Times:
“I’m never going to sign with a union. If they vote for it, I’m just not going to hire them.I’ll lay them off and take the work to Hungary. I’ll take it to Japan.”
Ironically, it’s when the sequence moves to the most brutally surreal level of satire that it actually gets more accurate. After the animators we see workers producing Simpsons merchandise, shreadding kittens to make stuffing for Bart dolls, sealing boxes with the tongue lolling from the severed head of a dolphin, and punching holes in DVDs with the horn of a starved, miserable chained unicorn.
Chinese Honda workers on strike earlier this year
The power of this is that it’s obviously exaggerating for comic effect. But the reason we’re laughing nervously as we watch it is that most of us now somewhere in our where we’ve shoved the uncomfortable knowledge to our subconscious about how much of the stuff that surrounds us every day is produced. Mass consumer culture for the overdeveloped world today rests on the super exploitation of workers in places like Korea and China. Workers are locked in factories that become also their homes/prisons, are paid slave wages, and hundreds of thousands die every year as a result of work related health problems.
The bit of hope at the end of all this comedy grimness is that there is light at the end of the sweatshop tunnel in the shape of the growing union militancy in China. Bypassing traditional unions which are often in the pockets of bosses, workers have been organising independently, producing high profile strikes at companies like Foxconn, which makes iPods and iPads for Apple, as well as at Honda manufacturing plants. There’s a staggering level of protest in China: in 2004 alone, there were, according to the conservative estimate of the government, 74,000 “mass incidents, or protests and riots.” All the more reason that the model of mass consumption capitalism, which is destructive both of the global ecosphere and of human beings, can’t last much longer: the people it relies on aren’t going to take it much longer.
The Guardian has today highlighted a collection of postcards designed to be auctioned of to raise money for the Feminism in London conference which takes place in a few weeks. The conference is organised by the fairly radical London Feminist Network, and is sounding like it could be quite good, featuring workshops on feminist self defence, feminist parenting, reproductive health, male privilege, an anti-pornography slide show and such speakers as the inspirational Rebecca Mott.
So, why then, are some of the postcards to be auctioned so weird and… misogynist?
Take this postcard, designed by David Rusbatch, whose website doesn’t work so I can’t find out much about him.
Pre-feminism… those blissful days where men could be men, women could be women, and everyone was happy… especially Frida Kahlo. She was totally content as a woman, as you can see in her verycheerfulpaintings. Never mind her communist beliefs, dissatisfaction in her marriage and and the fact that she was recognised as an artist only secondary to her husband – and her eventual affair with Leon Trotsky.
Next, the artist seems to have chosen the least flattering image of Germaine Greer he could possibly find to represent feminism – in the same way that the Daily Mail uses pictures of feminists looking crazy and/or ugly to try to discredit our politics.
The most striking image of the three is the last one, post-feminism. Featuring a young woman’s face soaked in semen, presumably a still from a porno. Why does this represent post-feminism? Because feminism has made young women sluts who think we’re being liberated by appearing in pornography? Er, no – as proven by the anti-pornography workshops and speakers planned for the conference, and the anti-pornography women’s rights campaigners in the London Feminist Network!
The boundaries have shifted a lot since the beginning of feminism’s second wave in the 50s and 60s. Pornography is a lot more prevalent and accepted in society than it ever has been before. Why is that? It’s not because of feminists and our loose morals and demands for sexual equality – it’s because as men have lost the power that they traditionally held over women in the family and the workplace, misogynist men who feel alienated and less-than because of our fucked up capitalist system have to look elsewhere to exert power over someone. They may not be able to get away with beating their wife for burning the dinner anymore, but they’re more than free to use and abuse the sluts, bitches and cunts in the sex industry.
Not to mention the fact that in the 50s and 60s, if you wanted to get hardcore pornography, you had to go and buy it from a shop or a dodgy guy in an alley – whereas now, everyone and their dog has access to horrific abuse of women for free on the internet, anonymously. Upwards of 90% of children in Scotland have viewed online pornography.
Check this out: artist Blake Fall-Conroy has designed a machine to help people understand the reality of exploitation in a mimimum wage job.
The box is full of (American) pennies, and you have to crank the handle hard in order to get out a penny every 5.04 seconds, which adds up to $7.15 (about £4.50) an hour, the minimum wage in the state of New York. If you stop turning the handle, you stop getting paid.
The artist says in his statement that he wants his projects to be “socially conscious”, “easy to understand,” and that he’s “more interested in communicating ideas than making art.”
This project is great at communicating the reality of what minimum wage labour is, drudgery for a pitiful reward. If you imagine that a boss was deriving some other benefit from you cranking the handle (generating energy say), and you only get paid every 5.04 seconds, then you come to realise that all the times you crank the handle for no reward you are basically a slave, receiving no compensation for your labour. This is where the money that makes rich people rich comes from: all the work you do that they don’t pay you for.
(Thanks very much to LydiaTeapot for being first to spot this and show it to me.)
Part of that reclaiming was a healing process for herself, in coming to terms with the miscarriages that her bus accident caused her to have. The paintings depicting this might be upsetting for those who have suffered miscarriages or are sensitive to graphic images, so I’ll just link to them here. Frida wanted more than anything to have a family with her husband, so the pain of her injuries served as a constant reminder of the happiness she was denied.
Take this postcard, designed by David Rusbatch, whose website doesn’t work so I can’t find out much about him.
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