Positive Space

Well, Erin asked for more blogging, so if this one is crap, hassle her about it instead of me.

Last weekend (it was last weekend, right?) I and some compadres (you know who you are) went to the MOCA to see an exhibition of feminist art from the seventies and eighties. It was very cool. As with lots of modern art the specific message of a lot of the pieces wasn't quite clear, but I think I got the gist of it.

What really interested me was the fact that the images and subject matter were centering around certain topics, and tended to avoid others. I think this had a lot to do with the decades they were representing, but it was still really thought provoking to me.

There were lots of pieces on violence and objectification. Performance pieces on being treated as a thing, images of violence against women, and a healthy number of body image studies and self esteem examinations. There weren't actually very many on menstruation and motherhood, although I hear there were more on motherhood upstairs that I didn't see.

It made me think about what aspects of gender people think are important. In fact, the women at my work said the first things they thought they would depict if they were making an art piece were motherhood and menstruation. One even said that she thought depicting violence and body image was demeaning and portrayed women as weak. She said she'd pick aspects of femininity that showed strength, like motherhood. I think attitude is actually a very good compliment about effectiveness of the women's lib movement, by the way.

Of course, all this got me thinking that there haven't been many (any that I know of) exhibits dealing with men's issues. I started thinking about what I would want to depict if I was going to depict something. So, here's a short list of issues that I think are ripe for discussion surrounding men's liberation:

(my favorite topic) men's appreciation for their own childhood and emotional responses

a culture's view of men's lives as public resources/natural resources

the threat of injury and death being part of a man's expected gender role

strength vs. responsibility: two aspects of the male role that appear to be one and the same, but are in fact quite separate, even if they necessitate one another.

men's reaction to the feminist movement. This one is pretty scary because there's a lot of misogyny involved in it, but it's still an important issue to cover just the same.

I notice these are mostly negative, so how about I throw in the positive aspects of Stoicism for a little appreciation of the cold, unfeeling man.

There, that seems like a bite appropriately bigger than I can chew. It would be reeeeeeeeeally cool if someone wanted to go in on this with me and actually make some art on these topics. Though I suppose I'd have to set an example by actually doing it myself. I wonder what the likelihood is of that happening. My ideas so far are a little too elaborate. Maybe I can take some masculist photos. Just call me Robert Mapplethorpe!