Museum of Menstruation April 12, 2006 Jill My dear friend Kate Goldwater of AuH2o fame has some of her creative works — paintings with her menstrual blood — up in the online Museum of Menstruation and Women’s Health. Check out her work, and the rest of the museum.
Um. Ew, and I don’t mean the blood part: Would you stop menstruating if you could? “I’m surprised that women have been putting up with symptoms of fibroids, PMS, migraines, mood swings, hot flashes, etc., for this long. . . . I know several husbands who buy Bellatude for their wives and insist that they use it.”
Wait, that sounded wrong. Let me rephrase: “And when I say ew, I’m referring to the creepy-ass controlling attitude these guys take towards their spouses’ cycles, and definitely not referring to menstruation itself or any bodily phenomena associated with it.”
So, this is going to sound like a troll. Please believe me, it isn’t. It’s honest curiosity and not-getting-the-point. [Kate Goldwater] preserves her menstrual blood in film canisters and then paints with it to alleviate stigmas on feminine hygiene and draw attention to feminist issues. I don’t get it. As near as I can tell (the pics on the site are pretty low res!), the blood is mixed in with other paints. Now, the pictures themselves are powerful & compelling. I can certainly see how, for example, the female anotmy pictures would work to “alleviate stigma” and “draw attention of feminist issues,” but how does the use of menstural blood add to that? I feel like I’m not making sense, so let me try to ask a different way: Wouldn’t these pictures be just as effective without the use of menstrual blood?
Jeff- Don’t worry, you don’t sound like a troll! Most of the stuff Kate uses to paint is menstrual blood. Anything brown in the picture is dried blood. I can’t speak for what her art means, but she does comment here fairly often and I’m sure she’ll read this thread, so hopefully she can answer your question!
I don’t think I get it. Is it kind of a middle-finger to the old beliefs that menstrating women are unclean and need to be avoided? That’s just a shot in the dark.
It’s Passover so I couldn’t get to my computer until late, but thank you Jill. And I’m very happy to clarify: Sorry Lauren, that isn’t the Virgin Mary (though I have painted a Jesus and a Pope in menstrual blood- for good reasons.) That’s actually a self-portrait with a gag in my mouth (protesting the global gag rule) and another self portrait in menstrual blood and ink. Jeff and Jeremiah, it’s not at all troll-like to question or not understand, though your guesses and “shots in the dark” on what it means are just as valid as my own explanations and interpretations. That’s the thing with art, isn’t it? To start, yes, I do use other media, both combined with menstrual blood and on its own. I often mix graphite and ink with the blood because I like the messiness- using my fingers, smearing, rubbing and dripping. On the other hand, I love the precision of calligraphy pens dipped in ink or blood. It’s actually a very versatile medium– older blood appears darker and brown, newer is brighter red and stickier (I’ll stop, I know that probably sounds gross.) Jeff, you’re definitely right that either way those pieces are powerful for their content, though they wouldn’t make it into the Museum of Menstruation if they weren’t in menstrual blood. I’m kidding, but if I painted them in acrylics and oils such important issues would barely get exposure. When word got out freshman year that a girl who painted with her period blood lived on the 7th floor, I had visitors all the time asking to see “BUT NOT SMELL” my work. Everyone wanted to see art made of menstrual blood, and while they were at it they learned about genital mutilation and sexual trafficking. I think it’s a great way to create awareness on a political issue. At the same time, I do create equally political or activist pieces in oils, acrylics, and prints which you can see at my new flickr account here. I do not mean to sound like I only paint with my menstrual blood for shock value. While I love that the medium grabs people’s attention and gives me the means to preach about the global gag rule or supreme court nominees, I do not solely attempt to bombard my audience with a political message. I consider menstrual blood a medium for subversive activism because to me it brings up concepts of cycles, organic, body as beautiful, natural bodies, and personal, gender, and bodily identities. I hope and assume my audience has their own conscious or subconscious reactions. And finally, I define myself as a feminist artist by recognizing I’m a woman and seeing this as a positive factor, displaying it in my life and art. I think painting with my menstrual blood is the best way to do this.
I’ve actually seen similar works in menses. I’m not going to issue the expected male response of “Dude, ew!,” but I can’t say I cared for the pieces I did see. First off, I didn’t think that the paintings were really that striking visually. They evoked no emotional response–they were just a few squiggles on canvas. It seemed like they were only noteworthy for the menses gimmick. As a result, any viewer not in on the joke, so to speak, immediately fails to get the piece. That’s irresponsible on the part of the artist. I’m all for painting in menstrual fluid, but art to me is a combination of three things: 1) Innovation 2) Response 3) Technical skill 4) Context So far, the work I’ve seen in bodily fluid grasps the first two, but ends up severely lacking in the latter pair. And I hate to say it, but without all four, IT ISN’T REALLY ART. Art must be more than simple pretense and shock value. (end rant)
P.S. Upon further examination, I now see the error. Art is a combination of FOUR things. “My bad,” as they say.
How cute. Does she also paint with other bodily wastes? I’m all in favor of de-abominatizing menstruation, but I don’t think we need to celebrate piss, shit, and semen, either.
I’m not going to issue the expected male response of “Dude, ew!,” but I can’t say I cared for the pieces I did see. First off, I didn’t think that the paintings were really that striking visually. They evoked no emotional response–they were just a few squiggles on canvas. It seemed like they were only noteworthy for the menses gimmick. As a result, any viewer not in on the joke, so to speak, immediately fails to get the piece. That’s irresponsible on the part of the artist. First of all, what Jill said. Second, don’t assume that something that doesn’t resonate with you fails to resonate with “the viewer.” Don’t assume that it was created with your viewpoint in mind. Chris Ofili is a great example of this fallacy–his work is rejected precisely because the themes it works with don’t jibe with “classic” standards. Botticelli is the template, not Romare Bearden; Ofili’s worth as an artist is measured by his ability to paint like Botticelli. His work is therefore ugly, literally shitty, coarse and opaque. That “expected male response,” is part of the context of this piece of art. In general terms, the “joke,” or the conceptual framework, is frequently included in any art work that isn’t classical realism. You don’t look at a photorealistic painting as a really detailed picture of a station wagon in a suburban driveway. It’s not the artist’s intent to present it in isolation, or the privilege of any of the viewers to look in ignorance.
Thank you Jill and piny. Freeman, I’m not going to try to convince you that I do, in fact, have artistic talent, but I do want to point out that I don’t have a particularly large supply of menstrual blood so I really can only create small works out of “squiggles” on sketchbook pages or rice paper (not canvas- it doesn’t absorb the blood at all.) Additionally, I would not say I’m “irresponsible” since I always do make sure the viewer “gets the joke” by drawing attention to the medium. These pieces are in a museum of menstruation and right below them I describe the process of extracting and saving the blood. No one is in the dark on the “gimmick.” As for your definition of what is art, that’s personal to you so I won’t say it’s wrong, though it doesn’t classify a large portion of dada, formalist, minimalist, abstract impressionist, fluxus and performance art as art. Did you frown upon all dadaist work that purposely challenged the idea that artists have to have technical skill in order to be artists? Duchamp’s objects, Pollack’s splatter, Allan Kaprow’s “Happenings,” Robert Rauschenberg’s recent exhibit of Combines at the Met-is that all not art? And I changed my mind. I do want to argue I have artistic talent. I suppose it’s a matter of taste anyway, but I design clothing as well that people seem to like, and buy. (end rebuttal)
Kate – i don’t care what it’s about (i do, but bear with me), i just really (REALLY) enjoy having the artist’s point of view on her own work: thank you!
i would like to thank freeman for giving us the rules about art…my daughter has responded so politely to the comments here because that is her nature, but i’m her mother and i don’t have to be so nice. if kate’s work evoked no emotional response why bother to dis her in writing? that evoked a response from me, my bad…..
And it STILL amuses me that the focus of the Ofili work is on the elephant dung (rolled up in neat balls and lacquered, BTW, not “smeared” as is so often reported) and not the porn-mag hoo-hahs that are all over the damn thing.
I *heart* Kate’s mom. (And Kate, of course, but she knows that). And as someone who has eagerly purchased Kate’s pieces, and worn them on multiple occasions (and received very positive responses, I should add), I’ll be the first to defend Kate’s artistic skills. But that should be obvious, since I’m already posting about her.
One more thing: Having seen Kate’s menstrual blood paintings in person, I can further attest that the website doesn’t do them justice. You’re still welcome to dislike them, but I’d buy ’em. Of course, I’m also one of those freaks who loves modern art (I believe I’ve mentioned my obsession with Mark Rothko before) and would take a de Kooning scribble over a Renior any day of the week, so what do I know.
Kate, thanks for chiming in. Learning that the medium is mostly menstrual blood (as opposed to a bit of blood mixed in with paint) changes my mind completely. For example, “womens’ right to vote” (which I’d hang in my daughter’s room in a hearbeat!) wouldn’t have nearly as much impact in another medium. BTW, did the pics at the Muesum get changed? I swear they were lower res when I looked this morning.
Regarding said rebuttal, My web browser won’t pull up the link to this site (work computer), so I’m not implying that Kate lacks talent. I can’t honestly say that, miss, having not seen your work. Please don’t misunderstand me. I was simply referring to a series of images done in menses, by an unknown artist, that I chanced upon several months ago. I was simply stating that they were lacking in execution, and that the media itself was not sufficient justification for labeling it as “art.” Forgive me if I’ve elicited a harsh reaction. That was not my intent.
Ah, sorry Freeman. I think we interpreted your comment as an attack on Kate’s work specifically. Thanks for the clarification!