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Naked Authority: The Body in Western Art 1830-1908 by Marcia PointonReview by: Gillian ElinorFeminist Review, No. 43, Issues for Feminism (Spring, 1993), pp. 97-100Published by: Palgrave Macmillan JournalsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1395076.

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Reviews 97eviews 97

mothering will necessarily be politi-cally progressive, given the currentfunctions and organization of psy-chology - in the editorial introduc-tion Ann Phoenix and Anne Woollettdescribe well the polarized andequally unsatisfactory treatment ofblack women in psychological itera-ture as either devalued absence orpathologized presence.It could be argued that formu-lating critiques which assume that adiscipline like psychologycan be im-proved is reformist. But this wouldbe to ignore the strategic impact thispersuasive book will have for itsaudience within psychology. It ishowever important for all of usstruggling to make similar inter-

mothering will necessarily be politi-cally progressive, given the currentfunctions and organization of psy-chology - in the editorial introduc-tion Ann Phoenix and Anne Woollettdescribe well the polarized andequally unsatisfactory treatment ofblack women in psychological itera-ture as either devalued absence orpathologized presence.It could be argued that formu-lating critiques which assume that adiscipline like psychologycan be im-proved is reformist. But this wouldbe to ignore the strategic impact thispersuasive book will have for itsaudience within psychology. It ishowever important for all of usstruggling to make similar inter-

ventions o recognize hat the enter-prise involves internal contra-dictions. In the case of this book,even f it werepossible o add n moreand more factors or categoriestoreflectwomen s xperiences,his at-tention o diversitywould ventuallycollapse ntoa muddled omogeneitywhich flattens out, and treats asequal,women sdifferent, nd differ-ently privileged, positions. More-over,notionsof accuracy, ruth andrealityunderlyinghis position eaveunquestioned the knowledge-producing ractices f empirical sy-chology.Erica Burman

ventions o recognize hat the enter-prise involves internal contra-dictions. In the case of this book,even f it werepossible o add n moreand more factors or categoriestoreflectwomen s xperiences,his at-tention o diversitywould ventuallycollapse ntoa muddled omogeneitywhich flattens out, and treats asequal,women sdifferent, nd differ-ently privileged, positions. More-over,notionsof accuracy, ruth andrealityunderlyinghis position eaveunquestioned the knowledge-producing ractices f empirical sy-chology.Erica Burman

Naked Authority: TheBody in Western Art183>1908Marcia PointonCambrzdgeUniversityPress 1990ISBN O521 50999 3 14.95 PbkISBN O521 38528 8 35 HbkIn 1989 Marcia Pointon asked whichdirection a theorised art historymight take in the l990s? (Pointon,1989). The direction she offers in thisbook of essays is a careful and multi-layered analysis of paintings as ma-terial objects n their own terms. It isan analysis she regards as the publicresponsibility of art historians, onewhich she believes they have re-cently failed. Despite her generalwelcome, it is history labelled newshe claims most culpable. That his-tory, whose purpose lies in decon-struction of the artefact, is mostvulnerable to the charge of dealingbest with the worst paintings1- or ofnot dealing with them at all, but withmerely their surrounding dis-courses. New art histoxy has notaccounted for the needs and desiresof artists and viewers who make andrespond to certain artefacts re-garded as best .Pointon herself doesnot labour issues of qualitativejudgement but does proclaim that

Naked Authority: TheBody in Western Art183>1908Marcia PointonCambrzdgeUniversityPress 1990ISBN O521 50999 3 14.95 PbkISBN O521 38528 8 35 HbkIn 1989 Marcia Pointon asked whichdirection a theorised art historymight take in the l990s? (Pointon,1989). The direction she offers in thisbook of essays is a careful and multi-layered analysis of paintings as ma-terial objects n their own terms. It isan analysis she regards as the publicresponsibility of art historians, onewhich she believes they have re-cently failed. Despite her generalwelcome, it is history labelled newshe claims most culpable. That his-tory, whose purpose lies in decon-struction of the artefact, is mostvulnerable to the charge of dealingbest with the worst paintings1- or ofnot dealing with them at all, but withmerely their surrounding dis-courses. New art histoxy has notaccounted for the needs and desiresof artists and viewers who make andrespond to certain artefacts re-garded as best .Pointon herself doesnot labour issues of qualitativejudgement but does proclaim that

many canonical works have an abid-ing power to move people (p. 3) anddespite being institutional high artforms, their effect is personal. So shedeals here with important paintingsthat are also vety popular .In her first essay on the femalenude Pointon disposes of the popularbinary opposites posited by KennethClark and John Berger. Clark snotion of the natural body outsideculture and against which art is to bemeasured, along with Berger sproposition that the nude be truewoman translated into art by love(p. 17) are dismissed as deeplyflawed (p. 33). But also she urgesacknowledgement that depiction ofthe female nude does not alwaysrepresent male power over women.Instead Pointon argues that suchrigid categories of viewing positioncannot be so established becauserepresentation of the body will con-stantly shift. Her agenda throughoutthese essays is to examine the un-stable boundaries of such move-ments in order to gain an under-standing of whether, and how, suchimages articulate power, and overwhom.The chapter on psychoanalysismaps more fully the terrain of suc-ceeding essays, as Pointon addresses

many canonical works have an abid-ing power to move people (p. 3) anddespite being institutional high artforms, their effect is personal. So shedeals here with important paintingsthat are also vety popular .In her first essay on the femalenude Pointon disposes of the popularbinary opposites posited by KennethClark and John Berger. Clark snotion of the natural body outsideculture and against which art is to bemeasured, along with Berger sproposition that the nude be truewoman translated into art by love(p. 17) are dismissed as deeplyflawed (p. 33). But also she urgesacknowledgement that depiction ofthe female nude does not alwaysrepresent male power over women.Instead Pointon argues that suchrigid categories of viewing positioncannot be so established becauserepresentation of the body will con-stantly shift. Her agenda throughoutthese essays is to examine the un-stable boundaries of such move-ments in order to gain an under-standing of whether, and how, suchimages articulate power, and overwhom.The chapter on psychoanalysismaps more fully the terrain of suc-ceeding essays, as Pointon addresses

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98 FeministReview

the unacknowledged nvestment ofart history in psychoanalysis. In as-serting similarities between thesedisciplines (most delightfully, an ob-sessive concern in looking for lostobjects) and by making the case fortransference relations in academicscholarship, Pointon properly ac-knowledges her masters. She pealsthe ring of Great Fathers - KennethClark is brilliant and E. H. Gom-brich justly celebrated , then MaxFriedlanderand Ernst Kris in Chap-ter Two are followed hard by War-burg, Wolfflin, Riegl, Pevsner andPanofsky. Hugh Honour and JohnFleming are merely useful , thoughart historians manques are properlytrounced- and we find John Bergerreducedto a signature, a meresign torepresent the ideas of others. Hereare the big knocks aimed most fre-quently at sons and siblings, spec-tacularly at Michael Fried, de-scendant of the Father-ghost ofGreenberg (dismissed by absencefromthis dramatispersonae).VVhilstberating Michael Baxendall forbeing short-sighted over questionsof gender (p. 3) she also swipes atCarol Duncan with her own phrasemale sexual appetite as being with-out specificity.2But a woman- andbeside that roll-callthe names of thewomen have appeared - AnitaBrookner, for example, representstraditional values, Linda Nochlinplays comradeat arms.Thuswas thefield delineatedforthe demonstrablyauthoritative Pointon to disrupt thesmooth transitions of lineal descent.Marcia Pointon deals with issues ofgender, and as a feminist she has aninterest in unravelling texts as aseeing woman. The result is work ofsatisfying scholarship and fascinat-ing insights.Pointon asserts that both artand art history are places wheredisplaced repetition of the Oedipalscene canbe enacted, as her succeed-ing case-studies demonstrate. Sheaddresses what she names as inter-subjectivity (p. 1) by which shemeans the subjectivities of artists

and readers, across time. For ex-ample,one study looks at the issue ofdesirein relationto the invisibility ofwomen s fertility in nineteenth-century society. Pointon suggeststhat attempts to encompassthis un-seen within the seen in paintings offertility and maternity, werepromptedby male fear of castrationwhich, according to this semiotic,psychoanalytic approach, expressthe painter s fear of fusion with thelost mother, that pleasurewhichwassacrificed for power. In another ex-ample Pointon uses Julia Kristeva sinsight which insists on the simul-taneous reassurance and instabilityof motherhood, with its promise oftranscendence. Here she offers Re-noir s late nudes, in particular TheJudgement fParis,as works whichexpress that artist s abjectness, hiscondition of absolute fear, and hisdesirefor reversionto Kristeva spre-Oedpial master-mother relation-ship.As Pointon sRenoirapproachesdeath, Kristeva s sublime point atwhich the abjectcollapses in a burstof beauty that overwhelms wouldprovidea convincingknell (Kristeva,1982:210). Yet again, in a study ofMichael Fried s analysis of ThomasEakin s TheGross Clinic,this his-torianis taken to task fordabbling npsychoanalysis merely to confirmand reiterate the transference situ-ation. In his patriarchal narrativemale power is again representedagainst female lack, and in order toproclaimthe value of the male rolewithin art history.Marcia Pointon contains theissues she raises within her case-studies, and there is no concludingchapter. As a result this book ofessays providesopeningswith whichwe may engage. Two essays I foundparticularly stimulating were thoseon Delacroix sLibertyon the Barri-cadesand Manet s Le Dejeuner url herbe.Pointon s analysis of De-lacroix spainting showshow the con-struction of sexuality here, which atonce heroicizes and demonizeswoman,is ambiguous.Libertysboth

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Reviews 99

the allegorical good (freedom) andbad (licence) woman, a dualitywhich may be explained in MelanieKlein s object relations theory(Mitchell, 1986).3 ein suggestedthat the infant s splitting of the ob-ject results in severance of love andhate, so it seems that Delacroix sapproach to Liberty ways betweenthose two emotions, and also be-tween sexuality and politics, alle-gory and realism. Pointon names LeDejeuner ur l hverbes Manet s suc-cessor to Liberty,n examining therelationship between the real andideal in French nineteenth-centurypainting; again, allegory threatensto collapse into the real. Howeverthe lack of narrative closure in LeDejeunerurns attention to the actof reading.Pointon s analyses of these twopaintings can be taken I believe, torepresent case-studies of radical ne-gativity. Feminine negativity is aprinciple proposedby Julia Kristevaas a means of escape from the im-passe imposed on us by JacquesLacan s fixed gender hierarchy. Heasserted that woman is only theexcluded Other of male discourse(the symbolic) and that indeed,there is no such thing as woman(quoted in Irigaray, 1985: 87). ForKristeva, the very exclusion ofwoman from the symbolic realmprivileges her to express the re-pressed truth which cannot bespoken of in social life. It is thiswhich has potential to disrupt fixedlinguistic and social codes in theform of feminine negativity. FromPointon we gain insight into Libertyas a representation of that principle,here fragmenting the conventions ofaudience response. This is markedby the frequent re-use of her image,severed from the violence and thereal (male) world which is actuallyher context. And Manet s femalenude also possesses qualities of radi-cal negativity. It is she who holds thebalance of power for the viewer, shewho has subversively challengedmale authority, as the word and the

body interlock across that picnicarea. Pointon shows how the storythat cannot be told in Le Dejeuner(what after all, is he saying?) hasbeen treated either to participativeacts from viewers, or to symbolicinversion of the gender hierarchy.Kristeva claimed that radical negati-vity possesses subversive politicalpotential. To my mind, Pointon swork illuminates that articulation inthe shape ofLiberty.Nevertheless, on reading hertwo essays I was drawn to return toPointon s Introduction,to her statedaim of accounting for the intersub-jectivities of artists and viewers.These she has discussed in varietiesof ways throughout, and althoughthe issue of gender constantlyerupts, its intersubjectivity does not.I believe however, that she did pro-pose it forLe Dejeuner. ointon doesnot connect with the use of this sameterm- intersubjectivity- by DrucillaCornell and Adam Thurschwell(1987). Their work builds on Kriste-va s softening of the gender cat-egories which has conceptuallyundermined the Lacanian Oedipalstructure. Kristeva showed theinterdependence of masculinity andfemininity, in that identity, knownonly through the relational Other,makes interdependence internal aswell as external. In other words, bothfemininity and masculinity possessthe Other of their own self-differ-ence, each thus having an internaldialectic which is beyond the gendersystem. It is this dimension whichCornell and Thurschwell identify asone which may generate intersub-jectivity, that is, the potential ofcommunicative freedom. Their the-sis however, involves a rejection ofthe feminine exclusivity of Kriste-va s radical negativity. This, theydemonstrate, leads to an essentialistposition which is one Kristeva her-self would wish to avoid.Pointon noted that Delacroixfinally sought control of the femalepower he had raised, striding to-wards the viewer over the bodies of

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dead men (p. 73) by means of care-fully placing his signature (the wordof his male power)onthe painting. InLe Dejeuner however, there is nosuch attempted resolution, the wordand the body are indeed shown byPointon to be interdependent.Articulation of the word is promised(the male hand so gestures) but is notspoken. The naked body preventinghis articulation is unstable, herclothes lying nearby remind us of herde-socialized position, together withall that she hides from him. Butneither male nor female (not wordnor body) has the power. In refusingto identify the power-holder,Manetgives the space to self-difference. Itwould seem that the intersubjecti-vity of artist and viewers of LeDejeuner can occur only in that dim-ension beyond the gender system.Gillian Elinor

dead men (p. 73) by means of care-fully placing his signature (the wordof his male power)onthe painting. InLe Dejeuner however, there is nosuch attempted resolution, the wordand the body are indeed shown byPointon to be interdependent.Articulation of the word is promised(the male hand so gestures) but is notspoken. The naked body preventinghis articulation is unstable, herclothes lying nearby remind us of herde-socialized position, together withall that she hides from him. Butneither male nor female (not wordnor body) has the power. In refusingto identify the power-holder,Manetgives the space to self-difference. Itwould seem that the intersubjecti-vity of artist and viewers of LeDejeuner can occur only in that dim-ension beyond the gender system.Gillian Elinor

Notes1 The case cited by Pointon s a review by

Anita Brookner in The Observer 5May 1988.2 Here Pointon cites C. Duncan s articleas 1982, in its reprint form and date- itwas first published in Artforumn1973, and at that time represented oneof the earliest, and extremely helpfulfeminist art historical analyses.3 See especially chapter, Notes on someschizoid mechanisms (1940)ReferencesCORNELL, D. and THURSCHWELL,A. (1987)Feminism, negativity, intersubjec-tivity in S. Benhalib and D. Cornelleditors, Feminism s Critique: ssayson thePoliticsof Gendern LateCapi-talist Societies Cambridge: PolityPress.IRIGARAY,Luce (1985) This Sex Which sNotOne,rans. C. Porter and C. BurkeIthaca: CornellUniversity Press.KRISTEVA,Julia (1982) Powersof Horror:An Essay in Abjection ew York: Co-lumbia University Press.MITCHELL,Juliet (1986) editor, TheSelec-ted Melanie Klein Harmondsworth:Penguin.POINTON, Marcia (1989) SVimagery ArtHistoryMarch.

Notes1 The case cited by Pointon s a review by

Anita Brookner in The Observer 5May 1988.2 Here Pointon cites C. Duncan s articleas 1982, in its reprint form and date- itwas first published in Artforumn1973, and at that time represented oneof the earliest, and extremely helpfulfeminist art historical analyses.3 See especially chapter, Notes on someschizoid mechanisms (1940)ReferencesCORNELL, D. and THURSCHWELL,A. (1987)Feminism, negativity, intersubjec-tivity in S. Benhalib and D. Cornelleditors, Feminism s Critique: ssayson thePoliticsof Gendern LateCapi-talist Societies Cambridge: PolityPress.IRIGARAY,Luce (1985) This Sex Which sNotOne,rans. C. Porter and C. BurkeIthaca: CornellUniversity Press.KRISTEVA,Julia (1982) Powersof Horror:An Essay in Abjection ew York: Co-lumbia University Press.MITCHELL,Juliet (1986) editor, TheSelec-ted Melanie Klein Harmondsworth:Penguin.POINTON, Marcia (1989) SVimagery ArtHistoryMarch.

Vested Interests: Cross-dressing and CulturalAnxietyMarjorie B. GarberRoutledge:New Yorkand London 1992,ISBN 0 415 90072 7, 25.00 HbkOne thing that sticks out about thecodpiece . . (p. 122) is a painful pun,but forgivable were it the exceptionrather than the rule. However,multiplied across the 400 pages ofVested nterests:Cross-dressingndCulturalAnxiety, t is calculated toset on edge the teeth of even the most

tolerant reader, particularly givenManorie Garber s grating literarycombination of twee wordplay andingenuous insertion of the authorialvoice. Glib chapter and subheadings- Clothes encounters of the thirdkind - are matched by a multiplicityof abstruse and unexplained intro-ductory quotations; while para-graphs which open with, It is notclear to me who reads these novels

Vested Interests: Cross-dressing and CulturalAnxietyMarjorie B. GarberRoutledge:New Yorkand London 1992,ISBN 0 415 90072 7, 25.00 HbkOne thing that sticks out about thecodpiece . . (p. 122) is a painful pun,but forgivable were it the exceptionrather than the rule. However,multiplied across the 400 pages ofVested nterests:Cross-dressingndCulturalAnxiety, t is calculated toset on edge the teeth of even the most

tolerant reader, particularly givenManorie Garber s grating literarycombination of twee wordplay andingenuous insertion of the authorialvoice. Glib chapter and subheadings- Clothes encounters of the thirdkind - are matched by a multiplicityof abstruse and unexplained intro-ductory quotations; while para-graphs which open with, It is notclear to me who reads these novels

and magazines, but some statisticssuggest that male transvestites arelargely middle-class, heterosexualand married , (p. 96) only serve tofurther undermine the author sauthority.This immature prose style iscoupledwith a tendency not to defineher terms, and to casually toss incomplex and undersubstantiatedconclusions while spending pageschattily discussing irrelevant ma-terial. For example, Garber uses thehistorically and culturally specificgenderbending (p. 62) in relation toHarvard s Hasty pudding theatri-cals of the mid-nineteenth century.Although she is Professor of 13nglishat Harvard University, Garber alsoapparently finds the concept of greattheater unproblematic, given herstatement that: The notion thatthere has to be a naturalness to thesign is exactly what great theaterputs in question.Similar linguistic imprecision is

and magazines, but some statisticssuggest that male transvestites arelargely middle-class, heterosexualand married , (p. 96) only serve tofurther undermine the author sauthority.This immature prose style iscoupledwith a tendency not to defineher terms, and to casually toss incomplex and undersubstantiatedconclusions while spending pageschattily discussing irrelevant ma-terial. For example, Garber uses thehistorically and culturally specificgenderbending (p. 62) in relation toHarvard s Hasty pudding theatri-cals of the mid-nineteenth century.Although she is Professor of 13nglishat Harvard University, Garber alsoapparently finds the concept of greattheater unproblematic, given herstatement that: The notion thatthere has to be a naturalness to thesign is exactly what great theaterputs in question.Similar linguistic imprecision is

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