perspective.

The Body According to Chadwick

With material ingenuity and anatomical candor, Helen Chadwick used photos, sculptures and ambitious installations to explore the physical basis of experience. A touring exhibition surveys this British artist's brief, bright career

BY LYNN MacRITCHIE

The British iirUst Helen Chadwick was born prematurely in 1953 and died prematurely 43 years later. The first retrospectKe of her ai1., organized by London's Barbican Ait Galleiy, makes one thing clear: we lost not only her potential work but also an artist—perhaps tbe only artist—^who effectively bridged the gap between the radical, politicized feminist art of the 1970s and the self-conscious, media-aware work of

the British women artists who came to prominence in the mid-1990s.' Before Tracey Emin and her unmade bed there was Chadwick, fdrining sculpture witb her owii urine. Before Sam Taylor-Wood susjiended her- self from the studio ceiling for the camera there w;i.s Chadwick, naked, wrestling with photos of her own body. Fiercely ambitious, attractive and bold, Chadwick was the precursor of those groovy artist girls who

.4bor<'. vietr of Helen Chadwick's sculplure Oacao (foreground). 199^, irith photo-based objeciafrom the •'Wreath lo Pleaaure" series, 1992-93. on wall. Photos thUi article, unless otherwise noted. Edward Woodman.

Opposite, view of Piss Flowers, 1991-92. bronze, cellulose lacquer. Photo An ti Kiiivatainen. Works this article © Helen Chadwick Estate, courtesy Barbican Art Gallery, London.

smileatusnowfromthepartysectionsofglossymagazines,signdeals with fashion houses and take pictures of movie stars.

Like the YBAs, Chadwick was a media phenomenon. Her 1994 solo show at the Serpentine Gallery in London garnered extensive press coverage. Piss Flnwera (1991 92), white-lacquered bronze casts of impressions made by Chadwick and her male partner urinating into deep snow, and Cacao (1994), a bubbling, odoriferous fountain of melted chocolate, were just the stuff to grab tabloid headlines. And the exposure got results. In 1995, PIHH Flowers was included in tbe huge survey show "Feminin/Masculin, le sexe de Tart" at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, installed next to work by Louise Bourgeois. Yet, no matter how apparently sensational her subject matter, Chadwick did not set out to play a media game of cat and mouse, which, at least in the U.K., may have become one of the obli-

gationsofasuccessfulartist.Sheseemstohavebeenimpelledbya fierce inner drive to find ways of capturing the messy business of human existence in artworks of ever increasing inventiveness.

To make Ego Geomelria Sum (I Am Geometry), 198;{, her first mature piece, Chadwick subjected her early life in Croydon, a quiet outer suburb of London, to an almost forensic examination. Having made a comprehensive photographic record of ber past—including shots of such objects as an incubator identical to the one she was placed in at birth and sucb locations as the various schools she attended—she then devised a way of combining the black-and-white pictures with sculpture. She made 10 differently shaped plywood objects, each meant to represent a stage in her life, then painted them with a light-sensitive coating and printed the photographs directly onto the wood surface. Naked, she impei-sonates herself first as a baby, then

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The m essage of The Oval Court seem s clear enough: the artist is free to

play with the bounty of the universe, arranging it all to suit her whim.

center of the platform,fivegleaming golden spheres, arranged in a cuived formation, seem like planets amid the constellation-like groupings of photocopies. On the surrounding walls are photocopied ren- derings of ornate twisted columns that evoke Bernini's monumental baldachin in St. Peter's—which is surmounted by a golden or'b. 'Hie mes- sage seems clear enougb: the aitist, a woman at the heiglit of her physical beauty and witb supreme (confidence in her creative i)owers, is free to pli^y with all the bounty of the universe, airanged to suit her whim.

But Chadwick also includeti an image of her weeping face, multi- plied and set atop clusters of photocopied foliage that connect the columns. And between two of the columns hangs a Venetian hand mirror, its glass frame augmented with a pair of crying eyes. Intended as a caveat, reminding viewers that life's beauty and pleasure are fieeting, all this did not stem a tide of criticism in the feminist press, which attacked Chadwick for using nude photographs here and in Vanity (1986), a large color shot of herself, naked to the waist and adorned with drapery and feathers, gazing into a large circular mirror in which The Oval Court is reflected.

The criticism leveled at Chadwick echoed the charges against Hannah Wilke a decade earlier, when tbe American artist photographed herself nude, dotted with lumps of chewing gum shaped in vaginal forms, for "S.O.S. Starification Object Series" (1974-79). Cbadwick and Wilke used similar language to explain what they were doing. Wilke

Aliore, lijfi) (iPDitietria Sum: The Labours X, 1!)S6, one of 10 ilyt'd gelatin silver photographs, each 4S by SSVi inches framed. Photo Mark Pilkington.

Right, partial lieir oflhc in.staUntion R^o Gponielria Sum, photographic emulsion on pif/iroad; at Aspex GaUenj, Portsmouth, Photo Philip Stanleg.

as a young girl, and develops object by object into the adult woman sbowii standing straight and confident on the final piece, a tall rectan- guliu- st)lid, which lepresenls her London home. Ai'ound the sculptures are hung additional photographs, 10 gelatin silver prints dyed a peachy pink. Called "Ego Geometria Sum: The Labours" (1984), they show the artist, a^ain naked, grappling in turn with each of the plywood forms, her trim body suggesting the youthful male athletes of Greek vase paintings. Chadwick had found the means, both literal and metaphori- cal, to make visible in art her veiy struggle to render life itseli".

Chadwick quickly became a respected artist at the heart of the London scene, teaching at Goldsmiths, Central Saint Martins and the Royal College of Ail. Tlie installation 77w Oval Court (1984-

86) seems to celebrate her life at tbat time. It pictures the nude artist cavorting with a cornucopia of animals, fish, fruit and flowers. The .striking images are photocopies made by placing the objects (dead creatures, flora and her own body) directly on the glass plate of a photocopier loaded with blue ink. The results look like negatives, the pbotoc(tpier's beam baving captured the textures of fur, fruit, skin and fish scales as white shapes against a dense blue back- ground. Tbe photocopies are collaged onto a platform painted the same blue and raised from the floor on legs a few inches higli. In the

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Ahoir, (tclailoflhp O\al Court, 198^-86. coUagt'ti photocopies, laminatedpfywood gesso, gold leaf. Courlexy Victoria and Albert Miisi'um, London.

Right. Vanily. I9HH. (ibachrome. 2S% inches in diameter. The Oval Court installation can be seen in the mirror.

wanted to seduce, she said, wanted

women to "allow their feelings and

fanl.jLsies to emerge, so that this

could lead to a new type of art."^

Chadwick, in a BBC radio interview

about The Oval Court, said she wa.s

interested in "making pictures

about desire, showing" desire from

the inside," explaining that because

she used herself and not another

model, she was in control, "the site

and subject oF my own feelings."'' She

used her nude body once more, along

with that that of her mother, also naked,

in the installation Lo/as A'^mpAon (1987),

which considered her mother's relationship

to her native Athens. Interestingly, Wilke, too, used images of herself and her mother in the photo series "So Help Me Hannah" (1978-81), undertaken during her mother'.s illness.'

r

r

Art in America

Blood Hyphen, 1988, site-specijic installation with laser, smoke, photographic transparencies; at Woodbridge Chapel, Clerkenwell, London.

"Of Mutability," Chadwick's 1986-87 exhibition at London's Institute of Contemporary Art (of which The Oval Court was one part), led to her becoming the first woman to be nominated for the Turner Prize in 1987. The following year, however, Chadwick declared that she would no longer use her naked image, claiming that this would force her to "be more deft" in dealing with the representation of the female body.^ This clever spin protected her from engaging in direct debate against opin- ions she elsewhere described as "Stalinist."''

Having renounced depicting the body's outward appearance, Chadwick turned inward with Blood Hyphen (1988), a site-specific installation in the 18th-century Woodhridge Chapel in Clerkenwell, London, which was re created in its original location as an adjunct to the Barbican sho\y. Visitors climbed steep narrow steps behind the pulpit and put their heads through a gap in the false ceiling above. In that upper space, blinds were drawn over the clerestory windows to

create a shadowy and mysterious realm, the pipe organ at the far end looming dark through clouds of dry ice. From a tear in one of the blinds, the red beam of a laser cut diagonally across the space to strike a photographic transparency that had replaced one of the ceil- ing panels. Within the transparency, amorphous shapes glowed a pinkish grey, punctuated with darker, circular masses. These were slides of cells, taken from the artist's cervix. Chadwick had literally penetrated her own body to show not its outward appearance, but the material of life itself, drawn from within.

Chadwick also used animal flesh as a metaphor for the human body. The "Meat Abstracts" (1989) are large-scale Polaroids of still- lifes with organs and offal arranged on suede, wood veneer and silk. Nestled among the animal parts are illuminated lightbulbs; as the meat evokes the body, so the bulbs suggest the mind, consciousness glowing amid flesh. The "Meat Lamps" (1989-91) were Chadwick's

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Aboie. Meat Abstract No. 8, 1989, Polaroid, silk mat, 2i by 20 inches.

Like the wooden sculptures in Ego Geometria Sum, lightboxes permitted

Chadwick to combine photographs with the objects that displayed them,

first experiments with lightboxes, a format, like the wooden sculp- tures in E(}o Geometria Sum, that permitted her to combine photo- graphic images with the objects that displayed them. She would work with lightboxes for the rest of her career, describing them as "not exactly a sculpture and not exactly an image," and equivalent for her to "the space of a body,"'

The most complete and spectacular realization of Chadwick's vision was "Effluvia." her 1994 solo show at the Serpentine Galleiy. In one room, on a rectangle of bright green Astroturi', s-dt Piss Flowers. It was possible to hear and smell the nearby Cacao, the chocolate-spouting fountain. A succes de scandale, "Effluvia" attract- ed 54,000 visitors. Chadwick seems to have taken to fame with some relish. Asked why she had made Cacao, she replied that her libido demajided it.^

Above. Self-Portrail, Jf)9J, Cibachrome transparency, glass, aluminum, electrieal apparatus, 20 by 17% by .5 inchps.

left. Enfleshings I, 1989, Cibrachrome transparency, glass, steel, electrical apparatus. i3by3S'/i inches.

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Viral Landscape No. 2, 1988-89. C-print, powder-coated steel, aluminum, plyirood, Perspex, 47'Aby US by 2 incheH.

Reading such comments now, the most striking* inipression is not that Chadwick was deliberately inciting the media, but rather thai she was simply enjoying herself. While she undoubtedly relished the provocative aspects afPis's Flowers, the final work bears no resem- blance to the physical act. Chadwick did not exhibit photographs of herself and her lover urinating in the snow, though she planned their actions meticulously, with the specific intent DI' making the sculpture, its shape—thanks lo petal-like modules placed on each pile of snow for them to piss thi-ough—largely predetermined. One senses Ihe spirit of Duchamp at work, too. The glossy white surfaces suggest the urinals in which the waste matter that had given them form would normally be flushed away. The "fountain" oi Cacao is no baro(|ue extravaganza but a simple vertical spoul at the center of the pool of melted chocolate. The pale blue circular tub is carefully wiped by a waiting atlendanl whenev- er it is besmirched by a rogue splatter from the gloopy mass. Chadwick may tease with the suggestion of shit, but she doesn't let its scatologi- cal-looking substitute muck up the gallery. Tlie body was central tn Chadwick's iiil, it seems, not to establish a realm of autobiographical reality, but as a means to an end: the messy reality of the physical realm being transformed into the cooler stufl' of art.

Wreath lo Pleasure No. 1, 1992-93. Cibachrome. powder-coaled uleel. g!ass. wood, aluminum. ^3'A inchex in

diameter by 2 inches.

At the time of her death from a heart attack in UMt, Chadwick liad been working in the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Sinjjeons, using pi-eserved human and animal specimens. In Cyclops Caiiico (1995) a photograph of a mallurmed human fetus, with only one sightless eye socket in the middle of its forehead, was shown at the center of a vortex of yellow and green lines, recalling Duchamp's Rotoreliefs. Chadwick seems to have been making a point about how we see, with our eyes and with our minds, reshaping what is per- ceived into ideas of the monstrous or the beautiful.

The Barbican retrospective was just a first step toward establishing Chadwick's position in recent art history. One can only speculate, of course, about what she might have achieved, but the work that is left, challenging in content, innovative in form, combining ruthless enfjuirj'mth joyful celebration, is a rich legacy. We may be social and political beings, Chadvrick seems to say, but we are also animal, sen- sual, self-conscious—alive.