Lisa Tickner, 'The Body Politic: Female Sexuality and Women artists since 1970'

In her article Lisa Tickner deals with the representation of the female body, with her study centred around the 'erotic'. According to her their are two types of representation, the 'realist and the 'fantasist' within erotic imagery. These images are frequently women alone, fetishized for the masculine observer primarily, although erotic imagery of the female is not exclusive to men alone, she says.

Her argument, and what is evident in a lot, if not the majority of masculine depictions of the female body, is that the female body becomes a 'recepticle' for 'male fantasies, and fears and repressed homosexuality', in Freudian terms. She uses works by Munch, Bellmer and Klimt, to back up her argument.
Hans Bellmer, La Poupee (The Doll), 1935

Realist representation shows the woman as an equal sexual prtner. These images of copulating couples, where produced by men, for men to fantasize over. The male spectator/other, in the image, can be identified with or even displaced by the spectator/owner in fantasy, thus placing themselves in the picture plane with the female. In 'coitus' the male stands for 'Everyman'.

This is the function of pornography, in that it enables the spectator/owner to posses the fetishized desirable. Another strand to this is the association with sexuality, and its androgynous sensualities. The duality of the 'female' body, seving both masculine and feminie roles, and expressions of anxiety and fear. Tickner says: "woman is the symbol of purity and transgression...she is not the expression of female experience, she is a mediating sign for the male (artist as male). Woman's body has been created through and in parallel with a patriarchal culture.

The female body is not for the benefit of the female, breasts, menstruation, ovaries, pregnancy, are all for the benefit of others. The authors juncture is that through the reclamation of the female body, the'colonized territory from the masculine fantasy', by females, can they achieve 'equality'. Thus she states that the 're-integrationof the female genitals in art is primarily political, and not aggressive. Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro talk of the unconcious use of the 'centralized void', evident in the work of Hepworth and O'Keffe.

Judy chicago, 'Red Flag', 1971

Tickner paraphrases Betty Dobson who says that "women will not easily live in their bodies until they have learnt not to suppress its less 'feminine' physical processes" i.e; menstruation. The concealment of menstruation has invited the violation of the taboo.

The sign 'woman' has been emptied of its original content and refilled with maculine anxieties and desires, the reclamation of this body, by women, enables them to express the feminine through their personal connection with its unique bodily functions, thus repositioning the body not as a fetishized body, but as a lived in feminine body that is true, and not constructed through masculinities.