Women - Helen Laville would rather grow old disgracefully than honourably
Despite the thousands of pages of women's magazines dedicated to moisturisers, anti-ageing creams and surgical enhancements, many women secretly look forward to growing older. Year after year, we've cared how we look, how we act, what we say, where we go, who we see, who sees us, and so on and so on.
But through it all we're on a learning curve. We're learning not to care. As a birthday card I bought my sister recently said: "Can cook. Can't be arsed." Therein is the secret of women's coming of age. While the surveys, trotted out on a regular basis from the "Making Women Feel Bad About Themselves Institute", continually remind us of the failings and insecurities of younger women, surveys of older women consistently document their contentment, self-confidence, and enjoyment of life. This self-confidence comes from the inner realisation that whatever we do for self-improvement, there will always be a new crop of surveys and experts (most prominent among them back-stabbing sell-outs from our own sex) who will come up with more evidence or a new theory on how women are failing both themselves and everyone around them.
Men seem to come of age in a Steven Spielberg movie, in a battlefield, or in a meaningful deathbed chat with the father who never understood them. Women come of age when they stop thinking that someone is watching them all the time and writing it all down in a statement to be later used as evidence against them. When women learn not to believe that their lives are constantly being looked at, they can look at themselves.
The "Coming of Age" exhibition at the New Art Gallery Walsall, taken from holdings of the Tate Museum, has two aims. First, by exhibiting only works by women, the gallery seeks to demonstrate a "coming of age" for female artists. With more than half of the displayed works acquired by the Tate after 1985, the exhibit argues that, in this period, female artists have gained authority and stature within the art world. Barbara Kruger's print, a series of images from a sign language manual, documents the shift of women from the object of art to the producers of art with its text "We Will No Longer Be Seen and Not Heard". This, co-curator Sheila McGregor suggests, could be taken as the subtext of the exhibition.
However, the exhibition of women artists seeks to explore "coming of age" in a wider sense, looking at the influences and events that make up women's experiences. A powerful theme running through this is the self-reflection of women; powerful moments that force women to face the realities of their lives are only recognised in retrospect. This is vividly illustrated in Tracey Emin's video exhibit, Why I never became a dancer. Over flickering visuals of a dilapidated Margate seafront, Emin remembers her humiliation and shame, shattering at the time her belief in the inevitability of triumph and escape. The video ends with the Emin of today dancing in an empty flat, retrospectively celebrating victory. Similarly, Paula Rego's The Dance uses dance as a journey though past events, which then become manageable and understandable. Louise Bourgeois's series of prints tries to bring an adult understanding to a difficult childhood.
Women's need for control, or at least an understanding of uncontrollable events, is further emphasised in exhibits on childbearing. These are uncompromising in their focus, not on any Madonna-like beatification of maternal love, but on labour as an uncontrollable force upon women. Rineke Dijkstra's photographs show herself and two friends, taken one hour, one day and one week after childbirth. In all the pictures, the physical act of childbirth is painfully apparent, etched on the women's tired, stretched bodies. The children are secondary, clutching their mothers, faces away from the camera. These are pictures of women coming of age, not of children beginning their age.
However honourable the intent of the exhibition, the lack of joy is a little wearing. Vanessa Bell's female nude is surly, as if she knows Bell is going to make her bum look big in this painting. Maggi Hambling's Portrait of Frances Rose is a little more cheerful. Despite her hands, deformed by arthritis, Frances Rose looks comfortable, enjoying her role as a model. Co-curator McGregor approves: "Hambling's portrait touchingly conveys the sitter's reticence and underlying resilience."
But is this all we're left with? Reticence and underlying resilience? It made me feel a guilty longing for a Beryl Cook picture, a celebration of women who have decided to come of age disgracefully. Or the text of Jenny Joseph's magnificent testament to letting yourself go gloriously: "When I am an old woman I shall wear purple/With a red hat which doesn't go and doesn't suit me./And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves/And satin sandals and say we've no money for butter."
"Coming of Age" is at the New Art Gallery Walsall (01922 654 400) until 24 November
Post this article to
We want to encourage people to comment on our content and to exchange views with other readers and hope this will be done on a courteous basis. However, if you encounter posts which are offensive please let us know by emailing comments@newstatesman.co.uk and we will take swift action where necessary.
