Ellin Pollachek

Author & Photographer

www.ellinpollachek.com

This doctoral dissertation took over 3 years to write. At the time, it didn't seem possible that I would ever complete it. Having dones so, however, I must say that it has been one of the greatest accomplishments of my life. I learned humility, discipline, incredible research techniques and finally, respect for anyone else who has achieved this most difficult accomplishment.

The dissertation, 300 pages in its entirety, is much too long to include here so I've limited the selection to the brief first chapter. If, for academic or professional reasons...or simple curiosity you want to see more please use the link on my home page and email me and I will quickly respond.

Ellin Ronee Pollachek

Sponsoring Committee:
Professor Carl Schmidt, Chairman Professor Joy Gould Boyum Professor Gerald Pryor

Program in Culture and Communications Department of Humanities

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy in the School of Education
New York University 1999

CHAPTER I

THE RESEARCH OBJECTIVE

The Problem and SubProblems

This study examined, through a method of content analysis, the critical responses to
transgressive art in two different art forms in order to identify any similarities and differences that might be perceived and what inferences could be drawn from those similarities or differences.
The following subproblems led to the completion of this study:
1. The identification, through a method of content analysis, of the criteria employed by selected
scholars and critics, when responding to transgressive literature.

2. The identification, through a method of content analysis, of the criteria employed by selected
scholars and critics, when responding to transgressive photography.

3. On the basis of the findings of research problems one and two, the criteria were compared and inferences were made regarding the responses of critics and scholars to transgressive art in two different art forms.

Rationale for the Study

This is the first interdisciplinary, or to use Wendy Steiner's word "interartistic" (1982, p. 19),
study of transgressive photography and literature in which the critical responses, rather than the art forms, are compared.

What appears to be "deceptively simple label[s]" (W.J.T. Mitchell, 1995, p. 4) are not. W. J. T. Mitchell writes that "images and words are.. .not only.. .two different kinds of representation" (1995, p. 4), they represent two "deeply contested cultural values" (1995, p. 4). Mitchell maintains that because the current cultural disposition favors the visual, the traditional "separation of 'faculties' (corporal and collegial) on the basis of sensory and semiotic divisions is becoming obsolete and is now being replaced by a notion of humanistic or liberal education as centrally concerned with the whole field of representations and representational activity" (1995, p. 6). This study is a step toward assessing whether Mitchell is correct in his theoretical position that the long-held divisions between sign-systems are obsolete.

The relationship between the reader and the text, and the text and its content (Iser, Rosenblatt, Culler, Foucault, Mitchell) significantly influenced my decision to limit the art work in this study to transgressive works of art. Transgressive texts not only provoke and, in some cases, offend their audiences, they also are an "indispensable, causal mechanism in the creation of future non-transgressive art" (Graves, 1998, p. 46).

Leslie Graves, writing about aesthetics, states that transgressive works are an essential part of conventional art because the "repudiative practices [which] have been prevalent in art history... [have ultimately been a support to art] "even if it is not altogether clear how..." (1998, p. 46).

The importance of the transgressive in art is further corroborated by Lee Quinby, author of Anti Apocalvose, who suggests that because transgressive art is a process of "questioning.. .values, especially the value of loyalty to an oppressive civilization" (1994, p. 129), it functions as positive provocateur. By introducing the transgressive component to the visual literary art-equation, I had hoped that, because of the provocative nature of the art works, whatever
differences and similarities that did exist would become more evident in the responses to the works.

Finally, in considering the rationale for this study, I could not ignore Mitchell's claim that "we
still do not know exactly what pictures are, what their relation to language is, how they operate on observers and on the world, how their history is to be understood, and what is to be done with or about them" (1995, p. 13) . Mitchell also goes one step further. Mitchell argues that although literature is made up of words and words are seen as part of a systematized way of meaningmaking, they are not. Words and pictures are both parole1 neither is “univocally coded" (1995, p. 97). Language is as much of “a medium" (1995, p. 97) as painting or film.

By comparing responses to two art forms, this study may shed light on questions regarding the
similarities and differences between art forms.

1 Langue and parole are two terms introduced by the French structuralist Ferdinand de Saussure. Langue refers to the system of language (grammar and syntax); parole refers to the language as it is used.


Selection of Art Forms and Artists

My background as a published novelist, essayist and short story writer, led me to select literature as the first art form for this study.

Photography seemed a natural second choice. I had worked as a professional photographer. Granted, my photographic talents were called upon only to accompany my travel articles, but they were called upon and paid for. I have also taken course work at the New School and, more recently, at New York University. Selecting literature and photography as my two disciplines was, therefore, not a difficult choice to make.

The number of artists to include was only slightly more problematic. I originally chose one artist from each discipline but, after further consideration, became convinced that one artist would not afford me the perspective which comparison brings. By employing two artists within each of the two art forms, a more secure foundation to compare the responses was established.

Kathy Acker was my first choice for literary artist. Ever since a friend suggested I read Kathy Goes to Haiti, an early work of Acker's, I have been attracted to her writing. I found her novels difficult to read, often unpleasant in the images presented, politically incorrect but always intelligent and amusing.

Because her novels involve heroines whose bodies, like their language, are not their own and thus disengage from themselves her work fit perfectly into the rubric of transgressive. The boundaries Acker moves are contextual as well as formal. Meaning, like the women in her novels, seems displaced. Roland Barthes' assessment that a novel is consumed and enjoyed does not apply here.

Sally Mann's work appealed to me because it is rich with innuendo. In addition, Mann is recognized as a fine technician and a fine artist. Her photography has brought with it, its own brand of criticism. It is not Mann, the artist, who has transgressed, but Mann the mother.

Sally Mann photographs her children dirty, generally naked, often hanging from things which are perceived as violating their childlike innocence. What Mann shows us is another side of childhood, one which until recently was never spoken about or, if it was, it was done so in the field of psychology. Mann's photographs not only have moved the contextual boundaries of child photography but they have moved disciplinary boundaries as well.

Although William S. Burroughs was much older than the other artists in this study, his novel Naked Lunch has long been considered a classic. Naked Lunch is a travelogue of sorts in which the book's protagonist, William Lee, is so addicted to drugs that he must leave his homeland in order to relocate to a country which will give him unlimited access to his addictive drugs. As a result, his addiction becomes stronger and he becomes more and more alienated from his body. Inhabited by inner demons, his life becomes a living nightmare.

Because fame came to Andres Serrano as a result of his notorious piss Christ, a photograph of a crucifix in urine, Serrano has never really caught up with his reputation. No matter what he does, piss Christ becomes the backdrop against which he is judged.

If one removes Serrano from the celebrity he has received and attempts to find a throughline within his work, one would find a consistency in the size of the pictures (40"x50"), their color and his religious iconography. Through pictures and texts, Andres Serrano challenges the notion that religion offers solace and, in so doing, joins his art with Foucault's notions of the transgressive.

The notion that even God cannot save us from death seems to be in the forefront of Serrano's art. But Serrano doesn't stop there. He challenges "the sacralization of art" (Quinby, 1994, p. 121), as well.

2 William S. Burroughs, like Kathy Acker, was alive when I began this study. William S. Burroughs died on August 2, 1997 at the age of 83. Kathy Acker died on November 30, 1997 at the age of 54.

Method

Content analysis allows for "making replicable and valid inferences from data to their context" (Krippendorf, 1980, p. 21) and was the method of analysis selected for this dissertation. The Modes of Inquiry Discourses Descriptors (MIDD), the specific type of content analysis employed, was designed by Carl Schmidt of New York University to make aesthetic
inquiries.

Selection of Reviews

In an effort to assure that the selection of reviews was unbiased, I generated a computer search at the Bobst Library at New York University requesting any and all information written in English about the four artists included in this study. In addition to the Bobst search, I searched Dissertation Abstracts, Modern Language Association, the "New York Times Index" and the
"Art Index" at Cooper Union Library.

With the exception of William S. Burroughs, all the artists in this study have been producing works during this past decade. Because I wanted the reviews to reflect similar time-relationships between production and review, one criterion of this study was that the review of the work had to appear within five years of the original publication or public showing of the work.

The reviews varied in length. Some were as short as seven lines, others as long as 255 lines. I
accepted the challenge of the longer reviews but limited the shorter reviews to a minimum of thirteen lines feeling that a review of less than thirteen lines would not afford the reviewer to focus her attention on more than a few issues.

Group reviews were excluded from this study. Because this study was designed to analyze the responses to each artist's work, a group review would invariably focus not on a single artist's work but on some element which was common to all the artists within the group. An example of a review which I originally intended to include in the study, only to find out that it was a group review, was Catherine Liu's "In the Realm of the Senses." Liu's review included the works of Sally Mann, Aimee Rankin and Cindy Sherman and focused on the "field of vision.. .usurped... [by] the violence of the image" (1988, p. 100).

Also disqualified were interviews, unsigned reviews or reviews signed as "editor."

The reviews under consideration appeared in mainstream, discipline specific and scholarly publications. The New York Times, The Villaqe Voice and New York magazine were seen as mainstream publications. Flash Art, Artforum and the New York Review of Books fall into a second category which I characterized as discipline-specific. Scholarly and university publications were originally going to count as a separate category but the only artist whose work appeared in such publications was Kathy Acker. Not wanting to exclude scholarly reviews, I integrated them into the discipline-specific category.

Once the process of separating reviews which could be admitted for analysis was over, mainstream reviews were separated from the discipline-specific reviews. I separated the two groups thinking that the type of publication in which a work appeared might influence the writer's foci and orientations of attention. If one artist's work only appeared in mainstream publications and another artist's work appeared in both mainstream and scholarly publications, the responses might differ as a result of the types of publications in which the reviews appeared. I wanted to avoid that from happening.

The actual selection of the reviews took place as follows:

. The reviews for each artist were divided into two columns. Those which appeared in mainstream publications appeared in one column, those which appeared in discipline-specific and scholarly publications appeared in another.

. The reviews were alphabetized by the last name of the author of the review.

. The list was divided by four and the review which fell on the divisible number was selected. For example, if a list had 28 names on it, the seventh, fourteenth, twenty-first and twenty-eighth review was selected for analysis. However, if only four reviews appeared on the search, all four were selected for analysis.

. Every effort was made to remove reviews from the list which would not qualify for the study, however some slipped through and were removed after the list was compiled.

. It is important to note that the reviews were analyzed over a period of time. Some of the reviews were found to be inappropriate when the analysis was almost complete. In those instances, the review either following or preceding the originally selected review was the one analyzed and used for the study.

Appendix E on page 278 lists all of the reviews uncovered by the search.

Definitions

Transgression or transgressive. Chapter II, The Related Literature, is an effort to describe the transgressive in literary and visual texts. Because it is ever changing and involves a "play of limits... [which] incessantly crosses and recrosses a line which closes up behind it.” (Foucault, 1977, pp. 33-34) the definition cannot be limited to a single idea. Chapter II examines the term in relation to the problems of this study.

Text refers to any literary or visual work.

Delimitations

The results of my findings cannot be generalized to all transgressive art. Rather, in an effort to determine how a reading of transgressive visual art is similar or different from a reading of transgressive literary art, this study will allow me, as well as other researchers, to generate questions and hypotheses leading to further studies.


(In order to read any of the subsequent 280 pages, please email me or go to any university library and order it on an inter-library loan.)