MacArthur Fellow Case Study No. 1

A look at the work of Joan Snyder

I have no problem with abstract art. In fact, I love it. I’m a practitioner as well.

I also think Joan Snyder is good. Some of her work is very good. It’s in the eye of the beholder. I wouldn’t call her a genius, though. Her ideas aren’t original. Her paintings take the urban landscape of Basquiat- crude figures juxtaposed with clever phrases ( I also like much of Basquiat’s work)- and replaces them with angry feminism, usually with an introitus painted right in the middle.

The introitus could be viewed or even used as objectification of women, a real no-no in the world of feminism but that clearly isn’t the intention here, so we’ll leave it at that. But let a man paint this shape in the middle of his canvas? The feminists will rain hellfire down on him. There is a little bit of n-word logic going on here. My own view, (for what it’s worth,) is that the word is disgusting and shouldn’t be used by anyone.

But not female anatomy. In fact, roughly half the population possesses it. Straight teenage boys are obsessed with it; even, uh, sixty-year-old men. It never ends. Nevertheless, these paintings preceeded, but are in the vein of, the Vagina hats and full vulva get-ups worn by the protesters at the anti-Trump rallies. It was self-humiliation ; definitely not the way to go, given the objective of the rallies which were, at least in part, to protest Trump’s “grab them by the P…” objectification.

Joan Snyder’s depictions of female anatomy may come from the same place but are painterly and in some cases, mildly appropriate for her audience . She is appealuing to angry feminists no matter how antithetical the symbol appears to the outside for a group supposedly dedicated to treating women with respect and measuring them for what they contribute as people, not as sexual gratification objects for men.

It’s really a confusing mess. To me, anyway.

And very confusing to young daughters everywhere. If these were considered great works of art painted by one of the great contemporary female artists of the 2000’s (remember, it was a “genius grant” she received) and presented to young girls as such, imagine the differences between what might go through their minds vs what a young boy would think. If you don’t think art is for children or this is “grown-up art” , imagine what goes through a young boy’s mind when he sees the Statue of David or a greek statue of a beautiful woman.

Art is very personal and I’m clearly not getting it , about why a vulva is painted in the middle of so many of these canvases. They were obviously painted by a woman; just look at her palette, full of pinks, lavenders, mauves, yellows and light blues and it obviously strikes a chord with angry feminists, feminists and maybe even women who are neither of these, maybe? But I suspect most women who wish for great things for their daughters don’t want them to see these paintings labeled as the greatest produced by women artists.

I’ll leave you with one that has no obvious female genitalia since most of her paintings do not.

A good work of art to many but not great and not genius.

I’m afraid Joan Snyder, in true MacArthur grant-fashion, is being rewarded for her wokeism, not her works of art and I still can’t get past the seemingly contradictory use of female sexual genitalia. The equivalent for males would be a penis painted in the center with “male colors” all around, surrounding “male words- whatever is analogous to the prefix, “mam”. But that isn’t what we get. We give our young boys, depictions of conquering heroes. The statue of David, for example.