March 10 Clare (Huang Lu)---Maureen Connor Thinner than You 1990

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•By Maureen Connor (1990)
•Stainless & Cloth (Sculpture)
•60 x 17 x 7 ½ inches
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•Maureen Connor (American, 1947- )
•is a New York-based artist who has been active as a visual artist for over two decades. Her work has been exhibited in Europe and across the United States.
•Especially explore in the psychic stresses that accompany eating
disorders, excessive plastic surgeries, restrictive
clothing, and other self-punishing attempts at conforming
to the social ideal.
•Important to current explorations of sexuality's social construction

A dress
•A tightly stretched dress

An extremely exaggeratedly restricted pencil dress
A woman’s dress whose femininity is obliviously displayed

A dress emptily hung on the clothes rack

1. Thinness– valued highly as a significantly characteristic of attractive female body
2. Anorexia & Bulimia 厭食症—extreme
consequence
3. Restrictions and pressure on
nowadays women to strive for
extreme thinness.

The artist here exaggerates the quality of thinness to such a degree that its positive value is being questioned. The sexual ideal of modern society for women is defined within incredibly narrow parameters—they must be thin, young and fit—and this parameters puts enormous pressure on women to strive for this ideal, though those goals are quite unrealistic. Alison Ferris, a critic said, “her art points directly to the extreme consequences of the current fitness and slimming mania—anorexia and bulimia” these two words refer to a kind of disease that their patients hate eating and often result in extreme thinness.

Anorexics represent a culturally imposed ideal of the body. There are examples of how oppressive it is to have a single model of desirability for women. It is one of contemporary Artists’ responsibilities to work to destroy traditional cultural ideas and myths.
Besides thinness and its Pathological Behaviors, I think the stretched figure of the dress also indicates women’s bodies suffer all kinds of tortures in order to meet various social standards and restrictions. Their bodies have been distorted under great pressure.

•A women’s dress
3. The judge: male
4.The information disseminator信息傳播者: mass media (power of publicity)
5. Women’s role: conform to prevalent images to avoid being marginalized or ignored
6. Consumerism &Consumer culture ( women’s bodies being commodified)

One is the judge for beauty—men, they have the right to determine what is thinness and what is beauty; the other one is the information disseminator—the mass media, who spread the beauty standards and provoke the narrow standards of beauty and sexual attractiveness, that is thinness and youth. The mass media also links the thin female bodies to successful relationship. There was a research from Michigan State University showing that (thin female characters in television programs are more likely to have a romantic relationship than the fat ones) and I conclude the influence of men and mass media into the definition of consumer culture and the women became the victim of consumer culture. Because in order to avoid being marginalized or ignored, they have to conform to prevalent images and can’t control their own destiny. Women’s bodies have become commodities being consumed by men.

•A women’s dress
7. Women’s bodies: sexual objects to men
the nude women’s bodies shown in Western painter’s classic art to various sexual elements in present pop art as to satisfy men’s sexual desire
Men’s gaze on women’s bodies

he commodification of women’s bodies began long time ago. In many western painters’ classic artworks, we see the elegant nude bodies of women. In present days, women’s naked bodies are frequently shown or implicated in all kinds of art and commercial activities. Women are considered as the sexual objects of men. Men’s gaze on women’s naked bodies never disappeared.

•A hollow dress
8. Symbolize the separation of soul and body

“Traditional western sculpture tended to portray the soul in the body-or rather, the body ensouled…”

NOW: no soul but only the body.
The body is an empty vessel, an empty shell
Hollow body, empty body

Lost in the modern world & spiritual emptiness

i think the artist intended to suggest modern people’s soul are separated from body because the great pressure of modern society. the hollowness and loneliness of this dress indicates the our lost and spiritual emptiness.

•Quotes
•Thinner than You, and Wishing Well, have massive elements at their base. What do they stand for, big feet by chance?
•M - Yes, or a testicle... the bottom of the dress contains pennies.
•J - Why do you call it a testicle, isn't this a female dress?
•M - Well, it is about a woman as depository, as container. Men ejaculate inside of the women. This is clothing, so it could represent her interior as much as a pocket.

•My own opinions
•Simple but profound
•From the title: thinner than YOU
Comparative degree: no better, just best
•We should be the owner of our own bodies
•A more mature reflection on consumerism

Websites
•http://www.curatedobject.us/the_curated_object_/2009/08/-exhibitions-katonah-dress-codes-clothing-as-metaphor-katonah-museum-of-art-new-york-the-curated-obj.html
•http://www.lacan.com/frameVIII14.htm
•http://www.wavehill.org/arts/maureen_connor.html
•http://www.wavehill.org/arts/maureen_connor.html
•http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1248/is_n4_v83/ai_16862130/?tag=content;col1
Books
•Isaak, Jo Anna, Feminism & Contemporary Art, Routledge, 1996
•Edited by Pollock, Griselda, Generations and Geographies in the Visual Arts—Feminist Reading, Routledge, 1996
•Edited by Robinson, Hilary, Feminism Art Theory, Blackwell, 2001
• Pollock, Griselda, Vision and difference : femininity, feminism, and histories of art / Griselda Pollock London ; New York : Routledge, 1988
•Doss, Erika, Twenties-Century American Art, Oxford University Press, 2002
Artworks
•Connor, Maureen, Wishing Well, 1990; Ensemble for Three Female Voices, 1990-1991; Lung Rack, 1988

•Why a dress?
•As a metaphorical substitute /metaphor to female’s body

A challenge to traditional way of representing body
Clothing: the mediator between body and culture---“It is always either the mediator between the body and culture which is clothing, or the part which is repressed, inside, the interior of the body. It is a whole other world inside the body, this is how I think of it.” by Maureen Connor