I shall be visiting the 'Casa das Historias' Gallery in Lisbon in April to see the work of Paula Rego and will write all about this while I am out there. However, prior to this...
(I ask that no one use any of this text without my consent)
Paula Rego’s work is an
entanglement of both real and imagined stories and, like an allegorical
collage, the characters and plots will change as she makes the work. Her
work from the 1980’s in particular, focuses more on the woman and the role the
woman plays within the family and society. The narratives in her work almost
always take place in a seemingly domestic and ordinary setting, giving the
sinister layers which underlie her work even more of a sense of power and fear
which, in turn, seems to ensure that the ‘the personal always becomes political’.
The fact that such ordinary settings can be the basis for such disturbing
narratives, guarantee that the viewer connects with the piece on a very
personal level thus making it seem even more powerful.
Rego
‘depicts mental outlooks more than people’.
When viewing Rego’s work, it invites one almost to inhabit the piece as the
content resonates with elements in one’s own life. It is not something from
which one can easily stand apart. One is also never entirely sure about
the scene taking place since her finished works are not simple illustrations
but instead something that must be interpreted and analysed- ‘the characters
and events change and develop as she works’
. For
example, in Rego’s painting ‘The Family’ which depicts a man being manhandled
by his wife and daughter, it is uncertain whether they are deliberately and
maliciously hurting him or simply trying to help him. If the wife and daughter
are attacking him, the viewer is left unsure as to whether the man will be able
to escape. The only clue may be held in
the
Portuguese tableaux featuring St. Joan, and St George slaying the dragon on the
dresser behind the figures and in the fable of the stork and the fox
illustrated beneath. Yet the viewer again remains unsure if the man’s outcome will
mirror that of the slayed dragon, or the fox- who ate the stork once it had
removed the bone stuck in his throat
. The
static narrative given leaves the viewer in a state of uncertainty because ‘there
is no end to a story, it unfolds all the time’
.
The stories told in Rego’s work have never ended and
continue to be analysed and adapted today. In an interview with the Guardian
in 2002, Rego uses
her husband as an example of the enduring nature that stories can have through
art. She asserts “Vic’s story hasn’t ended, it goes on and on. He is always
there in my pictures, his voice in my head -The stories will continue to at
once be transformed by both themselves and us ‘in life and art”
.
Although she never plans to produce more than one canvas, Rego often develops
many of her initial pieces into a more complex series, often in the form of a
triptych. Unlike the traditional narrative painters however, Rego does not
strictly stick to the conventions of this form and her triptych work still
remains inconsistent; a good example of work by Rego in this form are her
pastel works of ‘The Pillowman’.
When discussing the artist Gwen John, the point was made
by Alicia Foster that
an individual’s letters and art can ‘be used and manipulated to fulfil certain
needs and desires’ and that identities can be constructed ‘from a choice of
different historical images and values’
. This is
one of the very essences of Calle’s work as she invites and encourages the
viewer to see, read and interpret her factual narratives- ‘she situates the
work of art in a terrain that can be likened to film and literature’
. Calle
manipulates her own art in order for it to be manipulated by us and promotes
the idea that art and life itself can and should be, interpreted and
re-interpreted. For works of art ‘being interpreted and re-interpreted is their
destiny’
.
Germaine Greer, spoke of ‘the
effort to present a violent and subversive personal vision in acceptable
decorative terms’, which would be an accurate analysis of the aims of Rego in
her work. Rego makes no attempt to search for a rational explanation in the
narratives in her work, nor does she take a character’s side. This aspect of
her work itself is reflected in her own life. In 1953, 18 years old and a
student at The Slade, she fell pregnant by a married Victor Willing who would
later become her husband and with whom she would have three children. When she
told him about the pregnancy, he abandoned her and went back to his wife for a
further two years. Despite being abandoned by him however, in an interview with
The Guardian in 2002, she states that “I didn’t think there was anything wrong
with his behaviour. I think. Well, I don’t think to tell you the truth.”
She comments that she was “...always very obedient... I always did what I was
told to. When he told me to take my knickers off, I did”. As she recounts this
story one cannot help but feel she was the victim in the events, emotionally
powerless to the more mature Victor Willing yet there is no suggestion of
self-pity in her recounting of the time.
Rego does not simply use her own personal experiences in her
work but rather draws from a collection of female experience, using literature,
film and myth as her inspiration. This concoction of well known stories, fairy
tales and the everyday allows a variety of women viewing her work to feel more
personally engaged with it. Rego’s portrayal of women not only confronts the
viewer visually but also emotionally. Rego conveys the darkness of everyday
life, giving her paintings sexual undertones without ever having to show nudity
or even openly erotic behaviour.
Rego’s 1994 series of pastels portraying ‘dog women’ show
women seemingly behaving like dogs yet these women are not being depicted as
downtrodden or suppressed. She says: “To be a dog woman is not necessarily to
be downtrodden; that has very little to do with it...In these pictures every
woman's a dog woman, not downtrodden, but powerful. To be bestial is good. It's
physical. Eating, snarling, all activities to do with sensation are positive.
To picture a woman as a dog is utterly believable."
As a
woman, being ‘feminine’ is something which is very visual and so by showing a
woman in such an unfeminine yet physical way, one could perceive that Rego is
empowering women. One of the most intriguing elements of these pieces is the
male presence which is so strongly felt yet not seen- for surely a dog must
have a master. There is the suggestion of unused potential in all of these
women, perhaps challenging therefore the women viewing these pieces to think of
their own power and potential. One of Rego’s reviewers commented that “...Quite
a lot of male art explores the way in which men can be attracted to women while
at the same time fearing and/or disliking them. These pictures involve
something close to a reversal of that”
One can argue that the fundamental force in Paula Rego’s
work is based around gender. As was mentioned earlier however, this will always
remain inextricably intertwined with politics, religion and culture. In Victor
Willing's words “...All the time in Paula’s pictorial dramas things are going
wrong (but) the accumulating disasters somehow adds up to a survival. The
underlying drive in much of Rego’s work is gender based.” By understanding the
drive and hostility towards the gender power struggle that goes on throughout
Rego’s work, one can perhaps have a deeper understanding of the political and
cultural messages also contained within.
Works such as ‘The Dance’ of 1988 depict a variety of female
roles and explore how identity may be constructed through the relationships
that exist among women as well as those between women and men. The painting
‘The Dance’ illustrates the various roles performed by women. Each of the women
shown represents a different role, such as a mother, lover, companion or
individual in her own right. Paula Rego has grouped the women in such a way
that one is conscious of the different roles being played out just by observing
the body language, facial expression and positioning of the characters in this
piece. The woman to the far left stands alone, in a defiant and strong
position, while in contrast to this the woman to her far left appears dependent
on the man with whom she is dancing. We are unable to see this woman’s face,
giving her anonymity. This almost gives the impression that she is no longer
her own person and has perhaps in some way lost her identity to the man. Further
away from this grouping two women and a
small girl dance with one another in a circle. Both women are staring lovingly
at the girl. One of the women is clearly much older and could perhaps be the
other woman’s mother, who could in turn be the mother of the girl, which points
to the pasts and futures of the two. One is unable to see the girl’s face
clearly, although one can almost see her profile, possibly illustrating the
continuing growth of the girl’s identity and her unsure future. At a first
glance, the couple to the far right of this painting appear close. While the
man is gazing lovingly at the woman however, she is staring into the distance
in an extremely pensive manner and the man’s eyes do not actually appear to
quite meet the woman’s face. The movement of the characters in this piece helps
to convey the relationship between them all, the ever changing nature of these relationships
and the suggestion of the ever changing gender power struggle.
Rego feels that illustration is an
integral aspect of all art “...since pictures have always been about stories”.
It is because of this that Rego has always admired English social satirists
such as Hogarth. Rego’s work focuses specifically on female roles and in
particular those of daughters and their relationships with their mothers. She
challenges traditional pre-conceptions by making one question the story
unfolding before their eyes. As Katy
Deepwell says in ‘Women Artists and Modernism’, There is no standardized
relationship between a woman and her mother or a woman’s understanding of being
a mother during the twentieth century and so one cannot assign such
relationships to particular categories’. This can be accounted for in the way
the concept of mothering has adapted with social policy, psychoanalytic theory
and medicine- among many other things.
Rego explores this shifting relationship throughout much of her work, delving
into the power struggle in female relationships and in particular the influence
the relationship with one’s mother can have on the development of personal
identity for a girl experiencing the transition into becoming a young woman.
Rego’s 1995 ‘Snow White’ series
evidences the power shifts between Snow White and her Stepmother through a
narrative that takes place across five different paintings. Although Rego has
used a well known fairy tale, popularised by Walt Disney’s films, her very
sinister and figurative painting places the narratives telling of these in her
work, in bleak contrast to the stories we know so well from fairy tales and
children’s films. The fact that the stories retain a sense of familiarity and
one can at once recognise the children’s fairy tale that is being told, gives
the events that are taking place even more of a disturbed edge. Seeing these
adapted, contradicting and twisted narratives for the first time is akin to
revisiting a place from a childhood memory and having the heavy realisation
that something is not quite exact, that the things you thought you saw and
remembered from before have their own alternate reality, one that is wholly out
of your control. Rego said in 1996 in an interview with The Independent that “I
haven’t changed the essence of the story. I’ve just told it differently from
the film; and in the tale of Snow White that is the psychological war which is
taking place between these two-generations of women”.
Rego’s reworking of ‘Marriage a La Mode’ (The Betrothal:
Lessons: The Shipwreck) transforms Hogarth’s work into a contemporary piece as
relevant today as it was during the eighteenth century. Although Hogarth’s
‘Marriage a La Mode’ remains a relevant tale and is likely to remain so, its
adaptation by Rego contributed a female perspective on the story, giving it a
modern twist. In addition to this, in Rego’s version, rather than the men
organising the marriage and so being the initiators of the disaster which later
entails it, she portrays women negotiating the ‘devilish contract’
resonating her consistent theme of mothers- the mothers generally getting a
“pretty bad press”
.
In Rego’s adaptation of Hogarth’s ‘Marriage a La Mode’ she
has preserved the theme of the doomed arranged marriage but set it in 1940’s
Portugal. While reversing the role of the parents so that it is the mothers’ of
the children making the marriage contract, Rego has also reversed the financial
situations of the families. The girl’s family is upper-middle class but they
have now lost the wealth they once had while the boy’s newly rich mother was
once the maid of the girl’s family. Although Rego has transferred the power the
men possess in Hogarth’s ‘Marriage A La Mode’ onto the women, the image of a
man reflected in the mirror of the first piece of this triptych could perhaps
still be an ominous reminder of the power men retain today and their underlying
influence in this arranged marriage. The mirror is also a powerful symbol as it
could be a reference to what one believes they can see or what they hope to see
in the future.
In great contrast to Hogarth’s ‘Marriage a La Mode’, the
male depicted in Rego’s work is shown as being extremely weak and dependent on
the women surrounding him. This is captured in the first piece of the series
where the male is shown hiding behind his mother, as though seeking her
protection, and again, in the last of the series, where he is shown lying
helplessly in the lap of his wife. The position of the girl in the first piece
also comes across as being quite helpless and doll-like. This position is
imitated in the last piece once she has been emotionally and physically crushed
by her husband’s failure with him lying across her and preventing her from any
movement if she is to remain supporting him. The girl, who was originally
staring down at the floor, now a woman, stares off to the side as though
contemplating the life that she could have had. The room around them is
disorderly, reflecting the emotional chaos the two are now in. The snarling cat
standing at the forefront of the painting simply adds to this feeling of chaos
and irretrievable loss.
After viewing this work, one is left with the feeling that
the selfish, short-sightedness of the women organising the marriage played to
the ultimate downfall of their own children: The girl in particular is
ultimately the one forced to pay for their oppression. The second piece of this
series conveys the vanity of the girl’s mother as she gazes at her reflection
in the mirror with pride and arrogance. Her vanity is further emphasised by the
expression of her daughter as she gazes into the mirror which is simply that of
deep thought and innocence. This piece is an effective example of Rego’s
depiction of women and of their strengths and weaknesses. Having adapted it
from a work by William Hogarth, one is able to see even more clearly the way in
which Rego has made it her own personal work. Her adaptation encourages one to
think further than the traditional story of ‘Marriage a La Mode’ presented by
Hogarth, as the relationships between each of the characters has been much more
clearly expressed within the composition and so is a much more emotional piece.
It goes beyond exploring the morals of the situation, venturing into the
interaction between the four people and the role reversal and power shifts
taking place over the course of the work.
“My movements were dictated by decisions to do with leaving
men and being with men” states Calle. She tells us that she travelled to
communities in the Cevennes, Crete, Central America, Mexico, the Ardeche, The
United States and Canada all because of various men she was with or, sometimes,
men she was simply trying to forget. It wasn’t until she was twenty-six when
she discovered photography that she was able to cease doing this.
As Rego is quoted as saying in
Paula
Rego’s Map of Memory, ‘I am Portuguese. I live in London, I like living
in London, but I am Portuguese’ (Rodriguez Da Silva, 1988, 11) Rego therefore
defines herself by her nationality and in her work, is profoundly influenced by
the politics both past and present of her birth country and by its culture,
mores and religious observances. This is clearly seen in the themes of her work
such as her series on abortion in 1998-9.
Although the strong themes of gender issues and rights remain in this work, a
more finely attuned level of understanding is retained from the knowledge that
the artist who painted these is Portuguese- given the political and religious
background of the country. Rego’s paintings from the 1960’s such as ‘ The
Salazar Vomiting the Homeland’ and ‘When We Used To Have A House In The
Country’, also serve to show her anger towards the oppressive regime that was
then in its final decade ruling over Portugal.
The tension between ‘external
conformity and internal revolt’
was an important aspect of her childhood in Portugal, where she was born in
1953, three years into the dictatorship of Antonio De Oliveira Salazar. Rego
says that it was here she learned “...you never asked questions, you never
answered back” and also the command that secrets could have:
It is this that has become the core element of her work today.
Combining these cultural and political scenes with the
seemingly every day narrative, Rego captures the viewer in a far more intimate
way than had she simply illustrated more literal representations of the
oppressive effect the regime of Portugal, during the 1900’s, had on women.
In 1940 the Church and State together signed
an agreement that Portuguese women should have only one woman as a role model
from whom to emulate and that that woman should be the Virgin Mary. Women were
pressured into obeying the male as the head of the household and submit to
‘domesticity, chastity and obedience’
and
this was all enforced through legislation on marriage, divorce and employment
law passed through at this time.
In many ways all of the work Rego has created has
undercurrents of continual revolt against this regime that is so symbolic of
male dominance. Throughout her life Rego had to contend with this male power on
a personal level. Her acceptance of the fact that Victor Willing went back to
his wife, after she had fallen pregnant with his child at eighteen, and her own
descriptions of first meeting Willing, shows the way in which she utterly
relinquished all of her power to him - a way which was ordinary and natural to
her. She could not put any blame onto Willing for what he had done to her
because she had surrendered herself to him and she had come from a world in
which men were the ones with the authority.
Throughout her life Rego allowed the males closest to her to take
control but through her paintings she takes back that control and dominance. It
is as though Rego’s work is an act of revenge. Victor Willing himself said that
she ‘punishes’ people with her paintings.
The
use of women in Rego’s work has been strongly influenced by her childhood
experiences as she felt that, as an artist, her mother was often
‘discriminated against’ and that ‘art was
man’s work’
.
Paula Rego therefore set about portraying life through her work from a woman’s
psychological point of view, exploring the roles of mothers, sisters and
daughters- contrasting scenes of female oppression with scenes of female
dominance. Women everywhere are able to recognise themselves in Paula’s work
yet the women she grew up with in Portugal are also reflected in her work,
recognised for their ‘compassion, stoicism and bravery’
in a
way that they never have been previously- but also recognised for their weak
and negative facets, their ‘coquetry, duplicity and cruelty’
. Rego
herself stated that she uses Portuguese models for her work because, not only
does she identify with them, she has a ‘profound admiration’ for them,
particularly their bravery since they have to endure such hard lives. Rego has
also always felt a connection with ordinary working people and as a child
‘always identified with the people’
who
worked at her grandparent’s home in Ericeira. Her connection with these people
was further intensified when she returned as a woman to live there and she was
able to witness and value the extent of the hardships women suffered first
hand.
To quote from ‘Tales from a True
Life Class’; “
She continues to investigate what it
means to be female with emotional sophistication and unflinching strength.”
It is almost as though, through her painting, Rego is taking back a bit of the
power these women have lost.
Primarily also, Rego is a
storyteller. Less of a storyteller of autobiographical events she instead
records complex relationships and emotions, which will often have been
experienced by the viewer themselves. It is because of this that one is able to
feel an immediate connection with Paula Rego’s work and the stories she tells.
Rego’s love of stories was first nurtured by her grandparent’s and she vividly
remembers her grandfather’s stories being “horrific”; “he’d speak of things
coming alive in the dark and creeping through windows”.
She also remembers her Aunt Ludgera’s stories, which had an added twist to them
when her Aunt would make her stories ‘real’ by dressing up in costumes of the
characters from them- this was so convincing and unexpected that Rego was often
left wondering whether her Aunt’s stories had in fact come to life (or had in
fact, life come to them?). These stories remain to have a profound influence on
Rego’s artwork, the roots of which lie in this “immemorial tradition of
storytelling”.
