Louise
Bourgeois | Niki de Saint Phalle
| Eva Hesse | Rebecca
Horn
Yayoi Kusama
|
Annette Messager | Jessica
Stockholder
from the Museum of Modern Art and Los Angeles County Museum of Art catalog
Annette
Messager
Annette
Messager was born in 1943 in France. She attended the École des Arts Décoratifs,
but was eventually asked to leave as she spent more time at museums and
movie theaters than at school. In her installations, Messager makes use
of photography (her's and others'), drawing, knitting, embroidery, sewing
and objects she has collected.
Her work often involves fragments, such as My
Vows, which includes an large number of small close-up pictures of
parts of the body. This tendency to fragment and catalog is everywhere
in her work. She catalogues ink blots, pictures of children with their
eyes scratched out and her own children's drawings. She embroiders mysoginist
French proverbs and does drawings based on popular media depictions of
happiness. These are sometimes included in albums or encased in glass
and framed.
The individual elements of these catalogs are like small snapshots of the themes Messager deals with- issues of sexual and physical abuse, fragmentation of the body, sin, obsession with appearances, fairy tales, children, symbols, effigies, disguise, distortion, repetition. These all connect to issues surrounding women. The work is often executed using "women's" materials and techniques.
The example here, Untitled, from 1993 is comprised of mosquito netting, taxidermized animals, fabric and string. Here we peek in on a strange fairy tale scene with a threatening atomosphere. The scene takes place under soft, concealing mosquito netting. It often appears that Messager is attempting to soften the cruelty she portrays by obscuring it or using nonthreatening materials. However, using innocuous objects or materials often intensifies the disturbing qualities as we see the familiar being made to represent evil. The taxidermized animals in Untitled wear fabric hoods, reminiscent of executioners or the Ku Klux Klan. They surround a smaller stuffed animal as if it was an impostor. These dead animals, however, in their artificially preserved state, have no more life than the stuffed toy.
