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Unraveling Fairy Tale Fallacies
The works now adorning the walls at 323 East cover an impressive gamut of ideas, emotions and imagery, but in the end everything boils down to the F word.
Not as in Freud — and certainly not as in Friedan. Think Fontaine (or, if you prefer, La Fontaine). As in fairy tales. As in fears. And most importantly, as in female.
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"The dark fairy tale theme comes from the idea that in fairy tale, fantasy and even some bedtime stories, there is always constant evil lurking in the shadows," explains curator April Segedi. "No matter how good that gingerbread house looks, how sweet that apple may taste or how handsome that prince on horseback may be, you should never trust the false glamour these objects may hold."
Indeed, false glamour and superficial innocence — the eternal patina of "once upon a time" — are the recurring motifs of these canvases.
The shadows of childhood linger long for every adult person, but the most ominous and haunting shadows are invariably those that darken (or ironically illuminate) a female artist's works. One has only to appreciate the fitting name of Grimm in connection with a number of well-known tales to glimpse an eternal truth — that a woman will always resort to the weapons at hand to wrestle herself away from the grasp of demons. This is an even more poignant lesson to ponder when the weapons are her own discerning eye and a brush daubed with color. Hence, the exhibit is a visual symposium on these and many other parallel matters. Does that make it a feminist show by design or default then?
"It was not my intention to have this show deal with feminism per se, but in a way it does. All the artists in the show are women and the art they are producing have female subjects and heroines. Fairy tales sometimes depict women as damsels in distress, but judging by the works we've received these 'damsels' are not going to need help from a shiny white knight on his mighty steed. But most of all, I wanted this exhibit to showcase great female artists from around the world. Some of them were already on my radar and some I found through research. I made a long list of everyone I saw as a good fit for the show and simply reached out to them. I wasn't expecting them all to say yes — but they did!"
The participating female artists (drawn from Detroit, California, New York, France, Australia and elsewhere) have striven to find a key — a personal and general one — that deciphers the puzzle of identity. The images they offer up are menacing and ambiguous, soft and dreamlike, familiar and uncanny. And if the enigma of self is still a beguiling sphinx in the end, we can at least rejoice that future attempts at decipherment will prompt even more works in the future by these remarkably talented women. The glass may break, the cinders may scatter, but the withering roses will still offer up thorns to serve as swords. | RDW
Robert would like you to read him a bedtime story. Email him: Robert@realdetroitweekly.com
Glass, Cinder & Thorns • Opens 3/20, 6 -11 p.m; runs thru 4/18 • 323 East Gallery • 323 E. Fourth Street, Royal Oak • 248.246.9544 • 323East.com
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