Chapter 9 Familiar Brushstrokes, Different Narratives
Re-Framing Embodiment and the Futurist Free-Word Aesthetic with Stories from Female Veterans of the Canadian Armed Forces
In: Feminist Critique and the MuseumSearch for other papers by Lauren Spring in
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Abstract
When assessing gender diversity in art gallery collections, much has been written about the canonisation of works by men, the male gaze, and unbalanced sex-perspectives of our shared human past. Until recent decades much of this was taken for granted and flew under the radar and has only been brought into the light thanks to feminist critiques and interventions. One of the most unabashedly “masculine” turns throughout art history, however, has been the Italian futurist movement. Obsessed by motion and speed, and intent on glorifying violence, war and machines, futurist artists developed specific aesthetics to match the objectives laid out in their manifesto. Much of the work from this era reflects the artists’ embodied experiences fighting in WWI. One such painting, on view at the Art Gallery of Ontario, is Mer=Bataille by Gino Severini (1915). Its collage-like words of battle cries and machine gun noises attempt to provide the viewer a full-sensory glimpse into what war experience was like for Severini and others who fought alongside him. Though much has changed in military practice since 1914, the institution itself remains overwhelmingly masculine in nature. It is only in recent years that the female experience of military training, deployment, and trauma has started to come to light. For this project, researcher Lauren Spring conducted three in-depth narrative interviews with female veterans of the Canadian Armed Forces – all of whom have been diagnosed with service-related Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Recurring words from these interviews, and artistic contributions from participants themselves in response to Severini’s work were combined to paint a very different, though equally as embodied, picture of the female military experience and resulting trauma.