Portico Press

Domestic spaces have long been an area of importance whether or not we are cued into their significance. This essay looks into how visual culture and the representation of domestic interiors can draw our attention to the impact they have on us. Visual culture points this out explicitly through the observable emphasis on objects and spaces we overlook. An examination of the environments which we see all the time can reveal the impact these places have on our moods and illuminate our behavioural patterns. Visual culture is essential in capturing these ideas in painting, photography, and drawing making possible an awareness of such “home culture”. 

Images by Carrie Mae Weems, paintings by Becky Suss, and drawings by Dawn Clements all examine ways in which we impact space and in return, how it impacts us. The relationship between the artist’s content and context emphasizes the commonality of this subject matter and the urge to express the significance of the home.  Becky Suss’s bold use of “flattened architecture, exaggerated proportions, and distorted perspective” compared to Dawn Clements highly detailed and layered work (fig 3) engage the viewer in different ways. Both artists force a meditative reflection on our homes but through very different material uses. 

Images from Carrie Mae Weems Kitchen Table series (fig 1) points to, and expressly captures, behaviour and patterns that only exist within the home in a different way than Clements and Suss.  The static placement of the camera explores shifting identities through time and the roles women exclusively play and accumulate.  Revising the table as a central spot in the home forces the viewer to contemplate why intimate actions like brushing hair, applying makeup, or reading are done primarily in the home. With the cultivation of this nurturing environment falling largely to women, it felt appropriate to explore these ideas through their point of view. 

 Fig 1 -Carrie Mae Weems, Untitled, from the Kitchen Table Series, 1990, Silver gelatin print, 10 × 9 3/4 in, Light Work, Syracuse

Similar to Carrie Mae Weems’s exploration of interior spaces, Becky Suss’s paintings (fig 2) of real and imagined interiors beg the viewers to rethink the associations we have with certain rooms.  Thought of typically as supplementary rooms, kitchens and bathrooms are reevaluated. These rooms in Suss’ work are shown to be spaces that we allow ourselves to relax in. The intimacy these spaces breed is often overlooked as a minor part of ourselves when in fact it may reflect the most authentic time we have with ourselves.

Fig 2- Becky Suss, Bathroom (Ming Green), 2016, Oil on Canvas , 84 × 60 inches, oil on canvas, Jack Shainman Gallery, New York

Dawn Clements’s drawings of her desks and tables (fig 3) reflect on the “mundane” aspects of the home which simultaneously confirm its importance. Eloquently depicted piles of paper, textiles, food, and common objects flood her huge drawings and ask the viewer to pay attention to these small items. Giving a spotlight to the objects which live with us, unnoticed and under-appreciated, Clements describes her work as “a kind of visual diary of what [she] see[s], touch[es], and desire[s].”  Clements invites the viewer into her private life and routine with the display of these objects. The way they are placed and layered, perhaps even dusty or stained indicates the frequency of usage of such things to the owner. 

Fig 3 -Dawn Clements, “Mrs. Jessica Drummond’s (‘My Reputation,’ 1946)” 2010, Ballpoint pen ink on paper, 87.5 x 240 in, Pierogi Gallery, Brooklyn

Artists have chosen to depict these spaces for centuries, but as with most work, there are hidden messages. The observation of a still life on a table becomes fluid and commonplace for the artist to produce perhaps because these are objects which they live around. The constant observation of the home cannot be said to have a limited impact on its residents. A space where we come to shelter, reset, get ready, recover, rest, and all acts of  “getting back to yourself”. These places act as a reflection of our habits and activities. The frequent representation of homes is an indication that we do indeed know the importance of home and domestic space despite how it has in the past commonly been dismissed and taken for granted. 

The work of these three artists confirm and highlight the home as a space of interest for its residents.  Informing our ‘ways of seeing’ with the use of interpretive techniques such as semiotics, vision, and visuality contextualizes how these images impact the way we understand their subject matter.  Contemplating the impact of these works through the lens of visuality encourages the use of a framework such as “how we see, how we are able, allowed, or made to see, and how we see this seeing and the unseeing” as a methodology for interpretation. Application of these ways of seeing makes us privy to our implicit understanding of these spaces and calls us to question why we intrinsically take domestic spaces for granted. 

Citations

Avant-Guardian Musings. ‘Focus on Research| The Elements of Art: Form, Content, and Context’, 5 February 2023. www dorothy barenscott com/rothybarenscott.com/2010/10/focus-on-research-elements-of-art-form.html. 

‘Becky Suss « Artists « Jack Shainman Gallery’. Accessed 18 April 2023. https:// jackshainman.com/artists/becky_suss.

Cubitt, Sean. ‘Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture by Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright. Oxford University Press, New York, 2001. 385 Pp., Illus. Trade. ISBN: 0-19-874271-1.’ 

Leonardo 35, no. 2 (April 2002): 211–12. https://doi.org/10.1162/leon.2002.35.2.211.

Genzlinger, Neil. ‘Dawn Clements, Who Put Her Life Into Her Panoramas, Dies at 60’. The New York Times, 7 December 2018, sec. Obituaries. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/07/obituaries/dawn-clements-dead.html.

Palumbo, Jacqui. ‘Revisiting Carrie Mae Weems’s Landmark “Kitchen Table Series”’. Artsy, 19 August 2020. https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-revisiting-carrie-mae-weemss- landmark-kitchen-table-series.

Pierogi Gallery. ‘Dawn Clements’, 16 March 2010. https://www.pierogi2000.com/artists/dawn-clements/.

Rose, Gillian. 2001. Visual Methodologies:An Introduction to the Interpretation of VisualMaterials. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.