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Elina Brotherus

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Elina Brotherus

 

Model Study 5 by Elina Brotherus.

Dimensions: 105x85cm | Year: 2004 | Edition:6

There is no doubt that aesthetics can be used to dazzle.  Taunting or even deceiving us into thinking a piece of work is ‘great’ and then leave us wanting for some substance after the initial thrill has worn off.  This is a trend I see often linked to areas such as graphic design or in-vogue art magazines and it tends to be a flash in the pan.  So when I see the arena of aesthetics doing justice to context and meaning, I start to take note.

Elina Brotherus’ series ‘Model Studies’ is an apt description of what she is trying to do, positioning herself with the old masters in her ambition to understand form in order to convey something of the here and now.  They are thoughtful and concentrated ‘studies’ of art technique, history and the human form and the artist’s relationship with the sitter; in this case self-portraiture.

I’m especially interested in the way an artist looks at a model, the ‘artist’s gaze’ which is neither the male gaze nor the female gaze but something neutral, observing, scrutinising, sometimes surprised or admiring.
In the double portraits of artist and model I try to make this gaze visible. In addition, Artist and her model points to the double identity I have in my photographs: since my very beginning in the 90’s, the artist and the model have often been one and the same.
Elina Brotherus

The detail of the shutter release cable in some of these images draws me in. Gustave Flaubert said “The artist must be in his work as God is in creation, invisible and all-powerful; one must sense him everywhere but never see him.” Brotherus, as a creator, is attempting the opposite. She is not trying to remove her artistic voice from the picture but instead to become part of it, to enter her subject matter and reference herself.  Perhaps God would approve.
This is all quite postmodern in a sense.  The referencing of the medium within the work has become part of the study of photography for decades; photographology to be Oxbridge about it.
Roland Barthes famously contrasted the studium and the punctum in his essay Camera Lucida.  He argues that the punctum within a photograph is an irrational personal connection, an instinctual gravitation to an image which you can’t explain whereas the studium is a more formally constructed and considered means of making a ‘good photograph’.  With everyone obsessed with the punctum I often wonder what is so wrong with the studium?  It seems to me that Brotherus is wondering the same thing and doing her best to bring it back to the fore and give it the kudos it deserves.  I think she’s succeeding!  What about you?

Artist and Model Reflected in a Mirror 1, by Elina Brotherus

Dimensions: 130x104cm | Year: 2007 | Edition 6

Images used by kind permission from the artist.

See Elina’s new book here and watch a fascinating video of her at work here.


Posted by author: Sharon

22 thoughts on “Elina Brotherus

  • The book looks excellent – a shame it’s so expensive. The video is very interesting to watch. Elina seems so unselfconscious in her nudity, and workwomanlike. Maybe that’s what happens when you have allowed yourself to be gazed upon for some length of time so dispassionately. And the urge/fascination to gaze upon and explore someone’s body with your eyes, without sexual intent, judgment or comparison. If that’s allowed, again for sufficient length of time, does the fascination disappear? Does the person beneath the skin reveal him/herself more clearly?

  • Hi Catherine,
    I know! Your questions are just what went through my mind as I watched it. Thankfully I will be able to ask her them soon as I will be interviewing her. I’ll send you the link but it won’t be for a while.

  • What I found interesting was the tethered nature of her pose, that when she was modelling for the artists, she was at all times connected to her camera. I thought I saw that umbilical cord in one of the artist’s paintings, but I can’t be sure, I may watch again to see if I can catch that. In her statement about her life’s work that whilst most everything else is changing her aesthetics are constant, which includes her model – herself – what a wonderful thing to be able to review something like twenty years work with that constancy as a backcloth. Inspiring, thanks Sharon I will look forward to the interview

    • Yes. You can see the camera in one of the paintings. i hadn’t thought of it as an umbilical cord but you’re right John. If that’s so then does that mean that she is continually re-creating herself. Of course, her model (herself) is changing because she is watching herself grow older in minute detail.

      • Catherine, Maybe the physical connection to the camera is the only constant (a reference to the constancy of her aesthetic?) in her body of work; in that sense she wouldn’t be constantly being reborn, rather reporting the process of ageing in a constant way?

  • I really like the visible cable.
    Mesmerising work, and so straightforward that I am thinking, “why didn’t I think of that?”, or why didn’t I take that idea, that I had years ago, further forward. I feel inspired and a bit envious. I love its simplicity and clarity.
    I am fascinated now but I wonder for how long. The images are aesthetic, attractive, clean, but it’s mostly intellectual and doesn’t feed my soul.

      • Sorry Catherine, I added a postscript before I saw your reply.
        That’s a very good question. A warmth is missing I’d say, which I think I managed to put in my similar work a few years ago – just by hiding less about myself I suppose.
        Yes, that’s it, she’s hiding herself even though we see her. What is she telling us about herself? That she is interested in the artist’s and the model’s gaze. I would like to see her cat in the corner, or a teapot, or a novel she’s reading. Something more than bedclothes and a mirror?
        But I can see that it is clean, intellectually, and the work is ‘tight’, there is nothing extraneous and that’s what she wants. I would like to see her real relationship with these rooms and landscapes.

        • BUT… I really enjoyed the images when she was in the picture and you could see her thinking, feeling, now when shall I take the next shot – and that was human and showed some warmth.

        • Re my comment (which may be below this) about her being in the picture… I meant when she’s in the picture WITH other models then some warmth sometimes comes through, or perhaps that should be ‘escapes’ through.

        • Re my comment (which may be below this) in which I said there was warmth when she was in the picture… I meant when she’s in the picture WITH OTHER MODELs then some warmth is revealed. If I learn anything about her it concerns her warmth towards others rather than to herself.

    • It does feed my curiosity though. I wasn’t slating it. I like it, and I am aware it has a clinical quality that I wanted to mention.

      • It’s this clinical quality that I’m interested in and how it’s coming over. Maybe it’s because of the attention that’s given to ‘the pose’ and when to press the shutter.

      • This is odd because I’m starting to think of dissociation and how that can happen when undressing for a doctor. Maybe it happen as well with strip artists etc. It seems as if everything is being revealed yet the vulnerable self remains hidden.
        Sharon has chosen a very thought-provoking body of work for us to question I think.

  • I’m not too sure about this work. But then perhaps there is a question over gender and the gaze, that I don’t really appreciate. I hope that doesn’t sound patronising – it isn’t meant to.
    I was instantly reminded of Jeff Wall’s ‘Picture for Women’, a re-interpretation of Manet’s painting. There are lots of discussions about this work out there which I’d definitely recommend. The paradigm that Wall sets up is intriguing – there is certainly get a sense of that in the second image here – I do feel a little but under scrutiny. But just a little bit.

  • I feel like it’s genderless. It’s a study and therefore is it supposed to be warm? Or exude warmth? I wonder whether this is our obsession with the punctum in action – whereby we are desperate to find an affiliation or point of dispatch and perhaps lose what the work is in the first place…

  • For me the most interesting piece is the film. The interactions and the subjects (which seem to be to be really the two male painters) and how they respond to the returned gaze. One really can’t settle and the other loses himself in intense concentration – only to be shocked out of it when the flash goes off unexpectedly. There seems to me to be lots of layers in that work. I am sure there are in the stills also but I possibly need to see more of her work to really get it completely.

  • I have looked at her book and video (plus a couple of others of hers) and come away with this incredible feeling of sadness. This may be the lack of warmth and the dissociation that Stephanie and Catherine mention. The fact that as a model she feels comfortable under the ‘artistic’ gaze of the painters is not too surprising. The fact that she clambers around naked attending to he cameras is however surprising. There may also be some element of how in Finland nudity is accepted, I am not sure of this but it may be an element.
    In he book I find the images more appealing with less nakedness. However, I again have the feeling of sadness. It is a compelling piece of work though and has made me wonder about Elina the person.

  • I have done some life drawing so looking at her work bearing in mind the context of her statement, it seems to me that she is looking at herself as an artist would their model. Its a different way of looking – to do with form and balance and the relationships between things in the frame, not to do with portraiture. I guess judging from the earlier comments it must be very different from the way you’d look in the same situation if you were a photographer. Although of course she is a photographer.

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