In the latest chapter of the Ladies Lounge saga at Hobart’s Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), curator Kirsha Kaechele has admitted to faking several Pablo Picasso paintings displayed in the gallery’s new ladies toilets. This move came after the forced closure of the original Ladies Lounge earlier this year.
This entire saga is perhaps the most compelling piece of performance art since Yoko Ono’s 1964 “Cut Piece,” a work often hailed as the Titanic of performance pieces. In “Cut Piece,” Ono sat as members of the public were invited to approach and cut off pieces of her clothes. Similarly, the public’s reaction to Kaechele has been intense. Unlike Ono, however, Kaechele’s performance has lasted for months, engaging and scandalizing many more people and garnering worldwide attention.
The first stage of this ongoing performance was Kaechele’s creation of the Ladies Lounge. In this space, women could enjoy high tea, admire great art, and be served by attractive, adoring male butlers. The butlers had to be young, handsome, and dressed to serve the ladies. In Kaechele’s own words, “They are the only men allowed in the Ladies Lounge, and that is because they live to serve women. They attend to our every desire and shower us with praise and affection (in chivalry — the unequal rights component of the reparations equation). And champagne. They also massage us.”
When a man named Jason Lau complained about being denied access due to his gender, the media had a field day. The presence of a women-only lounge serving champagne and great art drew the ire of some men. And that was the point: in a world where women have been (and continue to be) denied access to the same spaces as men, Lau was “experiencing the artwork as it’s intended.”
Lau took Kaechele and MONA to the Tasmanian Civil and Administrative Appeals Tribunal, where the hearing became the second act of Kaechele’s performance. In court, Kaechele and her troupe staged a synchronized performance reacting to those who stood over them in judgment. The tribunal found the Ladies Lounge discriminated against “persons who do not identify as ladies.” But even as the case was lost, the troupe danced out of the courtroom to the tune of Robert Palmer’s “Simply Irresistible.”
While the lounge was closed “for reform,” Kaechele pondered her next move. She considered a ladies bible study room but eventually settled on decorating a toilet with some of the masterworks. When questioned on the desirability of drinking champagne in a toilet, Kaechele replied, “There is a real precedent for people imbibing in the toilet. People enjoy all kinds of substances in there.” She has a point.
Once the toilets were open, a fascinated media noted – among other works – paintings by Picasso. To treat famous (and expensive) art with such open contempt drew international attention, including from the Picasso Administration, which manages, collects, distributes, and controls the rights attached to Picasso’s works. Kaechele then “confessed” she painted the “Picassos” herself three years ago. She said she made the paintings green to match the lurid green aesthetic of the Ladies Lounge, where they were first placed.
These “Picassos” weren’t the only fakes in the lounge/toilets. Others included modern spears from Papua New Guinea captioned as antiques and plastic jewelry claimed to be heirlooms.
As well as taking the mickey out of the patriarchy, one lesson from Kaechele’s work is that gallery and museum visitors should use their eyes and not always believe what labels say. If Kaechele had persisted in claiming the works were by Picasso after being challenged by the Picasso Administration, she would have been guilty of fraud. However, she immediately “confessed” and explained why and how she acted as she did.
As a result, the Ladies Lounge/toilet has become an amusing exposé on how thin-skinned some men can be – and why the legal system (at least at its lower levels) needs to get some perspective. This event reminds me of Melbourne artist Ivan Durrant, who in 1974 put a dead cow in the forecourt of the National Gallery of Victoria. The following year his commercial gallery, Hogarth Gallery, announced Durrant had acquired a severed human hand which would be exhibited as art. The photographs looked so realistic that the national media tied itself in knots trying to locate the person whose hand it was. It was, of course, a prosthetic.
For Kaechele – and for MONA – the Ladies Lounge controversy has been a spectacular success. She has reminded visitors that the roles of artist and curator are often intermingled. She has also succeeded in exposing the patriarchy as a humorless joke. Kaechele’s acts fall within a great tradition of performance art, which had fallen out of fashion since its heyday in the 1960s and ‘70s. She is, however, more lighthearted than Pat Larter’s “Tailored Maids.” In this performance work, which itself was a critique of female circumcision, she sat behind a sheet and used shadow play. As the implements of destruction – including secateurs – approached her body, she threw pieces of raw meat into the audience.
Ever since it opened, MONA’s exhibitions and installations have combined curatorial originality with a talent for attracting the kind of worldwide publicity other art museums yearn for. Kaechele’s husband, David Walsh, has said his mission is to make the arts approachable to people who aren’t a part of a self-defined cultural elite. Indeed, Kaechele has now brought more international prominence to MONA, showing yet again why it is essential viewing for any art lover in Australia.
Source: The Conversation, The Guardian
