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The Opera Room
Yvette Coppersmith
October 2009
Yvette Coppersmith has transplanted
the intimate portraiture of her recent works into a lush tropical landscape
for her new show, The Opera Room. By adopting the role of an
operatic heroine, Coppersmith has produced paintings that appear rather
traditional at first glance, but on closer examination reveal themselves
to be highly contemporary interrogations of Orientalism and its assumptions
about culture and gender.
The opera in question is Lakmé,
Léo Delibes’ 1882 work set in Raj-era India. The larger paintings
tell the story of the eponymous heroine, a young Brahmin girl whose
name derives from the Hindi Lakshmi. She is represented here by Coppersmith
herself, most substantially in the character self-portrait As
Lakme, and the artist has portrayed herself in a shawl that evokes
the traditional sari.
Lakmé’s father Nilakantha, the
high priest, sends her to a river to collect flowers for the temple.
En route, she sings the famous ‘Flower Duet’ with her servant Mallika
– its melody is instantly recognisable from True Romance and
Carlito’s Way, as well as several British Airways advertisements.
At the riverbank she meets a British officer, Gérald, with whom she
falls in love. This is depicted by Coppersmith in Duet for Two Sides
I and II, in which the exotic landscape that looks so impenetrable
in some of the other paintings is portrayed as a European pleasure-garden,
complete with gazebo.
But her father thinks Lakmé has been
defiled by her contact with Gérald. He forces her to identify her lover
in the marketplace by singing the opera’s other famous aria, the ‘Bell
Song’. Gérald recognises his love and rushes to greet her, but is
stabbed by Nilakantha. The wounded soldier is taken by Lakmé to a forest
hideaway, where she nurses him back to health. Coppersmith shows this
in Duet for Two Sides III, in which the previously welcoming
forest is portrayed far more intimidatingly, its formidable spikes encroaching
on the two lovers.
While Lakmé fetches sacred water
to confirm their vows of eternal love, one of Gérald’s fellow officers
arrives to remind him of his duty to the King. Lakmé returns to find
she has lost her love – a realisation represented here by Coppersmith’s
decision to hang a self-portrait directly opposite the figureless
Scene, reflecting Lakmé’s own desolate view of a world that no
longer has anything to offer her. Having effectively betrothed herself
to Gérald, Lakmé chooses to die with honour by eating the poisonous
datura flower. Her last moments are shown by Coppersmith in her final
Duet for Two Sides (IV), in which the tranquility of the water mirrors
the stillness of the heroine. Whereas Lakmé was previously cradling
her wounded lover, he is left holding the lifeless body of a girl he
has wounded far more deeply.
Just as the artist has cast herself
in a role that Delibes would never have imagined a real Indian girl
playing, these landscapes are not genuine representations of the East,
but instead reflect uninformed Victorian conceptions of the exotic.
Coppersmith’s Indian jungle is the Rippon Lea Estate, a garden where
she played as a child, situated a short walk from her house in Melbourne.
And just as she has made herself the subject of these works, Coppersmith
has chosen to locate her self-portraits in an environment with which
she has a strong personal connection.
The landscape architect William Sangster
designed Rippon Lea in the rustic ‘Picturesque’ style, which “asks
the visitor to view the garden as a picture”, according to the National
Trust, which manages the property today. Its remodelling with the ornamental
lake and gazebo which feature in Coppersmith' paintings took place in
1882 – the year of the opera’s completion. Its Romantic design is
a visual equivalent of the lush Romantic music of Delibes – which,
of course, bears no connection to the real music of India. And since
Lakmé and Rippon Lea reflect contemporaneous European notions of
the exotic, it’s no surprise that the studies that Coppersmith has
included in this show bear a distinct similarity to the highly ornamental
jungle drawing that appeared on the poster for the opera’s original
season in Paris.
The theme of the noble Eastern heroine
who is despoiled by her contact with a Western soldier is familiar to
opera audiences from Puccini’s Madama Butterfly. It’s not
surprising, then, that both stories have an author in common – Pierre
Loti, whose work Madame Chrysanthème was a major influence on
Puccini’s opera. Just as ‘Chrysanthème’ was inspired by a Japanese
woman with whom Loti had a relationship, Loti’s novel Le Mariage
de Loti (The Marriage of Loti) was based loosely on his relationship
with a Tahitian woman. Delibes’ librettists Gondinet and Gilles transplanted
the story from Tahiti to India, perhaps so as to avoid any implied criticism
of a French soldier for abandoning his lover.
Readers of Loti are left unsure which
parts of the novel are fictional, an ambiguity which the author deliberately
played up when naming his book. And Coppersmith, like the semi-autobiographical
author, also plays with the viewer’s natural curiosity about the artist’s
‘real’ life. The very title of Le Mariage de Loti invited
the reader to wonder just how much of the work is fictional, and those
who recognise these paintings as self-portraits will inevitably wonder
about the man who plays Gérard in this verdant garden paradise. Like
Loti before her, Coppersmith leaves us to our own speculation.
But even ‘Pierre Loti’ himself
was a fiction, a pseudonym adopted by the French naval officer Julien
Viaud. Fittingly, the word itself is the French word for ‘lotus’,
the plant associated by Coleridge and others with exotic reverie. Peter
James Turberfield’s book Loti and the Theatricality of Desire
describes the once-shy author’s adoption of native clothing and customs
while he was in Tahiti – which was mirrored by his fictionalised equivalent
in the novel.
And just as Viaud chose to cloak
himself in constructed personae for different situations – a uniform-wearing
French officer on some occasions, and a flamboyant author who had ‘gone
native’ on others – Coppersmith plays here with her own image, depicting
herself not only as an Indian maiden, but as a British officer in
As Gerald.
It’s impossible to mention Orientalism
and painting without referring to Gauguin’s Tahiti paintings, another
high point of the artistic movement within France. Like those idyllic
island landscapes, Coppersmith conveys here an other-world of great
sensuality, but has also succeeded through her own positioning within
that world in transcending the patronising, distancing notion of otherness
that has troubled some critics of Orientalism. Whereas Gauguin’s nude
islander innocents are defined by their contrast with and dislocation
from European society, Coppersmith has made herself the ‘other’,
and challenged the viewer to guess at the boundary between artwork and
artist.
By doing this, Coppersmith has placed
these works firmly within the tradition of Western landscape painting
while at the same time making them as deeply personal as much of her
other portraiture. For The Opera Room, the artist has responded
to the challenge of landscape painting by creating ornate works of considerable
drama – a successful visual representation, therefore, of opera.
Dominic Knight
2009
Blue Series
Yvette Coppersmith
11 - 27 June 2009
Chalk
Horse Gallery
 Coppersmith's
process involves a close, and almost obsessive examination.
In discussing Forever in Blue Jeans she
comments that there is a need to intimately understand her chosen
subject: the way their hair drops and sits on the back of their neck,
the slight wrinkles around their eyes, and the way their smile raises
subtly on the left. This type of knowledge is
something that one often obtains from an extended personal
relationship, but that is essential to Coppersmith's labour.
A labour formed by the sublimation of desire.
Understanding this, in Blue Head the artist
presents herself as a hysterical predatory creature who ravenously
pursues her subject. With its ring of empty oyster
shells this work presents us with a simple propostion: in this world of
Sex and the City and Gossip Girl, is the artist really constrained by
and perpetuating this dominant sexualising gaze and what does this
imply of her subject?
If Blue Head is an examination of the
artist as predator, then Forever in Blue Jeans can be read as an act of
analytic assault. Certainly every detail is
painstakingly rendered and as Coppersmith's subject is presented in a
number of regimented mug shot like poses it is the artist and viewer
who have control here.
Or is it? The
heightened and mesmerizing hyper-real tones of the sitter's blue shirt
in Forever in Blue Jeans, as well as the foliage in The Two Blue Eyes
suggest another narrative. Certainly, our need to
look has created a visual culture where display and desire are
intimately bound together. Indeed, this is no big
secret - it is why and how Kate Moss sells clothes with silent looks.
We look at them and we want what they have,
what they are, and often, on the most elementary level, we want them.
So to look and conversely, to be seen, are
both powerful acts. Coppersmith highlights this
with the display of peacock feathers in The Two Blue Eyes, where the
sitter is the subject of her gaze, but also ultimately master of his
image, for he is the object, the desired vision. And
to be desired often equates to real power and whilst the artist is
hungry in pursuit of their subject, the visual playing field is more
even than it appears.
This complex relationship between
artist and sitter is what makes portrait painting so powerful and so
fascinating. For there are two different lives and
stories on canvas for us the viewers. And we are
all forever engaged.
Rupert Greene
2009
Gallery
Yvette
Coppersmith
10 - 23 December
2008
Metro Gallery Melbourne
 “The quizzical expression of the monkey
at the
zoo comes from his wondering whether he is his brother’s keeper or his
keeper’s
brother.” Evan Esar.
I am bored. It’s 2.30pm on an intensely
sunny
Thursday and I am at the zoo. So far I have visited enclosures from the
water
dwellers to the tree swingers to the powdery high flyers and I feel
like I am
looking at very boring photos in a very boring picture book of animals
from
around the world.
It should be interesting.
It should be fascinating.
But it isn’t.
So I go to the gift shop.
After looking at a few rather dubious
soft toy
impressions of various animals I realise I haven’t yet seen all the
monkeys.
The monkeys. Interesting not just
because of the
ever fascinating baboons’ rears but rather because I have a surprising
interaction with an infant Mandrill.
I have my 8mm camera with me. I begin to
remove
it from the case in which it sits and for some reason, this grabs the
attention
of the Mandrill. His excitement swiftly brings him face to face with
me, not 10
cm apart, separated only by the clear-pane divide standing between us.
He jumps
up and down and presses his face against the glass to get a better look
at the
camera and what I’m doing. Taking his enthusiasm as a cue to continue
this
contact, I proceed to show him the insides of my handbag.
He drags his mother over so she can look
too, but
after her initial concern she reverts back to being watched. I suppose
she is
used to sitting inside the confines of the same space and being the one
who is
examined. Then again, maybe my bag’s contents of keys, wallet, phone,
tampons
and endless papers, tissues and receipts are just not that intriguing
to her.
The mandrill having fun with me on the other hand, has not yet resigned
itself
to merely being an object-on-display.
I realise in this exchange, my role
alters from
the observer to the observed. For a few minutes, no longer do I exist
on the
periphery of this creature’s world, but I become the focus.
In these brief moments of communication,
I too
become transfixed and subsequently disappointed when the mandrill’s
interest in
me wanes.
It is only later when I get home that I
think the
zoo sort of reminds me of art galleries. They contain all this artwork,
gallerists, artists and viewers. Each work is like an animal in a
mini-enclosure bound by its frame or the space it exists in. The work
invites
you to engage; view, contemplate, enjoy, question, examine,
like or dislike or both, and walk past.
Sometimes though, you come across a
monkey of an
artwork making us reconsider the relationships between artist, audience
and
model. The inclusion of gallerist as
model complicates the act of looking, as we are gazing at someone who
traditionally controls our viewing experience, now inside the frame.
We are drawn into a consideration of the act
of making, looking back on what has transpired.
Yvette Coppersmith’s work subverts the
existing
relationships, unmasking a gradual unease in this new context of
keeper-as-artwork and artist-as-keeper. We, the zoo going viewers are
privy to
this transference and tension as the works stares back at us into the
space of
a gallery.
Amelie Scalercio
2008
Still/Moving
Artist Statement, Linden St Kilda Centre for Contemporary Arts,
2006
The logic of the visible at the service of the
invisible
Odilon Redon
 It
is through the ideas of the Symbolists of depicting that which lies
beneath the surface, that I have entered into a negotiation between
autobiographical stimulus and borrowings from Christian, Buddhist and
classical myths and iconography.
The
second commandment of the Old testament tells us 'Though shalt not make
unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in
heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water
under the earth: though shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve
them.'
However the impulse to make images and their power to
captivate, has been profusely utilized by Churches and by artists
themselves.
Christian
imagery was principally utilized to educate and inspire religious
fervour in the illiterate. From the personal experience of
traveling to Europe this year, it seems that to the artist and art
appreciator, such imagery has become the idol itself, rather than
merely the signifier.
Through the adaptations in my work of such
images as the pious woman, repentance and Eve in the Garden, these
images become symbolic representations of my creative processes.
Correlating with that is the notion of the artist as being in consort
with the divine, throughout the making of the work. It is here
the image of the pious woman is subverted. For example, the
Virgin as we are told, was the channel for God's creation. In
this instance, what she is divinely channelling, is in the form of her
own portrait.
The painting Ensanguined is derived from my
recent work with the performer,
Queen of Cabaret Bizarre, Moira Finucane. The performance
which is the basis of the painting, is titled Soup. Her work is a
melding of various performance genres, one of which is burlesque.
Here's an apt description in the words of Robert Allen from his book
Horrible Prettiness, 'the burlesque is one of several
nineteenth-century entertainment forms that is grounded in the
aesthetics of transgression, inversion and the grotesque.'
The reframing of the stills from Soup, allows for a departure in
interpretation, from its original form. The poses, recalling a
crucifixion image, echo the grotesque aspects of biblical
depictions. Even in its dance like qualities, there is an
ambiguity, is the doubling of the figure a dance with the self - or not
a dance at all - but a self-flagellation.
The
'tableux vivant' and installation provide a transference of the
performance (in the paintings) from the private space (the studio or
dwelling) to the public space (gallery). Also shifts the work from the
two-dimensional to the three-dimensional and from permanent object to
an ephemeral art form, or vice versa as in the painting of Moira.
The
framing devices of the paintings recall Giotto's idea of painting being
like a window. It is through these frames that the walls of the
gallery have been opened, revealing some of the signs that have
embedded themselves within our consciousness and the very structure of
the gallery.
I would like to thank for their
generous support:
Moira Finucane, Jackie Smith, Marilyn and
Michael Kino, Mum, Dad,
Brendan Hay, Adele Varcoe, Aliza Levy, the staff, volunteers and
sponsors of Linden.
Somewhere
Here
Artist Statement, Linden St Kilda Centre for Contemporary Arts, 2004
Yvette
Coppersmith
 There’s a
loss of objectivity that happens in an intimate relationship. I have
the same difficulty trying to piece together what my work means. There
is a fine line separating multiplicity of meaning from a total loss of
meaning and between intended meaning from merely a motivation to make
the work. On one level, Somewhere Here is related to the unveiling of
the meaning, and it’s elusive quality to be pinned down by either the
artist or viewer.
The interest in material excess and refinement
recalls earlier times of sumptuary laws and the need to display ones
status through appearance. Renaissance female artists often depicted
themselves with great skill and dignity. Their self-portraits were
partly to fulfil the curiosity of patrons and were subtly aimed at
establishing themselves within a male-dominated field. In contemporary
times, a self-portrait relates to the need to be seen - a need
validated by our narcissistic culture. It also allows for the control
of ones image, which women are lacking within the male-driven barrage
of consumer advertising.
The elements of lowbrow trashy glamour
inherent in the self-created pin-ups are at odds with constraint of
prudish modesty and the need to be more than mere ‘eye candy’. The
serious yet seductive gaze contradicts the frivolity of dressing up in
a different guise and lures the viewer. The desire to be more than just
surface is in someway paradoxical for the medium of painting.
The Renaissance notion that a beautiful
exterior is a physical manifestation of the divine inner qualities is
an enduring way of thinking to this day. The illusion that if someone
perfects their physical self they simultaneously internalise the
qualities they outwardly project seems quite real, so that physical
appearance is taken to be a sign of what is within. The body acts as
the interface between private and public spheres. Possibilities for
grooming and embellishing of the body’s surface create a greater divide
between outer and inner realities.
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