Artifacts of artifice

Art in America, July, 1998 by Kate Linker

The gap between the irresolution of meaning and the viewer's insistent desire for closure is the theme of Part III of the series, whose subjects are social and religious images -- gods, figureheads, icons. Gold functions as an emblematic signifier here (Bull), along with an exaggerated central placement of images that yields hieratic forms of immobile, static power. In Lotus Bowl, a piece inspired by Charlesworth's longstanding interest in Buddhist culture, the juxtaposition of two images, one above the other, yields a meditative token: a lotus flower hovering enigmatically above a religious vessel.

In "Objects of Desire," juxtaposed images form an experiment in basic visual syntax, developed in analogy with the linguistic premise that words placed against words elicit meanings. Images are apposed in contrasting panels (Bowl and Column, 1986; Buddha of Immeasurable Light, 1987), or in triptychlike formats composed of rephotographed images that are intercut by a central monochrome panel (Natural History, 1987). The result is an indeterminate space burgeoning with meanings, somewhat like a dreamscape or oneiric field.

However, Part IV explores the limits of the viewer's urge to ascribe meanings to images, at once inciting this impulse and discouraging narrative closure. For example, in Bowl and Column, two glistening gold-hued objects -- one short and squat, the other tall and elongated -- are positioned in separate deep blue fields, the column centered and the bowl set in the lower portion of the frame. Any decoding of these figures as female and male symbols, Charlesworth suggests, is a projection imposed by the viewer: an effort to "ascribe" meaning or "locate" reference based on effects, rather than attributes, of the photograph.

The Density of Emotions: "Academy of Secrets" and "Renaissance Paintings"

In Barthes's Camera Lucida, photographic experience is presented as a relationship between three terms: the Spectrum (the subject or referent), the Operator (the photographer) and the Spectator (the viewer). This triangular composition also structures Charlesworth's practice, although her emphases vary at different moments. In the work that extends through "Objects of Desire," attention is directed primarily to the role spectator. In two succeeding series, "Academy of Secrets" (1989) and "Renaissance Paintings and Drawings" (1991), Charlesworth concentrates on the Operator, or what might be called the subjective dimension of the artist.

While these series lack the analytic rigor of Charlesworth's earlier work, they embody a deep-seated need to address personal emotions and feelings. Charlesworth has said of "Renaissance Paintings" that although "it looks like a clear manipulation of cultural things,. . . the series has involved extremely emotional work." The mood, tenor and physical demeanor of the work shifts toward a soft, almost elegiac, tone.

The title "Academy of Secrets contains a reference to Giovanni della Porta, the 16th-century Neapolitan nobleman reputed to have invented the first camera lens. In his treatise Magia Naturalis (Natural Magic) of 1558, della Porta made an early description of a camera obscura, significantly indicating that our means of organizing knowledge may determine the extent to which we see. "We are persuaded that the knowledge of secret things depends upon the contemplation and the view of the whole world," he observed.(8) It is less known, however, that della Porta was the master of a clandestine society dedicated to the notion, considered heretical at the time, that nature's laws might be independent of God's. Della Porta's conjunction of seemingly opposite terms -- secrecy and science, hidden magic and technological innovation -- appealed to Charlesworth, who has long been interested in magic and the occult, and in the suspension of reason that they imply. In "The Academy of Secrets," the two concepts are fused: "secrecy" alludes to the inner, unknown life of the psyche, while the organized or "scientific" structure denoted by the title refers to established or codified knowledge. In Charlesworth's work, the relations between the two categories are mediated by an approach that is based loosely on Freudian psychoanalytic theory and, in particular, on its notion of the dream.