Nan One Month After Being Battered, 1984
written by Hope Ezcurra
We had driven the museum van out to the desert to return an artwork, to a collector who had loaned our institution the work for a show. After the head prep and I had rehung the work and the collector had signed the paperwork releasing the work back to them, they had noticed us looking at the incredible artwork in their home and asked us if we had time and would like a brief tour of their collection. She and her husband had amassed a museum quality collection of contemporary artwork: John Baldasari, Marina Abramovic, Cindy Sherman, and Paul McCarthy to name just a few. Walking through her home was impressive, but what has stayed with me since then, almost a year later, was the Nan Goldin print, from the mid-80s, that she had hanging in a spacious secondary bathroom.
Nan Goldin, Misty and Jimmy Paulette in a taxi, NYC, 1991
Previous to this encounter, when I thought of Nan Goldin, I had thought of her photograph, Misty and Jimmy Paulette in a taxi, NYC, in which she had photographed two drag queens in the back of a NYC yellow cab. I had respected her work for the frank and honest light with which she captured people. In the case of Misty and Jimmy Paulette, she had looked at these two marginalized members of society at the height of the AIDS epidemic, and in her photograph captured not only their glamour but their pathos; the viewer sees fully realized human beings with hopes, dreams, and fears.
I was unprepared for the photograph that I was about to be confronted within the collectors home though. I use the word confronted as this photograph is absolutely confrontational. It is not an easy or comfortable work of art. Its power is in its ability to discomfort. Nan herself stares directly at the camera and at the viewer. You are eye to eye with her, her left eye still blood red and the orbital discolored and distended from the abuse that she had suffered. Standing in front of it for the first time, the thought of what Nan must have experienced for her face to look like this made me want to look away, but I was caught in the tractor beam of her gaze. The photograph at first appears to be simple documentation, but as I continued to gaze at the image, layers of meaning, nuance, and intelligent composition unfolded. Nan Goldin made many deliberate choices when crafting this image that serve to elevate this photograph from documentation into a layered and significant piece of artwork.
Nan Goldin, Nan one month after being battered., 1984
The first detail that one's attention is called to, after the viewer is able to disentangle themselves from the physical damage to Nan’s face, are her red lips. She precisely applied a rich and vibrant shade of red lacquer, creating an unsettling incongruence with the rest of her mangled face. There are many layers of meaning that can be read into this detail. The lipstick itself suggests traditional female tropes of beauty and societal constructs of gender. Both concepts that could be seen as having correlations with domestic violence against women, a dissonance with the aftermath of violence presented in the image. There is a suggestion that while her lips are beautified by this lacquer, that her damaged eye in it’s beaten hues, is somehow also sexualized in a strange way, by the hematomas and hemorrhaging in and around them, correlating dominance, control and abuse. The evidence of her survival, instead of making her ugly, creates a strange asymmetrical grace. Her survival and strength gives her back the beauty that the brutality to her face had taken away . The lipstick plays a compositional role in her photograph as well as a conceptual one. The red of her lips creates a push and pull with the blood red of her eye, and guides the viewer to look at the entirety of her face, not only the most severe damage on it. Her beautiful red made-up lips, that would be considered traditionally beautiful, create a sharp and elegant contrast with the evidence of savagery in and around her eyes.
The second detail that I notice when looking at this image are her pearls and earrings. This, alongside the lipstick, suggest to the viewer that the image is staged, that while the bruising is real, Nan is elevating her trauma into artwork. These details inform the viewer that while there is an element of documentation in the image, that Nan as an artist is offering up her pain as a way to create connections about power, brutality, violence towards women, sex, intimacy, and traditional gender roles with her work. This image is not exploitive of her pain. As a woman, jewelry is something that I put on when in public, so although this is a very intimate and confrontational image, her wearing jewelry reflects a sense of intention for it to be public discourse. They are the silver platter on which she is serving her suffering to the audience. The jewelry also plays a role compositionally, as they frame her face and draw an additional gentle attention to the focal point of the photograph.
Lastly the background also plays an important role conceptually and compositionally. She chose to take this photograph in front of embroidered curtains, which suggests a domestic setting. The idea of domestic safety is torn to shreds by the presentation of her face. It also suggests that the violence was of an intimate nature, that it occured in the home by someone she cared for. It again calls into question societal tropes of femininity and gender roles. The embroidery is delicate and pulchritude, traditionally female characteristics; it suggests that this violence was perpetrated not only as an expression of anger, but as an expression of dominance.
The background is also a clue to a wise photographic choice that Nan made. The background is obviously white, but reads in the image as green. This is evidence that she either used film, added a filter, or used a light that had green tones to it. This is a very smart use of color theory, as red and green are opposing to one another, hence intensifying each other. The red of her eye and lips is intensified by the green undertones in the image. Also the undertone helps establish visual interest and depth to the image as the warm colors on her face reach the viewer before the cooler green tinged background and breaks up the image into near symmetrical vertical thirds that are visually pleasing. Nan used color theory and spatial composition to create an image that is elegant while also unsettling and brutal.
The same humanity and pathos of Jimmy and Misty, that she was able to capture in the back of the cab, she lets the viewer see in herself. The pain is obvious, but you can also see the strength she has in bearing this trauma to the viewer. She is confronting the viewer, society, and her abuser. While her face is stoic, her right eye, that did not suffer the same trauma as her left, expresses a gamut of emotions. It expresses her humanity, and through this shared humanity, the viewer, perhaps never a victim of abuse themselves, can connect with her. She is not just a statistic of domestic abuse, she is a human being that feels the same emotions that we all do, and that still resonates decades later.
My measure of great artwork is: does it make you think and does it make you feel? This photograph of Nan - broken, bloodied, sad, yet resilient and strong - passes the test.