Community
Notebook
Fatgirl
in Public
Fatgirl
by Audrey Francis How did then relatively unknown French artist Marcel Duchamp’s
Nude Descending a Staircase fuel an uproar at the 1913 Armory Show,
the famed New York City modernist exhibition featuring works by Picasso,
Cezanne, Gaugin, Matisse and Kandinisky? Of the reaction to his Nude,
responsible for introducing the Dadaist movement in painting to the
world, Duchamp remarked in 1967, “What contributed to the interest
provoked by that canvas was its title. One just doesn’t do a nude
woman coming down the stairs, that’s ridiculous. It doesn’t
seem ridiculous now, because it’s been talked about so much, but
when it was new, it seemed scandalous. A nude should be respected.”
Revealing a similarly fractious line between text and image, a dispute
that erupted last month at the Hyde Park post office over a narrative
portrait called Fatgirl, by town artist Audrey Francis, brought
the local Artist of the Month exhibition to an abrupt end.
Launched a year ago with a single work to advertise painter Antonio
Marquez’s first stateside show, held at Palmer Gallery at Vassar
College, the post office continued the exhibition program, giving local
artists the opportunity to display one piece of their work for an entire
month in a special window in the building’s lobby. Marquez, a writer
who holds a PhD from Salamanca University in Spain, became the program
curator, often selecting art in connection with an opening scheduled
elsewhere in the region. Fatgirl was to announce Francis’
first solo show, hung at the Hyde Park Library on November 17 and continuing
through December. The narrative portrait artist, herself sensitive to
the fact that both the post office and library are public spaces, avoided
choosing nudes for either location. She ultimately selected Fatgirl
for the Artist of the Month window because the work best fit the space
in terms of size and color composition.
Fatgirl, a 24 x 36-inch oil on linen shows a female cropped from
below the eyes to just above her knees. Depicted in motion, the figure
strides open-mouthed (perhaps singing?) with arms at her side through
a sea-green vista, clad in a bright pink outfit reminiscent of an old-school
gym uniform. Declining to comment “on the person or the context”
of the canvas (rumored to be of a girl posing at the Vanderbilt Mansion
in Hyde Park), Francis says, “I loved the way she looked and took
her picture.” Extrapolating from the photograph in creating the
painting, the former illustrator explains, “I remember absorbing
[the image] with that name—fatgirl—because I already had a
canvas called Catgirl. So it was a way to organize and simplify what
I was doing. I don’t think I’m identifying the person by the
title; I’m identifying the painting.”
But two days after Fatgirl went up, Postmaster John Viola contacted
Marquez to inform him that the post office had received a letter from
a town resident stating Fatgirl “was insensitive to people over-weight,”
while other patrons had complained in person to office personnel. Viola
asked Marquez to consider removing the painting. Both curator and artist
initially refused, but by November 7th negotiations ended and the program
shut down. Quoted on the controversy in several area newspapers, US
Postal Service spokesperson Anthony Musso of New York City stated, “This
[the post office] isn’t an art gallery, open to free expression.
. . . Our bottom line is if one person is offended, that’s too
many.”
Likewise commenting on the vicissitudes of mounting public art, particularly
on whether federal or municipal spaces should hold curators and artists
to criteria differing from private galleries, Marquez suggests, “Yes,
public spaces should be managed in a different way than a professional
gallery. But once a librarian or postmaster accepts a show they should
abide by the rules of a gallery.” Stating that a realistic painting
should be judged on treatment of the figure, colors and textiles, he
calls Fatgirl “very cheerful and bright” with “pleasant
color” and “not derogatory in any way.” Careful not to
denigrate the Hyde Park post office staff either, Marquez, a retired
religion professor respectful of everyone who works in the town where
his wife, Margaret Marquez (author of the best-selling picture book
Hyde Park on the Hudson) serves as historian, calls the painting’s
removal in part a consequence of living in the age of anthrax.
About her own plight with sites of public art, painter Francis observes,
“I thought the idea was to show different voices for art here in
Hyde Park; not everyone paints landscapes. I thought everybody would
know this wasn’t the post office’s point of view. The purpose
of showing in such spaces is to educate the public about a wide range
of art.”
During the news cycle beginning November 14 and stretching to Francis’
art opening three days later, The Poughkeepsie Journal, Kingston Daily
Freeman and Hyde Park Townsman all ran articles on the Fatgirl controversy.
Amidst the publishing frenzy, Antonio Marquez appeared in a Channel
6-Poughkeepsie television feature on the subject. And then there was
Susan Arbetter, interviewing Freeman editor Ira Fusfeld on her WAMC’s
“Roundtable” show on his decision to run a color reproduction
of the painting in his paper. The radio host meanwhile told National
Public Radio listeners that she could relate to the complainant’s
position, having herself been “the fat girl.”
But identity politics don’t necessarily hurt a promising artist’s
emerging career, as the saga of Duchamp demonstrates. Though regretful
about her painting being pulled from the post office, Audrey Francis,
sanguine about the publicity, positively beamed at her opening, surrounded
by eight of her larger works, mostly oils on linen, including the notorious
Fatgirl. As a person who uses art to explore her particular cultural
identity, Francis also can understand how viewers may read their own
circumstances in a particular painting.
Born of Colombian and Irish-American parents in 1962 in New York City,
where she was raised and educated, Francis later attended Syracuse University,
receiving her BFA in 1984. After graduating, she returned to New York
as a professional illustrator and freelance graphic designer with varied
clients, including the MTV network, MGM and Fairchild Publications.
Since 1989, when her work was selected for the permanent collection
of Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, Francis has worked exclusively
as a painter, displaying her canvases at an impressive roster of exhibitions,
including in Manhattan, Philadelphia, Santa Monica and Nantucket, as
well as throughout Dutchess County.
Her present work concerns her South American heritage, such as the large,
vividly bright oils from her series on saints and sinners. A collector
of Mexican and South American folk art, which she reassembles in displays,
Francis has in recent years begun to sculpt her own derivative clay
figures, using herself and family as subjects. A lover of religious
art, she paints using her sculptures as models with traditional decorative
themes still in mind. “I’m making myself and my daughter into
saints, Latin-American icons, using models that are rougher than traditional
folk art. I don’t have the need to duplicate what’s totally
there.”
Situating the artist’s work within the tradition of the great Mexican
pastel painters, curator Marquez observes, “This exhibit is not
about the controversy surrounding Audrey Francis, but about the totality
of her work.” Pointing to her self-portrait as mother with two
children, American Family (33 x 53 inches on paper), he enthuses, “Did
you see the pastel in front of the fireplace? It’s a masterpiece.”
Audrey Francis continues to show her work, including Fatgirl, at the
Hyde Park Library, Route 9W, Main Street, through December. Twenty percent
of all proceeds from sale of the paintings will benefit the library.
—Pauline Uchmanowicz
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