The Matisse Stories - Antonia S. Byatt [25]
TO THE DEAN OF WOMEN STUDENTS
DR GERDA HIMMELBLAU
and continues in minute minuscules
from peggi nollett, woman and student.
It continues:
I wish to lay a formal complaint against the DISTINGUISHED VISITING PROFESSOR the Department has seen fit to appoint as the supervisor of my disertation on The Female Body and Matisse.
In my view, which I have already made plain to anyone who cared to listen, and specificly to Doug Marks, Tracey Avison, Annie Manson, and also to you, Dr Gerda Himmelblau, this person should never have been assigned to direct this work, as he is completley out of sympathy with its feminist project. He is a so-called EXPERT on the so-called MASTER of MODERNISM but what does he know about Woman or the internal conduct of the Female Body, which has always until now been MUTE and had no mouth to speak.
Here followed a series o( tiny pencil drawings which, in the original, Dr Himmelblau could make out to be lips, lips ambiguously oral or vaginal, she put it to herself precisely, sometimes parted, sometimes screwed shut, sometimes spattered with what might be hairs.
His criticisms of what I have written so far have always been null and extremely agressive and destructive. He does not understand that my project is ahistorical and need not involve any description of the so-called development of Matisse’s so-called style or approach, since what I wish to state is esentially critical, and presented from a theoretical viewpoint with insights provided from contemporary critical methods to which the cronology of Matisse ‘s life or the order in which he comitted his ‘paintings’ is totaly irelevant.
However although I thought I should begin by stating my theoretical position yet again I wish at the present time to lay a spercific complaint of sexual harasment against the DVP. I can and will go into much more detail believe me Dr Himmelblau but I will set out the gist of it so you can see there is something here you must take up.
I am writing while still under the effect of the shock I have had so please excuse any incoherence.
It began with my usual dispirting CRIT with the DVP. He asked me why I had not writen more of the disertation than I had and I said I had not been very well and also preocupied with getting on with my art-work, as you know, in the Joint Honours Course, the creative work and the Art History get equal marks and I had reached a very difficult stage with the Work. But I had writen some notes on Matisse ‘s distortions of the Female Body with respect especially to the spercificaly Female Organs, the Breasts the Cunt the Labia etc etc and also to his ways of acumulating Flesh on certain Parts of the Body which appeal to Men and tend to imobilise Women such as grotesquely swollen Thighs or protruding Stomachs. I mean to conect this in time to the whole tradition of the depiction of Female Slaves and Odalisques but I have not yet done the research I would need to write on this.
Also his Women tend to have no features on their faces, they are Blanks, like Dolls, I find this sinister.
Anyway I told the DVP what my line on this was going to be even if I had not writen very much and he argued with me and went so far as to say I was hostile and full of hatred to Matisse. I said this was not a relevant criticism of my work and that Matisse was hostile and full of hatred towards women. He said Matisse was full of love and desire towards women (!!!!!) and I said ‘exactly’ but he did not take the point and was realy quite cutting and undermining and dismisive and unhelpful even if no worse had hapened. He even said in his view I ought to fail my degree which is no way for a supervisor to behave as you will agree. I was so tense and upset by his atitude that I began to cry and he pated me on my shoulders and tried to be a bit nicer. So I explained how busy I was with my art-work and how my art-work, which is a series of mixed-media pieces called Erasures and Undistortions was a part of my criticism of Matisse. So he graciously said he would like