Kim Kardashian's Butt Performs . . .

. . . Race, Gender, and Art History

Oh yeah.  And celebrity.  Which is why I was definitely NOT going to write about this.  I mean, other than giving a bottomless pit of opportunity for creative photochopping (and bad backside puns), what’s there to say?  That Kim Kardashian West (or her mother, or her publicist) demonstrates absolute genius for content-less self-promotion?

Then the Metropolitan Museum of Art had to weigh in.  The Met’s clever tweet of a 6,000-year-old steatopygous Cycladic figure made me think about KKW’s shameless publicity ploy in somewhat different ways.  By connecting the soi-disant internet-breaking image to an ancient statue of a fecund woman, the Met opened the door to considering the KKW photo in art historical contexts, which also mean socio-cultural contexts. 

Jean-Paul Goude, “Carolina Beaumont” (1976), "Kim Kardashian Champagne Cover" (2014)

We can start with race.  That the photographer Jean-Paul Goude copied his own 1976 shot of Caroline Beaumont (and referenced his contorted shots of Grace Jones) doesn’t say much about KKW’s own views about performing race.  Nor does the fact that she doubtless knows next to nothing about the centuries of visual stereotypes she mimics.  Most notorious is the case of Saartjie Baartman, the Khoikhoi woman exhibited in Europe as ‘The Hottentot Venus,’ whose supersized buttocks and large genitalia were seen as atavistic links to the great apes.  Then there is Josephine Baker, ‘The Bronze Venus,’ whose banana dance was the toast of jazz-age Paris.  Hip-hop culture has re-exhibited the stereotype in a positive way, if valorizing big-booty-shaking women is considered positive. 

“The Hottentot Venus” (1810); Josephine Baker, “The Bronze Venus” (1925);

Reality TV personalities Joseline Hernandez and Porsha Williams at the BET Hip Hop Awards (2014)

Kim Kardashian West is certainly aware of this last mode of performing race.  After all, she’s married to Kanye and has appeared in his music videos, most notably the ridiculous ‘Bound 2,’ in which her seemingly nude self is being bonked on a bike.  Like other members of her family – notably her father – she likes to bling out her celebrity cred by hanging around with famous black people.  As far as I know, Armenian does not equal ‘black’ anywhere on earth except possibly Turkey; nonetheless, KKW has self-fashioned into a cartoon of the hypersexualized black woman. Or perhaps race is secondary to female hypersexualization itself.

LeRoy Neiman, “Femlin,” created for Playboy in 1955; Camille Clifford, a model for ‘The Gibson Girl,” c. 1905.

Maybe that’s the point of her relentless out-there-ness:  she’s performing gender in a way so blatant that one can overlook it, rather like the big letters on a map.  I’ve seen some comparisons to the Barbie Doll, but those don’t seem apt – Barbie does have a big chest and a wasp waist, but her bottom resembles an anorexic white woman’s slatty rear end.  Closer may be the Playboy ‘femlin,’ whose hourglass figure harks back to Gibson girls and other corseted ladies.  And we can go back and back through art history, from Ingres’ “La Grande Odalisque” to Aphrodite Kallipygyos to the Venus of Willendorf . . . from Baule spirit spouses to Ukiyo-e courtesans to Indian apsaras.

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, “La Grande Odalisque” (1814); Aphrodite Kallipygos, Roman copy of Hellenistic original (c. 100BCE); the ‘Venus of Willendorf’ (Austria, c. 25,000BCE)

Baule spirit spouse (early 20^th century); Kunisada school shunga print (early 19^th century); Apsara, Uttar Pradesh (12^th century)

These images are male representations of ideal, or satirized, female sexuality.  When women artists (at least in the 20^th century) have confronted the subject, they’ve tended to focus on female genitals, either through formal and symbolic correspondences (see Georgia O’Keeffe’s vulvaform flowers), through disturbing juxtapositions of female stereotypes (see Meret Oppenheim’s “Object,” which grafts Venus in Furs onto a feminine tea cup), or through assertions of female worth as child bearer and culture bearer (see Judy Chicago’s “The Birth Project,” an installation that acts as a visual midrash on the Biblical creation story). 

Georgia O’Keeffe, “The Blue Flower” (1918); Meret Oppenheim, “Object” (1936);

Judy Chicago, tapestry from “The Birth Project” (1985)

21^st-century women artists are more likely to confront and invert traditional male representations of the feminine, bringing to the forefront the patriarchal politics that ‘normalize’ such representations and the gendered gaze that produces them (see Tracy Enim’s “This is not happiness” or Laila Esaydi’s revisionist “La Grande Odalisque,” where the courtesan’s body is veiled with Arabic calligraphy).

Tracey Enim, “This is not happiness” (2011)

 Laila Essaydi, “La Grande Odalisque” (2008)

Except under a greatly expanded definition of performance art, Kim Kardashian West is not a woman artist nor does she seem to be aware of – or care about – the art historical/cultural contexts her image evokes.  Well, why should she?  She’s laughing all the way to the bank . . . rather like the contemporary artist she (as image, as object) most closely resembles:  Jeff Koons, the master of glossy sensuality in an age of mechanical reproduction and profit-driven corporate aesthetics.  For only $20,000, at Neiman-Marcus you too can buy a limited-edition zaftig pop-art fertility goddess, complete with a bottle of premium champagne.  It’s cheaper to buy a copy of Paper magazine.

Jeff Koons, “Dom Perignon Balloon Venus,” limited edition figure, 2013