Women Artists' Professional Identity
Set on a quest of women artists' myth of today we will eventually confront Leila Sand’s professional identity. Gradually we will become woven in the narrator’s web of motifs, time and space references that allude to women’s art. We will face the five W’s once again - who is that lady; how is a piece of art created; whereabouts is it done; what is it like; whom is it addressed to. Unsurprisingly it will take us five sections to provide some of the answers. We will find out why both the legacy of sketching and the secret shrine of the studio will take an almost mystical significance in the novel; why the cliche ; of art periods in artists’ careers is not valid for Leila; why all her periods and works reflect her diverse emotional life; why does the narrator need to reclaim other women artists. Then our aim will be to figure why the blur of art and life is so essential for Leila’s creativity and thus sum up the features of the upcoming myth of women artists.
The key motif of sketching
We tend to think that artists are not overdoing or overtiming themselves in their professional activities; that their creative process is much more of a hedonistic idling than working. However there are number of examples in Erica Jong’s narrative that her woman artist breaks this mythical misconception of ours. Her Leila Sand can hardly fit the cliché of the bohemian artist. She is basically conceived as a hardworking artist, a ‘very disciplined worker’. Leila’s professional identity seems to be focused on the motto that ‘No artist gets anywhere otherwise’ - p.22/I; that no contemporary artist could achieve success and satisfaction without hard days’ work. Probably it is not accidental that the piece of art is etymologically rooted in our minds as a work of art.
The serious efforts of an artist who aims to be at the ‘crest of the wave at the moment’ could be traced as back as the time when Leila was four. Her efforts culminate in the recurrent use of a particular word, denoting the domain of creativity.
I was sketching, sketching, sketching. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t draw. I could always ‘get a likeness’. p.50/III
Moreover from the moment Leila met Dart, she was sketching him - p.66/III. Thus we will soon realize that the key word sketching is fundamental for the build-up of Leila’s character of a woman artist. We will soon realize how special and suggestive it is for Leila’s personality. It seems that through sketching, through creating, the woman artist could transcend time and reality. The metaphoric notion of a single time-frame or a mythological timeless in which the act of sketching is set invokes the sacred nature of creativity. Sketching is more than a lifelong occupation for Leila, it is conceived as a ritual, lifestyle and philosophy. Perhaps we won’t be surprised that there is a blend of fiction and faction in sketching. A brief look at the autobiography Fear of Fifty [Jong 1994/a] will reiterate E. Jong’s major focus. It is Leila’s grandfather - a prosperous portrait painter and a commercial artist with a ‘sprinkling’ of famous clients - who was ‘always sketching his past as he lived his present’. That was the legacy he left for his disciple, for any creative woman.
Just keep sketching. Try not to ask why. There may not be an answer. [Jong 1994/a, p.73]
This is how sketching is handed down from one generation to the next in the manner of a family myth maintaining itself. Thus it is no wonder that further on in E. Jong’s writing the semantic string of sketch - sketching, sketchbook, scratching will keep being the key opener for Leila’s professional identity.
Copyright © : Iliyana Nedkova,1996-7
N.Paradoxa : Issue No.6, 1998