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Notes on 'Zabat' - Maud Sulter exhibition at New Hall Cambridge
'Calliope'
24/09/2021
When I visited New Hall to look at the exhibition of Maud Sulter's photographic series ‘Zabat’ (1989), I had avoided reading much about her so as to let the images do their work in their own way. The large gold-framed photographs are hung in a long light-filled walkway overlooking New Hall's atrium with its rills and giant pot-plants . On display are six of the nine photographs of black women as Greek muses with Sulter herself as Calliope.
This mage comes from a photograph of Jeanne Duval, the Haitian born actress and dancer and mistress of Baudelaire. Sulter holds a classic Pre-Raphaelite pose with heavy tresses pressing on her bare shoulder, in her hand a small case whose contents are in shadow. The case apparently contains an image of Jeanne Duval, but it is hidden, unknowable, secret and private.
As with each of the images there is a play of what is seen and what is unseen; they all have the basic studio-style background familiar from early photography, but each of the backdrops is crumpled paper or cloth, lacking the usual props of potted palms, rugs, architecture, as though the women themselves had no backgrounds, no settings, no things of their own. They are improvised from the least thing that was to hand, decontextualised and cut out not only from the aesthetic tradition of portraiture but also from their own personal histories.
Sulter's curved wing of inky hair is dense, almost geometric, sensual but articulated as though carved from ebony. Heavy hair is one of the Pre-Raphaelite fixations; the subject often gazes in a mournful unfocussed way as though lost a dream, an object (snowdrop, pansy, a tress) in her hand, pearly nape exposed. Here I have to say that as a child I loathed these boneless fish-like images, shiny women who didn't seem to be looking at anything and who you couldn't imagine talking, running, eating. At the same time I was fascinated by the technical skill that could create such paintings and have remained repelled by the squeamish atmosphere of the Pre-Raphaelite movement.
Her skin is gleaming and when you look closely you can see its fine texture and surface and its sheen of life. It is awful to see this vivid life and know that she died so young (48) though she and her fellow muses are all caught here forever young, forever gleaming. The velvet she wears is glossy too, but it is visibly a shiny cheap nylon cloth - like the backdrop it is a gesture at sumptuousness on the cheap.
Sulter is twisting away from the viewer as she looks out of the frame, as though about to turn her back. The relationship to the viewer is almost discouraged; you can look but it is one-way, in no way is your gaze returned. The ‘gaze’ is often an act of possession, but here Sulter takes the power by intimitating that you can look all you want - as the cloth slips down - but she’s about to go her own way.
This mage comes from a photograph of Jeanne Duval, the Haitian born actress and dancer and mistress of Baudelaire. Sulter holds a classic Pre-Raphaelite pose with heavy tresses pressing on her bare shoulder, in her hand a small case whose contents are in shadow. The case apparently contains an image of Jeanne Duval, but it is hidden, unknowable, secret and private.
As with each of the images there is a play of what is seen and what is unseen; they all have the basic studio-style background familiar from early photography, but each of the backdrops is crumpled paper or cloth, lacking the usual props of potted palms, rugs, architecture, as though the women themselves had no backgrounds, no settings, no things of their own. They are improvised from the least thing that was to hand, decontextualised and cut out not only from the aesthetic tradition of portraiture but also from their own personal histories.
Sulter's curved wing of inky hair is dense, almost geometric, sensual but articulated as though carved from ebony. Heavy hair is one of the Pre-Raphaelite fixations; the subject often gazes in a mournful unfocussed way as though lost a dream, an object (snowdrop, pansy, a tress) in her hand, pearly nape exposed. Here I have to say that as a child I loathed these boneless fish-like images, shiny women who didn't seem to be looking at anything and who you couldn't imagine talking, running, eating. At the same time I was fascinated by the technical skill that could create such paintings and have remained repelled by the squeamish atmosphere of the Pre-Raphaelite movement.
Her skin is gleaming and when you look closely you can see its fine texture and surface and its sheen of life. It is awful to see this vivid life and know that she died so young (48) though she and her fellow muses are all caught here forever young, forever gleaming. The velvet she wears is glossy too, but it is visibly a shiny cheap nylon cloth - like the backdrop it is a gesture at sumptuousness on the cheap.
Sulter is twisting away from the viewer as she looks out of the frame, as though about to turn her back. The relationship to the viewer is almost discouraged; you can look but it is one-way, in no way is your gaze returned. The ‘gaze’ is often an act of possession, but here Sulter takes the power by intimitating that you can look all you want - as the cloth slips down - but she’s about to go her own way.
