''The Oval Court'' is an artwork created between 1984 and 1986 by British artist

Helen Chadwick Helen Chadwick (18 May 1953 – 15 March 1996) was a British sculptor, photographer and installation artist. In 1987, she became one of the first women artists to be nominated for the Turner Prize. Chadwick was known for "challenging stereotypic ...

. The work was part of Chadwick's first major solo exhibition entitled Of Mutability, held at the

Institute of Contemporary Arts The Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) is an artistic and cultural centre on The Mall in London, just off Trafalgar Square. Located within Nash House, part of Carlton House Terrace, near the Duke of York Steps and Admiralty Arch, the ICA c ...

in London. Chadwick received a

Turner Prize The Turner Prize, named after the English painter J. M. W. Turner, is an annual prize presented to a British visual artist. Between 1991 and 2016, only artists under the age of 50 were eligible (this restriction was removed for the 2017 award) ...

nomination in 1987 for the exhibition, making her one of the first women nominated for the prize. The work is currently in the collection of the

Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...

South Kensington South Kensington, nicknamed Little Paris, is a district just west of Central London in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Historically it settled on part of the scattered Middlesex village of Brompton. Its name was supplanted with ...

, London. ''The Oval Court'' refers to an entire room in the Of Mutability exhibition. On the walls of the room was a venetian glass mirror and photocopied images of the artist crying with tears made of blue foliage which flowed down into computer rendered drawings of the

Baroque The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...

columns from the

baldacchino A baldachin, or baldaquin (from it, baldacchino), is a canopy of state typically placed over an altar or throne. It had its beginnings as a cloth canopy, but in other cases it is a sturdy, permanent architectural feature, particularly over h ...

St Peter's Basilica The Papal Basilica of Saint Peter in the Vatican ( it, Basilica Papale di San Pietro in Vaticano), or simply Saint Peter's Basilica ( la, Basilica Sancti Petri), is a church built in the Renaissance style located in Vatican City, the papal en ...

, that reach down to the floor. As if formed from the artist's tears, the centre of the room contained an ovoid shaped, photocopied collage of blue toned A4 paper where multiple copies of the artist appear floating in a pool of plenty, with dead animals, insects, flowers, fruit and fish all swimming around her.Horlock, Mary (2004). "Between a Rock and a Soft Place". In Mark, Sladen (ed.). ''Helen Chadwick''. pp. 33-46 In the centre of this platform is five golden spheres corresponding to the artists fingers as well as the touch of the divine. In the second room of the exhibition was ''Carcass'' (1986) a glass tower that was two metres high, full of rotting vegetable matter which the artist would refill daily. ''Carcass'' was adjacent to the room containing ''The Oval Court,'' the decay of ''Carcass'' seemed to loom over ''The Oval Court'' that was full of reminders of the transcience of life.

Background and concept

''The Oval Court'' was made with a

Canon Canon or Canons may refer to: Arts and entertainment * Canon (fiction), the conceptual material accepted as official in a fictional universe by its fan base * Literary canon, an accepted body of works considered as high culture ** Western can ...

photocopier and a computer. Chadwick claimed to like the photocopier and said it is "an extraordinarily direct and efficient medium." She liked that there was no conscious framing of the image. The work plays into the

vanitas A ''vanitas'' (Latin for 'vanity') is a symbolic work of art showing the transience of life, the futility of pleasure, and the certainty of death, often contrasting symbols of wealth and symbols of ephemerality and death. Best-known are ''van ...

tradition with its subtle display of the transience of life, such as Chadwick's use of dead animals, maggots and fruits. In a traditional vanitas work the human body is often absent from the scene and if it is present, the person is usually solemnly contemplating death. Chadwick subverts this by having her naked body embrace and enjoy the transient and the goods surrounding her. In her notes Chadwick describes the 12 nude images of her as "12 gates to paradise, the twelve paths to self-knowledge through the power of love" and here she achieves "one-ness with all living things." Chadwick claimed to have been heavily influenced by the

Rococo Rococo (, also ), less commonly Roccoco or Late Baroque, is an exceptionally ornamental and theatrical style of architecture, art and decoration which combines asymmetry, scrolling curves, gilding, white and pastel colours, sculpted moulding, ...

and Baroque eras for the creation of this work. She visited many churches and palaces of these eras before creating the work. She turned the heavenly ceiling paintings of the Rococo and Baroque upside down so instead of looking up at a glimpse of heaven we are looking down at her floating world of desire. Chadwick described the work as "a stitching together of so many different references, ultimately post-modern, a kind of bowerbird theft of facets from everywhere, from architecture, from painting." Chadwick's body and facial expressions in ''The Oval Court,'' references specific paintings and sculpture of the Rococo and Baroque''.'' Such as

Gian Lorenzo Bernini Gian Lorenzo (or Gianlorenzo) Bernini (, , ; Italian Giovanni Lorenzo; 7 December 159828 November 1680) was an Italian sculptor and architect. While a major figure in the world of architecture, he was more prominently the leading sculptor of his ...

's sculpture the

Ecstasy of Saint Teresa The ''Ecstasy of Saint Teresa'' (also known as ''Saint Teresa in Ecstasy'' or the ''Transverberation of Saint Teresa''; it, L'Estasi di Santa Teresa or ) is a sculptural group in white marble set in an elevated aedicule in the Cornaro Chapel of ...

. As well as Jean-Honore Fragonard's The Raised Chemise and Francois Boucher's The Brunette Odalisque and The Blond Odalisque.

Critical reception

''The Oval Court'' and her earlier work '' Ego Geometria Sum'', received a lot of criticism from Feminist reviewers arguing whether the way the artist's naked body is perpetuating the objectification of the female body. Chadwick claimed that she wanted to address "the issue of the female body as the site of desire" and "was looking for a vocabulary for desire where I was the subject and the object and the author." Chadwick tried to achieve this by having all the figures in the work never look out at the viewer, they do no invite the viewer in, they are all engaged in their own forms of pleasure. As a response to this criticism Chadwick began to question the use of the body in her art and she stated that "I made a conscious decision in 1988 not to represent my body. It immediately declares female gender and I wanted to be more deft." After this Chadwick's work, while still exploring notions of the self, never portrayed her outside body again. Instead she turned her focus inwards with her ''Meat Lamps'' series''.''

References

1986 in art Works by Helen Chadwick Feminist art Xerox art Self-portraits Installation art works Installation art {{DEFAULTSORT:Oval Court, The