Review of Diane Bush’s Make a Merkin Great Again by Jane Boyer

It is just about five weeks until the 2024 Presidential election in America. It’s a tense time. Without going into the depths of the political rivalries in America, or the internal and external pressures on the election process, I want to consider the recent work of American artist, Diane Bush. News of the election is readily available in the media.

Bush’s 2020 work, Make A Merkin Great Again,[1] on exhibit at the Burchfield Penney Art Center in Buffalo, NY in The Unseen exhibition as part of a recent acquisition into their permanent collection, is a satirical piece bristling with political and sexual innuendo. Made in conjunction with her husband collaborator, Steven Baskin, the work is a response to Donald Trump’s history of sexual assault on women, and his infamous brag of grabbing “them by the pussy.”[2] The first thing that strikes me in the work is the prickly triangular frames. Painted red, white, and blue, and hung in a formation reminiscent of the American flag, these frames are actual veteran flag frames for memorialising the military dead. Within each frame is a woven triangular tangle of cat fur and red, white, and blue coloured strips.

The cat fur is significant here, not only for Trump’s boast, but also because of the 2021 comment by Republican, J.D. Vance, who at the time was running for the Senate calling Democratic political leaders, “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.”[3] Bush has defiantly embraced this charged and sexist trope, as many other women have done since the media furore surrounding this statement. But I want to consider what Bush has done artistically in this work, and my thoughts turn to British artist, Helen Chadwick.

I admit, whenever I see hair entwined with a non-fibrous material, I think of Chadwick’s Loop My Loop. The first time I saw an image of this work, it seared my brain, and I live with its afterimage. So, I may be forgiven for making this obvious connection. However, it is Chadwick’s humour and her irreverence for feminist motifs, claiming the right to use the female body as subject, rather than merely as the contested object of the male gaze[4] that are perhaps not so obvious connections here with Bush’s work. In short, Bush is doing for American politics what Chadwick did for gender, approaching it with satire and a deep sensitivity to experience. I would also suggest that Bush’s work would not be permissible if it hadn’t been for Chadwick.

Is it disrespectful that Bush uses the emotive veteran flag frames? When we consider that she exiled herself to the UK in support of a conscientious objector partner when she was 18 and her brother was blacklisted by the FBI for being a member of the Buffalo Nine during the Vietnam War, the use of this memorial frame becomes highly charged with personal political trauma. Her brother, Jerry, also formed the Free Martin Sostre Committee[5] working to free a wrongly imprisoned American prisoner rights activist.[6] It took a name change and a move to the American West in order for her brother to find work as a teacher and to continue making art. Through this distressing history, we begin to see a kind of personal memorial to the political ideals of American culture.

There is another more subliminal characteristic to Bush’s Make a Merkin Great Again that is reminiscent of Chadwick’s work though. That perfectly formed little triangle of hair in a red frame, which feels deeply feminist, and is a reminder of the genital wigs used as early as 1400 to beautify a lice-preventing shaved pubis.[7] Interestingly, the triangles in the white and the blue frames do not resonate in the way the ones in the red frames do.

I recall Chadwick’s works, In the Kitchen (fridge), 1977 and Menstrual Piece, 1976.[8] The perfectly formed triangle of pubic hair shrouded in translucent PVC is the focal piece of Chadwick’s In the Kitchen even though her head is prominently and clearly framed within the freezer section of the fridge (it makes me laugh just writing that last phrase). The reason her pubic shape takes on such significance in this work is not because of its diffused visibility, and is therefore subject to the sexualised male gaze, but because it is as emblematic of the female form as a female head is. The attention attracted through its partial veiling is a reminder that this form has a strong association with the feminine but is dangerous and therefore must be covered. This same peril is sensed in Bush’s wall installation, albeit as a more coded presence. The colour red is associated with menstruation, carrying a complex history of shame in the association. The red frames in both artists’ work feel stark and politically charged; one as an (un)common hanging structure for what could be taken for sacks of sausages, if we didn’t understand otherwise, and the other as stalwart defenders against a penetrating force of an aggressive whiteness.

Taken together, both artists play games with male chauvinism. They also claim the right to use the female body, or reference to it, as its own subject adding an important statement to the polarised political atmosphere surrounding the American elections and the perpetual fight for women’s reproductive rights in America. ‘Memorialising’ the merkin as Bush has done in her installation suggests the submissive objectified female body part should be put to rest. But we all know that isn’t likely to happen anytime soon.

Bush’s work is on view in The Unseen at the Burchfield Penney Art Center in Buffalo, NY until 27 Oct.

[1] Bush, D., and Baskin, S., 2019-20. Make a Merkin Great Again [artwork]. Burchfield Penney Art Center. Available at: https://burchfieldpenney.org/art-and-artists/artwork/object:2021-005-000-make-a-merkin-great-again/ [Accessed: 5 Oct 2024].

[2] Ibid.

[3] Treisman, R., 2024. JD Vance went viral for ‘cat lady’ comments. The centuries-old trop has a long tail. [online] NPR. 29 July. Available at: https://www.npr.org/2024/07/29/nx-s1-5055616/jd-vance-childless-cat-lady-history [Accessed: 5 Oct 2024].

[4] Davis, L., 2022. Helen Chadwick: body artist and feminist vanguard. [online] ART UK, 18 March. Available at: https://artuk.org/discover/stories/helen-chadwick-body-artist-and-feminist-vanguard [Accessed: 5 Oct 2024]. Richard Saltoun Gallery in London represents Chadwick’s estate and limited edition multiples of her work can be found here: https://www.richardsaltoun.com/artists/101-helen-chadwick/works/ [Accessed: 9 Oct 2024].

[5] Bush, D., 2024. Sibling Art Activists, Proud “Childless Cat Lady” Work On View in

Burchfield Penney Art Center Group Exhibition, The Unseen [press release]. Press release provided by the artist.

[6] Wikipedia. Martin Sostre. [online] Wikipedia. Last edited, 3 June 2024. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Sostre [Accessed: 5 Oct 2024].

[7] Bush, (n.1).

[8] Davis, (n.4).