A Different Kind of Intimacy: The Collected Writings of Karen Finley, A Memoir
by Karen Finley
Thunder’s Mouth Press, 384 pp., $17.95 (paper) In 1990, four notable American artists were denied funding from the National Endowment for the Arts — a refusal stemming from the “obscene” nature of their work — and gained celebrity/notoriety as the NEA Four. Karen Finley’s inclusion into the faux gang was particularly fortuitous for critics looking for tangible proof of obscenity, something easy to understand and easy to grasp. The convergence of chocolate, yams, and a naked female body signaled something more stripshow than art to those who didn’t delve further into Finley’s performance.
Such is the cross to bear when you’re a performance artist: So much of what you do depends on the sorts of spells you can weave onstage. Performance texts may seem too overboard on cursory examination; descriptions of the work fall far short of accurately depicting what is happening; desperate measures (such as quoting critical theory) must be taken to properly intellectualize the work. In experiencing artists like Finley, it’s easier to respond through the sink in the gut of guilt or the flush of rage than it is through a snappy thesis drawn up over a post-performance latte.
Which brings us to A Different Kind of Intimacy, a lovingly assembled and comprehensive book of Finley’s work. Though stripped of the stage setting and performative control that make Finley’s texts work in a theatre setting, New York Times cultural writer Mel Gussow ventures toward explanation in the book’s intro by stating, “Her art is meant to be redemptive, an attempt, in other words, ‘to lay the moral compass for others to live up to.'” Finley’s performances are, indeed, a sort of shepherding experience where she leads the audience through various valleys of darkness. By framing the performances in a chronology detailing her personal and political struggles as she took on each project, the book really does function more like memoir than collection, with the performance excerpts and accompanying photos serving as extremely vivid points on the timeline.
The timeline starts in the early 1980s, as Finley began marrying outrageous, sometimes-shocking performance strategies and provocative, sometimes-scathing texts exploring the treatment of women in society. Throughout the memoir, Finley makes the case that the way she’s been treated throughout the controversy surrounding her work is an extension of the very ills she identifies in her work. Finley attributes a miscarriage in 1992 to the stress of encountering steady and sometimes bizarre attacks from figures like Rush Limbaugh and Oliver North. In her 1998 show, The Return of the Chocolate-Smeared Woman, she goes as far as to say that Jesse Helms, one of her most virulent critics during the NEA funding fallout, had engaged her in an “eight-year, sexually abusive relationship.” While Finley’s story is, to her sympathizers, a harrowing one, it is not without its humorous twists and turns. The story of her ill-fated Martha Stewart parody book and the story of her pro-First Amendment shoot for Playboy magazine with Politically Incorrect host Bill Maher not only provide comic relief, but highlight certain foibles of the media that would be funny if they weren’t so serious.
Ultimately, A Different Kind of Intimacy is like much of performance art itself: sometimes hard to take, often rewarding if you can get through it, but, ultimately, designed for those predisposed to it. Finley observes that art is now fully on the fringes of society (as opposed to, say, sports), and has championed public art projects throughout her career to accompany her work with the converted in hip cabaret spaces. But this book is as far from public art as you’ll get with Finley. It’s unlikely that the casual shopper is going to pick this up in a chain bookstore (assuming he or she can find it in a chain bookstore), read monologues in which Finley inhabits the minds and mouths of deplorable individuals, and want more. Though her work is valuable, you have to be willing to embrace revulsion in order to follow Finley’s shepherd lead. And given the reaction over the chocolate-and-yam-covered intro course, it’s hard to imagine how this book will convert people over to the full curriculum.
This article appears in December 29 • 2000.