DO NOT SMILE FOR THE CAMERA.
Three crone artists refusing to smile politely for the patriarchy. Is NOT smiling one of the most liberating freedoms of our crone identity?! Leonor Fini, Mickalene Thomas, Barbara Walker.
I was having a break from writing, mooching around a brocante shop in Cahors, when I first saw her, propped against a chair leg. Or rather, SHE saw ME. She was staring right at me. Daring me to pick her up.
I resisted at first on practical reasons - a) I don’t have any money, b) how would I drag this weighty tome back home?
So I tried to ignore her, I really did. But I could feel her eyes boring into my back and knew I’d regret at least not taking a little peak…
And sure enough, this was a crone of epic proportions. Le Livre de Leonor Fini.
And best of all, it was 16 Euro, and the crone who owned the shop gave it me for 15, with a conspiratorial crone wink.
In Crone Club, we sometimes share ‘Crone Assignments’ to encourage us to reflect on what we want from our ‘crone years.’ One of the most popular assignments is - ‘don’t smile for the camera’, where we flood the algorithms with our own unsmiling images, whilst getting a first-hand feel for what it might be like to not smile all the time.
I remember a dinner lady in school saying to mum once, ‘we love Justine, she’s always so happy… always smiling!’ The irony being of course, that smiling was a mask to pass myself off as ‘normal’, and had absolutely nothing to do with feeling happy.
Plenty of Crone Clubbers took up this assignment challenge and shared their unsmiling poses on social media @crone_club_reclaiming_crone. Interestingly, (though I guess not surprisingly), many of those who took up the gauntlet were also early adopters of ‘crone strength training’.
I was buzzing from the response, until I noticed that one of the posts had messages of abuse in the comments, saying it ‘made them look ugly’ and ‘they should really try smiling’.
Point proven. Not that there was ever really one to prove.
I’m a big fan of Sky Portrait Artist of the Year, and I think I’ve mentioned this portrait before by Caroline de Peyrecave, where she adopts a traditionally male pose in the style of an ‘old masters’. It struck me how rare it was to see a woman unashamedly taking up space in the same way as a traditional male portrait, with a direct gaze, unsmiling (and even manspreading!) A confidence that could usually only be born from generations of white male privilege.
At the time, I was writing a bid in response to a call for artists in Sheffield, to illustrate electricity boxes across my neighbourhood. For my pitch, I'd decided to impose the heads of local crone heroes onto the male bodies of old ‘master’ style paintings… what would happen if we put the head of the crone who invented Lily’s Baps onto the body of say, William the Conqueror? I couldn’t find a picture of Lily, so for the purposes of the bid, with the help of my mate Reg, we had a play with my head instead.
I never heard back from them about the bid but, hey, as Crone Janet Street Porter once said, ‘never waste a good idea’. So here I am, writing about it instead; thanks to a reminder from the mysterious woman on a book cover, with the unapologetic gaze.
The woman with the unsmiling gaze is Leonor Fini (link to Wikipedia - OMG check out her story!) Born in 1907, a more beautifully bonkers crone spirit you could not wish for. Despite being an important contributor to the Surrealist movement (mates with Dali, and famously posing in the buff for Henri Cartier Bresson), she refused to officially ‘join’ the Surrealist movement, preferring - as many crones do - to remain an outlier instead.
Much of her work often referenced symbols of the crone domain - sphinxes, werewolves, and witches, and her animal-inspired costumes that she designed and wore, were legendary.
As her final crone fk u, I noted that at the time of her death in Paris 1986, aged 88, she’d made a final request to only sell her apartment after the death of the last of her remaining 17 cats. Now there’s a cat lady that I’d have loved Donald Trump to have met.
We move on from Cahors to a campsite outside the city of Toulouse. As is the norm on arrival, we are gifted with a brochure about the city - another weighty tome, featuring shed loads of bonkers arty stuff… quelle choix!
But then I saw her. Or rather, SHE saw ME, her direct, unapologetic gaze locking eyes with mine, with one ‘tit to the wind’.
And best of all, despite it now being October, the exhibition was still on.
The exhibition is called ‘All About Love,’ and was inspired by the book of the same name by feminist writer and activist, Bell Hooks. 👌🏽 The artist is New Jersey’s Mickalene Thomas, and the museum is called ‘Les Abattoirs.’
As I walk into the first room, my jaw is literally on the floor. These collages are MASSIVE. Each wall is filled with collages of black women in repose - strong, taking up space, and of course, NOT SMILING.
At the altar of one of these huge canvases, a young black girl sits crossed legged with her sketch book, studying the art work intently. I wonder when was the last time that either of us were invited to admire a ten-foot naked body of a black woman, unsmiling, happy in her skin, and fully embracing her female power.
Oh, that would be never.
Les Abattoirs is a wonderfully curated space. Towards the end of the exhibition is a room laid out like a design studio, where you’re encouraged to sit at a desk and colour in outlines of these incredible collages.
When was the last time you were invited to colour in a strong image of a woman of colour ‘taking up space?’
Exactement, mes crone amis.
When I get back and look her up online, I read about her mammoth 10ft tall x 24 ft wide masterpiece, which was commissioned for the restaurant at MoMA - physically, and symbolically taking up space in a domain traditionally dominated by white male artists. 🔥
The MoMA work - Le Déjeuner Sur l’Herbe: Les Trois Femmes Noires’ - is described as a ‘homage’ to Manet’s painting, ‘Le Dejeuner Sur l’herb’ (pictured above), to ‘reclaim agency for women who have been represented as objects to be desired or subjugated.’ (Wikipedia).
Dunno about you though, I see it as less of a homage and more of a ‘fk you!’.
In room after room, these assertive women give us an insight into the crone quality of being 100% at ease in your own skin (also known in Crone Club as ‘zero fks given’), staring out directly at us, “challenging the dominance of the male gaze in art.[14]” (Wikipedia).
But to me, it’s more than a challenge to the traditional ‘male gaze’ of art history - it’s also her proudly queer identity that also gives that traditional ‘male gaze’ a further twist to the gonads.
In the final room at the exhibition, you’re invited to sit on a sofa and browse through the coffee table of books, which have all been selected by the artist as having influenced her work. (What Fking great idea, I love the curation of this gallery so much!)
‘All About Love’ is there of course, but so too is a bizarre collection of what looks like soft porn mags from the 50’s and 60’s, accompanied by a set of ‘beauties of the month’ calendars. There’s something different about the models though - they are all women of colour. The collection, I discover (with the help of Google translate) belongs to her mother (‘Mamma Bush’, a model herself in the 1970s), which Mickalene used to leaf through as a child.
It turns out the magazine is called ‘Jet Magazine’, a trailblazer for Black American culture and the civil rights movement from the 50s-1980s, in addition to being the only magazine at the time to celebrate black models.
Rather than viewing these calendars as female objectification, Mickalene sees them as a form of black emancipation, hence their heavy influence in her work. As she says:
“These calendars offered an alternative to Playboy at a time when America was not ready to see black pin ups spread out in magazines.”
Mind. Officially. Blown.
I’m now back in the van and can not wait to get back to my book of Leonor Fini, as the two artists I’ve stumbled upon quite by chance, feel somehow inextricably connected. I turn through page after page of arresting photographs of women in control, often erotic, and always, UNSMILING, and then I come to this one...
It’s a photograph of Leonor staring out at us, in the pose of…guess what… an old masters painting! Ha ha, never mind ‘never waste a good idea’ - hows about, ‘there’s no such thing as a new idea!’
We’re now into the last day of Toulouse and I’ve braced myself to ‘do’ my social media work, when this post in my feed stops me scrolling. 👇🏽
It’s the artist Barbara Walker, staring directly at me, daring me to scroll past her.
Born and raised in Birmingham in the UK, it turns out she also went to the same shitly-named ‘University of Central England in Birmingham’ that a few of us Crone Clubbers went to! Despite being a contemporary of other YBA’s such as Tracey Emin et al, I’m ashamed to say that I wasn’t aware of her work until her unsmiling gaze met mine on my social media feed.
I see there are a couple of comments about the photograph, so I click on them.
Amongst the complimentary comments about her work, there’s also one from someone called Will, whose hugely valuable contribution is about the photograph of Barbara, more specifically, her pose...
“Defensive posture, lack of smile. Yikes.”
Yes crone sisters and allies, it seems like we still have much work to do, so let’s get to it.
Allons-y !👇🏽
🔥 Join the Crone Club movement and help change the narrative of female ageing and menopause.🔥
👉 Become a paid subscriber of Tits to the Wind to help keep Crone Club going.
👉 Join the Crone Club Private Members Facebook Group (sorry, crones and crones-in-training only).
👉 Follow Crone_Club_Reclaiming_Crone on instagram (all welcome including fellas and pro-ageing allies!)
👉 If you’re in Sheffield, or can get to Sheffield a few times a year, apply to join Crone Club Sheffield. Our November meet up is a chance to try boxing and punch the shit out of stuff. Still got 8 places to fill, so hit me up!
Links
About Leonor Fini, and an interesting link to some of her work being sold at Bonhams.
Buy Bell Hooks, ‘All About Love’
Mickalene Thomas exhibition All About Love at Les Abbatoirs in Toulouse.
Mickalene Thomas Wikipedia page.
Barbara Walker Studio on Instagram.
Barbara Walker’s latest exhibition at Victoria Miro, Venice 2025.
Finally, apologies for any typos and repetitions in this edition, as our volunteer proofreader Crone Kazza is hopefully in the final throes of chemo. Sending massive love and healing vibes to you my friend, and to Crone Sarah and everyone who is going through this right now. xxxx
You don’t need me!! Fascinating stuff. I’m really looking forward to catching up with you soon xx
I get “Which” magazine - so middle class! - and I’ve written to them a number of times about the pictures they have of a (usually young and attractive) woman on her own, smiling at her laundry/lawnmower/toilet/shopping trolley/laptop etc. FFS!!!
BTW, you might like this website: https://manwhohasitallshop.com/. There items I particularly like which remind men to smile!!! Because women like positive men! 😁