Illustrator Ulli Lust – shamelessly through the ice age

They grew up in an Austrian village – between an almost naked Jesus in the church and a chaste covered by Mary. When did you get the idea of ​​getting to the bottom of such body representations?

As a child, I haven’t noticed that something is wrong with the gender relationships. I had two sisters and a mother who was quite confident – and our father was a nice man. In the church, however, it was already noticeable that the girls were disadvantaged because only the boys were allowed to ministers. But there was also this spirit of optimism in the 1970s and one thought: equal rights will soon prevail.

When we became grown up, many restrictions and prejudices suddenly appear to which you are subject to as a woman. I noticed that this is reflected in art. When you go for a walk in old towns, you can always see famous gentlemen in world history, but only a few portraits of women. These are rather allegorical representations: goddesses, figures and naked. At the beginning of my comic, I always describe irritation about why women are presented so weird in art, always slightly ashamed. Just like this love goddess in the British Museum in London, the “crouching aphrodite”, which is surprised when bathing and tries to hide her shame. In the room there are loud male naked, and in the middle it stands one woman who is surrounded by everyone. This is an absurd staging that gave me to think.

Interview

Kai Pfeiffer

Ulli lust was born in Vienna in 1967. From 1999 to 2004 she studied at the Berlin-Weißensee University of Applied Sciences. She lives and draws in Berlin. Beyond the German -speaking borders, it was known through her autobiographical comic “Today is the last day of the rest of your life” (2009), which was awarded the Ignatz Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Award. Ulli Lust is considered one of the most important German-language comic artists and as a representative in the documentary comic.

When did it start that women are depicted so ashamed?

This can be clearly traced back to the Greek antiquity. Even in ancient Egypt you were very prudish, you didn’t take your off, neither men nor women. At most there was cultic nudity among gods. In ancient Greece it was forbidden to show women naked. They should always be dressed unless it was a goddess. As a result, the female body has sexualized very much. The bare body is suddenly always the goddess of love. It is always meant erotic, there is no natural female nudity in the old classic character. There is natural beauty only for male bodies, the ideal person. This is a purely cultural character that cannot be seen in the previous works of art.

What do body pictures and representations say about our society? Are we still in ancient tradition?

And how. In my childhood I experienced how suddenly the top-without-bathing was allowed in the swimming pool in the neighboring town. We were totally out of the house: who wants to swim upstairs? Such nonsense! But it was officially allowed because it was time. FKK was also completely normal in the GDR. I then experienced how the female body was exposed in the 80s. You could go swimming without dresses without constantly feeling that the tensioners run after you. A normalization of the body began.

But in the past 20 years, such an American prudery has been nestled with us again. On the one hand, you have greater opportunities in private life, even open relationships are more accepted than before. But when breasts can be seen, you will be closed on Instagram. The young people are prudish again when we were at the time. We had the feeling that we had to overcome the shame because the nonsense and arrested spitness is. Today there is a very strong sexualization towards the bare body, and I think that’s not a good appearance.

Frauenkampftag

Feminist fighting day

In your book you go looking for gender pictures in the FRüHumanity of humanity. How were bodies shown at the time?

In the neolithic and in the Paläolithic, women were presented very confidently or confidently, and they also have no male figures that are provided to them. There were many women’s figures and only a few men in the art that I portray in comic. They are all naked – or at least they show all genitals and rarely a face. The background should be that art has been used or viewed as a magical practice. My guess is that there was a fear of the effects of faces that were drawn.

Overall, there was very little art in the ice age. But what there was was really great. As an artist, I know how difficult it is to get a certain skill to achieve realistic representations. A hyper -realistic representation of animals and humans is an artistic achievement for which you have to practice a lot.

According to autobiographical stories and a literary adaptation, “the woman as a person” is her first non -fiction book. How was it for you as an artist to draw art?

Since I’ve been doing comics, I’ve been dealing with documentary fabrics. I have always used material from the so -called real life. In art, there is sometimes a restrictions. When drawing historical events, you have to imagine a lot, but I try to build the most likely variant of a past through research results. I like to read archaeological books myself. Then the idea arose to draw this type of content as a comic. Because in the picture you can visualize things that you would have to explain long and tediously in the text. In addition, there is the scenic that a comic delivers. This allows you to get into the everyday life of people. This brings many advantages when it comes to empathy into other social systems or historical facts.

In this case it was about visual things, i.e. sculptures. But the picture is a good medium. I marked the artifact and not paused, which would probably have been more correct. Because when drawing, it may be that you incorporate light modifications. But I was concerned with understanding what I draw. To do this, I have to watch the object very closely and perceive the smallest turns. As a result, my respect in front of the artists has grown many times over.

Let’s take a look at your job: is the comic area a male-dominated field?

That used to be the case. There were these adventure comics and the superhero rail, which was very male. Until the turn of the millennium, comic shops in Germany were focused on men. Then women conquered the comic business through the graphic novel. It deals with different content, away from horror, adventure, humor – towards a colorful range of different types of text or literatures, in which the autobiographical is often emphasized. In Germany there are now many successful draftsmen who do graphic novels. And then there is the really large manga rail that I don’t have an overview. But a lot of women also draw there.