First tutorial with Jill

I think Jill and I are going to get on.  I had sent some preliminary thoughts to her prior to my tute.  She cut through it in several fell swoops, and very effectively restricted the range of my questions.

Key Questions:   These questions may be further narrowed

How do museums represent the work made by women? 

What cultural values are attributed to women?

How does framing and/or the gaze impact on the representation of women?  (I thought framing and the gaze were different things - need to investigate)

Aim(s):  - To develop a series of narratives that explore the values attributed to women’s work in contemporary urban Britain, as an artist working with stitch and the traditional sampler format.

- to challenge notions of trivia associated with women and their family history. These aims will evolve as the research continues.

Context and Scope
                                                                                                      

I’m restricting the range of artwork that I consider to Museums and Galleries from the last 30 years - 1977, maybe a bit more to include second wave feminism.  Restrict the range to art by women about women.

My life experience is urban UK, so this will be my focus

Methods

Visual texts and data: paintings, textiles, other applied arts as identified as of interest, archives e.g. V&A and Tate archives, British Library etc.  NB V&A can be difficult to gain access to their archives - but there is a big project identifying women artists of the last 30 years, so it is topical for them.  I know Mary Schoeser (who used to work there) and her network might be of help!

Interviews - 2 categories
- semi-structured interviews with people about values they see in specific women

(this should identify how women see values in women, compared to how men see values in women?)

- interviews with women artists who work on female subject matter.

Literature review to include PhD theses.

Create a glossary (Autobiographic; ethnographic; trivia - relativism; etc)

How do gender norms vary impact my research?. .  I can only comment from a white working class woman’s cultural perspective – so the work is autobiographic and I need to use an ethnographic methodology to consider women who have impacted on my life

Restrict the range of my research to:

Art by women about women 

Iconographic analysis - this is the old term for semiotic analysis. Identify and reconstruct the role of women in an art form. What values are portrayed?  How do I code my findings? – 

Book: Naked Truths: Women, Sexuality and Gender in Classical Art and Archaeology

Subset questions

What is the role of the viewer in gender construction of value in art? Read about the gaze and precis it in your literature review

Who are the patrons of art about women and who was the intended audience? Read

What was the social and economic status of patrons and artists? – so you are asking how does patronage work Helen Gorrill who was at your interview wrote her PhD thesis on this but it is embargoed whilst she writes a book from that thesis for IB Tauris due out late next year – but you could go to Cumbria and interview her.

Also suggest you interview Andrea Hannon whose PhD was entitled The House is Still Named After and is in our library. Andrea lives nearby in Leamington.

Mandy Havers is on our staff as a 0.2 – look her up! And her studio is nearby in Coventry – she would be good to interview too.

What is the required and accepted behaviour of women in order to be valued?

What roles are played by women who are valued?

Do women who are valued act beyond stereotypical roles?

Read between the lines – what is implied and look for the belittled roles to disclose the real context of women.

Suggested reading: -

Writings by Marsha Meskimmon – including Women Making Art

Simone De Beauvoir The Second Sex also Greer, Dworkin and Friedan

Rebecca Fortnum:   Contemporary women Artists in their own words

Luce Irigaray This Sex Which Is Not one

Guerrilla Girls

Rosika Parker The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the making of the Feminine

Writings by Griselda Pollock on gender eg Vision and Difference

I’ve just realised - by restricting the range of what I consider, to women’s art about women, means I am focussing on defining my version of the female imaginary.  As Luce Irigaray postulated that the female imaginary had not yet been clearly defined, I am targetting a clear definition that satisfies me, from my reading and subsequent artwork.  And in order to get the female definition, men need to be omitted because the definition is not about them.

"Defining my female imaginary”. 

Great outcome from a tute.