All direct quotations:
Why use text? Words draw people in. They engage people's whole attention. If you can read, you do read: you can't help it. The brain interprets the simplest strokes and outlines as letters or numbers. p6 introduction
For most textile artists [who use words], text is rarely an add-on or afterthought but an integral part of the work. The placement, size and character of any script they use [is carefully considered]. Many artists, aware that the involuntary urge to read can dominate the viewer's emotional and intellectual response, work on the borderline of readability. ... Words ... connection the past and the present, giving rise to a sense of dialogue with the aanymous mark-makes who went before. p8 introduction.
Artists find that text based found objects are ideal vehicles to articulate personal or collective memories or to high issues such as the consumer society or environmental degradation. p9 introduction.
Why artists choose to work with text. How to include text in such a way that it does not intrude clumsily on a work's design, but enhances and complements it. p10 introduction
I have always interpreted the idea of text on textile in a literal and explicit way. My quilts are intended tote legible and the works and meanings are paramount. I use my work to comment on social or personal issues, or to lay with language, often with a dash of humour. I enjoy using the medium of stitch to explore the territory in which the visual image of the text intersects with what it is trying to express.
Artists who work with text and textiles are uniting two media whose narrative potential is deeply ingrained in human experience. p14
There is indeed something resonant, almost magical, about an embroidered name the echoes down the generations ands lost none of its potency today as a physical link to the past. p16
All memory is a part of a narrative and is also affected by the narratives we constantly tell ourselves .... for this reason the work demands text to elucidate some of the stories - Val Jackson p29
Tilleke Schwartz - enjoys subverting the notion that textile artworks have to be scrupulously plotted and designed. p31
Chapter 3 Social and Political Issues
Robin Schwalbe - Text should not dominate the viewer's emotional and intuitive response. The quilt works initially as a striking image, with the suggestion of language - and then, if you work hard enough at it, you can discover the full quote for yourself. p46
Impey: I wanted to draw attention to the often inadequate responses to issues by political leaders and the population at large. p48
Caren Garfen - The entertaining accessibility of her work masks a serious underlying social commentary. p50
Rhiannon Williams - It's striking just how much is conveyed, almost in a documentary sense, by short phrases or single words. p51
Lynn Setterington - depicts everyday items that are usually overlooked 'a constant celebration or the ordinary'. p59
Tuesday, 23 April 2019
More than Muses - Feminism and Art History.
Allison Deutsch. Social politics of making, viewing and writing about art in the 20th century.
Why are there no great women artists.
What is it like to be a feminist art critic today?
1970-90 arguments were well established and impact had been made ...? Importance of critique - changed art history.
Still completely urgent and vital. Why it matters still? How to contribute? Be skeptical. Art criticism is riddled with gender assumptions and prejudice.
Morisot best known female Impressionist. Impressionism has waxed and waned in popularity. Wealthy-genteel-art eduction accomplishments. 1860s submitted to Salon. Morisot was in all their exhibitions from 61-68 except the year when she was pregnant. No men did this. Died 1896 and on death certificate it said 'sans profession' ie no employment! In year of death 1896 retrospective of 400 of her paintings.
Obscurity. Male colleagues became popular. Not Morisot until 1987 Women's college Mount Holyoke Massachusetts. Important show - pushed thinking. Books on her from 1987-92, cemented her into the canon.
Then her star wanes again. New show now on tour (France?) First woman solo show in France since 1941.
Patronising review! New Yorker - written by a man - well intentioned. Sexism is a problem. Concludes "puts Morisot centrestage'. Puts the emphasis on to women. Talks about the woman, not the art.
Women's art - products of labour and training - NOT: the unconscious pouring out of personality; or less professional and more sensitive person.
'Radiates selfhood' - generic female self? Contemporary art writing - encodes many messages?
BBC Culture - Cath Pound 7/8/18. Cassatt. Factually wrong.
Marginalised by consciously not marginalising.
'Morisot comes into her own' - conflates with her self?
We get told women can be quickly forgotten. Neglected, forgotten, marginalised - key terms in headlines.
Different in how women and men artists are written about.
Nochlin argument challenges premises of Great Western Artists by two main arguments: There are great women artists; there is a feminine type of painting.
People who subscribe to There are great women artists - dig them up. Many books post 1970s. Important - contests ideas: women don't paint; navigate history and perspective; motivation. But it's not enough to include women. We are not an afterthought. Need to find the mechanism of exclusion.
Question assumptions. Great? Art? Direct personal expression of personal genius? Unmediated outputting? Appealing narrative but not enough. Find social and political influences, institutional factors.
Mythology of male genius. Griselda Pollock.
Mad/genius - eg Van Gogh. Unmediated outpouring of genius. Conditions of epilepsy - source of unique vision, not holding him back. Male power and potency = male genius.
Going Native - eg Gaugin. Invention of Primitive Modernism. Failed stockbroker - heroised social misfit = groundbreaking new art. (Actually he worked from Manet's Olympia to paint The King's Wife). Constructs the hero. Paintings reveal personality - magically transforms emotions into paint. Understand language of art immediately - NOT TRUE. His contemporaries did not understand it!
Godlike man - wife selfish for going back to London to live with her children supported by her family. As described by a male art critic.
19th century - Female greatness? Possibility, yes. Different kind of genius? Feminine style 19thC. Direct personal experience of women (not teacher/practice). Morisot popular in her time. Feminine painting described as 'charming' or 'delicate and feminine', or 'elegant and light touch'. Pastels and loose brush work.
Manet descriptors - ugly canvas, half completed
Degas - ugly, horrifying, bathers like monkeys.
Impressionism - thoughtless and mechanical - quintessentially feminine, hypersensitivity and nervousness of women.
It takes skill, training and practice, not genius. 19th C 'proved and categorised' women's brains as laser. Women were not to be original but copyists.
Women need to be judged on their quality of work, rather than sensuality of women.
---------
Art & Sexual Politics
Female painting and the nude. Women lacked access to many things. Painter of modern life essay. Charles Baudelaire focussed on contemporary reality. Ignore the past; focus on contemporary. The Modern ie in Paris, technologies, lighting, railways, cafes. Quick paced painting.
The Flaneur - urban wanderer. Move about city alone and unnoticed. Clear observer of all - top and bottom of society. In Impressionist times, women cannot do this.
Feminists - concept of modern - deeply gendered. Experience of men, not bourgeois women. Women restricted to being veiled, chaperoned, respectable spaces, restaurants.
1988 Pollock. Gendering of modern life. Vision and Difference. Middle class women painters can't go to these space. Created a grid in her book.
Men could go everywhere
Middle class women would be at home, or chaperoned. Bourgeois women's ideology - home was their private space.
Working class women - laundresses, milliners - could go out more. Working class women provided entertainment for middle class men eg backstage and opera. Middle class women could not be seen in this space, so could not paint it. Exhibiting such paintings would indicate middle class women knew too much!
Loge - theatre boxes. Upper class couples. Renoir - La Loge - opulent woman - spectacle, woman in front, illumination. Respectable woman? Man has costume of public power - tux. His body not on display - uniform. Eyes covered by opera glasses. He's watching other loges - looks at another woman. We get get the masculinised position - the power to look.
Eva Gonzales 1874 A box at the Halman Theatre.
Painted modern life. Men and women don't paint differently but instititional gender assumptions are made. Fashion exposes female bodies.
Cassatt In The Loge. Pearl necklace. 19th C France. Committed to feminist movement. Interested in changing social acceptance of women. Shows actual effects of gas lighting - and was slated by critics for making flesh look mouldy. In The Loge, woman looking actively not passively looked at. Resists male gaze, and is covered up.
Gendered titling. In the 1980s, difficult to find woman artists? Today - in same place? Unknown women. But what separates men and women? Women different and lesser.
Historically, in art, women were less able - not unable.
Degas Hatmaker was only able to be painted because Cassatt took him with her to her milliner. Otherwise he would not have had the contacts in that environment.
Control of women via Italian renaissance. Northern School. Women encouraged by families and male artists. Institutions are male. Powerful male supporters help. This is true, and ok.
Vision - male - power
Taste/smell - female and associated with the body.
Impressionism at the time was deemed feminine. But not just about women
Used vision and science of optics. Uses gendered arguments.
Why are there no great women artists.
What is it like to be a feminist art critic today?
1970-90 arguments were well established and impact had been made ...? Importance of critique - changed art history.
Still completely urgent and vital. Why it matters still? How to contribute? Be skeptical. Art criticism is riddled with gender assumptions and prejudice.
Morisot best known female Impressionist. Impressionism has waxed and waned in popularity. Wealthy-genteel-art eduction accomplishments. 1860s submitted to Salon. Morisot was in all their exhibitions from 61-68 except the year when she was pregnant. No men did this. Died 1896 and on death certificate it said 'sans profession' ie no employment! In year of death 1896 retrospective of 400 of her paintings.
Obscurity. Male colleagues became popular. Not Morisot until 1987 Women's college Mount Holyoke Massachusetts. Important show - pushed thinking. Books on her from 1987-92, cemented her into the canon.
Then her star wanes again. New show now on tour (France?) First woman solo show in France since 1941.
Patronising review! New Yorker - written by a man - well intentioned. Sexism is a problem. Concludes "puts Morisot centrestage'. Puts the emphasis on to women. Talks about the woman, not the art.
Women's art - products of labour and training - NOT: the unconscious pouring out of personality; or less professional and more sensitive person.
'Radiates selfhood' - generic female self? Contemporary art writing - encodes many messages?
BBC Culture - Cath Pound 7/8/18. Cassatt. Factually wrong.
Marginalised by consciously not marginalising.
'Morisot comes into her own' - conflates with her self?
We get told women can be quickly forgotten. Neglected, forgotten, marginalised - key terms in headlines.
Different in how women and men artists are written about.
Nochlin argument challenges premises of Great Western Artists by two main arguments: There are great women artists; there is a feminine type of painting.
People who subscribe to There are great women artists - dig them up. Many books post 1970s. Important - contests ideas: women don't paint; navigate history and perspective; motivation. But it's not enough to include women. We are not an afterthought. Need to find the mechanism of exclusion.
Question assumptions. Great? Art? Direct personal expression of personal genius? Unmediated outputting? Appealing narrative but not enough. Find social and political influences, institutional factors.
Mythology of male genius. Griselda Pollock.
Mad/genius - eg Van Gogh. Unmediated outpouring of genius. Conditions of epilepsy - source of unique vision, not holding him back. Male power and potency = male genius.
Going Native - eg Gaugin. Invention of Primitive Modernism. Failed stockbroker - heroised social misfit = groundbreaking new art. (Actually he worked from Manet's Olympia to paint The King's Wife). Constructs the hero. Paintings reveal personality - magically transforms emotions into paint. Understand language of art immediately - NOT TRUE. His contemporaries did not understand it!
Godlike man - wife selfish for going back to London to live with her children supported by her family. As described by a male art critic.
19th century - Female greatness? Possibility, yes. Different kind of genius? Feminine style 19thC. Direct personal experience of women (not teacher/practice). Morisot popular in her time. Feminine painting described as 'charming' or 'delicate and feminine', or 'elegant and light touch'. Pastels and loose brush work.
Manet descriptors - ugly canvas, half completed
Degas - ugly, horrifying, bathers like monkeys.
Impressionism - thoughtless and mechanical - quintessentially feminine, hypersensitivity and nervousness of women.
It takes skill, training and practice, not genius. 19th C 'proved and categorised' women's brains as laser. Women were not to be original but copyists.
Women need to be judged on their quality of work, rather than sensuality of women.
---------
Art & Sexual Politics
Female painting and the nude. Women lacked access to many things. Painter of modern life essay. Charles Baudelaire focussed on contemporary reality. Ignore the past; focus on contemporary. The Modern ie in Paris, technologies, lighting, railways, cafes. Quick paced painting.
The Flaneur - urban wanderer. Move about city alone and unnoticed. Clear observer of all - top and bottom of society. In Impressionist times, women cannot do this.
Feminists - concept of modern - deeply gendered. Experience of men, not bourgeois women. Women restricted to being veiled, chaperoned, respectable spaces, restaurants.
1988 Pollock. Gendering of modern life. Vision and Difference. Middle class women painters can't go to these space. Created a grid in her book.
Men could go everywhere
Middle class women would be at home, or chaperoned. Bourgeois women's ideology - home was their private space.
Working class women - laundresses, milliners - could go out more. Working class women provided entertainment for middle class men eg backstage and opera. Middle class women could not be seen in this space, so could not paint it. Exhibiting such paintings would indicate middle class women knew too much!
Loge - theatre boxes. Upper class couples. Renoir - La Loge - opulent woman - spectacle, woman in front, illumination. Respectable woman? Man has costume of public power - tux. His body not on display - uniform. Eyes covered by opera glasses. He's watching other loges - looks at another woman. We get get the masculinised position - the power to look.
Eva Gonzales 1874 A box at the Halman Theatre.
Painted modern life. Men and women don't paint differently but instititional gender assumptions are made. Fashion exposes female bodies.
Cassatt In The Loge. Pearl necklace. 19th C France. Committed to feminist movement. Interested in changing social acceptance of women. Shows actual effects of gas lighting - and was slated by critics for making flesh look mouldy. In The Loge, woman looking actively not passively looked at. Resists male gaze, and is covered up.
Gendered titling. In the 1980s, difficult to find woman artists? Today - in same place? Unknown women. But what separates men and women? Women different and lesser.
Historically, in art, women were less able - not unable.
Degas Hatmaker was only able to be painted because Cassatt took him with her to her milliner. Otherwise he would not have had the contacts in that environment.
Control of women via Italian renaissance. Northern School. Women encouraged by families and male artists. Institutions are male. Powerful male supporters help. This is true, and ok.
Vision - male - power
Taste/smell - female and associated with the body.
Impressionism at the time was deemed feminine. But not just about women
Used vision and science of optics. Uses gendered arguments.
More than Muses: Makers, Models, Muses
Carol Jacobi
"Why are there no great women artists?" Famous essay from Linda Nochlin. Jacobi's reflections cover women as hidden in plain sight - models and muses.
All artists covered were more known as muses than artists - Isabel (Lizzie) Siddle (described as a victim in literature); Derila - Slade; Madelene Knox - Camden Town Group.
Most of these women are mentioned as an artist, not known as artist. Consider how the caption is written. National Gallery is trying to identify women artists in Pre-Raphaelite portraits.
How do curators talk about models who are also artists? Do they reinforce myths? Women model/man artist? Notably, both men and women are artists and models. What is the interaction between artists and sitters when both are artists. The discussions definitely took place but are not documented.
Francis Bacon and Freud - captions describe their relationship
Holman Hunt and Rosette - muse-like relationship.
Julia Margaret Cameron and Holman Hunt - ?
PRB - paint from reality. Not perfect bodies but friends and family as subjects. PRB members were impatient with middle class expectations of their family - respectability; enforced introductions to suitable partners. Associating with working class women instead. Consenting relationships. Parental pressure; seducing - No! All parties to encounter consent.
William Holman Hunt - The Awakening. Annie - seduced woman. Conscience. Unusual take. Original interpretation brother & sister playing the piano ! Really? Annie, the subject, became a professional model as it paid double to domestic work, and gave her a good living.
Fanny Carnforth. Model and sex worker. Woman modelling alleged to be prostitute. But need to hear real story to explode the stereotype. Portrayed as a fallen woman who committed suicide in river. Actual story - Bought pub, married, had 7 children. Being a model could be a good start in life.
Lizzie Siddell. Poor family, from Old Kent Road. Working in hat shop. Spotted for her red hair. Actually met Walter Deverell at art school, and writing poetry. She accesses the studio via common interests. Issue of name. Died Lizzie Rossetti, but known as Lizzie Siddell.
Deverell wanted a boyish girl for Viola (Shakespeare) so picked Siddell for her boyish looks, not her beauty. Models are just actors within the scene set by the male artist.
Millais, Ophelia - Siddell lay in a bath, heated by candles under it. Victim of love, father wants her to marry another, and Hamlet who breaks her heart. Story is part of daring world of rule breaking - defies parents; defies social expectations.
Image as fantasy of artists vision. A dream, not an actuality.
Rossetti and Siddell move in together - very risqué for its time. But gives Siddell - introduction to patrons; studio space; proper teaching.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti was obsessed with her. 1000s of images. Informal and quick. Loose hair, no corset - awakening conscience?! Intimate relationship of painter and model. Part of PRB group. Rossetti did not marry her at this stage. She could not engage with society. He starts playing around.
Janey Morris, uneducated, daughter of stablehand. Successful textile artist. May Morris, daughter, ran the textile part of the business. Changed fashions. Tight hair and corset became loose hair and uncarpeted. Fashions associated with women's rights and freedoms - 1850s.
Love triangle - William Morris, Janey and Rossetti.
Fanny Carnforth. Often portrayed with mouth open. Risque. Mouth does not wear out. Sexually awakened woman. Power of beauty. Loose hair and clothing. Jewellery of natural forms.
Rossetti finally marries Siddell. Miscarriage. Suicide by laudenham.
Women are known by diminutives. Not men. Holman Hunt 'The Mad' - not recorded. Isabel (Lizzie) Siddell - recorded.
Men's artistic legacy - preserved by family members. But happens less often to women.
Women artists influencing male artists - many. But not recorded. Whereas men influencing women are - Cassett/Degas.
Women's trajectory lost with change of name, eg marriage, aristocracy. Need to look harder.
-------
Patterns with second case study.
Women who model get reputation for slovenly, lacking morals, bohemian.
Suzanne Valadon. Hangover; blue room self portrait, books and cigarettes.
Isabel Rawthorne/Lambert. Only had her own studio in 40s. From poor background. Won scholarship with RA. Original of the skinny figures of Giacometti - known as his muse. Was also studio assistant of Epstein. Described as 'exotic', not from Bali, but was Scots/Welsh. Had Epstein's baby, but registered it as his wife's child. Has studio in Essex. Giacometti changes the spelling of her name to Isobel.
Her artistic story: Paris. Life class prizes. All there is, is drawing. Gaining presence. Only 3 self portraits. Very light tough. Friends of Giacometti. Flaneurs. He developed drawing skills in 1937 when he became friends with her. Studio and conversation - she, as a young woman artist, influences an older male artist.
Epstein and Giacometti makes sculptures of her. Spanish Civil War - they bury their work. Few sculptures survive - Epstein's and Giacometti's work is found, hers is not. She was in war intelligence, travelling - passport documents it. Couriering money and documents? Worked for SOE? Black propaganda ie from inside Germany. Malingering leaflets for German troops to go home - her image is on their leaflets to us!). Black porn - Bletchley Committee meeting notes - porn found on German soldiers - undermine morale.
Post War - first civilian artist to get back to Paris and Giacometti. He wanted her to model for him - yet male art critics publish her as bitch. His work stalled - but she had to leave to get a decent studio space. 46/7 winter very cold. We know she influenced Giacometti because of dates on work.
Successful design career in ballet. Draws in practice rooms. Her work is of moving figures. Giacometti's work is static figures. Her work is moving cubism. Several positives and once. Looks at figures and draws. Real body in continuous movement. Elongates arms of Nureyev and Fonteyn. No difference between animals and people. Cold War takes place.
Starts looking at swallows and oilseed rape. (Made British landscape look very different - no longer muted colours but bright yellow). Sparrowhawks die due to pesticides. Final piece when she died of dead sparrow hawk. Represents death - harbinger of death. Turner's angel in sun. Scratched names of all those she's loved into the paint, and handprints.
When she died, house sold. Bacon's biographers checked the house. Tried to get Giacometti's letters. Bridget Noakes saved Isabel's works with permission from the family. Obituaries - recorded her as muse not artist. All biographers of Epstein, Giacometti and Bacon tell of her as muse, tease, man-eater, lush, impotence maker, beauty who lost her looks - especially James Lord. None of these things are said about men!
Artist talent eclipsed by femme fatale/vanitas figure, by male recorders.
Show at Hanover. Isabel Lambert (name of second husband). Gallery adverts 'by Isabel Rawsthorne'. She was not know by this name, other than as a muse. She became a derivative of a man.
Solution Research and publish and exhibit women artists.
Women artists - biographical ghetto or misfit to artistic canon? What about telling her story by rewriting art history but changing it. Try rereading the Bacon story - her story casts a lot of light on his story. Every exhibition should identify where women are part of the story and how they impact on it.
"Why are there no great women artists?" Famous essay from Linda Nochlin. Jacobi's reflections cover women as hidden in plain sight - models and muses.
All artists covered were more known as muses than artists - Isabel (Lizzie) Siddle (described as a victim in literature); Derila - Slade; Madelene Knox - Camden Town Group.
Most of these women are mentioned as an artist, not known as artist. Consider how the caption is written. National Gallery is trying to identify women artists in Pre-Raphaelite portraits.
How do curators talk about models who are also artists? Do they reinforce myths? Women model/man artist? Notably, both men and women are artists and models. What is the interaction between artists and sitters when both are artists. The discussions definitely took place but are not documented.
Francis Bacon and Freud - captions describe their relationship
Holman Hunt and Rosette - muse-like relationship.
Julia Margaret Cameron and Holman Hunt - ?
PRB - paint from reality. Not perfect bodies but friends and family as subjects. PRB members were impatient with middle class expectations of their family - respectability; enforced introductions to suitable partners. Associating with working class women instead. Consenting relationships. Parental pressure; seducing - No! All parties to encounter consent.
William Holman Hunt - The Awakening. Annie - seduced woman. Conscience. Unusual take. Original interpretation brother & sister playing the piano ! Really? Annie, the subject, became a professional model as it paid double to domestic work, and gave her a good living.
Fanny Carnforth. Model and sex worker. Woman modelling alleged to be prostitute. But need to hear real story to explode the stereotype. Portrayed as a fallen woman who committed suicide in river. Actual story - Bought pub, married, had 7 children. Being a model could be a good start in life.
Lizzie Siddell. Poor family, from Old Kent Road. Working in hat shop. Spotted for her red hair. Actually met Walter Deverell at art school, and writing poetry. She accesses the studio via common interests. Issue of name. Died Lizzie Rossetti, but known as Lizzie Siddell.
Deverell wanted a boyish girl for Viola (Shakespeare) so picked Siddell for her boyish looks, not her beauty. Models are just actors within the scene set by the male artist.
Millais, Ophelia - Siddell lay in a bath, heated by candles under it. Victim of love, father wants her to marry another, and Hamlet who breaks her heart. Story is part of daring world of rule breaking - defies parents; defies social expectations.
Image as fantasy of artists vision. A dream, not an actuality.
Rossetti and Siddell move in together - very risqué for its time. But gives Siddell - introduction to patrons; studio space; proper teaching.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti was obsessed with her. 1000s of images. Informal and quick. Loose hair, no corset - awakening conscience?! Intimate relationship of painter and model. Part of PRB group. Rossetti did not marry her at this stage. She could not engage with society. He starts playing around.
Janey Morris, uneducated, daughter of stablehand. Successful textile artist. May Morris, daughter, ran the textile part of the business. Changed fashions. Tight hair and corset became loose hair and uncarpeted. Fashions associated with women's rights and freedoms - 1850s.
Love triangle - William Morris, Janey and Rossetti.
Fanny Carnforth. Often portrayed with mouth open. Risque. Mouth does not wear out. Sexually awakened woman. Power of beauty. Loose hair and clothing. Jewellery of natural forms.
Rossetti finally marries Siddell. Miscarriage. Suicide by laudenham.
Women are known by diminutives. Not men. Holman Hunt 'The Mad' - not recorded. Isabel (Lizzie) Siddell - recorded.
Men's artistic legacy - preserved by family members. But happens less often to women.
Women artists influencing male artists - many. But not recorded. Whereas men influencing women are - Cassett/Degas.
Women's trajectory lost with change of name, eg marriage, aristocracy. Need to look harder.
-------
Patterns with second case study.
Women who model get reputation for slovenly, lacking morals, bohemian.
Suzanne Valadon. Hangover; blue room self portrait, books and cigarettes.
Isabel Rawthorne/Lambert. Only had her own studio in 40s. From poor background. Won scholarship with RA. Original of the skinny figures of Giacometti - known as his muse. Was also studio assistant of Epstein. Described as 'exotic', not from Bali, but was Scots/Welsh. Had Epstein's baby, but registered it as his wife's child. Has studio in Essex. Giacometti changes the spelling of her name to Isobel.
Her artistic story: Paris. Life class prizes. All there is, is drawing. Gaining presence. Only 3 self portraits. Very light tough. Friends of Giacometti. Flaneurs. He developed drawing skills in 1937 when he became friends with her. Studio and conversation - she, as a young woman artist, influences an older male artist.
Epstein and Giacometti makes sculptures of her. Spanish Civil War - they bury their work. Few sculptures survive - Epstein's and Giacometti's work is found, hers is not. She was in war intelligence, travelling - passport documents it. Couriering money and documents? Worked for SOE? Black propaganda ie from inside Germany. Malingering leaflets for German troops to go home - her image is on their leaflets to us!). Black porn - Bletchley Committee meeting notes - porn found on German soldiers - undermine morale.
Post War - first civilian artist to get back to Paris and Giacometti. He wanted her to model for him - yet male art critics publish her as bitch. His work stalled - but she had to leave to get a decent studio space. 46/7 winter very cold. We know she influenced Giacometti because of dates on work.
Successful design career in ballet. Draws in practice rooms. Her work is of moving figures. Giacometti's work is static figures. Her work is moving cubism. Several positives and once. Looks at figures and draws. Real body in continuous movement. Elongates arms of Nureyev and Fonteyn. No difference between animals and people. Cold War takes place.
Starts looking at swallows and oilseed rape. (Made British landscape look very different - no longer muted colours but bright yellow). Sparrowhawks die due to pesticides. Final piece when she died of dead sparrow hawk. Represents death - harbinger of death. Turner's angel in sun. Scratched names of all those she's loved into the paint, and handprints.
When she died, house sold. Bacon's biographers checked the house. Tried to get Giacometti's letters. Bridget Noakes saved Isabel's works with permission from the family. Obituaries - recorded her as muse not artist. All biographers of Epstein, Giacometti and Bacon tell of her as muse, tease, man-eater, lush, impotence maker, beauty who lost her looks - especially James Lord. None of these things are said about men!
Artist talent eclipsed by femme fatale/vanitas figure, by male recorders.
Show at Hanover. Isabel Lambert (name of second husband). Gallery adverts 'by Isabel Rawsthorne'. She was not know by this name, other than as a muse. She became a derivative of a man.
Solution Research and publish and exhibit women artists.
Women artists - biographical ghetto or misfit to artistic canon? What about telling her story by rewriting art history but changing it. Try rereading the Bacon story - her story casts a lot of light on his story. Every exhibition should identify where women are part of the story and how they impact on it.
Thursday, 11 April 2019
More than Muses - Rebel Girls and the establishment; breaking into the boys club
Katy Norris.
Who are they? Push? from whom, to where? International Art News - women's exhibiting society. Collective. Not domestic, but a group.
Pull? Unlocked for them by men? Gatekeepers of the art world - curators, galleries, and critics - mostly men throughout history in the UK/musuems.
Range of education - expanded social accomplishment - from 1850s professions - merchants, lawyers; Drs and politicians - their spouses were middle class women- leading to art education. But mostly social accomplishment for women meant time at home for decoration in the role of mother/governess.
Family apprenticeship or female school of art, physically underneath male school of art in the basement! Men's studios - spacious and light; women's dark, only for drawing in a domestic space.
Private schools gave lectures. Female artists became suffragettes and campaigned for education in science and business. Women were admitted to London and regional schools. Sheffield targeted working class women too for drawing classes. Institutions reshaped sexual difference (women could draw dressed women in the domestic space) rather than giving women access to the same opportunities as men. Withholding training gave women disadvantages as they were not able to compete for exhibiting opportunities without studying the body form. Petition by women to RA for life class, led to women drawing the partially draped figure being the norm.
St John's and Grosvenor schools of art. Incremental progress by policy change. Private and governmental process. More professional women artists by 1900 due to art education changes.
Slade - Two thirds women students in 1905. eg Gwen John. Slow to take up women. Policies geared for women. Removed the drawing application. No prior training - able to learn without family support for classes beforehand. Assessing via University of London criteria gave students credibility. Edna Waugh 1899 youngest female student, aged14.
Separate teaching rooms for women to keep women out of composition and figure drawing conversations.
Image. Gwen John - bohemian. Augustus John - drawing of mixed company in student rooms. In each others rooms - not solely in single sex accommodation.
Slade - female subjectivity of Gwen John. Nude girl 1909-10. Image of reverie.
Decoration deemed feminine, pretty ( now deemed superficial)
Edwardian times, draftsmanship was learned from history painting- for mural and public art - and women were excluded from this.
Awards won by Gwen John, Winifred Knights (Deluge - I saw this at Dulwich Picture Gallery). Grand themes - monumental scale. Taught by Henry Tonks.
We know who taught many men artists, but we don't know which women tutors taught the brilliant women.
Jessie Newbury, early 1900s. Arts & Crafts exhibition. Half of GSA at 1900 was women. Did their own designs - not far from commercial galleries at museums. Architecture, ornamentation of books, book plates. Art valued in its application.
Opportunities after graduation. Dealer/critic system. Grafton and Grosvenor Gallery for women. 1890s Slade women well placed for this. English Art Club - forged relationships via Slate, admitted to full membership. Alternative to RA and the undemocratic salon system.
Women landscapers. Exclusion of women from New England Art Club.
Vanessa Bell - all male jury is a bad thing. Need to understand the criteria - then all get work in - when trained by the jury!!
Ethel Waugh - c1924. Letter found in archive from her advised 'don't identify your work by a female name - jury will try to keep women out'. Extreme support of other women artists. Exhibited at NEAc. Exhibited at Womens Art Club. President and leader of hanging committee.
Alternative to Boys Clubs. WIAC - separate and ok with it. In feminist network - early 1900s. Used art nouveau international art language. Women's agenda at the front. Touring exhibitions. Interact with Grafton Gallery space - could see across exhibition room. Artistic values - freedom of expression. Prominent sight lines to associate works together. Made important pacifist statement of 1st world war. Nausicaa - celebrates femininity and peace.
Where did women run free without limitations of Slade exhibition committee.
Class and sex impact the access to education. Class stopped progression beyond graduation. Could women support themselves? Big problem for less privileged women. Constraints of the time. Women looked after after each other.
Most successful women were privileged. Social relationships and living together, and sexuality helped. Very few working class women - as restricted by money.
Annette Wickham. Breaking into the boys club.
RA = the establishment.
2 founding members - Moser and Kauffman. Then waited until 1936 for Annie Swinnerton and Laura Knight.
Recent history shocking/depressing.
Members and students and exhibitors.
1768 34 members - 32 men, 2 women. RA. Wome had a toehold of exhibiting - but were marginalised.
Royal Society excluded all women.
Zoffany image. Women on wall at back of new life drawing room. Casts refer to life class. No women in life class. Image is positive in that that he included women on the wall. Otherness and lack of parity with men. Icon of expulsion. Moser and Kauffman only allowed to vote on new members - could not be council or committee members; or to teach in Academy schools.
Kauffman - Swiss. 1794. Self portrait of artists hesitating beaten music and painting. Mytholygises her own life. 1778-80 creates 4 oval ceiling paintings - demonstrating colour, invention and composition - drawing from casts as excluded from life class.
Hired models to draw them in private (rumours about propriety). She had to dress as a man to go to life class. Hired Charles Cranmer - RA porter/life class model. Only exposed arms, shoulders and legs and her father always present. Moved to Rome 1781. Died there 1801. Sent pictures to RA exhibition every year.
Moser trained with father. Flowers and landscapes - w/c and drawing; developed oil technique to become RA. Eyesight failed.
Maria Cosway did not get RA status. 1789 Death of Miss Gardiner - history/mythology style. But was ignored by her peers.
20th C. Why no women? 18th C enlightenment accepted (2) women. 19th C more repressive.
Formality of RA became more - excluding women. First members were the international set, but more traditional themes led to more English men being elected; who selected more English men - wanted peers to be 'like me"!.
19th C Lady Butler - exhibited at RA exhibition. Nominated by existing members, then had to be seconded, and voted in - needed 20 votes. Then would be added to the list for vacant places. Not admitted until then.
1875 - Maiden nameThompson. Not successful
1877 Applied in name of Lady Butler. Not successful
1879 Butler. Lost by 2 votes.
However she rattled RA members. Led to proposal to suggest no more women members; current members could not hold positions, attend meetings or teach.
Laura Herford. 1st RA Student. The Little Emigrant, signed L Herford. 1860. No actual roles forbidding women. Thus L Herford was accepted into school. Numbers of women kept in check - on grounds that there was not enough space, for 30 years.
1890s women admitted to life class.
1878 women campaigning to attend life class, 1900 still campaigning for same access.
Could attend life class with the fully nude woman, and the partially draped man.
1914 RA refused to admit any more women because they Ould outnumber the men.
Rokeby Venus Deeds not Words - Mary Somerville - 6 months imprisonment - for vandalism - chose this image for its monetary value and persistence of men gawping at it.
Annie Swinnerton. Associate of RA 1922. Nominated 3 times, elected aged 77. Associate membership gave no benefits. Very little advantage in practice. Symbolic move - died 1933.
Dod Proctor. Morning 1926. ARA 1934, RA 1942
Laura Knight, RA 1936? Associate RA. RA Collection - representative portfolio given to gain membership . 1965 solo retrospective. In her 80s, RA 30 years - first invitation to RA Annual Dinner.
In 1960s 4/5 RA Women.
Ethel Walker - ARA 1940. RIP 1950
Gertrude Hermes ARA. Women members were not invited to RA Annual Dinner - wrote to RA and complained about how outrageous it was that Laura Knight had been a member for 30 years, and not ever invited. Time to update their rules.
RA very slow to change. Elizabeth Frink- first female RA sculpture 1977. Categories - Painting, sculpture, architecture, engraving and print. For draughtsmen and designers. Not women!!
Ann Christopher RA 1989. Always asked for identity when she went in - no grey hair!!!
Phyllida Barlow and Cornelia Parker
4 architects - eg Hadid.
RAs for painting - 19 out of 50. More women. Jean Cooke, Eileen Agar (aged 60) Gillian Ayres (60s). Emma Stibben, Sonia Boyce.
Women did not hold main offices - President, Treasurer, Professor - until 2011.
First RA woman solo show in the main gallery - Marina Abramovic.
RA - upping their game for women?. Last 10 years - 50/50 for representation of women. Aiming for parity. Many high profile women. 125 members - very senior too. Typically very old and male population - despite younger women being elected. Election process leads to a self-perpetuating membership.
Exploring another site for my art show.
Eastbury Manor have not got back to me regarding my art show (I've chased 4 times, the decision maker has been reminded 4 times, and now I'm fed up of waiting. As a potential paying customer, I've been treated badly, and I am seriously underwhelmed by their customer service).
I'm getting increasingly anxious about finding a venue. So I wrote to Mary Schoeser, who forwarded my email to some of her contacts in East London. BowArts got back to me yesterday, suggesting a venue, and this morning I went to view it.
The venue is RAW Labs, Norton Quays, Royal Albert Dock, E16 2QP. 5 minute walk from Gallions Reach, DLR station. Good public transport but virtually no parking (pre-booked disability parking only).
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| Outside the building |
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| Stairs to mezzanine level (no disability access - guests have to use the stairs) |
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| Ground floor has coffee bar, (wine licence), and vegan hand made chocolate maker Well Bean Co |
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| Top of stairs |
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| Gallery view from top of stairs |
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| And again. Two plug socket close to top of stairs. Can't see any others in other corners |
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| View from south east corner of mezzanine floor |
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| View from north west corner of mezzanine floor |
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| Looking from north west corner to south east corner |
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| View from south west corner. |
Gallery is approximately 13m wide, by approximately 7 metres deep. Well light with electric strip lights. Airy feel. Natural light gets in from big windows on 2 sides, but does not hit the walls. Two hanging surfaces. Wall surfaces are painted hardboard on long wall, and painted chipboard on short wall. Artwork on walls is attached by hammered tacks, so presumably not precious about marking the walls a little. There are spare trestle tables that can be brought upstairs for my concertina sketchbooks.
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| Trestle tables |
RAW Labs is a community hub for Royal Albert Docks. Artist studios on ground floors around the docks, plus this art venue, and posh flats above. Stonebaked pizza van parks outside during opening hours. Current artist in residence is working on Campaign for Empathy, looking at the distance between those in power and the people - how to transform this vacant negative space in the a positive space of empathy, emotion and connection?
Laura, from the vegan chocolate company, said Bow Arts take short notice bookings for this event.
RAW Labs is open Fri/Sat midday-10pm, and Sunday 10-4.
If I were to run with this, I'd be planning Wednesday to set up, Thursday for assessment, Friday private view (not sure what time - afternoon or evening? Easier for me 2-4, or 3-5 and people can get public transport home easily, but maybe 6-8 after work? Not that many of my contacts work in London). Simple refreshments for PV - tea/coffee/wine, high quality vegan chocolate (separate company works downstairs). Plus pizza van outside!
I liked the feel of this place. Geographically it fits with my theme. And the venue does not feel too precious, more like approachable and accessible to ordinary people.
Right, I think I need to crack on and get a proposal sent to the site organiser to establish availability and costs for September.
Thank you Mary Schoeser, I think you've got me out of a hole!
Right, I think I need to crack on and get a proposal sent to the site organiser to establish availability and costs for September.
Thank you Mary Schoeser, I think you've got me out of a hole!
Friday, 5 April 2019
More than Muses: What Women Paint
Belle Smith.
Sonafabisa Anguissola - self portrait at the Clavicord 1561. Skilled - image includes both youth and age. Accomplished multi-talented.
16th and 17th century focus. National Gallery art - tradition of European painting. Embroidery would give a different narrative (Oh good!)
Women were present at this time, despite obstacles. Needed chaperone. Renaissance - art became more intellectual - thereby making art more respectable. Women artists were trained by fathers. (Skills were effectively traded instead of dowry when married off). Women did portraiture, and small scale religious paintings mostly. No figure/nude training, therefore no narrative myth. Unusual for women to set up studio. Some banner painting.
SA was Court artist in Madrid with Philip II. On payroll. But, can't refuse commissions. Gave protection of court circle and courtly atmosphere - good for status. Learn from patron's art collection. Dame de Chambre (lady in waiting) to Isabella, Philip's wife. Chose Queen's dress fabrics. Paints women and children mostly. Philip pays her dowry to Sicilian - married 4 years then widowed. Visits Cremona on way back from Sicily, marries captain of boat. Paints all the way. Dies in her 90s. Van Dyck visits her and overlaps time wise.
Catherine van Hemmessen 1548.
Religious and portraits. Painting men. Unmarried woman painting in a studio. Issues of propriety? Chaperone? Close scrutiny of men by a woman?
Marries in 1553 - musician - off to Spain.
Plautilla Nelli. 1554. Pentecost Nunnery. Encouraged to earn via art. Centrally positions women. Women (Mary and 2 Dominican nuns) in centre - places men at the side. Unlike most religious images. Large scale. Nuns could do this? - They were not stuck at home with children, working at the home scale - nunnery provided women assistants to support on larger works in bigger rooms.
Women don't do murals - public arena/churches - ladders, scale, unseemly - people might look up your skirt!
Properzia de Rossi 1520. Joseph and Potiphar's wife.
Bologna. Uni admits women. Accepts pioneering women. Sculpture - very rare. Strong women. Michelangelo used male model when depicting women, so his women looked strong.
Lavinia Fontana. 1599. Self portrait. Minature. Opulent, sumptuous. Books. Latin inscriptions, nude models on desk, body parts and casts. Shows tools of her trade. Worked on copper.
Women tend to paint Mary and female saints. Her career was managed by her husband - a lesser artist, who gave up his career to manage her career. Male artists can be stroppy and eccentric - but not women. Women judge as not having intellectual heft for allegorical images. Women can be copyists or engravers, but not original, imaginatory or investors.
Artemesia Gentileschi. National Gallery has just acquired AG as St Catherine 11615-17. Born Rome. Large scale religious, allegory painting. Trained by father. In her day renowned. Biography (rape and torture) overshadows her work. Paints female heroines and icons.
Judith and Holofernes. Judith, the virtuous Jewish widow. Meets the enemy, gets him drunk, seduces and chops off his head. Violent story. Less titilation.
Loose hair represents loose women. Idea of what a woman artist should be, gets fixed in 18th century. Narrow and unwanted attention.
Amy Tobin, University of Cambridge/Kettles Yard. What women paint - 1963 to date.
Women's lib 1968. Women always painted. But women erased from discourse. Feminist politics. Compared self to men. How excluded? Cambridge gallery settings, museum settings, tutors, critics, curators. Systemic discrimination. Shared oppression - not self to blame but political understanding and gender politics.
Women artists are not just painters. Substantial - weighted by tradition and led by men.
Patriarchal values. Pollock argued historically substantiated gender difference. Focus on artist as male. Depends upon exclusion of women, unless in supporting role. Historically role of women - model or sex partner.
Women perform or disavow gender. Lee Crasner, Agnes Martin - they distanced themselves a women artists. Women artists compromised their identity as artist. Feminism reclaims work of women - critiquing issue of "woman artist" - your work is not as good as men.
- Try referring to 'male artist' as well as 'female artist'.
- Interrogate values of women artists
- Rejection of painting
- Rewriting history
- Reclaim the body
- Rethink abstraction.
Ukraine Rosenbach 1983. Reputation of great masters Raphael and Loughner. Mythic and Christina images - puts self in, to be judged against mores of history. Real cannot meet the ideal, therefore unrealistic and harmful to real women. 1970s high art and pop culture being challenged. Different expectations of men and women from images and legal reform for change. Attack icon of Madonna that you attack yourself.
Carolee Schneeman. Broke canon. Interested in exploring creative freedom. Eye Body - 3D transformative acts. Performance - Up to and Including her Limits. Reclaims Cezanne for feminist intent. Does not disavow but considers how work can be reframed/positioned.
Jackson Pollock drip technique. Gendered modern image - wife Lee Krasner perches on edge. CS - Tethered Drawing. Pushes against Pollock - what is it to be creative. Considers sensuous, sexuality, art and how to make it. Impulse - can I be both image and image maker. Interestingly, Tethered, and other 1970s drawings, now gets censored on Instagram.
Melissa Gordon, 2016. Copycat Pollock and Janet Sobel. Dummy studio from sizes she's worked in. Photos, not abstract drawing. Janet Sobel was first to use drip technique. Pollock found it resolved a problem in his art - he did credit her.
Ordinary in relation to cooking, caring and sustaining self as artist. Inspired gesture, or hours of practice and changing/adapting. Kitchen counter represents it.
The problem of painting - expanded practice ie drops and by-products - move away from emotion and gesture.
Images of women are a political problem. Self portrait - always objectified and sexualised - women painters don't push at it. Find contemporary self portrait artists.
History Painting
Sylvia Sleight - AIR group 1977-8. Women who founded the AIR group revisioned historic group portrait - defined purpose - more than wife, mother, woman, sister.
Louise Fishman, Angry Gertrude. Abstraction - feminine or women based practice. Via language, and bold brushmarks. More ordered than drop. Less accomplished than formal fine art.
Woman as Angry. Artist mother and Gertrude (stein). Avoids artist (ie husband) surname.
Faith Ringgold. Broad global art knowledge. We meet the master #12 "prejudice".
African/americal protest. White women did not give black women space to be heard. Remakes Olympia.
Dana Schutz. Open Casket 2016. Parker Bright's protest. Her position changed on motherhood. Know the murdered boy's mother. Open letter for it to be removed and destroyed at the Whitney Bienniel. Whose right to portray? As a white woman? Damaging - market value - of a black man's death?
Lubaina Himid. Naming the Money. 2004. Representing history carefully. What stories we are told. 10 x 10 figures. Roles and vocations of different people. Walk a path through the staging. Through part of history. Immigration - what's lost when people travel - white version of own identity. Slavery and slave trade. Historic and contemporary costume.
Reclaim the Body
Joan Sewell 1974. Intimacy - autonomy. Comes from artist perspective as love. Post coital vision in landscape format.
Maria Lassnig. Body conscious painting - self portrait with stick.
Claudette Johnson. 2017. Pinned. Gouchae and pastel. substantial but under-described. Reclining figure.
Betty Tempkins Apologia 2018. Metoo#. Woman attacking/accusing a man. Avatar Ronelle apologisd for attacking a male student. Complexity of sexual violence. More than rape or unwanted advances. Manipulation of powerful/powerless.
Abstraction
Chicago, Kozloff, Pindell. Women paint what they want.
Mira Schar - Slit of Paint 1994. Sexual pleasure. Grammar is a system for understanding - so is art. Over determined by patriarchal culture.
Julie Mehretu. Landscape/history painting via abstraction.
Vaginal Gene Davis - Drag artist. Heroicism. Owens lesson - a different kind of painting. About community not heroes.
Great lectures. Exhausted now.
Sonafabisa Anguissola - self portrait at the Clavicord 1561. Skilled - image includes both youth and age. Accomplished multi-talented.
16th and 17th century focus. National Gallery art - tradition of European painting. Embroidery would give a different narrative (Oh good!)
Women were present at this time, despite obstacles. Needed chaperone. Renaissance - art became more intellectual - thereby making art more respectable. Women artists were trained by fathers. (Skills were effectively traded instead of dowry when married off). Women did portraiture, and small scale religious paintings mostly. No figure/nude training, therefore no narrative myth. Unusual for women to set up studio. Some banner painting.
SA was Court artist in Madrid with Philip II. On payroll. But, can't refuse commissions. Gave protection of court circle and courtly atmosphere - good for status. Learn from patron's art collection. Dame de Chambre (lady in waiting) to Isabella, Philip's wife. Chose Queen's dress fabrics. Paints women and children mostly. Philip pays her dowry to Sicilian - married 4 years then widowed. Visits Cremona on way back from Sicily, marries captain of boat. Paints all the way. Dies in her 90s. Van Dyck visits her and overlaps time wise.
Catherine van Hemmessen 1548.
Religious and portraits. Painting men. Unmarried woman painting in a studio. Issues of propriety? Chaperone? Close scrutiny of men by a woman?
Marries in 1553 - musician - off to Spain.
Plautilla Nelli. 1554. Pentecost Nunnery. Encouraged to earn via art. Centrally positions women. Women (Mary and 2 Dominican nuns) in centre - places men at the side. Unlike most religious images. Large scale. Nuns could do this? - They were not stuck at home with children, working at the home scale - nunnery provided women assistants to support on larger works in bigger rooms.
Women don't do murals - public arena/churches - ladders, scale, unseemly - people might look up your skirt!
Properzia de Rossi 1520. Joseph and Potiphar's wife.
Bologna. Uni admits women. Accepts pioneering women. Sculpture - very rare. Strong women. Michelangelo used male model when depicting women, so his women looked strong.
Lavinia Fontana. 1599. Self portrait. Minature. Opulent, sumptuous. Books. Latin inscriptions, nude models on desk, body parts and casts. Shows tools of her trade. Worked on copper.
Women tend to paint Mary and female saints. Her career was managed by her husband - a lesser artist, who gave up his career to manage her career. Male artists can be stroppy and eccentric - but not women. Women judge as not having intellectual heft for allegorical images. Women can be copyists or engravers, but not original, imaginatory or investors.
Artemesia Gentileschi. National Gallery has just acquired AG as St Catherine 11615-17. Born Rome. Large scale religious, allegory painting. Trained by father. In her day renowned. Biography (rape and torture) overshadows her work. Paints female heroines and icons.
Judith and Holofernes. Judith, the virtuous Jewish widow. Meets the enemy, gets him drunk, seduces and chops off his head. Violent story. Less titilation.
Loose hair represents loose women. Idea of what a woman artist should be, gets fixed in 18th century. Narrow and unwanted attention.
Amy Tobin, University of Cambridge/Kettles Yard. What women paint - 1963 to date.
Women's lib 1968. Women always painted. But women erased from discourse. Feminist politics. Compared self to men. How excluded? Cambridge gallery settings, museum settings, tutors, critics, curators. Systemic discrimination. Shared oppression - not self to blame but political understanding and gender politics.
Women artists are not just painters. Substantial - weighted by tradition and led by men.
Patriarchal values. Pollock argued historically substantiated gender difference. Focus on artist as male. Depends upon exclusion of women, unless in supporting role. Historically role of women - model or sex partner.
Women perform or disavow gender. Lee Crasner, Agnes Martin - they distanced themselves a women artists. Women artists compromised their identity as artist. Feminism reclaims work of women - critiquing issue of "woman artist" - your work is not as good as men.
- Try referring to 'male artist' as well as 'female artist'.
- Interrogate values of women artists
- Rejection of painting
- Rewriting history
- Reclaim the body
- Rethink abstraction.
Ukraine Rosenbach 1983. Reputation of great masters Raphael and Loughner. Mythic and Christina images - puts self in, to be judged against mores of history. Real cannot meet the ideal, therefore unrealistic and harmful to real women. 1970s high art and pop culture being challenged. Different expectations of men and women from images and legal reform for change. Attack icon of Madonna that you attack yourself.
Carolee Schneeman. Broke canon. Interested in exploring creative freedom. Eye Body - 3D transformative acts. Performance - Up to and Including her Limits. Reclaims Cezanne for feminist intent. Does not disavow but considers how work can be reframed/positioned.
Jackson Pollock drip technique. Gendered modern image - wife Lee Krasner perches on edge. CS - Tethered Drawing. Pushes against Pollock - what is it to be creative. Considers sensuous, sexuality, art and how to make it. Impulse - can I be both image and image maker. Interestingly, Tethered, and other 1970s drawings, now gets censored on Instagram.
Melissa Gordon, 2016. Copycat Pollock and Janet Sobel. Dummy studio from sizes she's worked in. Photos, not abstract drawing. Janet Sobel was first to use drip technique. Pollock found it resolved a problem in his art - he did credit her.
Ordinary in relation to cooking, caring and sustaining self as artist. Inspired gesture, or hours of practice and changing/adapting. Kitchen counter represents it.
The problem of painting - expanded practice ie drops and by-products - move away from emotion and gesture.
Images of women are a political problem. Self portrait - always objectified and sexualised - women painters don't push at it. Find contemporary self portrait artists.
History Painting
Sylvia Sleight - AIR group 1977-8. Women who founded the AIR group revisioned historic group portrait - defined purpose - more than wife, mother, woman, sister.
Louise Fishman, Angry Gertrude. Abstraction - feminine or women based practice. Via language, and bold brushmarks. More ordered than drop. Less accomplished than formal fine art.
Woman as Angry. Artist mother and Gertrude (stein). Avoids artist (ie husband) surname.
Faith Ringgold. Broad global art knowledge. We meet the master #12 "prejudice".
African/americal protest. White women did not give black women space to be heard. Remakes Olympia.
Dana Schutz. Open Casket 2016. Parker Bright's protest. Her position changed on motherhood. Know the murdered boy's mother. Open letter for it to be removed and destroyed at the Whitney Bienniel. Whose right to portray? As a white woman? Damaging - market value - of a black man's death?
Lubaina Himid. Naming the Money. 2004. Representing history carefully. What stories we are told. 10 x 10 figures. Roles and vocations of different people. Walk a path through the staging. Through part of history. Immigration - what's lost when people travel - white version of own identity. Slavery and slave trade. Historic and contemporary costume.
Reclaim the Body
Joan Sewell 1974. Intimacy - autonomy. Comes from artist perspective as love. Post coital vision in landscape format.
Maria Lassnig. Body conscious painting - self portrait with stick.
Claudette Johnson. 2017. Pinned. Gouchae and pastel. substantial but under-described. Reclining figure.
Betty Tempkins Apologia 2018. Metoo#. Woman attacking/accusing a man. Avatar Ronelle apologisd for attacking a male student. Complexity of sexual violence. More than rape or unwanted advances. Manipulation of powerful/powerless.
Abstraction
Chicago, Kozloff, Pindell. Women paint what they want.
Mira Schar - Slit of Paint 1994. Sexual pleasure. Grammar is a system for understanding - so is art. Over determined by patriarchal culture.
Julie Mehretu. Landscape/history painting via abstraction.
Vaginal Gene Davis - Drag artist. Heroicism. Owens lesson - a different kind of painting. About community not heroes.
Great lectures. Exhausted now.
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