18-07-18
The work;
Digital portraits
Painted Portraits
Writing samples - deciding on adding the names of the historic characters and women of this era onto the edges of the canvas.
A digital interpretation of the flags
A sound experiment to hear women's voices.
Writing embossed print using the antonyms for change – to interpret that only 9 out of 33 European countries have included laws that consider consent in rape trials.
‘Disney-esque’ Hague
‘Rigid Flags’ Hague
15-07-18
New potential influences:
Tacita Dean – Antigone 2018
Elizabeth Peyton
Luc Tuymans and Wilhelm Sasnal
Angela Carter – Black Venus
Understanding phenomenological – looking at the work of Heidegger
08-07-18
Nancy Spero – Women as protagonist
Juxtaposing past and present and re-entering women into history
Spero recognised women has been written out of history and wished to re-write the imagery of women through historical time but with vitality.
Spero saw that women had been represented as objects by men in history.
She used women in the lead role – as the active protagonist
29-06-18
Considering text to include into trials:
Feisty / bossy / working mother / mumpreneur / bubbly / chatty / abrasive / ball-buster / aggressive / shrill / bolshy / intense / stroppy / forward / mannish / yapping / barking / gossipy / dramatic / catty / bitchy / nag / cold / ice-queen / shrew / humourless / man-eater / banshee / fishwife / ditzy / feminazi / militant / slut / trollop / frigid / easy / tease / loose / cougar / asking-for-it / prude / town-bike / mutton-dressed as lamb – slutty / curvy / mummsy / cheap / frumpy / let-herself-go / faded-beauty / mousey / plus-size / clothes-horse / ladylike / vivacious / flirty / sassy / demure / modest / emotional / hysteria / pre-menstrual / menstrual / bridezilla / diva / primadonna / blonde / harsh / jarring / raucous / dissonant / discordant / unharmonious / clashing / sharp / super-mum / career-woman / yummy mummy / little old lady / work-from-home-mum / fierce / spirited / flaky / moody / over-sensitive / clucky / neurotic / irrational / baby-brain / baby-weight / mummy-blogger / female-engineer / spinster / barren / she-wears-the-pants / housewife / house proud / mistress / kept-woman / mistress / girly / tomboy / princess / little-lady / jail bait / heart-breaker / pretty / bitch / catfight / wonder woman
22-06-18
Look at Andy Warhol – Screen Test. A silent film of a portrait.
Pecha Kucha Plan;
WOMEN – Mary Beard introduction
VOICES – Penelope being silenced by Telemachus
SPEAKING – Vilification – yapping, barking, mewling…
TIMELINE – Now – When? Back to the Western Text
WHO – Names of those characters in history
COLOUR – Green / monochrome to sit alongside Richter / chromakey
CURRENT – Examples of contemporary women who suffer misogynistic abuse and are speaking out
MYTHS – repetition of the Myth e.g. Rape of the Sabine Women / Chibok Abduction.
REINTERPRETATION – The story needs to change / new language / new imagery
EXAMPLES – Leda and the Swan
FUTURE WORK – Comparing parallels into contemporary history – happenings…
Not a producer of meaning, produced by meaning.
02-06-18
Font styles – to consider writing the names of the women upon the edges of the stretchers to combine the classical woman with a contemporary counterpart – example Diane [Abbott]/one of Penelope’s Maids, Anita Hill/
Clytemnestra. Decide how the name will be written – from bottom to top or top to bottom. Will this change according to which side it is viewed?
Women speak out - paired with a mythological partner.
WOMEN FROM MYTH
Research of women who have been raped, murdered or had their children sacrificed from the ancient classical stories;
Zeus raped Leda, daughter of the Aetolian king Thestius, in the guise of a swan.
Zeus raped Danae, a princess of Argos, disguised as the rain
Rhea – Cronus ate all their children except for Zeus
Hera suffes domestic violence and rape from Zeus, her brother.
Niobe’s children were all killed as a result of her boasting.
Cassandra raped by Ajax
Megara – killed bu Heracles her hisband who also kills their children.
50 maidens – deflowered by Heracles in a single night.
Achilles uncharacteristically wears his heart on his sleeve when he reveals how much he loves Briseis in Book 9 of the Iliad, referring to her as if she were his wife. The beautiful and intelligent Briseis first encountered Achilles when he ruthlessly slaughtered her father, mother, three brothers and husband during a Greek assault on Troy, before taking her as war booty. Achilles wiped out Briseis’ family so that she was utterly bereft and had only him to focus on.
Achilles raped one of the daughters, Deidamia, and with her fathered a son, Neoptolemus.
Philomela, who is raped and silenced by her violator, who cuts out her tongue after she tries to scream out the crime.
Beard also recounts the myths of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, including the tales of Io“turned by the god Jupiter into a cow, so she can cannot talk but only moo”, “the chatty nymph” Echo “punished so that her voice is never her own, merely an instrument for repeating the words of others”
Ovid’s Metamorphoses, including the tales of Io“turned by the god Jupiter into a cow, so she can cannot talk but only moo”,
The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus by Rubens
The Story of Lucretia (1496-1504) by Sandro Botticelli; Lucretia's rape is on the left panel.
Rape is a common topic in history and mythology. A list of notable victims from history and mythology includes:.
Agnes of Rome, was a young girl of around 12 or 13 years of age, who consecrated her virginity to Christ, and was dragged to a brothel to be raped, in a bid to make her recant her Christian faith.
Antiope from Greek mythology; raped by Zeus
Cassandra from Greek mythology; raped by Ajax the Lesser
Demeter was raped by Poseidon to become the mother of Despoina. She was also raped by Zeus to become the mother of Persephone.
Dinah from the Hebrew Bible; raped by a Canaanite prince and avenged by her brothers
Europa from Greek mythology; raped by Zeus in the form of a bull
Ganymede son of Tros of Dardania, from Greek mythology; taken by Zeus
Helen of Troy was raped by Theseus. She was also abducted by him.
Leda from Greek mythology, raped by Zeus in the form of a swan[1]
The daughters of Leucippus, Phoebe and Hilaeira, were abducted, raped and later married by Castor and Pollux. In return, Idas and Lynceus, nephews of Leucippus and rival suitors, killed Castor. [2]
Lucretia from Roman legend/history; raped by a prince, Sextus Tarquinius.[3]
Medusa from Greek mythology; raped by Poseidon
Persephone from Greek mythology; raped by Haides, king of the underworld
Rindr from Norse mythology, raped by Odin in Saxo Grammaticus' version of the engendering of Baldr's avenger
Rogneda of Polotsk from Belarus/Scandinavian history; raped by Vladimir, half-brother of her betrothed Yaropolk I of Kiev, in the presence of her parents (10th century)
The Sabine women; raped by the founders of Rome according to its legendary history
Tamar from the Hebrew Bible; raped by her half-brother Amnon.
From this is extensive list the focus will be to use these mythological characters to represent the phenomenon of rape and murder that continues to plague women and the quantity that continues to be hidden and disappeared from sight.
10-06-18
Taking part in 'Procession' a women's march.
Capture the sound of a critical mass.
01-06-18
Written text - quote;
'By 800 BCE women had become the target of widespread vilification. The Greek poet Hesiod wrote at about this time that Pandora, the first woman, was the source of all men’s suffering, was “the ruin of mankind.” There was little in the evidential world to explain this harshness. Women, objectively speaking, were, and are, subject to most of the same infirmities as men, but not all of them and certainly not more than men. Women are or may be wonderful, brilliant, and beautiful, and they have a miraculous capacity to create life. Women are or may be— and no doubt were at that time— for the most part more tender, and at least as good— if not decidedly better— at human relations than men. Given the evidence of the last ten thousand years, they are less apt to organize armies of destruction and at least as given to healing, dancing, and singing as are men. Why, therefore, would Hesiod, one of the very first poets in our history and in the history of literature, claim with utmost seriousness that women were the ruin of mankind? To say that women are more dangerous than men may be true in some limited respects but certainly not in most respects that would have been important in the agrarian and shipping economy of the eighth century BCE.'
Barnes, Craig S.. In Search of the Lost Feminine : Decoding the Myths That Radically Reshaped Civilization, Fulcrum Publishing, 2006.
To research;
Maxine Peake and the Pendleton Witches
Judy Chicago – Dinner Party [understand her selection of women]
Susan Phillipz – Turner Prize / public spaces / sound installation
Tony Oursler – Sound Work
Idea to use mythological women?
31-05-18
Rebecca Solnitt
Rebecca Solnitt is very inspirational and I include a number of quotations from the Mother of All Questions;
‘for the purpose of this essay, regard silence as what is imposed and quiet as what is sought’
‘If our voices are essential aspects of our humanity, to be rendered voiceless is to be dehumanised or excluded from one’s humanity. And the history of silence is central to women’s history’
‘Having a voice is crucial. It’s not all there is to human rights, but is central to them, and so you can consider the history of women’s rights and lack of rights as a history of silence and breaking silence.’
‘In I Corinthians, St Paul ordered, “Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto let them speak” The new Testament declares “ But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence”
‘A 2000 UCLA study noted that the ‘flight or fight’ human response to stress and danger was primarily based on studies of male rats – but studying women led to a third, often deployed option: gather for solidarity, support, advice…’
‘Stories save your life. And stories are your life. We are our stories, stories that can be both prison and the crowbar to break open the door of that prison; we make stories to save ourselves.
‘Liberation is always in part of a storytelling process: breaking stories, breaking silences, making new stories. A free person tells her own story. A valued person lives in a society in which her story has a place.’
HATE CRIME:
Tweets by Mhairi Black and examples of misogynistic abuse directed to Diane Abbott.
25-05-18
PEST Analysis – 48 Portraits
PEST Analysis
Factor
Opportunity
Threat
24-05-18
Considering how to use sound in an installation – trial of covering a polystyrene head on which to project an image?
Flags – start to decide on wording to incorporate onto the flag.
100 Nasty Women?
Why have women not been recorded into the history books in their full and contributory roles – written out.
Stitched silence – occupied women / occupying women?
Marina Warner writing around the myths – Beast to the Blonde
Carol Ann Duffy – The World’s Wife – a collection of stories that focus on the man but is written from the wife’s point of view
Challenging the image of woman in speech.
Painted portraits - trials to consider how to capture a women in speech.
17-05-18
Idea to shape a resistant material – MDF – into a flag. Quoting Mahari Black quoting Tony Benn
"In politics there are weathercocks and signposts - weathercocks will spin in whatever direction the wind of public opinion may blow them, no matter what principle they may have to compromise.
And there are signposts, signposts which stand true and tall and principled.
Tony Benn was right when he said the only people worth remembering in politics were signposts."
Visually, by taking a flag that changes direction and shape according to the wind and making this into a rigid signpost to suggest a metaphor for change.
Gottifried Helnwein
In 1991-92, Helnwein made a response work to Richter’s 48 portraits 20 years later from when Richter had exhibited these at The Venice Biennale in 1972. His work featured 48 women of the most important women in the world who left an indelible imprint in history in every field and this was painted in tones of red.
On reflection, to consider only 48 women of historic importance without a clear parameter could belittle the artistic intention to celebrate women.
The response work is of women, but still by a male painter.
Current Day Role Models
Listening to Radio 4 and hearing Julia Killick speaking on behalf Holloway Prison where she had been the director – add to a potential list of women to include in some way to the work.
Ideas arising are to include women who have been silenced to re-write history / explore photomontage / silkscreen printed mouths of women.
Laura Bates – Founder of The Everyday Sexism Project; she receives around 200 abusive messages a day including “detailed, graphic and explicit descriptions of rape and domestic violence”
Pamela Merritt – blogger and activist
Bettany Hughes – historian
Elizabeth Cady Stanton – gave rise to the 1st women’s rights movement
11-05-18
Jean – Leon Gerome (1824 – 1904)
A French Painter and Sculptor who works in a style known as Academicism.
Interestingly the timeframe Richter set for his 48 Portraits corresponds with the birth and death of Jean-Leon Gerome who was known for his paintings of women and focused on women as his subject matter.
‘Truth Coming Out of Her Well’
1896
“Thanks to photography Truth has finally come out of her well, she will never go back” - Quote by Gerome.
This painting by Gerome is one of the few paintings of a woman in speech. The use of a woman clearly speaking and articulating something is a powerful rendering of the female nude.
Processes and Techniques
Painting
3d Digital Printing – exploration of how to make a 3 d digital design. Buying various handbags to create a scaled down version of a Birkin Bag – a recognised ‘style’ icon, also used by Jeff Koons to make an installation piece of work. Explore using Qlone to scan and create a 3 d design / Solidworks a program to draw and create a 3d design.
Printing – use of print to explore visualisations of text and image
Sculpture – Exploration to make 3d flags and signposts using MDF / Ceramics / Casting
Sound – recording using Voice Pro
06-05-18
Explore how the female voice may be visualised to re-write the patriarchy into a different social system.
Ideas; to create a response work to Gerhard Richter’s 48 Portraits. All white central European and North American males born between 1824 and 1904 – all prominent in literature, science, philosophy and music. Richter’s reasons – ‘the absence of the father is a typical German problem’…
By making a female response to redress the balance and gain equality?
Intention is to use the same parameters as Richter - The standardised format of the paintings is 70cm x 55cm.
Gerhard Richter
48 Portraits
1972 Venice Biennale
