Black and White Geometry

Simone Lucas (German, 1973-)
"Not Titled Yet", 2009
Oil on canvas
70.87 x 70.87 in.
image: Jack Tilton Gallery http://www.jacktiltongallery.com/more_artwork/lucas_more/2nd./Lucas.NotTitledYet.Email.Cap.gif

Something about this artist's paintings intrigues me. Their simplicity, geometry and monochrome palette with just a touch of color. The color is usually defined within the geometry and in this painting in particular the women paint that geometry, the color coming from their brushes.

"Their idea is as simple as it is ingenious, and involves infiltrating black-and-white images taken from 19th- and early-20th-century photographs with colorful designs suggestive of the pictorial avant-garde of the same historical period, colorful spheres, checks and other geometrical designs." (Walter Robinson, Weekend Update http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/reviews/robinson/weekend-update10-16-09.asp)

More by Simone Lucas

Printmaker of the 16th century

Diana Scultori (Italian, about 1547-1612)
Latona giving birth to Apollo and Diana on the Island of Delos, n.d.
after Giulio Romano, Italian, 1499-1546
engraving

Image and owner: New York Public Library

I discovered this print and the artist through the catalog for the exhibition, Women in Print: Female Printmakers 1500-1800 (Ball State University Museum of Art). I am simply taken with the discovery of an exhibition and study into unknown and lesser known women artists. The date in and of itself is fantastic (why I chose this work over others in the show) How many women artists can you name from the 16th century? (Me, now 1) Starr Siegele, in an essay for the exhibition brings up that despite increasing scholarship into women's studies among art historians, that study of earlier women artists is still elusive. Diana Scultori, trained by a printmaking family, received a mention and tribute by Giorgio Vasari in his Lives of the Artists, yet this was not common for women artists before the 19th century.

Women

Morro de Providencia
28 millimetres project : Women
Rio de Janiero
JR (French)

I am apologize, this entry is a little haphazard, I spent too much time looking at the images and video and didn't leave enough time to write this entry!

I am not sure when I first came across one of these images of a Rio de Janiero slum. Be sure to click to get the larger image. I was fascinated by the imagery placed on the walls of these buildings. I looked into the photographer who goes by JR. These images are part of an over-all project. JR shoots pictures of local women, blows up the images and puts them back into the community. He has done projects in various parts of Africa, Brasil and other areas. These works are obviously more than the photographs that I am sharing with you. JR refers to them as "Actions" and you can find a few videos of the process of putting the images up as well as photographing women in Africa. He is referred to as a photographer, activist and street artist.

Article

Ladies

Mary Cassatt
Gathering Fruit c.1893
Rosenwald Collection
National Gallery of Art

I googled "art" and the second hit was a wikipedia article (and it is always fascinating to me to read definitions of "art"). I was curious as to what the first image might be associated with the term and it was a Mary Cassatt painting. Not this one, but it made me think of Cassatt's prints which I've always been a fan of. Initially I wasn't a fan of much women's art from the late nineteenth century as it was too feminine. As I've gotten older I learned how groundbreaking and crucial not only this subject matter was but that women were freely doing it. I have never done well at discussing the incredible hardships that women have overcome through time (I was discouraged from going into art history because it was female dominated, which is not actually true) but I was once again reminded while watching Michelle Obama speak at the Democratic convention last night. Regardless of your political views, I hope that if you saw her speak, you'd be just as excited and proud as her mother was sitting in the audience, of not only a headstrong, bright, unique, American woman, but also of all th0se who came before and after her. 2008 marks 80 years since women got the right to vote on equal ground with men. I look forward to hearing Hillary Clinton speak tonight.

Sorry about that, back to art. This print is part of a mural that Cassatt was commissioned to do for the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893 for the Woman's Building. It was to represent the progress of women into the modern age. While it appears to be a simple scene,
"The act of plucking the fruit suggests women's opportunities in the modern world to harvest from the tree of knowledge. This was an important element in depicting the role of modern women, who, in the late nineteenth century, were able to enjoy for the first time many new opportunities for formal education. In sharing the fruit with the baby, the woman symbolically passes knowledge from one generation to another."
Women have also been left out of the history of art for many years, something that is being remedied slowly, but hopefully surely. So yay! to whomever put together that wikipedia article.

Portrait of the Self

Marie Bashkertsiff
Self-Portrait with Palette, 1880
Chéret Museum
of Fine Arts, Nice, France?
b.1858 d.1884
image courtesy of wikimediacommons

This week I am going to focus on self-portraits. I intend to show you a range of artist self-portraiture, hoping to share the range of intent and style of an array of artists.

We open up the week with a work by a young woman from the late 19th century. She unfortunately lived a very short life but was able to leave us with not only excellent paintings, but also writings. Marie Bashkertsiff is new to me, a discovery in book that came across my desk (which I can't recall right now but will post when I find it).

You can't help but be pulled in by her steady and studious gaze. She holds a palette providing a context for herself as an artist, as well as the broader context of the arts with the harp in the background. She does not reveal herself at work, but confronts us with a mode of confidence and stature as a woman and artist.

Bashkertsiff spent part of her educatoin at the Academie Julian in Paris which allowed women to enroll. She became a well known intellectual feminist in Paris before her death of tuberculosis at the age of 25.

She also captured her own bourgeois life in writing, Marie Bashkirtseff: the journal of a young artist, 1860-1884 or as I am the most interesting book of all which was published more recently (I am not sure of the distinct differences).