Welcome back. I am very happy today to present to you three fantastic women artists. I like to place these artists after the Jeff Koons piece just to give you a little bit of a breather because after covering this monstrosity we need a little bit of a refresher to cleanse our brains. So here we go.
Our first piece is called Untitled Number 228. It is part of this series of history portraits that photographer Cindy She has put together. So Cindy She is one of the most prolific women photographers of the contemporary era. She has earned millions of dollars through the sale of her paintings, or rather her photographs.
So this particular work was part of a series of portraits that Cindy She did virtually all of the work for. She staged, costumed. posed herself, she did her own hair and makeup, she did everything involved in the creation of each of the works for this series.
So as a postmodern artist, a lot of Cindy She's work has feminist overtones. There's lots of commentary on the objectification and stereotyping of women and the role that gender plays in the, in greater society in general. So I think that's a really good point.
So this series nods at the work of greater master painters, basically using their works as a starting point, but not necessarily something to copy directly. What Cindy She is not doing is basically looking at a painting from the Renaissance and recreating it. She's using them as a starting point to create her own compositions and her own messages.
So the pose of the figure and the richness of the costuming are reflecting. this inspiration, particularly from the Renaissance when we're seeing lots of rich draping, fabrics with different kinds of influences in them, as well as the contrapposto of the figure. So the story depicted in this image is biblical in nature. It is the story of Judith.
So this is an excerpt right here that describes this narrative a little bit more succinctly than I ever could. So this This narrative is as follows. In the story, Judith, a beautiful widow, is able to enter the tent of Holofernes because of his desire for her.
Holofernes was an Assyrian general who was about to destroy Judith's home, the city of Bethulia. Overcome with drink, basically he was drunk, he passes out and is decapitated by Judith. His head is taken away in the basket. A lot of versions of the story also have Judith accompanied by a maidservant. So, um, Basically, she's this devout widow and a total badass.
She saves her people, the Israelites, from conquest. So the gristly nature of the story, of course, is reflected in the color of the figure's dress, this bloody red, as well as her posing with a knife in her left hand. You can also see these theatrical bloodstains in her hand and on the knife. The figure's face seems detached from the event as well.
instead of looking at Holofernes'head, she's looking right at us, which is again this play on the female gaze, this postmodern concept of women not being the subjects of objectification in a painting, but rather they're staring back at you and basically challenging you to objectify them. It's one of my favorite concepts in art history. So it's difficult to convey in this image here, but it is seven feet tall and That is also intended to be a nod to the monumental nature of Renaissance paintings. Most of them are quite large and the figures are life-size or larger, kind of transporting you as a viewer into the scene itself. So, its tackiness, however, this element of kitsch is more visible upon a second look.
Her makeup and her clothes are quite clownish, quite tacky. and the head looks like a Halloween mask. You look at this and it's obviously not like an actual human head nor is it intended to resemble one.
The drapery in the background too is not super organized. It's kind of like thrown back there as a backdrop. There's this again this element of tackiness, this element of kitsch that is injecting itself into a lot of these pieces.
So I Kent bring up Judith's slang Holofernes as an art subject without talking about a couple of other amazing examples. So of course this is a narrative involving a woman decapitating a man. So there is a bit of blood and violence ahead, so if you want to skip ahead that's totally fine. Alright, so here are two examples from the Baroque period of this subject. On the left we have an artist that we're familiar with, Artemisia Genovese.
She's the painter who did the allegory of the painter, the woman in the painting. green dress with her face unbound. We covered her last semester. She's amazing. I love her.
I was really sad that she wasn't in the AP curriculum. And on the right, we have an artist that was represented in the AP curriculum, Caravaggio Vaju. who did the calling of Saint Matthew. So you're noticing a couple of similarities between these pieces, namely the use of tenebrism, this extremely dark background, and these highlights that are popping the subjects out. We also again have this similar narrative moment of the exact instance, the height of action where Judith is driving the knife into Holofernes'neck and murdering him.
You're also also notice that there's a maid servant in these images here. So that's pretty much where the similarities end, however. What you'll notice in this piece in particular is this extremely dynamic arrangement of figures, and Genileschi actually painted this subject several times throughout her life.
You see this extremely determined look on Judith's face. She knows what she's doing. There's absolutely no hesitation. She is grabbing on his hair.
You can see see the the way that her knuckles are popping out right here you can see the maid servant playing an active role in holding him down she is really into this and you can see like the the blood dripping down onto the bed sheets here it's this extremely violent but at the same time there's a a righteousness to this the figures wouldn't be that orderly otherwise whereas look at at the Caravaggiovaggio piece. We see this incredible distance between Holofernes and Judith. She is very hesitant. If you look at the pinching of her brows and the look in her eyes, she is not as into this as the Judith is over here.
We also see this maidservant as this kind of like side figure. She's this much older woman than she is. is in this image and she's kind of like holding the bag she's playing a more passive role and this is very indicative of this this notion that women are not violent creatures in Caravaggiovaggio's paintings this is something that they're uncomfortable with they seem a lot more passive than the very active figures in Artemisia's painting this is interesting too because Caravaggiovaggio literally murdered people during his lifetime like there is lots of documentation to indicate that he killed at least two people. So the notion of this piece seeming less involved and more kind of like squeamish than this one is very interesting to me.
There's this great list, it's kind of like Buzzfeed style list of 10 paintings of Judas Slaying Holofernes. It is absolutely hilarious to read, so please take a look at this if you would like to see more paintings. paintings of Judith Slang, Hall of Fair News. It's a very popular Baroque subject because it's so dramatic and it's very violent.
Here's a couple of other images produced by Cindy She for her Untitled series. Again, she's frequently posing herself as a character in these narratives, particularly narratives about women. So this is from a series of images where she is this kind of like 1920s Hollywood starlet in this film. And this right here is a series that she did more recently, in the 21st century in fact, where she's depicting images of people from kind of like stereotypical white trash neighborhoods. It's very entertaining.
Moving on to our second female artist of the day. This piece is called Dancing at the Louvre. It's from the French collection, which is a series, and it's by Faith Ringgold. So Faith Ringgold is fabulous.
She's an African-American artist that works out in New York, and she uses the form of art of the African-American slave quilts to create her works. So these slave quilts were supposed to be made by her. supposedly embedded with codes or maps to assist in the escape of enslaved persons to the north during the underground during the era of the underground railroad so this theory is still heavily disputed there's not much written documentation to support this theory however there is a history of oral tradition to support this notion so basically women made these amazing quilts that had that were basically embedded with secret directions as to where to go and who to speak to.
So the medium of quilting is typically associated with women and female communities and relationships. We talked a little bit about tapa cloths, for example, when we were covering oceanic art. So this act of engaging in community textile making is not just a western construct.
So this piece is meant to represent a work of art that is both functional and beautiful. A quill is something that is intended to decorate, to keep, keep oneself warm, but you can see that this piece also has a decorative element to it. So Faith Ringgold will oftentimes create a painting on a piece of canvas or cloth and then she'll incorporate that painting into a larger quilt, incorporating pre-printed fabrics as well as things that she's written onto the fabric.
It's a really beautiful and unique medium of creating artwork. So this concept of female relationships is maintained in the subject matter of this particular quilt. We have a woman with her friend and her friend's three daughters. So the French collection series is a narrative and the narrative is of this fictional story of Willa Marie Simone who is this fictional character of Ringgold's creation and this character moving to Paris in the early 20th century.
So this character basically moves to Paris and she meets and interacts with all of these famous people. So it's basically like a self insert like fanfic historical fiction. So she visits museums and meets famous artists and figures such as Pablo Picasso, Zora Neale Hurston, who was a writer, and Josephine Baker who was this fantastic like World War I era spy as well as a performer.
So the figures in the work act out scenes that the artist may have liked to have taken place. Of course we're talking the early 20s century in Paris at this particular point in time it was not normal or like socially acceptable for a woman particularly an African-American woman to travel out on her own only accompanied by another woman and her three daughters to go to these museums and to meet these people so there's really a sense of liberation here this challenging of inherent biases and accepted forms of art and letting this character basically reenact Faith Ringgold's hopes for the world, that women can occupy this place of liberation and be able to do all the things that white men would typically be able to do. So this work is really challenging the notion of these inherent biases. It is a quilt which is a typically like an art form that's associated with women, but again it's conveying the scene of liberation, this imagined history of a time that Faith Ringgold imagines could have been like a better past.
Here's a couple of other pieces by Faith Ringgold. This was actually her first story quilt right here. It's called Who's Afraid of Aunt Jemima and she describes the history of this piece in this fabulous video right here.
Faith Ringgold was also a member of the second wave feminism movement. She was very active in the 1970s advocating for the representation of women and particularly women of color in museums and galleries on the East Coast. So this is another piece from the French collection.
You can see again this community of women working on a quilt and then Vincent van Gogh in the top right hand corner. So I highly suggest watching this video. It's not particularly long, and you get a sense of, like, who Faith Ringgold is. She's also a children's book illustrator. I read lots of her books when I was younger.
They're a great little break. I think there's some videos on YouTube of her narrating the books. Our third and final piece today is called Trade, Gifts for Trading Land with White People by Jean-Claude Quick-DeSea-Faith, another female artist of color.
in our series. So Kwik Desi Faith is a member of the Shalish and Kootenai Indian tribes. She created this piece in response to Columbus's quincentenary celebration, which is basically this thing that happened in 1992. that was meant to commemorate the 500-year anniversary of the European occupation of America.
So she referred to this event as a quincentenary non-celebration because, of course, from her point of view, this is a conquest. of her ancestors'lands. So this piece is meant to demonstrate the historical and contemporary inequities between non-Native Americans and Native Americans, particularly the injustices perpetuated by the U.S. government. So this piece is in reference to this allegorical story that Manhattan was purchased from the Native Americans for goods worth $24.
So this story is a little bit more interesting. suggests that Native Americans were lured away from their lands by trinkets. So these trinkets are, of course, also referenced in the artist's piece.
So this allegorical tale originates from this event that likely actually happened where Europeans and Native Americans had these kind of crossed wires in terms of what they perceived of was land ownership. So it's very likely that the Native Americans that occupied Manhattan around the 1500s saw this gesture from Europeans as like, this is rent, basically, for your right to be on this land, but it's not to own it. A lot of Native American groups don't really have land ownership as a concept. It's more of like, you pay to establish a...
temporary presence on this land you're visiting. It's like when you buy a ticket to Disneyland, you're not buying a part of Disneyland, you are buying a day's worth of activities at Disneyland. Of course, to people in the West, they basically construed this as, all right, I just basically cheated these people out of this awesome land. I bought it for $24 and I guess we can just do whatever we want here now.
Excuse me. So the imagery here also references social issues caused by European occupation. We have references to poverty, alcoholism, disease, unemployment, etc. A lot of this displaced... that is happening as a result of European occupation.
There's also this collage of images on the canvas which you can see in this close-up right here. So a collage is basically a collection of images that has been glued together. So the those images might be created by the artist, the images might be sourced from other materials.
Basically collage is this word that comes from the French word for glue and that word in turn originates from the word collagen which is the connective tissue that holds our bones and our muscles together. So this material is actually used in glues before industrial processes started using. artificial polymers. So this like notion of like like the horse being sent to the glue factory that's where that comes from. So that's what a collage is.
So we have these themes of conquest these stereotyped and commodified images of Native Americans represented in food wrappers, magazine articles and ads, photographs, comic books. So basically these very stereotyped images of like the silent stoic Native American are peppered. throughout this piece, particularly in the use of advertisements and kind of like film and other elements of contemporary culture.
So a string bearing some trinkets also follows these seams. When you look a little bit more closely at these trinkets, you're noticing that a lot of them are children's toys. We have like these children's moccasins. We have a bottle of alcohol.
We have a child's bow and arrow. We have paraphernalia from various sports teams that use Native Americans as their mascots. We also have paint collaged over the image. And a lot of these brushstrokes are from the United States. evoke expressionist pieces in the fact that they're not necessarily representational but they're intended to convey an emotion, they're intended to convey this reality of the artist and their existence.
The red features most strongly and prominently it likely represents the bloodshed and sacrifices made by Native Americans in the basically what is now seen as a celebration. So a canoe also dominates the image. A canoe, as you probably all know, is a mode of water transportation. There are three parts of this piece.
You can see the divisions in the canvases right here. So the canoe is spanning across these three canvases, but you'll also notice that the canoe is not really situated in a space where it's useful. You don't see any paddles to propel the the canoe forward, you don't see a body of water that the canoe can actually be used in.
So historically canoes were used to facilitate movement and trade, which also ties into the title here, but this canoe remains stagnant and is divorced of water, its vehicle of use. So there's certainly a parallel between the canoe and it being divorced from its mode of agency and the lack of agency that Native Americans are feeling within their own communities. So here's a couple of other pieces by Jean-Claude-Couic de C. Faith. They're really fabulous and evocative, and a lot of them get a lot of meaning from the titles.
There's also lots of references to historical paintings in her pieces if you look closely. There's a bit from Guernica, which is this very famous Pablo Picasso painting about the bombing of a city in here. When you look at other paintings too, sometimes you'll see like the Batman symbol, or you'll see kind of like other elements of pop.
culture like emerging as like little Easter eggs. So this is a great video that kind of describes Jean-Claude-Claude De Seasmith's journey into becoming an artist. She loves to doodle and she is really kind of like focused on this this element of the artist's subconscious and bringing that to the physical, bringing that into a physical reality. She also talks about her difficulty in becoming an artist and particularly this incident when she was in art school where the instructor said you can draw better than all the men but you'll never be an artist because you're a woman and she was like okay I'll become a part of the AP curriculum then and tell you all who's boss so that's my collection of three fabulous women for the day I hope you enjoyed that lecture