Staging Subjectivity: Love and Loneliness in the Scene of Painting with Charlotte Salomon and Edvard Munch

This paper proposes a conversation between Charlotte Salomon (1917–43) and Edvard Munch that is premised on a reading of Charlotte Salomon’s monumental project of 784 paintings forming a single work Leben? oder Theater? (1941–42) as itself a reading of potentialities for painting, as a staging of subjectivity in the work of Edvard Munch, notably in his assembling paintings to form the Frieze of Life. Drawing on both Mieke Bal’s critical concept of “preposterous history” and my own project of “the virtual feminist museum” as a framework for tracing resonances that are never influences or descent in conventional art historical terms, this paper traces creative links between the serial paintings of these two artists across the shared thematic of loneliness and psychological extremity mediated by the legacy of Friedrich Nietzsche

“Femmes artistes / Artistes femmes”

Ces livres évoquent les impulsions souvent contradictoires qui caractérisent l’émergence du féminisme comme une inflexion —tant théorique et stratégique que pratique et tactique— de l’écriture de l’histoire de l’art et sa critique. Proposant des orientations différentes, ces ouvrages exposent une problématique commune qu’ils explorent selon des stratégies contraires. Cette problématique renvoie d’une part à la visibilité excessive du genre féminin comme représentation dans l’image (Ecce Femin..

Momentos e temporalidades das vanguardas “no, do e sobre o feminino”

Por que a cultura modernista foi tão incapaz de integrar imaginativamente a criatividade das mulheres em suas narrativas de radicalismo, inovação, dissidência e transgressão, quando o gênero deveria ser reconhecido como um dos pontos nevrálgicos da própria modernidade? Se a história canônica da arte introduziu gênero no modernismo apenas no negativo, apagando suas representantes mais ativas – as mulheres vanguardistas - como pode uma arqueologia retrospectiva da vanguarda, não como uma única vanguarda, mas como uma constelação de momentos contingentes históricos e auto posicionamentos radicais, vis-à-vis com a triangulação da família, do estado e da religião - típico da modernidade burguesa ocidental -, abrirem novas linhas de análise, revelar o lugar oscilante do "feminino/le féminin" em todas as vanguardas? Baseando-se na sociologia contemporânea da modernidade líquida de Zygmunt Bauman e nos pensamentos sempre férteis de Julia Kristeva sobre as temporalidades da diferença sexual, este artigo argumenta, em primeiro lugar, que em tempos líquidos o terreno relativamente sólido contra o qual operava a transgressão de vanguarda não é mais operativo, deslocando o modelo clássico da vanguarda, enquanto, em segundo lugar, a perspectiva feminista sobre a longa duração da ordem simbólica falocêntrica coloca uma intervenção “no, do e sobre o feminino” continuamente em uma posição estratégica de dissidência histórica e transformadora. Meu argumento tece materialismo histórico, psicanálise e teorias feministas de estética e diferença sexual, contestando as rápidas mudanças na moda intelectual típica da modernidade líquida que estão se infiltrando na academia e levando ao abandono prematuro de certos projetos político-intelectuais. Apesar de todos os perigos e complexidades de pensar sobre "o feminino" em qualquer forma, e certamente agora, quando as altas teorias feministas da diferença sexual são aparentemente tão démodé, mostro como este conceito problemático e preocupante ainda é historicamente significativo e teoricamente relevante para repensar a vanguarda

The flesh of painting: Caillebotte’s Modern Olympia

The language of putrefaction, often applied through a culinary analogy, appeared consistently in the critical reception of modern-life and Impressionist painting. For example, two critics used the term faisandé, referring to well-hung meat, to describe Manet’s nude figure of Olympia in 1865. The analogies that they posed between morgue bodies, female figures, meat, and fleshy paint material became central modes of denigrating Impressionist paintings of women in the ensuing decades. Gustave Caillebotte’s Veal in a Butcher’s Shop (c. 1882), depicting anthropomorphized, gendered, and sexualized animal flesh, can be considered in this context. In my reading, the painting enacts the critical responses to his colleagues’ figures, foregrounding the violent operations through which bodies might be reduced to meat, whether literal or metaphorical. In their comparisons to rotting flesh, nineteenth-century critics expressed a visceral reaction to works of art that Veal in a Butcher’s Shop demands

Painting the Body: Feminist Musings on Visual Autographies

In this paper I look at autographical depictions of the body in the work of Mato Ioannidou, a Greek woman artist, who participated in a wider narrative-based project on visual and textual entanglements between life and art. The paper unfolds in three parts: first, I give an overview of Ioannidou’s artwork, making connections with significant events in her life; then I discuss feminist theorizations of embodiment and visual auto/biography; and finally I draw on insights from Spinozist feminist philosophers to discuss the artist’s portrayal of women’s bodies in three cycles of her work. What I argue is that the body becomes a centerpiece in the attempt to perceive connections between life and art through expressionism rather than representation

Introduction to EJES special journal issue on ‘Feminist Interventions in Intermedial Studies'

Abstract The feminist project has radicalised text/image relationships in myriad ways, disrupting the contours of discipline and medium. The multifaceted recyclings of a transdisciplinary methodology remind us that although in the past decades text/image studies has become an established academic research field in the first decades of the twenty-first century, its subversive potential to challenge cultural hegemonies has not diminished. On the contrary, intermedial fusions remain loaded with political and ethical issues that are in search of sites of resistance for marginalised, othered social subjects and meanings. The introduction explains how this special journal issue emerges from and is addressed to the politically significant network of feminist researchers -- artists, theoreticians, activists -- we believe we share ties with on account of putting the study of intermediality in the service of 'constructing a radically new understanding of our world in all its horror and hope' (Pollock, 1988: 22)

Creating a space for young women's voices: Using participatory 'video drama' in Uganda

This article draws upon research that explored the experiences of young women in relation to sexual health in Uganda with a view to enhancing gender-sensitive strategies. We have coined the phrase ‘participatory video drama’ to describe the exploratory methodology that the young women participants in our research used to present stories about their lives. The aim of this article is to suggest that ‘participatory video’ (PV) and ‘participatory video drama’ (PVD) are innovative methodological tools to utilise when working with participants who experience voicelessness in their everyday lives. We contribute to an emerging body of work around this methodology by suggesting that the process of PV provides a novel and engaging platform for participants to express their experiences. PVD further creates spaces for the performative exploration of embedded power relations and is therefore informative and has the potential to be transformatory and empowering