I am watching the last in a three part series shown on channel 4 in 2005. The titles go from Togetherness to Loneliness and end in Shattered, they explore self portraiture from the renaissance to a more present time.
These are notes (and some information found from the internet to support) from the final episode which i borrowed from the library, in which art critic Mathew Collings concludes his scrutiny of self-portraits with a look at female artists including Cindy Sherman, Sarah Lucas and, in particular, Frida Kahlo (amongst mention of others).
Frida Kahlo
Traffic Accident, bus crash, empayled her on a hand rail, shattered spine
Mexican Artist, pursued Diego Riviera and married him, she 22 he 33 she middle class 3 years before mexican revolution. Created a persona to display, started dressing in costume in 'mexicanism' and combined the old with the new. In 1931 Kahlo experienced painful miscarriges and created art pieces. She shows the pain of life in a simple way, there is a magical element. Literal art, paints a death mask and diago on her head because they may be on her mind. Pain, passion, colourful paintings.
Picasso and surrealists impressed with Kahlos work, she wasn't keen on surrealists when she was invited to do a show with them. She said her self portraits were not 'surrealist dreams' but her reality.
Her life had been incredibly vivid, she had affairs with men and women, and had a lot of drink and drugs. Was in constant pain because of her spine. 'A beatiful wreck' 'The Blue House'. She became Violent and Crazed as she grew older, now she is seen as a saint of the 'me' generation.
Artemisia Gentileschi
raped at the age of 14, had to work in rigid conditions, helpless to display her true feelings because of the time.
Sarah Lucas
Lucas staging a modern female self
Tracey Emin??
Tracey Karima Emin, CBE, RA (born 3 July 1963 in Croydon) is an English artist. She is part of the group known as Britartists or YBAs (Young British Artists).
In 1997 her work Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963–1995, a tent appliquéd with names, was shown at Charles Saatchi's Sensation exhibition held at the Royal Academy in London. The same year, she gained considerable media exposure when she appeared drunk and swearing on a live Channel 4 TV discussion.
In 1999 she was a Turner Prize nominee and exhibited My Bed — an installation, consisting of her own unmade dirty bed with used condoms and blood-stained underwear.
Cindy Sherman
Charades of self hood. Film Stills. Disguises of her older self, ageing bodies 'must be disguised' in the media, Sherman makes a slight mockery of this.
Alice Neale
Self portrait aged 81, she died 4 years later. She had nervous breakdowns and tried to commit suicide as a young painter. She experienced a child's death, drug user partners. she said 'as an artist she had always been a collector of souls'.
Sam Taylor Wood
Sam Taylor-Wood (British, b.1967) is a photographer and filmmaker, considered a member of the group known as the Young British Artists. After beginning to exhibit fine art photography in the early 1990s, Taylor-Wood had her first solo exhibition in 1994. For her series of photographs titled Five Revolutionary Seconds, started in 1995, Taylor-Wood used a rotating camera to take five-second shots while capturing a full 360-degree panorama. The resulting photographs are often over six feet in length, and depict various settings and characters. Despite their physical proximity, the figures appear distant and detached from each other, presumably lost among their own internal thoughts.
Port modernist art, truth changes due to context. Nothing is believable.
After viewing this documentary, i feel i have gained more knowledge about how the 'self' has changed over time and how figures such as Frida Kahlo have used their life experiences and how society may accept or not accept their choices. It is this i will take through the next couple of weeks of my project to guide some possible outcomes and experiments.
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