Cigdem Aydemir

Cigdem (pronounced 'Chidem') Aydemir is a Sydney based Australian artist of Turkish Muslim heritage.  Like a number of other artists she addresses the wearing of the Burqa and the issues facing contemporary Muslim women but she does it with a quirky Australian humour that is uniquely her own.

http://www.cigdemaydemir.net/artworks.html

See Video Showcase of works (2011 - 2012) here

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"Cigdem Aydemir's Bombshell video challenges the viewer's prejudices by featuring the artist wearing a black burqa that leaves only her eyes visible.

Aydemir's outfit billows around her outstretched legs as ominous clouds move behind her. The sound of thunder or possibly bombs can also be heard.
Its a "re-creation of the iconic scene in which Marilyn Monroe stands above a subway vent from The Seven Year Itch"

Aydemir said the video explored the image and idea of the burqa as a possible terrorist threat. ''It's menacing but very beautiful at the same time,'' she said.

Aydemir's Bombshell will be announced on Thursday as the winner of the $10,000 emerging artist award of the Redlands Art Prize. The Redlands Art Prize is at the National Art School gallery in Darlinghurst from May 3 to June 1

full article here
http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/monroe-as-undercover-agent-takes-top-spot-20130501-2it9z.html

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"Cigdem Aydemir's Extremist Activity is a series of performances that explore body politics, feminism and Islamophobia, in particular the idea of the Niqab and Burqa being a security threat. These performances, documented in both in video and photography, are about reclaiming body-space. The forms worn on the body (or rather the body worn on the forms) create and exaggerate voids whilst also parodying the proper concealment, or disclosure, of that space. Extremist Activity explores the concept of the body as an occupied space and creates a dialogue between the viewers (both in and out of the gallery) and their perceptions of this culturally, historically and politically significant garment and the women who wear them.'

full article here


Cigdem Aydemir talks about her upcoming show at A-M Gallery 28 March 2012 from A-M Gallery on Vimeo.



Performance and Q&A with Cigdem Aydemir as part of her show ‘Extremist Activity’ at A-M Gallery, Newtown, on 31 March 2012 from A-M Gallery on Vimeo.

Article about "Extremist Activity" here

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"the Newtown mural of a woman in a full-face Muslim covering with a strike symbol over her face and the words ''Say No to the Burqa'' is the subject of an anti-discrimination complaint.

Cigdem Aydemir, 27, a Muslim, artist and high-school art teacher, said she felt ''completely offended and insulted'' when she saw the mural pop up in her neighbourhood."

full article here
http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/complaint-lodged-over-burqa-mural-20101125-18967.html

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Hair / Veil (2011) from Cigdem Aydemir on Vimeo.

Rosemarie Trockel

Rosemarie Trockel: A Cosmos
13 February - 7 April 2013
Serpentine Gallery

http://www.serpentinegallery.org/2011/03/rosemarie_trockel_a_cosmos.html

This exhibition is curated by Lynne Cooke and organised by the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in collaboration with the Serpentine Gallery.

A Cosmos reflects the artist's interest in creating a space for ideas to exist between different disciplines, past and present. Many of the objects and artworks, selected by Trockel in dialogue with curator Lynne Cooke, produce a context for the artist's work within other fields of inquiry, such as the natural sciences and natural history. Watercolours painted by the pioneering botanist Maria Sibylla Merian sit alongside intricate models of marine invertebrates crafted by Leopold and Rudolph Blaschka, initially used as research tools by naturalists who had no access to living specimens.

Listen to an audio introduction to Rosemarie Trockel: A Cosmos, written by Dominic Eichler

Berlin-based writer and musician Dominic Eichler has written a free, downloadable, audio introduction for Rosemarie Trockel: A Cosmos. Recorded in the style of a radio play for four female voices, this audio work reflects upon the exhibition in the context of Trockel's wider oeuvre, while also discussing several of the objects and artworks in the Serpentine Gallery show. This audio introduction is designed to be enjoyed on visitors' own mobile devices whilst in the Gallery or at home.

About

at Gladstone Gallery
http://gladstonegallery.com/trockel.asp

at Sprueth Magers
http://spruethmagers.net/artists/rosemarie_trockel

on youtube

on wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemarie_Trockel

The Dinner Party - Video

Back in November 2006 I posted about Judy Chicago's "the Dinner Party". ie

"In early 2007, The Dinner Party will be permanently housed at the Brooklyn Museum as part of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art."

see full post here
http://printaustralia.blogspot.com/2006/11/dinner-party.html

Being familiar with James Kalm's video reports of exhbitions, and amused at his comments on Tracy Emin, I was intrigued as to how he received the work. you can see for yourself here.





http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1jxdiuSkRk

Linda Nochlin on Women's Art

Linda Nochlin speaks for just over an hour on "Consider the Difference: American Women Artists".

From the Smithsonian



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYRnH-DmO7E


Linda Nochlin, the Lila Acheson Wallace Professor of Modern Art at the New York University Institute of Fine Arts, pioneered the study of women and art with her groundbreaking 1971 essay, "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?" Considered the foremost scholar of feminist art history, she has authored numerous publications, including Women, Art, and Power and Other Essays (1988) and Representing Women (1999). She was also the co-curator of the landmark exhibition Women Artists: 1550—1950, held at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1976. A former professor of art history at Yale University and Vassar College, Nochlin is also known for her work on Gustave Courbet. She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities and is currently a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Nochlin on Wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_Nochlin

It took a while to find the original essay online - however I eventually found it, so if you want to read the essay "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?" go here

http://www.miracosta.edu/home/gfloren/nochlin.htm

a quote from the essay

"The fact of the matter is that there have been no supremely great women artists, as far as we know, although there have been many interesting and very good ones who remain insufficiently investigated or appreciated; nor have there been any great Lithuanian jazz pianists, nor Eskimo tennis players, no matter how much we might wish there had been. That this should be the case is regrettable, but no amount of manipulating the historical or critical evidence will alter the situation; nor will accusations of male-chauvinist distortion of history. There are no women equivalents for Michelangelo or Rembrandt, Delacroix or Cezanne, Picasso or Matisse, or even, in very recent times, for de Kooning or Warhol, any more than there are black American equivalents for the same. If there actually were large numbers of "hidden" great women artists, or if there really, should be different standards for women's art as opposed to men's--and one can't have it both ways--then what are feminists fighting for? If women have in fact achieved the same status as men in the arts, then the status quo is fine as it is.

But in actuality, as we all know, things as they are and as they have been, in the arts as in a hundred other areas, are stultifying, oppressive, and discouraging to all those, women among them, who did not have the good fortune to be born white, preferably middle class and, above all, male. The fault lies not in our stars, our hormones, our menstrual cycles, or our empty internal spaces, but in our institutions and our education-education understood to include everything that happens to us from the moment we enter this world of meaningful symbols, signs, and signals. The miracle is, in fact, that given the overwhelming odds against women, or blacks, that so many of both have managed to achieve so much sheer excellence, in those bailiwicks of white masculine prerogative like science, politics, or the arts. "

Jenny Holzer - Basel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlfShcpuM6g


http://www.vernissage.tv | More info: http://vernissage.tv/blog/2009/11/04/...

Jenny Holzer is considered as one of the most popular contemporary artists. Holzer is known for her use of words and ideas in public space. In 1982 she publicised her statements and aphorisms (truisms) on one of Times Squares gigantic LED billboards, in 2008 she created a site-specific light projection for the newly renovated facade of the Solomon R. Guggenheim museum in New York.

Fondation Beyeler in Riehen near Basel, Switzerland, is now presenting Jenny Holzers first large sale exhibition in a Swiss museum. The focus is on recent works, some of which have never before been shown in Europe. On display are Jenny Holzers famous LED installations, combining poetic, socio-critical, and political texts and visual effects, as welll as paintings and sculptures. The exhibition is supplemented by a selection of works the artist has chosen from the Beyeler Collection (Giacometti, Picasso, Malevich, Bacon).

The presentation of Jenny Holzers work is not confined to the museum space. The show extends outdoors to the public space. Jenny Holzer conceived light projections on key buildings and sites in Basel and Zürich. These will only be on view on special nights.

The exhibition has been conceived in close cooperation with the artist and the MCA, Chicago, and curated by Elizabeth A. T. Smith and Philippe Büttner. The exhibition at Fondation Beyeler runs until January 24, 2010.

Jenny Holzer at Fondation Beyeler in Riehen / Switzerland. Opening reception, October 31, 2009.

Tracy Emin - NY

James Kalm is slumming on the Lower East Side when he comes across this opening. Tracey Emin is a founding member of the YBAs (Young British Artists) and represented Great Britain in the 2007 Venice Biennial. Featuring over 53 works in neon, film, sculpture, embroideries and monoprints, this extensive show continues the artists exploration and objectification of her own sexuality, lust, longing and desire.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHEruOXyFyc

check out the animation

Judy Chicago

"Judy Chicago & the California Girls" is an historical documentary by and about women, at the birth of the Women’s Art Movement in Fresno, California, 1971:

The Women

Dori Atlantis	Susan Boyd
Vanalyne Green	Suzanne Lacy
Cay Lang	Karen LeCocq
Janice Lester	Christine Rush
Shawnee Wollenman	Faith Wilding
Nancy Youdelman	Cheryl Zurilgen

view clips from the film
History/Clips

elles@centrepompidou - paris

elles@centrepompidou
by centrepompidou

For the first time in the world, a museum will be displaying the feminine side of its own collections. This new presentation of the Centre Pompidou's collections will be entirely given over to the women artists from the 20th century to the present day.

elles@centrepompidou is the third thematic exhibition of the Centre Pompidou's collections, following Big Bang in 2005 and the Mouvement des Images (Image Movements) in 2006-2007.

This will be the occasion for the institution, which has built up the very first collection of modern and contemporary art, to show its commitment to women artists, nationality and discipline taken together, and place them at the core of modern and contemporary art of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Key figures such as Sonia Delaunay, Frida Kahlo, Dorothea Tanning, Joan Mitchell and Maria-Elena Vieira da Silva rub shoulders with today's great female creators some of whom, including Sophie Calle, Annette Messager and Louise Bourgeois have been featured recently in monographic exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou.

The programming cuts across disciplines to take a deeper look at the place occupied by women in the culture of the last century, from literature to history of thought, from dance to cinema.

full info

the website
http://www.ina.fr/fresques/elles-centrepompidou/Html/PrincipaleAccueil.php

Marlene Dumas - Moma

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oJGwiEoj84

For more information please visit:
http://moma.org/exhibitions/exhibitions.php?id=3994.

Marlene Dumas: Measuring Your Own Grave
December 14, 2008-February 16, 2009
The Museum of Modern Art, New York

This exhibition of the work of the acclaimed painter Marlene Dumas, the first of its scale to be mounted in the United States, is organized by The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, in association with The Museum of Modern Art. The exhibition includes approximately seventy paintings and thirty-five drawings, providing a comprehensive examination of the work of one of the most thought-provoking and fascinating artists working today. The exhibition opens with Dumas's earliest mature works from the late 1970s. While loosely chronological, it will also reflect Dumas's tendency to work in series, with key paintings grouped together. Through her focus on the human figure, Dumas merges themes of race, sexuality, and social identity with personal experience and art-historical antecedents to create a unique perspective on important and controversial issues of the day. The exhibition provides an opportunity to trace these themes over the course of the artist's career, and also provides access to paintings and drawings of extraordinary technical quality. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue.

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James Kalm trips to Midtown’s Museum of Modern Art to witness the North American debut of Marlene Dumas “Measuring Your Own Grave”. Dumas (1953) have received increasing attention for her heartfelt and sensitive renditions of “the pageantry of the human condition”. In 2005, one of her paintings was auctioned at Christie’s London for $3.34 million, establishing her as the highest priced living female artist. Between the prices, and Dumas racially charged erotic and off kilter depictions, she has become a favorite target of comments within the cultural media. Featuring an interview with Marlene Dumas, and comments by Steve Kaplan

http://uk.video.yahoo.com/watch/4097729/11055282

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Marlene Dumas mounting the show 'For whom the Bell Tolls' at Zeno X Gallery in Antwerp.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mp-rXYfqWEw

More videos (in dutch )

Marlene Dumas - Part 1 (Marilyn)
Marlene Dumas about the texture of the paintings constituting the show 'For whom the Bell Tolls' at Zeno X Gallery in Antwerp. Filmed by Hans Theys on August 31st 2008.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZaRU5UXPeI

Marlene Dumas - Part 2 - Einder (Horizon)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnQd4Tm7IYg

Marlene Dumas - Part 3 - Waterproof Mascara
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ModQVeHGsHk

Marlene Dumas - Part 4 - Glass Tears
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YORRBA5W8iA

Louise Joséphine Bourgeois

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXq2tBDH9YM

Louise Bourgeois Louise Joséphine Bourgeois est une artiste plasticienne française[1] née à Paris le 25 décembre 1911.

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James Kalm battles Manhattan's morning rush hour, peddling twelve miles, to pay homage to the Grand Dame of the New York Art World, Louise Bourgeois. This remarkable retrospective gathers the most extensive selection of Bourgeois works to date, and features her major sculpture, installations, paintings, drawings and graphics. Viewers will see the arc of stylistic development form the early Surrealist to the Biomorphic, assemblage and the installations with sexually charged images that makes Bourgeois an essential Feminist artist. Part I presents works from the early 1940's till the mid 1960's. This exhibition is organized in association with the Tate Modern, London, and Center Pompidou, Paris.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n14J-rkGtL0



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIdpIIumOfw

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Famous British artists Tracey Emin, Stella Vine and Antony Gormley discuss the art works of Louise Bourgeois, interviewed by Alan Yentob for BBC in 2007



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgEXYOrT2Mo

Women's Studio Workshop

Women's Studio Workshop was founded in 1974 by four women artists, Ann Kalmbach, Tatana Kellner, Anita Wetzel, and Barbara Leoff Burge. They were committed to developing an alternative space for artists to create new work and share skills. Programs were centered on the artistic process and often informed by feminist values. In the early years, the studios were located in a two-story single-family house. Etching was in the living room, papermaking was in the attic, and screen printing was in the basement. Public programming included a regular workshop series, as well as special programs that featured the work of women artists. Women's Work in Film and Video, a long-standing series of topical films made by women film makers, and Outskirts, a series of 2-dimensional art exhibits, were initiated in 1976. These seasonal series were housed alternately at bars, dance studios or libraries—any place where we could access a new audience. The intention was to exhibit the work of women artists as well as provide professional experiences for the artists themselves

http://www.wsworkshop.org/_about/history.htm

blog
http://blog.wsworkshop.org/

sitemap
http://www.wsworkshop.org/sitemap.htm



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOtaghs9Mtk&eurl=http://blog.wsworkshop.org/&feature=player_embedded

Dale Spender - Book

Dale Spender - Women of Ideas and what Men Have Done to Them.
http://tinyurl.com/62b6e4
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dale_Spender

Dale Spender on Bellebyrd
http://printaustralia.blogspot.com/2007/04/dale-spender-interview.html

Women Pirates - Sally Smart

"Were there any women pirates?"

The Exquisite Pirate 9 May - 7 Jun, 2008
Amelia Johnson Contemporary - Hong Kong

A rising star of the Australian art world, Sally Smart’s work has been featured in numerous exhibitions in the Asia-Pacific region. In the last two years she has also debuted in New York and at Art Basel Miami to great critical acclaim. Smart’s colorful wall assemblages of painted felt and other materials combine mixed-media collage, intellectual sampling, and historical references to create fractured, epic spectacles that are part fantasy, part social critique.



For her Hong Kong solo debut at Amelia Johnson Contemporary, Smart resurrects the history of female pirates in her series The Exquisite Pirate. The all-encompassing installation will transport viewers into a ghostly armada hovering on the gallery walls, accented by skull-and-crossbones and details such as an electric blue pirate flag whipping from the main mast and a bleached skeleton strung up from a ship’s prow. In Smart’s work, female pirates embody a history without a history.

Along with the strong visual impact of the imagery in Sally Smart’s work, it is the richness of implication, triggering an array of conscious and subconscious associations, that gives her work its poetic resonance, depth and potency. A fiercely innovative voice in feminist and post-colonial art, Smart deftly handles weighty material with a light touch and is truly ready for world wide recognition.

http://www.ajc-art.com/artists/SallySmart/biography/

http://www.ajc-art.com/artists/SallySmart/page1/

download biography

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January 28 - February 25, 2006

“The Exquisite Pirate”

Postmasters Gallery is pleased to present the exhibition "The Exquisite Pirate" by Australian artist Sally Smart.

more info - press release
http://www.postmastersart.com/archive/sally06/sally06.html



Artist's website
http://www.sallysmart.com/

Julie Rrap

http://video.msn.com/video.aspx




Julie Rrap: Naked Obsession

Call - Bonnets & Boats, Sydney

BONNETS & BOATS BY CHRISTINA HENRI - ART RE-TELLING CONVICT WOMEN’S STORIES

Bonnets & Boats will re-connect convict women’s history and their stories to the English settlement of Australia. It will engage descendants of convict women transported to Australia and allow them to tell their stories handed to them from generation to generation. Christina Henri will be running a series of cloth bonnet making workshops with descendants of convict women from the local community in Parramatta. These bonnets will feature in the exhibition at Parramatta Artists Studios and other exhibitions spaces across Australia. Each bonnet will commemorate the life of a convict woman.

When: 5 September – 10 October 2008
Workshops: 11am – 4pm, 16 August, 11am – 4pm, 23 August and 11am – 4pm, 6 September 2008 (Max 20 per workshop, bookings essential).
Where: Parramatta Artists Studios, 45 Hunter St Parramatta
Cost: Free
Enquires and bookings: Parramatta Artists Studios on 9687 6090

Further information: www.parracity.nsw.gov.au

If I Can’t Dance - part 3

EDITION III:
THE MASQUERADE
2008 - 2010

http://www.ificantdance.org/test2/index.php

If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution launches its new, third edition. The departure point for this edition is to explore a conceptual framework of the masquerade. This can be read in the light of If I Can’t Dance...’s continuing exploration of paradigms such as performativity, theatricality and feminism(s), produced in collaboration with artists in the form of experimental sketches, performances, readings, exhibitions, enactments etc., since its inception in 2005.

By jumping into the intractably spectacular topos of performance and theatre-based regimes, If I Can’t Dance... through its unfolding production methodology probes, embraces and even sometimes collapses certain tenets of display and legibility employed in the visual arts, aiming to articulate a politics of perception. Key to this practice is working with a select number of artists (in repertory) over a longer period and generating multiple spaces, contexts and possibilities for them to robustly engage and produce new work and insight into the emergent subject matter.

Over the next two years, If I Can’t Dance… will have manifestations in Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Bilbao, Dublin and Eindhoven, collaborating with Overgaden Institute of Contemporary Art, de Appel arts centre, Sala Rekalde, Project Arts Centre and the Van Abbemuseum. Keren Cytter, Jon Mikel Euba, Olivier Foulon, Suchan Kinoshita, Joachim Koester and Sarah Pierce are invited to produce new projects that will be developed within the time frame of two years, and presented at the subsequent moments when If I Can’t Dance… will visit the institutions mentioned.

Edition III looks at forms of masking, mimicry, parody and assimilation. Areas for exploration include the construction of subjectivity, modes of formalized and ritualized behaviour, codes of contemporary transgressive and normative action, authenticity and falseness etc. In addition to the masquerade as subject matter in art, attention is directed to its manifestations in the methodologies of art making, manifesting themselves in for instance choreographies of detour, suspension and metonymy, activating that what is latent. As such, If I Can’t Dance... aims to articulate in art’s production and reception both, the apparent narrative, and that which remains illegible or invisible, as vital actors.

The prologue of Edition III will take place in Copenhagen. In a day-long programme in Overgaden, the artists involved will present their ideas on the projects to be developed. In Karriere Bar the stage is set for a performance of Planningtorock. In the University of Copenhagen, on the occasion of the conference Interregnum (August 20-24) organised by the university in collaboration with Performance Studies international, Frederique Bergholtz and Annie Fletcher will give a lecture on If I Can’t Dance… and its development.

PROGRAMME

FRIDAY, AUGUST 22, 14:00-16:00 - UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN
Lecture by Frederique Bergholtz and Annie Fletcher on If I Can’t Dance...
Address: University of Copenhagen, Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, Room 22.0.47, Blixens Vej 1, 2300 Copenhagen S
(+45) 35 32 92 74
info@interregnum.dk, http://www.interregnum.dk

SATURDAY, AUGUST 23, 12.00-20.00 - OVERGADEN
Prologue Edition III. Presentations: Keren Cytter, Jon Mikel Euba, Olivier Foulon, Suchan Kinoshita, Joachim Koester and Sarah Pierce. Moderator: Lars Bang Larsen.
Address: Overgaden. Institute of Contemporary Art, Overgaden Neden Vandet 17, 1414 Copenhagen K
(+45) 32 57 72 73,
info@overgaden.org, http://www.overgaden.org

SATURDAY, AUGUST 23, 22.30-23.00 - KARRIERE
Performance by Planningtorock
Address: Karriere contemporary art & social life, Flaesketorvet 57-67, 1711 Copenhagen V,
(+45) 33 21 55 09
info@karrierebar.com, http://www.karrierebar.com

A complete programme of events and ticket and reservation information is available at http://www.ificantdance.org

EPISODE 1 – DE APPEL
Episode 1 will take place in de Appel arts centre in Amsterdam, from September 26 – November 9 2008.

TEAM

Since the beginning of 2008, If I Can’t Dance… has established itself as an independent foundation with a permanent production base in Amsterdam. The team consist of Frederique Bergholtz (Financial and Artistic Director), Annie Fletcher (Artistic Director), Maaike Gouwenberg (Production / Curator), Claud Biemans (Finances), Marcel van den Berg (Communication) and Flora Lysen (Research).

PARTNERS EDITION III

COLLABORATING INSTITUTIONS
Overgaden, København – DK; de Appel arts centre, Amsterdam – NL; Sala Rekalde, Bilbao – ES; Project Arts Centre, Dublin – IE; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven – NL

video dating

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZePRVolYMV0



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRapCTGIlJA




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTRTXhX0ee4&feature=related

Jenny Saville

Jenny Saville’s monumental paintings wallow in the glory of expansiveness. Jenny Saville is a real painter’s painter. She constructs painting with the weighty heft of sculpture. Her exaggerated nudes point up, with an agonizing frankness, the disparity between the way women are perceived and the way that they feel about their bodies. One of the most striking aspects of Jenny Saville’s work is the sheer physicality of it. Jenny Saville paints skin with all the subtlety of a Swedish massage; violent, painful, bruising, bone crunching.

http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/jenny_saville.htm

article
http://www.artnet.com/magazine




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lIkMPvgENU

Ways of Seeing - John Berger

An Amazon review states

"Ways of Seeing is the book of a groundbreaking and brilliant TV series that Berger created with Mike Dibb in the 1970s. The book isn't quite as amazing as the series, but it's acquired canonical status anyway as Berger's most frequently set text on art and art criticism. Which is a pity, because while the impressive confidence of Berger's judgments was inspiring back then (Marina Warner and Michael Ondaatje have each paid tribute to it), time has passed over the last quarter of a century and the book is in danger of looking old-fashioned. The theory of desire, which Berger manages to popularise in a single succinct chapter, has been challenged, confirmed, turned upside-down and generally elaborated upon so much since the book was written that his version of it is now inadequate. Advertising is vastly more sophisticated now than it was in 1972 - the ads reproduced in the book, while perfectly representative of their time, are almost laughable in their blatant sexism and classism. (You wouldn't get away with them now, that's for sure.) But the account of the rise of oil painting is still persuasive, even if it lacks the cheek and mischievousness of the TV version. Readers expecting to find Berger's most incisive and complex criticism should look elsewhere, though, to The Sense of Sight or About Looking, because Ways of Seeing is essentially a popularisation of theories that have since become much more complex, and Berger's lapidary, no-argument tone is hardly applicable anymore. Somebody should release the series on video, then we'd get the same ideas in a more engaging and fascinating manner."

Well somebody did. Its on Youtube in 4 parts per episode.

Thanks to "man with a plan" you can see all the videos here.

Marlene Dumas - LA

I've been commenting recentlt that there isn't really a tradition of the male nude as painted by women. For the most part, a search on "male nude" returns works by male artists, ie gay porn or soft porn.

This is an exhibition by Marlene Dumas

In the first gallery of "Marlene Dumas: Measuring Your Own Grave" at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, hangs an oil painting of a washy gray skull set against a densely black background. The picture of the skull is in profile and takes up most of the canvas, which measures a little less than 4 x 5 ft. In the centuries-old tradition of vanitas, such still-lifes are meant to remind viewers that no amount of silver plate and glassware can stave off the inevitable. In the 17th and 18th centuries, vanitas pictures were among the commonest paintings produced by Netherlandish artists, and Dumas has lived in Amsterdam since 1976. This particular depicted skull, however, belonged to a woman. It is a memento mori for a way of seeing the world.

Half of the world is made up of women but the world does not seem as though it has been envisioned by them. Women still live in a world constructed and conceived by men. They do their best to fit in. Dumas, who was raised in South Africa, must be especially aware of that undercurrent of separateness. Still, she has fit herself into the world as a painter and asks for no special consideration. Instead, she takes on the history of art and makes her place in it with ambition and talent (Dumas paintings like The Teacher (Sub a) (1987) or Adult Entertainment (2000) have, of course, sold for hefty sums at auction). These paintings were made from the mind of a woman, and they are all the better for it.

full article
http://www.artnet.com

"Marlene Dumas: Measuring Your Own Grave," June 22-Sept. 22, 2008, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, 250 South Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, Ca. 90012
http://www.moca.org/museum/exhibitiondetail.php?&id=407


Listen to the artist discuss select works from her exhibition Marlene Dumas: Measuring Your Own Grave
http://www.moca.org/audio/