Artists Date at Home

I’ve not been keeping up with my Artists Dates for the creative group I attend, so I decided to do an at home, online time directly looking at art.

I’m always dismayed at my lack of knowledge of art history, although, to be fair, this is not a subject I’ve ever studied in any formal way. So when I come across a new name I try to investigate and find out more about the artist. I've looked at three artists in my online artists date today.

A name I discovered recently is Artemisia Gentileschi, who was painting in the seventeenth century, having completed an apprentiship with her artist father. http://www.artemisia-gentileschi.com/index.shtml

There is lots about her online including a website with a slideshow of most of her work. Her themes were largely biblical with an apparent slant towards showing women in more realistic poses and in rather striking activities such as performing beheadings, than similar themes depicted by contemporary male artists. But then the Old Testament is nothing if not gory at times, and some of the women recorded in it were apt to have to take care of themselves in the face of bog standard male violence and assorted wars.

http://www.artemisia-gentileschi.com/self.html

Last year I discovered the work of Niki de Saint Phalle in an exhibition at the Liverpool Tate. I spent hours in this exhibition in admiration of the variations in styles and the progress throughout her life as manifested in her art. Her life was not easy and in her own words she says:

“Some of my drawings look like those of mad people. Don’t we all have madness in us? Some of us are able to express it more easily.” N de SP
http://www.tate.org.uk/liverpool/exhibitions/niki-de-saint-phalle/

More info here
http://www.niki-museum.jp/english/frame.htm
I found her ‘shooting paintings’ especially interesting. She’d create art with layers of paint inside, then take it out and shoot it. There was terrific old black and white video of this as she shot her paintings with a rifle in front of assembled guests.

Tirage

The third artist is Elizabeth Peyton who talks about her art in an interview on this site.
http://www.newmuseum.org/exhibitions/400

Hers is again an entirely different style from the above artists, but I especially like the look of her portraits.
Piotr on the Couch

I hope this is considered enough of an Artists Date when I report back to the group next week. But I’ve not made time to go to an art gallery recently and I’m not sure that this is the week to take myself off to view the Titians. Given the conflicting feelings I harbour about all that I might find myself standing there growling at them.

Update Feb 23rd:

Greer writing in today's Guardian talks about the value/devaluing of women artists and the tendency for their work to be subsumed into their father's. One commenter mentions a Gentileschi hanging in the Queen's Gallery in Edinburgh. So another addition to my list of paintings to visit!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/feb/23/women-art-history