Afternoon diversion: Well, well, talk about tying up all our themes in one handy image, while tooling round we spotted the cover to the new edition of Women, Art, and Society by Whitney Chadwick, which covers:
This acclaimed study challenges the assumption that great women artists are exceptions to the rule who “transcended” their sex to produce major works of art. While acknowledging the many women whose contributions to visual culture have often been neglected, Whitney Chadwick’s survey reexamines the works themselves and the ways in which they have been perceived as marginal, often in direct reference to gender.
This revised edition features a new final chapter that charts the evolution of feminist art history and pedagogy since the 1970s.
And look at the cover! Turns out it’s by Polish artist Elzbieta Jablonska from a series in which she explores gender and parenting roles through photographs of herself and her son. The series, called Supermother, was quite famous in Poland and the image on the cover of the book, which is called Home Games, was seen on billboards throughout Poland when the exhibit debuted in 2002.
Here are a few more images from Supermother.
http://www.elajablonska.pl/
(Move the cursor to the bottom of the page, where it says “menu”. A link to “supermatka | supermother” will appear.
http://books.google.com/books/about/El%C5%BCbieta_Jab%C5%82o%C5%84ska_supermatka.html?id=bKkdAQAACAAJ
I don’ understand. How is this “confronting” anything?
Has the artist in question never read comics? Are they unaware of Supergirl, Batwoman and Spiderwoman?
Or is the gender roll we’re confronting the idea that baggy pants are only for men?
I hate art.
Aaron Sherman: THANK you. I fail to see how this sort of tripe “confronts” anything. I agree with the question about whether or not she ever read comics.
And, to be blunt, those costumes are tacky Halloween junk. She wouldn’t last more than three seconds on a cosplay stage… and they look like poorly composed snapshots that you would post on Facebook.