Our tutor for the Feminist History of Art at the Art Academy London, Dr. Sarah Lightman gives us homework every week. Sometimes it is a practical one, like "Notice how many works of art were made by women compared to men at art museums", and sometimes it's an abstract one, like "Get angry!"
One that caught my imagination was "How would you re-imagine a work of art, and where would you display it?"
I've wanted to research the motive of "woman at her vanity table" for quite a while now. Some of my favourite paintings are showing exactly that, yet at such different ways.
For this assignment I've compared the changes in the motive's use and attitude, since the 19th century until today. I compare both the times and authors, and rely heavily on the women painters of roughly my age today to demonstrate the shift that's happened. Click on the gallery below to see my analysis:
This analysis was powered by my obsession with Zinaida Serebriakova's 1909 self-portrait "At the Dressing Table". I find this painting to have such a modern quality in both figurative and stylistic terms:
If you are interested, you can read through the thought process around my re-imagining.
