Finished: Drawings to start panel one

These are the drawings the fill the top row of my first panel on my painting folio. They're establishing the subject matter I plan to use throughout my whole folio, of dainty and delicate objects like flowers and small animals, as well as the human anatomy. I'm really happy with how they came out, so now I'm onto starting the actual paintings.

First drawing: Bluebells

This is the first drawing that will go on my painting folio, at the top of panel 1. I'm going to have three drawings to start off my folio: along with this pencil drawing of bluebells, I also want to do a charcoal drawing of the human hand bones and an indian ink drawing of a swallowtail butterfly. I haven't drawn with charcoal or indian ink in a while, so I might switch to just pencil drawings if it doesn't work out after a bit of practice.

Artist models: Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo used her art as a way of expressing the pain she suffered in her life. This is what I hope to express through my painting folio, but for the pain women suffer from the beauty expectations that are forced upon them. Her works have an element of surrealism to them, which is what I'd like to incorporate into my work, like replacing the head of the deer with her own, and the roots of the leaves running through her body. Her paintings are also heavy on symbolism, through imagery like nature, animals and anatomy. These are things that I'm using as subject matter for my own work, so I hope to introduce similar forms of symbolism as in Frida's paintings.

The Broken Column (1944)

Self Portrait with Monkey (1940)

The Wounded Deer (1946)

Roots (1943)

Henry Ford Hospital (1932)

Artist models: Leonardo da Vinci

With Leonardo da Vinco, I specifically want to look at his anatomical drawings, as the human anatomy is something I would like to use as subject matter in my work. The drawings are highly detailed, focusing on bones and muscles, an aspect I could look at -- depicting insides on the outside, on display. I could also introduce an aspect of surrealism, combining the flower imagery from Rozi Demant's paintings with the anatomical imagery from da Vinci's drawings. The annotation around the drawings is also something I could possibly use in my paintings, but in a way that pertains to my concept, like critical comments of the female body and the way it's presented.

Vitruvian Man (1490)

Studies of the Arm showing the Movements made by the Biceps  (1510)

View of a Skull (1489)

Studies of the Shoulder and Neck (c. 1509-1510)

The Principal Organs and Vascular and Urino-Genital Systems of a Woman  (1507)

Artist models: Rozi Demant

Rozi Demant's work is highly influenced by other surrealist artists like Dali and Magritte. Her paintings depict female figures, nude or dressed in burlesque attire with elongated legs, and feature imagery of birds and flowers. These are the aspects of her work that I'd like to focus on to include in my painting work; the manipulation of the female figure, and use of birds and flowers in a symbolic way, relating to womanhood. I feel like Rozi Demant's paintings are expressing femininity and sexuality in a dark yet whimsical way, turning sweet and dainty imagery into something more sinister, which is a concept I'd like to incorporate into my own work.

Painting folio: concept & plan

The concept for my painting folio this year is the harmful beauty expectations for women, and how they hurt, distort and destroy us, with emphasis on femininity, sexuality and dehumanisation.

Some of the imagery I want to include throughout my painting is:

• Painful clothing - high heel shoes, corsets, etc.
• Makeup
• Mannequins
• Models - especially the recent trend of putting full-face masks on runway models
• Flowers - to represent being feminine, delicate, weak
• Human anatomy - organs, veins, bones, etc.
• Small, dainty animals - birds, butterflies, dragonflies, etc.
• Surgical-type tools
• Hands - to show the influence of others on our own image

Some other aspects I want to use are:

• Art within art - showing hands using paint, sculpture, etc. to manipulate the figures and objects in the paintings -- eg. painting blood on the ties of a corset, sculpting a female form into the same shape as a mannequin, etc.
• The evolution of beauty throughout the centuries, from the muses of classical art to today
• Combining and swapping flowers and objects of the human anatomy

Some of the artist models I'm looking at so far are:

• Rozi Demant
• Leonardo da Vinci
• Frida Kahlo

Research: Guerilla art

Guerrilla art, also known as street art, is the concept of anonymous art being placed in a public setting, by anonymous artists, with the intention of making a statement of their own views or opinions, share ideas, or simply have some fun. The Guerrilla art movement began in the UK but has since spread across the world, becoming a popular way to make a public statement to capture the attention of the people. One of the most popular forms of Guerrilla art is spray paint, a medium utilised by one of the most famous street artists today, Banksy. But Guerrilla art has spread into other art forms as well, such as sculpture and video.

Unnamed street art by Banksy

The anonymous British street artist known as Banksy is one of the most well-known and sought-after Guerrilla artists today. His spray-painted stencil works are featured all over the world. Banksy's work is quite controversial, not only because it is considered vandalism on public property by some, but because he comments on social and political issues that have often been swept under the rug. His work has been compared to fellow stenciller, Blec le Rat, who worked in Paris in the 1980's, while Banksy claims he was inspired by the street artist known as '3D'.

Charging Bull (1989)

Arturo Di Modica

The Charging Bull statue is an icon of Wall Street, standing in Bowling Green Park in Manhattan, New York. Arturo Di Modica constructed the bull in 1989, as a symbol of virility and courage after the Wall Street crash. It was made to separate bronze pieces and welded together to create the whole sculpture, weighing over 3 and a half tons and measuring 18 feet long. When completed, it was placed in front of the New York Stock Echange overnight, and had drawn much worldwide attention by the next day. It was eventually removed by the end of the day by the NYSE, but has since found a permanent home Bowling Green Park.

Research: Feminism in art

Feminism burst onto the art scene in the 1960s, with the beginning of the worldwide feminist art movement. Although feminist elements existed in art before this time, it was the movement that brought female artists and their works to the forefront of the art world. The movement was based around the idea that the experiences of women should be expressed through art, and that female artists should be receiving the same recognition as male artists.

Do Women Have to Be Naked to Get into the Met. Museum?* (1989, updated 2005, 2012) 

The Anatomically Correct Oscar** (2002)

Guerrilla Girls

The Guerrilla Girls is an anonymous group of feminist artists, formed in New York in 1985, with the aim of exposing sexism and racism in art, and later film, pop culture and politics. Their works specifically bring awareness to the inequalities for women and people of colour in the art industry, by taking the concepts that formed the basis of the Feminist Art Movement, and putting them on billboards and posters for the world to see.  They are known for wearing gorilla masks when making public appearances.

Do Women Have to Be Naked to Get into the Met. Museum?:

In 1989, the Guerrilla Girls gathered statistics of the works in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, comparing the number of male and female artists in the Modern Art section, and the number of male and female nudes in the museum, concluding that, for a woman to get into the prestigious art museum, you pretty much have to be the star of a nude painting. The resulting poster, bearing the statistics, also featured the famous 1814 painting Grande Odalisque by French artist Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, but the head of the female nude figure in the painting was replaced with the gorilla head that now represents the Guerrilla Girls. The group rented advertising space on the side of a New York City bus to run the billboard after their proposal was rejected by the Public Art Fund, but their lease was ultimately cancelled, as the MTA found the image to be "too suggestive". The poster has since been on display on buses and billboards in Shanghai, Paris and Venice, and has become one of the most iconic works from the Guerilla Girls.

The Anatomically Correct Oscar: 

A billboard bearing this poster was unveiled at Melrose and Highland in Los Angeles on the 1st of March, where it was on display for the entire month. The billboard exposed the lack of Academy Award recognition for women and people of colour, specifically pointing out that most of the awards go to white men every year, and mocking this fact with a more accurate redesign of the famous statuette. The following year, a related billboard was erected in the same place, stating that only 4% of Hollywood film directors are women.

On the Guerrilla Girls website, the poster is accompanied by the caption: "We redesigned the old boy so he more closely resembled the white males who take him home each year! We got a lot of attention, from as far away as Europe and Australia, most of it very sympathetic. And guess what: at the Academy Awards Ceremony on March 25, Halle Berry became the first ever African-American woman to win Best Actress and Denzel Washington the second ever African-American man to win Best Actor. We're very happy about that, but the film industry still has a long way to go."

*Do Women Have to Be Naked to Get into the Met. Museum? was updated in 2005, with the percentage of female artists changing to 3%, and the percentage of female nudes changing to 83%. It was then updated again in 2011, with the percentage of female artists changing to 4%, and the percentage of female nudes changing to 76%.

**The Anatomically Correct Oscar was updated in 2005, with the percentage of writing awards for men changing to 92.8%, and the percentage of acting awards for people of colour changing to 5.5%. The Oscar for Best Director has since been won by a woman for the first time, awarded to Katheryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker in 2008.

Bind series (2001)

Anikora series (2008)

Ryoko Suzuki

Ryoko Suzuki is a Japanese photographer. Most of her work is self portraits, as she uses her own face and body to express her own experiences and views, focusing on feminist issues like body image and women's roles in Japanese culture. In her works, she utilizes photo manipulation, often morphing one image with another to draw attention to the differences between men and women, Japanese and Western culture, fantasy and reality.

Bind:

Suzuki's Bind series consists of self portraits of her own face and body bound up with pigskin that has been soaked in blood. The pigskin is a symbol of the lies and fictions imprinted into the minds of children, referencing the cute and harmless image of pigs she received as a child from the Three Little Pigs fairytale, versus the harsh reality of ferocious breeding pigs she had seen. The blood that pigskin was soaked in is symbolic of female sexuality and her transition from a young girl to an adult woman. As this pigskin is wound around her head, it warps and distorts her face, making her almost unrecognisable. The series as a whole is a symbol of pain and constriction, representing the issues of oppressed womanhood that is often a theme in feminist art. 

Anikora:

The Anikora series depicts popular pin-up-styled Japanese dolls, equivalent to Barbie dolls in Western culture, with the doll's heads replaced with Suzuki's own face. These dolls represent both the erotic fantasy of Japanese women and women as a whole, with the dolls dressed in typical sexualised costumes like nurses, maids, Playboy bunnies and schoolgirls. By replacing the dolls heads with her own, Suzuki blends humanity with the exaggerated sexual image of the dolls, highlighting the difference between men's fantasy and women's reality. While commenting on both unrealistic expectations of body image and "appropriate" gender roles for women, the series also confronts the fetishisation of "kawaii"culture in Japan, and the way that Japanese women are portrayed to the rest of the world in comics, cartoons and toys.

Henry Ford Hospital (1932)

The Two Fridas (1939)

Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo was a mexican painter who was known for her self portraits and her portrayal of the harsh truth of her own life through her paintings. Throughout her life, she suffered polio which she contracted as a child, a bus accident which left her with many serious injuries and forced her to undergo many operations, infertility which resulted in multiple miscarriages, and a difficult marriage, all of which became strong themes in her work. She also incorporated other aspects of her life into her paintings, such as her Mexican culture, bisexuality and Communist views. Kahlo did not receive major recognition until after her death, and she was often only thought of as Diego Rivera's wife. While Frida Kahlo is not especially known as a feminist artist, her works are ultimately depictions of her struggles and experiences as a woman, which is what the feminist movement was about, and she has become an icon of Mexican femininity and women's art.

Henry Ford Hospital:
Kahlo painted Henry Ford Hospital, also known as The Flying Bed, in 1932 while she was in the Detroit hospital, having suffered her second miscarriage and coming to the realization that she could never carry a pregnancy to term. In the painting, she depicts herself naked on the hospital bed, the sheets covered in blood from her miscarriage, surrounded by images of a fetus, a snail, an orchid, a plaster female torso, and a metal machine. These six objects are connected to the suffering Frida, seemingly by umbilical cords, making them symbols of her own pain. Kahlo never shied away from expressing her own personal tragedies through her paintings, and her infertility was no exception. She was despaired by her inability to carry a pregnancy to term, as she wanted to have children with Diego Rivera, who already had children from his previous marriages.

The Two Fridas:
The Two Fridas is a double self portrait, depicting two images of Kahlo, seated and holding hands. It was painted at the time of her divorce from Diego Rivera, and expresses the feelings of love and loss that Frida was experiencing from the divorce. The Frida on the left is dressed in traditional European attire from the previous century, with her dress ripped open to expose her broken heart. The Frida on the right is wearing a Mexican Tehuana dress, with her heart also exposed, but full and whole. The Mexican Frida is the one who was loved and respected by her husband, while the European Frida was unwanted and abandoned. Like her miscarriages, Frida's divorce was a difficult part of her life. Her marriage to Diego Rivera was tempestuous and unconventional -- both of them had affairs during their time together, and they lived in separate houses connected by a bridge -- but she loved him entirely, saying of him: "I suffered two grave accidents in my life. One in which a streetcar knocked me down ... The other accident is Diego."

Research: Trompe L'oeil

Trompe L’oeil, meaning “trick of the eye”, is an art technique that employs the use of an optical illusion to suggest a three-dimensional image. The technique is used predominantly in drawing and painting, but also appears in other media, such as cartoons like the “Looney Tunes” and films like “Singin’ in the Rain”. Many forms of Trompe L’oeil rely on perspective, particularly wall and floor murals, in which the illusion can only be observed from a particular angle. The origins of these murals date as far back as classical times, where the ancient Greeks and Romans used wall paintings of open doors, windows and balconies in houses to make rooms appear larger and more open.

Escaping Criticism

Pere Borrell del Caso, 1874

Oil on canvas

76cm x 63cm

The "trick of the eye" in Pere Borrell del Caso’s Escaping Criticism is the frame, which we believe to be the frame around the painting of the boy. But the frame is part of the painting itself, and as the boy grabs it and steps onto it, the artist creates the illusion that he is the climbing out of the painting.

The Crevasse

Edward Müller, 2008

Paint on pavement

250 square metres

The Crevasse by Edward Müller is an example of a Trompe L’oeil illusion that can only be observed from a certain perspective. From the position of the photographer, the image appears three-dimensional, but from the opposite side of the painting, the image would appear flat and the illusion would not be seen.

Still Life with Chair Caning

Pablo Picasso

Oil on oil-cloth over canvas, edged with rope

29cm x 37cm

Pablo Picasso's Still Life with Chair Caning combines two-dimensional and three-dimensional imagery to create the illusion within the painting. The everyday objects painted inside the rope are depicted in two-dimensional cubism and are layered over the caning, which is realistically painted to create the three-dimensional aspect.