Tag Archives: Proto-Feminism

Reviews: ‘The Week In Art’

The Week In Art Podcast (May 10, 2024): We talk to The Art Newspaper’s reporter Sarvy Geranpayeh about her conversations with six Palestinian artists about their daily lives amid Israel’s ongoing military offensive in Gaza.

Frank Stella, one of the key artists in the history of American abstraction, has died, aged 87. We speak to Bonnie Clearwater, the director and chief curator of the NSU Art Museum in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, who worked with Stella on two landmark shows. And as Spring finally arrives in London, this episode’s Work of the Week is, fittingly, Vanessa Bell’s View into a Garden (1926). It features in an exhibition opening next week at the Garden Museum in London, called Gardening Bohemia: Bloomsbury Women Outdoors. Emma House, the curator at the museum, tells me more.

Glory of the World: Color Field Painting (1950s to 1983), NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale, US, until 25 August. Frank Stella: Recent Sculpture, Deitch Projects, New York, until 24 May.

Gardening Bohemia: Bloomsbury Women Outdoors, Garden Museum, London, 15 May-29 September.

Reviews: ‘The Week In Art’

The Week In Art Podcast (May 3, 2024): After years of decreasing public funding, the lingering effects of the Covid pandemic and enduring questions around the ethics of corporate sponsorship, UK museums are facing unprecedented financial pressures.

Some commentators are suggesting that the time has come to abandon the policy of free admission to museums that is viewed by many as key to the cultural fabric of the UK. Among those arguing for charging is the critic and broadcaster Ben Lewis, who joins Ben Luke to discuss the issue.

This week, the British Museum opened the exhibition Michelangelo: the Last Decades. It focuses on the period after 1534, when Michelangelo left his native Florence for Rome, never to return, and embarked on many of his most ambitious projects. We take a tour of the show with its curator, Sarah Vowles.

And this episode’s Work of the Week is Maria Blanchard’s Girl at Her First Communion (1914). The painting features in a new exhibition at the Museo Picasso in Málaga. Its curator, José Lebrero Stals, tells us more about this underappreciated Spanish artist, who was at the heart of the Parisian avant garde in the 1910s and 20s.

Michelangelo: the Last Decades, British Museum, until 28 July.

Reviews: ‘The Week In Art’

The Week In Art Podcast (April 19, 2024): We are back in Venice for the latest edition of the biggest biennial in the world of art. The 60th Venice Biennale comprises an international exhibition featuring more than 300 artists, dozens of national pavilions in the Giardini—the gardens at the eastern end of the city—and the Arsenale—the historic shipyards of the Venetian Republic—and host of official collateral exhibitions and other shows and interventions across Venice.

The Art Newspaper’s contemporary art correspondent, Louisa Buck, editor-at-large Jane Morris and host Ben Luke review the international exhibition, Foreigners Everywhere/Stranieri Ovunque, curated by the Brazilian artistic director, Adriano Pedrosa. We talk to artists and curators behind five national pavilions—Jeffrey Gibson in the US pavilion, John Akomfrah in the British pavilion, Romuald Hazoumè in the Benin pavilion, Gustavo Caboco Wapichana, the curator of the Hãhãwpuá or Brazilian pavilion, and Valeria Montii Colque in the Chilean pavilion—about their presentations.

And we like to end our Venice specials by responding to an example of the historic work that made la Serenissima one of the world’s great centres for art. So for this episode’s Work of the Week, Ben Luke gained exclusive access to one of the most significant paintings in Venetian history: the Assunta or Assumption of the Virgin made between 1516 and 1518 by Titian. Since the last Biennale in 2022, the Assunta has been unveiled after a four-year conservation project, funded by the charity Save Venice. We spoke to the man who restored this incomparable masterpiece, Giulio Bono, right beneath Titian’s painting.

Reviews: ‘The Week In Art’

The Week In Art Podcast (March 8, 2024): To coincide with International Women’s Day on 8 March, the South London Gallery is opening the exhibition Acts of Resistance: Photography, Feminisms and the Art of Protest.

Activism and photography have long gone hand in hand but this collaborative exhibition, organised with the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), attempts to capture a new chapter in this distinguished history, with a particular focus on feminism across the world. We talk to Sarah Allen, the head of programme at the South London Gallery, and Fiona Rogers, the V&A’s Parasol Foundation curator of women in photography, about the show. The financier, philanthropist, collector and leader of cultural organisations Jacob Rothschild died last week at the age of 87.

We talk to Anna Somers Cocks, the founder of The Art Newspaper, who interviewed Lord Rothschild on numerous occasions, about his impact on the visual arts and heritage. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Adelphi, made in 1967 by Robert Ryman. It is one of around 50 pieces by Ryman in the exhibition The Act of Looking, which opened this week at the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris. Guillaume Fabius, the co-curator of the show, joins us to discuss the painting.

Acts of Resistance: Photography, Feminisms and the Art of Protest, South London Gallery, London, 8 March-9 June.

Robert Ryman: The Act of Looking, Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris, until 1 July.

1960’s Music: Kenneth Womack Discusses “The Beatles” Early “Proto-Feminism” (Harvard)

From a Harvard News online article:

The Beatles Encyclopedia Kenneth WomackRock ’n’ roll, or even popular music, [was] often highly gendered and sexist. It certainly was paternalistic in the ’60s and prior, in terms of songs being directed at women as objects, women as needing to be “counseled” about love, [or] it was about coming on to them, even if it was just something innocent and romantic, “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” And the Beatles very consciously in 1965 began to change their tone. They created a very specific type of female character who would think for herself and did not need a man.

The Harvard GazetteLooking back at your favorite classic rock songs through the lens of today’s attitudes about women’s empowerment, male privilege, and even sexual violence can be cringeworthy at best. But just as they were trailblazers in music, film, fashion, and popular culture, the Beatles were ahead of their time in embracing feminism, argues Kenneth Womack, a well-known authority on the band and dean at Monmouth University, evolving from early patronizing “hey, girl” entreaties to songs filled with independent women who don’t need a man, not even a Beatle. Ideological Diversity, a Harvard Kennedy School student organization, hosts a free talk with Womack on Thursday about how the group explored issues of feminism, gender, and inclusion in ways few rock bands dared in the 1960s.

To read more: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/12/kenneth-womack-explains-why-the-beatles-were-proto-feminists/?utm_source=SilverpopMailing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily%2520Gazette%252020191211%2520%281%29