George Eliot (Marian Evans) comes to mind, especially in Middlemarch. Her depictions of Dorothea, Rosamond, and Mary Garth are very real to me, even if Dorothea, especially, is an odd one. I remember reading her characterization of Rosamond, the kind of girl I tend to intensely dislike, and while reading, I discovered that oh! I am Rosamond, too. Eliot understands the inner lives of women well, and she writes in such a way that the reader must confront her own faults and envies and struggles as well.
In the dark comic novels of Muriel Spark -- a Catholic convert no one ever mistook for “nice” -- female characters are wonderfully self-confident, if often wrong. No Sparkian heroine ever suffered from “imposter syndrome” or feeling “less than.” Highly intelligent and observant, they view events with an arched brow and an acerbic remark. Many are casually amoral schemers, but their bracing insights into reality ring true.
Though schoolteacher Jean Brodie is Spark’s most famous anti-heroine, my favorite is a wimpled nun named Alexandra, star of the little-known comic masterpiece The Abbess of Crewe. A beautiful, high-born Machiavellian, the Lady Abbess quotes English poetry to her charges while spying on them through an elaborate system of surveillance, ruthlessly quashing rival factions in her cloistered empire. Both irresistible and terrifying, she’s the poster child for an age of cutthroat politics. Narrated by an unforgettable female voice, it’s one of the funniest novels I’ve ever read.
I know you asked for female artists where possible, but Hayao Miyazaki of Studio Ghibli leapt to mind straight away.
Studio Ghibli moves routinely create stories (both realistic and fantasy) which present girls and women with authenticity. They're something of an antidote to the increasingly prevalent Western idea of the "Strong Female Character", who is usually a woman who overcomes by unrealistically being able to fight like a man - not through anything uniquely female (I owe this observation to this piece by Alastair Roberts - https://mereorthodoxy.com/why-we-should-jettison-the-strong-female-character/)
For example, the way he describes his heroine from "Nausicaa of the Valley of the Winds" rings true throughout his work: "(The story of) a man gaining independence is always told though (some events) in which he defeats an opponent in a battle, or fights his way through a difficult situation. But in the case of woman, it's to feel, to accept, or to cradle, something like that... Nausicaa is not a protagonist who defeats an opponent, but a protagonist who understands, or accepts." (SOURCE: http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/interviews/heroines.html)
Visually, that plays out in the character design of Ghibli movies - you get realistic looking women, who overcome as women, not by inexplicably gaining the physicality of men. So you have the scrawny Satsuki in "My Neighbour Totoro" struggling to fill her mother's shoes; you have Sophie in "Howl's Moving Castle" transformed into a bent old woman; you have Chihiro in "Spirited Away" running, jumping, and climbing to keep up in a world where she is dwarfed by strange spirits; you have Kiki in "Kiki's Delivery Service" in a plain dress and bow, buffeted about by a big glamorous city.
Very late to this party, but I absolutely love Zinaida Serebriakova’s work. Her self-portraits and paintings of other women are imbued with a sense of loving confidence and a deep satisfaction in beauty. And her models always have this enigmatic smile, that seems to point to such hidden depths. I could stare at those paintings for hours! I strongly recommend taking a look at “At the dressing table”, a painting from over a century ago that has an incredibly contemporary feel to it.
The titular character in Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset is such an honest, forthright depiction of a woman throughout the various stages of her life. Kristin is just so very, well, *real*--and in a way that no other character I've read about has been--that Undset definitely deserves a place on this list (although this is art in the literary sense, of course).
One of my favourite, favourite pictures, which comes to mind when reading this, is one of the pictures in the Benedictional of St AEthelwold (late tenth century A. D.). It's the Annunciation page. The Virgin isn't a size zero, she isn't a languishing nineteenth-century maiden, and she's depicted writing --- left-handed!!! The BL has the whole MS digitized, and I've linked to that particular page here: http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=add_ms_49598_f005v.
Thanks for the insightful post! It reminds me a lot of a 2018 Instagram post by musician Alanna Boudreau. She compares a classical yet objectifying painting of a woman by a male artist to several self portraits made by women. Here is the link:
She also references her song “Red, Raw, Rolling,” which addresses similar themes. In a way, even music can be a “self portrait” of sorts, though I don’t pretend to know whether Boudreau sees her song that way.
Her post and song inspired me to create my own self portrait:
Elizabeth Vigee le Brun was a Revolution-era French artist who was unusually successful for a female artist of her era. Her many portraits feature both men and women, but among them are some lovely maternal artworks including of the artist herself with her daughter, and of the queen Marie Antoinette with her children. She painted attentive, flattering portraits of many women featuring different scenes and poses.
I’ve always loved photographer Sally Mann’s depictions of her children, but specifically her older daughter Jessie. In several she’s seen sort of play acting the way all kids do, wanting to be what they think a woman looks like and how they should act. “Candy Cigarette” and others where both her daughters try to be some ideal of femininity always struck me both when I learned her work in photography class in high school as an adolescent woman and now as an adult woman. She was pilloried by some conservative “family advocate” prudes at the time when really they missed the fact that her artwork was an adoration of her daughters figuring out what it meant to be women.
Backgrounder on the Mann’s “Immediate Family” exhibit
George Eliot (Marian Evans) comes to mind, especially in Middlemarch. Her depictions of Dorothea, Rosamond, and Mary Garth are very real to me, even if Dorothea, especially, is an odd one. I remember reading her characterization of Rosamond, the kind of girl I tend to intensely dislike, and while reading, I discovered that oh! I am Rosamond, too. Eliot understands the inner lives of women well, and she writes in such a way that the reader must confront her own faults and envies and struggles as well.
In the dark comic novels of Muriel Spark -- a Catholic convert no one ever mistook for “nice” -- female characters are wonderfully self-confident, if often wrong. No Sparkian heroine ever suffered from “imposter syndrome” or feeling “less than.” Highly intelligent and observant, they view events with an arched brow and an acerbic remark. Many are casually amoral schemers, but their bracing insights into reality ring true.
Though schoolteacher Jean Brodie is Spark’s most famous anti-heroine, my favorite is a wimpled nun named Alexandra, star of the little-known comic masterpiece The Abbess of Crewe. A beautiful, high-born Machiavellian, the Lady Abbess quotes English poetry to her charges while spying on them through an elaborate system of surveillance, ruthlessly quashing rival factions in her cloistered empire. Both irresistible and terrifying, she’s the poster child for an age of cutthroat politics. Narrated by an unforgettable female voice, it’s one of the funniest novels I’ve ever read.
I know you asked for female artists where possible, but Hayao Miyazaki of Studio Ghibli leapt to mind straight away.
Studio Ghibli moves routinely create stories (both realistic and fantasy) which present girls and women with authenticity. They're something of an antidote to the increasingly prevalent Western idea of the "Strong Female Character", who is usually a woman who overcomes by unrealistically being able to fight like a man - not through anything uniquely female (I owe this observation to this piece by Alastair Roberts - https://mereorthodoxy.com/why-we-should-jettison-the-strong-female-character/)
For example, the way he describes his heroine from "Nausicaa of the Valley of the Winds" rings true throughout his work: "(The story of) a man gaining independence is always told though (some events) in which he defeats an opponent in a battle, or fights his way through a difficult situation. But in the case of woman, it's to feel, to accept, or to cradle, something like that... Nausicaa is not a protagonist who defeats an opponent, but a protagonist who understands, or accepts." (SOURCE: http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/interviews/heroines.html)
Visually, that plays out in the character design of Ghibli movies - you get realistic looking women, who overcome as women, not by inexplicably gaining the physicality of men. So you have the scrawny Satsuki in "My Neighbour Totoro" struggling to fill her mother's shoes; you have Sophie in "Howl's Moving Castle" transformed into a bent old woman; you have Chihiro in "Spirited Away" running, jumping, and climbing to keep up in a world where she is dwarfed by strange spirits; you have Kiki in "Kiki's Delivery Service" in a plain dress and bow, buffeted about by a big glamorous city.
Very late to this party, but I absolutely love Zinaida Serebriakova’s work. Her self-portraits and paintings of other women are imbued with a sense of loving confidence and a deep satisfaction in beauty. And her models always have this enigmatic smile, that seems to point to such hidden depths. I could stare at those paintings for hours! I strongly recommend taking a look at “At the dressing table”, a painting from over a century ago that has an incredibly contemporary feel to it.
The titular character in Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset is such an honest, forthright depiction of a woman throughout the various stages of her life. Kristin is just so very, well, *real*--and in a way that no other character I've read about has been--that Undset definitely deserves a place on this list (although this is art in the literary sense, of course).
One of my favourite, favourite pictures, which comes to mind when reading this, is one of the pictures in the Benedictional of St AEthelwold (late tenth century A. D.). It's the Annunciation page. The Virgin isn't a size zero, she isn't a languishing nineteenth-century maiden, and she's depicted writing --- left-handed!!! The BL has the whole MS digitized, and I've linked to that particular page here: http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=add_ms_49598_f005v.
Thanks for the insightful post! It reminds me a lot of a 2018 Instagram post by musician Alanna Boudreau. She compares a classical yet objectifying painting of a woman by a male artist to several self portraits made by women. Here is the link:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BlDuExtA0OV5MFRZ7XhKUJhVNuW74FepiIODOo0/?igshid=1jbiuc9emfhhi
She also references her song “Red, Raw, Rolling,” which addresses similar themes. In a way, even music can be a “self portrait” of sorts, though I don’t pretend to know whether Boudreau sees her song that way.
Her post and song inspired me to create my own self portrait:
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bmg3y7sgHzZ/?igshid=1ozbl9y2qifgu
I love Amy Sherald's work, especially
“She had an inside and an outside now and suddenly she knew how not to mix them” (2018)
“She always believed the good about those she loved” (2018)
"All things bright and beautiful" (2016)
Images here: https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2020/06/amy-sherald-grayscale-portraits/
And here: http://www.amysherald.com/2016/9/10/pupa
Zanele Muholi is a brilliant photographer, two examples of their work:
Zodwa II (Amsterdam), 2015
Mbali Zulu, KwaThema Springs, Johannesburg, 2010
And also a fan of Rose B Simpson's sculpture - like Genesis Squared (2019)
Not contemporary, but basically everything by Elizabeth Catlett.
Sculpture: Mother & Child (1956): https://www.moma.org/collection/works/146844
Pensive Figure (1968)
And prints including:
“In Harriet Tubman I Helped Hundreds to Freedom,” 1946
“My Right is a Future of Equality with Other Americans,” 1947
“Black Maternity,” 1959
Links: https://www.culturetype.com/2016/02/23/weschlers-african-american-art-sale-features-63-elizabeth-catlett-prints-from-private-collection/
Elizabeth Vigee le Brun was a Revolution-era French artist who was unusually successful for a female artist of her era. Her many portraits feature both men and women, but among them are some lovely maternal artworks including of the artist herself with her daughter, and of the queen Marie Antoinette with her children. She painted attentive, flattering portraits of many women featuring different scenes and poses.
I’ve always loved photographer Sally Mann’s depictions of her children, but specifically her older daughter Jessie. In several she’s seen sort of play acting the way all kids do, wanting to be what they think a woman looks like and how they should act. “Candy Cigarette” and others where both her daughters try to be some ideal of femininity always struck me both when I learned her work in photography class in high school as an adolescent woman and now as an adult woman. She was pilloried by some conservative “family advocate” prudes at the time when really they missed the fact that her artwork was an adoration of her daughters figuring out what it meant to be women.
Backgrounder on the Mann’s “Immediate Family” exhibit
https://publicdelivery.org/sally-mann-immediate-family/
Links to individual photos (pardon the length of the URLs)
https://www.pixelle.co/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Sallie-Mann-900x660.jpg
https://img-culturacolectiva-com.cdn.ampproject.org/i/s/img.culturacolectiva.com/cdn-cgi/image/f=auto,w=auto,q=80,fit=contain/content_image/2018/10/17/1539812324826/sally-mann-candy-cigarette-photography-6.jpg
I love Linda Christensen's paintings of women captured mid-motion while doing quotidian tasks. http://www.lindachristensen.net/series-2
I also love Emma Hartvig's motherhood series, as well as her photos of swimmers. https://www.emmahartvig.com/motherhood