Monday 4 January 2016

Claude Cahun

Claude Cahun

I briefly came across Claude Cahun last year when I was looking at issues involving gender but I am revisiting her now due to my re-interest in subverting cultural norms and my interest in body image.

Claude Cahun was a French artist, photographer and writer. Her work was both political and personal, and often undermined traditional concepts of gender roles. 


Source
 Cahun actually defined herself as agender but due to a lack of gender neutral pronouns she is referred to as a she in most documentation of her work. I do find that quite interesting as it points out a flaw in our basic language construct.

Source
 Cahun at the time and still to this day is not a widely regarded artist and many at the time thought she was weird and confusing. What I like about her (for lack of an agender pronoun) work is how the portraits do not reveal anything about the artist, they remind me of Cindy Sherman's work in that they are persona's or projections. Overall the appeal of this work is how non-conformist it is and how there is no set beauty ideal within the work.
Source

Vikki Stevens is an emerging artist interested in many areas including body image, mental health and abstraction. Her latest series of work aims to show how images and perceptions of women are “put- together”/ manufactured, and how these images and perceptions affect how women feel about their own body image. Vikki’s ideas for her artwork are expressed in mediums such as paint, collage and sculptural objects, mostly incorporating repurposed images from magazines and found documents. Artists such as Tracey Emin and Hannah Hoch have a large influence on her work. Both the personal perspective and distorted images play a major part in creating pieces that discuss personal as well as cultural issues within mainly the western world/media sphere. Stevens is planning on developing her work into a more abstract sphere to investigate feelings that she has herself and how she can communicate them by using and developing abstract techniques, continuing with collage as a starting influence. Currently the materials and processes she has used in her past work and the work in development are having a large impact on how the work develops and the message behind the work is entirely open. Rather than having a stand out message Stevens is now moving towards a more indirect way of working, focusing more on feelings rather than statements. Current concerns within the work reflect how Stevens feels about herself in day-to-day life and how outside influences affect her and her work. More specifically Stevens is dealing with feelings of anxiety, panic attacks, depression and how she feels as an individual in the world. Artists such as Gerhard Richter, Barbara Kruger, Yago Hortal and Steve Salo are having a large impact on the current work in development.

You Might Also Like

0 comments:

Post a Comment