#jennifer higgie

[pintoras]

What I long for is the freedom of going about alone, of coming and going, of sitting in the seats of the Tuileries, and especially in the Luxembourg, of stopping and looking at the artistic shops, of entering churches and museums, of walking about the old streets at nights; that's what I long for; and the freedom without which one cannot become a real artist. Do you imagine that I get much good from what I see, chaperoned as I am, and when, in order to go to the Louvre, I must wait for my carriage, my lady companion and family?

Marie Bashkirtseff (Ukrainian, 1858-1884), quoted in Jennifer Higgie, The Mirror and the Palette: Rebellion, Revolution and Resilience: 500 Years of Women's Self-Portraits

[earthiercurator]

Artist Gwen John to Auguste Rodin

[ghoulierstudio]

[alexanderfintain]

Georgiana Houghton, "The Eye of God", 1862.

[abwwia]

Bow Down: Women in Art

Shahidha Bari on Mary Moser and Angelica Kauffman

This episode of Jennifer Higgie’s podcast series about women in art, Bow Down, features the cultural historian, radio presenter and author of Dressed: The Secret Life of Clothes , Shahida Bari. She discusses the life and times of the two women founders of London’s Royal Academy, the trail-blazing 18th-century artists Angelica Kauffman and Mary Moser. There are many other episodes of Bow Down, although most focus on modern and contemporary artists.

LISTEN HERE : https://www.athenaartfoundation.org/listen/bow-down-shahidha-bari-on-mary-moser-and-angelica-kauffman

[journalofsolitude]

The Other Side, Jennifer Higgie

[thoughtportal]

What all these women have in common is that they’ve become fixtures in Western institutions in the past few years. Houghton is currently the subject of a show at Australia’s Art Gallery of NSW that finds a parallel for her drawings in the abstractions by Wassily Kandinsky, a much better-known artist. Blavatsky’s name recurs regularly in texts for exhibitions, including the 2018 retrospective for af Klint at New York’s Guggenheim Museum, which became the most well-attended show ever staged there. It turns out you can cram all this art referencing invisible worlds, spectral figures, and more into museum walls, those hallowed settings where art history is made.

Is there any way to free these women from the deadening force of the canon? Higgie makes a valiant attempt by writing something that is not necessarily a history. The Other Side broadly has a chronological structure, but it does not always move from Point A to Point B, as a textbook might. Partly, that is an attempt to reflect the very nature of this art itself, which, as Higgie points out, resists rationality and scientific study.

[thisisyesterdaystudy]

The Mirror and The Palette

by Jennifer Higgie

This book tells the story of female artists from the renaissance to the modern day (20, I just counted them) through their self portraits. I think it did an amazing job of telling the history and personality of the artists and how this influenced their art. A lot of the chapters I related to and felt connected to my life. Here are some highlights:

Gwen John (1873-1939)

Gwen John was welsh (as am I) and I saw myself in her reclusiveness and obsession (and her love of cats). I love her portraits and their muted colours, the models reserved expressions. The book includes her 1902 'Self-Portrait' which I saw at the Tate Now You See Us exhibition (the exhibition was great maybe I'll write about that another time). I like that her eyes are just slightly staring into space, instead of at the viewer

I also love her 'A Corner Of An Artist's Room In Paris' (1907-9) which I think is a self-portrait in another font - its a reflection of her but more enigmatic than a portrait. It shows her room she rented from money earned being an artist's model - she has a room of her own despite a lack of inherited funds which is a powerful message after hundreds of years of female artists being only upper class daughters or wives of artists, able to work in their husband or father's studio. Although Gwen John wasn't a hugely successful artist at this time, she was independent, living alone and free to paint as she wished.

Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-c.1656)

Artemisia was taught by her painter father and was producing professional works by the time she was a teenager. She was, when she was 18, raped by an artist employed by her father to teach her painterly perspective. Her subsequent arduous trials are recorded in a 300 page transcript. Her history paintings (a genre not deemed suitably feminine at the time) often feature prominent female characters who were usually treated as secondary to the male characters in other artists renditions. One of my favourite examples of this is Susanna and The Elders (1610)

Her self-portrait featured in this book is based on the symbol for painting from 'Iconologia' and shows her engrossed in her work, brandishing a paintbrush. I love this painting because of the energy and passion shown and because its so different from other artists self-portraits of the time which were much stiffer and less dramatic.

'Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting' (1638-9)

[churchofattraction]

" To trust in art is to trust in mystery." - Jennifer Higgie, The Other Side

[masterblackoak]

“Their home was old, enormous, filled with tunnels, abandoned passages, nooks and corners ~ and a library filled with her great-grandfather Prince Paul Dolgorukov’s rich collection of books. Helena devoured his tomes on the occult sciences, magic and alchemy ~ including Solomon’s Wisdom, a Jewish book written in Greek in the first century B.C….

   An aged serf who worked for the family, Baranig Bouyak, was a healer and magician; he taught Helena about the occult properties of plants and the language of bees ~ and predicted great things for her future. She later recalled in a letter to a friend: ‘All the devilries of the Middle Ages had found refuge in my head…’”  

(This passage comes from a book called The Other Side ~ A Journey into Women, Art and the Spirit World, which was written by Jennifer Higgie.)

[chihiro142bus]

Been reading a lot Jennifer Higgie, she is just an incredible writer. She talks about woman in the art world and talks about the spirit world - I love it

[ghoulierstudio]

Happy accidental discovery

[heavenlyyshecomes]

hi dear!!! if you’re still up for the book recs: 🪞

hi hi i love this emoji very much omg will recommend the mirror and the palette by jennifer higgie !!

[them2therockshow]

Michael Molthan - M2 The ROCK always takes time away from his busy schedule to keep his promise to his good friend Judge Jennifer Bennett to speak at her drug court. Judge Bennett told Michael 7 years ago to go “pay it forward” and that’s what he has been doing.

🎥 HIGGY 2.0 - Robin Higginbotham

#m2therock #tuesdaymotivation #payitforward #Redemption #addiction