Francesca Woodman
“At the age of thirteen Francesca Woodman took her self- portrait. From then, up until her untimely death in 1981, aged just22, she produced an extraordinary body of work. Comprising some 800 photographs, Woodman’s oeuvre is acclaimed for its singularity if styling range of innovative techniques. From the beginning, her body was both the subject and object in her work.”
-Virtoria miro
Research the history of Western art, social require woman to “beautiful”, act like false appearance.This traditional “feminine beauty” is a complex, passive cultural definition. It seems like woman should had been humble, gentle and tame. The female body in traditional art is often understood and treated in the position of being gazed and watched, and it becomes a taboo in the artistic expression.
By the 1960s and 1970s, feminist artists began to claim women’s own experiences is not only true woman’s body is beautiful, sexy, with spiritual strength. FW found society fettered women heavily, women were also under gender pressure much more than men. Sheared ti showing a kind of helplessness and sorrow in various way. She used the camera as a bridge between the human inner world and the external world together.
House #4
My House, Rhode Island, 1976
House #4
House #3
The ‘House series’ works are in full of darkness, the old brick wall, mottled wallpaper, dusty floor, decadent smell, fragmentary items on the ground an the old atmosphere to show the feeling of privacy. While Woodman seems in a camouflaged state like picture House#3, her obscure figure was covered in wallpaper and she was lining to the wall, the boundary is not clear between her and the wall, as if there is no any barriers, it look like they embraced each other. This makes people feel FW tried to expressed a nostalgia for returning to the full of memories old house and historical traces. In hee pictures, woman do not have a clear face and a bare posture or a traditional stereotyped female image, they disappeared, is no longer a female body to be gazed or peep.