Artemisia: Painting to Survive
Lovely evening at
the National Gallery for members with a preview viewing of a new Sky Arts
documentary on Artemisia Gentileschi followed by a discussion with the
director, the assistant curator of the current Caravaggio exhibition and the
art critic Jonathon Jones.
The film is
fantastic. It is done as a docu-drama with wonderful reactions of an artist’s
life in the period and some of the pictures she painted. At times some of the
language felt quite flowery but it turned out all the first person pieces were
Artemisia’s own words from letters and her testimony in court. Alongside the
drama were good interviews by art historians and descriptions of how her
pictures reflected her life.
Artemisia had
difficult life having been raped by one of her tutors and a friend of her
father. Her father brought the case to court and we have a transcript of the
hearing but oddly not the verdict! The programme discussed how this may have
influenced her art, with an emphasis on strong female figures often involved in
violent acts. A lot of the programme was taken up with discussion on the case
and yet it concluded that we mustn’t view her purely in the light of this which
seemed a slight contradiction.
It was a shame
that Griselda Pollock, the feminist art historian, who had been sue to be on
the panel had been unable to be there in person but she had sent a nice
illustrated short talk. Oddly it took a less feministic view point than the
film arguing that Artemisia should be viewed as an artist of her time and that
her subject matter wasn’t that unusual. Jonathon Jones reacted to her talk but
it was a shame she wasn’t there in person to get a discussion going. The
director was very insightful particularly about looking for an actress to play
Artemisia as she had very little dialogue and needed to convey emotion with a
look.
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