Research question…there could be progress!

17/06/19

I’ve been trying to really dig deep and focus down on what the right research question is for my work. I have formulated a rough title and had the go ahead from Leora to start thinking more about the most relevant artists for the title.

‘To what extent has the self-representative nature of the work of artists 1, 2 and 3 helped the drive toward the emancipation of women from the Beauty Myth as defined by Naomi Wolf.’

The artists I’ve been researching have been pretty numerous and I can now consider each one in relation to the above question, which I think will alter the artists I finally choose and may even change my question slightly.

At the moment I’m thinking of,

Jenny Saville

Jo Spence

Guerrilla Girls

Cindy Sherman

Frida Kahlo

Alice Neel/Suzanne Valadon?

I also find the Forty Frida’s by Ellen Heck really interesting and relevant, but I can’t find much on her and need to ask the library.

Then there’s still Glenys Barton the sculptor. Her multiple faced sculptures are fascinating but I’m not sure her work could be considered overtly challenging to female stereotyping, maybe she has contributed through her sculpture though.. Frida Kahlo may not have consciously gone about trying to emancipate women through her work, she’s had major influence on women’s art and the male gaze and one of the few women to really break through into the art world. I don’t know enough about Frida Kahlo to form an option yet. Other artists are more obviously involved in the feminist movement. However, I don’t think it’s necessarily that the artists have consciously gone out to change people’s thinking around the plight of women’s equality, but the fact that they’ve had some influence on the movement to one degree or another is the important issue.

This ‘self-reflective’ aspect of my research question links into my own work, which I see moving in that direction, where I’m trying to understand and reflect on myself through the art I produce. What are truly my own actions and which are those that are in response to how I think I aught to act, or how I feel I aught to be seen, or how I desperately don’t want to be seen! My identity feels so caught up in issues of women-hood, self-worth and confidence in my abilities (and my body).