Woman Caught Unaware by Annie Fox

Author:Annie Fox [Fox, Annie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781788500159
Amazon: B079BF3ZRJ
Publisher: Nick Hern Books
Published: 2018-01-25T00:00:00+00:00

PART THREE

We sent out invitations and here you all are. I see Ryan and a few of his media colleagues near the front, hoping to record the last embers of this story before it turns to ash. Genevieve, how kind of you to come, I can see you’ve brought support. And all these students, Sam, others, known to me or not, thank you – I hope you are here to learn as well as gawp. Jeremy, thank you, you’ve always been a most understanding and long-suffering colleague. I do note that security is at the door. Just in case things get out of hand – which they may.

I am starting this lecture with a bit of background.

No, don’t be disappointed, just a touch of context before I reveal all.

Last night, Gale, (hello Gale) and I were discussing representations of older women. May I say that we old dames don’t come well out of the arts. There are monstrous matriarchs (Queen Margaret); deluded and repulsive battle-axes (pick your Gilbert and Sullivan operetta or Marx Brothers film) or, let’s face it, downright witches (Wizard of Oz, Hansel and Gretel, you get the picture). In my field, the emphasis is very much on female youth and beauty. As you can see from these images, we recline, we pose, we flirt, we are ravished, all for your gaze. But when we age – you flinch.

There have been sympathetic portrayals of aged women. Rembrandt, in particular, is so sensitive and wise – but then he was never just painting the surface, was he? A favourite of mine is the portrait of Margaretha de Geer (it’s in the National Gallery) – her frank, strong face – and totally covered up. If I could get away with wearing a ruff up to my chin like her, I would.

But what perhaps attracted me even more to art history than the depictions of women were the woman artists who worked on and on and on, long beyond what are meant to be a woman’s useful years. Georgia O’Keeffe, Alice Neel, Louise Bourgeois, Paula Rego, Bridget Riley, hell, Grandma Moses… For art – and life – is not so much about being seen as about the seeing and the doing. Their energy – it seemed to me – was almost supernatural.

I will show you (you see I am taking back control – my image was stolen but now I share it) a recent popular image and together let’s analyse it. I have cropped out the vice-chancellor’s second wife for the purposes of this lecture – her image being worthy of a separate talk.

Without her foregrounded image, we can analyse the figure I will call, for purposes of academic objectivity, ‘The Crone’. The geometry of the figure is only mildly interesting and the colour scheme, the pale fleshtones, flecked with purple, against the white background, might seem insipid. But it is the story of the body that is so interesting. I will let you see what I see.

This is the stomach that carried a baby.

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