Women, Aging, and Art: A Crosscultural Anthology

Description

The dry, wrinkled skin, crow’s feet and rheumy eyes of old women can be seen universally, yet the actual images and their meaning differ widely. And, the very absence of these old women in certain settings also reveals both a discomfort with the aged and an ease in their invisibility. This is true in writing about art and often in the art itself. The physical markers of aging, even implications of death or the nearness of death, make many of these images of old women, haunting; in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, they become emblems of anger and avarice. Yet portraits of known elderly women are often created with a sense of awe, and in some cases, authority. And the old women themselves can serve as models for the young. Frank examination of the aging by contemporary artists is now the subject of a major exhibition, Aging Pride, at the Belvedere, Vienna. These images confront the viewer with their frankness and can be viewed in comparison with the stereotypes developed in the Early Modern period. Images of old women may be the very opposite of what one considers the ideal, but it is this examination that makes these often overlooked images seem fresh and have even been used for self-branding. Title Page Copyright Page Contents Illustrations Plates Figures Preface Acknowledgments Chapter 1: Introduction Notes Chapter 2: Alchemy’s Old Wives Notes Chapter 3: Silenced, Sidelined, and Even Undressed: Old Women in Seventeenth-Century Religious Art The Gradual Demotion of a New Testament Prophetess Old Sibyls Outnumbered as Well as Outlasted by Young Ones Naked Heresy Notes Chapter 4: Anger, Envy, and Aging: Early Modern Transgressive Old Women Notes Chapter 5: Frans Hals’s Portrait of an Older Judith Leyster Notes Chapter 6: Old Maids: Images of Elderly Servants in Early Modern Europe The Tichborne Dole John Riley’s Bridget Holmes Katherine Elliot Alice George41 Conclusion Notes Chapter 7: Portraits of Power: Masks of Northwest Coast Matriarchs in the Nineteenth Century Haida Contexts Women and Haida Worldviews Masks and Masking Practices on the Northern Northwest Coast Historiography of Haida “Labret” Masks Ceremonial Masking Practices Portrait Masks Jenna Cass/Jilaa Quns Early Fur Trade on the Northwest Coast St’iitga (Labret) Women in Trade Portraits of Power Notes Chapter 8: Paetini and Vaekehu: Change and Aging in the Portraits of Marquesan Matriarchs Paetini Vaekehu Notes Chapter 9: Old Woman/New Vision: Lucia Moholy’s Photographs of Clara Zetkin Notes Chapter 10: Sculptor, Hostess, Witch: Louise Nevelson’s Boxes Notes Chapter 11: Museums and the Missing Women of Sande Masks and the Mutilation Debate The Women and Art of Sande Initiation in Exhibitions So Where Are the Old Women? Absent Bodies, Missing Stories: The Colonial Legacy The Contemporary Exhibition: Why FGM Belongs in the Art Museum Solutions? Notes Chapter 12: Aging and Feminist Art: Joan Semmel’s Visible Bodies Notes Chapter 13: Darkness of Girlhood and Lightness of Aging: Miwa Yanagi’s Transcendental Old Women Introduction Dichotomous and Circular Womanhood: Young and Old Darkness of Girlhood and Lightness of Aging Performing Old Women Epilogue Notes Contributors Index