Nancy Spero, in contextSeminar on the feminist artist Nancy Spero Date:November 6, 2008 - December 4, 2008 Since the arrival of the so-called second wave of the feminist movement in the late 1960s, the relationship between feminism and the visual arts has been characterised by constant internal dissension and ongoing critical confrontation. Nancy Spero’s work is particularly interesting because it occupies a position at the very heart of those debates. Over the course of her career, Spero has made a series of risky artistic decisions that have ultimately transformed her artwork into the subject of frequent controversy. At a time when some feminist artists were defending the impossibility of creating images of the female body without the influence of patriarchal codes, Spero decided limit her iconographic universe to the representation of female figures. Spero’s insistence upon depicting violence against women (torture, wartime rapes, sexual violence, etc.) has also inspired diverse readings: for some, it is an unmistakeable expression of political commitment, while for others it is a form of fuelling voyeuristic fascination. Finally, her decision to appropriate images taken from very heterogeneous visual sources has also been interpreted in widely differing ways: some have insisted on grouping Spero together with other post-modern “appropriationists,” and others, by contrast, have underscored the originality of a cross-cultural and trans-historical iconographic that lays the foundation for a new feminist vocabulary. The seminar, coordinated by Patricia Mayayo and divided into six sessions, hopes to situate the figure of Spero within her proper context and consider her oeuvre as a part of this complex network of theoretical debates, many of which are still alive and present in feminist historiography. PROGRAM Day: 6 november Day: 7 november Day: 13 november Day: 20 november Day: 27 november Day: 4 december |
