This exhibition dealt with so much that I could incorporate into my art, such as sex and eroticism, and even expressionist violence in the sixth opera; Strauss’s Salome, the 1905 Dresden premiere of which took place against the background of the emergence of the psychoanalytic movement and the growing consolidation of feminism. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s aggressive nudes challenge the viewer, and an analyst’s couch, placed beneath a video of the final scene from David McVicar’s terrifying Royal Opera production, turns Strauss’s necrophiliac heroine into a case study. Strauss’s annotated copy of Oscar Wilde’s play, complete with Aubrey Beardsley’s illustrations, arouses something like reverential awe, and costumes by Salvador Dalí and Gianni Versace testify to its almost unnerving attraction. A poster for International Women’s Day in 1925 closes the section and leads us towards Shostakovich’s heroine and her sympathetically observed, if catastrophic, revolt against the male world in which she finds herself trapped.
Die Brücke
The Expressionist group Die Brücke was founded by four architecture students: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Erich Heckel and Fritz Bleyl. They favoured woodcuts (which is something I’m using for my pieces) for their raw physicality and pastels as they allowed them to draw quickly. The female nude had a distinct appeal for the young artists. Using their girlfriends as models, they rejected idealised 19th century depictions of women and instead sought to achieve a more liberated sense of creativity in their work. This links to my practice because it’s precisely my aim – to create quick, political art that challenges norms, especially in women. I’m using vaginas for this because they’re the most “shocking” yet most interesting part of a woman’s body.
saratrouble 