I’ve started a new blog called Women in the Picture which I hope to develop into a collection of essays for publication. The first post is a short essay on a painting by Berthe Morisot of her pregnant sister looking out of the window.
I started this blog of images because of late I find myself in a position where I talk about women in images for much of my work as an art history lecturer, even if the starting point is on the surface something quite different. Having trained as an art historian at University College London I came in contact with the work of feminist art historians such as Tamar Garb, Griselda Pollock and Lynda Nead, which without doubt changed my critical perception of the world, and moreover, the world of images that we inhabit sometimes unquestioningly.
In particular I have recently been teaching courses and giving lectures that address the issue of gender in images, whether that is the depiction of women in the media, or in the traditional canon of art history, where many of the problems in the perception of women’s bodies start. I wanted to devote a blog to analysing and deconstructing images of women, from all moments in history in order to think about pressing issues of gender politics both past and present.
You can find the new blog here.
Catherine McCormack 