Representing melancholy: figurative art and feminism
Reading, Christina (2015) Representing melancholy: figurative art and feminism. PhD thesis, University for the Creative Arts/University of Brighton.
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Re-presentations of women's melancholic subjectivity by women figurative artists from different historical moments, canonical images of melancholy and theoretical accounts of melancholy are brought together to address the question: 'What aspects of women's experience of melancholy have women figurative artists chosen to represent historically and contemporaneously, and further what is the importance of these artworks for understanding the nature of women's melancholic subjectivity today?
The question is examined through an original juxtaposition of women's figurative art history, theories of melancholy and the author's own studio practice. Adopting and refining Griselda Pollock's method of the Virtual Feminist Museum, the thesis elaborates a new critical and creative space to gather, re-read and make artwork to address the theme of women's experiences of melancholy (Pollock, 2007). The author curates a 'virtual feminist museum' of women's figurative art dealing with melancholy, past and present. Using Pollock's model as a trigger, the research project sets up a space for interrogating what new meanings are revealed in relation to notions of melancholy by examining the overlaps, collisions and juxtapositions between the works the author has selected and the works the author has made. The artworks are theorised and interpreted by their relationship to the following discourses: the history of figurative art practice, melancholy and feminism; Freud's foundational text 'Mourning and melancholia' (1917); and the examination of the author's own representational multimedia studio practice. This studio practice contributes works that interrogate still and moving images, and creatively explores the interface between practice, theory and history.
The thesis makes an original contribution to feminist fine art discourse by proposing a previously unexposed history of women's figurative art about melancholy, and creating a Virtual Feminist Museum of Women's Figurative Art and Melancholy which informs our understanding of women's melancholic subjectivity and its representation in the contemporary situation.
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