Rebecca Fortnum: Les Praticiennes

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Rebecca Fortnum: Les Praticiennes

Fortnum, Rebecca (2023) Rebecca Fortnum: Les Praticiennes. Henry Moore Institute Leeds, 3 February – 4 June 2023 [Show/Exhibition]

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Creators/Authors:

Fortnum, Rebecca

Abstract:

Les Praticiennes is a practice-led project that explores the lives and works of fifteen women sculptors who have been associated, to varying degrees, with Rodin. It present paintings, drawings and prints of these sculptors' work, much of it not widely known, thus retrieving and making public the lost histories of women sculptors of the Paris Belle Epoque. It asks, how a feminist researcher can ‘listen’ and respond to the archive, as well what artistic strategies can be used to recover the histories, objects, scenes, and feelings, of women’s creative lives and practices? Further, in exploring the creative methods used to disseminate and supplement the little-known history of women sculptors working in Paris at the turn of the Century it suggests painting, drawing, print and creative writing can be used to engage an audience in artworks that no longer exist or are unavailable to be viewed.

Official URL:

https://henry-moore.org/whats-on/rebecca-fortnum-les-praticiennes/

Output Type:

Show/Exhibition

Additional Information:

I have sought out two series of sculptural works by these sculptors to make paintings and drawings from. In my first selection these women are depicting women (often a friend or peer) with their eyes downcast or closed, looking away. I enjoy the ambiguity implicit in both the signalling of an empowered absorption or self-containment alongside a reading of social conformity and female modesty. I have also become interested in sculptural portraiture where the sitter is in a friendship or relationship with the artist, not only can this bring to light obscure[d] histories, it also allows me to speculate broadly on the ‘intersubjective’ relation that spirals around ‘ocular power’ within portraiture. The 12 paintings, 20 x 25 cm on gesso boards are placed on hand printed wallpaper, a patterned abstraction that explores the compelling nature of symmetry and references the decorative excesses of the art nouveau of the period. On another wall, a second series of drawings from sculptures by the same women will be placed, but this time of men (often teachers or lovers). Most of these portraits only exist as a photographic document - by painting and drawing them I attempt to exhume them, rescuing the forgotten legacy of women sculptors. Further, a larger drawing of Sarah Bernhardt, with her face nearly erased, from a maquette by another of these sculptors the American artist Bessie Potter Vonnoh (1872 –1955) is present on another wall and a plinth, between them, holds four small hands in different materials originating from a 3D scan of a sculpture 'After Rodin' from the Ashmolean collection that may or may not have been modelled by one of the women in the exhibition.

Uncontrolled Keywords:

women, sculptor, Paris, Belle Epoque, Praticiennes, assistants, archive, painting, drawing, print

Media of Output:

Painting, Drawing, Print

Schools and Departments:

School of Fine Art

Dates: