Female artistry.

Today I have been reading about female artists in the newspaper.

Saturday's newspaper takes up a fair amount of the day, usually with a break in the middle when I walk to the supermarket. Anyway, today I read about female artists, among other things.

 * The British one.
The first was Pauline Boty, described as a pioneer of the British pop art movement. She died young, in 1996. Diagnosed with cancer when she went for a pregnancy check-up, she turned down the option to have an abortion, which would have meant she could have chemotherapy, went on to have her daughter and died when the child was five months old. A sad story. A lot of work remained in storage for years and years and even now seems to be overshadowed by the make artists from the pop art era. Her work looks interesting. Here's a link to the article about her.

 * The Serbian one.
Having read that article this morning, later in the day I managed to get hold of the colour magazine from today's paper. I had to return to the local co-op for that as I got home from this morning's outing to discover that part of the copious Saturday edition of the Guardian was missing. The shop assistant handed it over without a problem; she had thought that the suppliers had sent them one newspaper too few or one colour mag too many. Note to self: check more carefully in future.

In the colour magazine was an article about an artist called Marina Abramović, a Serbian, now aged almost 70 and still producing performance art. Reading a transcript of her spoken words, I find myself "hearing" it with a kind of Slavic accent: "You write of me like glorious image, then comes Ulay (her ex-partner) and I lost the case, then Abramović machine will destroy him, then calling me a racist and having three abortions for my art."

She has apparently been criticised by the media for having had abortions in the past in order to further her career. Here is what she had to say (imagine the accent): "Right now, the latest thing on the web is how I am killing children to make art. Only one man came to my rescue today and says George Clooney has two Oscars and nobody asks him why he doesn't make children. Why me?"

She has a point but I still find it hard to understand her kind of art. But that's just me. Here is a link to the article about her. 

* The Spanish one.
And, still on female artists, back in 2012 a certain Cecilia Giménez had a go at restoring an ancient painting in the church in her small town in Spain and became famous for making a huge mess of it.

 * The Canadian one.
Now in a place called Sudbury in Canada a similar thing has happened. The statue of the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus outside Ste Anne des Pins Catholic church had been vandalised and baby Jesus lost his head.in downtown Sudbury. Local artist, Heather Wise, offered to make a replacement, even if only temporary. Unfortunately the head in question has been compared to Maggie Simpson. Here's yet another link.

That's it for culture for today.