Emily Brontë by Chantal Joffe

An exhibition of paintings by Chantal Joffe at the Victoria Miro Gallery(19 Mar - 21 Apr) in London, contains an (imagined) portrait of both Emily Brontë and Emily Dickinson:

Victoria Miro is delighted to announce an exhibition of new and recent paintings by Chantal Joffe. The show centres around a powerful group of seven large-scale paintings where the artist has restricted her palette to dark tones of black, red, blue and white. The works offer complex fictional portrayals of the artist's heroines painted chronologically and moving towards us in time from the 1840's. As well as conceptual explorations of representations of female icons, the works also engage with key moments in literature, painting and feminist history.
Both specific and non-specific, these are imagined depictions of women - some are real individuals and others hybrid figures - born out of Joffe's consideration of works of art and literature and the social climate in which they were created. Manet's The Drummer Boy, the writings of Emily Brontë and Emily Dickinson, the paintings of Lee Krasner and Tamara de Lempicka are all referenced here along with the intimate musings of Edmund White and the passionate polemics of Susan Sontag. Each painting shows these young women at a point early in their lives, when they are beginning to find a voice and question what it means to pursue a dream of being an artist. Set against dark backgrounds and located somewhere not of this time, the strongly contoured bodies are depicted in awkward or sexual poses, distorted or kneeling but equally conveying a sense of vulnerability. The models - as is often the case in Joffe's work - are taken from photographs in contemporary fashion magazines and bear little or no resemblance to their imagined counterparts.

Next, Emilys Brontë and Dickinson merge into the single likeness of a young 19th- century author.

More information in the Evening Standard.

Categories: Art-Exhibitions