Mother-Right: Equalitarian Societies by Max Dashu

"I’m on my way.": Kay Sage (1898-1963) by Priscilla Frank

Kay Sage, "Arithmetic of Wind." 1947. Ink, wash, watercolor and collage on paper.

Sage was born to a wealthy New York family and, after her parents separated, moved to Italy with her mother. It wasn't until the late 1930s, after she had married and divorced a young Italian nobleman, that Sage discovered her passion for surrealist art.

"I call Kay Sage a surrealist because her painting resonates with the unsettling paradoxes and hallucinatory qualities prized by André Breton and his group," her biographer Judith D. Suther wrote. "More fundamentally, I call Sage a surrealist because her allegiance to the surrealist identity lies at the heart of her self-image as an artist."

Kay Sage, "Le Passage" 1956

Sage's works are architectural, centered around the shadows and folds of various materials and "imbued with an aura of purified form and a sense of motionlessness and impending doom found nowhere else in surrealism," art historian Whitney Chadwick expressed.

Sage wed fellow surrealist artist Yves Tanguy in 1940, and the two endured a passionate and sometimes volatile partnership. "Yves was my only friend who understood everything," she said following his death. The artist stopped making work following Tanguy's death, in part due to cataracts that affected her vision, and committed suicide in 1963. Her suicide note read: "The first painting by Yves that I saw, before I knew him, was called ‘I’m Waiting for You.’ I’ve come. Now he’s waiting for me again -- I’m on my way."

Kay Sage and Yves Tanguy, here shot for Time magazine on the occasion of their joint exhibition at the Wadsworth Atheneum in 1954.

The names most often associated with surrealism, the avant-garde cultural movement born in the 1920s, include Max Ernst, Salvador Dalí, Man Ray, Hans Arp, Marcel Duchamp and Yves Tanguy, among others.

Surprise, surprise, they're all men. 

Thankfully, Sotheby's is now hoping to illuminate the many women artists who deserve equal recognition, those who also expressed the convoluted details of their interior worlds with sharp lines and bold colors. The upcoming exhibition "Cherchez la Femme: Women and Surrealism" will feature more well-known names like Frida Kahlo and Leonora Carrington, along with many even surrealist buffs may not recognize.

"A lot of it is still fairly unknown to the general public, even to surrealism enthusiasts," Julian Dawes, a Sotheby’s vice president who organized the show, explained to The New York Times. "Male surrealists look at women as objects of desire. The female surrealists sort of treat women as looking inward."

by Priscilla Frank, excerpt from 7 Forgotten Women Surrealists Who Deserve To Be Remembered

Shared with permission of the author.

You can read more about the artist here.

Morality is constructed and constructed by men - Mary Daly

Mary Daly "suggested that morality is constructed and constructed by men. Women need to say 'no' to the 'morality of victimisation' and resist the role that men have created for them. Daly anticipated a 'female ethic' which was 'yet to be developed because women have yet to be free enough to think out our own experience'.

Daly suggested that what she calls the 'unholy trinity' of rape, genocide and war naturally exist in a world in which 'phallocentric power' is celebrated. The sense of male entitlement leads to men doing whatever they want to get what they like. Christianity has failed because Christianity has generally reinforced rather than opposed male superiority."




Read more here: http://www.philosopherkings.co.uk/Radicalfeministtheology.html

Lesbian orgies and a sleeping woman dreaming of penises: Toyen (1902-1980) by Priscilla Frank

Toyen, "La Guerre." 1945. Oil on canvas.

Toyen, born Marie Čermínová, gave up her name and adopted an ungendered pseudonym based on the word citoyen, French for "citizen." She frequently referred to herself using masculine pronouns, and was uninhibited in expressing her queer desires through both her life and art.

In terms of her art, she was at the forefront of the Czech avant-garde, known in part for her erotic artworks that incorporated tongues, labia, vaginal openings, phallic chess pieces, lesbian orgies and a sleeping woman dreaming of penises.

"The Smile" - Toyen (1967)

"Toyen's entire oeuvre aims at nothing less than the correction of the exterior world in terms of a desire that feeds upon and grows from its own satisfaction," Benjamin Peret wrote in 1953. Indeed, her work constructs the enigmatic stage for an interior world, one pulsing with erotic urges and animal instincts that do not ask to be explained.

Toyen in 1930

 
The names most often associated with surrealism, the avant-garde cultural movement born in the 1920s, include Max Ernst, Salvador Dalí, Man Ray, Hans Arp, Marcel Duchamp and Yves Tanguy, among others.

Surprise, surprise, they're all men. 

Thankfully, Sotheby's is now hoping to illuminate the many women artists who deserve equal recognition, those who also expressed the convoluted details of their interior worlds with sharp lines and bold colors. The upcoming exhibition "Cherchez la Femme: Women and Surrealism" will feature more well-known names like Frida Kahlo and Leonora Carrington, along with many even surrealist buffs may not recognize.

"A lot of it is still fairly unknown to the general public, even to surrealism enthusiasts," Julian Dawes, a Sotheby’s vice president who organized the show, explained to The New York Times. "Male surrealists look at women as objects of desire. The female surrealists sort of treat women as looking inward."

by Priscilla Frank, excerpt from 7 Forgotten Women Surrealists Who Deserve To Be Remembered

Shared with permission of the author.

You can read more about the artist here.

RAISE HELL: The Life & Times of Molly Ivins

Every little girl should know who Molly Ivins was! Dare to care, take action & Raise Hell!

Help This Film! http://kck.st/1GQZJ94

African Queens by Max Dashu

Urge Pope Francis to abandon the canonization of Junipero Serra via Max Dashu, Suppressed Histories

Please sign the petition below, in support of Indigenous Californians who are at this moment on a walk to draw awareness to the crimes against their people by the mission system founded by Junípero Serra. He was no saint! All of you who have liked posts in support of Native rights, sovereignty, and against genocide, this is a place where you can make your voice count!

The Tongva medicine woman Toypurina, of Japchavit ranchería, led a rebellion at San Gabriel Mission in what would later be Los Angeles. [Notice that it is built like a fortress!] She recruited six villages, joined by two others, to join in overthrowing the mission on Oct 25, 1785; but some convert betrayed their plan to the priests, who set soldiers to ambush them, and all were captured and imprisoned for three years.

A Spanish document Ynterrogatorio de la india gentil ("Interrogation of the pagan Indian woman") relates of the young medicine woman, "She was unarmed... she came to animate their will to fight." After three years, they exiled Toypurina to a Spanish base in Monterrey (which says something about how threatened they were by her) but released the male warriors, after flogging them with 20-25 lashes. Antonia I. Castañeda explains, "This punishment was levied as much for following the leadership of women as for rebelling against Spanish domination. On sentencing them, Fages stated that their public whippings were 'to serve as a warning to all,' for he would 'admonish them about their ingratitude, underscoring their perversity and unmasking their deceitful tricks by which they allowed themselves to be dominated by the aforesaid woman.' "

Castañeda goes on to make this very important point: "Precisely because historical documents portray both Toypurina and the Chumash visionary of 1801 as 'witches and sorceresses,' we need to understand witchcraft within gendered relations of power in the Spanish /European world..." Truly. And this applies not only to Jeanne d'Arc and the European witch hunts generally, but also to the babaylan / catalonan in the Philippines, reinterpreted as "witches" and "devil-ridden old women" by Spanish colonials. Same constructs deployed in Africa, Peru, and across the European empires for centuries.

More info on the Tongva medicine woman Toypurina, of Japchavit ranchería, who led a rebellion at San Gabriel Mission in what would later be Los Angeles. She recruited six villages, joined by two others, to join in overthrowing the mission on Oct 25, 1785; but some convert betrayed their plan to the priests, who set soldiers to ambush them, and all were captured and imprisoned for three years. A Spanish document Ynterrogatorio de la india gentil ("Interrogation of the pagan Indian woman") relates of the young medicine woman, "She was unarmed... she came to animate their will to fight." After three years, they exiled Toypurina to a Spanish base in Monterrey (which says something about how threatened they were by her) but released the male warriors, after flogging them with 20-25 lashes. Antonia I. Castañeda explains, "This punishment was levied as much for following the leadership of women as for rebelling against Spanish domination. On sentencing them, Fages stated that their public whippings were 'to serve as a warning to all,' for he would 'admonish them about their ingratitude, underscoring their perversity and unmasking their deceitful tricks by which they allowed themselves to be dominated by the aforesaid woman.' "

Castañeda goes on to make this very important point: "Precisely because historical documents portray both Toypurina and the Chumash visionary of 1801 as 'witches and sorceresses,' we need to understand witchcraft within gendered relations of power in the Spanish /European world..." Truly. And this applies not only to Jeanne d'Arc and the European witch hunts generally, but also to the babaylan / catalonan in the Philippines, reinterpreted as "witches" and "devil-ridden old women" by Spanish colonials. Same constructs deployed in Africa, Peru, and across the European empires for centuries.


Source: "Engendering the History of Alta California, 1769-1848: Gender, Sexuality, and the Family, in Contested Eden: California Before the Gold Rush, U of California Press, 1997.

Time to show solidarity for Indigenous people, in California, in the US, in North America, in all the Americas, all over the world. - Max Dashu

Urge Pope Francis to abandon the canonization of Junipero Serra

Evoking her personal journey to self-discovery and spiritual awakening: Bridget Bate Tichenor (1917-1990) by Priscilla Frank

Bridget Bate Tichenor, "Untitled." Signed and dated Oct. 1976. Oil on plastered linen.

Tichenor was a French-born painter who later embraced Mexico as her home. At the age of 16, when still based in Paris, she served as a model for Coco Chanel and a subject for photographers including Man Ray. In the 1950s, the artist left her second husband and a job at Vogue to permanently move to Mexico, building a community with fellow magical realist painters like Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo.

Tichenor's paintings, inspired by 16th-century Italian Renaissance works, combined traditional painting methods with more unorthodox spiritual influences, such as Mesoamerican mythology and the occult. Her works often involve masks, disguises and unhinged faces, evoking her personal journey to self-discovery and spiritual awakening.

Bridget Bate Tichenor 1978, by Francesco Scavullo

The names most often associated with surrealism, the avant-garde cultural movement born in the 1920s, include Max Ernst, Salvador Dalí, Man Ray, Hans Arp, Marcel Duchamp and Yves Tanguy, among others.

Surprise, surprise, they're all men. 

Thankfully, Sotheby's is now hoping to illuminate the many women artists who deserve equal recognition, those who also expressed the convoluted details of their interior worlds with sharp lines and bold colors. The upcoming exhibition "Cherchez la Femme: Women and Surrealism" will feature more well-known names like Frida Kahlo and Leonora Carrington, along with many even surrealist buffs may not recognize.

"Espejismo" 1967, Oil on masonite

"A lot of it is still fairly unknown to the general public, even to surrealism enthusiasts," Julian Dawes, a Sotheby’s vice president who organized the show, explained to The New York Times. "Male surrealists look at women as objects of desire. The female surrealists sort of treat women as looking inward."

by Priscilla Frank, excerpt from 7 Forgotten Women Surrealists Who Deserve To Be Remembered

Shared with permission of the author.

You can read more about the artist here.

THE GREAT MOTHER EXHIBIT

Nathalie Djurberg
It’s the Mother, 2008

"Through the work of more than a hundred international artists, the exhibition The Great Mother analyzes the iconography of motherhood in the art and visual culture of the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries, from early avant-garde movements to the present.

Whether as a symbol of creativity or as a metaphor for art itself, the archetype of the mother has been a central figure in the history of art, from the Venuses of the Stone Age to the "bad girls" of the postfeminist era and through centuries of religious works depicting innumerable maternity scenes. The more familiar version of “Mamma” has also become a stereotype closely tied to the image of Italy.

Gillian Wearing
Self Portrait as My Mother Jean Gregory, 2003

In undertaking an analysis of the representation of motherhood, the exhibition The Great Mother traces a history of women's empowerment, chronicling gender struggles, sexual politics, and clashes between tradition and emancipation."

"The Great Mother," an exhibition organized by Fondazione Nicola Trussardi in conjunction with the 2015 World Expo, will run through November 15, 2015. It will feature the painting Rapture (1945) by Dorothea Tanning.

Rapture (1945) by Dorothea Tanning.

THE GREAT MOTHER
Palazzo Reale, Piazza Duomo 12, Milan
August 26 - November 15, 2015

"Jump I did" - Dorothea Tanning (1910-2012) by Priscilla Frank

Dorothea Tanning, "The Magic Flower Game." Oil on canvas.

"Keep your eye on your inner world and keep away from ads and idiots and movie stars, except when you need amusement," Tanning told Salon in 2002. The self-taught surrealist, who passed away in 2012 at 101 years old, enchanted the public with her meticulously detailed canvases depicting richly colored worlds of the imagination.

Her most well-known work, 1942's "Birthday," features a self-portrait of Tanning, breasts exposed, dressed in shabby, Shakespearean garb. Before her feet rests a mythical furry creature with black wings and behind her, an endless path of doorways extends into infinity.

Dorothea Tanning "The Birthday"

"When I saw the surrealist show at MoMA in 1936, I was impressed by its daring in addressing the tangles of the subconscious -- trawling the psyche to find its secrets, to glorify its deviance," she continued. "I felt the urge to jump into the same lake -- where, by the way, I had already waded before I met any of them. Anyway, jump I did. They were a terribly attractive bunch of people. They loved New York, loved repartee, loved games."

Tanning, who in her later years made a name for herself as a writer and poet, was also in love with sculptor Max Ernst. The two were married for 30 years until he passed away in 1978.

Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning, Sedona, Arizona

The names most often associated with surrealism, the avant-garde cultural movement born in the 1920s, include Max Ernst, Salvador Dalí, Man Ray, Hans Arp, Marcel Duchamp and Yves Tanguy, among others.

Surprise, surprise, they're all men. 

Thankfully, Sotheby's is now hoping to illuminate the many women artists who deserve equal recognition, those who also expressed the convoluted details of their interior worlds with sharp lines and bold colors. The upcoming exhibition "Cherchez la Femme: Women and Surrealism" will feature more well-known names like Frida Kahlo and Leonora Carrington, along with many even surrealist buffs may not recognize.

"A lot of it is still fairly unknown to the general public, even to surrealism enthusiasts," Julian Dawes, a Sotheby’s vice president who organized the show, explained to The New York Times. "Male surrealists look at women as objects of desire. The female surrealists sort of treat women as looking inward."

by Priscilla Frank, excerpt from 7 Forgotten Women Surrealists Who Deserve To Be Remembered

Shared with permission of the author.

You can read more about the artist at www.dorotheatanning.org

Woman Shaman by Max Dashu