Full Description
The dry, wrinkled skin, crow's feet and rheumy eyes of old women can be seen universally; yet the actual images and their meaning differ widely, and the very absence of these old women in certain settings also reveals both a discomfort with the aged and an ease in their invisibility. This is true in writing about art and often in the art itself. The physical markers of aging, even implications of death or the nearness of death, make many of these images of old women, haunting; in the 16th and 17th centuries, they become emblems of anger and avarice, though portraits of known elderly women are often created with a sense of awe, and in some cases, authority.
This book provides a frank examination of old women, from medieval "old wives" to contemporary reimaginations of shamans and witches and empowering self-portraits. Works from medieval Europe to colonial-time Polynesia, present West Africa, Japan, and the Americas, in a multiplicity of media are explored. These studies of varied representations of "old women" offer fresh perspectives and a dialogue about society's values and preconceptions regarding the "golden years" in different times and cultures. Images of old women may be the very opposite of what one considers the ideal, but this discussion makes these often overlooked images seem fresh and highlights their many positive associations.
Contents
Introduction
Frima Fox Hofrichter (Pratt Institute, USA) and Midori Yoshimoto (Jersey City University, USA)
1. Alchemy's Old Wives
M.E. Warlick (University of Colorado at Denver, USA)
2. Anger, Avarice and Aging: Transgressive Old Women
Jane Kromm (State University of New York at Purchase, USA)
3. Silenced, Sidelined, and Even Undressed: Old Women in Seventeenth-Century Religious Art
Zirka Filipczak (Williams College, USA)
4. Frans Hals's Portrait of an Older Judith Leyster
Paul Crenshaw (Providence College, USA)
5. Old Maids: Images of Elderly Servants in Early Modern Europe
Diane Wolfthal (Rice University, USA)
6. Paetini and Vaekehu: Change and Aging in the Portraits of Two Nineteenth-Century Marquesan Matriarchs
Carol Ivory (Oregon State University, USA)
7. Portraits of Power: Depictions of Nineteenth-Century Northwest Coast Matriarchs
Megan A. Smetzer (University of British Columbia, Canada)
8. Old Women/New Vision: Lucia Moholy's Photographs of Clara Zetkin
Vanessa Rocco (University of New Hampshire, USA)
9. Sculptor, Hostess, Witch: Unpacking Louise Nevelson's Boxes
Johanna Ruth Epstein (Independent Scholar, USA)
10. To Honor or Condemn: Museums and the Women of Sande
Susan Kart (Lehigh University, USA)
11. Women and Aging in Contemporary Japanese Art: The Case of Yanagi Miwa
Midori Yoshimoto (Jersey City University, USA)
12. Aging and Feminist Art: Semmel's Visible Bodies
Rachel Middleman (University of California at San Diego, USA)
List of Contributors
Bibliography
Index
