“Francesca’s pictures and quotations evoke an ambitious, driven young woman impatient for recognition, who is cursed with that volatile combination common to artists: a voracious ego and a fragile psyche. The word frequently used to describe her is “intense.” Making herself the center of so much of her work could only magnify that intensity. As a precociously brilliant student at the Rhode Island School of Design, she arrived there already knowing exactly what she wanted to accomplish. One fellow student recalls that she exuded a “rock star quality.”
Her story suggests the perils of becoming the subject of your work. As long as your creative fires burn, you are propelled forward. But if you are consuming yourself in the process, what is left when the fire begins to sputter?”
from the nytimes review, above, and read more from the piece here
this documentary, which was one of the films i was most saddened to not get into at last year’s tribeca film fest due to tix being sold out, is a composite rendering of the life, work, death and impact on the family of the suicide of artist francesca woodman. the daughter of a family of artists, woodman was most notoriously known for her nude self-portraits with her body the subject, prior to her death at age 22 from throwing herself out a window. for the next week or so film forum is running the layered biopic, which interweaves her writings, art and her family’s story of her, illuminating the negative space she created and they have yet to fill.
playful, light-heartedly perverse, color-saturated mylar non-sensical scenes that were exactly what i wanted to lift the rain-fueled gloom. were the paint still wet, i’d dive in and not come back. and i’m hardly the only fan: looking at the listing just before i left, almost all had sold. something about them is reminiscent of george grosz, and henry darger, and illustrations from a subversive children’s book. very cool. no idea what’s happening in them, which i think is the point.
