"Costume Design (Androcles and the Lion)," Florine Stettheimer, c. 1912.

Stettheimer (1871-1944) was a poet, designer, artist, feminist, and intellectual, with a highly individual style of Modern art.

In 1912, she began to create an opera, which she titled "Orphée des Quat'z Arts," inspired by an annual ball held by Paris art students that combined an excuse to party with a chance to show off their works. They were always masquerades built around some annual theme, and were known for scandalous behavior.

Stettheimer designed costumes, sets, and a libretto for the opera, but it was never produced. However, her costume designs were some of her earliest modernist works that prefigured today's mixed-media art.

Here we have Androcles, riding the lion, only the lion is on a wheeled cart, like a huge toy. The rider, though is interesting; the costume bits are made of cloth and cellophane, and the lion's collar is lace. Stettheimer was fascinated by cellophane, then a new material, and used it a few decades later when designing costumes for Gertrude Stein's opera "Four Saints in Three Acts."

From the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

#Art #FlorineStettheimer #Modernism #WomenAritsts #CostumeDesign #MixedMedia

"Three Women Playing Musical Instruments," Katsushika Ōi, 1850.

Katsushika Ōi (c. 1800 - c. 1866) was the daughter of the great Hokusai and a very talented painter in her own right. Little about her life is known, not even her exact dates. It is known that she married unhappily in 1824, and divorced her husband three years later. She never remarried, remaining with her father to tend to his workshop and work alongside him.

She was especially talented in the bijin-ga genre, or "paintings of beautiful women," of which this is an example. We have three ladies (one with her back turned to us, a daring stylistic choice for the time) playing assorted traditional Japanese instruments( (sorry, my education doesn't cover what these may be). I'm not sure if these are meant to be geishas or court ladies or what, but it is kind of charming to see these ladies sitting and playing music, facing each other rather than an audience....which makes me lean toward them being court ladies, playing for the joy of it.

From the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

#Art #AsianArt #JapaneseArt #WomenAritsts #KatsushikaOi #Ukiyo_e #Bijin_ga #Music

"Self-Portrait," Marie Benoist, 1786.

Marie-Guillemine Benoist (1768-1826) was obviously very talented, having painted this while only in her teens. And she went on to be an acclaimed neoclassical and historic painter. She was initially trained under Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun and later under Jacques-Louis David, so she had guidance from some of the top talent of her day.

She became an in-demand portraitist, and even had commissions from Napoleon Bonaparte himself. She enjoyed quite a big of success...until the Bonaparte era crumbled. In the face of growing conservatism in Europe, she tactfully retired from public life and only rarely painted.

I love the energy depicted here...it's so obviously the work of someone very young and very excited and confident.

From the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe.

#Art #SelfPortrait #NeoClassicism #MarieBenoist #WomenAritsts #WomenInArt