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Installation

Femvertising

2019

Installation from clothes rails, hangers, T-Shirts with screen prints, digital prints, embroidery, price tags

140 x 50 x 180 cm


Installation view of the exhibition “WILD SPOERRI ROSENSTEIN”on the left installation view of “Femvertising” | on the right “Bildertollwut Vienna” 2015, by Daniel Spoerri

Installation view of the exhibition “WILD SPOERRI ROSENSTEIN”

on the left installation view of “Femvertising” | on the right “Bildertollwut Vienna” 2015, by Daniel Spoerri

 

Femvertising

For this installation, the various logos of the Wiener Frauenakademie (WFA) and a photograph of a statue of Iason, a mythological figure of antiquity, were printed on T-shirts. 

Wiener Frauenakademie (Vienna Women's Academy)

The WFA (originally called Kunstschule für Frauen und Mädchen) was a private and later state-funded art school for women and girls. It was open from 1897 to 1939 and was an artistic educational institution for women in Vienna. The school was opened at a time when women who wanted to be trained in painting, graphic arts or sculpture were still forced to take private lessons. Although the artists Rosa Mayreder and Tina Blau were co-initiators, the WFA was founded by Adalbert Franz Seligmann and largely run by men.

The Legend of Iason

The Greek legend about the figure of Iason, eponym to this work, deals with the robbery of the Golden Fleece from the Kingdom of Colchis and its consequences.

Iason achieved the robbery only by taking advantage of the love of the Colchian king's daughter Medea, who left her homeland for him and betrayed her family. Nevertheless, Iason took the next opportunity to outcast Medea and her children and marry the Corinthian king's daughter Glauke in order to increase his power. Out of pain and anger, Medea kills Glauke, her father and their children with Iason. Iason's opportunism, driven by his greed for power, finally becomes his downfall and he dies old, insignificant and alone under the ruins of his collapsed, rotting ship.

Insight into power structures

The Iason narrative is a metaphor for a hegemonic masculinity that is valid as a historical continuum from antiquity to the present. This can be seen, for example, in the fashion industry through the strategy of pinkwashing and in the exhibition WILD SPOERRI ROSENSTEIN through the collection of female artists from the early twentieth century through the male curator Adam Szymczyk as well as a multitude of artistic contributions by male artists, myself included.

The exhibition and sale of the T-shirts with the WFA logos symbolizes the appropriation of creative female work as commercialized goods. They also exemplefy the questionability as an illustration of the WFA, because they are ahistorical and because of the use of symbolism at the time, which was already strongly influenced by National Socialist image politics in the 1930s.

 
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Detailed view of

Femvertising

 

Overview of used logos and emblems

 
1803Sculpture of IasonSculpture by Bertel ThorvaldsenPhotography is probably by Adolf Rosenberg

1803

Sculpture of Iason

Sculpture by Bertel Thorvaldsen

Photography is probably by Adolf Rosenberg

 
1901-1910 ff.Logo of the Kunsthochschule für Frauen und Mädchenby an unknown artist

1901-1910 ff.

Logo of the Kunsthochschule für Frauen und Mädchen

by an unknown artist

 
1904Emblem of the report of the general assemblyby an unknown artist

1904

Emblem of the report of the general assembly

by an unknown artist

 
1918-1926 ff.Emblem of the advertising brochureby an unknown artist

1918-1926 ff.

Emblem of the advertising brochure

by an unknown artist

 
1937Logo for the forty-first exhibitionby an unknown artist

1937

Logo for the forty-first exhibition

by an unknown artist

 
1938Emblem of the advertising brochureby an unknown artist

1938

Emblem of the advertising brochure

by an unknown artist

 
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Detailed view of Femvertising

Detailed view of Femvertising

 
 

I would like to say thank you to Prof. Marina Gržinić, the Austrian Association of Women Artists (VBKÖ), Adam Szymczyk, Wienbibliothek, National Library Vienna, Anne Zühlke, Anna Fastnacht and Coco Bayer