Working Women (eBook)

Portraits by Mendelson Joe

Mendelson Joe (Künstler)

eBook Download: PDF

2004 | 1. Auflage
102 Seiten
ECW Press (Verlag)
978-1-55490-671-0 (ISBN)

Infos

'[Mendelson Joe] paints with more emotion than almost any other painter in the country. It comes through blazingly in the colours of his 'Working Women' series.' — Toronto Star In the words of Mendelson Joe: 'My purposein my work, any of it from song to essay to picture, is to tell the truth and it seems that most truth ain't couth. Inequality bugs me. Prejudice bugs me. And, I've long believed that women are the only hope for this ever-degrading organism that mothered us all. So, in 1982, I began to paint portraits of women. The purpose was to document women in the context of their job descriptions, so the pictures showed them as working folks as opposed to sexual objects.' For years, Mendelson Joe has been painting portraits of women, some of them prominent (Anna Banana, Doris Anderson, Irshad Manji, June Callwood, Jane Siberry), and some less so. Along with faithful reproductions of the original paintings, Joe has added his own brand of particular comments about the subject and the sessions.

Textauszug

Why? More than one person asked me if my self-commissioned series of portraits I call Working Women was a celebration of prostitutes or prostitution in general. Though it's true the term working girl is used by some in policing as a euphemism for prostitute, my choice of language as phraseology to title these selected portraits (from a collection of over three hundred) alludes specifically to my thesis that women do everything men do (as vocation) and, often, do doubleduty to boot. Like it or not we define people by what they do. I also recognize that not all people see themselves as defined by their job-description so it's my arbitrary choice to label each portrait by vocation, I see nobility in work, especially the most important job of all, mothering, many of these people are mothers. If ever there will be a true equalizer amongst men and women, I figure it will result from the fact that women are capable of doing anything men do (and probably do it better). Can a woman play professional football? Why not? If there were to be a league for women, I might watch. Can women beat men at football? Why not? Some might laugh at the idea of mixed gender football if only because men usually have greater upper-body strength. When it comes to endurance, no-one with a brain would argue that the test of childbirth and the agonizing labour preceding the actual birth could ever be equalled by male endurance. The point? Women can do anything men do except produce sperm. The day women assert their positions as universally capable creators and thinkers and consciously unite (I believe women tend to work co-operatively by nature), that'll be the day true parity can exist. From that place, maybe women will turn around this destructive trajectory we've taken under the manipulation and thuggery of men. Until at least half of those governing and sitting as judges are women, the world is doomed to inequality, divisiveness and the escalating degradation of our habitat. Around 1989,1 wrote a song which became the title track for one of my self-produced musical recordings. The song's called Women Are the Only Hope. Need I say more? Maybe I do need to say more for those who may have misread the foregoing. Without a world of equals, we get what we've got. Male dominance from the God-gangs to the corporate gangs to the goons who govern: it's all testosterone-driven, an exclusive club of greedy men and their little-boy wieners. I began soliciting women subjects to portray in 1982. I offered a small landscape of Joe art plus a Polaroid photo of the completed portrait (all the paintings in the book are acrylic on canvas) in exchange for three hours' sitting. I received no, 0, zero, nada, zilch government grant nor private subsidy to do this work though I was encouraged when The Canada Council Art Bank purchased a small grouping of the early portraits in 1983 or 1984. Finally, I thanked all subjects when I painted them, and now, I thank them again for their time and trust. Mendelson Joe 2004

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 18.11.2004
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Kunstgeschichte / Kunststile
• Themenwelt: Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Malerei / Plastik
• Themenwelt: Schulbuch / Wörterbuch ► Lexikon / Chroniken
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung
• ISBN-10: 1-55490-671-7 / 1554906717
• ISBN-13: 978-1-55490-671-0 / 9781554906710