Back from a mini tour of Yorkshire and Stockport and cheering for supporting act Indignation Meeting
Artemisia Gentileschi’s Judith and Holofernes
Canvas which challenged feudal stereotypes of women
Artemisia Gentileschi’s Judith and Holofernes
ALISTAR FINDLAY is mesmerised by this multiple ‘Visions of Scotland’ assault on the audience’s eyes and senses
The Star's critics ANGUS REID, ANDY HEDGECOCK and MICHAL BONCZA reviews I Am Love, The Penguin Lessons, Freaky Tales, The Thicket
MAYER WAKEFIELD has reservations about the direction of a play centered on a DVLA re-training session for three British-Pakistani motorists
New releases from Steve Knightley, Jupiter & Okwess, Jason Palmer, Lisa Knapp and Gerry Driver, Kin'Gongolo Kiniata, Ingrid Laubrock/Tom Rainey, Dan Sealey, Simin Tande, PAZ
Peter Mitchell's photography reveals a poetic relationship with Leeds
A uncomfortably misogynistic authorial voice that sometimes seems to lack insight troubles FIONA O’CONNOR
WHEN, at the age of 17, Artemisia Gentileschi painted Susanna and the Elders she might have well been responding to the sexual harassment she had to put up with in the studio of her widowed father Orazio.
If so, Gentileschi’s alter ego Susanna shows determination and courage in refuting the Elders’s debauched advances. They are portrayed as leering, aggressive voyeurs — there is trepidation in this image and the threat of imminent rape.
In the canvas, Gentileschi borrows the chiaroscuro technique from her father’s influential friend Caravaggio, in which the luminous and courageous Susanna is accosted by her tormentors, whose shapes and contours stay in the penumbra.
More from this author
MICHAL BONCZA recommends a compact volume that charts the art of propagating ideas across the 20th century
MICHAL BONCZA reviews Cairokee gig at the London Barbican
