"Look up Francesca Woodman’s images online. What evidence can you find for Bright’s analysis?" (OCA, Context & Narrative, 2017 Edition, exercise page 74)
I used this question as a starting point for my research on Francesca Woodman.
I made this choice because I was fascinated by Woodman's use of pre-digital black & white, and the way she exploited herself ("It's a matter of convenience, I am always available..." she answered to a friend).
I did not focus on the fact that she committed suicide at 23, because the more I look to her works and the less I see a connection between her (as many defined) "troubled personality" and "absence of self-identity" and all the photographs I could find.
I agree with Gerry Badger in his introduction to Isabella Pedicini's "FRANCESCA WOODMAN. GLI ANNI ROMANI TRA PELLE E PELLICOLA" (2012, Contrasto Ed., Rome, Kindle Edition July 2012). Badger states that we should be cautious when we read Woodman's work in psychological or psychoanalytical key. When an artist commits suicide, especially at a young age, we can be tempted to post-analyse his/her opera and, in total contradiction, "predict" his/her death "a posteriori", or find unhappiness.
So, my answer to the question is: I found many images online and inside the book, but I could not find clear evidences of what Bright defines as a "troubled state of mind".
On the contrary I found marvelous examples of composition narrative and, why not, irony, in a person who was the daughter of two artists, fascinated by old Italian paintings, with "50 millions ideas", in love with Dada and Surrealism since she was eleven (as stated by George Woodman, the father, in an article from The Guardian).
Francesca Woodman's work is quite totally about self-portrait, with rare exceptions. As stated by Badger, the artist's work of art is not his/her life, it is his/her work.
Life and art are surely connected, but this connection it is not always so direct.
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| Francesca Woodman, from "Some disordered interior geometries", published in Philadelphia in 1981, Copyright George & Betty Woodman |
