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- Painting webinar: MARIE'S WIGS
Painting webinar: MARIE'S WIGS
LIVE on Friday, October 16 2020, 11 am Pacific. Register to watch anytime thereafter.
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Watch the inspiration video here: https://youtu.be/d1T6iG4o2j0
After purchase, we will send you access link to the webinar (before session starts) or recorded links if you purchase thereafter. We'll also send you the link to the shared photo folder specific for this webinar.
We're using ZOOM as video platform. Video and audio for participants will be muted by default during the live webinar. You'll be able to view and listen presentation, and interact via chat. Session will be recorded and up for replay anytime after live webinar ends.
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MARIE'S WIGS
This week, Sotheby's sold a collection of artifacts that contained a painting by Anne Vallayer-Coster (1744-1818). Vallayer was one of the three most important portraitists in the court of Marie Antoinette, along with two other females painters. France's despised queen commissioned a series of portraits during her short life to push back against the ongoing misogynistic and homophobic series of rumors spread to bring her down.
In this painting webinar, we will use 18c wigs as a subject for our paintings. The wigs are a symbol of the time's social dissonance and our way of marking the queen's decapitation on October 16, 1792.
In our opinion, Marie's death is a metaphor for, in the words of painter Elizabeth Louise Vigee, the dethroning of women. Marie refused to conform to her supposed primary duties as queen: pop babies non-stop and be a submissive wife always willing and ready to be scrutinized by the public. She paid the price with her life.
Certainly independent in her spirit, Marie was no feminist, though. She lived in a fantasy world she created for herself while she was oblivious to the real world outside falling apart. Yet, the intense and widespread hate she received, and receives, hides an explicit misogynistic nature that transcends her actions and persona. She was wrongly accused of 'deviant' sexual practices and hated for being an immigrant (she was born in Austria), not to mention the vitriol she received for being seen as conspiring to upstage the king. People believed she was an animal possessed by a demon.
More than 200 years after Marie's execution, there are nuts out there that still believe Hillary Clinton ran a child sex ring in a pizza parlor, Michelle Obama hides a penis, and Gretchen Whitmer, Michigan's Governor, has to be 'taken out.' And let's not forget a certain individual recently referring to Kamala Harris as 'a monster.' Can you guess the common denominator?
Antoinette-like unhinged hate is alive and well, and it is as toxic and dangerous now as it was in the 18c.
• Painting premise: Still life/Portrait.
• Props: a photo bank will be provided.
• Painting surface: any size, any kind. We recommend 9x12 or under.
• Painting webinar medium: oil over cotton paper. Feel free to select your media.