During last year I have been working full time with researching and writing. Despite the Corona which has been absolutely awful but luckily not disturbing my work too much. One of the fruits from last year is my article in this beautiful and outstanding Routledge publication edited by Kerry Greaves from the University of Copenhagen.
My article with title ”Modern Corporeality: Body, Movement, and Dance in Ellen Thesleff’s Art” is focusing on finding ut how the Finnish painter Ellen Thesleff (1869–1954) handled and pictured the female body in her art at the beginning of the 19th century. From the beginning of the twentieth century Thesleff painted vivid female figures and landscapes, placing emphasis on the artist’s subjective experience and appearance of reality and nature. My argument is that Thesleff’s aim in painting was not only to document or repeat the body, movement, or dance on canvas, but to live it in space and to let the modern corporeality to happen on the canvas.
Two thoughts of two outstanding women, Thesleff herself and the french feminist Hélène Cixous, have guided my way during this writing process:
“A figure composed purely of color—movement—through color.”
Ellen Thesleff’s journal, January 28, 1917
“Woman must put herself into the text—as into the world and into history—by her own movement.”
Hélène Cixous, The Laugh of the Medusa, 1975
Please read more from the book which is available in early April 2021.