Comedy in an Era of Anxiety
By: Brett Holverstott
Tags: Painting, Exhibition, Aesthetics, Art, Figurative Art

In The Allegory of Painting, Brown has created a beautiful and iconographic self-portrait. The almost Egyptian pose of the figure is balanced, fills the painting with fun shapes, and the spotlight washing over the scene seems to indicate an inspired thought.

Jen Brown, The Allegory of Painting, 36 in x 48 in

The painting plays on Cesare Ripa’s classic Iconologia, published in 1611 and hugely influential on painters, in which he prescribes the muse of painting (la Pittura) as:

A beautiful woman, with full black hair, disheveled, and twisted in various ways, with arched eyebrows that show imaginative thought, the mouth covered with a cloth tied behind her ears, with a chain of gold at her throat from which hangs a mask, and has written in front “imitation.” She holds in her hand a brush, and in the other the palette, with clothes of evanescently covered drapery…

Both Vermeer and Caravaggio both painted Allegories of Painting as self portraits at the easel, while a woman posed in the background. In 1630, Artemisia Gentileschi painted herself at the easel, and in a bold move adorned her own person to represent the allegory of painting. She includes the gold chain and mask, and is clothed in a fine gown. She omits, however, Ripa’s prescription for a cloth tied around her mouth, the symbol to show that painting is “mute poetry”. Gentileschi reminds us that through her art she indeed has a voice.

Artemisia Gentileschi, Self Portrait as The Allegory of Painting, 1638

In Brown’s contemporary self portrait, she is at her easel, and the audience can see the painting they are looking at in progress on the easel itself, making it unmistakable that she is the artist of the piece in front of their eyes. This is a powerful way to claim ownership of the work. (If you notice, however, the painting on the easel is a mirror image.)

Instead of us looking over the shoulder of an unaware artist, Brown is turning to face the audience, almost exhibiting herself momentarily to the viewer, and the figure makes a great composition on the canvas. Like Gentileschi, and consistent with other female self portraits of the time such as Judith Lester, she is wearing a dress that she wouldn’t be caught dead painting in.

And she interprets Ripa’s prescription as a gag — with a bra.

Brown was touched by the experience of a friend and artist, who painted a nude self portrait, only to receive harassing comments and unsolicited attention on social media. In response to this, the artist began to alter the features of the figure in the painting so that it was no longer a resemblance. What a sickening experience it must have been.

Brown contemplated doing a nude, although was easily dissuaded from it by the experience of her friend. In the background, she shows a partial sketch of a nude self-portrait and a crumpled drawing on the floor. As a narrative painter, Brown’s paintings hinge on context: time, place, and story. For this reason she ultimately prefers clothed figures, and her dress allows us to place the painting in time.

Brown tells me that the presence of the gag an expression of the barriers women still face when expressing themselves in the public sphere. It is something that women are struggling with everywhere, although it was not specifically a nod to current events.

But, like the other paintings in the collection, Brown can’t resist her own wit. The gag is a bra, which men will want to interpret as an erotic signal. (Sometimes, wit goes over the head of the audience, and sometimes the joke is on them.) The artist occupies a powerful position in the frame. There is a healthy sense of self, creative ownership, and intelligence. I wonder what is keeping her from spitting out the gag at any moment.

As figurative work is reborn in the world of today, nothing is more important that supporting artists, including female artists, in expressing themselves uninhibited by social pressures. A self-portrait is an open book, in which the artist is revealing something, or everything, about themselves. It makes them vulnerable. Let’s respect that in how we talk about the painting.