Where My Work Sits - The Arts and Crafts Movement

Personally, I feel that this work has several layers to it, all giving the project as a whole its dimension. One way to help break down these layers is to understand where my work sits within contemporary practice. This means placing my work, or at least parts of it, within a timeline, based off the themes, messages and visuals that reside within the work. I have chosen some key areas in which I feel that my work sits in some form, but I appreciate that all of these elements come together in order to create something new. I have not been able to find any other artists that are doing similar to me, in the way of taking self-portraits as Goddesses or another higher being, based off paintings from different eras, staging the images and then use photography as their medium. Of course, there are many who do Self-portraits as Goddesses in general, but the way of integrating painting, and of course elements of reality, have not been done to my knowledge.


The Arts and Crafts Movement

The first element, or position if you will, that I believe my works can be related to is the Arts and Crafts movement.

The arts and crafts movement began in 1863, when people had become fed up with machines making everything at a lower quality within the industrial revolution. It was a reaction to the negative impact of industry, including barbaric labour positions and company policies. 

There are many ways I could begin to link the two, but I will start first by discussing the work of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Rossetti was a founder of the pre-raphaelite brotherhood, an artistic organisation that aimed to show the beauty in the truth of life, rather than overly glamorised pieces which was believed to have first been made popular by Raphael, hence the name. In Rossetti's later years, he actually slowly intertwined both aspects into his paintings, the glamorous and the natural.

This painting by Rossetti in his final year of life, 1882, depicts the roman Goddess Proserpine, who's Greek equivalent would be Persephone. The painting feels incredibly poetic, as it's filled with beauty, luxurious textures, a colour palette that creates harmony, a fair and young-looking woman fills the canvas with her elegance - and yet at the same time, we see distress on her face, dark thoughts, nature shown by ivy and of course the colour palette, all of which is strengthened by the story of Persephone. Persephone was Hades wife, only she disliked being in the underworld very much. So Hades said she could go free, but she broke the rules and ate the forbidden fruit that is the pomegranate. Eating 6 pomegranate seeds, she was therefore forced to stay in the underworld for 6 months of the year. Here, she appears to be dreading her return. The combination of both beauty and nature is melodic within Rossetti's work. 

I bring up Rossetti for multiple reasons, foremost, the painting was made in the midst of the arts and crafts movement, where artists aimed to make things unique and personal, but the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood focussed on the way things were done in the late medieval and early renaissance - much as those from the arts and crafts movement did. In a way, they can both be seen as interlinked in the fact that they rejected the norm of how art was made. 
Secondly, the Pre-Raphaelites often, but not exclusively, focussed on heroes and immortals, including the Greek Goddesses. "Pre-Raphaelitism found itself paradoxically poised between nostalgia for the past and excitement about the future" (https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/the-pre-raphaelites) - a feature that is incredibly prominent in my own work, where it sits between reality and fiction, and the past and the present. Thirdly, and perhaps most relevantly, Rossetti collaborated with the founders of the arts and crafts movement in 1957 where together they redecorated the Oxford Union debating chamber, a key beginning to how the arts and crafts movement arose - Edward Burne Jones and William Morris decided to redecorate places in a way that reflected their envisionment of a perfect society - filled with collaboration and handwork. 

Edward Burne Jones and William Morris bought and made odd or interesting furniture and painted it, decorated it and added to it in order to give it that personal, unique touch. 

This chest, completed in 1887, is one that would have often been used as a dowry, filled with beautiful and expensive fabrics. Edward Burne Jones added material to the chest to shape the figures and then painted it to depict the Garden of Hesperides. The Hesperides were believed to be nymphs of the evening within Greek Mythology, who protect the golden apples that belong to Hera. The piece is a low relief sculpture, which refuses the distinction between painting, sculpture and decorative arts. I believe my work, while when looking at it physically is clearly only a two, or three if printed, dimensional photograph, the concepts within it intertwine the medium of painting, literature and even sculpture, as these are the mediums that have been used throughout the journey of depicting the Goddesses that I have based my work on. 

William Morris' work looks forward to a better future, as well as looking back, as he wishes to go back to a time where art was a very personal thing that took time, effort and skill, as opposed to the machines that were producing copy and paste furnishings of the time. This is another element of the arts and crafts movement that I believe my work relates to. My work is made from a reaction of how uncomfortable I find the present, and therefore seek nurturing and nostalgia within a glorified past filled with deities and wonderful unknowns, but also intertwine that with subtle present-day elements, giving the same effect of experimenting with multiple positions of time, in order to give hope for a personal or collaborative future. Morris gives us a projection of a post-revolutionary future, whereas mine keeps the aspect of reality within my images, only on a subtle level. Despite Morris' morals leading him down this path, it actually caused quite the paradox as his work being handmade and good quality ended up being expensive and beautiful, and therefore not being art for all.

Overall, this time period can clearly be seen in reflections of my work when we take all of this into account. Most obviously, because a lot of the paintings I have looked at for my own work comes from this era, and therefore will clearly transfer various elements and symbolism within these pieces into my photographs. But also because pre-raphaelite work, which is also intertwined with the arts and crafts movement, often focussed on the stories and myth of heroes and gods, exploring a world unknown to them just as I am. Their paintings offer a sense of nostalgia and beauty, and I believe my own photographs do the same. Another reason for me positioning my worth within this style and influence, is because my end result, the images, take inspiration from a long journey of depictions of the Goddesses I am portraying. The Arts and Crafts movement also intertwined multiple mediums as a way to create a comprehensive, collaborative piece - which is different to using it as inspiration but important nevertheless.
Lastly, the work and the movement was created as a reaction against modern times. And still, over a century later, we still seek to escape the world in which we live in and create a more idealistic version of life. My images, at its core, does just this.