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Artist’s Talk with Alison Bechdel: Wednesday, February 21st, 7PM in the Dudley H. Davis Center’s Silver Maple Ballroom. Free Admission.<\/p>\n
A renowned cartoonist and graphic memoirist who lives in Bolton, Alison Bechdel is a MacArthur Foundation \u201cgenius\u201d grant winner, and the third Cartoonist Laureate of Vermont\u2014a position unique to the state. Her pioneering comic strip about the lives of a group of lesbian friends, Dykes to Watch Out For<\/em>, ran from 1983 to 2008 and was syndicated in over fifty alternative papers, including Vermont\u2019s Seven Days<\/em>, which recently published new Dykes strips by Bechdel focused on current political events.<\/p>\n In 2006, Bechdel published the graphic memoir Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic<\/em>, which explores her relationship with her father, her coming out, and his possible suicide. Fun Home<\/em> was a New York Times<\/em> bestseller and the basis of the Tony-award winning musical of the same name. Bechdel followed up in 2012 with Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama<\/em>, which follows her relationship with her mother, girlfriends, therapists, and her exploration of psychoanalytic theory. Both books are works of multilayered complexity, employing nonlinear storytelling and a rich trove of literary and historical references.<\/p>\n “Self-Confessed” presents these primary bodies of work in depth through original drawings and sketches, while incorporating other aspects of Bechdel\u2019s creative output, from early drawings to activist ephemera to large-scale self-portraits. The exhibition also includes a model of the set for the musical Fun Home<\/em>, reconstructed for this exhibition.<\/p>\n The exhibition explores Bechdel\u2019s work as a writer, an artist, and an archivist of the self, someone who constantly mines and shares her own experiences as a way to communicate something vitally human: the quest for love, acceptance, community, and social justice.<\/p>\n Image: Alison Bechdel (American, born 1960), Page from Fun Home<\/em> (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2006).<\/p>\n In 1844, famed French caricaturist Honor\u00e9 Daumier (1808-1879) published Les Bas Bleus<\/em>, or Bluestockings<\/em>, a series of forty lithographs satirizing groups of upper-class women who sought intellectual stimulation in defiance of their narrowly proscribed roles in society. Daumier\u2019s combination of word and image as well as his depiction, albeit mockingly, of the flouting of gender norms makes it a fascinating counterpoint to the work of Alison Bechdel, who cites Daumier as an early influence.<\/p>\n The Blue Stockings Society began in mid-eighteenth century England as a women\u2019s literary discussion group, which represented a radical departure from the acceptable activities for upper-class women of the time. Though hosted by women, the society included learned men as well, and focused on equal intellectual exchange between the sexes. They supported each other\u2019s creative pursuits, and many members became published authors. The name of the group is said to refer to the fact that participants were encouraged to wear their everyday blue stockings, rather than more formal black ones.<\/p>\n In France, Les Bas Bleus evolved into an informally organized women\u2019s movement that continued to advance women\u2019s literary and intellectual opportunities and ambitions. The term came to have derogatory implications, as men and women opposed to this liberation mocked bluestockings for being unattractive and insufficiently feminine. In Daumier\u2019s images, women are depicted abandoning their domestic responsibilities of housekeeping and childrearing in favor of novel- and poetry-writing, intellectual discourse, and what was seen as \u201csalon socialism\u201d\u2014the support of socialist causes from the comfort of a well-appointed salon.<\/p>\n Though Daumier\u2019s message ridiculed women\u2019s emancipation efforts, today we can see in his humorous cartoons the beginnings of a revolution, one that would eventually lead to women\u2019s suffrage, women in the work force, and women\u2019s freedom from reliance on men for their education or economic security.<\/p>\n These prints are generously loaned from the Arthur Ross Collection at the Yale University Art Gallery, whose donor intended that the works be shared with other teaching museums throughout the country. The Fleming Museum is grateful to Kimberley Adams, M.D., for facilitating this loan.<\/p>\n (text adapted from the venue\u2019s press materials)<\/em><\/p>\n INFORMATION<\/strong><\/p>\n Fleming Museum of Art<\/strong> Hours: MAP<\/a> | WEBSITE <\/a>| FACEBOOK<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Fleming Museum of Art Spring 2018 Artist’s Talk with Alison Bechdel: Wednesday, February 21st, 7PM in the Dudley H. Davis Center’s Silver Maple Ballroom. Free Admission. Self-Confessed! The Inappropriately Intimate Comics of Alison Bechdel 1\/30 to 5\/20\/2018 A renowned cartoonist…<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\nHonor\u00e9 Daumier’s “Bluestockings”<\/h2>\n
1\/23 to 5\/20\/2018<\/h3>\n
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\nUniversity of Vermont Campus
\n61 Colchester Avenue
\nBurlington, Vermont 05405
\n(802) 656-0750<\/p>\n
\nTuesday, 10AM-4PM;\u00a0Wednesday, 10AM-7PM;\u00a0Thursday-Friday, 10AM-4PM
\nSaturday-Sunday, Noon-4PM
\nClosed for Spring Recess<\/p>\n