Agent of Chaos

Just some artists pondering their orbs

That's actually a good idea!

I always get so fucking mad when I remember that it’s actually a 16-year-old Algerian girl who influenced BOTH Picasso and Matisse. and. No one gives a rat’s ass about her work which was very focused on women and nature. History -or people dare I say- didn’t bother to remember her name because she was a young Algerian woman and no one cares about Maghrebi/Arab women. unlike P*casso & M*tisse who both became legends, almost gods both during their lives and after their deaths, no one knows her.

Her name was Baya Mahieddine.

I wish there was an internet trend to collect and document and circulate artists that should actually be getting the credit.

Oh, I’ll play. Everyone has heard of impressionism and may have heard of the Impressionists. A group of artists who took the derogatory term for their work and turned it into a movement. You’ve probably heard of Monet, Manet, Degas or Renoir.

An imdb mini series that claims to be based on documentaries called it a “Brotherhood” and left the lady members out of it.

Including Berthe Morisot, who was a prolific painter and an integral part of the movement.

Since she was quite going Morisot had been painting “en plein air”, basically meaning outdoors in open areas. Not incredibly common because paint tubes had only recently been invented and paints dried quickly and it was considered impractical.

But she had a group of like minded friends, after all she married Manet’s younger brother, and they were described by one critic as “five or six lunatics—among them a woman—a group of unfortunate creatures.“.

She was there from the beginning, an original member, when they were known as Société Anonyme des artistes.

I’m going on a bit much, but she wanted to change art, she helped them set up their own exhibition which, at the time…wasn’t done really. Private exhibitions were rare, but since most of her fellow artists were rejected from being displayed at the Paris Salon (not your girl though, she was displayed there) they had to fund their own.

She captured women often during mundane moments, moments that men didn’t really see as being quite as important. As a woman age we not allowed access to the cafes that many of the men went to for their muses, so she captured the women in her life, often her only daughter Julie.

Anyway, she was relevant and important and boss and here are some of my favourite of her work.

Woman at Her Toilette, 1875.

The Cradle, 1872

View from the Trocadero, 1871-72

Woman Hanging Out The Wash, 1881

Julie Daydreaming, 1894

Nice