The Lurid Love Lives of Women Artists on Film
- ARTISTS ON FILM
Film Talk
To mark Women’s History Month a talk looking back at the representation of women artists on film.
In this talk, illustrated by a range of clips, Professor Maggie Andrews will look back at the portrayal of women artists on film, who, thanks to exhibitions, biographies and the films which have appeared since the 1970s are no longer hidden from history.
Yet cinema’s focus on the complexity of these women’s personal lives ensures biopics such as ‘Carrington’ (1995), ‘Frida’ (2002) and ‘Hilma’ (2022) often sideline women’s artistic significance.
We will therefore explore whether some of these films consider if women have a particular perspective or place in the art world and if women artists, having been saved from obscurity, are too often portrayed as victims or tragic heroines.
In contrast, in recent fictional films, such as ‘Portrait of a Lady on Fire’ (2019) and ‘Nightbitch’ (2024), artists are used to signify how women’s creativity is constrained by society, motherhood, or marriage and how women escape from these constraints.
