We are not always able to see original Bloomsbury art in person, but yesterday I got a look at several pieces exhibited at the Tate Britain.
Bell, Grant, Gertler
They include paintings by Vanessa Bell, Virginia Woolf’s sister; Duncan Grant, Bell’s friend and lover who lived with her at Charleston; and Mark Gertler, who became acquainted with the Bloomsbury group through his patron, Lady Ottoline Morrell.
I share them with you here.
Vanessa Bell, Studland Beach, 1912. An oft-visited beach in Dorset by Bell and her family. Bell uses bold colors and simple shapes, rather than emphasizing the subjects. It is likely that the figures in the foreground are Vanessa’s son Julian and his nanny.
Duncan Grant, Bathing, 1911. Based on the theme “London on Holiday,” this painting was part of the decoration for the dining room at the Borough Polytechnic.
Duncan Grant, Head of Eve, 1913. In this head of the biblical figure of Eve, grant fuses Byzantine and early Italian style with the styles of Matisse and Picasso.
Duncan Grant, Film of Abstract Kinetic Collage Painting with Sound, 1974. This is a digital film version of a scroll painting Grant composed in 1941. The music of Bach was meant to accompany it.
Mark Gertler, The Artist’s Brother Harry Holding an Apple, 1913.
Mark Gertler, Merry-Go-Round, 1916. Gertler, a pacifist, painted this during WWI while living in London as a conscientious objector. The fairground ride is transformed from something pleasurable into a metaphor for the relentless military machine that traps both soldiers and civilians.
The Woolf Arts Archive, a global project devoted to the collection and appreciation of art inspired by the life and works of Virginia Woolf, held its inaugural major public event.
Panelists at the Woolf Arts Archives symposium
Titled “Following an Author’s Trail: Virginia Woolf, the Woolf Arts Archive and Freshwater: A Comedy” symposium, the event was held March 6 in Ankara, Turkey.
About the symposium
The event brought together scholars, artists, and theatre practitioners to explore Woolf’s enduring influence across different art forms.
It featured a rich exchange of ideas with numerous talks addressing themes also relevant to International Women’s Day.
The sessions ranged from the Woolf Arts Archive’s creative role to Woolf’s artistic and cultural legacy, including her female characters and the afterlife of her works. A highlight of the symposium was the Woolf Arts Archive’s performance of the third staged reading of Freshwater in Turkish.
Featured talks
“Following an Author’s Trail: Virginia Woolf and Woolf Arts Archive” by Prof. Dr.
Mine Özyurt Kılıç.
“A Shell of Many Layers: Woolf Arts Archive and the Snail’s Journey” by Atahan
Mahir Karabiber.
“From Drops to Waves: Woolf Arts Archive as a Basin” by Tuğba Çanakçı.
“Dimbola Lodge as a Precursor to the Bloomsbury Group” by Nidanur Yıldırım.
“Flawed Eyes and Faces Behind the Visible: Julia Margaret Cameron, Diane Arbus, Vivian Maier and; Cindy Sherman” by Independent Artist/Curator Can Akgümüş.
“Representation of Female Characters in Fictional Texts” by Dr. Abdullah Özdemir.
“Freshwater as a Play” by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Z. Gizem Yılmaz.
“Waves Hitting the Stage: Translating Woolf” by Dr. Ercan Gürova.
TED University’s Department of English Language and Literature hosted the event, which was supported by TEDU WIL (TED University Women in Literature).
Mine Özyurt Kiliç, professor of English at Social Sciences University of Ankara, Turkey, and a member of the International Virginia Woolf Society (center), conceived of the archives project and made it a reality with the help of a dedicated team. Team members include Can Akgümüs, Atahan M. Karabīber, and Tugba Canakci.
The Woolf Arts Archive, a global project devoted to the collection and appreciation of art inspired by the life and works of Virginia Woolf, can now be found online.
Mine Özyurt Kiliç, professor of English at Social Sciences University of Ankara, Turkey, and a member of the International Virginia Woolf Society, conceived of the project and made it a reality with the help of a dedicated team. Team members include Can Akgümüs, Atahan M. Karabīber, and Tugba Canakci.
“WAA is founded with a passion for both literature and all forms of art; thus, we are a diverse team of Woolf enthusiasts and art lovers who believe in the power of creativity to expand and deepen our understanding of literary figures,” according to the site. It
connects artists, scholars, curators, and common readers, offering a space where Woolf’s impact on the arts can be explored, celebrated, and shared.
The site includes an archive of images related to Woolf that is described as being “always in progress,” and a blog. Each image in the archive includes a description and a link to its source.
I took a walk through Virginia Woolf’s words last week. I moved slowly, quietly. I felt reverent at the silence and the sight of her poetry flowing from the rafters in the light-filled Ellipse Gallery in the tower of the Fresno State Library.
Ane Thon Knutsen watches as conference goers walk through her “Kew Gardens” installation.
I was there early in the morning on Saturday, June 8, to experience Ane Thon Knutsen’s breathtaking installation of “Kew Gardens” at the 33rd Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, June 5-9 at Fresno State University.
I was among dozens of other conference participants, each of us lost in our own experience of the unique art installation, each of us feeling lucky to be there, as our view of the installation almost did not happen.
Catastrophe averted
The day before the conference began, the library’s air conditioning stopped working properly — and Fresno was in the middle of a heat wave. That meant that our visit to the installation had to be rescheduled and reformatted.
Our viewing of Ane’s brilliant art installation transformed itself from an elaborate evening arts event with refreshments, poetry, and two keynote talks to a one-hour early morning walk-through in awesome silence.
Kudos to conference organizer J. Ashley Foster for being able to turn on a dime with humor and grace. And kudos to everyone on campus — from librarian Melissa to academic deans and library and student center staff — who made the change possible.
Angling for a view
As I walked through the installation, I was struck by how much I had to use my body to view the art and read the words. I had to read with my legs, feet, torso, and arms, as well as my mind, eyes, and hands.
Sitting to read Woolf’s words.
I had to sway, walk, crouch, take a step backwards, step sideways, step forwards. I also had to stand still and wait patiently for the bright morning sunlight to change slightly and for the strips to still themselves in the shifting air so I could read Woolf’s words.
I watched as other viewers did the same. They stood still. They craned their necks upwards. They crouched. They bent. They sat down. Some even lay down, quietly giggling as the words wafted over their heads and their bodies, ruffled by the wispy breeze generated by weak air conditioning and the movements of those walking by.
About the “Kew Gardens” installation
J. Ashley Foster, conference organizer and associate professor at Fresno State University, and Jane Goldman, reader at the University of Glasgow, at the installation viewing.
Ane spent five years planning her adaptation of Woolf’s short story. It consists of 1,514 letterpress-printed sheets on translucent 18 gms kozo, a Japanese paper.
The sheets are arranged in 94 chains. each 18 sheets long, and they include all the words and punctuation marks that compose Woolf’s short story “Kew Gardens.” The printed words follow the colors named in the story, changing as each color is mentioned.
Ane explains the installation as an “organic book allowing you to walk through the pages, like insects in a flowerbed.”
Later, after the viewing, she said the installation no longer felt like it was just hers, as she had now shared it with dozens of people who love Woolf’s words.
About Ane Thon Knutsen
This was not Ane’s first exhibit focused on Woolf’s words. The associate professor of graphic design at the Oslo Academy of the Arts is internationally known for her letterpress-focused installations and artists’ books. She has won numerous awards for her work and owns and works from her private letterpress studio in Oslo.
Ane gave an artist talk on Friday evening during the conference.
In “Printed Works,” she adapted a selection of Virginia Woolf’s self-published short stories. The exhibit focused on Woolf’s poetic short stories “Blue” and “Green.” The printed pages were collected and are being stored in book form in FGCU Bradshaw Library’s Archives and Special Collections.
Virginia Woolf’s numerous experiences with illness led her to write the essay On Being Ill, published in 1930 by the Hogarth Press. Inspired by this work and the coronavirus, Norwegian typesetter Ane Thon Knutsen has turned her spontaneous homage to the essay into book form.
Working from her private letterpress studio at home, Ane started a third. She printed one sentence from “On Being Ill” on one sheet of paper every day. Her project ran from March 23 to Aug. 29, 2020, and she shared those pages on Instagram. She also shared her thoughts about the project with Blogging Woolf.
Through this process, she shaped a diary in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and allowed for research on pandemics by creating an artist book.
The book merges Woolf’s sentences with with my reflections on covid, pandemics, isolation, escaping reality through literature, waiting, time, art, love, protests, feminism, typesetting, printing, family, small stuff, big stuff. – Ane
The publication also contains reflections on teaching during the pandemic in the spring of 2021, along with insights and works by master’s students in graphic design and illustration at The Oslo National Academy of The Arts, using Woolf’s essay as a mirror for their own pandemic experiences.
The digital book edition
With an introduction by Mark Hussey, the book is available as a digital book edition of 150. It is now available through several independent bookshops, which are handling distribution. They include the following:
The publication is supported with research funds from The Oslo National Academy of The Arts. Graphic design was done by Tiril Haug Johne and Victoria Meyer.
Ane expresses special thanks to the Oslo National Academy of the Arts Class of 2022: Araiz Mesanza, Embla Sunde Myrva, Kristine Lie Øverland Emil Holmberg Lewe, Ruth Emilie Rustad, Nicolo Groenier, her former professor Alan Mackenzie-Robinson, former president of the International Virginia Woolf Society Dr. Benjamin Hagen, the Woolf community, her husband Truls and her son Pil.
Ane Thon Knutsen in her home printshop with a volume of On Being Ill, her pandemic project originally shared on Instagram.
About Ane Thon Knutsen
Ane is internationally known for her letterpress-focused installations and artists’ books. The associate professor of graphic design at the Oslo Academy of the Arts has won numerous awards for her work. She owns and works from her private letterpress studio in Oslo.
Ane Thon Knutsen at her exhibition “Printed Works: Adaptations of Virginia Woolf” at the 32nd Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf at Florida Gulf Coast University, Jun3 8-11, 2023.
In “Printed Works,” the self-taught typesetter who has exhibited other letterpress projects and installations related to Woolf, adapted a selection of Virginia Woolf’s self-published short stories. The exhibit focused on Woolf’s poetic short stories “Blue” and “Green.” The printed pages were collected and are being stored in book form in FGCU Bradshaw Library’s Archives and Special Collections.
More coming up
In addition, Ane will display another installation, Woolf’s “Kew Gardens,” May 16 – June 11 for the 33rd International Virginia Woolf Conference. The adaptation of Woolf’s short story consists of 1,514 letterpress-printed sheets of kozo.
According to Ane, it is an “organic book allowing you to walk through the pages, like insects in a flowerbed.”
