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Simulating the sensation of tears with a spray of water

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Extraction and reorganisation of elements based on the large number of images obtained from the research

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Guidance of the research
The research for this project was based on four lines from "Southeast the Peacock Flies"：

"Southeast the peakcock flies"

"Her fingers were slim as scallion roots"

"Lithely she walked, with delicate steps"

"Her tears falling in a hundred streams or more"

"She lifted her skirt, stepped out of her silken shoes, and threw herself into the clear pond"

Details are on blog

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Combining sculpture and print, 'Peacock' is a papier mâché sculpture of a crouched female, hugging her knees in a self-protective pose. The woman's head is slightly cocked as she ponders the prints of female genitalia, which are fanned out on the wall like a peacock's tail. The prints are physically linked to her body by 28 umbilical-like threads of paper, making direct reference to the female reproductive cycle. In Smith's print work, the visceral is often counterbalanced by an impulse toward the refined and the decorative, seen here in the use of fine handmade paper and in the delicate lines of the drawn jewelry which adorns the figure.

Medium

Papier Mâché and Nepal paper with ink

Dimensions

67.3 x 44.5 x 54.6 cm

Credit Line

IMMA Collection: Purchase, 1997

Item Number

IMMA.784

Tags

Image Caption

Kiki Smith, Peacock, 1994, Papier Mâché and Nepal paper with ink, 67.3 x 44.5 x 54.6 cm, Collection Irish Museum of Modern Art, Purchase, 1997

About the Artist

Born in Germany, American sculptor and print maker Kiki Smith (born 1954) attended Hartford Art School, Connecticut. Influenced by a generation of female artists including Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse and Lee Bontecou, Smith uses paper, fabric, ceramics and glass to create figurative sculptural works which mediate the separations between the psychological and physical nature of the body. Smith has exhibited in America and Europe since the 1980s. A major retrospective of her work toured the US in 2005. Smith was awarded the Brooklyn Museum 'Women in The Arts Award' in 2009.
View Artist

Location

Royal Hospital Kilmainham
Dublin 8, D08 FW31, Ireland
Phone +353 1 6129900

View Map

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Combining sculpture and print, 'Peacock' is a papier mâché sculpture of a crouched female, hugging her knees in a self-protective pose. The woman's head is slightly cocked as she ponders the prints of female genitalia, which are fanned out on the wall like a peacock's tail.

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" Work Of Art " Young Woman Holding A Rose

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Such modest scale works are relatively rare in Boucher's oeuvre, but the image is typical of many that he reused repeatedly in compositions small and large. It has recently been compared with a center design from a Gobelins tapestry of an almost identical image, but since the tapestry design has not reversed the image it must be eliminated as the direct source. This painting was conceived more probably as an independent work, as was the Girl Smelling a Rose (New York, Frick Collection) and a series of later ovals. The Frick painting, dated to 1754 by Alexandre Ananoff, in his catalogue raisonné of the artist (François Boucher, Peintures, 2 Vols, Paris, 1976) and related by him incorrectly to the same Gobelins tapestry, had a distinguished provenance, having belonged to the hugely wealthy Wittelsbach Duke of Zweibrücken (Deux-Ponts), whose passion for his French mistress had kept him in Paris rather than on his Rhineland state. That the Frick later downgraded the attribution to "school of Boucher" was probably the result of a general lack of understanding of the artist's later work, rather than a sensible judgment on its quality, as Dr Colin Bailey has recently observed (verbally). Like the Frick painting, undated and probably later than Ananoff suggests, our elegant oval is an autograph work probably dating from the early 1760s, although Alastair Laing (author of the François Boucher exhibition catalogue), while confirming its authenticity, has attributed to it a later date, circa 1766-69).

This attractive young woman gazes solemnly at the viewer, with an almost trancelike expression, perhaps brought on by the pleasurable perfume of the rose she holds in her right hand. The treatment of the flowers, the curve of her breast, the complex folds of her shirt, and the blue silk of her dress, are all effects of which Boucher had long-established his mastery. She could have stepped, robed or nude, from any number of mythologies or pastorals, but here, in relatively modest attire, she strikes a more solemn pose. Two slightly larger ovals, from 1761, Young Woman with a Tambourine (Switzerland, Private Collection) and a presumed Portrait of the Artist's daughter, Mme Baudouin (Paris, Musée Cognacq Jay), both like this work unsigned but larger in scale, are stylistically close and probably date from the same period. The Young Woman with a Dove, neither signed nor dated but given by Ananoff (vol II, no. 689) to the artist's last year, shares almost identical dimensions but must date earlier in the decade. This latter composition also portrays a young woman in contemplative mood, décolleté, with similar costume and flowers, but embracing a dove instead of a rose. It may possibly be a pendant to our painting. The dating for the latter work is based on the date 1770 inscribed on a variant of the composition, but this variant is typical of the last works, with a harder outline, and less refined, as Ananoff himself noted while commenting that the dated work indeed derived from the undated painting.

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" Work Of Art " Young Woman Holding A Rose

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We offer the François Boucher work of art 'Young Woman Holding a Rose'. François Boucher of the French school of artists created this fine example of Genre or Daily Life art from the Rococo - 1720-1780 period. Contact the Matthiesen Gallery, London (+44 (0)207-930 2437) for further details.

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View of the exhibition "La Force de l'Art" in 2006 at Grand Palais, Paris

2010 - Hope, Palais des Arts et du Festival, Dinard, France
2007 - Dialogues Méditerranéens, Musée de L'Annonciade, St Tropez, France
2006 - La Force de l'Art, Grand Palais, Paris, France
2005 - Art Basel 36, Switzerland
2004 - Braunschweig Parcours, Braunschweig, Germany

It's a small boat made from raw wood that supports a glass architecture. It's an apparition in a no man's land, permanently renewing itself by following history, a retreat from the historical, cultural and social complexity of the region. The boat was built by Cuban boat people. Handmade and a sculpture already in itself, it is carrying the traces and the cruelty of the hope for escape. The canopy is the crown that is dedicated to this symbol of rebellion and of sufferance. It is a reference to the universal desire for liberty.

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Boat of Tears | Jean-Michel OTHONIEL (2004) | PERROTIN

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2010 - Hope, Palais des Arts et du Festival, Dinard, France 2007 - Dialogues Méditerranéens, Musée de L'Annonciade, St Tropez, France 2006 - La Force de l'Art, Grand Palais, Paris, France 2005 - Art Basel 36, Switzerland 2004 - Braunschweig Parcours, Braunschweig, Germany It's a small boat made from raw wood that supports a glass architecture.

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After photographing the eyes of the model Lydia and framing them in different ways, Man Ray, still with the Dada spirit, decided to put glass tears on his face. Arlette Bernard, director of beauty institutes in Paris, took advantage of photography, using it as an advertisement for her new mascara that allowed Madame "to cry at the cinema, cry at the theater, laugh to tears without fear of undoing her beautiful eyes "

Explore museums and play with Art Transfer, Pocket Galleries, Art Selfie, and more

Recommended

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Glass Tears - Man Ray - Google Arts & Culture

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After photographing the eyes of the model Lydia and framing them in different ways, Man Ray, still with the Dada spirit, decided to put glass tears on his face.

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The scene depicted is from Shakespeare's Hamlet, Act IV, Scene vii, in which Ophelia, driven out of her mind when her father is murdered by her lover Hamlet, falls into a stream and drowns:

There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide,
And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up;
Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes,
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and indued
Unto that element; but long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.

Shakespeare was a favourite source for Victorian painters, and the tragic-romantic figure of Ophelia from Hamlet was an especially popular subject, featuring regularly in Royal Academy exhibitions. Arthur Hughes exhibited his version of her death scene in the same year as this picture was shown (Manchester City Art Gallery).

Millais began the background in July 1851, at Ewell, Surrey. In accordance with the aims of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, he painted with close observation of nature. Millais quickly found, however, that such intense study was not without problems, and was moved to remark in a letter to Mrs Thomas Combe,

My martyrdom is more trying than any I have hitherto experienced. The flies of Surrey are more muscular, and have a still greater propensity for probing human flesh ... I am threatened with a notice to appear before a magistrate for trespassing in a field and destroying the hay ... am also in danger of being blown by the wind into the water, and becoming intimate with the feelings of Ophelia when that Lady sank to muddy death, together with the (less likely) total disappearance, through the voracity of the flies ... Certainly the painting of a picture under such circumstances would be a greater punishment to a murderer than hanging.
(J.G. Millais I, pp.119-20)

The figure of Ophelia was added afterwards. The model, Elizabeth Siddal, a favourite of the Pre-Raphaelites who later married Rossetti, was required to pose over a four month period in a bath full of water kept warm by lamps underneath. The lamps went out on one occasion, causing her to catch a severe cold. Her father threatened the artist with legal action until he agreed to pay the doctor's bills.

The plants, most of which have symbolic significance, were depicted with painstaking botanical detail. The roses near Ophelia's cheek and dress, and the field rose on the bank, may allude to her brother Laertes calling her 'rose of May'. The willow, nettle and daisy are associated with forsaken love, pain, and innocence. Pansies refer to love in vain. Violets, which Ophelia wears in a chain around her neck, stand for faithfulness, chastity or death of the young, any of which meanings could apply here. The poppy signifies death. Forget-me-nots float in the water. Millais wrote to Thomas Combe in March 1852: 'Today I have purchased a really splendid lady's ancient dress - all flowered over in silver embroidery - and I am going to paint it for "Ophelia". You may imagine it is something rather good when I tell you it cost me, old and dirty as it is, four pounds' (J.G. Millais I, p.162).

Ophelia was part of the original Henry Tate gift to the Tate Gallery.

Further reading
John Guille Millais, The Life and Letters of Sir John Everett Millais, 1899, I, pp.116-20, 123, 129-131, 144-7, 151, 162-3.
Leslie Parris (ed.), The Pre-Raphaelites, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1984, reprinted 1994, pp.96-8, reproduced in colour.

Terry Riggs
February 1998
Does this text contain inaccurate information or language that you feel we should improve or change? We would like to hear from you.

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'Ophelia', Sir John Everett Millais, Bt, 1851-2 | Tate

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Artwork page for 'Ophelia', Sir John Everett Millais, Bt, 1851-2 on display at Tate Britain. This work shows the death of Ophelia, a scene from Shakespeare's play Hamlet. Many Victorian painters like Millais used Shakespeare's plays as inspiration. Hamlet murders Ophelia's father, and she is so upset she falls into a stream and downs.

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I am trying to depict flowers with abstract brush strokes and, in addition to the beads, I am using water marks to simulate the sensation of crying.

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"Southeast the Peacock Flies" is inspired by the sexist phenomenon in Chinese characters and set phrase. Chinese characters are made up of radicals and components, and many  Chinese characters with horrible meanings are made up of the radical  "女“ （women), such as  " 奴”（slave), "妖“(monster). And there are a lot chinese set phrase only used in female ,such as ”窈窕淑女“, which means being a quiet lady.
There still exist many unrealistic fantasy about women to be a lady in current Chinese society. People gaze women and judge their behavior.

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The experimentation with the silhouette was not completed because the time was too short to develop it in more depth. The project could be further developed and a lot of elements that could be used have been extracted in the course of the research.

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The project is a "ladylike" indictment through a dialogue with the Chinese women portrayed in "Southeast the Peacock Flies".