Isabella Ruini as Venus, Lavinia Fontana, 1592
Link
https://kbender.blogspot.com/p/my-website.html?view=magazine
Content
What?
This long-standing project compiles the artworks (sculptures, reliefs, paintings, frescoes, drawings, prints, illustrations), depicting the Greek/Roman Goddess Aphrodite/Venus, accepted by its title given by the creator, by the owner or generally admitted by scholarly references or by tradition. These artworks are scattered among a multitude of monographs, ‘catalogues raisonnés’ of artists, museum catalogues, exhibition catalogues, sales catalogues, death inventories, myriads of bibliographical references, photographic collections and the Internet. The collection is the labour of a ‘self-designated non-professional archivist’.
How ?
The endless information is transformed into a structured digital thematic research collection with a categorization of the meta-data into 'topics' and classification in catalogues according to the geographical origin of the identified artist. All entries in the catalogues are ‘mutually exclusive’ and should be interpreted as 'convenient samples' of the indefinite population of artworks depicting the given theme by an unknown number of artists.
Why?
The theme 'Aphrodite/Venus' is well represented in the canon of art history, but the project responds to the need to ‘decanonize’ art history where traditionally only ‘masterpieces’ were examined. Social decanonization has been described as a process of “users’ interactions with cultural content on the web”. The quantitative or ‘distant viewing’ approach generates new knowledge and a more faithful view of the artistic production, including 'lower' works of art, in any period. The project allows for highlighting forgotten artists and the role of female artists.