Looking at the New Mexico desert, Georgia O’Keeffe found a new home. In the thirteenth Postcard piece, Emily Garbutt considers O’Keeffe’s vivid, evocative painting, Black Mesa Landscape, New Mexico/ Out Back of Marie’s II, 1930, and asks when she will have the opportunity, post-lockdown, to survey a foreign landscape.
Sian Norris reflects on the female gaze as captured in Zinaida Serebriakova’s At the Dressing Table, 1909, and when looking at Dorothea Tanning’s Self-Portrait, 1944, she considers the lack of freedom we have during lockdown.
Isabel Radford reflects on one of Frida Kahlo’s best known works, Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird, 1940, and sees the artist as a source of empowerment for our current times.
In Otto Dix’s Portrait of the Journalist Sylvia von Harden, 1926, Lottie Whalen sees both an insouciant New Woman and Dix’s embodiment of a dangerously dissolute era. Recalling a recent encounter with the painting in Paris, she reflects on the freedoms we stand to lose in the time of Covid-19.
Rabia Nasimi discusses the invaluable support and outreach work the Afghanistan and Central Asian Association continues to do with women from the Afghanistan diaspora, and calls for the UK not to forget this minority during the pandemic.
Toni Roberts discusses how Mona Hatoum’s radiant red sculpture, Hot Spot III, 2009, has become a relevant work of art during her time in lockdown and a metaphor for our cage-like existence.
Emma West discovered Barbara Hepworth’s sculpture, Spring, 1965, at the beginning of what would become a pilgrimage of the sculptor’s work around the UK. Here, she reflects on Hepworth’s sculptures in situ, the importance of touch and having hope for life after lockdown.
For the fourth piece in her continued series, Rochelle Roberts reflects on Dorothea Tanning’s monumental and transformative self-portrait, Birthday, 1942, and considers the prospect of the end to coronavirus.
As the internet will have no doubt reminded you, staying at home and catching up on some Netflix is now officially *heroic*. Here’s an eclectic mix of streaming recommendations from our contributors.
In her third piece from a self-conceived series, Rochelle Roberts reflects on Eileen Agar’s Angel of Anarchy, 1936-40, a striking and evocative object that embodies current feelings of sadness, inaccessibility and loneliness.
In these times of social distancing and remote learning, visual art can still offer us consolation. Here, as part of her second piece in a rolling self-conceived series, Rochelle Roberts reflects on Dorothy Cross’ sculpture, Virgin Shroud, 1993.
Katherine Rundell’s essay is a brilliantly smart and engaging defence of the importance of children’s literature for all readers, of all ages, writes our arts contributor Jo Hemmings.
