Judy Jashinsky at McLean Project for the Arts - McLean, Va - Brief Article

Judy Jashinsky's installation "Artemisia Gentileschi: An Artist's Life" is a tangled, sometimes confusing, sometimes lame narrative presentation focusing on the life and times of Orazio's daughter. The accomplishments of father and daughter were recently on view at the Metropolitan Museum in New York [see article, p. 104]. By now all of us know Artemisia's story: raped by her dad's friend and colleague, she had to endure a public trial. She went on to become a rarity--a 17th-century woman artist with a major career. Her work was forgotten for a long time, but now she is a feminist hero and a popular icon of sorts.

Jashinsky has been working on this project since 1995; she is obsessed with Artemisia, to put it mildly. To set forth the narrative, she has made a number of paintings and installed them in the midst of objects of many kinds. There are tables laden with fruit, draped tablecloths and dark Renaissance chairs. There are handwritten letters piled on the tables as well; some of them contain Jashinsky's imaginings of what the heroine might have written. A TV vignette shows Artemisia during her last days with her daughter. The video was put together by Jashinsky and Virginia Quesada. There are also some enlarged letters, conceived by Jashinsky and written out in 17th-century script by Rose Folsom.

The best of the paintings can stand on their own. Though the exhibition is uneven, Jashinsky bowls you over when she is at her best. Several works show Artemisia at work. Artemisia Drawing Lucretia (1997) is a feat of precision rendering in pastel and gesso. The artist's hand is tense; fully engaged and concentrating, she focuses on the model. Jashinsky is at the top of her skills here, working with a limited palette of grays, pale yellows and tans. The figure is beautifully drawn. Gazing at the head, you can imagine Artemisia's intelligence and power.

An amusing variation, The Curious (2000), shows the young Artemisia looking intently at a bronze statue of a hermaphrodite, which has breasts and a penis. This is one of the most realized of the paintings. The statue is on a table; at half life-size, the figure leans back to show off a little erection. Wearing a bright green flowing blouse, Artemisia leans forward raptly, as if to inspect the penis--surely not a usual sight.

A simple rendering of a rumpled blue-sheeted bed in the middle of a darkened room turns out to be a tragic icon. On close examination, the sheets in Piu Tardi (1998), are seen to be flecked with blood. This is the site of Artemisia's rape. Simple as the image is, it engraves itself on the viewer's brain.

The largest painting is also the most accomplished. It is called September 11, 1599: The Cenci Execution (2001). It shows a crowd of people grieving at the unfair beheading of a young family. The figures display an almost Pre-Raphelite degree of detail as they convey the pathos of the scene. Artemisia is depicted as one of the small children attending (she would have been about six years old). The mural-size work is remarkable in part because it is made up of 22-by-30-inch paper sheets attached to the wall with pushpins. Jashinsky should write a book on Artemisia, and she should concentrate on works like the four paintings described above for her next show.

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