Birgit Jürgenssen
Untitled (from the series 'Totentanz mit Mädchen / Death Dance with Maiden'), 1979
Lifetime black and white photograph
23.7 x 17.6 cm, 9 3/8 x 6 7/8 ins, paper size
52 x 42 cm, 20 1/2 x 16 1/2 ins, framed
52 x 42 cm, 20 1/2 x 16 1/2 ins, framed
Unique
© Estate Birgit Jürgenssen, Vienna
AJ notes from Hatje Cantz book: Framed at Estate Unique Signed, dated € 16,000 Studio Body I Am, 2013, Press Release: Birgit Jürgenssen’s self portraits (1978-79) are also ritualistic, in...
AJ notes from Hatje Cantz book:
Framed at Estate
Unique
Signed, dated
€ 16,000
Studio
Body I Am, 2013, Press Release:
Birgit Jürgenssen’s self portraits (1978-79) are also ritualistic, in this case through the artist painting her skin, then tying animal skulls to her forehead or looming from behind a death-mask cast from her own face and painted with skeletal features. In this group Jürgenssen dwelt not only on the notion of the ‘beautiful corpse’ but the idea in Austrian culture of ‘Frau Welt’, the personification of the idea of ‘woman’, whom patriarchal folklore viewed as being both fearful of death and a source of fatal disease. As alluring self-fetishised ‘woman’, Jürgenssen is both critiquing and counter-examining these destructive stereotypes, and those of occidental pictorial traditions.
Framed at Estate
Unique
Signed, dated
€ 16,000
Studio
Body I Am, 2013, Press Release:
Birgit Jürgenssen’s self portraits (1978-79) are also ritualistic, in this case through the artist painting her skin, then tying animal skulls to her forehead or looming from behind a death-mask cast from her own face and painted with skeletal features. In this group Jürgenssen dwelt not only on the notion of the ‘beautiful corpse’ but the idea in Austrian culture of ‘Frau Welt’, the personification of the idea of ‘woman’, whom patriarchal folklore viewed as being both fearful of death and a source of fatal disease. As alluring self-fetishised ‘woman’, Jürgenssen is both critiquing and counter-examining these destructive stereotypes, and those of occidental pictorial traditions.
Provenance
The ArtistThe Estate of Birgit Jürgenssen, Vienna, Austria
Exhibitions
Corpus, Zachęta Narodowa Galeria Sztuki, Warsaw, Poland, 1 September - 19 October 2014Publications
Schor, Gabriel, and Abigail Solomon-Godeau, eds. Birgit Jürgenssen. Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2009. Illustrated, p. 181.Landesmuseum Zürich. Birgit Jürgenssen. Zurich: Landesgalerie, 1998. Exhibition catalogue, p. 11.