Page 216 - Famous

BARBARA RIVERA

Lives and works in Miami, FL USA
w w w.barbararivera.com

The Victorian era was a time of abundance, but most of all gracious gentility, identification that can conceive the same subject and its social relations
when people cultivated good manners, refinement, and beautiful things. with diverse alternatives. This recycle operation offers a destabilizing, a
It was a romantic period that gathered artistic and nostalgic accessories remodeling, and a transferring of the accepted female of this era into a
from eras of the past and combined them in a personal, eclectic manner. new contemporary mode. New possibilities of interpretation arise in which
Its popularity today is reflected in the reproduction of famous paintings of the figures are recreated into other beings that are able to transcend the
the time into posters. The expanding popularity of these works continues patriarchal barriers of their original creation. My paintings are small in scale
albeit the detrimental legacy their paintings have left on the perception of to provide a contemporary version of the eighteenth century tradition of
women. My work seeks to liberate the female figure from this romanticism. decorative, fancy pictures. This tradition continued into early Victorian times
By reconsidering the rigid and essentially beautiful stereotypes that have in the more adulterated version of the ‘Keepsake’ (small engraved illustrations
fashioned the subject into an icon, there are now new possibilities of of lovely young women).

VENUS AFTER ROSSETTI, MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 8X10 IN./ 20X25 CM. PAVONIA AFTER ROSSETTI, MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 8X10 IN./ 20X25 CM.

216
FAMOUS
CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS