Colijn Strydom is a visual artist living and working in Cape Town.

In Strydom’s words: “In the spirit of the Less Good Idea, I started with one thing, only to end up at another. My starting point was the question: how do I inhabit my body in a way that is not determined by patriarchal norms? Or, how do I queer my body - from the inside out? Being a painter, I decided to look to painting (and Google) for an answer. I (naively) googled ‘50 famous paintings of women’, with the intention of taking on the pose of each sitter, in an attempt to understand my own body differently, find in it something new, a different way of ‘wearing’ my body, or just different from the posturing I had been taught to assume as a boy.

Predictably, what I found* were all paintings by white men (except for two by Artemisia Gentileschi). It was apparent that neither European art history nor Google’s algorithm was going to offer me the opening of possibilities I was seeking. What I ended up with looks to me like a choreography of the white male gaze, awkwardly projected on to my awkward, white, male body – with a momentary interruption courtesy of Gentileschi; possibly something that both shows the gaze and undermines it.” [Google search 2 May 2020: 50 Famous paintings of women]

* Only 32 paintings were suggested, not 50, and interestingly, there was no mention of the Mona Lisa.

Strydom used the first 18 of the paintings suggested by Google in order to fit into the 52 second limit. The paintings are:

Johannes Vermeer Girl with a Pearl Earring (1665); Édouard Manet Olympia (1865); Sandro Botticelli Birth of Venus (mid 1480’s); James Abbott McNeill Whistler Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1 (1871); Gustav Klimt Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (1903 – 1907); Leonardo da Vinci Lady with Ermine (1489-1490); Francisco Goya La Maya desnuda (1797 - 1800); Frederic Leighton Flaming June (1985); John Singer Sargent Portrait of Madame X (1883 - 1884); Paul Gauguin Tahitian Women on the Beach (1891); John Everett Millais Ophelia (1851- 1852); Artemisia Gentileschi Judith slaying Holofernes (1612 - 1613); Amadeo Modigliani Nude Sitting on a Divan (1917); John Singer Sargent Portrait of Isabella Stewart Gardner (1888); Gauguin Two Tahitian Women (1899); Giorgione and Titian Sleeping Venus (1510); Rogier van der Weyden Portrait of a Lady (1460); Titian Venus of Urbino (1534).

Concept & Performance | Colijn Strydom
Curator of The Long Minute | Bronwyn Lace