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Michael ToleHannah Belle Leading Her Forces at the Battle of Trebbia2024
2024
About the Item
Michael Tole says of his work…
I was driving home from work one day and channel surfing the radio when I stopped the scanner, transfixed by a cotton candy pop melody juxtaposed with fatalistic, world-weary lyrics about the impossibility of modern romance. This was way too complex a combo for top 40 radio, and I waited through multiple other vapid pop songs to find out who the performer was. To my shock, it was Taylor Swift. Being nearly middle aged, I knew who Taylor Swift was, but had ignored her as just another teen pop Diva of a younger generation. After this blind listening, however, there was no denying her talent, her relevance, or her deep insight into romantic relationships in the contemporary world. This forced me to face several biases that had prejudiced me against her as an artist. Without ever deeply listening to the music, I had assumed that someone who was young, conventionally pretty, blonde, female, and a pop-star, would have nothing serious or relevant for me, a male, middle aged listener. I was wrong, and an inherited bias (one that taught me that grungy boys like Kurt Cobain dressed in gray flannels were serious and unaffected, and girls like Taylor Swift who wore sparkly pink sequins were frivolous and fake) had led me to dismiss an artist’s oeuvre on the basis of gendered stylistic conventions.
My two paintings, illustrating the military triumphs of Hannah Belle Barca, are explorations of our stylistic gender biases. In these works, I am transitioning the historical figure Hannibal Barca (the Carthaginian general who crossed the Alps with elephants and spent years rampaging through Roman territory) from male to female. By transitioning the general’s gender (and that of much of her army), I am reflecting the ascendancy of historical fiction that reimagine the past to reflect recent evolutions in gender and racial realities such as Bridgerton, and also the proliferation of women superheroes like Wonder Woman. In addition to transitioning the gender of the general and her army, I am also transitioning the aesthetic conventions of these scenes to one that is intentionally decorative and feminine, with pastel colors, and curlicue compositions. Battle scenes in Western art history are usually “serious” (synonymous with masculinity for most of our culture’s history since the Renaissance) and signified as such by muted color and dramatic, high contrast lighting (think of the muted color palette of the movie Dunkirk, the black and white cinematography of Shindler’s List or Goya’s Disasters of War series). By contrast, the colors and compositions for the Hannah Belle paintings are a cross between a Fragonard and a riot at a Coachella concert. The work dares the viewer to dismiss its content because of the bias against the aesthetics of femininity as constructed by pop culture divas like Taylor Swift, Megan the Stallion, and similar artists.
In my current work, I am writing letters to art history, literature, and mythology in an attempt to reflect the social changes that have reshaped our society over the past century. As part of this agenda, I explore the evolution of gender norms, power dynamics, and representation within Western visual and literary culture and what this implies for the negotiation between aesthetic pleasure, justice, and our culturally specific discourse on beauty.
The seed for this work was sewn when I caught a glimpse of my preteen daughters watching music videos on their iPad as I chopped veggies for dinner. Out of the corner of my eye I caught glimpses of music videos featuring Beyonce, Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande, Katy Perry, and Doja Cat gyrating across the tiny screen. A better parent might have snatched the iPad away, but I was overcome with hallucinatory visions of this pop diva pantheon dancing through the painted ceilings of Versailles and countless Bavarian Chapels. Watching these videos, I observed that they employed an aesthetic that rested comfortably within Baroque and Rococo parameters, exhibiting chiaroscuro, ostentatious displays of wealth, over-the-top emotionalism, fantasy, self-aggrandizement, pastel color schemes, gender fluidity (a trait more Rococo than Baroque), and heaping piles of conventionally attractive young women in provocative poses. The new themes of female agency, diversity, and inclusivity were unquestionably positive additions to Western visual culture, yet some of the similarities between Katy Perry and Fragonard left me feeling conflicted about our culture. After all, it was only a generation ago that many critics called out the Rococo as the exemplar of frivolous and exploitative decadence. So what does it mean that its aesthetic conventions are now ubiquitous in media, especially media created by and for women? Since that initial revelation, my research has expanded to include the broader fantasy industrial complex, from Hollywood to Orlando, to advertising and social media. Through their conflation of art history, mythology, literature, and pop culture, these paintings attempt to sus out the implications of the observable ascendancy of various art historical conventions currently being used in our media landscape.
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This piece has been signed by the artist on the rear of the canvas.
- Creator:Michael Tole (American)
- Creation Year:2024
- Dimensions:Height: 72 in (182.88 cm)Width: 72 in (182.88 cm)
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- Framing:Framing Options Available
- Condition:
- Gallery Location:New Orleans, LA
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU105215543282
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