Another History of Art is an alternative version of art history, in which great works have been created entirely by women and irreverently imagined by Kunz. In this collection she has created her own versions of some of the most iconic paintings in the history of art, as if they had been painted by women. Conceived with delicious wit, humour, and an eye for the telling aesthetic detail, Kunz's recreations are not only stunning paintings in their own right but a sly, revisionist social commentary on the male-dominated history of Western civilisation. And it’s telling just how many of these master/mistresspieces involve naked female bodies.
What would the same paintings everyone is so familiar with look like drawn by Renée Françoise Magritte, Fiona Bacon, Davina Hockney, Leona Da Vinci, Gertrude Klimt, Henrietta Matisse, Francesca Goya, Paola Picasso, Fernanda Victoria Eugenia Delacroix, Wilhelmina Ottilia Dix, and over fifty other artists? Another History is your chance to find out. Included, on each page opposite the painting, is a biography of each woman artist.
Kunz describes the origins of Another History as a way of balancing her paid commercial illustration work: ‘Maybe twenty years ago I started doing my own work. I wasn’t getting the kind of freedom that I liked anymore in the publishing world, and I just started trying other things. So I made a whole bunch of famous paintings from my own perspective of how women might have done them, and eventually Another History of Art became a book. I sort of re-did a lot of iconic paintings as if I had done them. It’s a pretty cheeky thing I know!’
We have just included here some of the paintings; the hardback book is published by Fantagraphics – do go and buy it!
The paintings shown here are:
The Three Gibbons (Sandra Botticelli)
The Daughter of Man (Renée Francoise Magritte)
Nude with Louboutins (Elsa Schiele)
Study after Innocenta XX (Fiona Bacon)
The Stigmata (Guida Reni)
The Woman in the Pool (Davinia Hockney)
Portrait of a Lady with a Titi (Dame Petra Paula Rubens)
Lena and the Swan (Michelangela Buonarrata Simoni)
Woman with Monkeys (Leona Da Vinci)
The Tamarin Dancers (Henrietta Matisse)
Queen with Crown (Jeanne-Michelle Basquiat)
Simia and One of her Sisters (Anonymous)
Nightmare with Ape (Helena Fuseli)
Nude Study of a Chick (Fernanda Victoria)
Self-portrait with Wardrobe Malfunction (Alda Dürer)
The Girl with Zero Fucks to Give (Franka Hals)
The Two Graces and a Woman (Hanna Von Aachen)
Bat Woman (Alba Penot)
Natasha Reclining (Georgia Barbarella da Castelfranca)
Venus Rising after a Dip (Titiana Vecelli)
Seated Girl with Scar (Augusta Renoir)
Pieta with Macaque (Edwina Manet)
Self Portrait with Orb (Roosje Van Rijn (Rembrandt))
The Bathing Bunny (Wilhelmina-Adolpha Bouguereau)
Dark Days (Dame Antonia Van Dyck)
Duck out of Water (Jeanne-Augusta-Dominique Ingres)
The Dream of Archie (Jeanne Desirée Gustava Courbet)
The Four Phases (Spring) (Antonia Lucia Vivaldi)
The Four Phases (Summer) (Antonia Lucia Vivaldi)
The Four Phases (Fall) (Antonia Lucia Vivaldi)
The Four Phases (Winter) (Antonia Lucia Vivaldi)
