Reading is a personal and private experience. For all its essential intimacy, however, you can watch people in this act in almost any public setting. Carrie Schneider’s “Reading Women,” on view now at the Haggerty Museum of Art, draws on the historical, intellectual and personal resonances of engaging with the printed page through her video and photographic projects.
The video, Reading Women, acts as the starting point for Schneider’s work. The four-hour long piece focuses attention on a different person reading for several minutes at a time. The place each woman is seated at is usually in her home, curled on a couch or lounging in a chair in the style of bohemian chic. The light seems to indicate some mid-afternoon period, a nondescript time when sunshine bathes the subject without the drama of glare or dark shadows, but provides a glowing, gentle luminosity.
We watch as the women’s eyes dart over the page. Sometimes they hold a pencil for annotations, sometimes a painted nail underlines text as their eyes follow along. While it is not apparent in the video, the titles of photographs note that they read the work of female authors. Schneider engages us in the act of viewing women as autonomous intellectuals, as well as considering the legacy of feminine creativity.
What this project also does is challenge longstanding traditions of women as subjects in art. We observe these women in the video and the still photographs, but always remain at a distance from the experience of the moment. Even on the occasion when a woman sheds tears over a particularly powerful passage, we do not know what words are written on the page. By fixating on this private act, Schneider seeks to reestablish the independent authority of the female subject.
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“Reading Women” is complemented by a set of exhibitions that also address aspects of women in art. A historical overview is offered through “Page Turners: Women and Letters,” which investigates women in educational and intellectual circles, as well as additional exhibits on women in Japanese prints and a display of artworks celebrating Joan of Arc.
In addition to “Reading Women,” “Page Turners: Women and Letters,” “Bijinga: Picturing Women in Japanese Prints” and “Joan of Arc: Highlights from the Permanent Collection” are on view through May 22 at the Haggerty Museum of Art (13th and Clybourn streets).
Curator Hilary K. Snow will speak about “Bijinga: Picturing Women in Japanese Prints” on Tuesday, April 5, from 11 a.m.-noon.
