Barbara Neri

Selected works

"Double Vision" (2011)

Collage and color pencil drawing 7" W x 3 1/2" H.
This work uses the form of a 19th century stereo-card but replaces the original dual images with photographs from two movies. On the left is a photograph from the B&W movie version of Rudolf Besier's 1930 play "The Barretts of Wimpole St" about the courtship of Robert & Elizabeth Barrett Browning. On the right is a photo from the movie version of Tennessee Williams' 1947 play "A Streetcar Named Desire." In this particular scene Mitch has offered Blanche DuBois a cigarette, and she is reading the quote engraved inside the silver cigarette case. The quote is from Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "Sonnet 43" from her "Sonnets from the Portuguese."

Double Vision Script 2000

mixed-media with text

Tower of Malakoff (Valley of Death) 2010

Collage and color pencil drawing 20 1/4" W x 22 1/2" H.
"Tower of Malakoff / Valley of Death" uses two images from the Crimean War: The burial of war dead before the Malakoff Tower and The Valley of Death. These images are taken from the London Illustrated Times, circa 1855. I became intrigued with the 'Tower of Malakoff' when I read a letter written by poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning from Florence to her sister in London. She was describing the expanse of the cage crinoline (hoop skirt) and speculating as to what extreme the fashion might go and mentioned one that was called 'The Tower of Malakoff.' The 'cage crinoline' was the sub structure of mid Victorian dress. But the 'Malakoff Tower' was an earthwork built by the Russians: a complex underground fortress of tunnels and rooms carved deep in the earth where they were entrenched. There are other shapely images used in this collage: Drawings of the Duomo's structure, images of the female breast, and diagrams of Dante's vision of the universe. As I worked on this piece, I learned that an old friend was dying from breast cancer. Images, allusions and life come together across time and arouse contemplation in different ways for each of us.

Tower of Malakoff (Valley of Death) 2010

Am I out of fashion? 2009

Mixed-media with text. 17" W x 14" H.
"Am I out of Fashion?" emerges from research on Victorian women's fashion. This research is part of The EBB Project and it became part of a number of processes (performance, visual art). And it also became a lecture and article called "Creating Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Image: What she wore and what it means." I also confess that I love fashion and my closets contain items spanning decades. "Am I out of Fashion?" contains a discourse across time about what women wear and what a woman is. While the words used in fashion magazines to describe fashion are simplistic (see Roland Barthe's The Fashion System) the discourse on fashion is always about much more than fashion. So this piece engages in a political discourse about fashion and seeks to involve the viewer in that discourse. I also like using dialogue in different ways: I like writing it for plays and I like using it in visual art. The ways it can be read in each art form are different and yet the same.