Week XI

Developing The Brand

This week is the starting point of the development process for my brand. Firstly, we will focus on the name, brainstorming different options and ideas that could adjust to the project's general language and feel.

The process begins going back to where this project started. I’m not that interested in people knowing the artist’s artworks, their biographies, or the day they were born. I would love to just bring them out of the dark of historical memory and out into the popular imaginary, just like everyone knows the name of Leonardo Da Vinci, Picasso or Michelangelo without necessarily knowing much else about them. 

There are some first ideas that came to mind in Isobel’s class, in which she recommended including a painting technique in the naming:

Naming The Women / Restoring Their Names / The Great Restoration / Revival - Reinstate / Chiaroscuro (each one of them has its own technique) / Restoring Their Portraits / The Portrait Of A Name / Restoring The Female Portrait / Old Mistresses and Their Restoration / The Old Mistresses Restoration / Restoring The Forgotten / A Restoration of the Forgotten

A Restoration Of The Forgotten

Naming The Women Behind The Portraits

After some research I have noticed that there are no previous existent exhibitions with that name, so for the moment I’m going to stick with it. First, I used the word restoration, whose meaning worked nicely for this project. But to express the artists I’m “restoring”, it was more difficult not to fall into the “Women Artist” trope and make it more poetic. I love the sound of the title per se, although I’m not sure if The Forgotten downgrades the positive perspective Restoration has. But it has a nicer ring to it, and it’s briefer, than what I was brainstorming. I think that the subtitle will remain like that, as I think it explains quite well the project without sounding repetitive or falling into clichés in art.

Restoration

[from the verb restaurare]

1. The action of returning something to a former owner, place, or condition.

2. The process of restoring a building, work of art, etc. to its original condition.

3. The reinstatement of a previous practice, right, or situation.

4. A model or drawing representing the supposed original form of an extinct animal, ruined building, etc.

Reframing

1. Frame or express (words or a concept or plan) differently.

2. Frame or put together again, fashion anew.

2. Reframing, in the therapeutic sense, is about looking at a situation, thought, or feeling from another angle.

The goal in reframing is to be more accepting of yourself through positive self-talk so that you learn to believe it to be true. Word-forming element meaning "back, back from, back to the original place;" also "again, anew, once more," also conveying the notion of "undoing" or "backward," etc. (Etymon, 2023).

One of the posters by the Museo Nacional del Prado’s exhibition in 2019 (El Prado, 2020). This is the mood and feel I’m going for: their faces and their names in big picture.

1. About #5WomenArtists | National Museum of Women in the Arts (2023). Available at: https://nmwa.org/support/advocacy/5womenartists/.

2. Origin and meaning of reframe (no date). Available at: https://www.etymonline.com/word/reframe#:~:text=reframe%20(v.),%2B%20frame%20(v.).

3. Historia de dos pintoras: Sofonisba Anguissola y Lavinia Fontana - Exposición (2020). Available at: https://www.museodelprado.es/actualidad/exposicion/historia-de-dos-pintoras-sofonisba-anguissola-y/5f6c56c8-e81a-bf38-5f3f-9a2c2f5c60eb.

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