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Yvonne Owens
Yvonne Owens is a past Research Fellow at the University College of London, and Professor of Art History and Critical Studies. She was awarded a Marie Curie Ph.D. Fellowship in 2005 for her interdisciplinary dissertation on Renaissance portrayals of women in art and sixteenth-century Witch Hunt discourses. She holds an Honours B.A. with Distinctions in History of Art from the University of Victoria, British Columbia, an M.A. in Medieval Studies with Distinction from The Centre For Medieval Studies at the University of York, U.K., and an M.Phil. and Ph.D. in History of Art from University College of London. Her publications to date have mainly focused on representations of women and the gendering of evil "defect" in classical humanist discourses, cross-referencing these figures to historical art, natural philosophy, medicine, theology, science and literature. Her essay, “The Saturnine History of Jews and Witches,” appeared in Preternature (Vol. 3, No. 1) in 2014, her book chapter, "Pollution and Desire in Hans Baldung Grien: The Abject, Erotic Spell of the Witch and Dragon" appeared in Angeliki Pollali and Berthold Hub, Eds., Images of Sex and Desire in Renaissance Art and Modern Historiography, her essay "The Hags, Harridans, Viragos and Crones of Hans Baldung Grien" was published as part of the Hans Baldung Grien: New perspectives on his work, International Conference Proceedings (October 18-20, 2018), Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe in 2019, and her book, Abject Eroticism in Northern Renaissance Art: the Witches and Femme Fatales of Hans Baldung Grien, Bloomsbury London, in 2020. She also writes art and cultural criticism, exploring contemporary post-humanist discourses in art, literature and new media. She is the editor for an anthology of essays titled 'Trans-Disciplinary Migrations: Science, the Sacred, and the Arts,' forthcoming from Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Supervisors: Joseph Leo Koerner, David Bindman, Tamar Garb, Susanne Kord , Rose Marie San Juan, Lyndal Roper, and Robert Mills
Supervisors: Joseph Leo Koerner, David Bindman, Tamar Garb, Susanne Kord , Rose Marie San Juan, Lyndal Roper, and Robert Mills
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Renaissance altarpieces and sculptures are fitting as the sensible foundations for her paintings in her exhibition Mirror. That time and place, like our current age, also presented transformational crises of belief—world-changing shifts in political, spiritual, and ideological power, influence, and control. Like the early twenty-first century, the early sixteenth was a time of new and old pan-demics. Bubonic plague was making the rounds of major European capitals and the rural hinterlands, and the new scourge of syphilis had just made its debut in Western Europe. The new plague was popularly blamed (along with
crop failures, disastrous weather, more standard plagues, climate problems, and much else) on the activities of witches.
Renaissance altarpieces and sculptures are fitting as the sensible foundations for her paintings in her exhibition Mirror. That time and place, like our current age, also presented transformational crises of belief—world-changing shifts in political, spiritual, and ideological power, influence, and control. Like the early twenty-first century, the early sixteenth was a time of new and old pan-demics. Bubonic plague was making the rounds of major European capitals and the rural hinterlands, and the new scourge of syphilis had just made its debut in Western Europe. The new plague was popularly blamed (along with
crop failures, disastrous weather, more standard plagues, climate problems, and much else) on the activities of witches.
“The Lady told me, eventually, how she’d taken me from my natural mother when I was but weeks old. I learned of my royal human parentage and of my destiny: to serve King Arthur at the Round Table, the magnificent board not yet delivered to him as a marriage gift from Brittany. Exactly a year and a day after this talk the long lovely days on the Enchanted Isle came to an end. The Lady brought me to Camelot. It was only then I began to fully appreciate the marvel of those years in Avalon. It was as if I’d wakened from a dream and only then could wonder at it."
He looked up at the window as his soldiers flowed around him and poured through the gate ahead of him. “How can there be peace," he replied, "as long as your idolatry, and the witchcraft of your Mother, the Great Whore, abounds? Hear this, doomed queen:
This is the word of the LORD, which He spoke through His servant Elijah the Tishbite: ‘On the plot of ground at Jezreel the dogs will devour the flesh of Jezebel. And Jezebel’s body will lie like dung in the field on the plot of ground at Jezreel, so that no one can say: This is Jezebel.’ It is Yahweh who is speaking.
He looked up at the window as his soldiers flowed around him and poured through the gate ahead of him. “How can there be peace," he replied, "as long as your idolatry, and the witchcraft of your Mother, the Great Whore, abounds? Hear this, doomed queen:
This is the word of the LORD, which He spoke through His servant Elijah the Tishbite: ‘On the plot of ground at Jezreel the dogs will devour the flesh of Jezebel. And Jezebel’s body will lie like dung in the field on the plot of ground at Jezreel, so that no one can say: This is Jezebel.’ It is Yahweh who is speaking.
Yvonne Owens reads these images against the humanist intellectual milieu of Renaissance Germany, showing how classical and medieval medicine and natural philosophy interpreted female anatomy as toxic, defective and dangerously beguiling. She reveals how Hans Baldung exploited this radical polarity to create moralising and titillating portrayals of how monstrous female sexuality victimised men and brought them low. Furthermore, these images issued from-and contributed to-the contemporary understanding of witchcraft as a heresy that stemmed from natural 'feminine defect,' a concept derived from Aristotle. Offering new and provocative interpretations of Hans Baldung's iconic witchcraft imagery, this book is essential reading for historians of art, culture and gender relations in the late medieval and early modern periods.
Attending conferences and workshops, studying contemporary form and paper-making with renowned fibre artists, she embarked on a course of creating two and three-dimensional art in her new media, including that of fine art basketry. Applying ancient, traditional materials and skills to creating contemporary sculptural form felt like a translation of her musical journey. Earlier studies in music continue to shape the tone of her work, “most notably flute study with the eminent Marcel Moyse, theory and composition with the late Dr. Sam Dolan, earning an ARCT in Renaissance Counterpoint and later, music improvisation with Freddie Stone.” According to Minden, these extraordinary mentors still imbue her process with meaning and ideas.