Who's Ashamed of the Artistic Book-Smart Woman?

 

" I’m very proud of my job [as a designer]. I used to be ashamed of it because I was educated, I was a feminist."

 

Way back in the Spring I read an interview that a Guardian writer conducted with Miuccia Prada. Whenever I get frustrated with any one part of my ambitious self I always harken back to that interview.  I love what I do professionally, it earns me my daily bread and keeps me in shoes-- many, many shoes! Also I get tremendous satisfaction from it--it is food for the intellectual part of my brain. I am a lawyer by profession and I do not go to court but I write a lot---mostly laws for a bunch of countries. But I do get frustrated that my peers (maybe the men?) would think me less of a smart lawyer if I also dabbled in interior design--as if the artistic cancels out the intellectual.

 

 

 

 

But I think that had I grown up in a Western, first world country I would have done something artistic, like, become a furniture designer or some such thing. As it stands, I dabble in this blog in between spurts of scolding a smelly dog and caring for my little two year old girl. But can I honestly tell you that I started this blog because I kept being drawn to the lines of furniture, the colours of a room and the cut of a dress. I wish to do more than just law. Those bloody nuns that taught me at school gave me the impression the artistic had everything to do with all that is frivolous, vain and superficial in life and it would be shameful to pursue such things. So I can identify with Prada when she says she was ashamed of her job as a designer.

 

 

PRADA Resort 2016

 

"And in any case, if we work who cares? If you don’t work, of course you think about the problem of your wrinkles from morning until night! If you work, you have something better to think about. That is the beginning of every possible kind of pride, and with those women [who don’t work] I really have no conversation."

I especially love that in that interview Prada says that work is the beginning of every possible kind of pride. So this post is dedicated to the artistic, book-smart girl who values work--all kinds of work. And so what if you are "bookish"? Look what bookish did for Miuccia Prada--over four billion dollars profit yield in "ugly" (that word according to Giorgio Armani), bookish designs.

 

Fondazione Prada 

 

Images of the Recto Verso Exhibit at the Fondazione Prada

 

Interestingly enough, Prada started the Fondazione, in part, as a way of reconciling the bookishness with her artistic side. The Fondazione Prada will host the Recto Verso Exhibit which opens today. But isn't it just what it's about: Artistic and Intellectual/ Recto Verso? The two different things occupying the same surface/body, struggling to co-exist, spurring confusion and doubt within, but giving rise to ideas, actions, outcomes. It's simply not possible to choose between the two, simply accept them both (Albert Camus (1913-1960), L’envers et l’Endroit, 1937).

 

So tell me, am I the only woman who thinks that there are some who think that the world harshly judges the artistic as not being bookish and recto verso?

Hit the tweet button below to share with your followers.
 Tweet