What Eileen Casey freelance journalist
wrote about Emma Barone’s Shoe Show
There is a real danger of running out of superlatives when describing Offaly Artist Emma Barone’s work. The bold colours and sassy images in Shoe Show, her latest exhibition of acrylic paintings, possess a primeval quality with a slow, sensual burn. Barone, Tullamore born, now Birr based, whose commissioned work can be seen in The World Trade Centre, Amsterdam and throughout Ireland and America, appeals not only to the intellect but to the psychological realms also. Shoe Show, at Birr Theatre & Arts Centre (October – December) may well take the simple shoe as a source of inspiration but there is nothing simple about the sub- terrainian depths Barone teases the viewer with. If Ang Lee in Marie Antoinette depicted shoes as nothing more than gorgeously frivolous confectionaries out of which champagne could be sipped in the boudoirs of Versailles, then Barone goes further, much much further. Of course there is the patina of sexual titillation emanating from the electric blues, pinks, mauves, a psychedelic film noirish appearance but sex isn’t the only subtext on offer here.
Barone says that her work ‘is spontaneous, an eruption of inner emotion’. This instinctual transference of unadulterated passion is a bold and very distinctive signature throughout this exhibition. Transformation and possession of magical powers are a major theme throughout the work. ‘Shoes have personality and ruby red flats got Dorothy home to Kansas’ Barone says. Let’s not forget either that ‘a single glass slipper helped Cinderella nab her prince, and just look at what Manolo Blahniks do for those girls on Sex in the City’.
In 1954 when Parisian Roger Vivier invented the stiletto he was nicknamed ‘the king of the heel’. Vivier wanted the bold arch of the stiletto to complement the elegance of Dior models. Since then, the stiletto has been iconic with regard to teetering phallic symbolism. Half a century later, Barone rewrites the history of women and indeed men through her depiction of surreal and imaginative imagery which literally transforms and transcends reality . Yet, at the same time, she never loses sight of the grass root fascination with women wearing the strange and the wonderful and the downright bizarre on their feet. In her own words she has ‘transformed the simple shoe into objects of desire through the medium of art’. In this, Barone could be said to be the true disciple of nineteenth century German Philosopher Frederich Nietzsche.
On art, Nietzsche is quoted as saying ‘art is not merely an imitation of the reality of nature but in truth a metaphysical supplement to the reality of nature’.
Desire is indeed a curious commodity, not least the human craving for an alternative landscape. Barone creates possibilities which the most starved imagination can respond to. Legs appear to stretch for miles, clad in giraffe patterned tights, as if about to peer over the rim of a tropical forest at sunset. Fish with cheeky pouting lips are evoked in the open toed shoes where a river of blue, glorious blue gushes through. Barone’s shoes have a back story, they are fiction and fact, Orinoco and desert, throbbing and pulsating like a tangle of slithering eels. Dominatrix and fishwife are here and the warm plump breasts of the mothering female. Cliff edge and tantalising seabed, courtesan, whore, earth mother and goddess are here. Women as chameleons is a theme, women as little girl dressing up or as a powerful, Amazonian presence with the ability to step into the many personas that the modern female inhabits.
Barone has worked in many different mediums. Interior, graphic and jewellery design, glass, mosaic and architectural ceramics. She now works in the area of kitchen design. She describes her work as being ‘like the Irish weather, constantly changing and evolving’. Her experience in animation is evident in Shoe Show which imbues the work with a playfulness which is extremely charming as well as being provocative and threatening. A wonderful combination, almost Jekyll and Hydish!. Barone says that the hidden meaning of shoes is ‘encrypted into our DNA code – we must have them’. To that encryption, and with regard to the paintings themselves in Shoe Show, is added ‘the impulse to buy has nothing to with the need – it’s the thrill of having that fabulous shoe painting that piques desire. Men want them for women and women want them for themselves. One size fits all!’.
It is this inclusivity which is really endearing about the work, the recognition that shoes and their symbolism will resonate just as much for both the crocodile patterned shoe fetishist individual as well as the wide-eyed genuinely fascinated wonderstruck male. Again, Nietzsche averred that ‘in every real man a child is hidden that wants to play’.
Eileen Casey 2007
wrote about Emma Barone’s Shoe Show
There is a real danger of running out of superlatives when describing Offaly Artist Emma Barone’s work. The bold colours and sassy images in Shoe Show, her latest exhibition of acrylic paintings, possess a primeval quality with a slow, sensual burn. Barone, Tullamore born, now Birr based, whose commissioned work can be seen in The World Trade Centre, Amsterdam and throughout Ireland and America, appeals not only to the intellect but to the psychological realms also. Shoe Show, at Birr Theatre & Arts Centre (October – December) may well take the simple shoe as a source of inspiration but there is nothing simple about the sub- terrainian depths Barone teases the viewer with. If Ang Lee in Marie Antoinette depicted shoes as nothing more than gorgeously frivolous confectionaries out of which champagne could be sipped in the boudoirs of Versailles, then Barone goes further, much much further. Of course there is the patina of sexual titillation emanating from the electric blues, pinks, mauves, a psychedelic film noirish appearance but sex isn’t the only subtext on offer here.
Barone says that her work ‘is spontaneous, an eruption of inner emotion’. This instinctual transference of unadulterated passion is a bold and very distinctive signature throughout this exhibition. Transformation and possession of magical powers are a major theme throughout the work. ‘Shoes have personality and ruby red flats got Dorothy home to Kansas’ Barone says. Let’s not forget either that ‘a single glass slipper helped Cinderella nab her prince, and just look at what Manolo Blahniks do for those girls on Sex in the City’.
In 1954 when Parisian Roger Vivier invented the stiletto he was nicknamed ‘the king of the heel’. Vivier wanted the bold arch of the stiletto to complement the elegance of Dior models. Since then, the stiletto has been iconic with regard to teetering phallic symbolism. Half a century later, Barone rewrites the history of women and indeed men through her depiction of surreal and imaginative imagery which literally transforms and transcends reality . Yet, at the same time, she never loses sight of the grass root fascination with women wearing the strange and the wonderful and the downright bizarre on their feet. In her own words she has ‘transformed the simple shoe into objects of desire through the medium of art’. In this, Barone could be said to be the true disciple of nineteenth century German Philosopher Frederich Nietzsche.
On art, Nietzsche is quoted as saying ‘art is not merely an imitation of the reality of nature but in truth a metaphysical supplement to the reality of nature’.
Desire is indeed a curious commodity, not least the human craving for an alternative landscape. Barone creates possibilities which the most starved imagination can respond to. Legs appear to stretch for miles, clad in giraffe patterned tights, as if about to peer over the rim of a tropical forest at sunset. Fish with cheeky pouting lips are evoked in the open toed shoes where a river of blue, glorious blue gushes through. Barone’s shoes have a back story, they are fiction and fact, Orinoco and desert, throbbing and pulsating like a tangle of slithering eels. Dominatrix and fishwife are here and the warm plump breasts of the mothering female. Cliff edge and tantalising seabed, courtesan, whore, earth mother and goddess are here. Women as chameleons is a theme, women as little girl dressing up or as a powerful, Amazonian presence with the ability to step into the many personas that the modern female inhabits.
Barone has worked in many different mediums. Interior, graphic and jewellery design, glass, mosaic and architectural ceramics. She now works in the area of kitchen design. She describes her work as being ‘like the Irish weather, constantly changing and evolving’. Her experience in animation is evident in Shoe Show which imbues the work with a playfulness which is extremely charming as well as being provocative and threatening. A wonderful combination, almost Jekyll and Hydish!. Barone says that the hidden meaning of shoes is ‘encrypted into our DNA code – we must have them’. To that encryption, and with regard to the paintings themselves in Shoe Show, is added ‘the impulse to buy has nothing to with the need – it’s the thrill of having that fabulous shoe painting that piques desire. Men want them for women and women want them for themselves. One size fits all!’.
It is this inclusivity which is really endearing about the work, the recognition that shoes and their symbolism will resonate just as much for both the crocodile patterned shoe fetishist individual as well as the wide-eyed genuinely fascinated wonderstruck male. Again, Nietzsche averred that ‘in every real man a child is hidden that wants to play’.
Eileen Casey 2007