Paula Rego: Nursery Rhymes

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She further went on to receive honorary degrees: a Master of Arts from the Winchester School of Art in 1992, Doctorate of Letters from the University of St Andrews and the University of East Anglia, both in 1999, [8] the Rhode Island School of Design in 2000, the London Institute in 2002, and the University of Oxford and Roehampton University in 2005. In 2011 she was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Lisbon and in 2013 she was elected Honorary Fellow of Murray Edwards College, Cambridge, receiving an honorary doctorate of letters from the University of Cambridge in 2015. [2] Lopes, Isabela Pereira (10 December 2020). "DIÁRIO DA QUARENTENA DE UMA PROFESSORA DA INFÂNCIA: APROXIMAÇÕES COM BOAVENTURA, AGAMBEN E KRENAK". Revista Interinstitucional Artes de Educar. 6 (4). doi: 10.12957/riae.2020.52249. ISSN 2359-6856.

Her imagery can be confrontational, dazzlingly so: "Paula takes you to uncomfortable places – Jung called it the Shadow. They are taboo areas, where love and cruelty touch each other, and our drives and fears live," says Crippa. These unclear boundaries are "exactly where she likes to put us… Yet they're drawn with infinite compassion. She takes us on that journey of empathy." Iona and Peter Opie, The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1952 Portfolio Dame Paula Rego – Person – National Portrait Gallery". National Portrait Gallery, London . Retrieved 8 June 2022. In 1995, Rego used pastels to revise the story of Snow White in her drawing Swallows the Poisoned Apple. [17] In her work, Snow White is pictured after she has eaten the poisoned apple and appears older and in some type of physical pain. She "lays clutching her skirts, as if trying to cling to life and her femininity which are slipping away". [18] This was done to show what a female goes through during the processes of life [19] and ageing over the years, as well as showing the "physical and psychological violation" age plays in a female's life. [20] At the time the artwork was made, Rego was about 60 years old and her age did play a significant part in this artwork.Saligmen, Patricia (ed.). An American Passion – The Susan Kasen Summer and Robert D. Summer Collection of Contemporary British Paintings, (1995). [8]

In 2004, Rego asked her model Lila Nunes to pose for a series of large pastels titled Possession I–VII. It was inspired by late 19th century photographs of medical lectures showing women diagnosed with ‘hysteria’. This term was used to describe a wide range of psychological conditions, and has shaped prejudices about women’s assumed weak mental constitution. At the time, some believed hysteria to be ‘demonic possession’.Open Secrets – Drawings and Etchings by Paula Rego, University Art Gallery, University of Massachusetts, USA (1999) [62] Paula Rego's work got her important recognition fairly early on in her career but it was in particular after the 1990s, when the artist was already in her fifties, that she became a fundamental reference not only in Portuguese and English art circles, but all over the world. She was regularly invited to produce work for galleries and specific exhibitions, often establishing a dialogue with their collections. In 1990, she was appointed the first Associated Artist of the National Gallery in London. The bold, distinctive style of Paula Rego’s paintings has acquired for her not only an ever-increasing critical reputation but also an unusually large and enthusiastic following. Her be-ribboned little-girl heroines and fairy-tale characters seem firmly rooted in childhood, yet the innocence of this art is darkened by the underlying themes of power, domination and rebellion, sexuality and gender, that run through her work. Here Rego has turned to the nursery rhyme as a source for her imagery. It is a genre that perfectly complements her art; full of double meanings, rhymes are written from a child’s perspective but are open to adult interpretation. Twenty-six well-known nursery rhymes are accompanied by a series of etchings which she has executed spontaneously as a child might, drawing directly on the plate without preparatory planning. Following the traditions of earlier artists such as Beatrix Potter, she treats the fantastic realistically, dressing animals in human costume and using dream-like dislocations of scale. These are wonderfully comic and rich illustrations with a hint of the sinister, that turn classic nursery rhymes into colourful stories about folly and delusion, cruelty, convention and sex. Willing, Victor. Paula Rego: Paintings 1982 – 3 Arnolfini, Bristol; Galerie Espace, Amsterdam, (1983). [8] Rosenthal, T. G. (2012). Paula Rego: the complete graphic work. London: Thames & Hudson. ISBN 978-0-500-09368-9. OCLC 776773689.

Paula Rego: The largest and most comprehensive retrospective of Paula Rego's work to date, Tate Britain, London (2021) [67] Rosengarten, Ruth (2011). Love and authority in the work of Paula Rego: narrating the family romance. Manchester [England]: Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-0-7190-8070-8. OCLC 662578198. Rego’s fascination with storytelling has never faded. She has spent her life listening out for stories and turning them into pictures. The 1990s was a particularly productive period. Working in oil and acrylic paint, watercolour, and etching and aquatint, Rego took inspiration from a wide range of sources. Her series of Nursery Rhymes prints from 1989 illustrate traditional British children’s songs. Rego was delighted by the strangeness of these rhymes, which she highlights in her prints. About the Associate Artist Scheme | Learning | National Gallery, London". www.nationalgallery.org.uk . Retrieved 8 March 2016. She died after a short illness on 8 June 2022 at the age of 87 and was buried with Victor Willing in Hampstead Cemetery. [44] Style and influences [ edit ]Rego herself has said that the image is a response to photographs published in newspapers during the early days of the Iraq War. Upon seeing the horrors of certain images, she decided, "I would do a picture about these children getting hurt, but I turned them into rabbits' heads, like masks. It's very difficult to do it with humans, it doesn't get the same kind of feel at all. It seemed more real to transform them into creatures". Indeed, in transforming people into animals, Rego considers how we place sympathy and furthermore, what capacity we have to deal with extreme inhumanity. Perhaps it becomes easier/possible to engage with tragedy only when images are transformed to give other dimensions to what is otherwise one dimensional and indigestible explicit violence.