Bastienne Schmidt: Typology of Women

For her latest publication, Typology of Women, German-born, Hamptons-based mixed-media artist Bastienne Schmidt (born 1961) has created a series of hand-painted orange cutouts of different types of women as they have been represented in different historical periods, in popular culture and in literature. The clarifying, codifying logic of the typology—the systematic classification of types that have characteristics in common—is undermined by Schmidt’s spare, enigmatic silhouettes. Referencing ancient Greek pottery, Japanese woodcuts, American pop culture and fairy tales, Schmidt’s figures are vaguely familiar and recognizably female but often seem to dodge exact classification. Also inspired by the rigorous systematic method of Bernd and Hilla Becher and the politics of Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, Typology of Women expresses both the reduction of the represented female form and its almost infinite diversity.