Mierle Laderman Ukeles: Washing/Tracks/Maintenance, 1973.

She argues that the two, Maintenance Art and Avant-garde follow two very different paths through life. This is how she defines it: The Death Instinct and the Life Instinct

• The Death Instinct: separation; individuality; Avant-Garde par excellence; to follow one’s own path to death—do your own thing; dynamic change.
• The Life Instinct: unification; the eternal return; the perpetuation and MAINTENANCE of the species; survival systems and operations; equilibrium.

Mierle Laderman Ukeles: Washing/Tracks/Maintenance, 1973.

Here she is in her own words:

I have a lovely house in the countryside. Its a perfect place for reading and writing – and for walking. Here is an attempt to capture an impression from todays walk: A rather dramatic sky, as seen through the lens of my iphone

But, you might say, we asked you to speak about women and fiction – what has that got to do with a room of one’s own?

I will try to explain …

- a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction …

I have just finished re-reading A Room of One’s Own, this time in Norwegian translation. Once again I am struck by the actuality of Woolf’s writing.

The essay A Room of One’s Own is framed as a spoken lecture. It originated out of two talks given at a university; actually the university her brothers attended. (There were however no family funding for higher education of Virginia or her sister Vanessa).

A Room of One’s Own (1929) was an immediate success with its readers; it has never gone out of print either in the UK or the US.

In my privileged part of the world equal rights are secured by the government in form of legislations, but looking around I see that even in my own democracy women are being harassed & supressed in many strange ways – especially through misogynistic religions. So – unfortunately – A Room of One’s Own delivers a still relevant critique of patriarchal societies.

The Sitting Room at Monk’s House. The armchair was one of Virginia Woolf’s favourite reading chairs. It is upholstered in a fabric designed by her sister, Vanessa 

Going back to the origin, to Woolf’s situation in 1929, biographer Hermione Lee says:

A Room of One’s Own could be read as Woolf’s own disguised economic biography

– at this point of her life, at the age of 46, after having published 6 novels +, Woolf had sufficient money to plan, build, and furnish a new room at Monk’s House in Sussex. (Her reviews and essays continued to bring in more money than her fiction).

In A Room of One’s Own Woolf claim that women need an income of £500 a year, in today’s money this would equal a middleclass income.

What is the color of your winter?

… that I find it necessary to have:

• 4 x The Waves
• 3 x To the Lighthouse
• 4 x Mrs. Dalloway
• 4 x A Room of One’s Own

To my excuse I will hastily add that one of each copy is in Norwegian … and that the latest version of A Room… was sent me for reviewing -

but even so, I must admit that this seems a bit “over the top” …

Even if this is a book on loss and sorrows, and also on getting old, it was a truly beautiful story to read. The text has a kind of rhythmic repetition which gives it some very interesting poetic qualities. It seems almost as if Didion repeat her sentences in lack of words, or the RIGHT words, indicating that this, what she is trying to tell us, is actually impossible to formulate.

Hotel Waldhaus

We had no luck with the weather and the guests at our table were repellent in every respect. They even spoiled Nietzsche for us. Even after they had had a fatal car accident and had been laid out in the church in Sils, we still hated them.

The Voice Imitator

Waldhaus Sils

People tell me my paintings are about peace. I really think they’re about tranquility. Tranquility comes when you’re resting. Your mind has stopped. You feel happy.

I have dedicated this year to studying the work of Virginia Woolf. And maybe thats why I have become more sensitive and interested in the work of female artists? Anyways – today I would like to share my love for Agnes Martin (1912-2004) with you. A love which is not restricted to her visual work, but which also include her writings. For, as you can see in my quotations, her thoughts on art are extremely well formulated. I find them very-very inspiring; hope you will too!

Beauty illustrates happiness: the wind in the grass, the glistening waves following each other, the flight of birds – all speak of happiness.

The clear blue sky illustrates a different kind of happiness, and the soft dark night a different kind. There are an infinite number of different kinds of happiness.

Agnes Martin

When I think of Art, I think of Beauty. Beauty is the mystery of life.
It is not in the eye, it is in the mind.
In the mind, there is an awareness of perfection.

And here she is in her own words

I haven’t quite figured it out yet, but there seems to be a connection – in my mind at least – between Agnes Martin and Eva Hesse. An awareness of perfection, is it?

Fiction will be much the better for standing cheek by jowl with poetry and philosophy  … For books have a way of influencing each other.

All of Woolf’s writing (according to Hermione Lee) goes in for this mixing and merging of genres: fiction, history, biography, essays, elegy, poetry, drama, are always criss-crossing and influencing each other in her work.

This is, as I see it, why Woolf’s texts are such magnificent models and ideals for one who wants to write. She is extremely inventive and free in her texts, she uses the world, arts and history in her own ways, creating new meanings, which is really something to strive for

Vanessa Bell: The Schoolroom (1937)

Lithograph on paper. In many ways this is both quintessential Bloomsbury and closely representative of Vanessa Bell’s work: the colours are strong, the patterns bold, the décor of a type Bell might herself have designed for the Omega Workshops.