Skip to main content

Lesbos

Lesbos
/1
    • Lesbos
  • 1964
  • silver bromide photograph
  • 29,9 × 39,8 cm
Literary inspiration is particularly evident in the series "Hair," the intimate nature of which bore strong literary associations for Běla Kolářová. In Hair, she unites the distinctively feminine, archetypal, and personal material of her own wonderful hair and the hair of her closest friends under a feminine theme, a theme that recalls the stories of famous female characters from classical Greek literature (Lesbos; Ariadne’s Crown; Sadness on Naxos; Pythia; A Page from Ovid; Scylla, Nisa’s Daughter I.; Scylla, Nisa’s Daughter II; Eurydice) and the feminist lyric poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Sonnets from the Portuguese). She endorsed the personal tone of Browning, in particular. In a way similar to that of Jiří Kolář, Kolářová even arranged her “hair” material into the shapes of letters or poetic stanzas (Four Hair Curlerss; Hair Rolls, etc., 1964) or into picturesque handwriting-like curves (Hair “L”, Hair “Z”, Lianas). M.Kl.