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Francesca Woodman , (Apr 3, 1958–Jan 19, 1981)

Door #4

1976
5 in. x 5 1/8 in. (12.7 cm x 13.02 cm)

Medium and Support: gelatin silver print on paper

Credit Line: museum purchase

Accession Number: 1977.12

Commentary

When the Addison Gallery purchased her photographs in 1976, Francesca Woodman was 18 years old and beginning her studies at the Rhode Island School of Design. Before her untimely death in 1981, she produced a powerful and sophisticated body of work exploring the human body in architectural space. House series (1975–78) was made in an abandoned house in Providence, Rhode Island. In it, Woodman used herself as subject. She is seen in dilapidated, gothic-like interiors, alternately nude or clad in a vintage dress, slipping between visibility and invisibility, sexuality and innocence. As feminist art historian Abigail Solomon Godeau has remarked of the images, the house—a space of woman’s seclusion and worldly exclusion—“not only imprisons, it consumes.”

Gallery label for Walls and Beams, Rooms and Dreams, January 23 - July 31, 2016

When the Addison Gallery purchased her photographs in 1976, Francesca Woodman was only eighteen years old and just beginning her studies at the Rhode Island School of Design. Before committing suicide in 1981 at the age of 22, she produced a powerful and extraordinarily sophisticated body of work exploring the human body in architectural space and issues of self-representation. At RISD, the artist developed what would become a signature approach to her work, often taking class assignments and developing them into extended serial explorations. Her House series (1975-78) was made in an abandoned house in Providence where, using her body as her primary subject, she staged interventions with the architecture, posing with precariously positioned doors, mantelpieces, and strips of peeling wallpaper. Moving through the dilapidated, gothic-like interior, the artist’s figure, which is alternately nude or clad in vintage dress, slips back and forth between visibility and invisibility, sexuality and innocence. In this image of the artist’s blurred figure crouching behind a fireplace, her body seems to dematerialize and meld with the house itself. As feminist art historian Abigail Solomon Godeau has remarked, in these photographs the house—a space of woman’s seclusion and worldly exclusion—“not only imprisons, it consumes.”

Allison Kemmerer
Mead Curator of Photograph and Curator of Art after 1950

Exhibition List

This object was included in the following exhibitions:

Sculpture in Context Addison Gallery of American Art , 4/17/1999 - 7/31/1999
Physical Presence: Photographs from the Collection Addison Gallery of American Art , 1/16/2004 - 3/21/2004
Missing: Photographs from the Collection Addison Gallery of American Art , 11/16/2004 - 1/10/2005
In Focus: 75 Years of Collecting American Photography Addison Gallery of American Art , 4/28/2006 - 7/31/2006
Inside, Outside, Upstairs, Downstairs: The Addison Anew Addison Gallery of American Art , 9/7/2010 - 3/27/2011
Exterior Spaces, Interior Places Addison Gallery of American Art , 9/2/2014 - 1/4/2015
Walls and Beams, Rooms and Dreams: Images of Home Addison Gallery of American Art , 1/23/2016 - 7/31/2016
The Body: Concealing and Revealing Addison Gallery of American Art , 9/1/2018 - 3/31/2019

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