False Image Postcards 1968

This is one of Christina Ramberg’s False Image Postcards. I can imagine her working on this at her home in Chicago. What a strange and marvelous image! A sort of ink drawing made of many small dots and dashes. It's a figure from the back, shoulders, and elaborate beehive hairstyle. Maybe copied from a photograph? What was Ramberg thinking as she was making it? I can imagine her wanting to capture the essence of mid-century female identity. The hair is so dominant. It is not just a head of hair, but an aesthetic construction, literally built up, dense, a world of its own. There's something very poignant in the way Ramberg captures the way women perform femininity. It seems that artists like Ramberg are in an ongoing dialogue about image-making, inspiring us to consider new perspectives on the world. Painting is an embodied expression, an evolving language that embraces ambiguity, and Ramberg speaks it fluently.