Through a subtle game of references to art history, Mathilde Oscar immerses us in a meticulously executed scenography wherein each shot features a central female subject. Her modern take on historical themes is an enticingly clever coupling of classical painting and the digital era.
By Cécile Martet | 22 Aug 2023
Hello Mathilde, thank you for taking the time to talk to us today! First of all, can you tell us when and how your artistic career began?
I started painting and selling my work at the age of 17 (my first exhibition and sale was at an “artist’s market” on the streets of Paris in 1998). I continued to paint for a long time until one day an incident caused me to have an emotional block. I then stopped painting for a few years.
I later discovered the world of photography thanks to some photographer friends and started on a whim. Their advice as well as some internet tutorials allowed me to learn how to work with the lighting of a photo studio.
The scenography of your works takes the codes of classical painting but revisited. How do you create each set?
When I started photographing subjects, I of course always kept my background in painting always played a role in setting the scene. My studies in art history also fed my inspirations.
Classical painting in particular inspires me a lot, that’s why I often incorporate elements from the Renaissance period to the 19th century into my pictures. This is what characterizes my style.
The decorations are either hand-painted backgrounds that I create. Or like in one of my series,I worked with old master paintings that I printed on large fabrics that served as backgrounds.
It’s a bit like a theater set. I always favor the “homemade” and then add, according to the theme, decorative elements, which I find or make according to the need and inspiration.
It often happens that I search for a long time for the object or the costume that I can’t find, and I end up making it! And sometimes a costume is simply created from a few pieces of fabric knotted together, it does wonders.
The female figure is recurrent in your productions: draped, decorated with flowers, naked, etc. What messages do you wish to convey through these representations?
It would be presumptuous of me to talk about a message in my feminine representations. I think that it is more my unconscious that speaks. The naked body of the women I photograph is devoid of sexualized representation. The women I represent are innocent and pure. That’s why I get angry when social networks censor a photo that shows a nipple!
I wonder how Botticelli would have reacted to this…So maybe if we have to find a message it would be this one: vulgarity or perversion is in the eye of the beholder, while I only see beauty and purity.
The flowers and draperies are only there to sublimate and highlight this voluptuousness and romanticism. I am simply a great nostalgic, and a follower of the “classic” beauty.
Who are the artists, and in particular women artists, that have inspired you the most and still inspire you?
My inspirations often come from female artists. For the oldest, I would talk about Elisabeth Vigée Lebrun in painting. I like the softness she gives to her portraits. As a contemporary painter, I love the work of Nicoletta Ceccoli.
And then there is Frida Kahlo, whose life touches me enormously and inspires me again and again. In photography, one of the first who inspired me (and continues to do so) is Annie Leibovitz. I can’t really explain it, it’s like alchemy.
There are also some men whose work I admire! Take photographers like Eugenio Recuenco, Erwin Olaf, Paolo Roversi, and Kristian Schuller for example. But I also like other contemporary artists like Ray Caesar or Mark Ryden.
For the classical painting part: Bouguereau, Vermeer, De Vinci, Ingres, Delacroix and so on. It’s a pity that women were, at the time, not very present on the artistic scene!
Do you consider that being a woman artist today is an opportunity or a hindrance?
I can’t really say because I don’t think it’s a hindrance or an opportunity (in this day and age anyway). I have never experienced that feeling of being put aside because I was a woman and so I don’t have that feeling of injustice.
I am happy to be a woman in any case and to have this sensitivity perhaps softer and more subtle than in some male artists, but one cannot make a generalization. Inspiration comes to those who are attentive to it. Men or women!
