This essay was written for the 2024 Write on Art prize, winning second place in the Year 10 & 11 category.
A little mouse playing a banjo is watching you. No one else is. Even the central artist figure doesn't meet your gaze. Instead she spreads her legs wide, taking up space to assert her dominance. Her chunky, black boot emerges from swathes of her blood-red skirt as she blows idly into her pipe.
Her power is evident as she looms over her comically small male apprentices. However while the strength of a woman artist is celebrated in this painting, her stance is one of traditional masculine power. The composition, scale and stance of the sitter resemble traditional male portraits of power throughout art history, with Paula Rego using this recognisable format to challenge how society continues to be haunted by the idea that a woman can only be perceived as powerful by mimicking these figures. Yet, despite these patriarchal connotations of her 'manspreading' position, the artist is still presented as powerful. The painting sings with progression and strength despite further boundaries to overcome; here she is, a respected artist with her own studio and someone who men look up to and learn from.
The little mouse playing the banjo is peeking through the cabbages on the table. The artist rolls her eyes at this set up still life. This simple and tedious task of painting cabbages could reference the times in art history when women were permitted only to paint still lifes, never the human figure. The artist is tired by the constraints that are placed on her – her ability to do more than paint cabbages is obvious from the array of figurative stone sculptures and a stylised painting of a dove behind her.
Why then, in this scene of a powerful woman artist, did Rego depict this little mouse playing the banjo and why is it watching you? There it is, standing upright in its blue suit as a symbol of absurdity in an otherwise real-world image. The peculiarity of the mouse reminds you this scene is a constructed fantasy, not real life: just as it is absurd in real life for women to be perceived as powerful artists in our society. Yet even if they are, Rego highlights the constraints and prejudices that come with this perceived power. Perhaps it is less absurd for a mouse to play the banjo than it is for a woman to be viewed as a powerful artist.
Nancy Edwards
