Note of the Author:

 

This is the first book of a self-published project about the issue of decapitation along history, from aesthetics and art history. The project is theoretical, artistic and editorial, based on the following principles:

 

1.     This is an essay with the body of an Artist Book: a theoretical proposal as an object of art.

 

2.     The essays are original; they have never been published in a more serious way than this one.

 

3.     The editions are self-managed and low cost. Some of the copies will have colour and ink problems.

 

4.     The editions are limited and numbered.

 

5.  The addressees have been choses under the assumption that they will be interested on the project, from an aesthetic, artistic and/or a theoretical point of view.

 

6.     The shipments will be done by post, hoping to receive the feedback in the same way (constituting a documentation of the project).

 

The essay “Judith/ Salome: Decapitators in Art History. (A gender Issue)” is an adaptation of a chapter of my thesis “Decapitatio: Action and Effect of Decapitation”, written during the year 2010 in Barcelona. It doesn’t pretend to be an exhaustive research text about the subject in question, but an adaptation as a panoramic picture of a phenomenon.

 

It is no secret that the artworks and artistic movements reflect the concerns from the context in which they have been conceived. As the thesis “Decapitatio”, this essay proposes a reflection about the impact that decapitation have had in societies, and how this perception is going to influence, in its turn, artists working on the problem in question. In other words: society change, and with it, mentalities and judgments that evaluate different phenomena that are part of the human history, phenomena that will be reviewed over and over under varied perspectives.

 

Hundreds of historical or mythological characters have come back to life repeatedly from different cultural expressions, interpretations that speak, precisely, from a specific historical and social context. Judith and Salome are two of these characters, whose representation in art history has change and adjust to the discourses adopted by history, in this case, about the perception of the woman in society.

 

Daniela Hermosilla Z.

Berlin, 2012