Marie Antoinette

Marie Antoinette gets “borrower” credit for this entry because I, like so many others before me, use her story in aid of my own design.

I wanted to explore how books, images, and movies build a perspective on an historical figure (and often rob that figure of his or her own voice) and, at the same time, use the space to further explore some of my library work. Intermixed with the images of Marie Antoinette, in various court paintings, are books, both fiction and nonfiction, about her life as well as the Sofia Coppola film (a listing of all the books can be found below). I wrote the text.

The textual materials act as foils for her image and the underlying meaning of the Flash piece, enacting the assault even as it calls attention to the action.

Pictures in an Exhibition
2009
Flash CS4, ActionScript 3.0
Images, Text
:52

Pictures in an Exhibition
(click on the eye to begin)

A NOTE ON THE SIGNATURE THAT LED YOU HERE:
This is Marie Antoinette’s signature, reduced somewhat so that it would fit on the card. Marie had a sizeable library housed in the Petit-Trianon where it seems she read Fielding, Cervantes, and Aphra Behn. In regard to the books used in the piece, here is a listing of all titles in the order they appear: Abundance, A Novel of Marie Antoinette by Sena Jeter Naslund, Marie-Antoinette and the Last Garden at Versailles by Christian Duvernois and Francois Halard, The Hidden Diary of Marie Antoinette: A Novel by Carolly Erickson, Marie Antoinette: The Journey by Antonia Fraser, Dangerous Liaisons: Fashion and Furniture in the Eighteenth Century by Harold Koda, Andrew Bolton, and Mimi Hellman, Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution by Caroline Weber, A Scented Palace: The Secret History of Marie Antoinette's Perfumer by Elisabeth de Feydeau and Jane Lizop, and Farewell, My Queen: A Novel by Chantal Thomas.