{"id":164,"date":"2018-01-09T09:41:00","date_gmt":"2018-01-09T14:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/site.uvm.edu\/flemingmuseumofart\/?p=164"},"modified":"2024-12-12T18:49:51","modified_gmt":"2024-12-12T23:49:51","slug":"self-confessed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/site.uvm.edu\/flemingmuseumofart\/self-confessed\/","title":{"rendered":"Self-Confessed! The Inappropriately Intimate Comics of Alison Bechdel"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>January 30 \u2013 May 20, 2018<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>In the spring of 2018, the Fleming Museum of Art presents an exhibition of the work of Alison Bechdel, spanning her illustrious, decades-long career. A renowned cartoonist and graphic memoirist who lives in Bolton, Vermont, Bechdel is a MacArthur Foundation \u201cgenius\u201d grant winner, and the third Cartoonist Laureate of Vermont\u2014a position unique to the state. Her pioneering comic strip about the lives of a group of lesbian friends, Dykes to Watch Out For, ran from 1983 to 2008 and was syndicated in over fifty alternative papers, including Vermont\u2019s Seven Days, which recently published new Dykes strips by Bechdel focused on current political events.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-vimeo wp-block-embed-vimeo wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Self-Confessed! The Inappropriately Intimate Comics of Alison Bechdel\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/259359454?dnt=1&amp;app_id=122963\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture; clipboard-write\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>In 2006, Bechdel published the graphic memoir <em>Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic<\/em>, which explores her relationship with her father, her coming out, and his possible suicide. <em>Fun Home<\/em> was a New York Times bestseller and the basis of the Tony-award winning musical of the same name. Bechdel followed up in 2012 with <em>Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama<\/em>, which follows her relationship with her mother, girlfriends, therapists, and her exploration of psychoanalytic theory. Both books are works of multilayered complexity, employing nonlinear storytelling and a rich trove of literary and historical references.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Self-Confessed<\/em> presents these primary bodies of work in depth through original drawings and sketches, while incorporating other aspects of Bechdel\u2019s creative output, from early drawings to activist ephemera to large-scale self-portraits. The exhibition also includes a model of the set for the musical<em> Fun Home<\/em>, reconstructed for this exhibition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The exhibition explores Bechdel\u2019s work as a writer, an artist, and an archivist of the self, someone who constantly mines and shares her own experiences as a way to communicate something vitally human: the quest for love, acceptance, community, and social justice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Page from Alison Bechdel&#8217;s &#8220;Fun Home&#8221;<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" src=\"https:\/\/site.uvm.edu\/flemingmuseumofart\/files\/2024\/12\/image-76.jpeg\" alt=\"Alison Bechdel's Fun Home\" class=\"wp-image-165\" title=\"Page from Alison Bechdel's Fun Home\" srcset=\"https:\/\/site.uvm.edu\/flemingmuseumofart\/files\/2024\/12\/image-76.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/site.uvm.edu\/flemingmuseumofart\/files\/2024\/12\/image-76-150x150.jpeg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Alison Bechdel (American, born 1960)<br>Page 118 from Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic<br>(New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2006)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Page from Alison Bechdel&#8217;s &#8220;Are You My Mother?&#8221;<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" src=\"https:\/\/site.uvm.edu\/flemingmuseumofart\/files\/2024\/12\/image-79.jpeg\" alt=\"Alison Bechdel's Are You My Mother?\" class=\"wp-image-168\" title=\"Page from Alison Bechdel's Are You My Mother?\" srcset=\"https:\/\/site.uvm.edu\/flemingmuseumofart\/files\/2024\/12\/image-79.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/site.uvm.edu\/flemingmuseumofart\/files\/2024\/12\/image-79-150x150.jpeg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Alison Bechdel (American, born 1960)<br>Page 234 from Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama<br>(New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Page from Alison Bechdel&#8217;s &#8220;Dykes to Watch Out For&#8221;<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" src=\"https:\/\/site.uvm.edu\/flemingmuseumofart\/files\/2024\/12\/image-78.jpeg\" alt=\"Alison Bechdel's Dykes to Watch Out For\" class=\"wp-image-167\" title=\"Page from Alison Bechdel's Dykes to Watch Out For\" srcset=\"https:\/\/site.uvm.edu\/flemingmuseumofart\/files\/2024\/12\/image-78.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/site.uvm.edu\/flemingmuseumofart\/files\/2024\/12\/image-78-150x150.jpeg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Alison Bechdel (American, born 1960)<br>Dykes To Watch Out For, \u201cThe Rule\u201d. 1985<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Alison Bechdel&#8217;s &#8220;Tour of Vermont&#8221;<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" src=\"https:\/\/site.uvm.edu\/flemingmuseumofart\/files\/2024\/12\/image-77.jpeg\" alt=\"Alison Bechdel's Tour of Vermont\" class=\"wp-image-166\" title=\"Alison Bechdel's Tour of Vermont\" srcset=\"https:\/\/site.uvm.edu\/flemingmuseumofart\/files\/2024\/12\/image-77.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/site.uvm.edu\/flemingmuseumofart\/files\/2024\/12\/image-77-150x150.jpeg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Alison Bechdel (American, born 1960)<br>from \u201cVermont,\u201d from State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America<br>(Ecco-HarperCollins, 2008)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>January 30 \u2013 May 20, 2018 In the spring of 2018, the Fleming Museum of Art presents an exhibition of the work of Alison Bechdel, spanning her illustrious, decades-long career. A renowned cartoonist and graphic memoirist who lives in Bolton, Vermont, Bechdel is a MacArthur Foundation \u201cgenius\u201d grant winner, and the third Cartoonist Laureate of &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/site.uvm.edu\/flemingmuseumofart\/self-confessed\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Self-Confessed! The Inappropriately Intimate Comics of Alison Bechdel&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10094,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[11],"class_list":["post-164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-exhibitions","tag-vermont-artists","entry"],"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Staff","author_link":"https:\/\/site.uvm.edu\/flemingmuseumofart\/author\/rlmoreau\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.uvm.edu\/flemingmuseumofart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.uvm.edu\/flemingmuseumofart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.uvm.edu\/flemingmuseumofart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.uvm.edu\/flemingmuseumofart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10094"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.uvm.edu\/flemingmuseumofart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/site.uvm.edu\/flemingmuseumofart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":169,"href":"https:\/\/site.uvm.edu\/flemingmuseumofart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164\/revisions\/169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.uvm.edu\/flemingmuseumofart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.uvm.edu\/flemingmuseumofart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.uvm.edu\/flemingmuseumofart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}