INTERIOR LANDSCAPE OR

THE VARIOUS WAYS OF “BEING AT HOME”

In 1916 John William Waterhouse made this evocative painting of one of the summits of universal literature: Giovanni Boccaccio Il Decamerone, written just after the Black Plague, the pandemic that devastated half Europe and marked the beginning of a new age. Boccaccio's work is structured in one hundred stories, told for ten days by ten young people, who retreat to the outskirts of Florence during the ravages of the plague, thus making the confinement more manageable.

We want to make from this place a modest visual proposal, through an image gallery, of how the history of art has represented the fact of "being at home". More than 500 images of modern and contemporary age and of figurative character, simply searching for the visually "empathic" resource with our everyday life.

We have divided the gallery into different sections that want to cover different aspects of what "being at home" is: from the presence of children, shared spaces, leisure, privacy (alone or in company), through the reading or down time doing nothing. The house as a healing space or a refuge from which to look outside through the window, but also the house as a space for conflict and, sometimes, a space for abuse or how "having a house" is not equivalent to having a home.

We will see how so many artistic representations have been crossed by gender stereotypes or how art has also contributed to sustaining this social and symbolic construction throughout much of history, and where we have to make it difficult to introduce images with men into this domestic space; privative of women and children. All in all, also introducing at least a third of the images corresponding to the work of women artists who also present their vision of everything that happens "from the inside." Parity may not have been absolute, but the gender perspective is meant to be, such as sexual and body diversity, even in small quantities.

We hope that from your "own room", the virtual walk through this "interior landscape" will be enjoyable.