michelle Vaughan

“Generations” is an ongoing project examining two centuries of royal intermarrying inside the Habsburg dynasty. The Habsburgs unknowingly played with genetic fire for their quest of pure blue blood. “Marry not war” was a strategy they used for more domination throughout Europe, conquering territories such as Austria, Hungary, Bavaria, Spain and the Netherlands during the 16th and 17th centuries.

Through their vast wealth and power, they were able to have the finest portrait artists of the time work under them. Artists such as Velázquez, Rubens, Titian, Sofonisba, Coello and a number of superb Spanish baroque painters recorded their likenesses in what are now viewed as masterpieces. I began doing research in 2010 and continue to hunt little known portraits in obscure castles or visit famous ones in world class museums.

As the family married first cousins, uncles and nieces from Austria and Spain, their offspring all began to look the same and were getting closer to homozygosity. I experimented by collecting online images which were copies of copies, and worked with them in Photoshop, digital printing, GIFs and drawings. The Habsburgs were on genetic repeat and overlap, so I pushed this concept in making new images.

Here “Generations” continues in repeated portraits of Habsburg uncle-niece unions and photographic family trees. I was also able to physically examine radiographs in the Kunsthistorisches Wien around 2013, and eventually made digital prints from other radiographs I found which reveal the underpainting of a portrait. Not only do these images show how the artist (Velázquez in this instance) might soften the sitter’s face, but chemicals in white lead paint obscure the x-ray and give the radiographs a ghostly quality which seemed like some kind of larger metaphor.

More works in “Generations” are technical and refer to inbreeding coefficient numbers found in the research papers by Spanish geneticists, Gonzalo Alvarez and Francisco Ceballos from the University of Santiago de Compostela. Each pattern can be viewed as a genetic data for ten of the family members surrounding Spanish King Philip IV. In 2011, I researched books which showed the exquisies of Philip’s grave, and copied some of the goth skulls to depict the lifespan of the individual, masked as 17th century wallpaper patterns. Using a cathedral candle as a scientific measuring device, as the candle burns down, the inbreeding increases. Artists John Powers and Man Bartlett worked with me to construct the patterns, and there were many revisions over several years.

Then finally in 2017, I brought in a graphic designer (Paper Plane Studio) to apply colors to the wallpaper so they work as a versatile system. The main colors chosen were also used in the silkscreened banners, and will be used again in future artworks for “Generations”.

In 2010, the Frick museum in New York City unveiled their prized King Philip IV by Velázquez which had been restored by Michael Gallagher, the deputy director of conservation at the Met. The Frick produced outdoor banners of the portrait which lined Fifth Avenue. After the exhibition, I acquired those banners and silkscreened Mariana on to Philip.

“Generations” has had solo shows at Theodore:Art in Brooklyn (2016), Trinta galería in Santiago de Compostela, and the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC) in Spain (2018).

I have been hand setting type over at The Arm in Williamsburg since 2009. All of my text art is from The Arm’s library collection, and I generally print with Gothic wood type. Sometimes I’ll use small metal or unique historical wood type, but I always hand set my editions and favor a Vandercook SP-15 press.

Over the year of 2011, I combed Twitter for amusing tweets from people I follow. In the beginning I was looking for witty statements by authors where I felt the same, but someone else said it better. Although as the year evolved and international events took place, I recorded these moments, too. Following the principal for Gerhard Richter’s color grid paintings, 100 Pantone colors were randomized and I handset letterpress printed each tweet in tiny editions. Each print is hand torn on thick Italian paper and is 11x14”.

The project was shown twice, once at Dumbo Art Center in 2012, and again in “Bad Words and Good Snacks” at Theodore:Art in 2018.

In 2020, this solo installation opened August 26th — 100 years since the date of the passage of the 19th Amendment — arguably the high point of unity for America’s women. It took 72 years of work from the first women’s convention in Seneca Falls (1848) which focused on achieving universal suffrage.

In the 100 years since that date, women have become increasingly divided.

While progressive women were pushing for equality, conservative women spent much of their time defending American liberty and family values.

The concept of protecting the family originated with outrage against Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1930s. To some, these welfare programs were considered intrusive and threatening to the foundations of family. They went against the kind of individualism Ayn Rand was coining during the birth of Libertarianism. Simultaneously, many of the same women began to fear the “internationalism” of both Jews and Soviets, and signed up for the propaganda and conspiracy theories behind The Red Scare.

To be a conservative woman was to protect the patriarchy which supported stable middle class American life. Common opinion in such circles was that immigrants posed a direct threat against that stability. Conservatives rejected big government, fought for individualism and family values, and slowed social progress. Conservatives sought to preserve their hard-fought or deserved station in society. A patriarchal hierarchy made sense, complete with a rigid class system (and racism).

Conservative women in power today have climbed political and corporate ranks in the same way liberal women have, through higher education, connections and hard work. During the mid-twentieth century, educated women like Phyllis Schafly organized nationally to undermine the passing of the Equal Rights Act. Today, a new generation of conservative women such as Kristjen Nielson and Betsy DeVos have furthered the movement by rolling back policies that protect women, students, children and immigrants.

I was interested in exploring stories of conservative women and their journey in shaping American values while reinforcing the patriarchal norm. Some have famous legacies; others are lesser-known women who made imprints in the law, influenced policy, or had prominent positions across faith-based communities. Collecting names of who to include became a complex, personal endeavor.

This project started in 2012 during the Leveson Inquiry in the UK, a scandal which revealed the illegal journalistic practices of hacking into cellphones by Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper News of the World. Rebekah Brooks was editor of NOTW for the period of time being investigated. The scandal involved journalists, the prime minister at the time, David Cameron, the Metropolitan Police and executives of News Corp. This was especially disruptive to Murdoch as he had to testify personally and apologize during a time when News Corp. was attempting to take over the rest of Sky News.

It was interesting to read Murdoch’s commentary on Twitter during this period, so I collected tweets from about a six month period and hand set these quotes into letterpress cards for Valentine’s Day, in different shades of pink and red.

The following year, Wendy Deng and Murdoch divorced, and I tracked property he and they owned, then sold, prior to and right after their split. At one point, I had counted 12 properties, but he was buying and selling too fast to actually keep up. Once the divorce, he downsized and sold off mansions and penthouses in 4 countries. Recently he bought and sold a townhouse in the West Village within one year. Eventually it became clear that he relished in collecting luxury real estate as a vice, these were his trophies and signifiers of his success.

From 2007 to 2009 I researched piracy from over two centuries. I was looking for both typical and unusual historical pirates spanning the entire globe. My quest was to examine the gray areas. To some, Sir Frances Drake is a celebrated captain in British history, to others, he was a pirate who pillaged and destroyed villages up and down South America. History changes depending on who is telling the story. So for each of them I created a badge of honor most of them were never given, a coat of arms. All of these individuals have fascinating pasts and are either notorious in their plundering, heroes to the underserved, mercenary criminals working both sides of the law, or in the case of some women, groundbreaking in their achievements and nonconforming while hiding their true identities. But they all have one thing in common, these dexterous sailors were true adventurers born to sail the high seas.

Also included are installation images of printed flags, banners, murals, letterpress and more from the public art project in the South Street Seaport, which was made possible by the Howard Hughes Corporation and was awarded fiscal sponsorship from New York Foundation of the Arts.

After spending several years attending the World Economic Forum, otherwise known as the WEF or simply, “Davos” - I decided to make drawings of people next to me or those I talked to inside panel discussions, dinners and cocktail parties. My husband is a journalist and covered the conference for many years so was able to invite me along. Mostly I was the quiet observer, alone for the majority of the day while he worked, but over time I navigated the conference and had access to most sessions. Davos is a bizarre environment where CEOs, politicians, innovators, human rights organizations, media, scientists, medical professionals and the art elite collide during a week of exchanging information in a high security building surrounded by high security tents. The first time I visited, I thought I was getting on a spaceship. During my last year, 2015, I finally recorded what I was seeing in a little series of drawings, and published it on the website Hyperallergic.

After reading Strapless: John Singer Sargent and the Fall of Madame X by Deborah Davis in 2013, I became fascinated by Sargent’s obsession to paint Virginie Gautreau while it was rumored he was in love with his Parisian roommate, Albert de Belleroche. He was obsessed with two people at the same time, and as he was sketching Virginie in her beach cottage in Northern France, he started daydreaming of Belleroche and sketched him instead. My interpretation was to overlay Virginie on top of Albert.

A two year photography project researching an unknown family legacy of white supremacy and slavery in Alabama. These are a selection of images from the series. Accompanying essay can be emailed upon request.