Tales retold: fairy tales in contemporary European visual art

In Tales Retold, the fairy tale figures of the innocent persecuted heroine, the fairy god-mother and wicked stepmother are, in late-twentieth- and early twenty-first-century fine art reincarnations, examined through the theoretical framework of gender construction, as set down by Judith Butler and through the prism of the anti-tale. In featured European artworks, the anti-tale, through strategies of deconstruction, is played out as traditional representations of femininity are undone and made extraordinary. This paper debates visual expressions of gender and alternative iterations of femininity in fairy tale characters; it is useful for those interested in gender, fine art, fairy tales and anti-tales.