Women Tired of Wesrtern Artqwomen Tired of Western Art

Analysis by A. Evans, Masterworks Fine Art Gallery
Updated 3:38 AM ET, Tue March 26, 2018

• Beyond Frida, O'Keeffe, female person artists' influence on Fine art History vs. gender equality don't necessarily overlap
• Women are portrayed equally passive, powerless for the enjoyment of men in nineteen^th/20^th c. art
• Popular female person artists in the 19^th/twenty^th c. full-bodied on individualism while other f emale artists critiqued the patriarchy directly
• Gender inequality guides Art History, and teaching must include its glaring presence

The field of study of, or inspiration to, fine fine art is oft a woman. Withal, the women involved in fine art's history go beyond the final production'south mastic composition. Some of them earned their fame from their sheet, while others used the deviance of their art as a weapon against their oppressors.

A common summary of women in Fine art History goes like this:

- Mary Cassatt'southward mother and kid, and her relationship with Edgar Degas that got her recognized by the Impressionist circle in Paris
- Georgia O'Keeffe's flowers, and her relationship with photographer Alfred Stieglitz who put her in the limelight
- Frida Kahlo's self portraits, and her relationship with Diego Rivera

And then in that location's the famous female person subjects of Fine art History. Going beyond Mona Lisa's smile, Warhol's Marilyn obsession or Picasso's fleeting adoration of Jacqueline, permit the states focus on those female artists who influenced the last few centuries of gender equality, whether through art or activism.

"This is so proficient yous wouldn't know it was done by a woman."

-- German painter Hans Hoffmann'due south (1880-1966) compliment to Expressionist Lena "Lee" Krasner (1908-1984)^[one]

Women subjects of both male and female artists are commonly passive and powerless, so much to the point that citing specific works is unnecessary; just think of almost any famous painting of a adult female and she will likely lack any substantial agency. Since men dominated the purchasing of art^[ii], this defines the male gaze^[three]: Female power is unattractive to men.

The somewhat passive expression of "Girl with a Pearl Earring" (1902), credited to Johannes Vermeer. Withal, the female person field of study may take also been the artist[iv]. The headdress offers a inkling: the artist chose to forego the common azurite paint and instead she wore the deep blueish pigment of the semi-gem, Lapis Lazuli.

 

Albeit less famous than other works of their time, at that place are historical works created by women that depict a woman with bureau and purpose, and paying little listen to what was expected of a female subject or of a female artist.

Examples are Sofonisba Anguissola showing women not likewise happy almost their uncomfortable attire, Elisabetta Sirani drawing her own blood to prove she is not weak in the face of torture ^[5], and Artemisia Gentileschi'south artistic reaction to her sexual attack, as seen here, here, here (a rape victim, Lucretia, raising her bosom, possibly to amend expose her heart, before she took her own life), here, and here (detect the thumbscrew, which was the same tool used to examination her virginity ^[9]).

Sofonisba Anguissola's The Chess Game (1555) shows her and her sisters wearing proper formal wear but with expressions suggesting that their heavy, thick vesture were uncomfortably stiff. Anguissola portrayed individuals as they were rather than as they wanted to exist seen. In this piece, they are also playing chess, a game of logic considered better suited for men. ^{[half dozen]}

 

Portia's blood matches her dress of the same color, cartoon her own blood to enter into the earth of men, painfully proving the lengths women must get to in order to be taken seriously. "Portia wounding her thigh" (1664) by Elisabetta Sirani.

Her female friend heard Artemisia Gentileschi'due south cries for assist while she was being raped by her art tutor and another man, but her pleas were ignored. Artemisia had to evidence her virginity to be considered a victim. The eventual trial institute one of her rapists guilty, only with no punishment given. Her works thereafter depict a articulate stab at the patriarchy in tearing style. In Artemisia's "Judith Beheading Holofernes" (1614–xx), she and another woman are forcefully penetrating the powerless man, roofing the bed linens in blood. ^[eight]

 

In a time when the portrayal of a powerful woman was non desired in art, but her love for her human was a common focal indicate, a crossroads was created where a female artist must determine whether she wanted one or the other, but not both.

Powerful female figures in world history, such as Cleopatra and Joan of Arc, are ofttimes depicted as beautiful women. However, historical accounts of Cleopatra lack descriptions of physical dazzler. Jehanne d'Arc'south (Joan of Arc's) ^[10] appearance seemed to be of piffling importance during her lifetime, but her depictions in art testify her as increasingly cute over time every bit folklore set in. King Charles VII'due south chamberlain described her:

This daughter is reasonably expert-looking, and with something virile in her begetting... has a happy expression; and then smashing is her strength in the endurance of fatigue that she could remain completely armed during vi whole days and nights.

Despite the lack of historical chief sources to cite, attaching beauty to these women in art infers that their power came from the one allowable source of female power: a woman that potent must take been extremely beautiful.

Side note: d'Arc'southward beauty is lightly mentioned by her fellow soldiers, but more than importantly, they mention how those feelings of lust were diminished in her presence, "and it seemed that this was almost miraculous." Her presence is even described as nullifying the thoughts and discussions of sexual desires by her fellow male person soldiers.

"Well-behaved women seldom make history."

Pulitzer Prize winning historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's famous quote and her essay of the same name, "Well-behaved women seldom make history",  highlights how the insubordination by notable women is often a requisite for them being written into our history books. All the same, does this concur truthful for the female artists of Art History?

Camille Claudel (1864-1943)

The kneeling woman is successfully pulling the passive homo dorsum toward her in the offset version of The Age of Maturity (1894-1900), by Camille Claudel

The kneeling woman has nigh lost her grip on the man being led away from her in this final version of The Age of Maturity (1894-1900), by Camille Claudel.

French sculptor Camille Claudel (1864-1943) (pictured at the meridian of this article) was described equally

"a revolt against nature: a woman genius." ^[xi]

This same art critic follows up that being a woman unfortunately overshadows her genius, and that "if she were a man, she would have great success."

The first version of Camille Claudel's The Age of Maturity (1894-1900) centers around a male figure who seems passive, to the point of almost collapse ^[12] while being guided past ii women in opposite directions. The five-twelvemonth progression of this work began with 1 of the women successfully pulling the man toward her, and ends with that same woman's weakened grasp begging for him to stay. (This final version may have been destroyed by Claudel herself.) Although Claudel touched on mutual themes, this impassioned sculpture uniquely emphasizes the adult female's disharmonize and deemphasizes the male. When looking at all of her works together, one can infer that we are witnessing her personal struggle between wanting to be strong and wanting to be loved.

Mary Cassatt (1844-1926)

A woman reading the news through opera spectacles, but still indoors and wearing a dress. Mary Cassatt, Reading 'Le Figaro', 1878.

American Impressionist Mary Cassatt (1844-1926) emphasized the strongest human bail that simply exists between a mother and her child. She also emphasized a woman's right to vote ^[13]. As a Parisian "New Woman" in the Victorian era, she exercised control over her own life—personal, social, and economic—while nonetheless being considered a well-behaved proper Victorian adult female. However, another version of the New Adult female at that same fourth dimension "wore pants and was delighted in upsetting the status quo... She craved sensation."

Cassatt was 1 of the first American women to showroom at the acclaimed Paris Salon in 1872, and she remains 1 of the about well-known figures in Art History today.

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986)

Georgia O'Keeffe opined that if you see female anatomy in her flowers, that is but your own opinion, such every bit "Flower of Life Ii, 1918".

"I have already settled information technology for myself so flattery and criticism become downwardly the same drain and I am quite free," said Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986) of her critics who claimed to know her artistic intentions. "Yous write about my blossom equally if I think and run into what you think and see – and I don't." She was insistent on being considered an artist and not a female artist, and consistently denied the validity of Freudian interpretations of her art. She considered her fine art about "putting the right thing in the right place." ^[14]

Although O'Keeffe was not outspoken on gender equality, her influence on the topic is evident through her independent personality. Despite her lack of activism, creative person Judy Chicago (born 1939) gave O'Keeffe a prominent place in her popular installation of famous female figures in The Dinner Party (1979) ^[fifteen].

Frida Kahlo (1907-1954)

Mexican surrealist painter Frida Kahlo's (1907–1954) personal reflection of reality was rife with her ongoing physical pains and psychological state. She's quoted as maxim,

"I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality."

Kahlo'south utilize of "jolie laide" (French term, translates to "beautiful ugly") direct challenges the constant pairing of female person power with physical dazzler. Her subjects' unsympathetic expressions challenge the commonality of the passive woman, and have no interest in appeasing the male gaze. Instead of a litany of muses, she described her employ of herself as her discipline, "I am my own muse, I am the subject field I know the best." Her legacy lives on across her fine art and beyond her popular relationship. Unlike her personal life, her legacy lives comfortably in Mexican, American, and Art History equally an individual who wore her struggles on her sleeve, with niggling regard for the patriarchy.

Pussy Riot (2011-nowadays)

As their name shamelessly states, the Russian punk rock grouping Pussy Riot (2011-present) uses their artistic talents, from music to visual arts, to stage guerrilla performances centering around the need for equal rights. Forth with their anti-authoritarian stance, mainly against Russian president Vladimir Putin, the all-female group related to the women of the 2010s much like riot grrrl and Guerrilla Girls of the previous decades.

Their female person-empowering stance was seen as so subversive by the Russian church that the (appropriately named) Patriarch of Moscow considered the movement "very dangerous, considering feminist organisations proclaim the pseudo-freedom of women". What?

From beingness arrested for "hooliganism", to being imprisoned for two years, to being horsewhipped and defenselessly beaten in public by male police force (video), Pussy Riot has continued their protest in the form of curated art exhibitions (video) as their adjacent platform for the same cause.

Conclusion

Women were barred from receiving teaching from prestigious fine art schools, such as the acclaimed École des Beaux-Arts in French republic until 1897, and were still mostly encouraged to pursue art forms like textiles, considered "decorative arts", and not "fine art" ^[17]. If a adult female took involvement in painting or printmaking, she was to concentrate on landscapes, and, at best, portraiture of famous figures ^[18], but rarely of historical events. Thin education and narrowed discipline affair offered the "well-behaved" woman artist of the 19th and 20th centuries a sliver of the spotlight of their male counterparts, but some of those women who chose to follow their own paths still constitute their place in Art History and in the history of promoting gender equality.

The works of Mary Cassatt and Georgia O'Keeffe remain some of the most recognized works from female artists. Is this because they didn't colour outside the lines of what was expected of them when they created their fine art?

Other much bottom known artists like Artemisia painted a adult female's struggle in a society dominated by men'due south forceful nature, and likewise examined the importance of solidarity betwixt women.

And then at that place's the famed Frida Kahlo, i of the nigh famous artists in modern Art History, whose works draw the internal hurting of a person who refused to create anything just what her mind's eye saw.

These women's fame is oftentimes attributed to a man in their life who thrust their career into the spotlight. With some justice, this tin can exist understood, because those men were the movers and shakers of their time, but allow us non permit those auxiliary influences be the main discussion around these individuals. With no discredit to these men, it is not possible that those men were subjected to the same handling equally these women, nor did they have to overcome the same obstacles to beautify the pages of history and the walls of our galleries that allow us to know their names.

Our current record of Art History is strongly coupled and warped by sexism, oppression, and the effects of being viewed through a patriarchal lens. The obsession of the female figure throughout Fine art History is welcomed and appreciated through the ages. And to the same degree, we must pay gratitude to the women who created powerful works that illustrate the ever-present plight of women, and whose message of gender equality volition continue to gaze upon us every bit we report our past. Furthermore, we need to incorporate the relevance of the artist or artwork to that particular historical state of gender equality.

American women earned their right to vote less than a hundred years ago, and are at present considered a "protected status" (yes, being a adult female has to be artificially protected ^[nineteen] otherwise, [see the past]). Fighting for one's individualism through art and activism is noble, but fighting for all women's right to vote, to acquit or not acquit children, to be seen first equally a person and not a female, empowers hereafter generations to keep to pound the issue into the ground and into the canvass until their singular need to be seen every bit equal is finally met.

A note from the editor: This article is from the research and opinions of the author and not of Masterworks Fine Art Gallery. Information technology has been abridged, and, thus, many notable female artists are not named here but should exist. Some of these notable artists include Berthe Morisot, Peggy Guggenheim, Gertrude Stein, Dora Maar, Sonia Delaunay, Käthe Kollwitz, Louise Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, Beatrix Potter, Marie-Thérèse Walter, Elizabeth Siddal, Emilie Flöge, Cindy Sherman, Carrie Maeweems, Marina Abramobic, Yoko Ono, Helen Frankenthaler, Joan Brown, Alice Neel, Kiki Smith, Kara Walker, and Joan Mitchell, to proper noun a few.

Further reading:

• Edouard Manet'sOlympia
• Why Have In that location Been No Great Women Artists? by Linda Nochlin
• Gender Bias in the Visual Arts
• The largest march in U.s.a. history was the Women'south March 2017 (second largest was the Women's March 2018)
• International Women's Mean solar day is March viii^thursday, and Women's History Month is March

• 

  Claude Cahun (1894-1954)

Citations

1. Cindy Nemser, Art talk: conversations with 12 women artists, (1975).
2. Ben Davis, Why Are There Still And so Few Successful Female Artists?, (2015).
3. English Oxford Living Dictionaries, (2018).
4. Benjamin Binstock, Who Was the Girl With the Pearl Earring?, (2013).
5. Art of the Solar day, Elisabetta Sirani, Portia Wounding Her Thigh, (2015).
6. Ana Nocelotl, Art and Women Fall 2017, (2017).
7. [deleted]
8. Caroline Cubbage, The Journal of the Core Curriculum, p. 136, (2017).
9. Emily A. Francisco, Artemisia in the Metro, (2014).
10. Writer'southward note: Her nascency proper name was Jehanne and she chosen herself by that name, and so volition this author. Her full proper name is pronounced like "ju-ahn dark".
11. Ruth Butler, Rodin: The Shape of Genius, (1996).
12. Khan Academy, Claudel, The Historic period of Maturity, (circa 2017).
13. National Endowment for the Humanities. Mary Cassatt: A Adult female of Independent Mind. Accessed March 2018.
14. Hunter Drohojowska-Philp, Full Blossom: The Art and Life of Georgia O'Keeffe, (2005).
15. Google Arts & Culture, The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago, (1974-1979).
16. Kieron Bryan, Pussy Riot activist recreates Russian prison in London, (2017).
17. Khan Academy, A Brief History of Women in Art, (circa 2017).
18. Nicole Myers. Women Artists in Nineteenth-Century French republic. (2008).
19. U.South. Department of Justice. Federal Protections Against National Origin Bigotry, (2000).

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Source: https://news.masterworksfineart.com/2018/03/17/the-female-artists-who-greatly-influenced-gender-equality

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