Up until the 19th century, for the
most part, women were depicted in art as images of beauty. Ancient representations of women in artistic
form gave us ideal and abstracted visualizations of fertility and
motherhood. The Renaissance repeated
themes of religious iconography. With
the dawn of Modernity and the age of Industrialization came changes that
affected the daily life of men, but maybe even more so for women. Oscar Wilde was quoted as saying, “Life
imitates art far more than art imitates life.”
Either way, transformation was evident in life and art as the 1800s
became the 1900s.
Photography
was a huge catalyst in the changing views of art itself. Many artists wanted “to achieve a special
kind of optical veracity.”[1] Some artists feared that the
rise of photography would take away a big part of their revenue. They felt that portrait painting would not be
as much in demand and wanted to move away from realism to differentiate their
work from a photograph. A great example of this is in “Grand Odalisque”,
painted in 1814 by Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres. Although much of this piece is
photo-realistic, the woman herself is idealized with her elongated back and
limbs that are obviously not in proportion to the rest of her body.
Edgar Degas’ images of ballerinas are heavily
influenced by photography with his interesting angles and perspectives. He cuts into the images much like a
photograph would be cropped. He captures
a moment. The dancer may be bent over
with her back to the viewer, retying her slipper or adjusting her costume. But Degas’ work is not realistic. His paintings are emotional and
impressionistic. You can see the
brushstrokes. There is an obvious lack
of detail in their faces.
There are a few examples of women artists
prior to the mid 1800s, but not many.
Industrialization allowed for something that up until this time was
almost unheard of, free time. It created
a middle class. Many women found that
they actually had time on their hands and pursued the arts themselves. For the first time, women were depicting women
in art. Mary Cassatt and Berthe Morisot
showed us their impression of women at work and play. Suzanne Valadon painted her version of Grand
Odalisque, “Blue Room” in 1923. Valadon
kept the pose and the Oriental fabric, but this woman’s body is facing her
audience. She is fully clothed. She is not idealized, in fact, is overweight,
smoking a cigarette, and reading books (not your stereo-typical, dumb
blonde). Paintings of and by women
during the Impressionistic movement are about emotion, color, and light.
Around the turn of the century another
movement is taking shape. Marcel
Duchamp, also influenced by photography, is one of many artists studying the
human body in motion. He painted his
first version of “Nude Descending a Staircase” in 1911. Gone
are the soft curves, light, and even the color that we typically associate with
woman. This nude looks more like a
machine. The lines are geometric,
angular, and sharp. Duchamp did not
consider himself part of the Cubist movement, but its influence can definitely
be seen in his work.
Many modern artists seem to be fascinated by
prostitutes; it may have just been that many of them were available as models
at the turn of the 20th century.
Edouard Manet’s “Luncheon on the Grass” was considered shocking for its
time. The focal point of our attention
isn’t nude, she is naked. Her brazen
stare makes the viewer feel embarrassed to have happened upon this intimate
scene. Manet likes that reaction and
recreates it in his reclining prostitute, “Olympia”. “Pink Nude” was the fauvist version painted
by Matisse.
What Manet and Matisse presented with what
could be called a sense of humor, other artists took more seriously. Pablo Picasso’s renditions of prostitutes
aren’t as flattering as others we have seen.
Considered a co-founder of the Cubist movement, Picasso paints hideous
distortions of the female body. One
almost gets a sense of disdain when looking at “Les Damoiselles d’Avignon” or “Three
Women”. But Picasso does not hate
women. His work was to be an allegory
about the dangers of sex. Earlier sketch
book versions of Les Damoiselles d’Avignon had the “five female nudes appear
with two clothed male figures. Picasso
later identified the clothed figure entering from the left and pulling back a
curtain as a medical student and the clothed figure seated at the centre as a
sailor”[2]. This was a social statement about sexually
transmitted diseases. Spectators beware.
One of the biggest influences at the onset of
the 20th century was World War I.
Art created by men and women represented the chaos, destruction, and
despair of the times. Surrealism was
begat from the ashes of Dadaism which was a movement directly associated with
the war. Despite many celebrated female
artists associated with Surrealism, the movement as a whole took a less than
positive perspective when it came to women.
Female artists, like Meret Oppenheim, used the movement to portray a new
found sexual freedom, as in her piece called “Object (Fur Breakfast)”. But male artists were using it as a terrain
to project “their erotic desires and psychic fears"[3].
.
Women are not always pretty and not always monsters. On a daily basis, we probably find ourselves
somewhere in between. But in art, we
have come full circle. Women are equally
represented in music, dance, literature, sculpture, and painting. We are portrayed by ourselves and our male
counterparts, not only as mythological and beautiful creatures, but as we truly
are, real women.
[1]
H.H. Arnason and Elizabeth C. Mansfield, History of Modern Art: Sixth Edition (Upper Saddle River, NJ:
Pearson Education, Inc., Publishing as Prentiss Hall, 2010 ) 17.
[2]
Christopher Green, Picasso’s Les Damoiselles d’Avignon (London: Cambridge University Press, 2001) 5.
[3]
History of Modern Art, 339.
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