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ARTHI 119: Modernism and Modernity
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Nudes of the Renaissance and Modernist Eras
Thursday, October 18, 2012 @ 2:36 AM
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Female
nudes have been a popular subject in art for a long time. Two time periods with
contrasting ideals for reclining nude figures are the Renaissance and the
Modernist time period. One focuses on painting the female figure as an object,
and the other challenges that conception.
.jpg/800px-GIORGIONE-TIZIANO_-_Venus_dormida_(Gem%C3%A4ldegalerie_Alter_Meister,_Dresde,_1508-10._%C3%93leo_sobre_lienzo,_108.5_x_175_cm).jpg)
Shown
here is Giorgione's The Sleeping Venus. These kinds of paintings became
very common at the time, depicting mainly goddesses in their idealized
beautiful forms. For example, Venus’
body is shown to have curves in all the right places with soft skin and most
importantly, a downward gaze. There is no interaction between her and the
audience, and therefore she becomes an object the viewer can deem beautiful
without guilt. These women weren’t depicted to be erotic, but to be admired as
perfectly sculpted objects.
.jpg/800px-%C3%89DOUARD_MANET_-_Olympia_(Museo_de_Orsay,_Par%C3%ADs,_1863._%C3%93leo_sobre_lienzo,_130_x_190_cm).jpg)
On the other hand, Manet's Olympia shown here is in almost the exact same
position, however, her body is yellow with syphilis and her eyes stare directly
at the viewer. The presence of the female character automatically becomes more
apparent and the audience is unnerved. The fact that she is not a deity or any
other important woman, and that she is a prostitute upsets them further. At the
time, in the early 20th century, French art critics in the Salon
were accustomed to flowing, peachy, curvy bodies and an overall luscious
effect. Manet took something they loved and were familiar with and twisted it completely
around.
The Salon was disgusted Manet's painting, deeming it inappropriate because the
woman was no longer just an object, but a conscious subject. Though
compositionally, nearly identical to countless acclaimed paintings from the
past masters, the modernist take was extremely controversial.
Post by Yuning Yang
Post by Yuning Yang
Paul Cezanne's Crude Depiction of Women
@ 2:05 AM
Sources:
Gender Analysis and the Work of Meyer Schapiro
Patricia Mathews
Oxford Art Journal , Vol. 17, No. 1, Meyer Schapiro
(1994), pp. 81-91
Published by: Oxford University Press
Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1360479
What Can We Say about Cézanne These Days?
Cézanne in America. Dealers, Collectors,
Artists and Critics 1891-1921 by John Rewald; Paul Cézanne, Two Sketchbooks by
Theodore Reff; Innis Howe Shoemaker; Cézanne's Early Imagery by
Mary Tompkins Lewis; Interpreting Cézanne by Sidney Geist
Review by: Griselda Pollock
Oxford Art Journal , Vol. 13, No. 1 (1990), pp. 95-101
Published by: Oxford University Press
Article Stable URL:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/1360392
In the article, Gender analysis and the work of Meyer
Schapiro, written by Patricia Mathews, Paul Cezanne and his paintings
incorporating the nude feminine form are cast in a negative light and described
as being rude and vulgar. The article focuses on the famous art historian Meyer
Schapiro and his opinion and critique of Cezanne’s work. Schapiro accuses Cezanne
of having a sexually driven imagination and obsession that led to “paintings of
a crude sensuality, rape, orgy and murder” (Oxford Journal, 83). It is claimed that Cezanne’s
unorthodox depictions of women can be credited to an
intense repressed sexual desire. He used art to act out this desire, and as a
result works of great contrast were created, some being violent while others
are described as calm and composed. ‘Violent’ seems to be a popular term to
describe the more intense pieces created by Cezanne, as Griselda Pollock chose
to use the same term in her article What
Can We Say About Cezanne These Days? She even goes on to say that they are
“thematically disturbing” (Oxford Journal, 95). Schapiro’s main point is that
Cezanne’s paintings exploit women’s bodies. He feels Cezanne’s paintings make
women objects to be put on display as they fail to instill awe or admiration in the viewer.
By: Renny Niebuhr
Feminist Reaction to the Unconventional Female Nude
Wednesday, October 17, 2012 @ 10:44 PM
Matisse's works, such as Blue Nude, from 1907, in which he depicts a woman's body in a twisted, distorted position, a well-muscled body (not conventional nor considered attractive at the time), and a mask-like face, elicited critiques from both Art Historians and feminist Art Historians alike. Feminists saw Matisse's portrayals of female bodies as insulting as well as a symbol of male dominance over them. As Carol Duncan says of another of Matisse's works, Carmelina, "...Matisse celebrates his control over women as a way of boasting of his virility." ( It is clear that these thoughts John Elderfield, Pleasuring Painting) were echoed across the majority of the feminist community, as Griselda Pollock says, "High Culture plays a specifiable part in the reproduction of women's oppressions in the circulation of relative values for the ideological constructs of masculinity and femininity." (Pleasuring Painting) Some female students at the Art Institute School in chicago, along with a large student body of males, went so far as to burn Blue Nude and two other pieces by Matisse in effigy for having, "...violated the female body because of the way he deployed his aesthetic medium." (Pleasuring Painting)
It took many years, but gradually views on Blue Nude and Matisse's other woks changed. Marilynn Lincoln Board, a well-known feminist Art Historian, has a different opinion from earlier feminists. "She sees difference expressed in most of the artist's work, and most clearly in the so-called odalisques of his Nice period of the 1920s, because they exemplify...conventional imperialist attitudes towards the French colonies in Africa. Thus, the odalisque is a metonym for the controlling, exploiting, invading, European male." (Pleasuring Painting)
Written by Chelsea Reintjes
A New Take on Gauguin
@ 10:11 PM
Contrary to many feminist art
historians, such as Griselda Pollock who place Gauguin’s work in a manipulative
light, Jane Duran takes a different approach. She states that the paintings of
Gauguin, rather than having a sexist manipulation, display the Polynesian women
in a manner with a certain sort of feminine grace. What many interpret as a
‘savage’ depiction of the native people, Gauguin thought the native women to
retain a certain sort of innocence and a transcendental sacredness. This idea
of them Duran believes stems from his personal relationships with the females.
Duran stats that Paul Gauguin thought these women to be eternal female and saw
them free of the artifice of the European middle class women. He uses a more
natural, simple depiction to capture this aspect of the women. His less
detailed images were not to display savagery of the natives, but a simplistic
femininity the European women of the time lacked. This is an unusual
interpretation of the females in Gauguin’s paintings. Most feminist art historians regarded the
simplicity in body style to be a display of savagery or dominance of the
European male over the female body. Although there is evidence of this in many of
his works, images like Tehamana Has Many
Parents exemplifies a innocence and feminist quality to the images.
Blog Post By Kristen Barrett
Feminism and Gauguin
@ 10:08 PM
Popular female art historian Griselda Pollock was primarily concerned with issues of class, race and gender. Often she would discuss avante-garde gambits as filled with gender and racial issues. She analyzes the racial and gender politics of Paul Gauguin’s painting Manao Tupapau, made in 1893. His reworking of Manet’s Olympia was a way for him to claim a dominant place in the art world in Paris. Gauguin’s gambit is centered around the issue of the color of the world, featuring an Afro-Caribbean woman at work in a ‘service’ industry. The woman featured in this painting is frightened and lacks any historical specificity, creating a scene based off a sexism, racist, and colonial idea of difference. Females become archetypal figures for Gauguin, suggesting exoticism and sexuality. He creates images of young exotic women with whom he created a suggestive idea that she will accommodate the viewer. He creates a view of exotic, sexual Polynesian women that becomes accepted in modern society.
Blog Post By Kristen Barrett
Jones, Amelia.
A Companion to Contemporary Art Since 1945. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub, 2006.
Print. (text version)
Evolution of the Female Figure in Demoiselles d'Avignon (part 2)
@ 9:17 PM
Source: Looking at Art from the Inside Out: The Psychoiconographic Approach to Modern Art
(Mary Mathews Gedo)
 |
| Demoiselles d'Avignon. 1907 |
The
aggressive style of Picasso’s courtesans and the overtly negative impression of
his prostitute-victims are precursors to Demoiselles
d’Avignon, however, in both 1901-02 series, the artist has created a
setting in which he and the viewer are distant onlookers, sympathetic, at most,
to the agony and scourge of prostitution. This separation between the passive
(viewed) and the active (viewer) — as is traditional with nude female figures —
is not only absent in the final version of Demoiselles
d’Avignon, but it’s annihilated to the point that the inanimate figures
(prostitutes) have forced passivity onto the viewer. This expunging of the
traditional passive and active roles was an ever-evolving development.
 |
| The Harem. 1906 |
Prior
to Demoiselles d’Avignon, Picasso
completed a similarly themed painting, The
Harem in 1906. This painting, like Demoiselles,
presented a group of four odalisques, a decrepit poet and a oversize kindly male
figure. The four women, all modeled after Fernande, Picasso’s mistress at the
time, are depicted with a sense of gentleness, benevolence, and, even,
joviality. The women are also unquestionably passive, unaware of the viewer’s
presence.
 |
| Demoiselles d'Avignon original composition |
 |
| Close-up of a demoiselle |
The
first composition of Demoiselles
d’Avignon, like The Harem, places
a group of women (offering sex as a service) in a space with two male figures —
a sailor and a medical student. Also like the odalisques in The Harem, the prostitutes “seem benign,
self-involved, and oblivious of spectators” (pg143). However, Picasso did
depart from his previous painting, evolving the figures into short, squat, and
thick women, each positioned within her own illusionistic space. While creating
them, Picasso endowed each demoiselle with her own identity. This, along with
the elimination of the two male figures, and the rejection of an illusionistic
space allowed Picasso to focus his emotion on the women. He emphasized their hostility
by moving them ever closer to the boundary of the painting, including Iberian
masks — adding both savagery and androgyny— and creating direct eye contact
between the prostitutes and the viewer. Picasso’s figures were complete.
* * *
Source review: Mary Mathew Gedo's coverage of Picasso's biography and paintings are clear, extensive, and well-researched. I have only included my summary and analysis of Gedo's interpretation as it relates to the physical representation of the female figure. She discusses, in length, Picasso's possible role as both the male figures, what they might represent, as well as how Picasso's personal relationships may have been a determining factor in the final painting.