Much of her art may inspire it’s viewers to think about gender and/or sexuality, as it explores such topics. My favorite pieces of hers are her photogenetics, as they intrigue me. Some appear to be female, but are not what one would consider beautiful, which may cause the viewer (such as myself) to ponder how beauty and gender are associated. Her sculptures reflect the same themes.…
Kirsten Buick’s article “The Ideal Works of Edmonia Lewis: Invoking and Inverting Autobiography” focuses on several different works by the African-Indian sculptor. The article is beneficial in analyzing the cultural significance of Lewis’s works. Buick concentrates specifically on six of Lewis’s sculptures: Forever Free, Hagar in the Wilderness, Minnehaha, The Old Indian Arrowmaker and His Daughter, Hiawatha, and The Marriage of Hiawatha. Buick states, “while the subjects of her sculptures are African American and Native American women, invoking her autobiography, their features follow idealized, western European models” (190). In this article review, I will discuss Kirsten Buick’s use of data, structure, tone, and voice to formulate the article, the strengths and weaknesses her argument, and finally, broader implications of the article.…
Joy Kasson’s essay “Naratives of the Female Body: The Greek Slave” discusses Hiram Powers’ sculpture The Greek Slave and how much information it contains on the cultural construction of gender during this time period. Her naked body shows fine details and the beauty of the female body. Over time as our culture has developed, the way people view women has also developed to fit how our culture has changed. In the photo I will be discussing, a photo of Kim Kardashian from Playboy Magazine, one is able to see the similarities of expressing the beauty of the female body while at the same showing a more contemporary view of women.…
Edmonia Lewis was an African american sculptor.She was born July 4, 1844, she died September 17, 1907.She was the first African american female to gain international fame and recognition as a sculptor in the fine arts world..She began gaining attention during the civil war.She remains to be the only black woman who had participated in and been recognized to any degree by the American artistic mainstream.Her work was so popular in Boston, mass. That she could afford go to Rome, Italy and show off her talents in 1866.She found wide spread fame in Italy it was where she spent most of her adult career there.Lewis had many major exhibitions during her rise to fame, including one in Chicago, Illinois, in 1870, and in Rome in 1871. President…
In this essay, I defined that a historical painting is not pretty pictures of family portraits and landscapes, but can document events that spark the imagination, awaken emotion and capture truths about the black female body. I have highlighted two paintings by historical painters whose artwork offers a way of rethinking how the black…
Scholderer also paints the object of Wollstonecraft’s gaze, differing from Opie’s portraits and humanizes her by giving her agency in the painting. Nochlin presents her argument against how women are looked at in art stating “the acceptance of woman as object of the desiring male gaze in the visual arts is so universal that for a woman to question, or to draw attention to this fact, is to invite derision,” she reveals the problem of the male dominated world of objectifying women. During Wollstonecraft’s lifetime, feminism and gender equality were radical ideas that were rejected by the public and reflected in Opie’s work. Although a seemingly innocent way of portraying women as staring idly off to the side or at the audience, this actually…
Piland, Sherry. 1994. Women artists: an historical, contemporary, and feminist bibliography. Metuchen, New Jersey: Scarecrow Press.…
In the 1980’s, female artist addressed the dominance of cultural perceptions regarding female agency, pleasure, and spectatorship. In order to make their voice heard in a white male dominant art industry, they created works of art from paintings to films that challenged the social stereotypes and ideologies about female identity. This essay will define these three perceptions and examine the artworks from artist such as Julie Dash, Kobena Mercer , and Jenny Saville. These artists paved a way for the feminist movement through the use of disturbing the normative constructions of femininity, racial identity, and the body.…
We as Americans reminisce on history to see and understand the advancements we have accomplished and the same can be said of not only the advancement of women but also the image of how women are portrayed. Although in today’s day and age, their figures and beauty are scrutinized but also exploited. For instance in both Tennessee Williams motion picture, “A Street Car Named Desire” and Lorraine Hansberry A Raisin in the Sun you are able to see the evolution of the not only the portal of women but also the advancements they accomplish.…
2 Pollock, Griselda. Vision and Difference: Femininity, Feminism and the Histories of Art. (London:Routledge, 1988), 172.…
Hosmer's life and work have been liable to much insightful critique in late decades, with a few writers endeavoring to represent her remarkable global prestige as a female sculptor. While Power for the most part was perceived by art enthusiasts, craftsmen of history and by workmanship devotees, women artists like Hosmer were left in the shadows. The exposition coaxes out a perplexing web of mid-nineteenth-century worries that expect cutting edge distractions, including self-designing, gender roles, tourism, the ascent of VIP culture, and the craftsman's complicity with and fights against the contemporary press. All taken together, it looks to entangle and improve our comprehension of Hosmer and her key engagement with sculpture making , prompting…
The purpose of this research paper will be to briefly tell about some of the extraordinary women artist from the 1950’s to present. Team Louvre has chosen the following women artists: Audrey Flack, Helen Frankenthaler, Nancy Graves, and Alice Neel to share briefly their story as women artist.…
Kleiner, Fred S., Mamiya, Christin J. Gardner 's Art Through the Ages: Non-Western Perspectives. Boston, Ma: Cengage Learning, 2009.…
It was made aware that black male artists felt threatened by the possible sexism Black women would write, due to their double-standard; black and female. (Taylor 2011). A statement from a prolific female writer, Barbara Christian, during that time period expressed that the movement “deeply neglected Black female writers.” Thus a common response to women participating in the Black Arts Movement from Black men, was that it was called to be a distraction and even said to weaken the movement (Taylor,…
Regardless of the art form used to take a stand against oppression, the artistic tools of music, literature, dance, or photography can provide a way to reject social subjugation. In the case of Black women artists they took a stance against rape, murder, racial discrimination, and gender injustices. Harrison also believed that Black women through the expression of art were able to disrupt the notions of culture, race, gender, and any notions that demarcated their own lives (Harrison 2002).…