Modern Art

The art world has always been a means of expression for those who believe they need to have a voice for others. Paintings and other muses of art were not only for depicting a certain scene of life, but to express those feelings that could not be said with words. While the art world was always dominated by men, women were also painting and creating art. Women especially, created art to voice their feelings and express how they were being seen and treated by others. Women artists did this all the time, but when the modernist era came about, women took things to the next level. Modernism was a time in the art and creative world that was meant to question notions of the past and learn from them.
Artists were getting rid of old concepts that altered the lives of many and began creating new ones. Modernism was the new big thing: it was something to get the conversation going. Women especially were big advocates in creating modernist art.

Frida Kahlo, Self-Portrait With Monkey, 1940

Modernism explored in creating something new first or putting out an idea that no one had ever done before. Women began putting out art that utilized their own bodies as mediums, something that had not been done before. The New Woman was the new term in which many women were considered under. Whether it was through painting or photographs, women were going against the notions that women were only capable of posing as a stereotypical women roles. It still was not easy to be a women artist, "but there was also more opportunity than ever before for a woman to live her life and make art in her own terms" (Guerilla Girls 59). Women could still prosper and live a stable life, but there was still stigma against them being just as equal as men. Modernist artists such as Frida Kahlo, included ideas in their paintings that were not just traditional. Kahlo would include nature, her culture, and her personal thoughts into her paintings. Not only did she do this, but she utilized herself as the muse for her paintings. What better person to paint than oneself? Her paintings were intricate in color and ideas, and they went against the stigmas of women painting and painting traditionally.  An article that was published this year dives into Kahlo's turbulent life and her beautiful artwork can be seen here.

Paula Moderhson-Becker, Self-Portrait with
Amber Necklace, 1906

Women as well went against the idea of nudity and the male gaze. Women began to paint themselves nude as a means of expression and embracing the naked body. Painter Paula Modersohn-Becker was a female painter who went against the idea of "presenting women as powerless and sexually subjugated" (Chadwick 279). She was one of the first women that painted nude women that exuded power and was shown embracing her nude body. Modernism allowed women to act upon these ideas without being completely belittled. While modernism was still conservative, there was a a new wave in the art world that let women completely express themselves without any care.

Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Your Gaze Hits
the Side of My Face) 1981

Postmodernism came after modernism and it was revolutionary. Both women and men began creating postmodern art, and it changed the art world completely. Postmodernism has been described as the "breaking down of the unified (though hardly monolithic) traditions of Modernism" (Chadwick 380).  It was a means to break away from the ideas the art was only for the elite and had to be only intellectual. It allowed artists to take former art pieces and create their own version of art work without being held accountable for it. Postmodernism was meant to create art as something fun and playful, but still create though provoking ideas that questioned society. A good example of this is Barbra Kruger. Her artwork was meant to "subvert the meanings of both image and text in order to destabilize the positioning of woman as object" (Chadwick 382). Her art piece on the upper right is a critique to the male gaze and how women will omit the male gaze as it is not important and it does not make a woman what she is thought to be. She also created art work that referenced the female body and how strong women are. Women were always subjected to just their bodies. Their bodies were only meant for sex and birthing children. Kruger goes against that by saying that "Your Body is a Battleground." Women are more than just their body and they have much more to offer than sexual reproduction and male pleasure.

Cindy Sherman, Untitled, 1979

Another example of a postmodernist artist is Cindy Sherman. A woman who also did not utilize painting as a means to challenge women stereotypes. She used a camera, in which she used "...her own body in the conventions of advertising and film images of women" (Chadwick 383). Sherman would create characters and become those characters in order to depict stereotypes that had been enacted by people before. She would pose as many things; model, housewife, anything that a woman has been a victim of being stereotyped as. She took many photographs that challenged these notions and they are still prevalent today. Here is an article just from last year that interviews her and explores her new journey with Instagram.

Modernism and Postmodernism made one big dent in the art universe. Modernism led to the idea of postmodernism, in which resulted in the art world we live with today. It is a beautiful, chaotic, and intellectual world. Art is for everyone as postmodernism made it that way. Although modernism was a time where things began to change, postmodernism really defined a woman's status. Women saw way more success during the postmodernism era. Today, women artists are still challenging and creating art that invokes ideas in so many different people. These artist are creating art that they feel is art and they do not have anyone telling them their air is not worthy of being deemed art. Art is everything and nothing, and hopefully it continues to be that way.



Chadwick, Whitney. Women, Art, And Society. Fifth ed., Thames & Hudson, 2012.

Guerilla Girls. The Guerrilla Girls' Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art. Penguin Books, 1998.

Mabel Rodriguez

november 18,2019

Art and woman

post 3                                                
                                    
                               Modernism and Postmodernism

Nan Goldin 'The Ballad of sexual Dependacy'

    Modernism is a style that aims to break with classical and traditional paintings. woman artists in Europe 'use of techniques  drew attention to the process and materials used in creating a painting, poem, building, etc".'  The modernism reject realism and made use of the worst of the past by reprise, incorporation, rewriting, recapitulation, revision and parodying new form". "The sexism seen within the art world, was indicative of a larger, generalized misogyny, and through liberating and accessible forms of art such as performance, photography and film, women artists were able to express their dissatisfaction about gender roles, and the policing of their bodies.'  
Nan Goldin is an artist that take picture of herself with her face marked with bruises. the theme of those photography is  ‘The Ballad of Sexual Dependency’.

Tracy Emin 'My Bed' (1999)

“Postmodernism cannot be described as a coherent movement and lacks definitive characteristics.” “It can be better understood instead as a set of styles and attitudes that were affiliated in their reaction against modernism.”postmodernism go against modern art. postmodernism art are focus in intermedia ,installation, conceptual and multimedia. The post modernism start 1860s to the 1950s.Tracey Emin’s theme "my bed" is about sexual abuse. all her works are about sexual abuse. she also talk about her experience in life in this this theme. the bed symbolize the life of the woman.

Worked Cited

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernism

https://medium.com/@kate_shields/women-modernism-and-postmodernism-6ed84a00605e
https://www.theartstory.org/definition/postmodernism/history-and-concepts/

Post #4: 5 Women Artists

Women Artists and the Deflection of Male Gaze Throughout the Years

Women artists have fought for centuries against patriarchal oppression and sexist stigmas to have their artwork hang right alongside men in museums and have their own individual shows.  Studying the various women artists in this course has brought me to identify the theme in their artwork of exposing the male gaze through changing how the female body is portrayed as a subject. Their focus is on averting the male gaze, drawing attention to more things than just a woman’s body and giving women a voice through depicting them in ways that defied their society’s standards at that time.  Women artists work towards no longer allowing the female body to be the object for the prospector to gaze at, but instead to be looked at as independent, confident, motherly and other strong feministic aspects. By taking this stand against being an object in male artists’ works, women are progressively making strides through their art to end how they are viewed.

Artemisia Gentileschi, Susanna and the Elders,
1610
Susanna is depicted as uncomfortable and
awkward with a twist to her body.

Tintoretto, Susanna and the Elders,
1555
This painting shows Susanna as the
object with the male as the viewer.

Beginning in the 1600s, Artemisia Gentileschi was a teenage prodigy that had created several paintings, including one of her well known “Susanna and the Elders” (Guerilla Girls, 35).  Her painting was a rembrandt from a male artist, Tintoretto, in which she chose to depict the woman subject, Susanna, through a different viewing lense. In Tintoretto’s painting, Susanna is the object of the male gaze and the story behind the image is that she is being stalked by a man and afterwards is raped.  Gentileschi took the woman as the subject of male gaze, and instead depicted the rape scene in a realistic light. Through this, she was able to take the topic of rape culture and address it through her own image, where she makes Susanna a woman who is being sexually harrassed by the older gentleman, and there is nothing glamorous about these actions.  Through another one of her paintings, Gentileschi shows the strength that women have in order to commit actions that were not considered “lady-like” or “feminine.” In the piece, Judith Slaying Holofernes, where many artists showed Judith looking away as she cuts off the head of Holofernes, Gentilsechi shows Judith “intent on accomplishing her mission, and unafraid to face carnage and death” (Guerilla Girls, 37).  Women were thought of not being able to accomplish such a task and look at the person while they were committing the actions, but Gentileschi defies these stigmas and instead shows women who are strong, unafraid and able to do what men claim they cannot.

Mary Cassatt, Woman in Black at the Opera, 1879
In this painting, Cassatt is placing a woman in a
public setting with a focused concentration that is
not paying attention to the male gaze.

Continuing into the Impressionist time period, another artist, by the name of Mary Stevenson Cassatt, created paintings that reflected a different portrayal of women and were self-conscious of the male gaze.  She was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and came from a wealthy social class, therefore, getting the opportunity to study lessons in drawing and music abroad in Europe. She used this to her advantage in a time where men were the only sex being recognized for their paintings.  As a woman, she was restricted to certain aspects of the world that her male contemporaries could freely explore. However, in the second half of the 19th century, women began to participate in the “consumer culture” and emerged as “a social reality within spaces like those of crowds department stores and mass-market advertising” (Chadwick, 242).  One of Cassatt’s paintings, Woman in Black at the Opera, showed women breaking the boundaries of social norms and emerging into the same society that men were dominant in.  Though she does this, Cassatt is also not showing the gazing woman as the subject of her painting; instead the woman is represented as completely covered up and “unavailable” to the male viewer.  She is also strictly focused on looking at the show and does not look for any attention because she simply wants to be left alone. Cassatt also takes a play on the male gaze and paints a man who is leaning over the balcony and intently staring at the woman, who is paying no attention to him.  Mary Cassatt was a major influence on American collection, which initiated an era of modern art collecting in this country, and there would be no large collections of Impressionism in American museums if it wasn’t for her!

Suzanne Valadon, Grandmother and Young Girl Stepping into the Bath, 1908 The women are naked but not an object to view at; they are consumed with their own activities.

Suzanne Valadon, The Blue Room, 1923 There is a confidence and independence in this woman that Valadon paints.

Moving forward into the 1900s, artist Suzanne Valadon created artwork that challenged how women were represented as a form of “viewing pleasure” for men.  During her time, the beginning moments of investigating “the issue of female subjectivity, and the identification of the female body with nature, generation and the instinctual life” took root in her generation (Chadwick, 282).  Valadon painted female nudes that were an “observation with a knowledge of the female body...rejecting the static and timeless presentation of the monumental nude that dominates Western art” (Chadwick, 285). In her painting, The Blue Room, Valadon paints a woman who is completely clothed and is exposing very little skin, in which she is in her own world not giving a care to who is viewing her.  She has short hair, is smoking a cigarette and has books by her feet. This all signifies the “modern woman” who is independent, intellectual and confident. Valadon emphasizes on this as well as “the awkward gestures of figures apparently in control of their own movements” (Chadwick, 286).  In another painting, Grandmother and Young Girl Stepping into the Bath, Valadon again shows the woman engaged in their own activities and even though they are naked, there is no exact emphasis on any point of their bodies.  Through this, the images of “seductive and devouring femininity” that are gazed upon by men is changed with a focus on the biological nature and independent actions.

Frida Kahlo, The Broken Column, 1944
Kahlo depicts herself with a broken column,
pins in her body and an empty vast background.

During the 1900s, artist Frida Kahlo painted as well, in which she created artwork that displayed her body and was in a sense an exposure to her vulnerability.  She got very little support from Diego Riveira and his friends who did not take her seriously and even when she did find a group fo white male surrealists who did, she claimed that “I am in my own world not yours” (Guerilla Girls, 79).  In her artwork, she depicted women with “nature, and imaging femininity in its instinctive, enigmatic, sexual and destructive aspects” (Chadwick, 279). Kahlo painted herself in The Broken Column, in which she “reinforces the woman artist’s use of the mirror to assert the duality of being, the self as observer and observed.” (Chadwick, 314).  She is very vulnerable in her actions when she paints her own body, and she does this in order to explore the reality of her own body. The movement of Surrealism was a time period of art where women like Kahlo were able to use it for “a dialogue between the constructed social being and the power forces of the instinctual life...that would overthrow the control exerted by the conscious mind” (Chadwick, 314).  They painted these images of themselves for their own purposes to explore their own existence and not displaying themselves as an object for the entertainment and purpose of the male gaze.

Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Stills, 1977

This is Sherman in the photo where 

she mocks how women in Hollywood 

were portrayed sexually.

Finishing off within the period of Postmodernism, artist Cindy Sherman was a photographer who used herself as subject in her pictures.  Her work focuses on exposing the images that “Western cultures constructs for our consumption in film and advertising media.” (Chadwick, 383).  Women are always depicted in a sexual way and are seen in films always naked or in their underwear. Sherman, in 1978, began taking pictures of herself in ways that challenged the way women were represented.  In her one photo, Untitled, where she is lying down in her underwear, there is a sense of contemplation and yet repulsion.  Sherman is not trying to be sexual or an object of desire by the male gaze, but instead she is focused on “positioning herself within an art historical tradition that has for centuries objectified and fetishized the female body” (Chadwick, 383).  Through this she is mocking and exposing the way women are viewed by the media during the late 70s early 80s time period. She is no longer allowing the female body to be gazed upon in a sexual manner and instead is getting people to contemplate on the way women have been and still are being treated in society.

Works Cited

Chadwick, Whitney. Women, Art, And Society. Fifth ed., Thames & Hudson, 2012.

Guerilla Girls. The Guerrilla Girls' Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art. Penguin Books, 1998.

Modernism VS Postmodernism

Modernism was a rebellious and radical attitude that started between 1890-1970. The attitude was about rejecting European culture that was too fixated with their image rather than change. It completely changed how the modern world viewed life, art , politics, and science. Modernism is considered to be both an art movement and a philosophical movement, which isn't shocking since both go hand in hand. The factors that really pushed this new way of thinking was the environment people were living in. World War 1 just ended, cities were growing at a rapid pace, and societies as a whole were becoming more industrial. Religion also didn't fit in with the way modernists conducted their lives; Enlightenment thinking that was so popular in Europe was heavily rejected.

Modernism in art allowed artists to express their feelings and ideas, to create fantasy worlds and abstractions rather than just have art imitating real life. All the movements that were apart of modernism were impressionism, postimpressionism, fauvism, cubism, futurism, constructivism, dada-ism, surrealism, expressionism, abstract expressionism, and the list goes on.

Sonia Terk, who later is known as Sonia Delaunay, married painter Robert Delaunay and together they created a theory of color that they named simultanism. Robert wound up getting majority od the credit for it and Sonia put a pause on her artistic work in order to support him and her son. "Without Sonia, Robert Delaunay might have been just another Parisian paint slinger. After his death, in 1941, she went on to paint again and have museum exhibitions of her own", (Guerrilla Girls, 61).

Sonia Delaunay, Market in Minho, 1915

Sonia Delaunay, Yellow Nude, 1908

Pan Yuliang lived in China during a time when painters worked in traditional styles using ink. She was very attracted to Western-style oil painting and loved individual expression. Her earliest work are nudes of herself by using a mirror, while also dabbling in portraits and still lives. Yuliang was respected for being the first woman in China to paint in a Western European style.  Later in life, she became a professor at the National Central University in Nanjing but because of her past being sold into prostitution, the University shamed her. Fleeing to Paris, she was able to live her life how she wanted as a artist and express herself freely without anyone's judgement.

Pan Yuliang, Bathing Nudity, 1958

So what comes after such a groundbreaking important phase in art? Postmodernism started around 1970 and is the direct rejection to everything that modernism represents. One of the ideologies that was rejected was that "art" is something "special" which should be "elevated from" popular taste. The more the world changes, art changes too. Postmodernism led to decades of different new kinds of experimentation with art like conceptual art, performance art, installation art and created movements like Deconstructivism and Projection art. Art becomes overall less formal and artists have the liberty to do whatever they want.

Postmodernism is a reflection of the disillusionment people during that time felt with life and also having to deal with the breaking down of old values. Modern art was always seen as unattainable if the artist was not white nor male nor apart of the elite. That is why postmodern art celebrates feminist and minority artists. Even though postmodern art rejects big ideas, it has big ideas of its own. One of them being, "all types of art are equally valid", like Fountain by Marcel Duchamp for example. Or like Ana Mendieta, a Latina woman artist who made sculptures of her body in nature.

Ana Mendieta was born in Havana, Cuba in the year 1948. Mendieta was born into a wealthy family, but was sent away to the United States because of her father's work against Fidel Castro. In the United States, she was raised in orphanages and foster homes until in 1966 her mother and brother arrived from Cuba. Her start in the art world was when she studied at the University of Iowa and met many New York artists. Mendieta later moved to New York after she finished her education in Iowa. Her work became conceptual and performance based, the staged events were documented by photographs and that too became her artwork. In a gallery named AIR, opened by all women artists, she held her first solo show in 1978. Mendieta's most famous work is her Silueta series, where she would lay down, have her body outlined in the ground, then putting flowers, stones, or sticks around it. Her work is very postmodern because it goes against the traditional way of making art. It pushes the boundaries to what art is and can be, to the way the audience takes it in and interprets the message behind the art.

Ana Mendieta, Silueta Sangrienta, 1975

Ana Mendieta, Imagen de Yagul, 1973

Work Cited:
Guerrilla Girls (1998). The Guerrilla Girls' Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art. New York, NY: Penguin Books

Modernism Vs PostModernism

Modernism was an art movement in the late 19^th century that would influence art for the next century. Modernism refers to the change in art style during this time leading to many new art movements arising from Modernism such as Cubism, Dadaism, Impressionism etc… Modernism is also an era when artists began to use new styles of art, experimenting with new types of paints and materials in order to express their political and social ideas. Modernism was also a time where creating abstract art came into prominence. This would leave much of the interpretation of the art up to the viewer. When describing Modernism, Chadwick states: “Modernity is both linked to the desire for the new that fashion expresses so well, and culturally tied to the development of a new visual language for the twentieth century-abstraction” (Chadwick, 380). Modernism emerges during an era that is defined by rapid industrialization, its many social changes, and the quick advancement of technology. Modernism stands for a rejection of past conservative values and history, while looking to innovate the ways that artists are able to express themselves. This would lead to the prominence in abstractionism during this time, as many of the ideas that women were painting about were very new and theoretical at the time.

Claude Cahun, Self Portrait, 1928. Seen looking directly into the camera
in order to make a statement about her sexuality.

Female artists were at the center of this new art movement due to women being the cause for several of movements listed above. During this time, women artists were able to display the female subject in their work without sexualizing the woman body. One of the artists that began to change the perception of women was Claude Cahun who began using her art as a means to explore her sexuality and desires, all while defying the gender stereotypes that were set for her by society.  Claude was one of the first female artist to use herself as her own model in her photography where she could be seen breaking gender stereotypes. One of Claude Cahun’s famous portraits (shown below) was her self-portrait where you could see her portraying herself breaking the gender stereotypes as she doesn’t portray herself as neither male nor female. She began representing women how she wanted women to be portrayed, in a non-sexualized manner. The Guerilla Girls when speaking on Cahun’s impact said: “Instead of presenting herself as a passive object ready to be consumed by a heterosexual male gaze, she defiantly presents herself as both object and subject of her own sexual fascinations” (The Guerilla Girls 63). Claude entered the art scene during a time when artists were questioning many of the social norms set by society, one of them being sexuality. Claude’s statement on sexuality was very important as she brought light and discussion to topics that previously weren’t being talked about.

Barbara Kruger, Your body is a battleground, 1989.
Provocative lettering and eye catching designs in order to spark debate.

Post modernism is a direct reaction against the ideas and values that came into relevance during the Modernism movement. While the modernism movement was connected to understanding the truths of reality, Postmodernism movement is born from skepticism and a suspicion of what reality really is. Chadwick describes the Postmodernism movement as “breaking down of the unified traditions of modernism” (Chadwick 380). During this time,  other new mediums of art arose in order to represent the experimental and expressive ideas of the time. During the late 20^th century when Postmodernism was first emerging, new medium such as conceptual art, performance art and installation were introduced. The new forms of art allowed many people to join as much of the art was left up to interpretation. This also allowed  the idea that anything can be art, to be born, no longer was art a painting or a drawing, now art could take the shape of a collage or a picture or something much more abstract. The idea of what art itself was, was constantly changing during this time.  While both movements were very different, they were both deeply tied to feminism. Women struggled in both eras trying to get their work out as the spotlight was always taken by the male artists. In both eras women also began to use the new medians of the time to tackle the issues of sexuality and gender roles in society. Barbara Kruger was one of the postmodernism artists who used the new art medium of collages in order to challenge these issues. Chadwick describes Barbara Kruger’s work as “using severely cropped photographs  of women, and their short accompanying texts to subvert the meanings of both the image and text to destabilize the positioning of the woman as an object” (Chadwick 382). Barbara Kruger would take photographs she found in magazines and create a collage with aggressive phrases that were meant to spark discussion and thought. Kruger would manipulate her audience with the way she would emphasize certain words in order to create the discussions of sexism, consumerism, and many other social or political issues. Kruger’s art best represents the Postmodernism era, art that was abstract in nature that would cause the viewer to think about the social issues that were relevant during the era, in this case feminism.

Cindy Sherman, Untitled 1979
A woman portrayed as the subject of the male gaze.

In the 20^th century women were politically engaged through their art. Art during the early 20^th century gave a voice to many women artists to express their views on political and social topics, whereas before women may not have had the same amount of outreach without these art mediums. Artists such as Cindy Sherman through her art depicted how women are objects to the male gaze. Through her photography she revealed the obsession that society has with objectifying the female body. Through the abstract art that women were putting out, they were beginning a conversation. A conversation that is still being had to this day, however during their time, these conversations simply did not exist. These women were courageous and strong for beginning to speak on subjects that society would try to oppress them for talking about. Women artists through both eras of Modernism and Postmodernism would begin the foundation for many of the modern feminist movements.

Works Cited

Chadwick, W. (2012). Women, Art, and Society(5th ed.). New York, NY: Thames and Hudson.

Guerrilla Girls (1998). The Guerrilla Girls' Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art. New York, NY: Penguin Books