Two paintings; both are portraits of women wearing pink against a dark background. Each woman is exposed in a private moment of vulnerability, but each painting tells a very different story. Walt Kuhn's Chorus Captain and Thomas Eakins' Portrait of Maud Cook each portray a very different image of womanhood, femininity and beauty. Each of these artists, through the use of photography and nude models and through the promotion of modern art as a marketable product, helped challenge and shift the views of the art world.
Walt Kuhn's The Chorus Captain is a three-quarter length portrait done in oils on canvas. It was painted in 1935. The piece depicts a showgirl scantly clad and still in costume. She sits in front of a fading black background, a curtain or wall in an aging theater. A large headdress of pink feathers fans out above her head, larger than the woman herself. She wears pearls on her head and neck and her make up is thick and gaudy with bright red lipstick and rouge going all the way to her temples. The makeup can not cover the fact that she is exhausted. Her eyes are dark and heavily lidded. Her posture is slumped; she has had a tiring day or, perhaps, a tiring life. She appears unconcerned with her partial nudity and unbothered by the artist or the viewer. Why not; she has been looked at by far too many people to care any longer. She is brightly lit as if by a large spotlight, befitting of a subject who has spent so much time on the stage. Despite being exposed and on display, the woman is complete withdrawn from the moment, staring off into space as if in deep thought. By exposing her physical being so completely, the painting emphasizes what the viewer cannot see; the subjects inner life and psyche. The title states tha...
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...artists that the art world, especially the world of American art, owes a great deal of gratitude.
Works Cited
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Adams, Philip Rhys. Walt Kuhn, Painter: His Life and Work. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1978. Print.
Homer, William Innes. Thomas Eakins: His Life and Art. New York: Abbeville, 2002. Print.
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· 1999: Private commissions (2). Continues to work on paintings for traveling exhibition, Visual Poems of Human Experience (The Company of Art, Chronology 1999).
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The Harlem Renaissance, a time of global appreciation for the black culture, was a door opening for African American women. Until then, African Americans, let alone African American women, were neither respected nor recognized in the artistic world. During this time of this New Negro Movement, women sculptors were able to connect their heritages with the present issues in America. There is an abundance of culture and history to be learned from these sculptures because the artists creatively intertwine both. Meta Warrick Fuller and Edmonia Lewis, two of the most popular sculptors of this time, were able to reflect their native heritages and the dynamics of society through their artwork.
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Like how Pollock’s art helped put America on the map. “Jackson Pollock was an influential American painter, and the leading force behind the abstract expressionist movement in the art world.” (www.jackson-pollock.org) He helped bring America into the art world and helped America stand out from the rest of the world.
McKay’s uses the art of dance and fashion to allure the men and women. He chose to have the woman dancing sensually and half clothed, to capture everyone’s attention. By having the woman portrayed this way, it signifies her worth. Similarly, Rossetti uses art to objectify women, however, she uses the art of painting and fashion as well. “In an Artist’s Studio”, he objectifies the woman by painting her the way he sees her, not the way she actually is; In doing this, it is symbolizing that woman are controlled.
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Judy Chicago comments in her essay that she “had been made to feel ashamed of her own aesthetic impulses as a woman, pushed to make art that looked as if it had been made by a man.” The idea that female artists were not permitted to draw from their personal experiences completely undermines the basis of what art is. Art provides context of culture: it adds meaning and relevance to the time that it was created, and the artists’ personal experiences is what drives the artwork, and society, forward. Chicago’s blatant truths about women and their art in the early 70’s describes the struggles of walking between the worlds of femininity and the regular world talked about by Woolf. It’s impossible to deny the importance of femininity. If one is not
"Whilst some feminists have argued to be included in 'male stream' ideologies, many have also long argued that women are in important respects both different from and superior to men, and that the problem they face is not discrimination or capitalism but male power." (Bryson, 2003, p. 3). The feminist art movement is unclear in its description because some describe this movement as art that was simply created by women and others describe it as art with anti-male statements in mind. For the focal point of this paper, the goal will be to analyze several female artists and their works of art who influenced, and who are said to have made powerful influence both in the feminist art movement from a political and societal perspective, then and today. With that being said, we will start with the female artist Judy Chicago and a quote from her that calcifies her position as an artist. "I believe in art that is connected to real human feeling that extends itself beyond the limits of the art world to embrace all people who are striving for alternatives in an increasingly dehumanized
Thomas Cole was born on February 1, 1801 in Bolton, Lancashire, England. Due to financial problems his family endured, Cole, at the ripe old age of just fourteen, had to find work to assist with the family needs. He entered the work force as a textile printer and wood engraver in Philadelphia. In 1819, Cole returned to Ohio where his parents resided. Here, a portrait painter by the name of Stein, would become Cole’s primary teaching vehicle and inspiration for his oil techniques we’ve come to be familiar with. During this time, Cole was extremely impressed by what he saw in the landscapes of the New World and how different they were from the small town of England from whence he hailed. Self taught, art came naturally to Cole.
Aristotle once claimed that, “The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.” Artists, such as Louise-Elizabeth Vigée Le Brun and Mary Cassatt, captured not only the way things physically appeared on the outside, but also the emotions that were transpiring on the inside. A part no always visible to the viewer. While both artists, Le Brun and Cassatt, worked within the perimeters of their artistic cultures --the 18th century in which female artists were excluded and the 19th century, in which women were artistically limited-- they were able to capture the loving relationship between mother and child, but in works such as Marie Antoinette and Her Children and Mother Nursing her Child 1898,
One artist has a great influential advocate of modern art in the United State, Arthur B. Davies, (September 26, 1862 – October 24, 1928) with his part "the Dawning oil" (1915) In this painting, unlike in the past, where female bodies were conveyed as being sexually submissive and lacked individuality. Davies painted the female figures in an irrational and certainly unconventional way, in a fantastical setting showing a distinct unique sexuality portrayal of a woman's body, in a soft, shapely and receptive sexual manner, with smooth graceful movements of a perfect woman silhouette body. The one tone nude silhouettes of the women figures are an expedition of evolution from light to dark or even dark to light helps objects in the painting
Paradise: Painting in America 1800-1959. Ed. Kynaston McShine. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1976.
Diarmuid Costello, Jonathan Vickery. Art: key contemporary thinkers. (UTSC library). Imprint Oxford: Berg, 2007. Print.
Christina Rossetti's poem, “In An Artist’s Studio”, explores how men foster a need for control by creating unrealistic expectations for women through their fantasies. Through the use of repetition, contrast of imagery, and symbolism, Rossetti guides us through the gallery inside of an artist’s mind, portraying the fantasies that give him a sense of control over the women he creates.