“Women of Tahiti” is a famous artwork of a French artist Paul Gauguin; Paul Gauguin painted this picture in 1891 in Tahiti. Gauguin loved travelling and one of his favorite places was a French colony island –Tahiti. He loved Tahiti and stayed there for years, discovering the culture of this island. In his artwork “women of Tahiti”, I see two women sitting on the beach. My first impression is fulfilled with warm sunny colors, light ocean breeze and warm sand. The picture is taking the viewer to the exotic island of Tahiti One of the women, facing the viewer, was Gauguin’s mistress and the woman facing down was her sister. By looking at the picture, I feel a strong contrast between these two women. This contrast seemingly reflects in the clothes they are wearing in the facial expressions also in the traditional elements, which indicate about the status of these women. …show more content…
She is facing down and her face looks sad. She is wearing a traditional Tahiti poreo – red skirt with white flower prints, wrapped around her waist and a light blue top. She is having a white flower behind her ear and a light colored ribbon on her hair. This flower could be quite symbolic, telling that she might be single and ready for marriage. Paul Gauguin belonged to a symbolist art movement of early 1900s, and loved giving the viewer some sort of sigma, that always by looking at his art, the viewer wants to discover, what the artist wants to tell. I am also seeing some disproportions on her body. Her right hand and foot look a bit distorted and disproportional. This also was in style of Paul Gauguin to exaggerate people’s bodies on his artworks. Gauguin used very natural colors in women’s skin tones. The colors are blending nicely giving an effect of
Contextual Theory: This painting depicts a portrait of life during the late 1800’s. The women’s clothing and hair style represent that era. Gorgeous landscape and a leisurely moment are captured by the artist in this work of
The painting depicts a mother and her four children, who are all leaning on her as she looks down solemnly, her tired, despondent expression suggests she felt trapped in her roles as being a mother and a wife. The woman and her children are clearly the focal point of the artwork as the bright colours used to paint them stand out impeccably against the dull, lifeless colours of the background. This painting appears to be centred around the ideology that women are home-keepers, whose main role is to satisfy and assist her husband while simultaneously minding the children and keeping the home tidy and ready for his return. The social consequences of this artwork could have been that the woman could have been berated for not taking pleasure out of being a mother and raising her children, as a woman should. She could have been made redundant as her husband may have felt as though she is no longer useful if she couldn’t adequately adhere to her roles as a mother and a
A full face mask decorated exists to validate the progress made by all three women while also representing the creative component of this project. It adds to women’s literature by marking said progress. There is a clear visual of where they started at the beginning, where they were in the middle, and then where they stood at the finish line. The left side which is pink goes to show the messier side of these women’s lives. Negative words were placed on this side because they acted as a response to how they were treated on a daily basis. One word that respectively represents Queen Elizabeth in this instance is emotion. For example, line one proclaims, “I grieve and dare not show my discontent (page 67).” Queen Elizabeth seemed to have all these emotions but did not quite understand how to best express them. Whereas, the right side of the mask is meant to look more beautiful than the left. To articulate the beauty of the right side, positive words were typed out and then placed onto the mask. Some of the words included in this section are power, strength, etc. In particular, power is placed in the middle to represent both sides. It can be negative in a way because the women seemed to lack it in the beginning of their pieces. On the other hand, power is also positive because it was something they acquired. With this in mind, the narrator in The Yellow Wallpaper
... study for the overall concept they appear rather as abstract patterns. The shadows of the figures were very carefully modeled. The light- dark contrasts of the shadows make them seem actually real. The spatial quality is only established through the relations between the sizes of the objects. The painting is not based on a geometrical, box like space. The perspective centre is on the right, despite the fact that the composition is laid in rows parallel to the picture frame. At the same time a paradoxical foreshortening from right to left is evident. The girl fishing with the orange dress and her mother are on the same level, that is, actually at equal distance. In its spatial contruction, the painting is also a successful construction, the groups of people sitting in the shade, and who should really be seen from above, are all shown directly from the side. The ideal eye level would actually be on different horizontal lines; first at head height of the standing figures, then of those seated. Seurats methods of combing observations which he collected over two years, corresponds, in its self invented techniques, to a modern lifelike painting rather than an academic history painting.
The painting depicts two figures, the one of a woman and of a man. The dominating central figure is the one of the woman. We see her profile as she looks to the left. Her hands are crossed in a graceful manner. She has blonde hair and her figure is lit by what seems to be natur...
The painting, in its simplest form, consists of a naked woman lying elegantly upon stately and rich cloths, while a young, also nude boy, is holding a mirror which contains her reflection. Upon first glance of this work, I was quickly able to make out the identity of the two subjects. ...
Certain parts of her body are heavily exaggerated; she has overly huge breast, her stomach is large and as well as her butt. She appears to be smooth and her parts of her body I would consider to be very symmetrical. The artist that created her has chosen to exaggerate her breast and make them appear large and full. As well as they have done with her stomach, by making it appear overly large and to symbolize fertility or a late stage of pregnancy for women. The artist carriers, this plumpness and roundness of the female figure throughout out the stature. The artist has demonstrated plumpness of the female figure through her legs and carries it to her back side as well. The one aspect of this figure the artist had heavily rendered in detail, is the figures female genitalia. The genitalia is heavily rendered to show a female reproductive organs. It’s this aspect of the sculptural nature that makes me think that the artist had created her for fertility reasons.
It differs greatly, in its portrayal of mothers, from Le Brun’s Self-portrait with her Daughter and Cassatt’s artworks. Behind Marie Antoinette, you see a jewelry cabinet, off to the right of the canvas. This illustrates that, although she is with her children, she finds treasure within her own materialistic objects. Furthermore, her expression lacks emotion as she holds the child loosely within her arms. The child looks off, barely acknowledging its mother, who is holding him. Next, the child, on the far right of the canvas, reveals an empty cradle, alluding to a child who has died. Again, Marie seems unfazed or simply chooses not to acknowledge the boy’s actions. Furthermore, the young girl, on the right of the canvas, clings on to her mother as she lovingly looks up to her mother. Marie holds a wry smile, appearing somewhat annoyed or displeased. The color scheme is dark, but Le Brun utilizes contrast to emphasize the royal family. However, it only works to further expose the detached relationship between a Marie and her children. According to the lecture, “To counter people’s hatred of the queen and their criticisms of her as a bad (even a degenerate) mother, Vigée Le Brun was commissioned to paint this portrait of Marie Antoinette and her children” (Gartrell). Sadly, the painting was
Fauve style painting is defined as using color and letting it stand on its own, drawing strong and unified perspective to each element on the canvas. It also valued individual expression. (theartstory.org/movement-fauvism, n.d.). In the essay by Beth Harris and Steve Zucker, Bonheur de Vivre, they discuss the vibrant scenery’s colors and moving nudes within the painting, and liken it as the closest to Cézanne’s The Large Bathers.
It is dated 1842, which means late in the Romantic era. The painting shows a young woman standing on a rock in the river in front of a waterfall. She is carrying a water pot on her shoulder and next to her is a dog. Her shoes are lying on a rock further into the painting. The sun is rising in the painting, this gives it a beautiful glow, and the nature around the woman looks peaceful and almost magical.
In her interpretation of the painting she informs the reader that the two women in the picture are in fact the same woman. In the painting it is the woman on the left is before marriage and the woman on the right is as a wife. In this interpretation Goffen has shown that Titian doesn't always show women as just objects. " For Titian, humanity (male as well as female) was defined by sexuality, not merely by gender, and human sexuality was interpreted as a potent, positive quality ventral to the individual's identity and a concomitant of her (or his) personality" (112). Titian showed more understanding of women in his paintings but still believed they needed to do their role of being there for their husbands with what they need and for raising the children.
The Tahitian island of Hiva Oa is the place where artist Paul Gauguin chose to live out the remaining years of his life. In The Moon and Sixpence, the narrator describes the place by saying, “the beauty of the island is unveiled as diminishing distance shows you in distincter shape its lovely peaks…for Tahiti is smiling and friendly” (Maugham 160). This is an excellent description of the island, and it is little wonder that Gauguin found solace here. Hiva Oa is on the southern coast of Tahiti and is the most fertile and well known of the Marquisas group of islands, of which there are six. Even today, Hiva Oa retains much of the physical beauty that it did during Gauguin’s stay. Many of the roads are unpaved and the largest tikis in Polynesia are found right on the island. On the cliffs overlooking the village of Atuona is Cavalry Cemetery where Gauguin is buried, along with another famous man, Belgian singer Jacques Brel, who also lived out his life in Hiva Oa. In the village is a museum dedicated to the artist’s life and works. Further to the east is Puamau Village, where many of Gauguin’s descendants still live, mostly in the native lifestyle. In The Moon and Sixpence the natives are described as being promiscuous, although the definition may have a different meaning to Westerners than it does to the natives. One of the narrator’s friends describes the artist’s wife as “a good girl and she’s only seventeen.
Yet, her facial expression is full of shame. This reminds me of a time in my life when I was not comfortable with who I was, and was unable to look in the mirror. The story I took from this painting, from my personal interpretation, was that this god-like woman is viewed of as beautiful, but does not feel that way herself. I believe this woman is depicted to be someone who gives off confidence, but is secretly ashamed of who she is. I know many people who come off as happy individuals, but when they are alone, are very sad.
The gestural and heavy working of the paint and the contrasting colors make the painting appear active yet are arduous to follow. The defining element of Woman and Bicycle is the presence of the black lines that do most of the work in terms of identifying the figure. Through the wild nature of the brushwork, color, and composition of the painting, it can be implied that the artist is making an implication towards the wild nature of even the most proper of women.
Rossetti shows us the woman being painted as many different things. Although she is just a painting, the woman symbolizes how the artist views women in real life: as objects. Irony is used when the woman is painted as “a queen”(5). She is put on a pedestal in a position of power, yet she is only described as being “in [an] opal or ruby dress”(5), cementing her role as an ornament. The ruby symbolizes passion and perhaps promiscuity. Opal is a white stone that reflects many colors. White symbolizes purity; while the different colors reflected symbolize how her meaning can change, and how the artist controls her identity and can make her fit any persona he desires. The woman is also depicted as a “nameless girl”(6), indicating her identity is not important to the artist. It also shows that he does not personally know the women he’s painting, but only their looks, affirming that he bases their value off of their appearances. Lastly, the artist portrays a woman as “a saint [and] an angel”(7) and compares her to the “moon”(11), an allusion to Artemis, the goddess of virginity. In this painting, she is established as a pure virgin, which was a requirement of the time period Rossetti lived in. However, because it is one of the fantasies the artist creates, and the poem antagonizes him, this line also expresses the idea that a woman’s purity should not define her. He makes the innocent virgin and the licentious queen the only ways women can be viewed. Yet, they are the same to him. Lacking depth, their physical description is the only thing giving them any meaning. Rossetti describing the portraits conveys the idea that no matter the position in society; or what their actual personalities are like, women are just blank canvases for men to project their fantasies onto. Uninterested in a real person, the artist worships the idea of a