In “American Badass Vol.2”, a faculty lecture presented by professor Jennifer Brickey, the relationship between contemporary female painters and 1950’s artists is explored. Brickey opens by discussing the origin and the ever changing connotations behind the term “badass”. To elaborate, in the 1950’s the word “badass” was initially used in a derogatory manner, however in recent years the term has been used to describe confident, empowered, and cool women along with the strong attitudes they possess. Introducing one of the first female painters she plans to analyze, Brickey briefly talks about Georgia O'Keeffe and her “good girl” reputation. It was this attitude that the new generation of painters so desperately wished to rid themselves of. The …show more content…
The sexually explicit, gestural, and raw scenes that the painter, Cecily Brown created was over-viewed. Moreover, the rise of Brown was constantly speculated as some felt it was due to the pure controversial aspect of her work, while some believed it was a result of nepotism. Whatever the case, she is still considered a trailblazer in the sense that she was one of the first female painters to dare to depict sexual and grotesque scenes in a way that was not completely overt. Unapologetic and raw, Jenny Saville painted the unconventional woman and challenged the normalized and expected ideals that surrounded a woman’s appearance. Brickey emphasizes that Saville was someone who truly challenged the definition of beauty and did so in portraying society’s view of a traditionally “ugly” and “disgusting” female. Lisa Yuskavage, a female artist with a soft porn aesthetic, was touched on. She was a painter who was constantly criticized as either a “dumb feminist or a brilliant, cynical misogynist”. Constantly depicting the nude female form in a controversial light, Brickey mentions how feminists spoke out against her and her art as they felt it was detrimental to their
Despite the long history of African American art, many black artists in contemporary society still have a difficult time getting their art viewed or accepted by the masses. Society, in general, tends to look at African art as ethnic, trivial, simple, folk art, perhaps even collectable, but not worthy of true in-depth exploration of fine art accreditation. However, Laurie Cooper and Lorna Simpson disrupt these perceptions in their art.
To elaborate, Scott argues that as a picture interpreter, we must make a distinction between the “ideal and the real,” to understand the true meaning of an image. She argues how the Gibson Girl and the American Girl were two idealised visions of modern beauty and femininity which made women to try to be like them. These two girls became markers of their decade, ...
Barbara Carrasco is an artist and muralist based in Los Angeles. Her works range from pen and ink drawings, to paintings, to posters and countless murals. Her artwork has been exhibited nationally and internationally. Barbara Carrasco is considered to be a renegade feminist. Her art is known for critiquing, dominant cultural stereotypes involving socioeconomic, race, gender and sexuality.(Revision history statistics "Barbara Carrasco" 2017)She is known for bringing awareness to the Chicano art movement and their sexist attitudes sometimes seen in Chicano art. Barbara Carrasco works in advocating to change treatment of women. I decided to do my research paper because I believe that there's a difference between how a Chicano depicts and paint images and how a Chicana depicts and paints images. As a Latina woman, learning about Barbara Carrasco
Georgia O’Keefe is a famous American painter who painted beautiful flowers and landscapes. But she painted these images in such a way that many people believed she was portraying sexual imagery. “O’Keefe’s depictions of flowers in strict frontality and enlarged to giant scale were entirely original in character . . . the view into the open blossoms evoked an image of the female psyche and invited erotic associations.” (Joachimides 47) O’Keefe denies these allegations and says that she “magnified the scale of the flower only to ensure people would notice them.” (Haskell 203) O’Keefe’s artwork was misinterpreted because of cultural prejudice, her non-traditional lifestyle, and gender bias art criticism. But despite these accusations, Georgia O’Keefe’s artwork was not based on sexuality.
Both artists dressed as lesbians because it affected the way they shaped art and understood it in their future art education. Brooks was empowered by the lesbian identity and was able to paint lesbian portraits for those who attended Barney’s literary salons (Lampel, 6). As for Gluck, she had no interest in complying to society’s standard traditions for women. She was wealthy and always dressed exceptional like a well presented man. Her lesbian identity left E.A.Hoppe, photographer of The Royal Magazine, with an awe that she exerted an innovative sense of style that depicts her strength, determination, character, and success as an artist (Lampel, 7). She fell in love Nesta Oberner, who influenced her in a lot of her paintings. Gluck’s marriage with the woman left society with paintings that described her lesbian relationship and unconditional love they had together until she died (Lampel,
Mary Cassatt is one of the most famous female figures in the art world and aided in the popularization of Impressionism. Her work was simple yet impactful, and left its viewers wanting more. The main focus in most of her works was of mother and child or of women doing simple daily tasks. Her broken brush strokes and bright color palettes made her pieces pleasant and full of life. Though her work was not at first accepted, she kept painting and worked hard to make a name for herself and to change the art world into something more diverse and accepting.
Other research has devoted to unveiling the origins and the development of their stereotyping and put them among the historical contextual frameworks (e.g., Kawai, 2003, 2005; Prasso, 2005). Research has shown that those stereotypes are not all without merits. The China doll/geisha girl stereotype, to some degree, presents us with a romanticized woman who embodies many feminine characteristics that are/ were valued and praised. The evolving stereotype of the Asian martial arts mistress features women power, which might have the potentials to free women from the gendered binary of proper femininity and masculinity. Nevertheless, the Western media cultural industry adopts several gender and race policing strategies so as to preserve patriarchy and White supremacy, obscuring the Asian women and diminishing the positive associations those images can possibly imply. The following section critically analyzes two cases, The Memoirs of a Geisha and Nikita, that I consider to typify the stereotypical depictions of Asian women as either the submissive, feminine geisha girl or as a powerful yet threatening martial arts lady. I also seek to examine
Art could be displayed in many different forms; through photography, zines, poetry, or even a scrapbook. There are many inspirational women artists throughout history, including famous women artists such Artemisia Gentileschi and Georgia O’Keeffe. When searching for famous female artists that stood out to me, I found Frida Kahlo, and Barbara Kruger. Two very contrasting type of artists, though both extremely artistic. Both of these artists are known to be feminists, and displayed their issues through painting and photography. Frida Kahlo and Barbara Kruger’s social and historical significance will be discussed.
In an excerpt from Janell Hobson’s “Venus in the Dark: Blackness and Beauty in Popular Culture” Hobson argues that the “image of black women’s bodies in culture are distorted in a way resembling the morphing of a person’s figure in a carnival mirror,” a term she coins as “un-mirroring.” She continues this metaphor by saying black women artists must “fight against this process by challenging dominant culture’s representation of black women’s bodies as being grotesque and changing the discourse to being one of beauty.” One may argue that black women are too diverse to be represented by one image, rather that they should fight to be regarded as individuals devoid of stereotypes and negative historical connotations. Stereotypes, which are too broad to be accurate, have negatively affected the image of the black female body in culture. To change the trajectory of this idea in the future, the discussion must be aimed towards persuading society that stereotypes are superficial judgments, and that black women should be regarded as a diverse group of individuals, not individual elements of a stereotype.
No other artist has ever made as extended or complex career of presenting herself to the camera as has Cindy Sherman. Yet, while all of her photographs are taken of Cindy Sherman, it is impossible to class call her works self-portraits. She has transformed and staged herself into as unnamed actresses in undefined B movies, make-believe television characters, pretend porn stars, undifferentiated young women in ambivalent emotional states, fashion mannequins, monsters form fairly tales and those which she has created, bodies with deformities, and numbers of grotesqueries. Her work as been praised and embraced by both feminist political groups and apolitical mainstream art. Essentially, Sherman’s photography is part of the culture and investigation of sexual and racial identity within the visual arts since the 1970’s. It has been said that, “The bulk of her work…has been constructed as a theater of femininity as it is formed and informed by mass culture…(her) pictures insist on the aporia of feminine identity tout court, represented in her pictures as a potentially limitless range of masquerades, roles, projections” (Sobieszek 229).
These specific ploys that are performed by the Guerrilla Girls are in the way they dress, the masks they wear, pseudonymous names of dead women artists and the witty factual evidence in their works. These are all examples to evoke audiences in challenging not only the art society which dictates the value and worth of women in art, but also to confront yourself and your own beliefs in a way that makes audiences rethink these growing issues. Over the last twenty years, the Guerrilla Girls have established a strong following due to the fact that they challenged and consistently exhibited a strong supportive subject matter that defies societal expectations. In an interview “We reclaimed the word girl because it was so often used to belittle grown women. We also wanted to make older feminists sit up and notice us since being anti- “girl” was one of their issues....
Feminism and political issues have always been centered on in the art world and artists like to take these ideas and stretch them beyond their true meanings. Female artists such as Hannah Höch, who thrived during the Dada movement in the 1920s in Germany and Barbara Kruger who was most successful during the 1980s to 1990s in the United States, both take these issues and present them in a way that forces the public to think about what they truly mean. Many of Kruger’s works close in on issues such as the female identity and in relation to politics she focuses on consumerism and power. Höch, like Kruger, also focuses on female identity but from the 1920s when feminism was a fairly new concept and like Kruger focuses on politics but focuses more on the issues of her time such as World War I. With the technique of photomontage, these two artists take outside images and put them together in a way that displays their true views on feminism and politics even though both are from different times and parts of the world.
Terror and mockery come together in the portraits of Cindy Sherman on display at the Crocker Art Museum. Walking into the large, dimly lit ballroom, one may begin to feel a slight sense of trepidation as the viewer looks around to find nine sets of beady eyes watching one’s every move. Sherman produced her History Portraits during the late eighties and early nineties, nine of which are displayed at the museum. In her portraits she uses lush fabrics, lavish jewelry, and false body parts to decorate herself in these self-portraits. Her portraits have been know to cause discomfort in the viewers who find the general stereotypes, depicted in her portraits, amusing, yet confusing and terrorizing.
It throws the ambiguity of the piece wide open and in doing so empowers women across all spheres, encouraging a confronting discussion about women, their bodies and their place in the world. Paintings such as Black Iris discuss that natural beauty is found in many forms, and as Seeberg (2002) notes, that a galaxy of ideas can be and that form can be incorporated into an individual object, which, can be viewed in many different ways and is always subjective to the viewer. Black Iris caused a commotion when it was first shown. A woman producing a body of work that resembled, according to the Freudian mind, female genitalia, of which as Breedlove (1986) discusses was deeply upsetting to O’Keeffe as the artwork was more often than not critiqued with what the artworks said about her rather than the work in general.
EBSCO HOST. Web. The Web. The Web. 17 Feb. 2014. Madison, D. - Soyini, S. "Pretty Woman Through the Triple Lens of Black Feminist Spectatorship."