Greek Sex Art

This essay aims to investigate two different time periods in the history of art. It will scrutinize the influence that the respective societal contexts had on the different artists, which in turn, caused them to arrange the formal elements in a specific way. I will be examining an Egyptian sculpture of the god Isis nursing Horus, her son, as well as the Vladimir Virgin icon, which dates from the Byzantine era. Experts vary on the precise ‘lifetime’ of the Ancient Egyptian civilization, but according to Mason (2007:10) it existed from 3100 BCE up to 30 BCE. The Byzantine era, which

Art is not always pleasant, but neither is society. Art and society have a reflective relationship with one another. During social, religious, and political controversy, artists such as Frida Kahlo incorporated imagery into their portraits of society which are often disturbing to the viewer. The role of an artist often includes acting as a social critic, to show us aspects of our cultural landscape that are unpleasant. In this manner, the art acts as a commentary on the negative aspects of Western civilisation. During the thirties and forties, Kahlo incorporated the hidden realities of economic and social depression into her works.

In the Renaissance period women are almost invariably shown as completely passive and as an object for contemplation. The reclining female nude in the Renaissance raises questions of the male gaze more often than any other artistic stereotype. Female nudes were only an open acknowledgement of not only male desire but also the right males had to express that desire. A woman’s feelings when looking at such images of members of their own gender were never discussed or asked until recently.

Women artists faced many prejudices in the art world. From being allowed only in some art academies to creating positive depictions of women in their art outside of the male gaze, women artists all reacted differently to the goal of representation. Depictions of women in artwork, especially by men, tended to be highly sexualized images, often objectifying the female body through nudity and scandalous positions. In the 1920’s, women began fighting for their rights more tenaciously with the continued pressure by The Suffragettes, an organized women’s group that advocated for a women’s right to vote founded in 1909. The group advocated more fiercely in the interwar period, demonstrating the feminist and more outspoken views of women at the time. Women were ready to take a stand.

The post-modernist Julie Rrap is a contemporary artist whose focal point rests on the basis of femineity and the way the female identity is represented historically within art. She is a feminist who accuses the ‘male gaze’ of instigating a predatory activity that is accustomed with the norm of society. She relates this norm to existing social structures that are attributed with a patriarchal society, where women were nothing more than sexual objects. All in all this term, the ‘male gaze’ evaluates the predatory voyeurism of society, where the male is the active subject and the female is a passive object of representation.

Nudity has been an essential aspect in Western art. After the Renaissance, this is when the nudity was exploited as humans in their natural state. The nude form first was conquered by the ancient Greeks from approximately two thousand five hundred years ago. The Greeks celebrated the human body and cultivated the mastery of the human body through these sculptures of David. Rubens captures the nudity of Venus and makes her seen pure and compelling. When taking a glance at this masterpiece, one is immediately fixated and dragged in, it is a piece that cannot be missed. Ruben’s expression in this piece can be defined as timeless. Historians conclude that besides the magnificent Michelangelo, no other painter had a greater knowledge of the human body and visual power as Rubens. This is how he is able to cultivate these mythological pieces, and incorporate much detail. There is much life in Rubens’ painting, through the vibrant hues and how he depicts Venus and Adonis as these massive creatures. Figures depicted in art are more often nude then one would think. It is seen the human body is at its ideal state when artist depict the figure as nude. It is seemed as heroic because humans are compelled to see how artist illustrate the human body. Hence why the male and female body is the central theme of western art. When thinking about the human form, there is nothing more compelling, which is why the theme is still prominent in modern and contemporary

The reading claims that nudes throughout artistic history have been an important source of beauty and controversy. Nudes began to spike during the Baroque period as they were used for the more expressive and emotional arts of the time. In the nineteenth century, nudes became more common, yet became more sensitive. Artists would train by drawing nudes of ancient Greek statues and figures from myth. However, many artists would then move on to create works depicting prostitutes or peasant naked women. This would not please patrons as they were extremely societally taboo. However, this did not start artists from making them, as they moved into the twentieth and twenty-first century. This shows the importance of artistic nudes and their impact

The history of mankind has often been captured in snapshots between the rise and fall of great leaders and civilizations, by artists all with a common dream of portraying what they saw during their times. Ideologies reflective of their societies were depicted through sculptures, frescoes, pottery, paintings, and many other methods. Many of these principals were created, celebrated, and popularized by constituents of societies where andocentric values were applied not only to social and political mores, but also to the various art forms as the male body was cherished and praised and the female body was hidden away from public view. The book Feminism and Art History: Questioning the Litany edited by Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrad, strives

One such aspect that is commonly overlooked when discussing historical artists is that artist’s sexuality. It is readily apparent by the art that was created during historical periods such as the Renaissance that some of these artists were either homosexual or had homosexual tendencies and evidence of this can be found in the pieces of art they created. Homoeroticism or homoerotic images are not a recent development, and it may be said that these images had their start during the Renaissance when artists had greater artistic freedom. During the Renaissance homosexuality was against

Artist and people viewing the art work have always had a fascination with the female nude. Even when I was a child my attention was captured by the nude art not because I was a kid and I saw a nude lady , but it forced me to wonder more about why the female nude was so amazing as a tool for art and why this is repeated so many times throughout the centuries. One female nude painting in particular was the subject of controversy and exposed the syncretism and or the power of the female nude painting.

In Modernist literature, the artist is the most important occupation that a person can pursue. The artist is the person who is responsible for holding a mirror to the culture of the community. It is thus their responsibility to show that community exactly what the community was truly about, especially if that truth were particularly harsh or ugly. Paris, France is famous for being a location wherein one could indulge in every kind of sin, the more lascivious the better. This aspect of the city is often depicted in literature, but never as an exploration of that lifestyle, but instead as a comment on the true hollowness of such an existence. In the earliest half of the twentieth century, a growing number of people became dissatisfied with the world they had been living in following the First World War. These people became dissatisfied with the government, with their lives, and with the status quo. In the United States, women were abandoning their roles as wives and mothers in attempts to find an individual identity as a single human being. Men and women were finding themselves attracted to members of the same sex and, for the first time in American history, were unashamed to act on their feelings, although they would often have to keep their orientation a secret from the public world for fear of ostracism or violence. This new concept of sexuality and the belief of the artist as modernist critics are all interrelated. This is evident in the books Tropic of

Throughout history, specifically in ancient Rome and Greece, people admired painting to the point where it was taught to every son of respectable families, yet forbidden to the slaves. This goes to show how this form of art in particular was considered fit only to those of high social class. Although it was reserved for the educated and cultured, painting attracted everyone and pleased them equally. In particular, “[n]ature herself delights in painting.”(Alberti 64) Alberti persists in showing us how painting is of nature; he first references nature by saying that Narcissus was the inventor of painting. In the myth of Narcissus, nature plays the role of the artist who paints a portrait so beautiful that Narcissus cannot take his eyes off of it. To further convince the reader of the pleasures painting gives, the author recounts a personal anecdote of how gratifying and relaxing painting can be.

Throughout the years artists have portrayed sexuality in art in many different ways. Artists use different symbols, pictures, words, etc to express sexuality, and the way that artist express sexuality has changed throughout the years. In the 3rd to 1st Century B.C. the Sleeping Hermaphroditos was created by an unknown artist, and was discovered in Rome in 1608. The sculpture is of a woman lying down which is shown by the curvature of her body, but on the other side of her body is male represented by the male genitalia. The sculpture is based on the history of the son of Hermes and Aphrodite, where Hermaphroditos had rejected the advances of the nymph Salmacis. Salmacis was upset about the rejection, so she asked

World War II was a war that was forever etched in history as a result of it destruction and overwhelming body count. But who would have thought that this war would have found a way to impact art before it’s time. Before Hitler rose to power, he used the civil war in Spain around 1936 as his personal field test. In response, arts took to their trade to cope with their frustration and express their opinions. Then as war was on the verge of beginning, Hitler stole modern art from Jewish artists and put them in his own show. His show was titled “Degenerate Art,” and it portrayed the artist as demented people who were a hindrance to society. He felt sane people were incapable of producing such abstract art. He went on to sponsor another

When one thinks of art and religion, one may think of gender role defiance and non-conformism. While this may be generally true in present times, it was not always this way. Women and men have had distinctly different places in society, these places often being unequal. Generally most well-known works throughout the ages have adhered to and represented what society regarded as the proper gender roles for men and women. This is represented in three works of art which will be discussed: Hamlet by William Shakespeare, The Courtier: Book 3 by Baldassare Castiglione, and Luncheon on the Grass by Eduoard Manet. While these three forms of art come from different times and are of different mediums, they are connected in that they follow and represent the gender roles of their time.