The Eternal Feminine

Berthe Morisot was born in 1841, a time when it was still quite difficult for women to become professional artists as the art world was predominantly male. She continually faced criticism and encountered difficulties due to her sex. Despite this, Morisot was able to establish herself as a respected artist whose work only continues to become more highly regarded with time. Her place in art history alongside such Impressionist artists as Claude Monet, Marie Bracquemond, Mary Cassatt, and Edgar Degas, is a testament to her ambition. She was an artist who “aspired to greatness” who “was not content to take second place.” Her painting Young Woman Knitting of 1883 is a excellent example of her style and technique. To fully comprehend how this painting is typical of her work, it is helpful to study her life, as well as her artistic development, especially in her paintings.

Modernity and the Spaces of Femininity was written by Griselda Pollock in 1988, and later published in The Expanding Disclosure in 1992. Griselda Pollock is an art historian, and writes this article for fellow art historians. This is an article written to show the different approaches to femininity in the late 19th century, mainly dealing with the field of art. This article shows how during this time period there were women artists, but due to the gendered ruled ideas attached to art history, these women are largely ignored by art historians. Pollock thought that these women artists are primarily overlooked due to the fact that they are judged by the same standards that are affixed to the work of their male counterparts. But she argues

This painting is much more sensual than Giorgione’s painting due to Titian’s because he engages the woman with the audience by making her look straightforwardly at the audience and his use of chiaroscuro (Grabski, Józef).

The woman is displayed from waist up in the central position on the canvas. She appears to be nude, her left breast exposed. Her face is upturned, gazing at something above the top of the composition. Her eyes are large and glassy; reflective pools. Her skin is clear and pale, a sign of youth and beauty. Her lips are slightly parted, and they are full and soft red in colour. The kitten looks up, at the same object as the woman. It has grey fur, red/pink rimmed eyes, ears and claws. The kitten digs it’s claws into the hand of the woman, which she holds beside her chest, cupping her hand, palm up. The kitten rests against her chest and grasps her hand, suggesting a bond or relationship between the two.

Angela Hall Krysten Bailey, BFA, MFA FA 140 9/21/2017 Grande Odalisque Compare/Contrast As I was scrolling down on my computer looking at the images that was presented to me to do an essay on, I notice all the images was similar but different. So, I decided to put my focus on the young lady in the Grande Odalisque, because of the boldness of the image and how intense the image was considering the young lady is in the nude. Both artist was extremely brave and courageous enough to present such a vision such as this. The painting of Grande Odalisque represents strength, sensuality, elegance, royalty and dirtiness all at the same time.

Concerning color, there is a stark contrast between the figure on the painting and the background. More specifically, the figure of the woman is predominantly delineated in white color, especially pale, ashen white, as far her apparel and facial complexion are concerned, while there are also various hues of grey, with respect to her hair and accessory feather. These white and grey shades are vividly contrasted with the prevailing red and crimson hues of the background (viz. the drape, armchair, and table). Moreover, one can detect colors of dark green (jewelry), some beige on the left (pillar), and darker or lighter shades of blue on the right side of the canvas (sky), which all in concert and in addition to the subtle purple hue forming the sun or moon exude a certain dramatic sentiment. Also, there is brown, which often easily segues into gold (viz. books and attire details respectively). The main contrast of colors between white and red would be interpreted as serving the purpose of rendering the figure of the woman, and especially her face, the focal point of the work, despite, paradoxically enough, the lush red shades at the background. Bearing that in mind, the significance of the woman’s face will be enlarged upon later, when discussing aspects of her identity.

This work also highlights the female consciousness

He achieves this by using oil paint on canvas. Its main focus is that of a nude European woman in the foreground, the woman stares apathetically at the viewer. Her body is lounging on a blue couch, with rich linens crumpled beneath her. There are elaborately embroidered curtains hanging behind her. The only thing adorning her body is a turban in her hair and a peacock feathered fan clutched in her hand.

Firstly, in Brandt’s poem “missionary position (2),” she writes “there was a great crashing in my / ears the day God became man & the / last heavy link of the great command / came tumbling to earth i became my / own mother” (29). This connects to Irigaray’s ideas that because man is separate as a gender to women, he and God are not defined by the female. Moreover, because there is no woman God, women’s connection to the infinite is tied to the virgin mother and that she can only become divine through her son’s inherent perfection (Medd, March 20). Furthermore, Sawai’s short story, “The Day I Sat with Jesus on the Sun Deck and a Wind Came Up and Blew My Kimono Open and He Saw My Breasts,” explores the imagination and what is seen to be impossible in the world as a possibility in a fictive text. That is, words have multiple meanings and truths (Medd, March 24). Irigaray discusses how the imaginary stage is essential in how women define experiences. While the symbolic stage – the law of the father – centres male-embodied experiences into language, the imaginary stage emphasizes the body and experimenting with the impossible (Medd, March 17). As well, this narrative redefines the self within the existing symbolic order, adding a shock factor with the beliefs that we have internalized (Medd, March 27). For example, Sawai writes Jesus with sexually charged imagery and with intertextuality of Christian verses, such as “He kissed me on my mouth. Then He flicked my nipple with His finger” (31). This shock, utilized with other literary techniques, demonstrates that Irigaray’s ideas of the symbolic order and the imaginary stage are crucial in order for women writers to project their identities and

The analysis of these paintings will begin with Vuillard’s oil painting Interior With a Screen. This piece depicts a female nude placed in the interior a large and furnished room; the woman appears to be slightly hunched over

The use of linear perspective has been abandoned, we see an absence of chiaroscuro which dominated paintings from the Renaissance and other earlier stylistic periods. His painting is confrontational and engages the viewer immediately, however this engaging involves danger. We see a mixture of styles and influences in Picasso’s painting: influences from Cezanne and the faces of the women on the right can be interpreted as influenced by African masks. Overall, we see that Matisse and Picasso explored further on ideas put forth by Cezanne, they turned away from the traditional approach of body representation paving the way for Modern art to grow into what it has become today.

The portrait is displayed horizontally with a gold trimmed frame. The subject is a female that looks to be in her early 20’s sitting upright on a large brown chair. If the viewer travels up the painting the first indication of the woman’s class is her satin, blue dress. The saturated blue shines and falls in the light like water. Paired with the dress are her exceptionally detailed endings to her sleeves. The lace is even painted as though it is translucent, allowing a little of the blue dress to show through the sleeve. Flowers throughout history have symbolized innocence of a woman and her virginity. The repeating theme of flowers, in the sleeve cuffs and ribbon) in the woman’s attired suggests her purity or innocent nature. Another very details section of the painting includes the corset/torso details. The sewing suggests texture in the torso with small beading in between. Towards the top of the chest in the center, the female seems to bear an extravagant, ribbon piece with a tear drop bead in the center. The light pink

Girl before a Mirror, an oil on canvas painting by Spanish artist Pablo Picasso, shows two sides of a girl; one which is illustrated with a dark tone and one with a vibrant colorful tone. This painting is bright; colors are at full intensity and are arranged next to their complements, producing a visual relationship between shape and form. Forms are used to draw the viewer’s eye across the canvas where circular shapes, repeating throughout the work, are compensated by the pattern of diagonal lines of the background. The viewer observes the girl’s profile and full frontal image, looking into a mirror and noticing a different image of herself. In order to achieve this effect, Picasso uses a range of formal elements that highlight the

L’Origine du monde is an oil painting that offers an unconventional and pornographic framing of a woman’s body. In the center of the picture, she presents her pubis topped by an imposing hairiness contrasting with the pervasive flesh. She also shows generously proportioned hips and belly. We can even make a breast out, which is partly hidden by the white woolen surrounding the painting’s subject. In both bottom corners, there are wide thighs, which emphasize the pinkish crack in the foreground that is

The Large Bathers, 1898-1905 is the largest of Paul Cezanne's pictures and has been cited as an example of his ideal of composition and his restoration of classic monumentality after its lapse during the nineteenth century. Cézanne’s great achievement forced the young Picasso, Matisse, and many other artists to contend with the implications of Cézanne’s art. This essay will discuss how both Matisse’s Bonheur de Vivre (Joy of Life) and Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon are considered as inspired by and breaking free of The Large Bathers.