What Is The Role Of Women In Pop Art?

Alice Neel and Egon Schiele were some of the most daring artists of their time. Neel was especially known for her uncaring attitude of what was “in” at the time, while Egon Schiele was similarly known to paint some of the most bold nude figures of his time. Both painted what they wanted, not a thought towards what was socially acceptable. They both focused on painting people around them, or in Neel’s case, random people on the street, and Schiele was often compared to Picasso in his obsession with self-portraits. Either way, while Alice Neel and Egon Schiele were from opposite sides of the planet, they shared a remarkably similar style of painting and rendering of the subjects in those paintings.

A review of the world’s great artists conjures familiar images: Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel; Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night; Pablo Picasso’s The Tragedy. There are many more, of course: Monet, Moya, Warhol, Rembrandt, Kandinsky. What is immediately noticeable, however, upon any brief study of art, is the significant absence of women as heralded artists—not only in our ancient pasts, but even today, amongst valiant efforts for gender equality.

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

Throughout the 1950’s, the United States belonged to the Leave It To Beaver era. Families were structured around a strong, hard working father and a wonderful homemaker mother. Children were brought up with solid ideologies on what society expects from them and were warned about living a different and dangerous life. Only one-year separates Tennessee William’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room from there publishing dates during this decade of unwavering beliefs. These texts were seen as extremely controversial during their time due to their themes of homosexuality. Sexual orientation was an awkward topic during such a “to the book” time period and these texts pushed the limits, making them remarkable and memorable works. Both Tennessee Williams and James Baldwin explore the panic men experience while trying to comprehend what sexual orientation they belong to and highlight the masculine gay man. These texts also examine the woman’s role in the mist of it all.

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

“The Haunting of Emile Griffith” by Bob Herbert, presents Emile Griffith as an average individual, briefly describes the Paret v.s. Griffith fight in vivid imagery, and tackles society’s twisted view of homosexuality. Considering the article was printed approximately 40 years after the big fight, tensions have calmed down and people can analyze the surrounding circumstances with logic and rationality rather than emotion. Ultimately, the texts main purpose is to emphasize society’s distorted view of homosexuality and to present Griffith as a victim through the use of tone, diction, and credibility.

In the first example, a painting done by Norman Rockwell, a girl is portrayed as “more kittenish than hoydenish” the girl and her appearance are described as “soft and tentative”. She is with a boy who is awkward, she touches just his hand and that is only to tell his fortune. The girl “looks into his eyes with confidence and no assumption of consequences to her boldness”. The girl described, was the first step away from “Mary Pickford” yet is still far away from “Flapper”. In the cover the next year, the boy and girl are shown again, this time already contrasting from the Mary Pickford type; the boy and girl share a closeness - “he is standing close in an attitude of embrace” where last time there seemed to be a line drawn in-between them. The girl’s appearance is beginning to change as well, “her dress is beginning to be tomboyish” she wears a sweater and a skirt opposed to a one piece dress and it is no longer soft and delicate. The girl has a “glance backward at the young man- awkward boy no longer- is more conscious of possible consequences of this exciting intimacy”. The stark differences in the looks that each girl is giving is enough to show the changing behavior of this new generation

The Catherine Opie: O at LACMA was a rather small exhibition of photos in which interactions depicting sadomasochism, usually through sexual activity, in which one person enjoys inflicting physical or mental suffering on another person, who derives pleasure from experiencing pain as with her participation in San Francisco’s bondage community. This explores the tension between private desire and the public face by showing sexual practices which are usually unseen by the public. I see this as a relation in which one acts to fit into society while in their minds or personal time behave very differently - to draw a line between public life and “secret” life. Her work seemed rather alluring to me as others would avoid or found little interest

Through a multiplicity of layers, Gertrude Stein’s rhythmic poem “Susie Asado” evokes images of an ardent dancer, a formal tea party, and overtones of desire and lust. Picasso’s “Ma Jolie,” an analytical cubism painting, depicts Eva Gouel, Picasso’s lover at the time, playing a guitar or zither. These two modernist works portray the female figure, a traditional staple in the classical art world, with a newfound zeal and grit. This portrayal, connected with music and rhythm, demonstrates how both the artist and the writer exploited modern techniques to express a plurality of tumultuous emotions, including the duality of endearment and eroticism with which they viewed their subjects.

More specifically, my grandfather who used to stand against pre-marital sex and live in a mainstream way of life that was characterized by conformity became a man who had courage to chase his love and express his sexual desire. In this paper, I will discuss how the Rolling Stones’ rock 'n' roll music influenced my grandfather’s attitude toward love and sex and liberated himself to express his thoughts.

Poetry is much different than any other style of writing. Poets have a way of communicating their message in a much more indirect way than regular writers. One reader may interpret a poem in a way that is drastically different than another. To truly understand a poem, one must understand the author as well. Sharon Olds, an American poet, who is known for her morbid and unhappy poems, writes about various themes including political violence, family relationships, and sexuality (Gale). In Olds’ poem, “The Death of Marilyn Monroe” we see her examining sexuality not only in 20th century, but in today’s age as well. Olds uses the death of a famous sex icon to really show how women were, and are still being sexualized in society.

James E Miller wrote Sex and Sexuality, a piece that focuses on Walt Whitman’s fixation in sex as a theme of his writings. Here he tackles Emerson's involvement in silencing Whitman’s horny nature, how Whitman was fired from his job and charged with writing “indecent poems”, and how flamboyant his writing was. Here he says “He very early adopted two phrenological terms to discriminate between the two relationships “amativeness” for man-woman love and “adhesiveness” for “manly

Pop Art was a Modern art development that developed during the mid-twentieth century in both England and America. It first started to pick up acknowledgment in the early 1950's, after around twenty years of Abstract, as specialists changed their consideration and looked to change. In the late 1950's and early 1960's, Pop Art got to be substantially more prominent to the overall population and fruitful for the development's art because of the world becoming drained of the repetitive types of Abstract. Found in the Menil Collection, Seated Woman and Lavender Disaster are two illustrations of Pop Art. The correlation of these two pieces shows in spite of the fact that they vary in medium and topic both Seated Woman and Lavender Disaster offer

I decided to do my analysis on why women have been excluded from the art history in the past. In the past centuries, women were often kept away from the arts because of their gender and they often faced many challenges. Also, one of the other reasons I think is that they usually had to take care of their household and children and didn’t really get the chance to pursue a career. They often didn’t get the opportunity to pursue an education. Although there were female artists in the past, they never really got recognition for their work and they had a hard time selling their artwork. Also, women probably either had to choose between their career or marriage. In that time period, women often had a lot of pressure from the society. Women during

Leaves of Grass is Walt Whitman’s life legacy and at the same time the most praised and condemned book of poetry. Although fearful of social scorn, there are several poems in Leaves of Grass that are more explicit in showing the homoerotic imagery, whereas there are several subtle – should I say “implicit” – images woven into the fabric of the book. It is not strange, then, that he created many different identities in order to remain safe. What Whitman faced in writing his poetry was the difficulty in describing and resonating manly and homosexual love. He was to find another voice of his, a rhetoric device, and his effort took two forms: simplified, and subverted word play.