As an English contemporary artist, Tracey Emin is known best for her autobiographical and confessional artwork, during the art period of Young British Artists. Emin produces her artwork in a variety of mediums including drawing, painting, film, photography, neon text, and sewn appliqué. In comparison, Dame Paula Rego, a Portuguese-born British visual artist, is particularly well known for her paintings and prints based upon storybooks and fairy tales. Often Rego will paint within the genres of surrealism and abstract act whilst using a multitude of mediums. However, in the case of her ‘Abortion Series’, Dame Paula Rego uses a more naturalistic style than in her other works – perhaps to symbolise and show the vast importance of the movement. …show more content…
Despite this, Emin’s ‘My Bed’ and Rego’s ‘Untitled IV’ (from her ‘Abortion Series’) share a common aspect: a bed. In both artworks the bed provides a duality of symbolism. Alison Cole wrote in an article based upon Emin’s ‘My Bed’: “You can interpret it as an uncompromising self-portrait of a woman at a time of emotional trauma – or as a turbulent still life – but it is still a bed and all that a bed symbolises and encompasses: sleep, sleeplessness, sex in all its manifestations, birth, death, and dreams”. This quotation can easily be transferred and applied to Dame Paula Rego’s artwork as well, connecting the two artists despite their inherent …show more content…
‘My Bed’, 1998, was inspired by a personal experience that happened to Emin: “In 1998 I had a complete, absolute break down, and I spent four days in bed; I was asleep and semi-unconscious. When I eventually did get out of bed, I had some water, went back, looked at the bedroom and couldn’t believe what I could see; this absolute mess and decay of my life, and then I saw the bed out of that contest of this tiny, tiny bedroom, and I saw it in just like a big white space”. The inspiration for Dame Paula Rego’s ‘Abortion Series’ came not only from her own personal experience, but also out of political frustration. Paula Rego created this image, as well as the other seven, in response to a referendum on abortion that took place in Portugal, 1998. 50.92% voted against the legalisation of abortion, and only 32% of the population voted. Rego’s ‘Untitled IV’, 1999, expresses the reality of many women in Portugal when they did not have the choice to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, or even have access to contraception. Rego even stated “Everybody got pregnant many times in those years. There wasn’t any contraception, really”. Both artworks, despite their contrasting inspirations and backgrounds, contain a similar subject matter – the feminine struggle of sexuality, even in different countries and
When that room is entered all voices are hushed, and all merriment silenced. The place is as holy as a church. In the centre of the canvas is the Virgin Mother with a young, almost girlish face or surpassing loveliness. In her eyes affection and wonder are blended, and the features and the figure are the most spiritual and beautiful in the world's art.
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
Mary Hellmann is an artist that enjoys being in the spotlight.Hellmann participates in several pieces of art that are abstract and expressionist. Every line and every square in her art has a story and they play a part in the artist’s mind.Hellmann’s art is based on real life images, but she alters them to meet with her desires of that place or of that memory.With her titles, color, scale and music metaphor, she is able to express emotion and iconography.
Miro, V (2016). Review: Exhibits of Work by Grayson Perry [online] Available at: http:// www.victoria-miro.com Accessed on 30th May 2016.
Aristotle once claimed that, “The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.” Artists, such as Louise-Elizabeth Vigée Le Brun and Mary Cassatt, captured not only the way things physically appeared on the outside, but also the emotions that were transpiring on the inside. A part no always visible to the viewer. While both artists, Le Brun and Cassatt, worked within the perimeters of their artistic cultures --the 18th century in which female artists were excluded and the 19th century, in which women were artistically limited-- they were able to capture the loving relationship between mother and child, but in works such as Marie Antoinette and Her Children and Mother Nursing her Child 1898,
In the first image on the left, a man is kissing a lady; the artistic way of expression can be interrupted as disrespectful or offensive. Her work has had a lot of criticism as there is too much sexuality featured. For example, the boy and the girl on the cliff having oral sex. Nevertheless, she doesn’t shy away from controversial topics of racism, gender,and sexuality in her paper -cut silhouette.
One of many poignant themes in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening is Edna Pontellier’s fundamental choice of lifestyle -- the choice of dedication to the aesthete, the solitude of art (as represented by Mademoiselle Reisz), or devotion to the all-consuming task of becoming a domestic goddess (as Madame Ratignolle has done). Considered mutually exclusive not only by Chopin but by American society as a whole, the role of the housewife leaves little room for the serious pursuit of art. As evidenced in Helen Watterson Moody’s contextual document "The Artist and Marriage," "The woman must decided, then, whether to pursue her chosen art or to marry will make her happier." The plethora of demands of the successful artistic lifestyle, which includes near absolute concentration on one’s craft, the time and space to truly create, and the solitude needed to express one’s essential self simply was not compatible with nineteenth century ideals of domesticity. Edna Pontellier, unwilling to submit to the relative asceticism of art and equally incapab...
Edna seeks occupational freedom in art, but lacks sufficient courage to become a true artist. As Edna awakens to her selfhood and sensuality, she also awakens to art. Originally, Edna “dabbled” with sketching “in an unprofessional way” (Chopin 543). She could only imitate, although poorly (Dyer 89). She attempts to sketch Adèle Ratignolle, but the picture “bore no resemblance” to its subject. After her awakening experience in Grand Isle, Edna begins to view her art as an occupation (Dyer 85). She tells Mademoiselle Reisz that she is “becoming an artist” (Chopin 584). Women traditionally viewed art as a hobby, but to Edna, it was much more important than that. Painting symbolizes Edna’s independence; through art, she breaks free from her society’s mold.
“She may be unmarried or in a bad marriage. She may consider herself too poor to raise a child. She may think her life is too unstable or unhappy, or she may think that her drinking or drug use will damage the baby’s health” (126). The emotional appeal in this paragraph could make the reader think they are pro-choice. Apart from their use of pathos, the authors do a great job using a mixture of both ethos and logos. Page 130 is an example of both, which were used expertly to help the reader understand their point of view and the
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).
When looking at the development of abortion policy, it is clear that it has always been a subject of controversy. Campaigns for the legalisation of...
Being a women artist, displaying such an installation was not possible years back. Contrary to the opinions of many students new to the study of feminist literary Criticism, many feminists like men, think that women should be able to stay at home and raise children if they want to do so, and wear bras. Bringing such an art piece, reflection of her inner experiences or having sex in bed after having bad relationship could not be possible before. The main female characters are stereotyped as either “good girls” or “bad girls”. These classifications suggest that if a woman does not admit her male-controlled gender role, then the only role left her is that of a monster. Yet Emin’s confessional art- with its confidences of pregnancy, being raped, destructiveness of guilt, emotional stress- has become much common nowadays with feminist consciousness while in early generation, sharing such experiences lead to the destruction of women’s life. Her unmade bed, surrounded by such bric-bracs tells a story of a depressed, emotionally stressed women artist who asks for a sympathetic shoulder from the viewers by being a transparent soul. “For her British critics it [My Bed] expressed Emin’s sluttish personality and exemplified the detritus of a life quintessentially her own; it was, above all, confessional”, Cherry observes. Emin has limited the word ‘feminist; art practices have been the concerned of an early generation. This point seems to be confirmed by Emin herself, who declares to the discerning nature of her work in which she says that she decides to show either this or that part of the truth, which isn't unavoidably the whole story but it's just what she decides to gives us. As a self-motivated set of influences, feminism no longer titles a unitary or merging project infact it is now being the transformation just as feminist biases are perpetually subject to change. Whereas, looking at Tracey’s other work, Tent “Everyone I Have Ever
Even though the United States has ruled abortions legal, there is still controversy. One may say that this is a growing problem in our country. However, for every problem, there should be a solution. Erika Bachiochi argues that: “The state's suppression of a woman's right to choose [was] simply a perpetuation of the patriarchal nature of our society. To free women from [the] gender hierarchy, women must have a right to do what they please with their bodies” (22).
"People and Events: The Pill and the Sexual Revolution." PBS. PBS, n.d. Web. 12 May 2014.