When I visited the Denver Art Museum, allot of different works caught my attention but two out of them stood out above the rest. These two works were Lots Wife by Kent Monkman, and Untitled (It’s Our Pleasure to Disgust You) by Barbra Kruger. These two works of art conveyed a manipulation of the idea of gender and the roles associated with it.
The first work of art that really caught my eye was Lots Wife by Kent Monkman. Kent Monkman is of Cree ancestry (and that plays an important role in the meaning behind his works of art) and he works with a wide variety of mediums such as painting, film/video, performance, and installation. The title of his work is Lot’s Wife, which belongs to a culture that has an open view towards gender and the roles associated with gender. It could also appeal to those who embrace the Christian aspect of the artwork. In this particular work he used the medium of Installation, taxidermy deer, fiberglass, styrofoam, artificial grass, wood and video projection; a single male life sized sculpture in a field if grass and wild flowers. This is what made the work so interesting is all of the different mediums he used to convey such a deep message. Some speculate that this was a self-portrait of himself. A male dressed in a see-through white robe with a white beaded purse over his arm. Behind the sculpture lay a baby deer. Cross-dressing as well as manipulation of gender roles is portrayed in this piece. It has a much deeper subject matter, that of the Biblical story of the woman who went against the divine threat of reprisal, who turned back taking one final glance at Sodom, her previous home. For her defiance she received the wrath of God who turned her into a pillar of salt. He used this as a representation t...
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...as if a woman is not truly a woman unless she has a man by her side, that she has no importance without a man. Barbara Kruger wants to challenge that in her art. She projects feminism through her art.
Although both works focus on two different aspects of gender and gender roles, the first Lots Wife by Kent Monkman really portrayed gender roles in the way of the flexibility of gender roles and that males can do what females do and still be male, and the second work, Untitled (It’s Our Pleasure to Disgust You) by Barbra Kruger portrayed the gender roles that women are subjected to by males as well as by other females. They both used a very bold way to convey their message about their views on gender and their roles in our society, even though they were conveying different messages, the idea behind their works of art were the same. The way society views gender roles.
When determining what is good poetry, the analysis does not need to be conducted by experts of poetry. The goal of poetry is to provide a means of communication from the author to the reader or listener, so those on the receiving end of poetry can measure the success of this communication. However, these opinions are inherently subjective. Even if two people agree that a certain poem is an example of good poetry, they may disagree on what makes this poem exceptional. Personally, I believe that good poetry expresses sophisticated thoughts, while also creating a songlike sound when read or heard.
The show’s organizers, Teresa A. Carbone (the museum’s curator of American art) and Kellie Jones, did an exceptional job of strategically placing the artwork in relevance and relating topics to one another. When I arrived, the exhibit was empty and I actually had the opportunity to meet Ms. Carbone, who was on hand at the museum’s entrance.
Prior to the 20th century, female artists were the minority members of the art world (Montfort). They lacked formal training and therefore were not taken seriously. If they did paint, it was generally assumed they had a relative who was a relatively well known male painter. Women usually worked with still lifes and miniatures which were the “lowest” in the hierarchy of genres, bible scenes, history, and mythological paintings being at the top (Montfort). To be able to paint the more respected genres, one had to have experience studying anatomy and drawing the male nude, both activities considered t...
Whitney Chadwick, Women, Art, and Society 3rd ed. (NY: Thames & Hudson world of art, 2002), 153-160.
Women and men are not equal. Never have been, and it is hard to believe that they ever will be. Sexism permeates the lives of women from the day they are born. Women are either trying to fit into the “Act Like a Lady” box, they are actively resisting the same box, or sometimes both. The experience of fitting in the box and resisting the box can be observed in two plays: Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun” and Henrick Ibsen’s “A Doll House”. In Hansberry’s play, initially, Beneatha seems uncontrolled and independent, but by the end she is controlled and dependent; whereas, in Ibsen’s play Nora seems controlled and dependent at the beginning of the play, but by the end she is independent and free.
Knowing this you would think women would portray themselves more seriously, but the exact opposite is happening. These continuous loops of failure have severely weakened women’s physical presence, and because of this, are continuously singled out in world discussions on topics such as war or threats to national security, and are constantly burdened with tasks regarding health and family life. In my research I read many books from the nineteenth-century onwards, such as, Stuart Mill’s book ‘The Subjection of Women’ (1869) to Butler’s ‘Gender Troubles’ (1990), both of these and many more books has helped in my quest to conjure up a personal concept of women, but out of all of them I found Berger’s ‘Ways of seeing’ the most fruitful in terms of a literal explanation of women.
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.
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).
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.
Alexander Stowe is a twin, his brother is Aaron Stowe. Alex is an Unwanted, Aaron is a Wanted, and their parents are Necessaries. Alex is creative in a world where you can’t even see the entire sky, and military is the dream job for everyone and anyone. He should have been eliminated, just like all the unwanteds should have been. He instead comes upon Artimè, where he trains as a magical warrior- after a while. When he was still in basic training, and his friends were not, he got upset, he wants to be the leader, the one everyone looks up to.
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.
In the poem pride, Dahlia Ravikovitch uses many poetic devices. She uses an analogy for the poem as a whole, and a few metaphors inside it, such as, “the rock has an open wound.” Ravikovitch also uses personification multiple times, for example: “Years pass over them as they wait.” and, “the seaweed whips around, the sea bursts forth and rolls back--” Ravikovitch also uses inclusive language such as when she says: “I’m telling you,” and “I told you.” She uses these phrases to make the reader feel apart of the poem, and to draw the reader in. She also uses repetition, for example, repetition of the word years.
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,
One of the most influential and inspiring feminist artists to produce work, Judy Chicago was able to (how she changed the world) through her work including ‘the dinner party’ (1979).an instillation completed after 5 years of development. Triangular in configuration, equilateral in structure, reflecting the goal of feminism, an equalized world. Completed using ceramics, needle and fiber techniques as well as china painting. The table holding 39 place settings each commemorating a mythical or important woman or historical figure. Beneath the table was 2304 handmade porcelain tiles, 999 of which were inscribed of other important woman’s names. In her artwork the dinner party Judy Chicago gave recognition to woman both achievers and oppressed. In this way she gave a voice to the duality of woman’s issues, not only was she advocating for recognition of woman’s achievements but she was also bringing to the forefront the concept of inequality. Judy Chicago‘’ had been trying to establish a respect for woman and woman’s art; to forge a new kind of art expressing woman’s experience’- challenge and redefine conventions of gender’’ The fact that the names of woman were placed on a high end table setting challenged gender equality in itself as tables like this had previously been only acc...
In both Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple” and Kate Chopin’s “The Awakening”, we see that there are two types of women who arise from the demands of these expectations. The first is the obedient woman, the one who has buckled and succumbed to become an empty, emotionless shell. In men’s eyes, this type of woman was a sort of “angel” perfect in that she did and acted exactly as what was expected of her. The second type of woman is the “rebel”, the woman who is willing to fight in order to keep her creativity and passion. Patriarchal silencing inspires a bond between those women who are forced into submission and/or those who are too submissive to maintain their individuality, and those women who are able and willing to fight for the ability to be unique.