Throughout
the study of women in art, there is much evidence showing women are considered
to be the inferior gender in many aspects of society. As far back as the Middle
Ages, a woman was born into the world to perform specific roles. She is
expected to be able to bear children and complete domestic responsibilities.
Aside from being a wife and mother, women were not allowed to be educated
because it was considered unnecessary. Women artists have continuously fought
to become successful and recognized in the society that is male dominated.
Artists such as Elisabetta Sirani, Emily Mary Osborn, Frida Kahlo, Susanna
Valadon, and Georgia Totto O’Keeffe have made an impact in art history with
their oppressive paintings.
 |
| Portia Wounding her Thigh, 1664 |
Elisabetta Sirani
was
an Renaissance artist born in Bologna; she was the daughter of Giovanni Andrea
Sirani. She was trained in her father’s workshop and became a highly skilled
painter. However, “Sirani’s skill and the speed with which she worked led to
gossip that her father was claiming her work as his own in order to exploit the
publicity value of a female prodigy in the workshop” (Chadwick 104). Despite
these rumors, Sirani continued to paint and eventually proving to the public
she had in fact created these paintings. She eventually opened a school for
women artist in Bologna which included her two younger sisters (Chadwick 104).
In Portia Wounding her Thigh, Sirani paints a subject that women were not
allowing to depict. She paints the moment when Portia is getting ready to stab
her thigh to prove to Brutus she is worthy of his trust. “Stabbing herself
deeply in the thigh, Portia has proved herself virtuous and worthy of political
trust by separating herself from the rest of her sex” (Chadwick 101). By doing
so, Portia is removing herself from the “private” world of where women is
expected to be and become part of the “public” world of men. Sirani states that
“women who prove their virtue through individual acts of bravery can come to be
recognized as almost like men” (Chadwick 104). By painting the subject of a
woman mutilating herself, Sirani shows she is not afraid to step into themes
exclusive to males.
 | |
| Nameless and Friendless, 1857 |
Emily Mary
Osborn was
a 19th century painter from Victorian England. She specialized in
subjects of children and the theme of distressed women. In Nameless and
Friendless, it depicts a young woman accompanied by a boy entering an art
dealer’s shop with a painting and a portfolio of prints and drawings. The
painting is carefully structured to emphasize the commodification of women in
the art trade and the isolation and helplessness of the single woman in
patriarchal society (Chadwick 185). Within this piece, Osborn is showing how
little power women have in the art world.
 |
| The Broken Column, 1944 |
Frida Kahlo was born in
Coyoacan, Mexico in 1907. Her mother was Spanish and indigenous and her father
was a German Jew. She eventually married the famous painter and muralist, Diego
Rivera. Their marriage was filled with tempestuous turns. At the age of
eighteen, she was involved in a horrific bus accident which left her
traumatically immobilized most of her life (Guerilla Girls 78). Through herself
portraits, Kahlo boldly shows the world the intensity of her pain and
suffering. In the Broken Column, Kahlo shows her body cut open in the middle
exposing a tattered column which serves as her spine. The cracks on the column
symbolize the damage her spinal cord endured from the accident. While the nails
all over her body show the constant pain she feels even though she has healed
from the injuries. Unlike typical women artists, Kahlo was not afraid at
showing what’s on her mind. She composes her self-portraits to contain graphic
symbolisms simply because it is how she feels.
 |
| The Blue Room, 1923 |
Suzanne Valadon was born in
1865 at Bessines-sur-Gartempe, an illegitimate daughter of a French laundress
(Renoir Fine Arts). She is one of the first women artists to work extensively
with the female nude form. Her paintings collude with, and challenge,
narratives that construct female indentity, through connections to nature, and
that view women as controlled by emotions, sexual instincts, and biology
(Chadwick 282). While Valadon was working as an artist’s model, she taught
herself to paint by observing the techniques of the artist she posed for. In
the Blue Room, she paints a woman lying on a bed looking away from the
audience. The figure here is clearly not aimed for the male gaze. She is wearing
her pajamas while lying leisurely and smoking a cigarette. “Rejecting the
static and timeless presentation of the monumental nude that dominates Western
art, she emphasizes context, specific moment, and physical action. Instead of
presenting the female body as a lush surface isolated and controlled by the
male gaze, she emphasizes the awkward gestures of figures apparently in control
of their own movements” (Chadwick 285). By painting the female figure in this
particular way, Valadon is depicting the woman as a human being. That a woman
can act this way rather than simply being an object for the male gaze.
 |
| Yellow Calla, 1926 |
Georgia
Totto O'Keeffe was born in
Wisconsin in 1887 as the daughter of an art teacher and farmer. O’Keeffe was
the first woman to get a retrospective at the MOMA in 1946. She had paintings
and drawings that were unlike anyone else’s (Guerilla Girls 74). O’Keeffe
expressed the female body in a way completely different from the norm. She
paints flowers that intentionally resemble the female genitalia. The flowers
she paints are her way of expressing sexuality of the female body. “O’Keeffe
was forced to watch her work constantly appropriated between the sexes which
supported this social reorganization (Chadwick 306). She managed to make a
successful career as an artist; however, she was still receiving a lot of male
criticism. O’Keeffe states “The men liked to put me down as the best woman
painter. I think I’m one of the best painters” (Chadwick 303). Her strong and unique way in depicting female sexuality shows O'Keeffe was set to stand out.
Works Cited
The Guerrilla Girls. The Guerrilla Girls' Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art. New York: Penguin, 1998
The Life and Times of Frida Kahlo". PBS. November 27, 2012. <http://www.pbs.org/weta/fridakahlo/life/index.html >
Renoir Fine Arts Inc. November 27, 2012. <http://www.renoirinc.com/biography/artists/valadon.htm>
"Angels & Tomboys: Girlhood in 19th-Century American Art.” Newark Museum. November, 23 2012.
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