Srika Satish

Final Post!

Over the past few weeks we have learned about extraordinary female artists throughout history. A few of them include but are not limited to Artemisia Gentilechi, Rosa Bohner and  Emily Mary Osborn. These women did not only paint with skill but also represented and stood up for what they believed in. They created conversations and took on the task of challenging the patriarchy. Some contemporary artists that are also like these women are Wangetchi Mutu, Frida Kahlo, Cindy Sherman, Shirin Neshat and Faith Wilding. The following modern women are similar in that their art represents women and allows women to be portrayed as powerful. These women artists also highlight the inequality between men and women through their female subjects while incorporating postmodern ideas in some of them. As stated by Chadwich, postmoderism leaves behind ideas of modern art and branches out to classify other mediums as works of art. These women artists ditch the idea of modern art and explore the limits of postmodernism as they stray away from the generic art of painting and produce art in other forms.

Artemisia Gentileschi painted stories with a completely different point of view from her father for example. She made the viewer see the female perspective of the situation and eliminated the harsh male gaze. Instead the females in the painting took over the painting and became the focal view. Gentileschi worked in the early 1600s and for her to defy the basic rules of art (which meant giving forspace to women in her art) was a huge deal. 

Like Artemisia, Faith Wilding highlights the female struggle from the woman’s point of view in her poem, Waiting. The poem describes the life of a typical woman and how her life is always contingent on others - she is always waiting for the next planned out thing in a woman’s life and never really steers out of that cycle of waiting and doing what she is told. 

Faith Wilding, Waiting, 

Mutu’s short film, The End of Eating Everything, shows a rather powerful woman that seems to be calm - almost at peace. This piece is interesting as it represents two sides of women, the stern and strong side and the gentle and soft side. Mutu’s work like the other contemporary female artists chooses to focus on portraying women as strong and independent powerful beings. The woman here is against a dark background which gives off the illusion that she is tough and fierce. The snakes perfectly balance the birds to represent her.

Wangetchi Mutu, The End of Eating Everything

Cindy Sherman is a postmodern photographer that incorporates herself and brings herself into the art she is working on. This is a different approach as many artists don't include themselves in their art but Sherman effortlessly does so and takes on different roles and scenarios in her self portraits. Here is one of her works below which shows her emboding and portraying a 1920 film actress. Sherman’s intent was probably to give recognition to women in the film industry at the time and show that women can take on any role, even though during the 1920’s the film industry did not accept many women and were sometimes harsh to those that had made it. 

Cindy Sherman, Dreamers collection 

 

Frida Kahlo is well known worldwide for her paintings. Her paintings directly represent her life and are filled with symbols and emotion. Her painting, Henry Ford Hospital, which was painted in 1932 shows an emotional moment of miscarriage that Kahlo actually went through. This painting highlights a woman’s strength and power in that they go through so much and put their bodies through so much and still bring themselves to move on when things get hard. The painting shows the power women can possess even in a low time in her life. 

Frida Kahlo, Henry Ford Hospital 

Like all the other women discussed in this blog, Shirin Neshat produces art that focuses on women and makes them the center of their work. In the powerful photograph, Rebellious Silence, Neshat sheds light on and represents women of other cultures and highlights their struggles as well the way Faith Wilding did in her poem Waiting. The photograph shows women’s power in resistance and how they fight with inequality in their own ways. It might seem as the woman in this picture is still but just by standing here with these words on her she is fighting back against the wars she faces.

Shirin Neshat, Rebellious Silence

These art works, aside from Frida Kahlo's are all works that would be categorized under Postmodern works as they are not paintings. All the works, regardless of medium express female power/struggle in many ways - they represent a woman's viewpoint. The 5 artists above get creative to break traditions of modernism and create poetry, documentaries, painting,  and photography to better represent women, the female struggle, and the power a woman can hold.