Essay on READING AND WORK OF ART ANALYSIS
In the article Modernity and the Spaces of Femininity written by Griselda Pollock, there is much important information on the role of women in the construction of modernism. According to the author, “Modernity is presented as a far more than a sense of being “up to date.”1 The spaces of femininity take a special place in the representation of modernism in art. Modernity deals both with male and female sexuality, but there is a close relationship between modernism, modernity and sexuality. Griselda Pollock is focused on the analysis of the art pieces, which reflect the use of different spaces to place females for the proper art analysis. There are several important arguments made by the author of the article in relation to the role of the spaces of femininity in modernism and modernity.
First, the author states that “sexuality, modernism or modernity cannot function as given categories to which we add women.”2 From the masculine point of view, women are presented as the other because of social difference that plays an important role in gender relations. Artists use different dimensions of space. Mary Cassatt and Berthe Morisot are the most important impressionist female artist of the 19th century. They both use the female perspective to depicted the woman and the female’s life. Therefore from the representation of Mary Cassatt and Berthe Morisot’s work; in most of their painting, they use “dining rooms, drawing rooms, bedrooms, balconies/verandas, private gardens” to portray the female’s leisure life. From this painting, we are evidently seeing the limitation of the space and location in the female’s life. From the female impressionist artist, the space and location that allowed them to make art are mostly in the domestic space and private area. They do not have the equality as the male artists, the females were having the lower social status compare to male. Specially in the art practice therefore their home and their private area are immediately becoming the location and the subject matter of the domestic social life from their genre painting. From the later discussion in the article, the appearance of women participated in the public activity. Such as the female’s appear in the theater scene, we are seeing the females are often being sat in the backstage, they do not have the chance to view it in a close distance which same as the male. Therefore in here the issue of the female and male’s unequalled social status still occurred, there are still the difference between female and male in the social class.
Second, the author states that “femininity is not the natural condition of female persons.” 4 Women are represented as a sign or a confection of fantasies that “they are positioned as the object of the flaneur’s gaze.”The freedom of the male by looking, they have the freedom by looking at women in any space and any location. For example in the western tradition art, the male artist traditionally use female nudity subject in their painting, to satisfy male’s taste, and gives pleasure to the viewers. The artists use female images to highlight the role of female identity in the assessment of male superiority.
Third, The inequality right for women’s lower social class. There were not protection for women, therefore the dangerous concern of women enter in the public space “such as the masked ball or the cafe-concert constituted a serious threat to a bourgeois woman’s reputation,etc.” The dangerous position and the lower social class of female in the society, therefore the male is free to do anything they want, to satisfy themselves, where the female’s bodies can be exchange, etc. Here strongly presents the lower position of the female and the power of masculine in the society.Also Griselda Pollock argues that “femininity in its class-specific forms is maintained by the polarity virgin/whore which is mystifying representation of the economic exchanges in the patriarchal kinship system.”5 Therefore the money and property influence human relations, especially marriage relations. As a result, it is necessary to assess femininity as the ideology of female sexuality.
Lastly, the author states that the spaces of femininity have a strong impact on women’s lives as they reflect the roles of women, their status and the effects of their sexuality.
In the Eva Gonzeles’s painting“ A Box at the Italian Theatre”, we are seeing the depiction of a woman sitting in the centre accompanies by a man standing next to her. In this painting, it did not clearly showed the difference and inequality of female and male due to the argument in space from the reading. In here, the woman is being depicted in a public area, in the Italian Theatre; therefore the difference between the women’s domestic life from the reading has been changed. From the viewer’s perspective the female and male are staging in the same space, therefore there are not the inequality of the women between men that they were being placed in the backstage to view the show. This two figures are being depicted in the same horizontal line, but their gaze is different. The female figure are looking straightly at the viewer, but the male is turning his body and looking at the different way. With the provided information in the painting, we notice that the woman is straightly looking at the show but the man is totally looking at other things. In here, the painting clearly examine the “splitting of private and public with its double freedom for men in the public space, and the preeminence of a detached observing gaze, etc.” With the contrast between the two figure’s facial expression, there are no much facial expression in the female figure, she seems very concentrate by looking at the stage. But with the male figure’s pose, he lays back and his elbow are resting on the velvet. He seems very relaxing by looking at some other things, the difference between women and men in crowd are distinctly presenting in here. The freedom of men in any space, any location and the freedom of male’s gaze. They have the right to look at any things at any time in any space. Unlike the women, “they were never positioned as the normal occupants of the public realm.” Therefore in this painting, although the female and male figures are being placed in the same position but the existence of unfairly and the inequality’s social status between men and women still occurred in this painting.
In the Pollock’s article of Modernity and the Spaces of Femininity and the Eva Gonzales’s painting, both clearly present the unequal treatment, social inequality and the social discrimination between men and women in the 19th century society.
Do you like this essay?
Our writers can write a paper like this for you!
(No Ratings Yet)
Loading...