10/10/06 - History of Art - Art and Gender

Europe in nineteenth century centred on male as provider/master. Woman had few rights, no vote. Doctrine of Separate Spheres, a male and female sphere. Males were considered public people, life, reputation, jobs. Female's role to bring up children and do housework.

In France, Manet painted Zola 1868. His wife, 1874. Zola critic, analyst. Supported Manet's painting, so Manet thanks him with portrait. Image of man as intellectual, public, perhaps controversial. His wife, Dutch pianist, reclining on sofa. No sign of interests. Middle class but powerless.

Degas 1860s. His sister and her husband (Italian). Separate spheres. Man closer, direct gaze, large size. Woman hand on face, shy, reassurance from husband, small, shrinking. But husband vacant gaze; he was unintelligent. Hand on shoulder could mean his intelligent wife steering or controlling him.

These roles reinforced, especially in England. Hicks Woman's Mission: Companion to Manhood. Two others: bringing up babies and looking after the elderly. Middle class interior. Man standing, terrible news, grieving, hand covers face. Woman stands up also, arm round him. Man forms vertical, woman forms triangle to give momentum to her speed to comfort husband. Looks up to him.

Paintings by women. Mary Cassatt, American, lived in Paris. Five O'Clock Breakfast 1880. Upper-middle class women drinking tea. A visit. Left, hostess, sits beside tea. Not outdoor clothes. Visitor bonnet and gloves, well-brought up. Etiquette. But painting represents more than two women. They look across the room at a woman who must be talking. Eye level. So artist must be another guest. Hence four women.
Painted her mother reading political newspaper. Depicts assertiveness. Woman in Black at the Opera. Feminist viewpoint. Day dress, matinee. Serious, intelligent, interested in performance. Man in background looks at her (showing single-mindedness?). But the woman could be pointing binoculars at a box at the other side of the theatre. So women and men alike?

Degas Carriage at the Races. Gender and class roles. Woman breastfeeding child, but she is a whetnurse. Mother holds parasol. Man driving.

Bouguereau The Elder Sister.
Renoir Motherhood.
Woman carer of male child. Iconic status.

Van Gogh Madame Roulain au Berceuse. Rocking a cradle.

Women lending body to allegory in painting. Daumier The Republic. Republic as woman: muscular, powerful, breastfeeding muscular children. Infant reads book. Republican as caring and educating force of the future.

Barrias Nature Unveiling Herself Before Science. Women oversensitive, irrational, but more natural, while men represent science.
Carriere La Nature. Artist's wife. Blurred. Image of woman's body as procreative force. At time of low birth rate in France. Between 1891 and 1895, three hundred more people died than were born. Image engages this debate.

Women were thought to need constraint, more so than men. Families protected from outside threats.
Martineau The Last Day in the Old Home. Father making toast with son with glass in hand. Mother has rebuking face. Sitting beside desk of papers. Removal men in background. Jacobean house, seventeenth century portrait. Painting of horse in background. Prosperous family, man blown money on drink and gambling.
Hunt An Awakening Conscience. Woman's conscience. Cat playing with sparrow, symbolic of man and woman.
Egg Past and Present [1]. Man discovers she has had an affair. Children's card tower falling. Family break up. [2] Two daughters looking out at moon waiting for mother. [3] Mother, same moon, prostitution.

Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec's The Medical Inspection.
Degas vulgar, naked (not true to life), bestial behaviour, posture.
Toulouse-Lautrec's positive side, frank and moving. Queueing. Haggard, blase faces.

Department stores made cheap dresses so prostitutes unidentifiable. Renoir Les Parapluis. Woman on left holds an ambiguous basket.

Explicit meaning in posters, e.g. Moulin Rouge.
Seurat Le Chahut.

Nude paintings represent gender roles. Nude has idealised body, doesn't exist. Naked is not perfect, temporary.
Ingres La Source. Nude, no imprefection.
Manet Olympia. Naked - slippers, jewellery, flower. On bed. Construction, bringing unwelcome issues of prostitution into insecure society of prostitution in the form of aesthetics.

Gerome Cockfight. Woman paler skin, frightened, no sign of bones.

Renoir Grande Beigners. Controversial artist.
Bouguereau Two Bathers. Scholarly artist.
Not represented as goddesses, simply naked women.

Gauguin's Loss of Virginity. Patronising, symbolist, harvest in background.

Beardsley Salome. Women pressing out of social sphere. Divorces, professions, etc.

Men painted women is their worst light. But women, femmes fatales, could be powerful and sexy.

Munch's Jealousy. Personal relationship universalised. Munch believed disaster relationships were always the woman's fault.