In the Artists Studios: A Brief Overview of Womens Images in History

1
In the Artists StudiosA Brief Overview of
Womens Images in History

• Literary Criticism 2003 F

2
Outline

• Starting Questions Three Examples
• Issues for Discussion
• Ways of See John Berger
• Young Women in Dove Commercials
• Edgar Allen Poe The Oval Portrait and Thomas
  Sully
• The Pre-Raphaelite Women
• The Female Artists
• Women in the Music Videos
• Conclusion How do Women Look/Read?

3
Starting Questions

• How do the following three paintings about
  painters and their models differ from each other?
  What are the issues involved?

4
The Artist's Studio 1665-67, by Jan Vermeer

• the young girl
• crown of laurel -- identifies her as Fame
• a trumpet and a book of Thucydides -- . A
  connection with Clio, the muse of history.

5
Gérôme's painting of Pygmalion

• Late nineteenth century
• source http//www.uh.edu/engines/faust.htm

6
Rene Magritte Attempting the Impossible
7
Major Issues

• Functions of these Female Models 1) to be
  flaunted as properties, 2) to help the artists
  express themselves 3) to be created by the
  artists.
• Is it possible to render a real women on
  canvases, through cameras or with pens?
• What have been the codes used

8
Ways of Seeing by J. Berger

• nudity is a sign, different from being naked. (To
  be naked is to be oneself.)
• The nude in traditional oil paintings either look
  at "us" (the spectator-owners in the past) or
  look at the mirror
• Exceptions Rembrandts painting of his wife.
• The nude shows signs of submissiveness (e.g.
  being languid, passive and thus available).
• Their look with calculated charm, rarely
  directed at her lover in the painting, but at the
  spectator-owner.

9
The Oval Portrait

• 1. Pay attention to the description of the
  painting. What aspects of the portrait are
  emphasized?
•  2. Why are there two narrative frames? In other
  words, why do we need a first-person witness as a
  narrator?
• 3. Artistic creation is, in a sense, murder
  (152). Is that right?

10
Thomas Sully (American, 17831872)

• Portrait of a Young Girl, circa 1850Oil on
  canvas 24 x 20 inches http//www.kgny.com/displa
  ypages/sullyportrait.html

"Lady and fan" http//www.stagecoachgallery.net/su
llyt.html
11
Thomas Sully

• PORTRAIT OF FRANCES KEELINGVALENTINE ALLAN

• Queen Victoria, 1838

12
Pre-Raphaelite Painting Definition and Context

• The Pre-Raphaelites sought ...to restore to
  painting the naturalness and simplicity they
  insisted it has lost after Raphael by
  demonstrating in their own art the superiority of
  realism--freshly observed nature transferred to
  canvas--to timid emulation.
• anti-estalbishment
• the persistent ramantic-Victorian attachment to
  the Middle Ages.
• mixture of mysticism and "fleshlines" (i.e.
  sensuousness) especially in connection with
  female subjects.

13
Pre-Raphaelite Painting Definition and Context
(2)

• Pre-Raphaelitism revived in art the literary
  romanticism of half a century earlier.  The
  movement was much indebted to Keats. . ." (Altick
  288-90)

14
Pre-Raphaelite Painting Context

• Neo-Classicism Victorious males
• Realism Angels in the house (Thomas Sully as an
  example)
• Romanticism Women as the oppressed or abused
• Fin-De-Siecle -- Femme Fatale as a source of
  dread and power (example)
• (source ???????? 54 ?? )

15
Pre-Raphaelite Painting Context
Gustave Moreau, L'Apparition
16
DGR his life

• 1848 -- the formation of Pre-Raphaelite
  Brotherhood.
• 1849 -- met Elizabeth Siddal and used her as the
  main model (not to be used by the others)
• 1856 -- met Fanny Cornforth and used her as the
  main model
• 1857 -- met Jane Morris
• 1860 -- married ailing Siddal
• 1862 -- Siddal died, intered his manuscript in
  her coffin.

17
DGR his life

• 1863 -- Fanny Cornforth became his housekeeper
  again.
• 1865 -- used J. Morris as the main model
• 1869 exhumed his manuscript from Siddals
  coffin.
• 1871 -- Dante Gabriel Rossetti criticized as "the
  Fleshly School of Poetry
• 1872 -- DRR suffered from nervous breakdowns,
  afraid that his affair with J Morris would be
  found out
• 1882 -- Dante Gabriel Rossetti died

18
Pre-Raphaelite Women

• Follow the angel-whore dichotomy.
• I. The first and earliest type--the fair, demure,
  modest maiden with her innocent attractions
  (e..g. C. Rossetti, E. Siddal)
• II. the second--the proud golden beauty who might
  borrow a term from later 'sex goddesses' (e.g.
  Fanny Cornforth)
• III. the third--the dark, enigmatic Feminine
  (e.g. Jane Morris)"

19
I. Elizabeth Siddal

• As a milliner's daughter, she lived under very
  limited circumstances when she met DGR.       
  "Rossetti fell in love with the pale, red-haired
  milliner and transformed her life by encouraging
  her own pursuit of art" (Marsh 21).    

20
Beata Beatrix 1864-1870

21
II. Fanny Cornforth

• -Originally a prostitute, Fanny "sat for many of
  Rossetti's 'vision of carnal loveliness'" (23)

22
Fanny Cornforth

Fazios Mistress 1863, a relief from Siddals
death?
23
III. Jane Morris

• cast as powerful Pandora and Astarte Syriaca,
  saddened but powerful Prosperine and the poor
  Pia.  Why?  To show DGR's love for her, sympathy
  with her conditions, or to contain her power in
  his paintings? 

24
Astarte Syriaca

25
Astarte Syriaca

• One of the largest and most extraordinary of all
  Rossetti's pictures of Jane Morris. She is
  portrayed as Astarte, the cruel Babylonian
  fertility goddess, with two torch-bearing
  attendants, in a composition full of tension and
  mannerism, glowing with deep and mysterious
  colours.
• woman is the sign, not of woman, but of that
  Other in whose mirror masculinity must define
  itself (qtd Pearce 15 )

26
Rossetti, Dante GabrielLa Donna della Finestra
Sad and constrained

27
The Blessed Damozel the poem and the paintings

• Can you find out any contradictions in this poem?
  Can they be resolved?
• How is the depiction of woman here different from
  that in She Walks in Beauty? Why are there so
  many numbers associated with this damozel?
• Whose desire is expressed in this poem? How is
  this poem about death and heaven different from
  C. Rossettis or Wordsworths A Slumber Did My
  Spirit Seal?

28
(No Transcript)
29
Jane Morris in the background

30
The Lives Expressions of Female Artists

• Lizzie Siddal
• Christina Rossetti her poems
• ??? (??)

31
Christina Rossetti her poems

• Many women in her poems are observed, fixed in a
  place and silent--e.g. "Twice," "The Prince's
  Progress," "Portrait."
• The heroine's self-assertion in "The Royal
  Princess" Goblin Market
• Her strong criticism in "The Prince's Progress,"
  "Songs in a Cornfield" and "In the Artist's
  Studio"
• Her self-preservation she leaves an empty space
  in the center of her subjective lyrics so that
  she herself is not to be known, not to be seen.
  e.g. "The Bourne," "Memory" "Autumn," "Winter My
  Secret," "May."

32
Contemporary Pre-Raphaelite Women

• Often there was only a blank, air-brushed
  expanse of color in which eyes freely floated
  above undulations of shocking and moistly red
  shiny lips. (qtd in Pearce 52)

33
Dreamworlds 2 (on music videos)

• Who gets to tell the story about sexuality in
  music videos? Music videos are mostly to satisfy
  male fantasies.
• Roles of women musicians, back-up singers,
  dancers, part of the story, subject of the song.
• Main functions to be looked at, decorative
• Behavior serving men, always easily aroused
  sexually and active nyphomaniac
• Activities getting in and out of clothes
  available for peeping dancing, showering and
  swimming
• Dress codes garter belt as one of the sexualized
  items

34
Dreamworlds 2 (on music videos) 2

• Implications women like to strip themselves for
  men.
• Female artists Even female artists are trapped
  by this male way of looking at women. --e.g.
  Janet Jackson, Madonna, Salt Pepper
• Consequences women are accessible orrapable.
• (e.g. The Accused.)

35
Conclusions Womens Possible Positions

• Dual position as man and as woman
• Feminist Critique e.g. John Berger
• Symptomatic Readings reading for contradictions
  or to understand mens fear and desire
• Narcissistic or pleasurable identification
• Re-Discover Womens Works and their Significance
  (Gynocriticism)