In my experience, often artist like to believe that their artwork
is above “pop culture.” However,
when I visited the Saint Louis University Art Museum I found plenty of
connections between pop culture, the artwork presented there, and the
presentation of gender. When I
first walked in the very first artwork I saw was called Rodeo Queen Study by artist Luis Jimenez. It’s a drawing of half naked woman on a saddle. The artist did not include her arms in
the picture and created her breasts to be the main focus of the piece. In the second piece that I saw was
drawing by Jim Dine called Cubist Venus. In this drawing, the artist formed a
woman’s body out of cube like shapes and did not include her arms. This theme happened several times as I
walked around the exhibit. Women’s
bodies made out of objects and without their arms or their bodies completely distorted. I have no issues with women’s
bodies. However, it seems to me
that by taking off women’s arms the artist was taking away their ability to
accomplish tasks (not that it’s impossible to accomplish tasks without arms, as
many disabled individuals have proven to us that it is possible) but without
arms puts women at a disadvantage.
By literally creating women’s bodies into objects it makes it easier to
dehumanize them and think of women in the context of them being objects and not
people. This is a disturbing theme that we have discussed in class before with advertisements. Women’s bodies have become this canvas
to create products for the general public to buy. The combination of objectification and the overly
sexualization of women’s bodies in art creates a dangerous atmosphere were
sexual violence against women festers and has a safe space to grow. Now as I examine art, I need to keep in
mind that art has an influence in popular culture and should be given the same criticism
as such.
This distortion of women and representation of their bodies as simply a sum of body parts reminds me of the argument in Dreamworlds. It seems as if the artwork you saw is a direct continuation of this literal objectification of women, which also goes along with your description of creating a culture where violence against women is completely acceptable. It's so disturbing that this concept is so pervasive in our culture.
ReplyDeleteThis might be a long article/essay but Carol Duncan's MoMA's hot mama's talks about representations of women more so in 20th century art where women are broken up. Which also coincides with Mulvey's male gaze. To me its kind of hilarious to me how profound some of these artists think that their pieces are, with said influences from goddesses etc, but don't think about how they're literally breaking up women's bodies into segmented parts. If you look up Willem de Kooning's women series its sort of disturbing how he represents these women as monsters. Then in a documentary where he was interviewed, he said he picked out a woman's lips from an advert and something about women. But I found it weird that he would have probably never have thought about doing this to a men's bodies.
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