Museum Blog

    Wednesday I visited the St. Louis Art Museum. I also had a paper to write about a few Ancient Roman sculptures for Art History, so I was able to knock out two birds with one stone. One thing I've noted just from my Art History class is that recognized art throughout history has almost always come from male artists. Actually, I'm not sure we've studied one piece of art all the way up to the 14th century that has been from a female artist. Historically respected and art is considered a part of high culture and hence a sphere women are excluded from. I've actually done a lot of thinking about the idea of art as it relates to high culture, low culture, and women in the wake of Lady Gaga's latest album release for ArtPop. Gaga seems to be trying to infuse her status as a woman in pop music with high culture art. She recently has proclaimed noted artists Robert Wilson, Marina Abramovic, and Jeff Koons as her mentors, she had Jeff Koons sculpt her (featured on the album cover), and was photographed by Robert Wilson in a series displayed in The Louve. This week she tweeted, "I know my artiness + musical goals may seem lofty, but there is a POP STAR IN THE LOUVRE, right next to the Mona Lisa" I think that’s pretty amazing that she’s blurring the lines between the sphere of art that is considered legitimate and respected and that which is considered popular and less legitimate, especially as a woman. Both are creation so why are so many artists excluded from this sphere? I digress...
    Disclaimer that I’m not an expert on art and I don’t feel like I have the background to critique art so some of my thoughts may be slightly ignorant. The most obvious thing that struck me while wandering the museum was that obviously a lot of paintings feature naked woman... Naked women lounging, naked women sitting, naked women standing. In many works their bodies are not particularly overtly sexualized but presented as “art”. Don't get me wrong nudity is a part of art, both male and female, as the naked body is a thing of natural beauty. I don’t have any problem with this at all. However, as a blanket statement, I’d argue that considering art is a male dominated sphere the body of the women in many cases is still in some complicated ways exploited. One piece in particular was Two Female Nudes on Purple Drape by Philip Pearlstein. The placard stated, “Although the face of the seated model is bent toward the woman lying on the drape, the two do not interact. Pearlstein claimed, ‘I have never been interested in contact between model because that immediately suggests a story line.’” This left me confused. I feel like this means that the artist is painting an object, void of a story line or anything deeper than the visual representation. I still have mixed emotions about this. On one hand I understand portraying the female body as art, however the intentionality behind a lot of paintings of female nudity make me question the purity of the image. “Objectify” is a loaded word, but if there is no emotion or anything beyond the surface portrayed behind an image isn’t it simply portraying an object? Renaissance sculptural depictions of male nudity seem to imply strength, athleticism, power, and pride. Maybe if the art that featured female nudity portrayed the body as something besides just there...
    Another thing I noticed during my visit was that the one section that did feature quite a few female artists was the galleries containing textile arts and quilting which just seemed all too predictable (no offense or degrade meant to those artists). I think I could probably spend hours talking about all of the gendered things I saw in the museum but I’ll leave it at this. I think the museum is a great place to go to see some good old sexist patriarchy as it holds expressions of past times and of a world that is still heavily controlled by male thought and influence.

(I also learned that it is nearly impossible to take a nonchalant selfie at the Art Museum without being caught by one of the guards)