CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS

Remred Falcon
18 April 2018

CINDY SHERMAN 

    American artist Cindy Sherman was born on January 19, 1954 and resided in Huntington, New York. Cindy Sherman is a contemporary artist, photographer, and film director. She enrolled in basic studio courses such as painting, drawing, and photography at Buffalo State College. Initially she actually failed her photography class but later was inspired by a professor to just “take pictures”. A quotation that perfectly depicts her is “The still must tease with the promise of a story the viewer of it itches to be told”. Most of her conceptual portraits stimulate the audience’s thought processes to challenge the role of women in society and how women are represented.                                        

   Cindy Sherman turned to photography during the 1970s in order to explore and dissect the umbrella of common female social roles, and persona's. I admire her because she used her passion for photography and connected that to enable her to question how oppressive mass-media has over individual and collective women identities.

Cindy Sherman's Untitled Film Stills. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Apr. 2017.

Cindy Sherman's Untitled Film Stills. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Apr. 2017.

SHIRIN NESHAT 

Contemporary artist Shirin Neshat is known for her photography, films, and videos. Some would wonder why a silver spoon baby would leave her hometown of Qazvin for the United States. However, maybe it is the fact that she was born into a privileged family that allowed her to make such a decision. She moved to the United States where she pursued art.  She attended UC Berkeley. She captured photos that highlighted different cultural, religious, and political circumstances that impacted the identities of Muslim women.

Shirin Neshat, /react-text react-text: 580 Faceless /react-text react-text: 581 , Women of Allah series, 1994, B&W RC print & ink, photo by Cynthia Preston ©Shirin Neshat (courtesy Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussel)

    The photograph above entitled Rebellious Silence clearly shows a woman pointing a gun directly to the camera. There are two crucial components of this photograph that tell a bigger story than just a woman pointing the gun at the spectator. The veil and the gaze tell a lot about the message that Neshat is trying to convey. Veils are intended to protect women from becoming the sexualized object that the male gaze makes them to be. Neshat is very aware of how the male gaze is present in popular culture. Being a feminist artist that Neshat is, she has used a so called action of “gazing back” in her photographs. Furthermore, the means of gazing back is to free women from the male gaze that objectifies women. She photographs women gazing back as a way of showing a women's authority and their desire to break away from the subservient women they were told to be.

   As we learned about Orientalist paintings in the 18^th into 19^th  century Eastern women were nude. As one can observe that women were surrounded by vibrant colors and patterned textiles and decorations. Women were seen with the other beautiful objects in the photos, having the spectator view them as objects as well. 

 

Mehzfr. "Orientalism & Colonial Gaze." Blogs. N.p., 22 Feb. 2013. Web. 21 Apr. 2017.

MARINA ABRAMOVIĆ

A phenomenal contemporary artist is Marina Abramović. She is a Serbian-American Artist that held tight to performance art. She used performance art to literally cut the room between her and the audience. She dared to be different. She moved away from paint and canvas’s which were object-based art materials and used her body as a canvas. She was born in Yugoslavia into a family that held high positions of power in a communist government. Her performances reflect her personal responses to the repressive government she had lived under. She does not classify herself as a Feminist artist but performances and confrontations with her own body and mind has helped shape her performances. She is purely an advocate of continuing on the traditions of performance art so she actually opened the Marina Abramović Institute, where she continued to preserve performance art.

Crown, Nik. "The Best of Art History (modern&contemporary)." Pinterest. N.p., 26 May 2016. Web. 21 Apr. 2017.

In her piece entitled Rhythm 0, she willingly calls on her audience to use any of the 72 objects on her body in any way they desired. She strongly believed that this piece helped her confront physical pain as well as exhaustion giving her audience complete control. Some of the audience harmed her physical being while others were moved and tried to protect her through actions of wiping  away her tears. This performance lasted about six hours. 

Shearer, Stephen. "Miley Abramovic:
 The Artist Came In Like A Wrecking Ball." KQED Pop. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Apr. 2017.

Miley Cyrus in her “Wrecking Ball” music video was very much similar to Marina Abramović in her Rhythm 0 performance. In this music video she is one with the sledgehammer, she is completely nude walking toward the audience during the demolition, and riding a wrecking ball. Similarly Mariana Abramović challenges perceptions of vulnerability. Being presented in nude shows how Miley and Marina give power to the audience.

BARBARA KRUEGER 

In 1945 Barbara Krueger was born in Newark, New Jersey. She is an integral figure of a leader of feminism, postmodern and conceptual art. She expands on contemporary culture by combining images and texts in order to highlight oppressions and hypocrisies that exist in today's society. Your body is a battleground, 1989 uses a silkscreen frontal image of a woman’s face. She then proceeds to divide the image into sections right down the middle and the image goes from positive to negative. Aside from lines dividing the face, the face is also divided by the slogan “Your Body is a Battleground”. This is Kruger's way of showing her disapproval of how the media and advertising business was defining feminine beauty.

The Broad. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Apr. 2017. 

JENNY SAVILLE 

            A majority of the artwork produced by Jenny Saville is centered around female depicted as obese, brutalized, or mutilated. However, going surface deep Jenny Saville’s main purpose is to work again the way men idealized women to be. She was born in 1970 and makes a impression of women on canvas through oil.

"Jenny Saville." Pinterest. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Apr. 2017.

I find it quite fascinating that she said “I don’t like things to be too polished. We’ve got fashion magazines for that.” She paints many humans in their flesh. She highlights the parts of a women’s body that may viewed as “imperfect” due to the standards that society assigns.

Works Cited 

"Cindy Sherman Biography, Art, and Analysis of Works." The Art Story. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Apr. 

         2017.

"Shirin Neshat, Rebellious Silence, Women of Allah series." Khan Academy. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 

        Apr. 2017.

Hudson, Mark. "Jenny Saville: 'I like the down and Dirty Side of Things'." The Telegraph. 

       Telegraph Media Group, 24 June 2014. Web. 21 Apr. 2017.