Professor C
Art and Women
Introduction
I should probably start off by saying I am no where near being an artist. When I was younger I could barely draw a stick figure. However, over the years I have been practicing painting. I played around with a few different painting techniques and I found that the painting technique I liked the most was watercolor painting. As I was trying to figure out what to do for my semester project I finally decided that I would make a painting that covered a topic we discussed in class throughout the entire semester, the male gaze. I decided that I would paint a painting that represented the male gaze but I would add a twist. My painting has bright and vivid watercolors in it to magnify the intensity of the meaning behind the painting itself.
Inspiration
I was inspired to paint this way after seeing a painting an artist made by the name of Anselm Kiefer. Anselm Kiefer was born on March 8, 1945, in Donaueschingen, Baden-Wurttemburg, Germany. Kiefer was named after a famous nineteenth-century classical painter. From the very beginning of his life he aspired to be an artist. Much of his work deals with Germany and its culture. The painting he created which inspired me is called "Winter Landscape." Winter Landscape was created in 1970 and he used watercolor when creating it. This painting shows a woman with a detached head who is bleeding from the neck, the land looks like it has no life and it also has blood on it. What really intrigued me about this painting was not necessarily the meaning behind it but more so the technique that the artist used when creating it. That is what really inspired me to create my own painting.
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| "Winter Landscape," Kiefer 1970 |
Description
In my painting I painted a young woman with her clothes on, (not typical for the male gaze) who is looking at herself in the mirror but who is also looking at the audience through her reflection in the mirror. In her looking at herself in the mirror she is aware of her audience, not gullible to the world around her. The young woman in my painting knows that she is about to be the subject in many men's eyes so she looks at herself in the mirror preparing herself, making sure she is up to par for what she is about to experience from the men out in public, the stares, whispers and gazing eyes. The male gaze is something that will probably never come to an end which is quite devastating as if the world isn't a mans world as it is. Women are objectified for that of the pleasure of the men around them. This is something that NEEDS change for the sake of the generation of young women to come so that they won't have to face this type of treatment from men, EVER.
Technique
I used the color red inside the mirror to symbolize the outside world and their pitiful eyes. The black around the mirror represents the way in which men who objectify her make her feel on the inside, hollow and dark. However, in spite of this she is still a warm person on the inside and she still wears a smile on her face so that the gazing eyes who view her as nothing but an object don't know how much it hurts her. My subject is still strong and powerful despite anything else.
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| A Man's World |
Bibliography
hadwick, Whitney. Women, Art, And Society. London: Thames & Hudson, 2012. Print.
Work Cited
"Winter Landscape | Anselm Kiefer | 1995.14.5 | Work Of Art | Heilbrunn Timeline Of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum Of Art". The Met’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. N.p., 2017. Web. 25 Apr. 2017.
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