Art 6 Lecture 22

Everything's Rosie?

In response to an exhibition of Louise Nevelson's work in 1946, a critic said, "We learned the artist was a woman, in time to check our enthusiasm. Had it been otherwise, we might have hailed these sculptural expresssions as by surely a great figure among the moderns."


Worksheet #8 Due	Louise Nevelson. Sky Cathedral. 1958. http://www.brigantine.atlnet.org/GigapaletteGALLERY/websites/ ARTiculationFinal/artworkimages/nevelson.jpg

Modernism and Women	Man Ray. Erotique Voile'e (Meret Oppenheim). 1923. http://i252.photobucket.com/albums/hh21/ManiDeum/man.jpg

1930 US census recorded 40% of art professionals were women
Despite the increased participation of women in the artistic realm, modern imagery is dominated by the nude female body
The woman continues to be a passive subject on which male "genius" artists exert control

Surrealists around Rene Magritte painting. Published in La Revolution Surrealiste December 15, 1929.	Surrealism 1924 - mid 1940s

	Surrealist Manifesto proclaimed:
	Unconscious mind more powerful than the conscious mind
	Sought to make visible the imagery of the unconscious
	Purpose of their art was to resolve the two states of dream and reality into a kind of absolute reality, a surreality

Object

Meret Oppenheim. Object (Luncheon in Fur). 1936.
http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/960

Claude Cahun
1893 -1954

Cahun Self-Portrait

Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore. Self-portrait. c. 1928.
http://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/10803#

Suzanne Malherbe

Claude Cahun. Suzanne Malherbe. c. 1928.
http://www.calarts.edu/images/redcat/fv/hammer/600a.jpg

Kewpee Doll

Claude Cahun. Self-portrait. c. 1929.

"Beneath this mask, another mask. I will never be finished lifting off all these faces." - Claude Cahun

Don't Kiss Me I Am In Training

Claude Cahun. Don't Kiss Me I Am In Training.
http://www.electronicbeats.net/Lifestyle/Features/Claude-Cahun-The-Quiet-Surrealist

Sailor

Claude Cahun. Self-portrait. c. 1929.
Girls, Guerrilla. The Guerilla Girls' Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art.
New York: Penguin Books, 1998.


Claude Cahun. Self-Portrait. c. 1929.	Claude Cahun. Self-Portrait. c. 1929. http://icpbardmfa.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/claude0101.jpg

Joan Riviere's Womanliness as Masquerade 1929

Frida Kahlo
1907 - 1954

"Some critics have tried to classify me as a Surrealist; but I don not consider myself a Surrealist...Really I do not know whether my paintings are Surrealist or not, but I do know that they are the frankest expression of myself." - Frida Kahlo

The Broken Column

Frida Kahlo. The Broken Column. 1944.

Frida and Diego on Wedding Day

Frida and Diego on their wedding day 1929
http://www.chasingthefrog.com/reelfaces/frida/weddingday1929.jpg

The Two Fridas

Frida Kahlo. The Two Fridas. 1939.
http://homepage.mac.com/erlin1/iblog/C831409140/E20070902130419/Media/two_fridas.jpg

Henry Ford Hospital

Frida Kahlo. Henry Ford Hospital. 1932.

retablo = a votive painting that is characteristically small, portable and painted on a tin or wood support

Georgia O'Keefe
1887 - 1986

"At last, a woman on paper!" - Alfred Stieglitz

Yellow Calla

Georgia O'Keefe. Yellow Calla. 1926.


Alfred Stieglitz. Georgia O' Keefe. 1918. http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_E_o_0Bdm4GA/SbQ3nBaaGRI/AAAAAAAAHLk/3rAcThO09L4/s1600-h/Georgia-OKeeffe.bmp	Alfred Stieglitz. Georgia O'Keefe. 1918.

"The show is strong...one long, loud blast of sex, sex in youth, sex in adolescence, sex in maturity, sex as gaudy as Ten Nights in a Whorehouse, sex as pure as the vestal virgins, sex bulging, sex tumescent, sex deflated...Perhaps only half the sex is on the walls, the rest is probably in me." - Lewis Mumford reviewing Georgia O'Keefe's work	Georgia O'Keefe. Red Canna. c. 1924. University of Arizona Museum of Art

"I hate flowers- I paint them because they're cheaper than models and they don't move!" - Georgia O'Keefe

Georgia O'Keefe "found expression in delicately veiled symbolism for what every woman knows but what women heretofore kept to themselves." - quoted by Stokstad

Clement Greenberg's words, ". . . the greatest part of her work adds up to little more than tinted photography. The lapidarian patience she has expended in trimming, breathing upon, and polishing these bits of opaque cellophane betrays a concern that has less to do with art than with private worship and the embellishment of private fetishes with secret and arbitrary meanings." - Clement Greenberg 1946

Pelvis with Distance

Georgia O'Keefe. Pelvis with Distance. 1943.
Drohojowska-Philp, Hunter. Full Bloom: The Art and Life of Georgia O' Keefe. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2004.

Historic Context
1929 - 1941	Great Depression	J. Howard Miller. Rosie the Riviter. 1942. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Rosie_the_Riveter.jpg
1933	Hitler's Nazi Party seizes power - end of Weimar Republic
	New Deal begins - program of government spending that included two departments (the FSA and the FAP) that employed artists
	FAP artists received famous salary of $23.86 / week at a time when a Woolworth's clerk earned $11 /week
	40% of those receiving aide from the FAP were women
1939 - 1945	World War II
	Largest & deadliest war in history with over 62 million deaths
1941	Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor
1942	Rosie the Riveter character helps increase the number of US women working to 20 million (an increase of 57% from 1940)
	The average man working in a war-time plant paid $54.65 / week, while women were paid $31.21 / week
1945	First use of the Atomic Bomb at Hiroshima and Nagasaki