Post 4 - 17th and 18th Century - Iris G

Artwork from readings

Judith Leyster's, The Proposition, 1631

The painting is of a man and a woman. The woman is wholly focused on her needlework. She doesn't even look at the man who has his hand on her and seemingly offering her a bunch of coins. The woman's face looks focused and at peace. It's likely she's intentionally ignoring the man, who is wearing a smirk while asking her for sexual services. The focus is mainly on her as she's more in the middle and her colors stand out more than the man's. She's not being sexualized in the painting, which is interesting since the painting is showing her being sexualized by the man wanting to pay for sex. 

This painting by Judith Leyster, portrays this woman not as a seducer or sex object, but as a person who tries to peacefully ignore the unwanted advances of a man. It shows how the woman is virtuous and modest and that it is the man who is being immortal and sinful.

H.W. - Quotes from readings and responses 10/01

Chadwick (class text)

As gentlewomen and painters, women’s social and professional lives were elided; their presence at court both affirmed the breadth of court patronage and ensured that educated and skilled women were available as teachers and attendants.

To paint everyday life is to paint the activities of women and children, as well as those of men; and to record the realities of domestic spaces, as well as to aggrandize public, historical, religious, and mythological events.

This criticism of northern painting as lacking symmetry and harmony (that is, mathematical proportion and ideal form), and as therefore inferior to Italian painting and worthy of the admiration only of women, the pious, and the uneducated, draws striking distinctions between the painting of northern and southern Europe.

The organization of cloth production by entrepreneurs (“drapiers” wealthy enough to afford the purchase of raw materials which they then jobbed out to spinners and weavers) encouraged a strict division of labor and the use of women and children as a means of keeping wages low.

Guerrilla Girls

Thelma Johnson Streat(1912-1959) was the first African-American woman whose work was collectedby The Museum of Modern Art in New York. She was also probably the first artistto dance in frontofher painting atthe museum.

There's still a materials hierarchy, with oil paint on canvas at the top. Other media-like sculpture, drawing, photography, installation, and performance-are not quite as prestigious. Ironically, this has made it easier for women to make it in these fields.