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| Marie Laurencin, Group Of Artists, 1908 |
This is an oil painting by artist, Marie Laurencin. The painting depicts her and her inner circle of other well known artists such as, Pablo Picasso, Fernande Oliver, Guillaume Apollinaire, and herself (from left to right).
The figures in the painting are intentionally flattened with no illusion of depth or consistent light. The forms are simplified and unrealistic with minimal shading and some colors are left unmixed and unblended. The artists being used as the primary subjects of the painting is also a common characteristic of Modernism.
Laurencin applies a "feminine" alternative to her paintings by using softer and lighter colors, like pastels. She also exchanges the rough angular and sharp lines in traditional Cubism, for more curvy and rounded lines. In an art movement that was heavily male dominated (like most art movements at this point) she created a space for a more feminine aesthetic to exist.
H.W. - 2 Quotes from readings and responses 11/12
Chadwick (class text)
By 1921 Productivism- the belief that art should be practised as trade and that the production a of well-designed articles for everyday use was of far greater value than individual expression or experiment-dominated the teaching of art in Russia.
Perhaps it makes sense that in a communist country, art made for the benefit of the people and community is encouraged more than art made for individual expression. With that said, I deeply disagree with this ideology, as I feel it removes what I consider valuable in art; the narrative, the expression, the thoughts, and emotions, the freedom to experiment and enjoy. I feel that it reduces art to a meaningless product for the masses with no true depth or weight from start to finish.
According to Stewart Ewen, those in industry in Western Europe and America were often the most enthusiastic proponents of the new womanhood for they realized that liberated women were more able consumers.
Here, I can see why countries in the west and in America would be enthusiastic about "liberated women", it's because they benefitted from them. They rely on these women to buy their product which gives them profit. In a capitalist system, this just makes sense, as the liberated woman herself is not important unless she's useful to businesses and cooperations; it's all about the money, not the women. (That's how I interpreted that text anyway.)
Confronted with Valadon's powerful nudes, critics were unable to sever the nude from its status as a signifier for male creativity, instead, they severed Valadon (not a respectable middle-class woman) from her femininity and allowed her to circulate as a pseudo-male, complete with "masculine power" and "virility."
In short, because of their inability to cope with the fact that women could create art just as powerful and great as men, critics were more comfortable seeing these women artists as "pseudo-men", because they're so stuck in their beliefs that only men could produce such brilliant art.
The ideology of the "third Sex" advanced by pioneering sexologists like Havelock Ellis and Kraft-Ebing was rooted in homophobic attitudes. These theories... did provide new models for artists and writers early in the twentieth century, enabling women to break the asexual mold of romantic friendship through which nineteenth-century women had expressed their relationships with one another.
Basically lesbians and sapphics were able to start breaking away from the default, "close friends" narrative that the heteronormative patriarchal society enforced on them and start leaning more into their true identities, sexual orientation, and attraction towards each other.
Guerrilla Girls
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