Saturday, March 02, 2013

Exploring Women's Bodies: How do women artists depict women?

How do women artists depict women?

Pretty much all of the paintings we've looked at so far on this historical tour of paintings of women have been done by men.  It's been tough for women artists to get noticed, actually.  There's a very good article on Wikipedia which cronicles women artists' efforts through history.  Apparently there weren't many women artists over the centuries partially because they weren't allowed into the academies because of the nude male models.  Finally there were some women artists whose fathers or husbands were artists - perhaps they were allowed to work with their family members without scandal. There's a movie called Artemesia which is about one of the first well-known female painters - apparently it's too fictionalized for many people to like, but it gives some sense of her.  She was raped by one of her teachers then was put on trial for the rape - that's how women were treated in those days.  She was tortured to see if she would confess that her accusation was false.  Here's the picture she did a year after the trial in 1612:  It's called Judith Beheading Holofernes.
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Exploring Women's Bodies: How do women artists depict women?

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