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Heidi Hahn
painting

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Kehinde Wiley
oil on canvas

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Vague Series, The Demoiselles d'Avignon Issue, 2016

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Vague Series, The Demoiselles d'Avignon Issue, 2016

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Andrea Mary Marshall
mixed media

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Sylvia Sleigh
oil on canvas

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Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?, 1989

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Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?, 1989

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Guerrilla Girls
poster

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This piece challenges the traditional depiction of the reclining female nude in Western art, and, more specifically, resembles the pose of Diego Velázquez’ The Rokeby Venus painting from 1647.  While the gender identity in this piece is obscured, the work depicts a reclining nude that is a male figure, rather than a female.  The mirror in this painting allows the viewer to see the back side and face of the figure as well as the woman painting this nude.  The artist of this work, Sylvia Sleigh, explains, “I feel that my paintings stress the equality of men and women. To me, women were often portrayed as sex objects in humiliating poses. I don’t mind the “desire” part, it’s the “object” that’s not very nice. I wanted to give my perspective.” (Howden, 2010)  Allowing the audience to his face helps to reverse the tradition of the objectified female body by using the male gaze.  This piece also gives men the opportunity to see how they feel when they view the nude male portrayed in same eroticized way females are commonly depicted in the traditional reclining nude.

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Guerrilla Girls. "HOW WOMEN GET MAXIMUM EXPOSURE IN ART MUSEUMS." Guerrilla Girls. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Apr. 2017. <https://www.guerrillagirls.com/projects/>.

Howden, Rebecca. "Reversing the Male Gaze." Lip Magazine. N.p., 24 Nov. 2010. Web. 22 Apr. 2017. <http://lipmag.com/culture/reversing-the-male-gaze/>.

Kehinde Wiley Studio. "KEHINDE WILEY: ABOUT." Kehinde Wiley Studio. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Apr. 2017. <http://kehindewiley.com/about/>.

Lesser, Casey. "These 20 Female Artists Are Pushing Figurative Painting Forward." Artsy. N.p., 10 June 2016. Web. 24 Apr. 2017. <https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-these-20-female-artists-are-pushing-figurative-painting-forward>.

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Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?

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Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?

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This piece challenges the traditional reclining female nude by questioning if women have to be naked to get into the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  The female nude depicted in the piece has a gorilla head to advertise the creators of this poster, the Guerilla Girls, who are claiming that women get maximum exposure in art museums by portraying them in the nude.  The Guerrilla Girls created this poster after comparing the number of nude males to nude females in the artworks on display in the museum. (Guerrilla Girls, 1989)  In this poster, it is also noted that not only are the majority of nude artworks displaying females, but the majority of them are painted by males.  The vivid colors and bold words help make this statement clear and the design of the poster allows for the piece to be shared to a wide or general audience.  In this piece, the Guerrilla Girls are trying to express and bring awareness to the objectification of women, especially seen in artworks that include the female nude.

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In this piece, Hahn uses color and painterly techniques to express the emotion of an ethereal woman figure in nature.  Dull or muted colors are used throughout the piece and paint drips down the woman and her face, displaying the deadness and sadness of the woman and her surroundings.  The fully clothed woman, as the subject of this piece, does resemble a pose of a traditional reclining female nude, however it challenges this tradition.  Hahn explains, “These days I’ve been trying to tell a very specific story, choosing to portray women in an everyday way without the trappings of explicit sexuality or artifice.  The figures are allowed to just be and not perform to classical representations of nudity and provocation.” (Lesser, 2016)  Through this piece, Hahn is challenging the reclining female nude by displaying this female in a way that shows real emotions, rather than objectifying of sexualizing women through nudity.

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This piece was influenced by Alexandre Falguière’s Tarcisius, martyr chrétien, a statue from 1868 of a reclining, nude, young boy.  In this piece, Wiley interrupts tropes of the reclining nude artworks, crossing the traditional and contemporary modes of representation and portrayal of females. Wiley’s work challenges the reclining female nude by breaking the tradition of the reclining, nude, white female and bringing in a contemporary black male, or a figure one could associate with today.  The piece uses vivid colors and patterns, giving it a more modern or urban look, especially in comparison to the traditional nude paintings with a muted color palette.  The male posing is dressed in his everyday clothing to reflect Western ideals of style, and was asked to assume poses found in paintings or sculptures representative of the history of his surroundings. (Kehinde Wiley Studio, 2002)  This pose in response to Wiley’s request resembles the reclining female nude found in traditional artworks, showing how males view females due to how they are displayed as sexualized and vulnerable.  This piece sheds light on this issue of the objectification of females in art.

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Vague Series, The Demoiselles d'Avignon Issue

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Vague Series, The Demoiselles d'Avignon Issue

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This piece is taken from Marshall’s Vague Series, which uses collage and painting to alter the covers of Vogue, a high fashion magazine.  In this piece, the women on the cover of the magazine are adjusted to resemble nude women and the figures are influenced by Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon from 1907.  This work aims to parallel Western art paintings of females, shedding light on the way gender is presented to us through art.  Additionally, the abstracted women are formed to resemble the reclining female nude commonly used in art to present the ideal look of women.  This piece, however, is resisting this preexisting idea of how woman should be depicted in art, sexualizing them and portraying them as vulnerable.  Reimagining the women as nude reflects how people think females should be looked at and shown to the world, in the same way these magazines would advertise fashion.

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This exhibition displays artwork that challenges the traditional reclining female nude seen in various pieces by artists from the past and present day.  The pieces in this exhibition shed light on issues regarding how women are portrayed in art and how they are viewed in the real world. Due to art that focuses on the reclining female nude, women are objectified, sexualized, and seen as vulnerable.  The various artists of the works displayed aim to challenge these preexisting ideas of women.  In Les Demoiselles d’Avignon Issue, Andrea Mary Marshall reimagines woman to depict them as nude females in the same way traditional artworks depict females.  As an artist, Marshall is looking to challenge preexisting ideas of how women are sexualized and objectified when displayed to the world or expressed in art.  Kehinde Wiley’s Christian Martyr Tarcisius using a contemporary style ad figure with traditional aspects that resemble the reclining female nude.  By doing this, he is challenging the traditional female nude by bringing awareness the issue of women objectification and how females are sexualized through art. Similarly, the Guerrilla Girls’ poster titled, Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?, questioned if women have to be naked to get maximum exposure in art museums.  This piece was created to shed light on the objectification of women in art due to the common display of the nude female, as well as the fact that the majority of these pieces were painted by males.  In addition, Sylvia Sleigh’s piece, Philip Golub Reclining, challenges the traditional reclining nude by presenting a male figure in place of a nude female.  This piece allows people, especially men, to see how it feels to display a male as objectified and eroticized, rather than the usual female.  Lastly, Sadness is a Fulltime Job by Heidi Hahn challenges the traditional reclining female nude by portraying a female in this familiar pose but not showing a nude woman.  In this piece Hahn is expressing the woman’s real emotions, showing that there are more ways to display women instead of sexualizing or objectifying them through nudity.  In conclusion, the pieces in this exhibition work together to express not only how women are objectified and sexualized in art, but how artists work to challenge this tradition of the reclining female nude.

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Exhibition Title: A Gaze on the Female Nude

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Exhibition Title: A Gaze on the Female Nude

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Curated by: Molly Quinn