AP Art History Thematic Review

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AP Art History Thematic Review

• Gender Issues

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Prompt

• In the history of art, female artists have often
  faced a different set of circumstances than their
  male counterparts. Identify three female artists
  and discuss the unique circumstances they faced.
  Analyze the impact of their gender experience on
  their work in terms of subject matter and they
  way in which it is depicted.

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Disclaimer

• (Exemption from requirement for example from
  beyond European tradition.)

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Introduction

• Female artists often faced daunting circumstances
  to train for and practice their artistic
  profession, due to societal constraints and
  expectations of gender roles. Artemisia
  Gentileschi is one such example from the
  seventeenth century.

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Introduction, continued

• Paula Modersohn-Becker, of the German
  Expressionists in the early twentieth century is
  a second example. Finally, Adelaide
  Labille-Guiard is a late eighteenth century
  French example. Some of the female artists faced
  challenges in acquiring training, while others
  struggled to gain equal acceptance by male peers,
  but the trend that is true for all three of these
  painters is that their gender had an impact on
  the subject matter of their works.

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Gentileschi

• Judith Slaying Holofernes, 1621
• Italian

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Gentileschi Judith Slaying Holofernes

• Initially trained by her father, since women were
  not admitted to art academies, where drawings of
  the male nude were required. Later trained by a
  peer of her father a rape scandal and trial
  ensued.
• Her works, as this one reveals, often included
  powerful women and heroines.
• Furthermore, her Judith is much larger and
  stronger, leaning into the bloody work, than
  other artists Judiths.

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Modersohn-Becker

• Paula Modersohn-Beckers Self-Portrait with an
  Amber Necklace, 1906

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Modersohn-Beckers Self-Portrait

• She enrolled in a Berlin art school for women in
  1896, where she was allowed to study female nudes
  and sometimes a partially clothed male model.
• Women artists were tolerated in Modernist
  circles, but rarely treated as equals.
• In stead of the eroticized object of male
  desire, she portrayed herself, in the nude, as a
  natural being in tune with her surroundings. Note
  the muted palette or browns and greens.
• C/c with Kirchners Girl Under a Japanese
  Umbrella, of 1909

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Labille-Guiards Self-Portrait with Two Pupils

• Adelaide Labille-Guiards Self-Portrait with Two
  Pupils, of 1785

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Labille-Guiards Self-Portrait with Two Pupils

• Many leading portraitists in late eigthenneth
  century France were women, such as Vigee-Lebrun.
• However, the French Academy only opened 4 spots
  for women. Labille-Guiard and Vigee-Lebrun held
  two of those spots and in 1790, the former
  successfully petitioned the Academy to end the
  restriction on women.
• Rumors circulated that the works of both these
  female portraitists were actually completed by
  men. This self-portrait is a counter argument.

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Labille-Guiards Self-Portrait with Two Pupils

• Monumental painting, with pyramidal composition.
• In a witty role reversal, the only male in the
  work (both pupils are also female) is a portrait
  bust of the painters father in the background on
  the left. He was her inspiration or muse. (Muses,
  in Greek mythology, were female.)

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Additional Suggestion Kauffmann

• Angelica Kauffmanns Cornelia Pointing to Her
  Children as Her Treasures, 1785
• Swiss, trained in Italy,worked in Britain and
  elsewhere in Europe

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Berthe Morisots The Cradle

• Berthe Morisots The Cradle, of 1872