Membrii subculturii lesbiene în care a fost atras Toulouse-Lautrec erau membri ai clasei

muncitoare și celebrități. Astfel, ei au avut libertatea de a se comporta, iar Toulouse-Lautrec

autonomia artistică de a le înfățișa, în moduri care s-au îndepărtat de conceptele de la sfârșitul
secolului al XIX-lea privind comportamentul feminin adecvat. Sweetman îi atribuie lui
Toulouse-Lautrec faptul că a descris femei neconvenționale și puternice din punct de vedere
social și pentru că și-a ridicat statutul în secolul al XIX-lea, oferindu-le capacitatea de a-și depăși
adversarii contemporani, atât bărbați, cât și femei.

Opera se cuvine să aibă în primul rând un caracter decorativ, adică să fie o expresie
ornamentală, să împodobească suprafața pictată. Dacă sunt persoane într-un tablou, ele să se
acorde complet cu natura care le servește de cadru, natură care va căpăta astfel un rol emotiv,
aproape o expresie umană, pentru a intensifica ideea poetică de la baza compoziției. 1

Și-a creat propriile sale interpretări extrem de individuale asupra temelor canonice ale
artei occidentale cu tipuri figurale care rezistă esteticii idealizante a tradiției academice.

Multilateralitatea însușirilor și posibilităților de expresie artistică ale lui Gauguin este

încă unul din elementele prin care el exercită acea mare fascinație asupra celor cu care vine în
contact.2

https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/gauguin/explore-exhibition/
eternal-feminine

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/438821

https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/gaug/hd_gaug.htm

Nevertheless, Gauguin’s pictures showed a preoccupation with dreams, mystery, and

evocative symbols that revealed his own artistic inclinations.

He eventually set sail for Tahiti in 1891. His first major Tahitian canvas, Ia Orana Maria
(Hail Mary), dresses a Christian theme in Polynesian guise (51.112.2). A Tahitian Virgin Mary is
worshipped by two other Tahitian women dressed in colorful pareus in a lush, tropical landscape.
The composition is based on a photograph that Gauguin had brought with him of a bas-relief in
1
Oprescu, George, Manual de istoria artei. Postimpresionismul, Editura Meridiane, Bucureşti, 1986, pp.136-137.
2
Oprescu, George, Manual de istoria artei. Postimpresionismul, Editura Meridiane, Bucureşti, 1986, pp.122-123.

1
the Javanese temple of Borobudur. Another photograph that Gauguin packed, of Manet‘s
Olympia, inspired the masterwork from his first Tahitian trip, Manao Tupapau (Spirit of the
Dead Watching) (Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo). Gauguin’s Tahitian pictures are thus a
hybrid of various Western and Eastern sources, creating a new synthetic style that combined
decorative abstract patterning with figuration. In The Siesta, to take a further example, Gauguin
updates the fête galante genre as a languorous scene of Tahitian women relaxing on a porch in
the humid tropical heat (1993.400.3).

Kang, Cindy. “Paul Gauguin (1848–1903).” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New
York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–, March 2011

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/gaug/hd_gaug.htm

women suggest noble gods, angels, Eves, idols and archetypes.

Much has been made of the way in which Gauguin came to characterize the differences
that he saw between the French and Tahitian populations once he had embarked on the series of
voyages for which he is now celebrated. Although there is evidence to support a number of
interpretations with respect to his portrayals of women, one theme has been paramount in a great
deal of the commentary: Gauguin came to see the women of Tahiti as not only emblematic of the
island itself, and the island's culture, but as the embodiments of a certain sort of feminine grace.
The contrasts that Gauguin himself invoked between the "naturalness" of the Polynesian women
and what he took to be the falsity of women of his own class in Europe, especially France, has
been the subject of much writing. In our attempts to educate undergraduates with respect to
categories of oppression, we can appeal to the work of Gauguin as a valuable source of
understanding concerning these issues. Given the Eurocentrism of the time, and given that it is
roughly this same time period that Said will later go on to associate with the rise of Orientalism,
it is probably not possible that Tahiti, its women, and its various flora and fauna could have been
seen as anything other than vestiges of the natural in a world already too tamed. Words such as
"savage" are used frequently in the criticism of the day to explain Gauguin's subjects, and some
of the themes of his work seem to have been chosen specifically because they lent themselves to
such an interpretation, at least in European eyes. But Gauguin goes a bit further than this crude

2
caricature indicates, at least insofar as his portraits of female figures are concerned. It is clear
that, for the artist, they represent all that is to him unknown about Tahiti, and that at the same
time they are coded as the natural, the innocent, and even the holy. An examination of some of
his works will bear out the extent to which this is the case. Regarding Gauguin's attitudes toward
Tahiti and its women, Britt Salvesen has noted in recent commentary that Gauguin infused his art
with mystery, often by depicting enigmatic female figures, traditional symbols of nature and its
secrets. In Tahiti he expected to encounter exotic and sensual women. Given Gauguin's
complicated position as both observer and participant in Tahitian society, his ambition to
represent the "country's female type" bears close examination. He owned illustrated travel books
in which, as he noted scornfully, "all the [natives] … look like Minerva or Pallas Athena." He
aimed to disrupt this conventional projection of European ideals and fantasies onto Tahitian
women. As Salvesen indicates, Gauguin expected to find, and did find—by his lights—"exotic"
and "sensual" women. Feminist analysis has provided us with an overwhelming amount of
material about the extent to which such projections onto women as a group become a near
universal human cultural trope, but few individuals allow us to make such strong comparisons
with respect to projections on differing female figures as Gauguin does. That he is able to discern
the ridiculousness of Academy art with its emphasis on "Pallas Athena" is obvious; what he
chooses to do himself is something else again. Inaugurating a variety of personal relationships
with women and girls as young as thirteen years of age, Gauguin developed a view of the
Tahitian woman as emblematic simultaneously of the culture, of a certain sort of innocence, and
of a virtually transcendental sacredness. That these images might be thought, naively, to have
little to do with sensuality reflects the degree to which we fail to understand that for Gauguin, as
for others after him, the sensual itself was sacred. Salvesen notes that one of the early
relationships was with the "thirteen-year-old Tehamana. … [o]f Polynesian origin,
[in]experienced, and of a seemingly 'impenetrable' character, Tehamana offered Gauguin the
mysterious experience he sought in life and art." If Tehamana represents one take on woman-as-
elementally-pure in Tehamana Has Many Parents (a work that depicts her wearing the
missionary dress and with iconic Tahitian...

Artist atras de viaţa nocturnă, de lumea spectacolelor unde lumina artificială, dansul şi
fardul transpun privitorul într-un spaţiu feeric, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901) a lăsat
posterităţii valoroase lucrări în care sunt prezentaţi actorii şi cântăreţii din acea epocă care se

3
produceau în muzicaluri (ex. lucrarea Jeanne Avril). Preocupat de la debutul carierei de
portretizarea figurilor umane, şi-a păstrat în timp calitatea de a plasa personajele în mediul
cotidian, prilej de a pătrunde mai adânc în cunoaşterea temperamentului şi personalităţii celor
imortalizaţi.

Prostituate pariziene, atât reale, cât și imaginare — am căutat să ascult cu urechea ce se

întâmplă între bărbați, în timp ce ei au condus la circulația femeilor. Arta pe care o analizez aici
consemnează utilizarea ideologică a anumitor femei prin transformarea lor în topoiul unei
culturi, subiectul unei arte ambițioase, în mare parte masculine. Recent, Luce Irigaray, feministă
franceză, a evidențiat modelul social și economic general în care producția și circulația artei
studiate aici au jucat un rol:

Societatea pe care o cunoaștem, propria noastră cultură, se bazează pe schimbul de femei. . . .

De ce bărbații nu sunt obiecte de schimb între femei? Se datorează faptului că corpurile femeilor
- prin utilizarea, consumul și circulația lor - asigură condiția care face posibilă viața și cultura
socială, deși rămân o „infrastructură” necunoscută a elaborării acelei vieți și culturi sociale.
Exploatarea materiei care a fost sexualizată femeia este atât de parte integrantă a orizontului
nostru sociocultural încât nu există nicio modalitate de a o interpreta decât în acest orizont.

Scăldatorii nevinovați din cariera târzie a lui Renoir, scenele cu aspect ingenios ale lui
Degas cu femei spălându-se și îmbrăcându-se (29.100.41) și fata simplă a lui Balthus care se uită
în oglindă sunt în mod formal diferite de nudurile idealizate ale artei anterioare, dar în
umanitatea lor nedissimulata sunt rude cu nudurile din antichitate.

4
 The existence of prostitution on a scale so widespread and obvious that it alarmed
contemporaries was a distinctive and distinguishing feature of nineteenth-century Parisian
culture.1 And as Parisian streets filled with prostitutes, so did French art and literature.
Beginning in the early July Monarchy (1830-48), the prostitute became a regular presence in
paintings, poems, prints, and novels and remained so through the end of the century and beyond.
It would appear, then, that nineteenth-century French art on the subject of contemporary
prostitution mimetically paralleled the rise of a "prostitute problem" in the capital city. This
study of a group of such images concurs that the artworks depended upon the events and ideas of
their time. That real prostitutes were constant points of reference for artists in the nineteenth
century is undeniable. Indeed, in most instances later in the century, artists attempted to depict
observable practices. Yet although it is clear that the prostitution problem and the outpouring of
images of prostitutes coexisted, the precise correlation between these two phenomena is less
certain. Explaining that relationship will be the principal goal of the present work, which focuses
upon art made during the 18708 and 1880s.

Berthe Morisot, Woman Impressionist Cindy Kang

In fact, Garb’s compatriot art historian and literary theorist Griselda Pollock contends
that female impressionists, namely Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt, challenge the male gaze
with space as their matrix, endlessly dividing, angling, and mirroring their canvases as they play
with the gendered domains of modernity.8 In doing so, they unlock the natural female condition
that transcends what man has prescribed for her. A condition of the unmasked, unmade face of
femininity; of the not-for-show individuality and independence; of a subdued desire for more
agency over the lives that are rightfully theirs.

And so, by exploring the politics of the gaze, both male and female, in Édouard Manet’s
A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882), Georges Seurat’s Young Woman Powdering Herself (1890),
and Berthe Morisot’s Woman at Her Toilette (1875-1880), I will argue that, despite the inherent
gendering of modern bodies, female impressionists were able to capture the natural essence of
Woman by deconstructing the male fantasy of femininity.

Why is it that far too many hallmarks of early modern art hinge on femininity defined as
a submissive sexuality purely transactional in its nature? “To recognize the gender-specific
conditions of these paintings’ existence one need only imagine a female spectator and a female

5
producer of the works.”10 Many a naïve man may never have been aware of this context before
reading Pollock’s article, in which she lambasts the social strata and power schemata that permit
and encourage such depiction by calling to attention three works: Manet’s A Bar at the Folies
Bergère, his Olympia, and Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. Perhaps he is uncomfortable to
be placed at the scene of procurement – implicated in the very act of locking eye contact with
these women, some more assertive than others – but not cognizant, in the way these women
would have been of their own status, that he is out of place or somehow does not belong, a
condition of the blindness of his own, insistently male gaze. Thus, it is with A Bar at the Folies
Bergère that I begin my analysis of that very male gaze by contextualizing the spaces it may
occupy: where it was permitted and where it was not.

The Irish painter and critic George Moore offers an admittedly reductive commentary on
Berthe Morisot and her work, but if there are two takeaways from this critique, then let it be 1)
her indelible contribution to and her indisputable furtherance of female art and 2) how she
created an individual style by “investing her art with all her femininity… sweet and gracious,
tender and wistful womanhood.” And it is true: though not the founding cause of their work,
what differentiates the work of Morisot and Cassatt from their male contemporaries is the true
essence of femininity with which they were able to imbue their pictures, made possible by their
status as female producers of art and the particularity of their own female spectatorship.
Although, by convention, the art of these two great impressionists was “made to conform to
femininity as an inescapable condition understood perpetually from the ideological patriarchal
definition of it,” they achieved difference from the selective tradition by manipulating features of
“proximity, intimacy, and divided spaces [to] posit a different kind of viewing relation at the
point of both production and consumption.” Using Berthe Morisot’s Woman at Her Toilette, as
displayed in her breathtaking and (controversially) titled retrospective at the Barnes Foundation
in Philadelphia, I will now discuss Morisot’s effort to reclaim the male-colonized sanctuary of
the toilette.

https://www.artic.edu/artworks/11723/woman-at-her-toilette

6
 Tendința androcentrică este un mod de gândire, conștient sau nu, care exprimă o
perspectivă asupra lumii printr-o privire masculină. Derivând din cuvântul grecesc andro- (al
bărbaților; mâle), acest tip de prejudecată marginalizează perspectiva femeilor și o perspectivă
mai „feminină” asupra problemelor. Împinge un consens implicit că „privirea masculină” este
neutră, obiectivă și universală. A fost incontestabil.

Deci, de ce să considerăm lucrările lui Cassatt la operă ca o unitate? Savanții din trecut au
abordat individual lucrările ei de operă; Griselda Pollock și Linda Nochlin, în special, își dedică
o mare parte din timpul lor argumentând pentru considerarea lui Cassatt ca o artistă feministă,
folosind pictura ei, In the Loge (1878) ca dovadă a ceea ce ei consideră că este modul de
împuternicire în care ea își revendică privirea feminină.

https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/235416464.pdf DE CITIT MAINE

Cassatt envisioned the contemporary woman and her offspring, usually but not invariably
upper-middle class, as a kind of modern Madonna motif.
https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/cast/hd_cast.htm

https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-mary-cassatt-painted-domestic-life-way-
male-impressionists

https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/becoming-modern/avant-garde-france/
impressionism/a/cassatt-little-girl-in-a-blue-armchair

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20180807-the-women-impressionists-forgotten-by-
history

https://www.frieze.com/article/overlooked-radicalism-impressionist-mary-cassatt

Tamar Garb, “Powder and Paint: Framing the Feminine in Georges Seurat’s Young
Woman Powdering Herself

multe femei artiste fac acum lucrări pentru femei și nu doar despre femeile ideale.
https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/imml/hd_imml.htm

7
 The ideas formulated in the Enlightenment would go on to become fundamental in the
later nineteenth century, especially in France, and informed key political debates and conflicts,
with which artists and writers such as Gustave Courbet and Emile Zola (a close friend of
Edouard Manet) became directly involved. The democratic rights of the individual citizen were
central to Enlightenment political discourse, manifested most clearly in the French Revolution.
The French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, of 1789, which began, ‘All men
are born and remain free and equal in rights,’ immediately prompted the question of whether
women had comparable rights.

Pioneering campaigners, such as Olympe de Gouges in France and Mary Wollstonecraft

in Britain were quick to demand legal and political rights for women, founding feminism as a
modern political movement. But the question of women’s rights was complex. Women’s lives
and experiences were rarely referred to when discussing the rights of man. Whereas the
Declaration of the Rights of Man demanded that all men shared the rights previously held only
by a privileged few, writers like de Gouges and Wollenstonecraft were demanding rights that had
never been extended to any woman. Although the Rights of Man went on to form the basis of our
understanding of universal human rights, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the term
‘human’ was synonymous with the word ‘man’, with women left out of the equation all together.
Women could argue for their own rationality and for their entitlement to citizenship, but their
lives were lived in relation to and in dependency on men. Within patriarchal society women were
daughters of fathers, wives of husbands and mothers of sons, rather than individuals in their own
right.

The status of men and women throughout history is clearly communicated to us through
visual culture. Art has played an important role in perpetuating stereotypical images of women
and femininity, both negative and positive. As Meghan Goodeve explores in her essay on female
stereotypes, in visual art women can be characterised as good or bad, beautiful or ugly, sacred or
profane. As Goodeve explains, these categories are rarely as simple as they first appear and
female archetypes such as the virgin, the mother and the witch are complex and problematic.

The collection also enables us to understand how women were seen and represented in
the nineteenth century and how also how art museums perhaps reinforce assumptions about the
role of women in art history.

8
 Until the nineteenth century, women were predominantly portrayed in art in a religious
context, and the most frequently depicted female image was that of the Virgin Mary. Depictions
of the nude female body were restricted to scenes from classical mythology, as the paganism of
the Greeks and Romans excused their lack of modesty, or in images of Eve, as seen in Lucas
Cranach the Elder’s Adam and Eve (1526) [image 1]. In this work Eve’s pose deliberately recalls
depictions of the Virgin Mary. Eve’s body, improbably proportioned and free from hair and
imperfections, suggests that Cranach based the figure on a marble sculpture rather than a live
woman, seeking harmony and beauty rather than anatomical correctness. This was the standard
practice in artistic training. Drawing from live female models was not inappropriate for young,
male art students. Classical sculptures from antiquity were thought to represent the best and most
beautiful aspects of the female form, as determined by ancient artists and philosophers, and were
preferable prototypes.

Since her fabrication, the Witch has been suffocated by the masculine voice and mode.
Beginning with the witch-hunts, her social narrative has been completely dictated by men. All
predicating texts were written by men, for men to use against women. From Macbeth to the King
James Bible, from Glinda to Galinda, from Carrie to Sue, and from Myrtle to Madison, men have
defined, silenced, and appropriated Witches’ voices in order to maintain social hegemony and
hierarchy - man’s supremacy over women. Very rarely has a woman’s witchy voice been heard
when set against overpowering patriarchal domination. While women have written Witches in
the shadows, it is the male voice that has historically defined her as a threat to society, i.e.,
patriarchy. Women critics such as Matilda Joslyn Gage have defended the Witch as a source of
Female power and an obvious display of brutal patriarchal persecution, but the literary Witch and
her accompanying images that define public perception remain dominated by men, trapping her
in a cyclical fallacy of female autonomy, fabricated by men. Through a Feminist theory of male
gaze with New Historicism approach, this thesis will examine the manifestation and evolution of
the Witch, starting with the Witch’s origin and connection to birth and death through Lilith.
Next, it will provide an overview of the Witch in literary and visual mediums during European
witchcraze in order to show its influence on William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the King James
Bible, and Christian rhetoric, codifying the social perception of Witches’ - and thereby all
women’s - inherent wickedness. Turning to the first modern Feminist wave, Matilda Josyln

9
Gage’s treatise Women, Church, and State, brings forward and defends the Witch as an
intelligently educated women who threatened the patriarchy by living outside the bounds of male
influence and paints Witches as victims of masculine fear. Her treatise proposed an image of a
kind, intelligent Witch, persecuted and murdered for her female intelligence. The legacy of
Gage’s good Witch lives through her son-in-law’s children’s book The Wonderful Land of Oz.
The words asked by the Good Witch of the North upon Dorothy’s arrival opened the door to
represent women with power and magic as beings of goodness. However, L. Frank Baum’s
lasting legacy is the Wicked Witch of the West, further solidified by Margaret Hamilton’s iconic
performance on screen. In the second Feminist wave, this thesis will explore the use of Exodus in
Carrie to show how the King James Bible is still being used to justify and persecute women as
Witches out of fear and hate. In the third Feminist wave, the Wicked Witch of the West is reborn
through Gregory Maguire’s Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West,
which explores the backstory and motivations of the Wicked Witch, exploring both her obsession
with her sister’s shoes and her green hue. These Witches, echoes of the images of Witches
throughout history, are further examples of the Witch under the male gaze. Ushering in the
fourth Feminist wave, Witches have finally broken through patriarchal male gaze and limitations,
opening new possibilities for a thoroughly Feminine literary structure. Ariel Gore’s We Were
Witches is an extraordinary exemplar of the potential literary creation that happens when a Witch
takes hold and fully claims her witchy power and forges an entirely new, magical literary
structure - defining the Witch as a figure of women’s fortitude, love, and survival.

The Malleus maleficarum, 1487, which promoted stereotypes ofwitchcraft in order to

eradicate witches, influenced the artistic iconography of witchcraftestablished in the Renaissance
and further developed in the Baroque period. Goya revived thesubject in the 1790s and
incorporated a burlesque tone to expose and satirize the superstitions behind it. Goya ridiculed
the vices of clerical institutions and mocked the former stereotypesof witches and their deviant
acts. Goya also used grotesque figures in his Caprichos prints tosatirize human folly,
incorporating images of the monstrous body in men to implicate them.His late career would see a
change in style in the Black Paintings, again using the theme ofwitchcraft in a darker, more
pessimistic integration of humor. The monstrous male also appears in the Black Paintings, in the
form of Saturn, using the grotesque as a means torepresent melancholy and to explore the
boundary between horror and humor.

10
 L Lorenzi, Witches: Exploring the Iconography of the Sorceress and Enchantress (DE
CAUTAT ANTICARIAT GERMANIA)

The objectification (reducing to the level of an object) of women in representation is one

of the main themes of Roszika Parker and Griselda Pollock's influential study Old Mistresses,
published in 1981. In describing the tradition of the female nude in modern Western painting,
they echo Berger's formulation in attributing an active, powerful gaze to men while seeing the
representation of women as enshrining their passivity. Referring to images like Cabanel's The
Birth of Venus, 1863 (Plate 203), they write:

The images reproduce on the ideological level of art the relations of power between men and
women. Woman is present as an image but with the specific connotations of body and nature, that
is passive, available, possessable, powerless. Man is absent from the image but it is his speech,
his view, his position of dominance which the images signify. (Parker and Pollock, Old
Mistresses, p.l 16)

What Parker and Pollock stress is that the customary objectification of Woman in
representation is a function of male fantasy. It tells us more about the dominant construction of
masculinity, its projections, fears and anxieties, than it ever could about the femininity which it
purports to represent. Femininity in such a representational system is conditional on an absent,
masculine creativity, which defines and controls the world it creates. For writers like Berger,
Parker and Pollock, Art is particularly implicated in the formation and cementing of the unequal
power relations between men and women. Art does not only reflect these but constitutes one of
the sites of their formation. The way that traditional patterns of 'looking' and 'being looked at' are
related to gender identity and accepted notions of sexual pleasure are crucial in this respect.

Modernity and Modernism. French Painting - Francis Frascina, Tamar Garb pentru Intro

For feminists, neither the experience of 'pleasure' nor the processes of 'looking' are
neutral and value-free. Both are intricately connected to the different ways we have learned to
live as men or women in the world. There is no single solution which feminist theory offers to
explain the differences between men and women, but most reject the idea that these are located
entirely in our biologies or our fixed 'natures'. Biological essential- ists do trace such differences

11
back to biology alone, positing an unchanging biological essence or singling out an identifiable
physiological cause which they see as the origin of human behaviour. Other kinds of essentialists
see men and women as having fixed and unchanging differences which stem from psychological
or mental predispositions (for example, men are rational, women emotional). These are
sometimes, but not always, traced back to biology.

There are certainly some feminists who link their theories to biological roots, but feminist
theorists from different schools argue more often over the psychic and social meaning of
masculinity and femininity. Everyone acknowledges that men and women have different sexual
characteristics and capacities, for example women can give birth, men cannot, but it is the value
and meaning that different societies and cultures attribute to this fact, these differences, not the
differences themselves, that is important for much feminist scholarship. Some feminists place
their emphasis on social conditioning and the learning of behavioural roles which become
internalized as our natural 'femininity' or 'masculinity', usually called 'gender' differences. Others
object to such explanations for they allege that they are premised on the assumption that society
is normatively heterosexual and that the acquisition of gender identities is a stable and
unproblematic process which is achieved and maintained without difficulty. These theorists
focus, therefore, on the instability of difference and, drawing on psychoanalytic theory, locate its
acquisition in the complex psychic journey which each 'subject' undergoes unconsciously, in the
difficult passage through childhood and adolescence towards an adult 'masculinity' or 'femininity'
which are always unstable. Such 'subject positions' are said to stem from what is usually called
'sexual difference' rather than 'gender difference', the latter most often implying the social
acquisition of identity. While many theorists work with both these models in an attempt to
integrate the psychic with the social, others opt for one or the other. In this discussion you are
sure to find references to both sexual and gender difference and the difficulty of maintaining a
rigid distinction between them will, at times, become apparent. Feminists often use
psychoanalytic theories as a tool for understanding the formation of subject positions or a
culture's maintenance of distinct categories of 'masculinity' and 'femininity' within a specific
historical context. How identities (fragile as they may be) are learned within such a situation
might involve psychic adaptation to social norms.PENTRU CAPITOLUL 1

Whilst some painters have used us to explore their strange fantasies of purity versus
impurity, as in one well known work [Manet’s Olympia] where the strategic positioning and

12
obscure rendering of the servant woman serves to highlight the whiteness . . . of the reclining
woman.

https://arthistoryteachingresources.org/lessons/sexuality-in-art/

https://confluence.gallatin.nyu.edu/context/first-year-writing-seminar/the-ethics-of-the-
female-nude

Există subiecte și obiecte al căror ideal nu are nimic de-a face cu frumosul zeităților elene.
Idealul unei Venus, unei Junone, unei Minerve nu poate fi cel al Sfintei Fecioare. Îndeobște,
imaginea Fecioarei reprezintă o împletire între divinitate și umanitate, între noblețe și modestie,
între simplitate virginală și afecțiune maternă. Ar fi tot atât de nepotrivit să se acorde înfățișării,
trăsăturilor sau veșmintelor Fecioarei grandoarea de formă și caracterul general al statuilor
antice, pe cât ar fi de deplasat de a o reprezenta (așacum mulți au făcut-o) drept o vulgară și
banală imagine a unei mame sau a unei doici obișnuite, cu un prunc obișnuit în brațe. 3 – citat din
Quatremère de Quincy

https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/mane/hd_mane.htm

Nochlin, Linda. Realism. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971

http://blogs.bu.edu/guidedhistory/historians-craft/katryna-santacruz/ 

https://artist.christies.com/edouard-manet--33815.aspx

https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/
women-19th-century-representations-women-literature-and-art-19th-century

Gender roles in the 19th century

Female representation in art history 19th century

https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/gender-roles-in-the-19th-century

https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199920105/obo-
9780199920105-0034.xml

https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/37374962.pdf PENTRU ULTIMUL CAPITOL

3
Honour, Hugh, Romantismul, vol.I, Editura Meridiane, Bucureşti, 1983, p.261.

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 4.3. Feminitatea în curentele mișcării de avangardă

Gauguin (he mythologized and misrepresented Polynesian women for his own artistic and sexual
advantages), Degas (his beautiful ballet dancers were in fact glorified prostitutes with male
patrons who would sponsor them for sexual favors), and Courbet (he went a step beyond Renoir,
representing headless, bodiless female genitalia as the embodiment of beauty).

In Reclining Nude, by Amedeo Modigliani, we see, in contrast to the massive flashiness of

Lachaise, a sinuous and elongated version of the female. She is regarded as an object of pleasure.
Her very sleep is an expression of sexual fulfillment, of the subordination of all functions and
meaning to the erotic. Finally, we encounter the ultimate abstraction of the female form

In Girl before mirror, Pablo Picasso presents some of the morbid anticipations of a young girl as
she becomes aware of her impending biological role in womanhood. A kind of X-ray
representation of the actual figure on the left and her reflection in the mirror on the right shows
thespinal cord and the shapes of internal organs related to reproduction and nurture of the young.
The serene and innocent face of the girl is reflected in the mirror by a dark , hallow-eyed visage,
surrounded by black and blue moon-shaped crescents. The head on the left is partly surrounded
by a bright halo, a sunny nimbus, with a bright yellow passage on the side where a shadow would
be expected. This clear-eyed sun-face can be seen as a symbol of unclouded youth and vitality,
the moon-face in the mirror presents the fearful aspect of death. The girls arm is shown in motion,
reaching across to the mirror and to the apparition which holds the image of her fears. Since the
painting is divided vertically into two equal parts, the arm moving across the picture serves to
unite the halves compositionally, and, what is more important, psychologically. It is a gesture
which represents the end of innocence and a touching expression of simpathy for the other self -
the self which may die in the act of bringing life into the world. The painting represents a
remarkable achievement of sympathetic imagination and insight on the part of a man into the
understandable apprehensions of a girld emerging from adolescence. It should be compared to the
more naturalistic treatment of the same theme by Munch in Puberty, an equally hunting work, and
to the lithograph, Adolescence...

14
 În Nud culcat, de Amedeo Modigliani, vedem, în contrast cu strălucirea masivă a lui Lachaise, o
versiune sinuoasă și alungită a femeii. Ea este privită ca un obiect al plăcerii. Însuși somnul ei
este o expresie a împlinirii sexuale, a subordonării tuturor funcțiilor și sensului eroticului. În cele
din urmă, întâlnim abstracția supremă a formei feminine

În Girl before mirror, Pablo Picasso prezintă câteva dintre anticipațiile morbide ale unei fete
tinere pe măsură ce devine conștientă de rolul ei biologic iminent în feminitate. Un fel de
reprezentare cu raze X a figurii reale din stânga și reflectarea ei în oglinda din dreapta arată
măduva spinării și formele organelor interne legate de reproducerea și hrănirea tinerilor. Fața
senină și inocentă a fetei este reflectată în oglindă de un chip întunecat, cu ochi sfinți, înconjurat
de semilune negre și albastre în formă de lună. Capul din stânga este parțial înconjurat de un
halou strălucitor, un nimbus însorit, cu un pasaj galben strălucitor pe partea în care ar fi de
așteptat o umbră. Acest soare cu ochi limpezi poate fi văzut ca un simbol al tinereții și al
vitalității neînnorate, chipul lunii din oglindă prezintă aspectul înfricoșător al morții. Brațul fetei
este arătat în mișcare, întinzându-se spre oglindă și spre apariția care deține imaginea fricilor ei.
Deoarece pictura este împărțită vertical în două părți egale, brațul care se mișcă peste tablou
servește la unirea compozițională a jumătăților și, ceea ce este mai important, psihologic. Este un
gest care reprezintă sfârșitul inocenței și o expresie emoționantă a simpatiei pentru celălalt sine -
sinele care poate muri în actul de a aduce viață pe lume. Pictura reprezintă o realizare remarcabilă
a imaginației simpatice și a înțelegerii din partea unui bărbat în temerile înțelese ale unei fete care
iese din adolescență. Ar trebui comparat cu tratarea mai naturalistă a aceleiași teme de către
Munch în Pubertate, o lucrare la fel de vânătoare, și cu litografia, Adolescența...

Modernism, as a cultural and literary movement, began to develop as early as the late
1880s but traditionally runs from 1900 to approximately 1950, with the first 25 years of the
century characterized as the height of the period (Brockett, 1971; Cantor, 1988; Singal, 1987).
As the Industrial Revolution shifted the economic focus from rural to urban life and as
inventions changed lifestyles, the past, most notably seen in the Victorian culture, seemed
outdated. Modernists viewed the world as an isolating place yet a place full of mystery that
beckoned an exploration of its very essence. Described as ardent individualists, Modernists
reveled in their personal accomplishments. As a natural outlet of their creativity, artistic

15
achievement became important; however, art and the artist became elitist in nature. Art,
regardless of the genre, became fragmented in presentation, while the artist adopted an
isolationist persona. Literary works of all modes advanced non-linear plots and new themes such
as the effects of technology on humanity or the struggles of individuals with the industrialized
world.

The purpose of this study was to determine how gender roles were described and defined
in a selection of American Modern and Postmodern plays. Even though the essence of this
project was a "women's study," effective gender studies cannot be conducted by exploring only
one point of view. Therefore, in order to explore how women were depicted requires that male
characters be simultaneously examined. To achieve this end, this study focused on four major
research questions: Research Question 1: What gender roles did the characters have in each play?
Sub-Question A: Once described for the characters, did the identified gender roles fall into the
"traditional" realm or were the characters taking on roles outside the traditional categories? Sub-
Question B: Did the characters' gender roles determine their situations, and were the characters'
situations limited by their gender roles? Sub-Question C: Were there consequences for the
characters as a result of their gender role assignments or for their actions within their gender
roles? Research Question 2: Did the plays cast the female and male genders using certain
patterns and were the gender patterns polar opposites? Research Question 3: Were there
differences in gender portrayals of the characters in the plays that were designated as Modern or
Postmodern? 22 Research Question 4: Did the sex of the playwright make any difference in the
portrayal of gender in the characters that he or she created?

https://www.artforum.com/print/197310/virility-and-domination-in-early-20th-century-
vanguard-painting-36254

VIRILITY AND DOMINATION IN EARLY 20TH CENTURY VANGUARD

PAINTING

In a number of articles written over the last fifteen years, Carol Duncan has done much to
expose the mutually reinforcing relationship between modernist innovation and the female nude.
On the one hand, the stylistic experimentation of modernism works to revitalize and extend the
tradition of the female nude and, on the other hand, the representation of the female body in

16
these images functions as a critical sign of male sexuality and artistic avantgardism. In one of the
earliest and best known of these pieces, entitled ‘Virility and Domination in Early Twentieth-
Century Vanguard Painting’, Duncan argues that, both in terms of style and imagery, the female
nude in European modernism asserts a particular ideal of artistic identity as male, virile and
sexually uninhibited: ‘The assertion of that presence – the assertion of the artist’s sexual
domination – is in large part what these paintings are about.’25 Duncan sees the stylistic
distortions and abstractions of the female body in modernist art as a form of cultural subjugation
of women by men. Women are portrayed as powerless and vulnerable, given meaning only
through the creative force and potency of the male avantgardist. She states:

More than any other theme, the nude could demonstrate that art originates in and is
sustained by male erotic energy. This is why many ‘seminal’ works of the period are nudes.
When an artist had some new or major artistic statement to make, when he wanted to
authenticate to himself or others his identity as an artist, or when he wanted to get back to
‘basics’ he turned to the nude. (p. 306)

Although much of the analysis is framed in the language and by the concerns of the
Women’s Movement in the early 1970s, its importance lies chiefly in the way it opens out and
extends our understanding of the social meanings of the female nude. Duncan helps to create a
different kind of framework for analysing modernism and its place within the tradition of the
female nude.
Symbolist artists tended to portray not women but one or two universal types of women.
Depending on which artist one looks at, these types are sometimes life-giving, but more often
lethal, occasionally more spiritual than man, but usually more instinctual. They are always closer
to nature than man, more subject to its mysterious forces. They are possessed by dark or
enigmatic souls. They are usually acting out one or another archetypal myth—Eve, Salome, the
Sphinx, the Madonna.

Young artists in the next avant-garde generation—those maturing around 1905 in France
and Germany—began rejecting these archetypes along with the muted colors, the langorous
rhythms, and the self-searching Symbolist artist-types that these implied. The Symbolist artist, as
he appears through his art, was a creature of dreams and barely perceptible intuitions, a refined,
hypersensitive receiver of tiny sensations and cosmic vibrations. The new vanguardists,

17
especially the Fauves and the Brücke, were youth and health cultists who liked noisy colors and
painted mountains, flags, sunshine, and naked girls. Above all, they wanted their art to
communicate the immediate impact of their own vivid feelings and sensations before the things
of this world. In almost every detail, their images of nudes oppose the virgins and vampires of
the ’90s. Yet, like the previous generation, younger artists believed that authentic artistic content
speaks to the central problems of life, and they continued to define these in terms of the male
situation—specifically the situation of the middle-class male struggling against the strictures of
modern, institutionalized society.

Kirchner was the leader and most renowned member of the original Brücke, the group of
young German artists who worked and exhibited together in Dresden and then Berlin between
1905 and 1913. His Girl Under a Japanese Umbrella, 1909, asserts the artistic and sexual ideals
of this generation with characteristic boldness. The artist seems to attack his subject, a naked
woman, with barely controlled energy. His painterly gestures are large, spontaneous, sometimes
vehement, and his colors intense, raw, and strident. These features and the audacious
manipulation of the model’s body proclaim his unhesitant and uninhibited response to sexual and
sensual experience. Leaning directly over his model, the artist fastens his attention mainly to her
head, breasts, and buttocks, the latter violently twisted toward him. The garish tints of the face,
suggesting both primitive body paint and modern cosmetics, are repeated and magnified in the
colorful burst of the exotic Japanese umbrella. Above the model is another Brücke painting, or
perhaps a primitive or oriental work, in which crude shapes dance on a jungle-green ground.

Such images are almost exact inversions of the femmes fatales of the previous generation.
Those vampires of the 1890s loom up over their male victims or viewers, fixing them with
hypnotic stares. In Munch’s paintings, females engulf males with their streaming robes and hair.
The male, whether depicted or simply understood as the viewer-artist, is passive, helpless, or
fearful before this irresistibly seductive force which threatens to absorb his very will. Now, in
these nudes by Kirchner and Van Dongen, the artist stands above the supine woman. Reduced to
flesh, she is sprawled powerlessly before him, her body contorted according to the dictates of his
erotic will. Instead of the consuming femme fatale, one sees an obedient animal (although
Kirchner’s tense forms still hint of untamed energy). The artist, in asserting his own sexual will,
has annihilated his opponents’—so much so that he deprives himself of anything resembling

18
human companionship. For these women show no or few signs of human consciousness of any
kind. Not only do they appear lacking in the mental and physical capacities to challenge the
males above them, they also seem incapable of perceiving or valuing what is human about the
artist. Apparently, he exists for them only as a sexually demanding and controlling male
presence. The assertion of that presence—the assertion of the artist’s sexual domination—is, in
large part, what these paintings are about.

Most images of female nudity imply the presence (in the artist and/or the viewer) of a
male sexual appetite. What distinguishes these pictures and others in this period from most
previous nudes is the compulsion with which women are reduced to objects of pure flesh, and the
lengths to which the artist goes in denying their humanity. Not all nudes from this decade are as
brutal as Van Dongen’s Reclining Nude; but the same dehumanizing approach is affirmed again
and again. Nudes by Braque, Manguin (e.g., Nude, 1905), Puy, and other Fauves are among
scores of such images. Nor were they confined to Fauvism. They occur frequently in the work of
such artists as Julius Pascin, the Belgian Realist Rik Wouters and the Swiss Felix Vallotton (The
Sleep, 1908). Nude in a Hammock, 1912, by Friesz, is a Cubistic version of this same basic type
of sleeping or faceless nude. So is Picasso’s more radical Woman Sitting in an Armchair, 1913,
where the wit and virtuoso manipulation of form are lavished only upon the body, its literally
hanging breasts, the suggestive folds of its underwear, etc. Indeed, Picasso’s Cubist paintings
maintain the same distinction between men and women as other artists of this decade did—only
more relentlessly; many of these other artists painted portraits of women as authentic people in
addition to nudes. Max Kozloff observed the striking difference between Picasso’s depictions of
men and women in the Cubist period:

The artistic output of the Brücke abounded in images of powerless women. In Heckel’s
Nude on a Sofa, 1909, and his Crystal Day, 1913, women exist only in reference to—or rather as
witnesses to—the artist’s frank sexual interests. In one, the woman is sprawled in a disheveled
setting, in the other, she is knee-deep in water—in the passive, arms-up, exhibitionist pose that
occurs so frequently in the art of this period. The nude in Crystal Day is literally without features
(although her nipples are meticulously detailed), while the figure in the other work covers her
face, a combination of bodily self-offering and spiritual self-defacement that characterizes these
male assertions of sexual power. In Kirchner’s Tower Room, Self-portrait with Erma, 1913,

19
another faceless nude stands obediently before the artist, whose intense desire may be read in the
erect and flaming object before him. In a less strident voice, Manguin’s Nude makes the same
point. In the mirror behind the bed, the nude is visible a second time, and now one sees the tall,
commanding figure of the artist standing above her.

As an ethos communicated in a hundred insidious ways, but never overtly, it effectively

alienated women from the collective, mutually supportive endeavor that was the avant-garde.
(Gertrude Stein, independently wealthy and, as a lesbian, sexually unavailable to men, is the
grand exception.) Like most of their male counterparts, women artists came primarily from the
middle classes. It is hardly conceivable that they would flaunt a desire for purely physical sex,
even in private and even if they were capable of thinking it. To do so would result in social
suicide and would require breaking deeply internalized taboos. In any case, it was not sexuality
per se that was valued, but male sexuality. Moreover, the problem for women—and the main
thrust of women’s emancipation—was not to invert the existing social-sexual order, not to
replace it with the domination of women; the new woman was struggling for her own autonomy
as a psychological, social, and political being. Her problem was also the woman problem. Her
task was also to master her own image.

Accordingly, the German artist Paula Modersohn-Becker confronted female nudity—her

own—in a self-portrait of 1906. Fashioned out of the same Post-Impressionist heritage as Brücke
art and Fauvism, this picture is startling to see next to the defaced beings her fellow artists so
often devised. Above the naked female flesh are the detailed features of a powerful and
determined human being. Rare is the image of a naked woman whose head so outweighs her
body. That is, it is rare in male art, but not in the art of women; Suzanne Valadon, Sonia
Delaunay-Terk, and others of this period painted fully human female beings of all ages, naked
and clothed. Among male artists, only Manet in the Olympia comes close. But there the image-
viewer relationship is socially specified. Olympia is literally flesh for sale, and in that context,
her self-assertiveness appears willful and brash—a contradiction to the usual modesty of the
nude. As a metaphor for all bourgeois male-female relationships, the Olympia is both subversive
and antisexist; it is, however, consciously posed as male experience and aimed, with deadly
accuracy, at the smug and sexist male bourgeoisie. Modersohn-Becker, on the other hand, is
addressing herself, not as commodity and not even as an artist, but as a woman. Her effort is to

20
resolve the contradiction Manet so brilliantly posed, to put herself back together as a fully
conscious and fully sexual human being. To attempt this, and with grace and strength to boot,
speaks of a profound humanism and conviction, even while the generalized treatment of the body
and its constrained, hesitant gestures admit the difficulty.

Expresionism, Fovism – Matisse, Kirchner, Derain, Modigliani, Picasso, Duchamp, Ernst

I use bands of color to bring a particular delicacy to the figuring of the frame, which is
achieved through transparency and trompe l'oeil illusion. For me, this insistence upon
transparency and trompe l'oeil illusion distances my practice from late modernist painting. Like
all painters, my concepts are bound by the vocabularies I choose and the means I possess to
communicate them. The contemporary currency or redundancy of certain traits and effects also
necessitates the painting language I am working from. This thesis covers aspects of painting that
are central to my practice, such as units, transparency, coding, depicting space and the idea of
painting as a flattened-out cavity; while opacity and gestural mark-making are conspicuously
absent from both my research and practice. The critical thinking undertaken here is in direct
response to previous discourses; however, it is not always easy to separate which painting
actions are measured impulses and which are the result of influence from this body of research.
Again, this raises the question of the role of intuition. Although the written part - including the
appendix concerning my own work 'Notes on Practice' - goes some way to explain the factors
that both generate and govern my approach to painting, there are studio-based decisionmaking
processes at play that are not explained through this critical enquiry. These include my own
tastes, my choices of colour palette and tonal effects, and the sensuality and warmth of my
painted surfaces. However, I have also found that my studio practice frequently imposes
conditions that make sense within the confines of the painting language I have developed. My
method of using thin transparent films of oil colour that appear as though they are 'backlit' by the
white primer beneath 1 whilst also preserving the texture of the linen (rather than obscuring it
under a skin of applied colour), for example, actually restrict what and how I can paint. Literal
transparency dictates that I cannot make mistakes because there is no place within the act of
painting to hide an error or an ill-judged line. This means that while colour choices can be
tonally manipulated to a certain extent, shape cannot, therefore there are definite constraints to

21
the improvisation that can occur within the making. The adherence to my intuition concerning
the possibilities of transparent paint, then, has led to the paintings being largely premeditated.
This pre-planning of shape has, in turn, contributed to my concept of painting through
individualised units; an idea that has equally been engendered and supported by my use of bands
of colour that surround and isolate shapes. My bands are made against masking tape, a process
whereby the notions of pre-planning and separation (by the intrusion of tape that is removed) are
integral to the act of making. However, my bands of colour also both reference Frank Stella (my
proto-painter for depicting the limits of painting), and simultaneously provide the apparatus to
introduce my own brand of illusion. The thesis is attentive to such processes, as well as the
pragmatics of making, in order to demonstrate the possibilities of this meta-reflexive approach to
painting. The overall effect of the research into syntactical painting does not remove intuition
from the painting process; instead, the analytical thinking feeds back into intuition (and vice
versa) but does not replace it.

Pentru introducere sau Capitolul 1

Prostitution was widespread in nineteenth-century Paris and, as French streets filled with
these women of the night, French art and literature of the period took notice. This engrossing
book explains why, providing the first description and analysis of French artistic interest in
women prostitutes and examining how the subject was treated in the art of the 1870s and 1880s
by such avant-garde painters as Cézanne, Degas, Manet, and Renoir, as well as by academic and
lowbrow painters who were their contemporaries. The volume illuminates not only the imagery
of prostitution—with its contradictory connotations of disgust and fascination—but also issues
and problems relating to women and men in a patriarchal society. It discusses the conspicuous
sexual commerce during this era and the resulting public panic about the deterioration of social
life and mores and describes the system of regulating prostitutes and the subsequent rise of
clandestine prostitutes, who were condemned both for blurring social boundaries and for
spreading sexual licentiousness among their moral and social superiors. The book argues that the
subject of covert prostitution was especially attractive to vanguard painters because it embodied
key notions of modernity, exemplifying the commercialization and ambiguity of modern life.

22
Gustave Courbet a fost tatăl fondator al mișcării realiste motivate politic, care a revoluționat
pictura europeană. El a deschis calea către impresionisti și, în cele din urmă, nașterea artei
moderne.

Gustave Courbet a fost esențial pentru apariția realismului la mijlocul secolului al XIX-lea.
Respingând stilurile clasice și teatrale ale Academiei Franceze, arta sa a insistat asupra realității
fizice a obiectelor pe care le-a observat - chiar dacă acea realitate era simplă și defectă. În
procesul de eliminare a retoricii picturii Academiei, Courbet s-a așezat adesea pe compoziții care
păreau colajate și grosolane pentru sensibilitățile predominante. Uneori, a abandonat și
modelarea atentă în favoarea aplicării vopselei groase în pete și dale rupte. Astfel de inovații
stilistice l-au făcut să fie admirat de moderniștii de mai târziu, care au promovat compoziții
eliberate și au amplificat suprafața. Acesta este unul dintre cele mai bune exemple ale
tratamentului non-clasic al lui Courbet asupra nudurilor. În acest tablou înalt de opt picioare,
două femei sunt parțial goale, fără nicio justificare mitologică sau retorică, redate în mod natural
și nu idealizate. Pictura a fost slab primită, Delacroix n-a văzut nicio scuză pentru aceste
„burghezii goale și grase .. fese și gesturi fără sens”. Dar, mai degrabă decât negativă, atenția a
fost o bună publicitate, iar Courbet a vândut lucrarea în ciuda criticilor.

Această lucrare arată interesul lui Courbet pentru un realism erotic care a devenit predominant în
lucrarea sa ulterioară. Erotismul brut este livrat fără ajutorul cupidonelor sau justificări
mitologice de orice fel, făcând această lucrare vulgară celor cu gustul predominant al zilei. Astfel
de nuduri nesanctificate au provocat multe discuții cu privire la defectele caracterului și artei lui
Courbet, dar artistul s-a bucurat de atenția adăugată și de reputația sporită de text.

Principiile pe care Courbet și-a creat arta, care au modelat și conceptul de realism, mișcarea pe
care Courbet a început-o, s-au opus puternic tuturor reprezentărilor imaginilor fictive sau
artificiale, inclusiv mitologiei, chiar opusul acestei scene a zeiței și a muritorului.

Pictorul francez Gustave Coubert (1819 - 1877) a pictat Le Sommeil / The Sleepers (1866). -
Fără îndoială, Coubert își pictează fantezia heterosexuală masculină a două femei nud împreună
în acest tablou. Câțiva ani mai târziu, tabloul a fost interzis să fie expus. Privirea voyeuristă a
bărbaților și reprezentările artiștilor bărbați despre lesbianism au transformat lesbienele în
obiecte erotice de dorință pentru bărbați. Această tendință de a produce imagini lesbiene
stimulatoare pentru consumul masculin a înflorit în măsura în care „arta lesbiană” este astăzi un
eufemism pentru nudurile feminine erotice și imagini pornografice „lesbiene” create de bărbați
pentru consumul masculin.

Începând cu anii 1850, Courbet a devenit fascinat de pictura figurii feminine nud, un subiect
istoric al artei canonice. Experiența sa cu ilustrarea figurii feminine nu a fost vastă; cu toate
acestea, este necesară o înțelegere generală a corpului uman pentru orice artist care dorește să
includă figuri în lucrarea lor. Femeile descrise de Courbet nu erau reprezentările idealizate ale
femeilor cel mai adesea văzute în artă, ci mai degrabă reprezentări scandaloase care reflectau
femeile în epoca contemporană. Analizele acestor picturi din această teză, inclusiv Sleepers and
Woman with a Parrot, ambele finalizate în 1866, și trei picturi Venus și Psyche create între 1864
și 1866, identifică reprezentările sexuale evidente care sunt afișate în aceste lucrări. The Sleepers

23
portretizează două femei, împletite într-o îmbrățișare senzuală, în ceea ce ar fi descris în mod
obișnuit prin lentila heterosexuală masculină ca reprezentare a lesbianismului. Modul în care
această pictură diferă de picturile lui Courbet din Venus și Psyche în ceea ce privește
reprezentarea sa sexuală este absența oricărui context mitologic, care aduce în față tonurile
erotice și homosexuale ale operei. 15 Ilustrația homosexualității sugerate este evidentă nu numai
în această lucrare, ci cel puțin în alte două. Această descriere a lesbianismului este cel mai larg
discutat aspect al The Sleepers și este, de asemenea, evidentă în majoritatea picturilor sale de
nud. În timp ce reprezentările lui Courbet despre lesbianism și sexualitate nu pot fi ignorate, ar
trebui să credem că afișarea erotismului a fost singura motivație pentru Courbet de a produce
astfel de tablouri controversate? Întrucât s-a susținut că Courbet a folosit dublu sens în picturile
sale, ar fi plauzibil ca o abordare alegorică să poată fi văzută pe tot parcursul operei sale și să nu
se limiteze la picturile sale care descriu în mod direct probleme sociale. Michael Fried susține în
Realismul lui Courbet, că multe dintre picturile artistului despre care se consideră de obicei
reprezentările sale de bază în stilul realist sunt, de fapt, alegorii înseși.

Invenția daguerreotipului în 1839 a transformat folosirea modelelor pentru artă, cu metoda de a

folosi fotografii pentru a lucra de la o răspândire largă între artiști, inclusiv Courbet. Utilizarea
fotografiilor cu modele, îmbrăcate sau nud, a fost revoluționară pentru artiști. Nu mai era necesar
să aibă un model să stea ore în șir în studioul lor; în schimb, s-ar putea face o fotografie a
modelului în poza solicitată. Nu se știe dacă Courbet a făcut el însuși fotografii, dar există dovezi
semnificative care susțin utilizarea fotografiilor sale în crearea unor tablouri.

Nu toate modelele lui Courbet pot fi identificate, dar el a avut tendința de a refolosi modele de-a
lungul carierei sale. Cea mai recunoscută este Joanna Hiffernan, pe care Courbet a pictat-o de
mai multe ori. 56 Primul portret pe care l-a făcut despre ea a fost Jo, La Belle Irlandaise, 1865-
1866, finalizat în timpul unui sejur la Trouville; ulterior a făcut trei variante ale acestei picturi
(fig. 9). 57 Jo a fost, de asemenea, modelul pentru figura blondă din The Sleepers, 1866, în timp
ce călătorea la Paris în timpul creației picturii (fig. 10). 58 O descoperire recentă a determinat
speculații cu privire la ceea ce se propune a fi a doua jumătate a Originii lumii a lui Courbet,
1866, fiind susținută că o pictură găsită dintr-o jumătate superioară a unei figuri feminine făcea
parte din pictura originală și era ulterior decupată din versiunea acum finală. 59 Descoperirea
acestui tablou cu chip de femeie, despre care se susține că este Jo, sugerează că ea a fost sitterul
original al picturii.

Gustave Courbet was the founding father of the politically-motivated Realism movement, which
revolutionized European painting. He paved the way for the Impressionists and ultimately the
birth of modern art.

Gustave Courbet was central to the emergence of Realism in the mid-19th century. Rejecting the
classical and theatrical styles of the French Academy, his art insisted on the physical reality of
the objects he observed - even if that reality was plain and blemished. In the process of clearing
away the rhetoric of Academy painting, Courbet often settled on compositions that seemed
collaged and crude to prevailing sensibilities. At times he also abandoned careful modeling in
favor of applying paint thickly in broken flecks and slabs. Such stylistic innovations made him

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greatly admired by later modernists that promoted liberated compositions and amplified surface
This is one of the best examples of Courbet's non-classical treatment of nudes. In this eight foot
tall painting two women are partially naked without any mythological justification or rhetoric,
rendered naturally and not idealized. The painting was poorly received, with Delacroix seeing no
excuse for these "naked and fat bourgeoisie.. buttocks, and meaningless gestures." But rather
than being negative, the attention was good publicity, and Courbet sold the work in spite of the
criticisms. 

This work shows Courbet's interest in an erotic Realism that became prevalent in his later work.
Raw eroticism is delivered without aid of cupids or mythological justification of any kind,
making this work vulgar to those with the prevailing taste of the day. Such unsanctified nudes
provoked much discussion about flaws in Courbet's character and art, but the artist reveled in the
added attention and increased reputation as a confrontational artist.texture.

The principles upon which Courbet created his art, which also shaped the concept of Realism,
the movement which Courbet started, strongly opposed all representations of fictional or
artificial imagery, including mythology, quite the opposite of this scene of goddess and mortal.

French painter Gustave Coubert (1819 – 1877) painted Le Sommeil/ The Sleepers (1866). – No
doubt Coubert was painting his heterosexual male fantasy of two nude women together in this
painting. A few years later the painting was banned from being exhibited. The voyeuristic male
gaze and the male artists’ depictions of lesbianism turned lesbians into erotic objects of desire for
men. This trend of producing titillating lesbian imagery for male consumption has bloomed to
the extent that ‘lesbian art’ today is a euphemism for erotic female nudes and pornographic
“lesbian” imagery created by men for male consumption.

Beginning in the 1850’s, Courbet became fascinated with painting the nude female figure, a
canonical art historical subject. His experience with illustrating the female figure was not vast;
however, a general understanding of the human body is necessary for any artist who wishes to
include figures within their work. The women Courbet depicted were not the idealized depictions
of women most often seen in art, but rather scandalous portrayals that reflected women in
contemporary times. Analyses of these paintings in this thesis, including The Sleepers and
Woman with a Parrot, both completed in 1866, and three Venus and Psyche paintings created
between 1864 and 1866, identify the overt sexual representations that are displayed in these
works. The Sleepers portrays two women, entwined in a sensual embrace, in what would
commonly be described through the male heterosexual lens as a representation of lesbianism.
How this painting differs from Courbet’s Venus and Psyche paintings in terms of its sexual
representation is the absence of any mythological context, bringing forward the erotic and
homosexual tones of the work. 15 The illustration of suggested homosexuality is evident not
only in this work, but at least in two others. This depiction of lesbianism is the most widely
discussed aspect of The Sleepers, and is also apparent within a majority of his nude paintings.
While Courbet’s representations of lesbianism and sexuality cannot be ignored, should we
believe that displaying eroticism was the only motivation for Courbet to produce such
controversial paintings? Since it has been argued that Courbet utilized double-meanings within
his paintings, it would be plausible that an allegorical approach could be seen throughout his

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oeuvre and not limited to his paintings directly depicting social issues. Michael Fried argues in
Courbet’s Realism, that many of the artist’s paintings that are typically thought of as his basic
depictions in the Realist style are, in fact, allegories themselves.16

The invention of the daguerreotype in 1839 transformed the use of models for art, with the
method of employing photographs to work from wide spread amongst artists, including Courbet.
The use of photographs of models, clothed or nude, was revolutionary for artists. No longer was
it necessary to have a model sit for hours in their studio; instead, a photograph could be made of
the model in the pose requested. It is not known if Courbet made photographs himself, but there
is significant evidence that supports his use photographs in the creation of some paintings.

Not all of Courbet’s models can be identified, but he did have the tendency to reuse models
throughout his career. The most recognizable is Joanna Hiffernan, who Courbet painted several
times. 56 The first portrait he did of her was Jo, La Belle Irlandaise, 1865-1866, completed
during a stay in Trouville; he later made three variations of this painting (fig. 9). 57 Jo was also
the model for the blonde figure in The Sleepers, 1866, as she was traveling in Paris during the
time of the painting’s creation (fig. 10). 58 A recent discovery has prompted speculation about
what is proposed to be the second half of Courbet’s Origin of the World, 1866, with a claim
being made that a painting found of an upper half of a female figure was part of the original
painting and was later cropped from the now final version. 59 The discovery of this painting with
a woman’s face, which is argued to be Jo, suggests that she was the original sitter for the
painting.60

Prăbușirea celui de-al Doilea Imperiu în 1870 și înființarea celei de-a treia republici în
1875 au produs o cultură a clasei de mijloc din ce în ce mai democratizate. În anii 1870, un
public consumator activ a aglomerat bulevardele, magazinele universale și expozițiile
internaționale. Pictorii cunoscuți mai târziu sub numele de impresioniști – Claude Monet,
Camille Pissarro, Berthe Morisot, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edouard Manet, Edgar Degas, Alfred
Sisley, Mary Cassatt și alții – și-au produs propria versiune a modernității, dar inovațiile lor
stilistice și subiectul nou trebuie privit în contextul mai larg al unei restructurări a sferelor
publice și private.

Impresionismul a fost o mișcare de artă radicală care a început la sfârșitul anilor 1800,
centrată în principal în jurul pictorilor parizieni. Impresioniștii s-au răzvrătit împotriva
subiectului clasic și au îmbrățișat modernitatea, dorind să creeze lucrări care să reflecte lumea în
care trăiau. Unirea lor a fost concentrarea asupra modului în care lumina ar putea defini un
moment în timp, culoarea oferind definiție în loc de linii negre. Impresioniștii au subliniat
practica picturii în aer liber sau pictura în aer liber. Inițial luat în derâdere de critici,

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impresionismul a fost de atunci îmbrățișat ca unul dintre cele mai populare și influente stiluri de
artă din istoria occidentală.

However, looking at a number of paintings, it is obvious that beliefs about gender

affected the range of subjects that the men and women impressionists could paint easily. The
men were free to go more or less anywhere (including the café and the brothel) without breaking
taboo, and the paintings of Degas, Renoir and other male impressionists show the wide variety of
places they entered and used for motifs (or "subjects"). On the other hand, beliefs about
"respectable" behaviour for women greatly restricted the movements of the middle-class women
impressionists. The paintings of Morisot and Cassat show, for example, that they were largely
confined to the domestic environment. Impressionist paintings also show the attitudes which men
often took towards each other and, more crucially, towards women. Working on developments in
psychoanalysis, many feminist writers argue that the majority of works by the male
impressionists contain or represent an active, male way of looking which also involved a
relationship of power over the passive, female recipient of that gaze. In contrast, many paintings
by the women impressionists exhibit a more complex set of attitudes about looking and being
looked at. Sometimes they conform to stereotype and show women as "natural" objects of male
attention, but others break the rules and show how women experience looking and being looked
at in ways that men do not -- except very occasionally.

Renoir's identification with a tradition in which the idealization of the naked female body
is seen as the metaphoric realization of Beauty, Truth, and Purity, is well documented. In the
critical writing, he is repeatedly linked to such artists as Titian, Rubens, and Boucher in an
apparently unbroken tradition of celebration of female beauty through what is called pure
painting. In such accounts, the body of woman operated as an undeclared extension of matter -
earth, nature, pigment - so that the rendering of her flesh is seen to be outside of an ideological
construction of womanhood and exists rather as a natural extension of a natural will to form.
Renoir's entire painting practice is often accounted for in this light. Paradoxically, critics have
repeatedly claimed that his vision was unmediated by the intervention of history, psychology, or
tradition and unmarred by the barriers of subject matter, while at the same time invoking the

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tradition in which he should be placed. J.G. claimed in 1921 that in Renoir, like Rubens, we love
pure painting.

Cassatt i-a oferit figurii sale feminine un rol vizibil mai dinamic, pentru că se privește
prin ochelarii de operă la rândul de scaune vizavi. În fundal, în stânga sus, un bărbat își îndreaptă
privirea asupra ei. Privitorul, care le vede pe amândoi, completează cercul. Pictura lui Cassatt
explorează însuși actul de a privi, rupând granițele tradiționale dintre observator și observat,
public și interpret. Barter, Judith A., et al. Mary Cassatt, Modern Woman. Exhibition catalogue.
Chicago: Art Institute, 1998.

For her submission to the journal, Cassatt embarked on a scene of evening entertainment
at the Paris Opéra, a favorite setting among the Impressionists due to its visual opulence. Like
Degas and Renoir, Cassatt emphasizes the brilliant lights, sparkling reflections, and sumptuous
surfaces enjoyed by opera-goers in her copper-plate print In the Opera Box (No. 2) (c. 1880). Yet
Cassatt also hints at the discomfort of self-display for women spectators, who were as much on
view as the singers and dancers on stage. If opera boxes, as the poet Charles Baudelaire had
declared, “serve as picture-frames,” 5 the young woman portrayed by Cassatt appears to be a
reluctant sitter, shielding her bare shoulders with her fan and shrinking into her plush seat.
Ultimately, Cassatt produced three distinct versions of In the Opera Box, experimenting with
various approaches to light and shadow, surface and depth, and realism and abstraction

Spre deosebire de alte compoziții cu mame și copii sau familii, modelele lui Cassatt
pentru aceste picturi în cele mai multe cazuri nu erau persoane care îi comandaseră lucrările.
Artista folosea adesea modele și, ocazional, prietene sau femei muncitoare pentru a le înfățișa pe
mame, iar copiii nu erau adevăratul copil al mamei din tablou. Imaginile erau puse în scenă,
asemenea unei naturi statice, dar cu oameni mai degrabă decât fructe și flori. Dacă luăm în
considerare că picturile sunt construite, atunci ar trebui să luăm în considerare și mesajul
deliberat din spatele lor - un mesaj despre femeile moderne și sfera feminină și un mesaj despre
legătura maternă ca formă de îngrijire emoțională și senzuală.
Ipotezele tradiționale referitoare la copilărie, creșterea copiilor și locul copiilor în
societate s-au confruntat cu provocări

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 More on this subject in Temma Balducci and Heather Belnap Jensen, Women, Femininity
and Public Space in European Visual Culture, 1789-1914 (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2017)
and Gender, Space, and the Gaze in Post: Haussmann Visual Culture: Beyond the Flâneur
(2017), Ruth Iskin, Modern Women and Parisian Culture in Impressionist Painting (2007) and
John House, “Women Out of Doors” in Women in Impressionism: From the Mythical Feminine
to Modern Woman (2006)

Compared to Degas' earlier treatment of the dancing class in the opera in rue Le Peletier,
this painting shows how quickly the artist advanced into the world of movement and casual
effect which he was to make his own. Larger in size, broader, freer, and lighter in treatment, it is
full of many impressions, gathered into a remarkably complex design. Perspective is here
cultivated by the slating floor and by the diagonal line of dancers, starting in the left foreground
and continuing back into the farthest corner. The picture space is widened by a mirror catching
reflections of other dancers and a window beyond. What intense study has gone into each
ballerina! Each is caught in an individual pose and gesture and for the first time, the artist has
attempted a figure in action. All the bustle and confusion of many movements is caught with an
almost camera-like fidelity. Degas cuts off one figure by another, overlapping forms easily and
masterfully, but so shrewdly are they fitted together that there is no real confusion. Against all
this turning, twisting, and posing stands the rock-like form of Maitre Jules Perrot, leaning
heavily on his stick. Behind, in the further contrast, are mothers watching the class, their street
clothes furnishing a foil for the light graceful costumes of the dancers here was something new in
art, a surprising view of a little-known world, composed with the grace and authority of an old
master.

Începând cu anii 1880, remarcă Georges Vigarello, nudul se expune mai întâi în
spectacole, afișe și ziare. Carnația capătă valențe spectaculare, baletele de la Courier français
inițiază începând din anii 1890, „concursuri plastice”, al celui mai frumos picior, al celei mai
frumoase cefe, al celor mai frumoși sâni. Revistele de la Moulin-Rouge sau de la Cazinoul
Parisului promovează ținutele transparente, café-concerturile sporesc numărul dansurilor care fac
să „fremete” jupoanele, gravurile zăbovesc asupra dezabieurilor: „Fu domnia poalelor ridicate, a
descoperitului, a transparentului, a seminudului.”65 .

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 Dacă prima impresie este că pictorul a dorit să surprindă secvențe din lumea fascinantă a
baletului, eleganța dansului și grația tinerelor balerine, pe măsură ce avansezi în profunzimea
creaților sale realizezi că Degas a mers mai departe decât perspectiva de suprafață și strălucirea
care se vede pe scenă, mai departe decât tehnicile de pictură ale vremii, devenind un artist
avangardist, cu mult înaintea epocii în care a trăit. Dincolo de aparenta lejeritate a pozițiilor și a
mișcărilor de balet, scenele din tablourile lui Degas dezvăluie munca asiduă dar și condiția
deseori nefericită a balerinelor din acele vremuri.
Then, move from the public to the private sphere and discuss Morisot’s The Cradle
(1872) and Cassatt’s The Bath (1891-92), both female artists who frequently address the theme
of motherhood in their art. These are more than archetypal scenes of mother and child drawing
on the Christian theme of the Virgin Mary and Christ Child. They are distinctively modern
scenes—and spaces exclusively available to women in the nineteenth century: the nursery and
the child’s bath. Furthermore, there is a complex psychological bond and emotional connection
between mother and child in Morisot and Cassatt’s maternal images that is often lacking in
comparable works by their male colleagues. Morisot and Cassatt could be compared with the
work of Renoir, who created numerous images of women and children. For example, he created
several paintings depicting his wife nursing their son, Maternity (1885), which is more of a
nostalgic image of wholesome, pre-modern, rustic maternity than an exploration of the
psychological relationships between the two.

Morisot also poignantly illustrates the sphere of women in her scenes of mothers and
daughters out in the city together, such as in On the Balcony (1872). Mother and daughter stand
on a balcony overlooking a view of the city of Paris (distinguishable in the distance through the
gold dome of Les Invalides). The child, still young and unfamiliar with her expectations in life,
peers through the fence, looking out toward the city. The mother, on the other hand, aware that
the public life of the city is not open to her, looks down at her daughter.

Women started to push back against their prescribed gender roles toward the end of the
nineteenth century, and called for more liberty and socio-political rights. As female gender roles
began to change, the figure of the New Woman—an educated, independent career woman—
emerged. Many men were wary of the New Woman and the autonomy she demanded. They
lashed back against this early form of feminism with warnings of the dangerous power of

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women, and depictions of the femme fatale, or a dangerous, evil woman, in art and popular
culture.

Berthe Morisot’s Wet Nurse (1880) is another suitable artwork to examine the obstacles

that female artists faced in the nineteenth century. In another seminal essay, “Morisot’s Wet
Nurse: The Construction of Work and Leisure in Impressionist Painting,” Linda Nochlin
identifies the scene as depicting not just any wet nurse, but the woman who Morisot herself hired
to provide for her own daughter, Julie. In addition to representing a type of servant that Morisot
was expected to employ as a proper bourgeois woman—and which provided her with enough
independence from her child to pursue a professional artistic career—The Wet Nurse is also a
good example of Morisot’s mature painting style. Over time, Morisot’s style became more
Impressionistic as her palette lightened and her brushstrokes became more visible and broken.
Unlike the male Impressionists, however, Morisot was not criticized for this style because it was
perceived as inherently feminine.

By the mid-1880s the Impressionist group had begun to dissolve as each painter
increasingly pursued his own aesthetic interests and principles. In its short existence, however, it
had accomplished a revolution in the history of art, providing a technical starting point for the
Postimpressionist artists Cézanne, Degas, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, and Georges Seurat
and freeing all subsequent Western painting from traditional techniques and approaches to
subject matter.

Although the classical tradition lost its cultural supremacy in the twentieth century, the
appeal of the nude remains strong in modern and contemporary art. The rejection of academic
manners in pursuit of a new form of truth reduced the appeal of Venus but promoted the
unadorned nudes of private life. The innocent bathers of Renoir‘s late career (1975.1.199),
Degas’ artless-looking scenes of women washing and dressing (29.100.41), and Balthus’
straightforward girl looking in the mirror (1975.1.155) are formally unlike the idealized nudes of
earlier art, yet in their undisguised humanity they are kin to the nudes of antiquity.

LAITREC - TEXT DIN CARTEA DESPRE PROSTITUTIE LA SF SEC 19

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 Parisian prostitutes, both real and imaginary — I sought to eavesdrop on what was
happening between men as they masterminded the circulation of women. The art I am analyzing
here records the ideological use of certain women through their transformation into the topoi of a
culture, the subject matter of ambitious, mostly male art. Recently, Luce Irigaray, the French
feminist, pinpointed the general social and economic pattern in which the production and
circulation of the art studied here played a part:

The society we know, our own culture, is based upon the exchange of women. . . . Why
are men not objects of exchange among women? It is because women's bodies — through their
use, consumption, and circulation — provide for the condition making social life and culture
possible, although they remain an unknown "infrastructure" of the elaboration of that social life
and culture. The exploitation of the matter that has been sexualized female is so integral a part of
our sociocultural horizon that there is no way to interpret it except within this horizon.

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