In the Artists’ Studios:

A Brief Overview of Women’s Images in

History

Literary Criticism 2003 F

Outline

Starting Questions: Three Examples

Issues for Discussion Ways of See – John Berger

Young Women in Dove Commercials

Edgar Allen Poe “The Oval Portrait” and Thomas Sully

The Pre-Raphaelite Women The Female Artists Women in the Music Videos Conclusion:

How do Women Look/Read?

Starting Questions

How do the following three paintings about painters and their models differ from each other? What are the issues involved?

the young girl – crown of laurel -- identifies her as Fame a trumpet and a book of Thucydides -- . A

connection with Clio, the muse of history.

The Artist's Studio 1665-67, by Jan Vermeer

Gérôme's painting of Pygmalion

Late nineteenth century; source: http://www.uh.edu/engines/faust.htm

Rene Magritte “Attempting the Impossible”

Major Issues

Functions of these Female Models – 1) to be flaunted as properties, 2) to help the artists express themselves; 3) to be ‘created’ by the artists.

Is it possible to render a ‘real’ women on canvases, through cameras or with pens?

What have been the ‘codes’ used

Ways of Seeing by J. Berger

nudity is a sign, different from being naked. (To be naked is to be oneself.)

The nude in traditional oil paintings either look at "us" (the spectator-owners in the past) or look at the mirror

Exceptions: Rembrandt’s painting of his wife.

The nude shows signs of submissiveness (e.g. being languid, passive and thus available).

Their look: with calculated charm, rarely directed at her lover in the painting, but at the spectator-owner.

“The Oval Portrait”

1. Pay attention to the description of the painting. What aspects of the portrait are emphasized?

 2. Why are there two narrative frames? In other words, why do we need a first-person witness as a narrator?

3. : ”Artistic creation is, in a sense, murder” (152). Is that right?

Thomas Sully (American, 1783–1872)

Portrait of a Young Girl, circa 1850Oil on canvas; 24 x 20 inches http://www.kgny.com/displaypages/sullyportrait.html

"Lady and fan" http://www.stagecoachgallery.net/sullyt.html

Thomas Sully

Queen Victoria, 1838

PORTRAIT OF FRANCES KEELINGVALENTINE ALLAN

Pre-Raphaelite Painting: Definition and Context 1. The Pre-Raphaelites sought ...to rest

ore to painting the naturalness and simplicity they insisted it has lost after Raphael by demonstrating in their own art the superiority of realism--freshly observed nature transferred to canvas--to timid emulation.

2. anti-estalbishment 3. the persistent ramantic-Victorian atta

chment to the Middle Ages. 4. mixture of mysticism and "fleshlines"

(i.e. sensuousness) especially in connection with female subjects.

Pre-Raphaelite Painting: Definition and Context (2)

1. Pre-Raphaelitism revived in art the literary romanticism of half a century earlier.  The movement was much indebted to Keats. . ." (Altick 288-90)

Pre-Raphaelite Painting: Context

Neo-Classicism – Victorious males

Realism – Angels in the house (Thomas Sully as an example)

Romanticism – Women as the oppressed or abused

Fin-De-Siecle -- Femme Fatale as a source of dread and power (example)

(source 藝術大師世紀畫廊 54 牟侯 )

Pre-Raphaelite Painting: Context

Gustave Moreau, L'Apparition

DGR: his life

1848 -- the formation of Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

1849 -- met Elizabeth Siddal and used her as the main model (not to be used by the others)

1856 -- met Fanny Cornforth and used her as the main model

1857 -- met Jane Morris

1860 -- married ailing Siddal

1862 -- Siddal died, intered his manuscript in her coffin.

DGR: his life1863 -- Fanny Cornforth became his ho

usekeeper again.

1865 -- used J. Morris as the main model

1869 – exhumed his manuscript from Siddal’s coffin.

1871 -- Dante Gabriel Rossetti criticized as "the Fleshly School of Poetry“;

1872 -- DRR suffered from nervous breakdowns, afraid that his affair with J Morris would be found out;

1882 -- Dante Gabriel Rossetti died

Pre-Raphaelite Women Follow the angel-whore dichotom

y. I. The first and earliest type--the f

air, demure, modest maiden with her innocent attractions (e..g. C. Rossetti, E. Siddal);

II. the second--the proud golden beauty who might borrow a term from later 'sex goddesses' (e.g. Fanny Cornforth);

III. the third--the dark, enigmatic Feminine (e.g. Jane Morris)"

I. Elizabeth Siddal As a milliner's daughter, she live

d under very limited circumstances when she met DGR.        "Rossetti fell in love with the pale, red-haired milliner and transformed her life by encouraging her own pursuit of art" (Marsh 21).    

Beata Beatrix 1864-1870

II. Fanny Cornforth

-Originally a prostitute, Fanny "sat for many of Rossetti's 'vision of carnal loveliness'" (23)

Fanny Cornforth

Fazio’s Mistress 1863, a relief from Siddal’s death?

III. Jane Morris cast as powerful Pandora and Astarte

Syriaca, saddened but powerful Prosperine and the poor Pia.  Why?  To show DGR's love for her, sympathy with her conditions, or to contain her power in his paintings? 

Astarte

Syriaca

Astarte Syriaca

One of the largest and most extraordinary of all Rossetti's pictures of Jane Morris. She is portrayed as Astarte, the cruel Babylonian fertility goddess, with two torch-bearing attendants, in a composition full of tension and mannerism, glowing with deep and mysterious colours.

“woman is the sign, not of woman, but of that Other in whose mirror masculinity must define itself” (qtd Pearce 15 )

Rossetti, Dante GabrielLa Donna della Finestra

Sad and constrained

The Blessed Damozel: the poem and the paintings Can you find out any contradictions

in this poem? Can they be resolved?

How is the depiction of woman here different from that in “She Walks in Beauty”? Why are there so many numbers associated with this damozel?

Whose desire is expressed in this poem? How is this poem about death and heaven different from C. Rossetti’s or Wordsworth’s “A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal”?

Jane Morris in the background

The Lives & Expressions of Female Artists

Lizzie Siddal

Christina Rossetti: her poems 潘玉良 ( 《畫魂》 )

Christina Rossetti: her poems

Many women in her poems are observed, fixed in a place and silent--e.g. "Twice," "The Prince's Progress," "Portrait."

The heroine's self-assertion in "The Royal Princess" “Goblin Market”

Her strong criticism in "The Prince's Progress," "Songs in a Cornfield" and "In the Artist's Studio"

Her self-preservation: she leaves an empty space in the center of her subjective lyrics so that she herself is not to be known, not to be seen. e.g. "The Bourne," "Memory" "Autumn," "Winter: My Secret," "May."

Contemporary Pre-Raphaelite Women

Often there was only a blank, air-brushed expanse of color in which eyes freely floated above undulations of shocking and moistly red shiny lips. (qtd in Pearce 52)

Dreamworlds 2 (on music videos) Who gets to tell the story about sexu

ality in music videos? Music videos are mostly to satisfy male fantasies.

Roles of women: musicians, back-up singers, dancers, part of the story, subject of the song.

Main functions: to be looked at, decorative

Behavior: serving men, always easily aroused sexually and active; nyphomaniac;

Activities: getting in and out of clothes; available for peeping; dancing, showering and swimming

Dress codes: garter belt as one of the sexualized items

Dreamworlds 2 (on music videos) 2

Implications: women like to strip themselves for men.

Female artists: Even female artists are trapped by this male way of looking at women. --e.g. Janet Jackson, Madonna, Salt & Pepper

Consequences: women are accessible or—rapable.

(e.g. The Accused.)

Conclusions: Women’s Possible Positions

1. Dual position: as man and as woman

2. Feminist Critique – e.g. John Berger;

3. Symptomatic Readings– reading for contradictions or to understand men’s fear and desire

4. Narcissistic or pleasurable identification

5. Re-Discover Women’s Works and their Significance (Gynocriticism)