AP Art History Thematic Review

Gender Issues

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.

Disclaimer (Exemption from requirement for

example from beyond European tradition.)

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.

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.

Gentileschi Judith Slaying

Holofernes, 1621 Italian

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.

Modersohn-Becker Paula

Modersohn-Becker’s Self-Portrait with an Amber Necklace, 1906

Modersohn-Becker’s 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 Kirchner’s Girl Under a Japanese Umbrella, of 1909

Labille-Guiard’s Self-Portrait with Two Pupils Adelaide

Labille-Guiard’s Self-Portrait with Two Pupils, of 1785

Labille-Guiard’s 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.

Labille-Guiard’s 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 painter’s father in the background on the left. He was her inspiration or muse. (Muses, in Greek mythology, were female.)

Additional Suggestion: Kauffmann Angelica

Kauffmann’s Cornelia Pointing to Her Children as Her Treasures, 1785

Swiss, trained in Italy,;worked in Britain and elsewhere in Europe

Berthe Morisot’s The Cradle Berthe Morisot’s The

Cradle, of 1872