Kittaneh - Modernism

Modernism was a new beginning for female artists and their bodies in the early 1900's.

          Defining modernism may be difficult to define since the term incorporates many different arts, thoughts, expressions, styles, methods, and more.  Generally, modernism can be explained as the transition and opportunity to break from traditional forms and beliefs.  In the beginning of the 20^th century, modernism played a huge role in art, specifically in Europe.  Women artists in Europe influenced the techniques and development of modernism and movements of abstraction, German expressionism, dada, and surrealism in many ways. 

In the early 1900’s, modern art was gradually developed and female artists began to liberate themselves to reflect their freedom in their paintings.  In Women, Art and Society, Whitney Chadwick explains that, “…she argues that the vanguard myth of individual artistic freedom is built on sexual and social inequalities.  Reduced to flesh, the female subject is rendered powerless before the artist/viewer” (Chadwick, 280).  Chadwick explains Carol Duncan’s views on modernism and how although art has innovated and changed, the women is still ‘reduced to flesh’ and ‘rendered powerless before the artist/viewer’.  This was an ongoing theme in our Art and Women History studies and still continues through the ‘modernism’ art transition. 

The following link explains Dada and Surrealist artists in Europe and mentions prominent female artists that influenced and had an impact on the movements.

http://www.artic.edu/reynolds/essays/hofmann.php

Paula Modersohn-Becker, Girl with the Flower Vases c. 1907.
The painting above is a flat piece that focuses on the female body.

We’ve studied in the 17^th-19^th Centuries how frowned upon it was for a female to work with the nude female form.  Paula Modersohn-Becker was one of the first women artist to, “ Challenge the construction of female identity, through connections to nature, and [that] view women as controlled by emotions, sexual instincts, and biology” (Chadwick 282). Modersohn knew the female body was more than a sexualized image for the male gaze.  She helped develop modernism in Europe by changing the way women were overtly sexualized through art. 

       This painting above shows an interesting perspective of the female nude.  Up until modernism, nudity in females was of them laying down and/or submitting to males, while male nudity was of males ‘in action.  Modernism changed the outlook of female nudes and gave female artists and opportunity to depict their desires.

Pam Yuliang, Nude Study 1947.
Yuliang, a Chinese painter orphaned at a young age, painted and sculpted many nudes of herself.

      There were many important circumstances leading up to modernism that aided women in applying their techniques and design to art.  Artist Tarsila Do Amaral explains her success through a historical context.  “The idea: when a New World devours all the diverse influences around her, she digests it all and expels something completely new.  Mix with some political idealism via the Russian Revolution, add a trip to Moscow, and then a long life in Brazil, with a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in Sao Paulo in 1950…” (GG 73).  Her life of traveling and viewing so much in the world helped her open up her mind and ideas of what art can be outside of her wealthy Brazilian lifestyle.

The link below further explains some historical context that lead up to the ‘modernism era’ and how it may have played a role in female artists’ lives. 

http://arthistoryresources.net/modernism/roots.html 

Kathe Kollwitz, a European artist, wrote to Guerilla Girls in 1944 explaining her current circumstances.  Her husband died in WWII and her children and grandchildren are 'in peril'.  She further explains how she has lived her whole life in different political struggles, between war, battling the repression of the church, corruption, economic depressions, and more.  All of these events in her life have made her who she is, a strong and independent artist.  She was raised being told she is not good enough, not pretty enough, and worthless but she remains to fight for her rights and to show her struggles and all the injustice she endured.  She told the stories of war through her art and explains that many females have so much to say but have not expressed themselves through the hunger, rape, abandonment and suffering they endured.

Tarsila Do Amaral, Anthropophagy, 1929.

In conclusion, modernism has played an important role in the formation and transition of art through the centuries.  With the work of fierce female artists and many historical events, art has been modified to embrace the female body.

Kathe Kollwitz Mother with Dead Child0 1903

Chadwick, Whitney. 2012. Women, Art, and Society. 4th ed. New York, NY: Thames and Hudson.

Guerrilla Girls. 1998. The Guerrilla Girls' Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art. New York, NY: Penguin Books

-Sara Kittaneh

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