Modernism in art history marks a time where art began to change. Different art forms and cultural trends were emerging including impressionism, abstraction, cubism, dada-ism, surrealism, and expressionism. In Western art, the "isms" were what classified the movements of social change. Modernism did not only play a part of change in art, it also affected the role of women. It was during the 20th Century that women won rights, including the right to vote. This realm of new freedom allowed women, specifically artists, to express their femininity and power in art.
Claude Cahun was born in 1894 in Natas, France to a wealthy educated family. Cahun's art represented an attitude that rejected labels and stereotypes. She was the one of the first female artist that questioned sexuality in her art. Throughout her work she continuously photographed herself in both women's and men's clothing which made some people question whether or not she identified as a man. Under one of her photographs she wrote, "Beneath this mask, another mask. I will never be finished lifting off all these faces" (Guerrilla Girls, 63.) Her photography set a political stand that females bodies did not serve to entertain the male gaze, instead presents herself (as all women should) as a subject of her own desire.
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"Cahun’s art is, on one level, a reflection of her self-perception. She chose to show herself in many ways: female and coquettish, male with shaved-head, masculine and donning barbells, feminine and sexualized, curled up in a cupboard and child-like, androgynous, stereotypically male homosexual, comedic. Her work is deeply personal and liberating—Cahun experienced no boundaries in her self-portraits that society would have placed upon her outside her photos. She slips from one gender to another, creating mutating personalities with surreal photographic collages" (Fiona, 2012.)
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| La Lecon de Botanique (The Botany Lesson), 1974 |
Leonor Fini, an Argentine surrealist artist was considered one of the most influential women artists of the twentieth century. Many of her works depict powerful women including her most controversial oil painting, La Lecon de Botanique (The Botany Lesson), 1974. Fini was born in Bueno Aires, Argentina but was raised by her strong independent mother in Trieste, Italy. She was a self taught artist, learning anatomy directly from studying bodies in the local morgue and adopting techniques through books and public works of art. Many of Fini's work displayed women as dominant roles and males as passive roles. Her work also redefines the sexual relationship between genders. Surrealist artists including Fini, "made significant contributions to the language of Surrealism, replacing the male Surrealists' love of hallucination and erotic violence with an art of magical fantasy and narrative flow, and moving, however tentatively, toward laying claim to female subject positions within male-dominated movements" (Chadwick, 311.)
By the start of the twentieth century, dandyism and Modernism had challenged the cultural stereotypes about masculinity and femininity. "At an historical moment, radical feminists were advocating "androgyny," and designers like Coco Chanel were "masculinizing" women's fashions" (Chadwick, 302.) In 1913, Chanel opened a boutique named Chanel Modes and because she was not a licensed dressmaker, she could not successfully sell women's dresses. Instead, Chanel used this as an opportunity to start sewing dresses of jersey fabric, which had been used for men's underwear. Her rebellious creativity made Chanel a fashion icon. In the post World War I era, Chanel liberated women by introducing masculinity in women's fashion.
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| Man Ray Coco Chanel, 1935 |
Work Cited:
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.
Fiona. "Claude Cahun." Feminist Art Archive. Web. 23 Mar. 2016.
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