POST II: Bryan Choi

       During the Impressionist era, artists were determined to “discover for themselves a semblance of the individual freedom, self- determinacy, and sensual pleasure” (357 Eisenmen). Meaning artists were really painting for themselves to express the free will in their techniques of painting. Two magnificent exemplars of the impressionist were Mary Cassatt and Thomas Eakins. The two artists were both born in Pennsylvania, America, but have taken separate paths in making a statement as impressionist (369).

      Throughout the Impressionist era, Mary Cassatt stood out, simply because she is a woman artist who painted “only” women. The reason behind her bold move is because she is trying to make a statement. Throughout the history of art, gender plays a very important role because the women are mostly portrayed as subjects, meaning she doesn’t really have a role, other than being seductive or a symbolic figure like freedom or innocence. The painting of women is more for a male’s gaze, which indicates that only men are looking at the painting. The fact that women in paintings were treated as subjects for the male’s gaze, they hardly have any cloths or they are in the nude. Mary Cassatt was aware of this issue, and she wanted to address this by painting women in their everyday life.

     Mary Cassatt’s Woman in Black at the Opera (1880) is a perfect paradigm that she was trying to address to the male gazer. In this painting, viewers will see that the woman in black is using binocular to get a closer look of the opera. The woman is simply enjoying the opera by herself, without any men. During the Impressionist area, women must be accompanied by a man in order for her to go out. The artist is trying to paint a moment where a woman is just enjoying her freedom by herself. The woman is also painted in a very dark garment to camouflage from attention; therefore, she is hidden from the fact that she is by herself. Unlike traditional painting, the woman is not staring at her audience, the male gazer, because in traditional painting the woman stares for the male gazer. The woman is treated like a subject and decorative object for the men to watch. Mary Cassatt is trying to make a point of the gender issue, she wanted her woman figure to be aware that she is being watched, but she is ignoring her viewers for the amusement of the opera. Diagonal from the woman is a man who is also using a binocular, but staring right at the woman. The artist is trying to make a comparison, that both people in that scene are using a binocular, but for different reasons. The male is using the tool in favor of gawking at the lady, and he is depicted as a representation to the male gazer. In the other hand, the woman is enjoying her time, without caring anyone that is around her. Cassatt wanted equality in both gender so she gave humanity to women figures by painting them in everyday life.

     Unlike Mary Cassatt depiction of empowering women, Thomas Eakins painted many masterpieces that are symbolic to America. The Swimming Hole, painted in 1883-5 is perfect allegorical work that represents America. In this painting, they have six men and boys in the nude that are enjoying the peace and calm setting of nature. In traditional art, men are usually in the nude for playing a role of heroism and having honor, but Eakins depict the nude models as graceful and freedom. Some people refer to the painting as “Homoerotic” theme because it does not have traditional symbols that are entitled for men (“Eakins”). Once again gender issue is brought up, based on the fact that men that are in nude without traditional values are considered dreadful. Spectator must understand that the reason behind nudity in young man is to signify that America is free and young.

      Like many impressionist artist, Eakins painted his scene of joy and happiness in that “moment”, as well, as trying to capture light by painting the reflection of light from the water. The unique part of this painting is the touch of realism based on the detailed rock. Perhaps the reason for the touch of realism is to express the beauty of America and how nature plays a role in open, vast, and big. The open vast land means the endless of possibilities in America.

     Both artists from the impressionist era definitely painted their own viewpoints in their own artworks. The perspectives of the artists play an important role because spectator will never truly understand the artist’s emotions. Mary Cassatt is a woman; therefore, she will understand and react more towards the fact that women are treated as subjects in the painting. Cassatt and Eakins have broken traditional gender values and paint for their own interest. Like many impressionist, they wanted to depict the beauty, happiness and joy of life, so they painted a moment that can be appreciated by all. Move over the impressionist wanted to be free.

If any one wanted to see more artworks from Mary Cassatt click HERE!  

Works Cited 

"Eakins, Thomas The Swimming Hole (1885)." The Independent. Independent Digital News and Media. Web. 20 Oct. 2012. <http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/great-works/eakins-thomas-the-swimming-hole-1885-776575.html>. 

Eisenman, Stephen, and Thomas E. Crow. Nineteenth Century Art: A Critical History. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2011. Print.

 

Gender Issues and Gender Roles

     In Mary Cassatt's The Loge and Thomas Eakins's the Swimming Hole, issues of gender and gender roles play a significant part in how both artists portray their subjects in the canvas. As a woman of the impressionist movement, Mary Cassatt's work offered a new vision of art through women. The most significant way she illustrates gender roles through this vision is by depicting women as independent public people. In The Loge, Cassatt depicts two vibrant young women, Genevieve Mallarme and Mary Ellison, in evening dresses as they witness a theater performance together. Both women dominate the canvas as they are captured enjoying the moment whereas in the Swimming Hole, Eakins paints his male subjects, including himself, in the nude as they are swimming in the lake.
     He plays with the textures and colors in the canvas as he abandons the use of chiaroscuro. In The Loge, Cassatt abandons the depiction of the theater by limiting the audience to tiny heads in the background. Both female subjects seems self-conscious because one woman is watching the performance and clinching her bouquet while the other is hiding behind her fan. There's no sense of a man accompanying the women as the focus is on them instead of the viewer, who is fully aware of their gaze. In The Swimming Hole, the canvas is a pyramidal composition.
     Each position of the figures are precisely posed so that no private parts are shown which is similar to Cassatt because both artists capture the moment that doesn't objectify their subjects. He paints his canvas of a male experience from that of a male perspective where Cassatt paints her canvas from a woman's perspective. Eakins depicts a sense of freedom as the male subjects are in the nude and are not gazing at the viewer. Instead, their focus is diverted to jumping into the lake. The composition is in a natural setting and is engaging his subjects with nature.
     Similar to The Loge, there's no sense of perspective within the space. The subjects in the canvas are placed in the center of the space whereas in The Loge, the two women are placed in the foreground. Eakins highlights the freedom of the space as he captures the moment and like Cassatt, he focuses on his subjects rather than the viewer. Both artists are depicting their subjects enjoying being in the company of the same gender. Cassatt plays close attention to the composition of her canvas as she individualizes the female subjects whereas in The Swimming Hole, Eakins manipulates the focus of his painting because he has figures carefully positioned while the outer areas are diffused. The placements of their bodies emphasizes their masculinity and physical beauty whereas in The Loge, Cassatt's female subjects look like ordinary women dressed up for a special occasion.
     The presence of gender roles in both paintings show how each artist wanted their subjects to be portrayed. Cassatt's art comes from and gives her conception of women as concrete presences because she wanted her subjects to be seen as someone not as something. She has her women fully  clothed whereas in The Swimming Hole, Eakins puts his male subjects in the nude. He depicts the physicality of their bodies as he has their buttocks facing the viewer. What both artists do accomplish is that they don't let the stereotypical gender roles define the canvas but give their own perspective on how they should be seen. They both show that a man and a woman can be objectified in different ways that either  over sexualizes them or not.

    

  

   
Works Cited:
Images were taken from Google

Here's another link to another painting similar to Thomas Eakins painting:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ea/Eakins,_Thomas_(1844_-_1916)_-_Arcadia_-_ca._1883.jpg

Post 2

Mary Leriche                                                                                                

Development of Modern Art:           Post 2                                                

An analysis of the tension, opposition and technical developments during the 19^th century will be made through the works of Mary Cassatt and Thomas Eakins. I will also examine some other artists and their work during this time to give a broader understanding of this time period.

During this time photography was becoming a big thing, and so Impressionism developed as a direct response to photography and as a rejection of all previous art movements. Impressionists were concentrating on a fleeting moment, capturing how they saw movement. They wanted to create a visual representation of what they experienced. They concentrated on the effect of light on what they painted; they also emphasized brushstrokes, the form, shape, and color of objects. This resulted in a blurriness to their paintings a lot. The concept behind what they were trying to do was quickly paint oil sketches accurately recording landscape. They wanted to show how objects appeared in light.

Mary Cassatt and Thomas Eakins were both Impressionist painters, though their work style varied in how it was created, they both strove for the same ideals of the Impressionist movement in how art was created. They had a similar background, both came from Pennsylvania in America, both ended up in Paris around the same time and became a part of the Impressionist movement there.

The first work that will be looked at is Five O’Clock Tea, which is oil on canvas painting that was created by Mary Cassatt in the year 1880. In this painting the viewer sees two ladies of the upper class having tea in a primly decorated parlor. Since Cassatt rejected the timelessness of the nude, or more accurately, deprived of access to the representation of unclothed bodies, she uses fashion to define a specific historical moment, a concrete social milieu within the supposed a-historicity of the female domestic realm. One of the ladies in the painting is Cassatt’s sister, Lydia, and the other woman is a visitor.

Nudes in paintings were objects for men to look at, there was an objectification of women in art. The audience who saw these paintings was by default considered to be male. In Five O’Clock Tea the women are not looking at the viewer (a male), they are not beckoning the male gaze- they are not on display for the male viewer. This scene is a reality of women’s lives, which would be overlooked by men, but as a woman Mary Cassatt was able to understand this moment in a way a male could not, therefore giving the painting an essence of understanding. She is trying to show women and women, as they naturally are, not something to be owned or used by men. Here we see how gender and gender roles plays a part in the art during this time.

The next artwork that I will compare is Thomas Eakins’s The Swimming Hole, which is also an oil on canvas painting created from 1883-5. There are young men and boys swimming naked outside. This painting projects a heady sense of escape from social constraint through sheer bodily freedom. The youthful male nudes, including Eakins himself in the foreground, are represented modestly, form the back or with strategically bent leg, and evoke moral qualities of honesty and purity in the out-of-doors context. Democratic freedom is signified by the youthful male American body in the American landscape: to be American is at once to be natural and to have a privileged relation to Nature.

In this painting the viewer is able to see how Eakins is more traditional compared to Cassatt, who’s paintings are a lot like Manet’s work. In this painting the men are located more in the foreground, with Eakins’ depicted as the fore most figure in the lower right corner of the painting. Even though the brushstrokes are seen, the entire painting blends more then Cassatt’s paintings. There is some depth of field, though it is slightly off. There is a slight blurriness and a softness to the forms in some areas. The males are the focus in this painting, with one of the males standing on a large rock in the center of the composition.

Woman in Black at the Opera is another oil on canvas painting created by Mary Cassatt in 1880. The woman in the painting looks active, at a time when women were rarely understood to possess what is called “the power of the gaze,” Cassatt has given it forcefully and completely to her opera-goer. She holds the opera-glasses, that prototypical instrument of male specular power, firmly to her eyes; even her fan is somewhat raised in the tense excitement of her active looking. Energy, control, the vividness of active looking, even the suggestion of veins standing out beneath the glove on the wrist of the hand which grasps the opera-glasses; all this and the forcefulness of the dark silhouette against the light of the house behind: one can see this portrait in some way functioning as a self-image of the modern woman artist herself.

The man in the background is a little important in the painting because he’s centrally located, and the lines and directions in the painting lead to him. He mimics the woman in black in the way he gazes at her. The woman is in black because she is alone, which was not supposed to happen when she was in public. With her wearing black it helps her blend into the background. Cassatt understands the male gaze within the world of art, but in this painting she is saying the woman’s gaze is more important, and the male gaze is not important at all.

The Concert Singer (Weda Cook) is an oil on canvas painting done by Thomas Eakins in 1892. This is one of the portrait’s of a woman that Eakins made, even though Cook is shown actively performing, on the stage, she is in some sense figured as less active.  The pose of the singer is relatively pliant, wavering rather than a posture of easy command. She seems to have surrendered her separateness to the spell of what she is doing. To put it another way, Eakins interprets the female singer as the instrument of the music that flows forth from her rather than as a creator in her own right. Indeed, this notion of instrumentality is carried further by the presence of the male hand to the lower left, meant as a synecdochal reference to the otherwise invisible orchestra leader. Yet the hand can also be read as a sign of masculine control and dominance; it is, in fact, the hand of Weda Cook’s teacher, Dr. Schmitz: his almost unseen masculine presence figures as the active, generating force of the artistic creativity bodied forth in the painting.

This painting show’s even though Eakins is painting women, he still represents them as objects that are controlled by men, frail in themselves, needing the strength and leadership of men to succeed. Cook seems to almost fade into the background vs. the presence of the hand holding a baton. There is a little depth of field in this painting, but there does not seem to be a real wall behind Cook as she is on stage. The brushstrokes are visible in the painting, and there is a softness and fuzziness that is a part of impressionist art.

There is an opposition in how men paint and depict what happens in different scenes, and how they depict the role of women, compared to how women artists during this time depicted the same type of scene. One of the things influencing how women depicted scenes that had female’s in them is that they had a deeper understanding of what was going on in the instances that were painted. They understood these scenes emotionally, mentally, and physically, compared to men who painted their idea of what was happening. There is also a dichotomy of men’s ideas of women, believing they own or are better than women, and how they objectify women stripping them of their humanity in their own existence. Women understand that they do not need men and depend on them as much as males believe, women can show what goes on in a scene in a deeper more meaningful way, and they also show that women are in a sense better than men for they do not treat and think of men the way men treat and think of women.

Two other impressionist artists who understand this higher more complex quality of women are Berthe Morisot and Edouard Manet.  In Berthe Morisot’s painting The Psyche, she depicts a young woman who is starting to become sexually aware of herself. In the painting Morisot uses a mirror to show light, she hints at some depth but it is not as dark as it is in reality. Morisot is sympathizing with the character in the painting. Psyche is from Greek and Roman mythology who represents sexuality and love, essentially cupid. Morisot as a woman understands what this character is going through on a deeper level, in a way a man never could. In Edouard Manet’s painting Olympia, which is oil on canvas made in the year 1863, he paints the nude female in a way that is not traditional. His style of painting is impressionist in that he flattens the painting and has extreme white vs. darker colors but not completely black. Previously throughout history nude females were depicted as Venus, their gaze longing and beckoning the male viewer. In Olympia, she is not Venus, but a prostitute who is depicted as having extreme sexuality, but she is in control of it. She waits for a client, but she will be in control, not the male that will come. Her hand is not placed softly covering herself, she holds herself deliberately, and there is a harshness of the scene that emphasizes her control. She does not depend on a man, she depends on herself, and by keeping control she stops the objectification that is usually applied to women.

Sources that were used are:

Nineteenth Century Art: A Critical History by Stephen Eisenman

Images were obtained from Google images

The Psyche

Neoclassicsm versus Romanticism

          Neoclassism is considered a period that reflected on the classical theories and followed idealogies from antiquity.  The paintings of this time  relied on the theory that humans are social beings that were products of social order.  There is a great deal of respect for authority in the works of art and symmetry, balance and harmony were emphasized. 

           The Neoclassic movement occurs during a period when the aristocratic sense was moved away from to a focus on the normal average citizen.  The average man becomes the subject of art instead of the typical aristocrats that were portrayed.  The masses begin to understand the theories behind the dogma and this empowers them.  In Jacques-Louis David's Oath of the Horatii'.1785. Neoclassicism.

               David depicts a painting that focuses on the pagans rather than the Christians.  There is a shift from the classical styles of art to giving value to things before Christ.  David choses classical themes that applied to contemporary situations much like how some of todays art work focuses on the economic status and the Occupy Wall Street movement is depicted in present day contemporary art.   

          In David's chosen scene, two ruling families are at war and the brothers are portrayed giving their oath as a symbol of their allegiance to their citizenship.   What is not shown is that one of the brothers kills his own sister who is married to his enemy.  In this scene, families are torn apart due to the war.  However, it is typical of a classical style painting in that it is stoic, posed, rigid, and the composition is symmetrical with an emphasis on classical proportions, classical themes, and the use of chiaroscuro to ascentuate the soldiers in the fore ground.   David uses a different style compositionally in that he increases the size of the canvas.  During this time,artists were having academic salons.  Techniques were talked about as opposed to using art as propaganda which is why David's work was considered rebellious and caused such discomfort among the critics. 

                 Art during the Neoclassical movement generally portrayed Roman history and elevated Roman heroes on to a pedestal.  It occured during the Age of Reason and through its paintings historical works were a way in which the ideals of the Enlightenment were conveyed.  In example, the Oath of the Horatii, was a reaction to the revolution that was occuring during this time.  This art work showed that the average man is powerful and in control of what happens.  It is a form of propaganda and a call to arms. 

             In contrast, in Romanticism artists focused on the emotions of the scene which causes the painting to be active and dynamic in its composition and a lot of drama is achieved.  The brush stroke is emphasized and the colors are symbolic to mean something.  The artist becomes more painterly in his style and content. 
 
            A good example is the Raft of the Medusa, a painting by Theodore Gericault in 1818 in which a group of stranded people on a raft die, and despair is strewn across the canvas.  The story behind the scene is that the officer of the boat sinks the rafts in order to be able to save the more revered "important" people and the people left in the picture are left to die. Cannibalism occurs because they are not found.  The situation is desperate and it is a dire scene.  Gericault paints this scene in order to portray the highest drama and pinnacle of emotion that occurs.  He wants to show hope in that these people "might" be rescued despite of how badly the situation looks.  It is a message of hope.  There is a lot of symbolism that is shown, the bodies are not yet emaciated, not yet disfigured, plenty of emotion and fear, and it gives hope that maybe help is coming.

               Unlike Neoclassicism, Romanticism was created during the Age of Passion in thast art showed extreme emotional scenes.  It is a reaction to the classical, mental, contemplative nature of the Neoclassical art that precedented it.  Romanticism celebrated the height of the action, dramatic compositions, and a heightened sensation.
It focuses on the nostalgic romantic sentiment of rejecting contemporary society's evils.