Analysis Of Roberta Wealth's Essay Rereading Edward Weston

The post-modernist Julie Rrap is a contemporary artist whose focal point rests on the basis of femineity and the way the female identity is represented historically within art. She is a feminist who accuses the ‘male gaze’ of instigating a predatory activity that is accustomed with the norm of society. She relates this norm to existing social structures that are attributed with a patriarchal society, where women were nothing more than sexual objects. All in all this term, the ‘male gaze’ evaluates the predatory voyeurism of society, where the male is the active subject and the female is a passive object of representation.

Ever since the days of World War I, women have been seen as second rate to men. They had to live up to many social standards that men didn’t have to and had strict guidelines on how to live their lives. This all changed when modernism deliberately tried to break away from Victorian Era standards in which women were subjugated to a lot more scrutiny. Ezra Pound, who was a large figure in the modernist movement, captured the spirit of the era in his famous line “Make it new!” Consequently, many writers started to experiment with many different and wild writing styles, which led to the short stories and poems we have today. The stories The Wife of His Youth and Mrs. Spring Fragrance were all written in this era of modernism. While they are written in a more traditional style of writing, both these stories have strong implications on feminism from the viewpoints of both male and female writers.

The book Celia A Slave Melton McLaurin is telling us what happened to a slave owner and a slave that he brought. This story goes into details on the day of June 23,1855 about how a female slave that murdered her master and how she tried to cover it up. This story took place not far from Jefferson City in Calloway Country here in Missouri when around this time there were still debates over what state is going to be free and what states is going to be a slave one. As you’re reading the book you will see how race relations of that period was very … McLaurin talks in great details about the trail, the political climate of the time of the trail, and the experiences of a slave told in Celia view, and the antebellum time period.

Today when one thinks of feminism many sneer and roll their eyes in displeasure, perhaps remembering the bra-burning, empowered and angry feminists of the mainly 1970’s feminist movement featuring Margaret Atwood and Germaine Greer. It is easy, apparently, to forget that while things are still far from perfect for women there was a time in fact not very long ago when women were denied the most basic human rights. It comes as no surprise that women took to alternative ways of vocalising what everyone desperately tried to quash. Literature and art became vessels for the struggles and opinions of those that society tried so incredibly hard to push back into the kitchen. One of the best ways for women to express their dissatisfaction with the deeply patriarchal and oppressive society that they had been raised within was through art, which severely lacked female historical representation until this point. The USA was a centre-place for this movement but there is no denying the huge feminist presence that emanated from New Zealand. Documented as one of the first female artists in New Zealand to paint from a female perspective, Jacqueline Fahey paints narrative insights into her life, echoing that of many women at the time. She utilized her paintings to not only narrate her daily life but to make radical insights and critiques about the lives of many women, suburban or fellow artists, of the time.

What does it mean to challenge portraiture in an age of modernity, and how can typically-labelled Renaissance-style portraiture be challenged within the contemporary world? Janet Werner, an artist/painter from Montreal, QC. has done just that. Known for her exhibitions “Another Perfect Day”, “Too Much Happiness” and “Who's Sorry Now”, Werner forces us to question what the term “portraiture” truly means through a feminist art style, and how a typically generic form of artwork, in our modern world of “selfies” and mass photography, can be transformed into a powerful message of self-reflection and self-worth. We expect portraiture's to merely be a shell of someone's self, but we expect that in the physical sense, and less so in the mental and

One of the greatest concerns in the theory about feminism is the role that women play in relationships and also the identity that is placed upon them as a lover and as an artist. Many females during the time that Elizabeth Browning wrote "Aurora Leigh" felt discomfort by becoming an artist or anything besides a housewife. As mentioned before this was a stepping-stone for women in this time period. Society put women into separate social classes. And on top of the classes they were categorized in they had the class of being a woman also. With this passage from "Aurora Leigh" Browning describes and criticizes the works of the woman during this time period. The works

Throughout Ways of Seeing, John Berger uses European oil paintings and art to describe the relationship between women and men and the way that men view women. The entire chapter focuses primarily on a women’s body, how her body is surveyed by men, and how this causes the women to also survey herself. When first introducing the relationship between men and women, Berger clarifies women are an object of vision, stating,

The curators of the exhibition “Vienna’s Shooting Girls: Jewish Women Photographers” were Iris Meder and Andrea Winklbaeuer. These independent further promoted the feminist notion of successful women and equity in the workforce and skilled trades. Their technique in presenting the photographs was not radical; however some of the material they chose to present was risqué. Meder and Winklbaeuer captured the individuality of the photographers with the selected pieces and chose works with natural positions in contrast to stiff, old-fashioned poses that museum-goers were acclined to seeing on the walls. This revival of female empowerment in German culture stands as a memory

Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey is essentially the “coming of age” story of Catherine Morland, a sympathetic yet naïve young girl who spends some time away from home at the impressionable age of seventeen. As Catherine matures in the town of Bath and at Northanger Abbey, she learns to forgo immature childhood fantasies in favor of the solid realities of adult life, thus separating falsehood from truth. This theme is expressed in a couple of ways, most obviously when Catherine’s infatuation with Gothic novels causes her to nearly ruin her relationship with Henry Tilney: her imagination finally goes too far, and she wrongly suspects General Tilney of murdering his late wife. The theme is less apparent

Consequently, John Berger uses various visual tests to portray the position of the woman in the society. Some of the used visual tests include oil paintings by Frans Hals and images on magazines. There are some significant theories used in the book to portray the deep meaning of John Berger quotes. They include feminism approach and Queer theory.

The goal for feminist artists all along has been the gender-blind interpretation of art, allowing women equal opportunity for success. Feminists have long cried for museum curators and art collectors to see more than just “male” or “female” in a work. However, politics tend to get in the way, and it may be argued that, by clamoring for equality, women have isolated themselves further, making female art a socially-conscious fad rather than a respectable institution. In Women, Art and Society, Whitney Chadwick elaborates: “Feminist critics remain sensitive to the dangers of confusing tokenism with equal representation” (1990). Fear of such tokenism, and perhaps too much emphasis placed on inequalities, has made feminism somewhat of a “dirty word” to some artists today.

(Millhouse, 2011) In the 1980’s Pollock’s Feminism “critiqued the essential myths of individualism, the artist, and the social constructions of femininity and masculinity that define bourgeois culture”. While the 70’s feminism movement aim was to stand next to the existing masculine dominated culture. “Feminism's encounter with the canon has been complexed and many-leveled: political ,ideology,mythological,methodological and psycho-symbolic” (Pollock, 1999). The 1970’s movement was followed by the immediate task which was “the need to rectify the gaps in historical knowledge created by the consistent omission of women of all cultures from the history of art” (Pollock, 1999). The only art that was put on display was significantly male dominated work, if you wanted to see work created by women, you would have to view them “in a basement or storeroom of a national gallery” (Pollock, 1999). Female artists are only known in their own category of female artists while male artists don’t require a separate category . Art that is created by females have been historically dismissed from the art historical canon as craft, as opposed to fine art. The evident of

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” This opening sentence from Pride and Prejudice reflects the ideals of the age when it was written. Jane Austen wrote about the societal norms and the mindset of the general public through the medium of a family with five daughters, the Bennets. Elizabeth Bennet, the second of the daughters is the one who is different, and the protagonist of the novel, around whom the story evolves.

The messages being conveyed to the viewer are different from each of the photographers. In the two photographs displayed above the contrasts are very similar, but Franks photograph offers a slightly higher contrast to Marks. The photograph of Franks is of his off-the-cuff style that was revelation in the stylized, artificial 1950’s of Richard Avedon and Irving Penn. Marks photograph is more of a report on the state of our social environment. Although, Marks photographs are reports of what the social state has been for decades. All the photographs from both photographers are intriguing to say the

Susan Sontag said photographs sends across the harmlessness and helplessness of the human life steering into their own ruin. Furthermore the bond connecting photography with departure from life tortures the human race. (Sontag 1977:64)