Women and Modernism

Jenna Arvelo

Post 3: Women and modernism

Paula Modersohn-Becker: Mother and Child Lying Nude 1907 (Painting)

Suzanne Valadon: Grandmother and Young Girl Stepping into the Bath 1908 (Painting)

   From what I’ve understood about the modernist movement and the driving forces that propelled these ideas through various mediums of art, is the fundamental desire to move into uncharted territory. The modernist movement proudly rejected all proceeding tradition forms of art that had nearly up till then had been the unwavering consistent standard to which many artists either embraced or moved away from yet never completely disregarded. Never had there been such a radical movement that completely emancipated all recognizable forms of traditions in search of higher levels of expression and representation. Many movements, as a result were born from this break from tradition which includes Post-Impressionism, Cubism, Surrealism, Futurism, and Fauvism just to name a few. The formal definition of Modernism describes it as a philosophical movement that involved cultural trends that again broke with the past in search of a more pure form of expression; taking place in the late 19th and early 20th century. In my formal art history courses we don’t hear much about the presence of women within these movements. In fact they are completely left out, I couldn’t name even one. Yet in taking this course it is interesting and exciting to see the participation of women within these movements as forces of innovation and drivers of various new mediums. For example Pan Yuliang in her approach in using her own body as a model for her paintings while also reserving Chinese and European influences in her painting, or Suzanna Valadon in the way she challenges the male gaze by creating intimate controlled intimate gestures in her nudes that do not cater to direct male audiences. Or Paula Modersohn-Becker, in the way she creates a humanity in women that makes you think of these women was people rather objects. Better yet Frida Kahlo in the way she depicted the turbulence of her life in paintings as an autobiographical series of the pain she endured. Each of these women used this modernist movement to say something specific and brought new and valuable perspectives to her time by her sheer presence in these movements within modernism. In a way each of them were reclaiming their images and their bodies as a way to go beyond the physical differences between people and connect one another through empathy and humanity.

Ana Mendieta 'Untitled' Part of the Silueta Series; 1973-77

      The new use of medium gave way to a broader path of expression in artists. Artists such as Lee Krasner who delved into the world of abstraction through color, brushstroke, texture and mark making completely leaves behind the world of representation. Louise Bourgeois, who enveloped her works throughout several different mediums such as drawings, paintings, prints, illustrations and sculptures; made herself versatile and flexible in her creativity. Or even as we redefine what a painting actually is as we see artists creating paintings out of fabric and paper rather the traditional paint on canvas. We see that these artists are uprooting the ideas of what the medium can do as it alters the  perception of the art as a whole, and how the mixture of these mediums serve to strengthen the work.

Photo of Adrian Piper During the performance piece Catalysis III

        In the wake of modernism, post modernism is difficult to define. Yet what I can say it that it goes even beyond what modernism had set out to accomplish. Post-modernism detaches from the material that make the physical art piece. It delves into the more cerebral; or vise versa the visceral aspects in which it is difficult to define in itself. For example Ana Mendieta’s mixture of performance art and her use of nontraditional disintegrative materials that made her art an 'in the moment act' than a long standing physical object. (Analysis of Ana Mendieta) This new use of the the body as part of the interaction of art is one of the most distinguishing differences between modernism and post-modernism. To attach your very body to your art is to make it an object with the purpose of expression or exploration. In this way, women were at the front-line of this movement and paved a whole new medium to which they used to challenge specific problematic issues of race, gender, sexuality, feminism, femininity and much more. We see other women using this specific medium as well (Adrian Piper, Yoko Ono, Marina Abromavic) each one going beyond the limitations of the body in some way. (Abromavic in particular)

Frida Kahlo: The Broken Column 1944 (Painting)

Chadwick comments on a performances by Adrian Piper quoting: “Lippard, one of the first feminist critics to review the work of women artists who were working with their own images and their ability  to change them at will, suggested and her essay “Transformation Art" that experiments with role playing such as Adrian Piper's Catalysis Pieces (1970), in which  The artist wandered in public in clothes smeared with rancid butter or soaked in foul smelling liquid, represented interventions into social conventions as part of an ongoing investigation into the limitations of patriarchal models of femininity. Piper described the street performances as "at times ... violating my body; I was making it public. I was exposing it; I was turning it into an object". (Chadwick page 369)  (Adrian Piper performance piece analysis)






Work Cited Chadwick, Whitney. Women, art and society. Thames and Hudson, 2007.
The Guerrilla Girls. The Guerrilla Girls' bedside companion to the history of western art . Penguin books, 1998.