Sexualisation in art? Conversation

I’m a contemporary art student and I am planning to write my dissertation around the subject of whether or not the sexualisation of women within art has made an impact on feminism, looking at how art has changed through the years and if it has changed our view on how we see women etc (a rough a idea)
howeverrrr since figuring out what I wanted to base my dissertation around, I’ve been running on about 3 hours sleep and a lot more cups of coffee than I would care to admit, so I’m struggling to know wtf to start? I’m fairly new to the topic of feminism and it’s art history but I am deeply interested and think I could create an interesting piece about the subject, I am obviously going to do all the research I need to, but I was just wondering if anyone on here had anything to share about the topic that I could look into or had any ideas?
The start of planning always makes me lost and clueless 😂

(edited 4 years ago)

Reply 1

Dgriff99

OP

14

Original post by J0n3zviper

Rolls eyes

I know I know! I’m not a feminist myself (hence me being uneducated on the topic) but women are a very common subject in art so i think it would just be interesting to get peoples views

Reply 2

J0n3zviper

13

Original post by Dgriff99

I know I know! I’m not a feminist myself (hence me being uneducated on the topic) but women are a very common subject in art so i think it would just be interesting to get peoples views

Some women are victims of their own thoughts, that's about it

Reply 3

Dgriff99

OP

14

Original post by J0n3zviper

Women are victims of their own thoughts, that's about it

But could you not flip that around and say that women’s thoughts are fuelled by the way that men perceive them in certain ways?

Reply 4

username1799249

19

Have you discovered scholar.google.com? If you add your uni id to it you will have access to tonnes of resources.

Not sure why you are getting so little sleep. Don't arts students only do about 4 lectures a week?

Reply 5

Dgriff99

OP

14

Original post by ByEeek

Have you discovered scholar.google.com? If you add your uni id to it you will have access to tonnes of resources.

Not sure why you are getting so little sleep. Don't arts students only do about 4 lectures a week?

Erm that’s a little undermining isn’t it? What about the countless hours we spend on creating pieces, planning, doing theory work and so on... it’s not a bloody walk in the park

Reply 6

Notoriety

22

Original post by ByEeek

Have you discovered scholar.google.com? If you add your uni id to it you will have access to tonnes of resources.

Not sure why you are getting so little sleep. Don't arts students only do about 4 lectures a week?

Some students do the bulk of their work outside of lectures.

Reply 7

username1799249

19

Original post by Notoriety

Some students do the bulk of their work outside of lectures.

Yep. I get that. But if you are only getting 3 hours sleep a night you are doing something very wrong.

Reply 8

Tawheed

20

I have something to share

Reply 9

Dgriff99

OP

14

Original post by ByEeek

Yep. I get that. But if you are only getting 3 hours sleep a night you are doing something very wrong.

Hardly doing anything wrong lmao
Who says it’s cause of uni?

Reply 10

Tawheed

20

Original post by Dgriff99

I’m a contemporary art student and I am planning to write my dissertation around the subject of whether or not the sexualisation of women within art has made an impact on feminism, looking at how art has changed through the years and if it has changed our view on how we see women etc (a rough a idea)
howeverrrr since figuring out what I wanted to base my dissertation around, I’ve been running on about 3 hours sleep and a lot more cups of coffee than I would care to admit, so I’m struggling to know wtf to start? I’m fairly new to the topic of feminism and it’s art history but I am deeply interested and think I could create an interesting piece about the subject, I am obviously going to do all the research I need to, but I was just wondering if anyone on here had anything to share about the topic that I could look into or had any ideas?
The start of planning always makes me lost and clueless 😂

From:https://www.scientificamerican.com/a...-into-objects/

"Science has backed parents up on this. A recent study found that showing men pictures of sexualized women evokes less activity in areas of the brain responsible for mental state attribution—that is, the area of the brain that becomes active when we think we are looking at an entity capable of thought and planned action. Other studies have found similar results. When men see body shots of women as compared with face shots, they judge women to be less intelligent, likeable, ambitious and competent.

Reply 11

Tarzz

5

Try Birmingham's 'women empowerment' art exhibition, I had to do a slice of this topic towards my art and design portfolio, you can find the images of the paintings and models on the internet.
Theres also Pablo Picasso's african influenced painting. Which suggests the fear of STI's as he saw women as prostitutes and the African masks expresses the idea of danger :smile:

Reply 12

Dgriff99

OP

14

Original post by Tarzz

Try Birmingham's 'women empowerment' art exhibition, I had to do a slice of this topic towards my art and design portfolio, you can find the images of the paintings and models on the internet.
Theres also Pablo Picasso's african influenced painting. Which suggests the fear of STI's as he saw women as prostitutes and the African masks expresses the idea of danger :smile:

That’s perfect, thank you

Reply 13

abbiek432

3

Hi, I'm doing this theme at A Level right now, so I've done lots of research. Basically women are perceived the way men intend it, especially in the 20th century. Representation of women is much more provocative in the 20th century, they aren't presented as natural, delicate beings as previously like in Botticellis work. But females are represented much less in galleries, if you haven't look at artists like the Gorilla Girls. Jenny Saville is another great female artist to look at for body purposes. I discovered that many male portrayals of women are nude, so looking at a women's portrayal of herself nude is interesting. Mary Beth Edelson is also considered one of the first feminist artists so you could look at some of her work. She has a piece called real living American women artists or something along those lines.

Reply 14

CrimsonViper

5

Feminism wasn't caused by art of women being sexualised, as art has arguably only been in circulation publically in the last hundred years. However, that being said it may have caused by the 60s where artwork of nude women had became frequent publically, and the idea of a "femme fatale" or such became more of a prevalent archetype.
The post-war economy of the UK presumably pushed the idea a bit more, as well as the grassroots startings in the US.

Reply 15

TheAlchemistress

22

You could talk about pop-art in a way that is sexualising in my opinion.

However with other art genres in the past I wouldn't say so.

Reply 16

username5021692

16

What paintings are you looking at in particular? What we might think of as sexualised might not have been seen that way in others times. Classical painters made paintings depicting goddesses and mythological women so their nudity was seen as noble I suppose, not necessarily erotic or trashy. But that's different with Picasso and also with Egon Schiele, who were known to paint prostitutes in compromised and erotic positions. You know the male nude has also been a very popular subject to paint and sculpt throughout history. I've got no idea how nudity in art relates to feminism though, they probably would not like it that women were either idealised or downtrodden, Madonna/whore complex. I don't really know how to analyse it, but there is a painting by Dame Laura Knight where she is wearing normal clothes and standing in front of a nude woman painting her - it was supposed to be controversial in its time.

Sexualisation in art? Conversation

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