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One critic debunks these claims by questioning the age-appropriateness of these pageants, whether they achieve any positive outcomes or not. One critic debunks these claims by questioning the age-appropriateness of these pageants and whether they achieve any positive outcomes or not.Happylittletrees (talk) 04:54, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

Articles of Interest

Gender binary Masculinity Nude (art) Feminist art criticism Feminist aesthetics

I am currently working on the Nude(art) page. This page says nothing about the fact that women artists were excluded from the nude painting and training in arts education. This page also doesn't acknowledges any nude works by women. The source I found compares the male figure and the female figure as they are depicted in nude works and it examines the male nude created by women. This will help me when explaining the consequences of women being excluded from this part of an art's education.

Annotated Bibliography for work on Nude (art)

Hammer-Tugendhat, Daniela and Zanchi, Michael. “Art, Sexuality, and Gender Construction.” Art in Translation, vol. 4, no. 3, 2012, pp. 361-382.    

In "Art, Sexuality, and Gender Construction in Western Culture", Daniela Hammer-Tugendhat and Michael Zanchi observe the image of the female nude from the Renaissance to the 1990s by looking at art that uses the female nude to express a sexual image. This examination shows how sexuality is exclusively represented by the naked female body in art. A number of art works including Gustave Courbet's, The Origin of the World, and Francois Boucher's, Reclining Girl, express women with open legs. This implies the passivity of women and how they are not in control. This imagery leads the viewer to see women as an erotic object that men can receive and use. Hammer-Tugendhat and Zanchi also examine the trends in nude art throughout history since the Renaissance. They look at these trends through gender differences and apply these to the discourse of art. The gender differences observed include thorough comparisons between the representation of male sexuality and female sexuality in nude art. They determine that women's sexuality in the nude during the Renaissance is an image of eroticism. Women are portrayed as objects that are created by male desire. Men are the ultimate audience and their sexuality is not often included in the actual nude work. They are the artists who craft these images and there is no regard for equal representation. This article will benefit my research by assessing the female image in the nude and providing me with specific examples of historically important works of art that show a passive female image created by man. This is a credible source, as Daniela Hammer-Tugendhat is a professor of art history at the University of Applied Arts Vienna and has lectured at the Art History Institute at the University of Vienna.

Nochlin, Linda. “Why Have There Been no Great Women Artists?”. Women, Art, and Power and Other Essays. Thames and Hudson, 1998. ProQuest. Web. 25 Sep. 2017.

This essay by art historian Linda Nochlin addresses and attempts to explain why there have been no great women artists included in the art historical canon. She examines what art is and the public’s misconceptions behind defining art. Nochlin comments on the art world’s perception of individual genius and how men are seen as holding this creative genius. This essay will especially help me as it discusses the nude and how women were excluded from nude training in a traditional art education. During the Renaissance, this was known as “life drawing” and it was vital to an artist’s training. Studying the human form was something that women were very seldom allowed to do and if they were allowed, it was to be done by studying a draped figure. This ultimately hid and distorted the actual human figure from being clearly seen and studied. Linda Nochlin is an American art historian that has studied gender in art throughout her career. She has worked in the Yale University’s art department and on exhibitions at the Brooklyn Museum and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Fields, Jill. “Frontiers in Feminist Art History.” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, vol. 33, no. 2, June 2012, pp, 1-21. EBSCOhost search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx? direct=true&db=a9h&AN=79462464&site=ehost-live.

This article explores the feminist art history movement and how it has developed into something that can be included into women and gender studies and art history curriculum. Fields references Linda Nochlin’s essay, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?”, as the essay that started the feminist art history discussion. She then reviews the integration of feminist art history as an academic subject and how it is now included into some regular course work. This article will especially help me since it examines how women's bodies are interpreted in art. The phallus image in Western art is specifically evaluated and she goes on to explain how masculine art has been highly regarded and respected all throughout history while feminine art is seen as a type of “craft”. Women’s exclusion from major art museums and how the traditional idea of an artist has been seen as a male’s creative genius is also discussed. The main focus that I will draw from is where Fields acknowledges the modern debate about women’s bodies in art and how they are represented. Jill Fields has a Ph.D. in history from the University of Southern California and is a part of the Organization of American Historians Lectureship Program.

Jacobs, Frederika H. “Woman's Capacity to Create: The Unusual Case of Sofonisba Anguissola.” Renaissance Quarterly, vol. 47, no. 1, 1994, pp. 74–101. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2863112. 

In this article, Jacobs examines how women artists were seen as creators compared to how men artists were seen as creators. During the Renaissance, women were recognized as “intellectually inferior” to men. Women artists were marvels in society and women’s role in reproduction was often referred to and discussed when considering women as artists during this time. The connection between women creating life and art was often referenced throughout this article. Jacobs examines how early philosophers attempted to explain the phenomena of the woman artist. Particularly, Jacobs examines Aristotle’s theory behind procreation and how he credits man with the driving force in creating life. Aristotle’s widely believed theory insists that women provide the material and men are the ones that manifest the actual end product. This theory was carried into the art world by Galen, who asserted that women were men’s material and that men held “divine creativity”. This idea of women’s inferiority was strongly prevalent in Renaissance beliefs and Jacobs considers different philosopher’s theories to prove this. This article will particularly be useful in its discussion about women’s place in the Renaissance art world. This is a credible source as Frederika Jacobs was a professor of art history at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Nelson, Charmaine. "Coloured Nude: Fetishization, Disguise, Dichotomy." Racar22.1-2 (1995): 97-107. ProQuest. Web. 17 Oct. 2017.

In "Coloured Nude: Fetishization, Disguise, Dichotomy", Nelson illustrates how black women in nude Western art have been fetishized. She states that the nude in are has enforced "patriarchal and eurocentric ideals of woman, womanhood, beauty, femininity, and female sexuality within Western society." She uses the painting Coloured Nude by Dororthy Stevens to show how women of color are depicted differently than white women in the nude. In Stevens' Coloured Nude, the women is posed standing and with her hands over her head. She also has visible pubic hair. These are things that are seldom seen in nude art of white women. Nelson asserts that black women are represented in a way that symbolizes them as a sexual "other". She examines how white women in Western nude art are seen as objects, but they are idealized. They are seen as innocent and are even censored. Nelson argues that the black female body in nude art is seen more as animalistic and what is pornographic for white women is seen as normal for black women. She compares black women in nude art to white women in nude art to assert these claims. This article will specifically help me in the intersectionality aspect of my contribution. Charmaine Nelson has a PhD in Art History from the University of Manchester and she teaches at McGill.

McDonald, Helen. Erotic Ambiguities: The female nude in art. Routledge, 2001.

Helen McDonald's book Erotic Ambiguities: The female nude in art explores how the female nude has been seen as an "ideal" in art. She examines how artists would use the female body as a symbol of the ideal and how in this century the ideology of the ideal female body has transcended to the media like film and television. She also applies the feminist movement to changes in the way that the female body is created and perceived by the public. She also asserts that high-art is perpetrating a fantasy of the female body similar to the one that fashion and pornography has created. I will draw from this book when I am talking about how the feminist movement has affected the female nude in art. I will also use this book when I am discussing the central core image that was used by the feminist art movement when they were trying to create their own female nude image.

Bostrom, Leslie and Marlene Malik. "Re-Viewing the Nude." Art Journal, vol. 58, no. 1, Spring99, p. 42. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=vth&AN=1770295&site=ehost-live.

In this article, Bostrom and Malik examine different artists and informational art books' processes for creating the nude figure in art. Bostrom and Malik explore Matisse's methods and compare the different ways Matisse had his nude models pose. When Matisse used a male nude model, he was posed in an action pose and was usually holding an object like a pole or a rope. When Matisse used a female nude model, she was posed lying down on a chair and was usually in a hat or high heels. The book Natural Way to Draw by Nicolaide is also examined. Bostrom and Malik show that in this book, all the figures and bodies are female while all the separate heads are male. They argue that this represents the female body and model as "lifeless". Bostorm and Malik also acknowledge that the idealization of the female nude started during the Renaissance. They state that before the Renaissance, the male body was represented as the ideal and it was worshipped. I will specifically use the information regarding the different ways that male and female nude models were posed by Matisse. The example of the Natural Way to Draw book will also be very helpful to me when I am writing my major contribution. Leslie Bostrom is a professor if art at Brown University and the Department Chair. Marlene Malik is an associate professor of visual arts at Brown University.

Pollock, Griselda. "Whither Art History?." Art Bulletin, vol. 96, no. 1, Mar. 2014, pp. 9-23. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/00043079.2014.877301.

Griselda Pollock's essay "Whither Art History" reviews art history as a whole and it's oppressive and exclusive qualities that have been apprehensive to including all artists and types of art. She examines the initiatives that have been taken to try and change art history but she acknowledges that these measures will need to be put into practice over a very long period of time as the whole subject of art history will be very hard to change. From this essay I will focus on how Pollock asserts that art history as a whole has been created to exclude marginalized groups and how this institution will be very hard to change, but there has been new ways of thinking that try and oppose this school of thought. Griselda Pollock is well known for her feminists and art history academic work. She received her doctorate in 1980 and is now a professor of social and critical histories of art at Leeds University.

Main Contribution

The feminist art movement was aimed at giving women the opportunity to have their art reach the same level of notoriety and respect that men’s art received. The idea that women are intellectually inferior to men came from Aristotelian ideology and was heavily depended on during the Renaissance. It was believed by Aristotle that during the process of procreation, men were the driving force. They held all creative power while women were the receivers. Women’s only role in reproduction was to provide the material and act as a vessel. This idea carried over into the image of the artist and the nude in art. The artist was seen specifically as a white male, and he was the only one who held the innate talent and creativity to be a successful professional artist. This belief system was prevalent in nude art. Women were depicted as passive, and they did not possess any control over their image. The female nude during the Renaissance was an image created by the male gaze. It is an eroticized image that holds the heterosexual male desire.

In Jill Fields’ article “Frontiers in Feminist Art History”, Fields examines the feminist art movement and how they attempted to change the image of the female nude. She considers how the image of the female nude was created and how the feminist art history movement attempted to change the way the image of the female nude was represented. Derived from the Renaissance ideal of feminine beauty, the image of the female body was created by men and for a male audience. In paintings like Gustave Courbet's, The Origin of the World, and Francois Boucher's, Reclining Girl, women are expressed with open legs. This symbol implies that women are to be passive and they are an object to be used. The feminist art history movement has aimed to change the way this image is perceived. The female nude has become less of an icon in Western art since the 1990s, but this decline in importance did not stop members of the feminist art movement from incorporating things like the “central core” image. This way of representing the nude female figure in art was focused on the fact that women were in control of their own image. The central image was focused on vulva related symbols. By incorporating new images and symbols into the female nude image in Western art, the feminist art history movement continues to try and dismantle the male-dominated art world.    

Intersectionality

The nude image in art has affected women of color in a different way than it has white women, according to professor Charmaine Nelson. The different depictions of the nude in art has not only instituted a system of controlling the image of women but it has put women of color in a place of other. The intersection of their identities, as Nelson asserts, creates a “doubly fetishized black female body.” Women of color are not represented to the degree that white women are in nude art from the Renaissance to the 1990s, and when they are represented it is in a different way than white women. The Renaissance ideal of female beauty did not include black women. White women were represented as a sexual image, and they were the ideal sexual image for men during the Renaissance. White women, in most major works, did not have pubic hair. Black women normally did, and this created their image in an animalistic sexual way. While the white women’s image became one of innocence and the idealized, black women were continually overtly sexualized.