The Female Gaze and the Gaze at the Female: Between Manet and Coubet (Musee d'Orsay, Paris, France)

One of the {many} things that set my brain ticking while I was visiting the Musee d'Orsay one cold, rainy Parisian day was the way women were portrayed in art in the 19th Century... before modernism, before feminism, before women's sufferage.

I was particularly surprised by the differences in how women were portrayed in the work of Edouard Manet and GustaveCoubet. They were each others contemporaries, but the views on women portrayed in their work couldn't be more different.

Manet was a rare breed of man; a feminist. Although he can, in our world, be criticised for his portrayals of the female nude (done, quite obviously, through the male perspective), he did something no other painter had done till then. His women are not objects, but people. Quite simply, he gave them the gift of the gaze, which has, and still remains, largely the property of men. His controversial Olympia of 1863 stares back at the viewer, questioning and confronting the male gaze. In his Le dejeuner sur l'herbe (also 1863), the nude woman stares out at the viewer, her gaze also confronting men's assumed right to treat her as a visual object.

[Edouard Manet, Olympia, 1863, Oil on Canvas, source: here]

[Edouard Manet, Le Dejeuner sur l'herbe, 1863, Oil on Canvas, source: here]

Gustave Courbet's L'Origine du Monde of 1866 was even more controversial than Manet's Olympia but for very different reasons. The painting was criticised as pornographic (which, arguably, it is). However, the painting is perhaps the most clear example of the objectification of women in fine art. The model has no voice, she is, and this painting is, only and excusively to be looked at, to satisfy the male gaze.

[Gustave Courbet, L'Origine du Monde, 1866, Oil on Canvas. Source: here]

But this is an extreme example. The same objectification of the female nude can be seen in Courbet's 1854-55 L'atelier du peintre. The nude female is only a prop in the artist's studio. She looks on admiring his work, and is on view for the whole studio. It is clear she is the focus of the painting.

[Gustave Courbet, L'Atelier du Peintre, 1854-55, Oil on Canvas. Source: here]

However, it is not fair to single out Courbet. Perhaps the objectification of women in his work is far more surprising in comparison to his rural scenes which 'gave new dignity to the peasants'. Each and every artist of the era portrayed his women in the same light as Courbet.... the nudes of Degas and Maurice Denis and the call-girls and can-can dancers of Toulouse-Lautrec do not confront the viewer but accept their gaze. Courbet was just following the conventions of his oevre. But this leaves a few questions;

Does that excuse the objectification of women in art?

Does objectifying women for the purposes of art excuse the artist?

And what would the world have to say if these works were painted by women?

But that will all have to wait.

A symphony of Line - Joan Miro Foundation, Barcelona

In January of this year, by chance and pure luck, I found myself in Barcelona at the same time as Frantisek Kupka. A retrospective of the painter's works was held at the Joan Miro Foundation, atop Montjuic, the highest natural point in Barcelona. The gallery itself is a wonderful architectural space that looks out on the whole of Barcelona, and I could sit there for hours, even if there was no art, just looking out at the city below. The grounds are dotted with Miro and Calder sculpture.

However, more stunning than all of this was the interplay of the works of the 3 artists exhibited; Frantisek Kupka, Alexander Calder and, of course, Joan Miro. The one thing that struck me was the interesting use of line each of these artists has made his own.

[Frantisek Kupka, Vertical and Diagonal Planes, c 1914-15, Oil on Canvas. Source: here]

The retrospective of Kupka shows the evolution of his art, his amazing work as a colourist and his use of both geometric and organic line. Kupka is a complex artist, hard to define or classify into a certain movement within the 20th Century. Perhaps that is because the artist "never felt comfortable with the limits imposed by specific movements". His body of work contains de Stijl style; basic geometric forms with basic colours as well as abstractions showing an acute understanding of tone and hue in concentric circles and organic forms. His work, although referencing the world, is totally formalist, concerned only with the painting - the colour and the form, and devoid of narrative and allegory;

"Imitative painting belongs to the past, to the era where there were still witches, mystics and alchemists" - F. Kupka

[Joan Miro, Morning Star, 1940, Guache, oil and pastel on paper, 38x46cm, source: here]

Miro, on the other hand, is classically expressive. He has worked in various mediums (all of which are exhibited in his foundation), but his paintings in particular display an automatism associated with the unconscious mind and surrealism. Even his sculptures contain a sense of surrealism, with recognisable and juxtaposed references to the natural world, coupled with a naive or primitive aesthetic, I can't decide which I would use to more aptly describe Miro. his use of line is in the expressive qualities of art-making. He does not use line as meticulously and conscously as Kupka. However, the two artists complement each other.

[Alexander Calder, Untitled, 1942, Sheet Metal and Wire. Source: here]

Alexander Calder has yet another approach to the use of line. His works, and his mobiles in particular, are concerned with lines in space- how a line becomes and object and interacts with the space in which it is found. The lines in his mobiles and sculptures juxtapose with the solid shapes. They begin as static - but by becoming incorporated into his pieces, they become dynamic.

[For more info: Joan Miro Foundation]

I love you Frank Lloyd Wright

First post of the year.

I have a couple I'm working on. One from B'lona and one from Paris. Keeping up with 5 blogs is difficult.

For now, just this:

"The truth is more important than the facts" FLW

Frank, you're amazing:

Image source: me. Guggenheim Museum, NYC, NY, USA. I love>