Modernity and Spaces of Femininity - Essay Example

?“Modernity and Spaces of Femininity An Analysis Griselda Pollock’s article, “Modernity and the Spaces of Femininity” discusses issues of various interpretations of femininity and modernism as depicted in art. She conjectures that “modernist art history celebrates a selective tradition which normalizes, as the only modernism, a particular and gendered set of practices”1. She is referring to ‘masculinist myths of modernism’ that prevailed in nineteenth century art. This took much of artistic interpretation from the male perspective and propagated such views in criticizing various works of art, mostly with women as subjects. The article clearly represents Pollock’s feminist views. She is a credible author being a leading cultural theorist. She has done vast research on feminist issues such as those that women encounter while living and working in societies as objects of male satisfaction rather than as important subjects that gives credit to their own abilities as women. Pollock has recommended ways to change future representations of women. She has likewise provided significant insights on voyeuristic art and ties between art and human nature. She has become an activist using a “Marxist-socialist approach to reveal the key sexual and political biases involved in the formation of the modernist movement”2 Currently, she is the Director for the Centre for Cultural Analysis, Theory and History at the University of Leeds with a Masters Degree in History of European Art and a PhD degree in the study of approaches to modernism. She is considered an academic jewel, having taught History of Art and Film in the Universities of Manchester and Leeds and an author of several books on her expertise on Art, History, Feminism and Modernism. In the article, Pollock refers mostly to paintings of renowned artists in the nineteenth century and how their work affected its viewers. She analyzed T.J. Clark’s accounts of Edoard Manet’s controversial painting, “Olympia” which shows a nude woman reclined on a bed with her hand covering her crotch, with a black lady, presumably her maid, standing beside the bed and a black cat seated at the foot of her bed. This painting was widely criticized when it was exposed to the public, and its analysis runs from shallow comments about its physical appearance to deeper critiques about societal representations during its time. Clark claims that Manet’s Olympia has been the founding monument of modern art3, embodying a shift in what spectators are accustomed to viewing and was subjected to a wide variety of interpretations. Pollock contends that Clark leans on the class system in analyzing modernist paintings. For him, Olympia’s nakedness in Manet’s ‘modernist’ painting depicted her as a lowly prostitute as opposed to heavily dressed, sophisticated and fashionable women in other paintings ascribed as coming from upper classes of society. Pollock also agrees with Clark that such artwork of women catered to a masculine audience since it provokes sexual titillation which is not expected of decent women viewers. This is what she meant by ‘masculinist myth of modernism’. Male artists reigned over modernism because they are able to express their sexuality through their art, which was not a luxury granted to women artists. Pollock confirms that there was a historical asymmetry in art in the nineteenth century due to social structuration of sexual differences which determined what men and women painted4. Clark indexes impressionist paintings to class formations and class identities that emerged in society, giving ‘modernity’ a wider meaning than just being up-to-date. “Modernity is a matter of representations and major myths- of a new Paris for recreation, leisure and pleasure; of nature to be enjoyed at weekends in suburbia; of the prostitute taking over and of fluidity of class in the popular spaces of entertainment”5 References were pointed to Charles Baudelaire’s essay about the modern artist being a flaneur or “incognito” observer of people. In this concept, the artist/flaneur is a man who sees women from different walks of life through various angles. Respectable women are painted as chaperoned by their equally respectable husbands in parks or theatres or other leisurely public places where they are unashamed to be seen in their classy outfits. On the other hand, places and spaces meant to be hidden from public scrutiny are meant for women typically looked down on by society because of their social class. Pollock views this as mapping subjects of paintings according to their respective categories. She classifies them as ladies vs. fallen women. Under the category of ladies are debutantes; young women of fashionable society matrons, mothers, children, elegant families. Artists who feature them are Renoir, Cassatt and Manet. Fallen women usually found as entertainers in theatres, folies, cafes and brothels are cast as dancers, mistresses and kept women, courtesans and prostitutes, as rendered by Degas, Manet, Renoir and Guys. Pollock analyzes the use of women as subjects in modernist paintings in terms of femininity. She claims that femininity in this aspect, does not refer to the natural condition of females but as a historically variable ideological construction of meanings produced by the artists themselves, usually, men. Women were meant to be viewed, gazed at, desired within the spaces of modernity. In a sense, Pollock seems to imply that in modernist art femininity caters to the whims of a masculine society and women are depicted as objects of men’s leisure. In reality, when women are caught entering such spaces of modernity, they run the risk of destroying their own reputation, and their own femininity and respectability. Such places are associated with low moral standards where women are considered commodities that are bought and sold. Femininity, in the real, decent sense, is the regulation of female sexuality within the domestic sphere, and is inconsistent with the femininity depicted in modern spaces. Modernist art upholds double standards of femininity with such spaces. On one hand, the art itself satisfies men as they view women within the spaces considered by society as taboo. On the other hand, women of high regard are restricted from entering such places if they are to maintain their decent reputation. In general, such modern spaces cater to masculine preferences, leaving women no choice but to succumb to their whims. Read More