Modern Art, Culture and Issues of Class and Gender - Essay Example

The essay "Modern Art, Culture and Issues of Class and Gender" investigates culture and modern art, issues of class and gender. Still we see such cases in our daily life involving gender and class discrimination. Though we have stepped into 21st century but our society is still male dominated. Women are not given equal rights to most of the parts of this world. Gender discrimination is most common issue in both urban and rural areas, though a bit high in rural areas of different countries of the world.

On the other hand class discrimination has little suppressed due to literacy and education among people but till today people are categorized in classes on religion, money and power basis. Hinduism class system is an existing example. Here we are discussing the art work of three different artists, all portraying visual culture and all pin pointing the class and gender issues in our society. Ewa Lajer-Burcharth is a professor at Harvard University of fine arts major of history of arts and architecture.

She is also an author of numerous writings. Her renowned work Necklines: The Art of Jacques-Louis David after the Terror is one great achievement. In this work she describes the masterpiece of the French painter Jacques-Louis David. This painting portrays the height of brutality done with Sabine women during the French revolution. Ewa has done justice with this artwork by giving proper details and the main message of the artwork. She has not only cited this but also the crisis of professional life.

of Jacques-Louis David. The book starts with keen examination of the artwork produced by David in the prison which the author thinks is his self-representation, the inner him. Further on she discusses the involvement and the memories of the artist in the revolution, which revolves around the Sabine Women. She collected the preparatory drawing of the actual painting from his sketch book. She has discussed the body language and body construction beautifully. This art work led to major changes in the history of gender relation in French society and their laws.

Coming on Linda Nochlin, she is an American professor, art historian and a writer. She is notable by the fact that she dedicated all her work in representing the true image of a woman. We are discussing one of her famous work named as Dealing with Degas: Representations of Women and the Politics of Vision. This work talks about certain collection of art pieces interrelated to each other. Linda Nochlin wrote a part in it which discusses The Bellelli Family, especially women of this family. It represents the picture of a woman whose core interest was to pinch the burning question of that time which was gender discrimination.

Linda Nochlin has done a marvelous job in describing the Degas artwork, a woman is no less equal to a man and there is no house which can be home without her. The artwork of Degas shows that there was a passionless relation and an emotional disjunction between family’s man and woman. Last but not the least, coming onto the third book “The Painting of Modern Life: Paris in the Art of Manet and His Followers” by T.J. Clark who is an historian and also a writer. This book discusses mainly the artwork of Edouard Manet and his followers.

Manet without discriminating on class has portrayed the image of the bar-maids and courtesan. Through the nudity, he displayed the equality of women over the men of the society. His every art piece speaks for the freedom of women. T.J. Clarks in the book explains