Museum Visit: St. Louis Art Museum

Not gonna lie, I visited the St. Louis Art Museum the weekend that this assignment was given to us, I've just been a bit lazy, so it's taken me up until now to write all about my experience!

Snapping a selfie with a nude woman

As a Wisconsin native, I wouldn't exactly say that I was given much exposure to different kinds of art work (Milwaukee isn't as culturally diverse as they might have you believe). However, my senior year of high school, I was lucky enough to take AP Art History, and I learned a lot about different artists, eras, and stylistic traits of famous works. So I was very lucky to be able to see some of the pieces I saw in my textbooks in real life!

Something we talked a lot about in my class was hierarchal positioning. It can be found in almost every piece of art since the beginning of art itself. Any figures who are standing above others, or placed in the foreground, are supposed to be noted as more important. This is often the case with kings v. subjects, warriors v. defeated enemies, and of course, men v. women. I noticed that in many of the works in the museum, male figures were almost always standing, and female figures were almost always seated. Beyond this, women were usually painted either fully or partially nude, their faces mostly obscured or generically painted with ideal concepts of beauty. In fact, the only time when women seemed to be clothed was when they were part of an official portrait.

Yes this is a real thing.

This is part of a larger difference that I noticed about the nudes in the art museum. While the male nude figures seemed to represent athleticism, and the ideal bodily form, female nudes seemed to be dripping in sexuality. Regardless of form (i.e. sculpture, painting, drawing, etc.) women were almost always sexual objects, while men appeared to be strong individuals. After watching the documentary Dreamworlds, it's interesting to see how the artistic view of women has carried itself through years of patriarchal media. Art is almost singularly dominated by men, so of course, women are always depicted through what ever kind of specific lens men chose for them. They are symbols of fertility, sex, temptation and sometimes contrastingly, innocence. Some artists, (French impressionist Courbet comes to mind) are known for painting women as crudely sexual; bordering on what would be considered pornographic.

Here's one of Courbet's works, it's not found in SLAM, but I thought I would put it in this reflection anyway because I think it fairly shows how women are viewed in art. Could you imagine a man ever being painted in this sort of manner?

P.S. This woman was a prostitute of Courbet's...nice.