Trip to the Saint Louis Art Museum

              

               On Friday, I paid a visit to the Saint Louis Art Museum. When I first got there, I thought that finding examples of feminism in artwork would be a fairly easy task. But after I had gone through two floors without seeing anything that I could particularly relate to, I started getting nervous. Although I did see some interesting examples of realism which portrayed women stereotypically as mothers, wives, artists, and musicians, there wasn’t anything that really stuck out to me. After finishing the last floor, still without finding something, I was pretty disappointed. After looking at the map, though, I realized there was one area of the museum that I had missed—which was where I found exactly what I was looking for!

                I went into a smaller area of the museum, which featured art that was more abstract than what the rest of the museum had to offer. While there, I came across a wall of artwork, described, overall, as “Figuration and the Body.” This description discussed how, the shift from abstraction to the reexamination of representation began to occur in the 1970s. This reexamination and representation included a focus on the human form. According to the description provided by the museum, “In the 1980s and ‘90s, the human body took on special significance for many female artists and artists of color. Figuration became a way to assert the importance of bodies marked as ‘other’ by gender and race, a notable contrast to the abstract art made by mostly white, male artist of previous generations.” I really enjoyed this statement, especially because of the fact that we have so often discussed the idea of minorities being labeled as “other” in class.

"Two Female Nudes on Purple Drape"- Philip Pearlstein (1964)

                To me, their description kind of implied that they were going to feature works of art that had been created by female artists. However, I was apparently wrong in thinking this, because the only works of art that I saw in this area were picture featuring women as their subject—they had all been created by male artists. I was also disappointed by the fact that, in order to convey the emotions that the artists wanted to portray in their paintings, they felt that they had to feature the women nude. The two examples of this that I am referring to are “Two Female Nudes on Purple Drape,” by Philip Pearlstein (1964), and “Naked Woman,” by Lucian Freud (1988). Although I was happy that these artists clearly did not set out to portray these nude women in an idealistic manner (they didn’t choose women who had what society would consider “perfect” bodies), I was still quite disappointed by the fact that they felt that they couldn’t convey emotion by depicting them wearing clothing.

"Naked Woman"- Lucian Freud (1988)

                All in all, I definitely enjoyed my trip to the Saint Louis Art Museum. I had never been there before, so it was a great first time experience. I am very glad that I chose to go there for this project!