Faith Huang's Dec. Entry

The Gender Blur of the Aesthetic Body

Before the late 19th century, male and female figures are portrayed with distinct gender features that correspond to their sex. However, with the rise of the Aestheticism movement, this boundary of gender distinction starts to blur. As J.B. Bullen discussed in his essay, the Aestheticism “questioned the distinction between male and female, between masculinity and femininity, and between sexual differences.” With Edward Burne-Jones as the most prominent figure, paintings like Days of Creation became an iconic style of the Aestheticism, where it followed Whistler’s theory of “art for art’s sake” that values sensual response over the traditional moral message.

This gender ambiguity aesthetic from the Aestheticism movement can still be found in the modern fashion industry today. Fashion photography portrays models in the gray area of gender representation, two examples of such hermaphroditism type models are: Andrej Pejic and Erika Linder. Andrej Pejic, a 22 year old male model, poses for women’s wear because of his neutral features, whilst similar neutral gender traits enable Erika Linder to pose for menswear. Both models, resembling the figures of Burne-Jones, do not display distinct gender features, therefore, portrays gender ambiguity as neither masculine nor feminine.

Griselda Pollock’s fragment theory assists in illustrating the fashion photography through emphasizing the idea that “this is not a female (male) figure, but a fragment, ‘corps morcele.’” In other words, only certain body parts of the model are highlighted in the photographs; in this case, their faces and backs. By doing so, a frame is drawn around them to create an image that draws attention to only certain parts of the body and isolates the rest. This type of rendering is also seen in Rossetti’s Bocca Bacciata, which Pollock discussed in her essay as an example of “where the part stands for the whole.”

With the gender ambiguity aesthetic view of the Aestheticism movement and the fragmentation framing, the fashion industry adopts a new type of portrayal in their presentation of fashion. There are many reasons behind the rise of such trend, but I think Henry James’ statement, addressed in Bullen’s essay might be a good conclusive reason–“…they [the figures] are sublimely sexless, and ready to assume whatever charm of manhood or maidenhood the imagination desires.”

Reference

J.B. Bullen, “Burnes-Jones and the Aesthetic Body,” The Pre-Raphaelite Body: Fear and Desire in Painting, Poetry and Criticism, 2005.

Griselda Pollock, “Woman as Sign: Pyschoanalytic Readings,” Vision and Difference: Femininity, Feminism and the History of Art, 1988.

Edward Burne-Jones, Days of Creation

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Bocca Baciata, 1859

Fashion Photographs of Andrej Pejic

Fashion Photographs of Erika Linder

  

Ruimin Hui. Dec. Blog Entry

      The Beginning of drawing Prostitutes

Rossetti's writes the monologue poem Jenny to talk about his thought of prostitute through a man who is Jenny's customer.  In this poem, Rossetti portraits Jenny as a woman with grace even though for men she is just a tool to satisfy their desire (p.3). For Rossetti, lost women like Jenny are fragile and lonely since they are discriminated by other women. They are like “the volume seldom read”(p.5) and “rose shut in a book; in which pure women may not look”(p.7),which suggests that their beauty is inaccessible to the groups who obeys the Victorian tradition and only people who wants to break such tradition, like Rossetti himself, can appreciate their beauty and be sympathetic of their life (Keefe). He also parallels Jenny with Nell, the cousin of Jenny's customer that he is “proudest of ”and discovers that there is no difference between Jenny and Nell, no difference between whole and “normal” woman (Payne).

       His thinking about prostitution can be demonstrates in Found, an oil painting that makes him becomes the very first artists to draw prostitution. In this painting, Rossetti depicts a young fallen woman caught by her former lover who carries a lamb from countryside to the market in London (Morgan).  This event happens in such a remote place because prostitution is not accepted by the mainstream in Victorian British. Unlike Manet's Olympia, she dresses in normal manner and her entire body is covered by cloth, which makes her less directly related to sexual activity although her brilliantly red hair and pale skin implies her status as a whole (Mariotti). She looks extremely sad and guilty when caught and the lamb in the cart kind of suggests that she is innocent in heart (Mariotti). These two together demonstrates her unwillingness of being a prostitute.

Such treatment of prostitute reminds me of the controversial South Korean artist Shin Yun-Bok, who starts his career as a Joseon court painter but gains fame for his paintings of daily life and prostitutes and people think that he shifts his artistic focus due to his disappointment of the ruling class. Like Rossetti, Shin Yun-Bok lives in a period in which prostitutes are not considered as appropriate for painting and their social status is low. In Portrait of a Beauty, he paints a young prostitute who stands alone in the black background, which makes her isolated from where she lives. Also, Shin paints the young prostitute dressing in the usual manner of the period in which she lives and thus vagues her connection with sexual activities, like what Rossetti does in Found. What differentiates her from prostitutes depicted in paintings of the same time is the sadness on her face. Women who engage in sexual activities with men are often captured by their happiness when they spend their time with customers. However, this women stares at far away sadly and plays with the decoration on her cloth, which probably can be interpreted that she does not want to live as a prostitute.

Even though these two paintings come from different cultural background, they do demonstrate the similarity of how prostitutes are treated when such a disputable subject first appears in conservative culture. Artists tend to avoid nudity that makes people connect the women they paint directly to sexual exchange while focus on their sadness of becoming something that other people despise. And these approach is quite distinctive from French Impressionism artist Manet, whose Olympia is a nude prostitute and does not feel shame of her occupation.

Reference

Keefe, D(2004). D.G Rossetti's “Jenny”: Eschewing Thinking for Feeling. English/History of Art. Retrieved from http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/dgr/keefe5.html.
Marroit, M (2004). Rossetti's Found: Unfamiliar Territory. English and History of Art. Retrieved from http://www.victorianweb.org/painting/dgr/paintings/mariotti4.html
Morgan,H. Found by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1859). Retrieved from  http://www.victorianweb.org/painting/dgr/paintings/11.html
Payne, J(1998). Two Literary Treatments of Prostitution in mid-19 century England: Rossetti's “Jenny” and Gaskell's “Esther”. Retrieved from http://www.oocities.org/athens/aegean/7023/prostitution.html
Rossetti, G.D. Jenny (1870).

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Found

Shin Yun-Bok, Portrait of a Beauty, South Korea, late 18^th century.

Edouard Manet, Olympia

Icons of Beautiful Femininity by Qianhe Zhao

          Iconic women and the male gaze in Pre-Raphaelite art are two of the most engaging topics that we have discussed in class. I feel that Laura Mulvey’s essay on female icons in classic Hollywood cinemas is especially interesting in its attention to particular representations of women in film. Professor Marshall’s discussion of the link between women as icons in the films and in Pre-Raphaelite paintings is also very thought-provoking, and it has enabled me to interpret the ideas from the readings in a broader context.

Although paintings and films are different forms of art, they both share the characteristic of presenting visual images in a physical frame. It is naturally accepted that women are meant to look perfect on the screens and canvases, but what are the reasons for this acceptance? I have never thought about this question before because I, like many others, take beautiful women in movies and paintings for granted. I think one of the reasons why such depictions of female icons do not seem problematic is that they drive people’s attention away from who the women are towards how they are represented. As Budd Boetticher said, “What counts is what the heroine provokes or rather what she represents… In herself the women has not the slightest importance.”¹ By depicting iconic women in a two-dimensional space, artists present women as beautiful objects to be gazed upon and appreciated by the male-dominated world.

The purpose of women in old Hollywood film was to function as an eroticized figure who was intended to be the subject of the male gaze.² This idea is also shown in Pre-Raphaelite works. Rossetti’s Lady Lilith (1867) plays with feminine sexuality and the objectification of women. As we discussed in class, Rossetti emphasized Lilith’s full lips, pale skin and red hair, which makes Lilith a sensuous figure. Lilith looks into a mirror instead of looking out towards the viewers; however, her beauty still grasps the spectator's gaze. She occupies the central space in the painting and becomes the focus of the image.

There are two interesting parallels that can be made between Pre-Raphaelite representations of women and Hollywood female movies stars. The first one, as Mulvey argues, is that women are more likely to be depicted in a two-dimensional space, which makes them become an ideal image rather than a representation of a living person. In Lady Lilith, although the window may indicate some sense of depth, the dark wall background emphasizes a rather flat space. The flowers around Lilith are like decorations on a flat plane surface, surrounding Lilith in a shallow space. The second point is, as Professor Marshall explains, how women's behaviors before the camera give them the ability to stop the narrative and attract the male gaze. Lilith in Rossetti’s painting has the same quality of extreme beauty. Lilith sits on the chair and holds a mirror as she combs through her long hair. Her hand stops in the middle of the action, creating a strange sense of stillness, which makes me want to stop and gaze. It is like when the camera turns to a woman, everything else stops and the viewers’ attention has been drawn toward her.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Lady Lilith, 1868.

Both Mulvey and Pollock’s readings try to explain such presentations of iconic female beauty in terms of psychoanalysis. The perfection of women reflects male’s fear of a woman’s “otherness”, characterized by the physical differences of the female body³. By presenting the woman as having perfect or extreme beauty, men try to compensate for women's guilt for not having a penis. It is interesting to think about how Freud may explain such subconscious needs. Men have “castration anxiety”, but they are also the ones in power. The male gaze reveals the superior status of men in the society. They are the judge, and they decide what women should look like. In this sense, women are portrayed as passive in the paintings and on the screens. Another display of men’s power is that men tend to be shown in three-dimensional space in the movies⁴. Occupying more space also suggests men’s more active and dominant role, which contrasts with the representation of women in Pre-Raphaelite art and Old Hollywood cinema.

Image link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dante_Gabriel_Rossetti#mediaviewer/File:Lady-Lilith.jpg

1 As cited in Laura Mulvey, “Visual pleasure and narrative cinema”, course packet.

2 Mulvey, “Visual pleasure and narrative cinema”

3 Lecture notes, 28 Oct.

4 Mulvey, “Visual Pressure and narrative cinema”

Kelsey Fuller's Blog Post #2

            For my second blog post I decided to further compare Elizabeth Siddall’s and Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s poetry that we looked at in class. Both individuals address topics of love quite frequently, though often in strikingly different manners. In Siddall’s “Dead Love,” the last stanza states that:

            Sweet, never weep for what cannot be,

            For this God has not given,

            If the merest dream of love were true

            Then, sweet, we should be in heaven,

            And this is only earth, my dear,

            Where true love is not given. (“Dead Love” 13-18)

Siddall is making the claim that love can be true only in heaven, for on earth “love is seldom true”  (“Dead Love” 2) and passes on eventually. When this is compared to Rossetti’s “The Blessed Damozel” of 1881 there are a few similarities in theme. “The Blessed Damozel,” in abbreviated terms, is about two lovers separated by the death of the lady. The pair muses the fate of their love in their respective spheres, heaven and earth. While Siddall’s poem emphasizes the idea that true love is unachievable on earth, Rossetti offers a different view on the subject. Based on “The Blessed Damozel,” Rossetti paints a picture where true love is possible on earth, yet he appears unsure what will happen to this love when it is separated between heaven and earth. The final stanza states:

            (I saw her smile.) But soon their path

            Was vague in distant spheres:

            And then she cast her arms along

            The golden barriers,

            And laid her face between her hands,

            And wept. (I heard her tears.) (“The Blessed Damozel” 139-144)

I believe these “golden barriers” refer to the separation of the lovers between heaven and earth. There is a sad and desperate tone to the final stanza as though these lovers will not overcome their separation. I think it is striking to consider that the situations described in Siddall and Rossetti’s poems. Siddall’s poem claims that true love cannot be found on earth and Rossetti’s lovers are clearly meant to have found that together. While it would be easy to jump to the conclusion that Siddall and Rossetti are referencing their own relationship I don’t think it is fair to blindly apply the poem to that situation given we do not know when Siddall wrote her poems. But, I think the comparison of Rossetti’s “Body’s Beauty” and “Soul’s Beauty” to Siddall’s “The Lust of the Eyes” can aid in the connection of their poetry to their relationship.

            “The Lust of the Eyes” appears to be written from the perspective of a man leaving his wife or “lady.” On the other hand, Rossetti’s two poems contrast a woman’s sexual beauty with her soul’s beauty. I think “Body’s Beauty” and “Soul’s Beauty” could easily be interpreted as discussing the beauty of a mistress with the beauty of a wife, respectively. It is interesting then, that Siddall chooses to discuss, from a husband’s perspective, the “pros and cons” of his wife. The connection between these poems is undeniable and speaks to the issue of how the two artists should be approached from an Art History perspective. While it is important to treat each as an individual artist, significant in their own way, they are clearly intertwined with one another. These potential call and responses within Siddall and Rossetti’s poetry present a fascinating research topic.

Jenniffer Williams' Blog Post 2

Valued Image and Vilified Labor:

Women as Artists and Models in the 19^th Century

  While Pre-Raphaelitism was described by its founders as a Brotherhood, there were several notable women who were associated with and made significant creative contributions to the movement.  However, their work as artists was often unrecognized or undervalued at the time of production.  In present day, much of the work is now unavailable to be studied due to later owners' disregard for the works, or the works being destroyed by the artist herself due to lack of success[1].   The reasons for the limited success of these woman artists varied from restricted access to education and artistic training, to their work being attributed to a male artist to whom they were related, such as a brother or a husband, to a lower market value for art works produced by women[2].  However, women also faced the additional constraints on their ability to have successful careers as artists due to the societal expectations that women should conduct their lives solely in the private sphere, while men could exhibit their work in public and achieve recognition and success.  Additionally, when women, such as Elizabeth Siddall, posed as artist's models, their work as models earned them negative reputations, while their images earned the male artists who painted them success and recognition.

         As mentioned above, Elizabeth Siddall was a model for several of the artists in the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood.  In particular, John Everett Millais' Ophelia (1851-1852) and Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Beata Beatrix (1870) are well-known representations of Siddall that are counted among the artists' best-known works.  However, rather than benefiting Siddall, working as an artist's model instead resulted in her being labeled as working class and described as “under ban” for certain social engagements and “not a lady” by a middle class woman artist Barbara Bodichon[3]. In this way, Siddall's work and her appearance in public sphere through her representation in art earned her notoriety while her image earned fame for the male artists.

        In addition to working as a model, Siddall also produced her own artwork.  However, she still remains best-known as a Pre-Raphaelite model and wife, rather than an independent artist[4].  While her image was made public through the work of male artists, these roles placed her more firmly in the private sphere, thus limited her ability to be successful as an independent artist.  Her work was even described at one point as “under Rossetti's influence” and as having “no original creative power”, due to the instruction of her mentor and husband[5].  Again, her role as a wife has led to an interpretation that she was incapable of independent creativity, due to the expected role of women to remain in the private sphere and rely on men for support.  While some similarities in style exist between Siddall and Rossetti's work, the two artists remain distinct from one another, despite critiques that say otherwise.  This is made apparent in a comparison between Siddall's Self Portrait (1854) and Rossetti's Regina Cordium (1860), both representing Siddall's image.  Siddall's Self Portrait presents her image as fully dressed with an upright posture, open eyes, and while the figure engages in direct eye contact with the viewers, she appears reserved and austere.  Rossetti's painting, on the other hand, depicts Siddall in a more sensuous manner, with bare shoulders, a forward posture, and a downward gaze that does not directly address the viewer.  While Rossetti's representation of Siddall was successful in the public sphere, her own representation of herself was not, showing that women's labor in the public sphere was not as highly valued as men's representations of their images.

Elizabeth Siddall, Self Portrait, 1854.

Dante Rossetti, Regina Cordium, 1960.      

          Other women involved in the Pre-Raphaelite movement were also limited due to their domestic roles or needs to stay out of the public sphere.  The poet Christina Rossetti, for example, turned down an invitation to join the original Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood because she felt it was improper to be “on display” as a woman in Victorian society[6].  On the other hand, her brother, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, exhumed the body of his wife in order to retrieve poetry so that it could be published, an act which contributed even more attention to his work in the public sphere.  Joanna Boyce, another woman artist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite movement, died from complications of childbirth, a result of one of the responsibilities of her domestic role which limited her success as an artist.

       In order to be successful as an artist, one is required to have a public presence through, at a minimum, the display of artwork, and in some cases a public persona, such as that of Dante Gabriel Rossetti.  Women, however, were often not valued, and in some cases were vilified for taking a role in the public sphere as artists and models, which is an additional reason why women artists in the 19^th century may not have achieved the same recognition as their male counterparts.

---

[1]    Elizabeth Prettejohn, The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites (London: Tate Publishing, 2000), 69.

[2]    Ibid.

[3]    Deborah Cherry, “Elizabeth Siddall: Woman in the Relay of Gaze,” in Painting Women: Victorian Woman Artists (London: Routledge, 1993), 189.

[4]    Griselda Pollock and Deborah Cherry, “Woman as Sign in Pre-Raphaelite Literature: The Representation of Elizabeth Siddall,” in Vision and Difference: Femininity, Feminism and the History of Art (London: Routledge, 1988), 91.

[5]    Pollock and Cherry, “Woman as Sign,” 97.
[6]    Prettejohn, The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites, 71.

Image links:
http://lizziesiddal.com/portal/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/selfportrait-1853-54.jpg    http://preraphaelitesisterhood.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/reginacordium-siddal.jpg

Faith's Nov. entry

The Gender Blur of the Aesthetic Body

Before the late 19th century, male and female figures are portrayed with distinct gender features that correspond to their sex. However, with the rise of the Aestheticism movement, this boundary of gender distinction starts to blur. As J.B. Bullen discussed in his essay, the Aestheticism “questioned the distinction between male and female, between masculinity and femininity, and between sexual differences.” With Edward Burne-Jones as the most prominent figure, paintings like Days of Creation became an iconic style of the Aestheticism, where it followed Whistler’s theory of “art for art’s sake” that values sensual response over the traditional moral message.

This gender ambiguity aesthetic from the Aestheticism movement can still be found in the modern fashion industry today. Fashion photography portrays models in the gray area of gender representation, two examples of such hermaphroditism type models are: Andrej Pejic and Erika Linder. Andrej Pejic, a 22 year old male model, poses for women’s wear because of his neutral features, whilst similar neutral gender traits enable Erika Linder to pose for menswear. Both models, resembling the figures of Burne-Jones, do not display distinct gender features, therefore, portrays gender ambiguity as neither masculine nor feminine.

 Griselda Pollock’s fragment theory assists in illustrating the fashion photography through emphasizing the idea that “this is not a female (male) figure, but a fragment, ‘corps morcele.’” In other words, only certain body parts of the model are highlighted in the photographs; in this case, their faces and backs. By doing so, a frame is drawn around them to create an image that draws attention to only certain parts of the body and isolates the rest. This type of rendering is also seen in Rossetti’s Bocca Bacciata, which Pollock discussed in her essay as an example of “where the part stands for the whole.”

With the gender ambiguity aesthetic view of the Aestheticism movement and the fragmentation framing, the fashion industry adopts a new type of portrayal in their presentation of fashion. There are many reasons behind the rise of such trend, but I think Henry James’ statement, addressed in Bullen’s essay might be a good conclusive reason–“…they [the figures] are sublimely sexless, and ready to assume whatever charm of manhood or maidenhood the imagination desires.”

Reference

J.B. Bullen, “Burnes-Jones and the Aesthetic Body,” The Pre-Raphaelite Body: Fear and Desire in Painting, Poetry and Criticism, 2005.

Griselda Pollock, “Woman as Sign: Pyschoanalytic Readings,” Vision and Difference: Femininity, Feminism and the History of Art, 1988. 

Edward Burne-Jones, Days of Creation

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Bocca Baciata, 1859

Fashion Photographs of Andrej Pejic (left) and Erika Linder (right)