Friday, December 5, 2014

Mystical Femme Fatale



Daria Modrzanska's second post

            Inconsistent with the conventional representation of female savants as excessively sexual or as sickly, barren women during the Victorian era, artists affiliated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood turned to a more controversial mode of their portrayal. This was explored by Beverly Taylor in her article, Female Savants and the Erotics of Knowledge in Pre-Raphaelite Art. She explained how the femme fatale- an alluringly beautiful and dangerously knowledgeable woman- encapsulates the Pre-Raphaelite notion of a female with both pelvic and brain power. Artistic representations of the femme fatale, such as Frederick Sandys’s Medea and Edward Burne-Jones’s The Beguiling of Merlin include mystic elements into their portrayals of dangerous women. This reflected what Taylor notes as “the excitement of discovery and experimentation, the erotic charge of mystery”. As a result, Pre-Raphaelite femme fatales often took the form of enchanting sorceresses and tempting sirens by luring men with their knowledge of magic and ultimately leading them to their demise.
Over time, the femme fatale motif entered the scope of contemporary artwork, accumulating in the 2012 exhibit of the same name. Put on by the Cella Gallery in Los Angeles, Femme Fatale explored the female allure through thirty-five individual artists and their respective approaches. Although painted in very different social contexts, the artwork of Nom Kinnear King and Chrystal Chan strongly echoes the Pre-Raphaelite notion of the “deadly woman”. 
            Nom Kinnear King concentrates her art as oil paintings of fantastic female figures. Her half-length compositions and two-dimensional backgrounds, which often incorporate floral and vegetal motifs, are reminiscent of many Pre-Raphaelite compositions. Like the Brotherhood, King displays her femme fatales as mystical creatures. With their large, mesmerizing eyes and entrancing stares, the figures enchant the viewer, luring him into their magical worlds. Their parted lips supply sensuousness while fantastic body modifications evoke power and threat. Chrystal Chan’s work is, in this regard very similar to King’s. Although not consistent in half-length compositions, Chan’s femme fatales evoke spirituality and otherworldliness through a “storybook” manner. While bringing about a sense of the mystical, the female figures enchant the viewer with their universal beauty and allure. Compared to other artists in the exhibition, it is noteworthy that both King and Chan decided to evoke a sense of the mystical in their depictions of the femme fatale, mirroring the sorceresses and sirens painted by the Pre-Raphaelites.


For more information on the Femme Fatale exhibition:

For more information on Nom Kinnear King:
For more information on Chrystal Chan:


Nom Kinnear King
Nom Kinnear King


Chrystal Chan

Chrystal Chan



1 comment:

  1. It is really interesting to see how Pre-raphalites' way to represent female fatale been used in the contemporary art. Especially the third one reminds me of William John Waterhouse's the Magical Circle, in which the witch wears a similar fur hat. Also the dark brown background echoes with the one on the Magical Circle, which creates a sense of mystery. However, I also find that in pre-Raphaelites work, female’s direct gaze toward the viewers was rarely depicted as a way to enchant, because in the Victoria Period, women were supposed to be looked at instead of actively looking at men. However, here, in contemporary art, female fatale ‘s direct gaze toward viewers becomes a reasonable and popular way to represent their sensuality, which may reveals that in the contemporary, woman is not as passive as before.

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