Final Artist Statement
The Guerrilla Girls once created a statement that declared, “Do women have to be Naked to get into the Met. Museum?” The statistics have fluctuated on this evolving artwork, but the truth stands clear: A large percentile of artists in galleries are male and majority of their nudes are female. Feminist art has changed the face of artistic expression, facing the male gaze head on and presenting the female body as a weapon rather than a muse. The issue with this shift comes in the vulgar abuse of the vulva. Women have taken back their bodies, painted it how they want, and, in turn, have objectified themselves. To imply that the vulva is the perfect representation of woman creates two stigmas: That all women have vulvas, placing transgender artists completely out of the picture, and that women are only capable of portraying themselves.
Since the Christian indoctrination of Rome, women artists have been removed from artistic expression. Because art was considered artisan, it was not effeminate to practice painting. The upperclass women that were allowed to paint were subject to landscape artistry and simple self portraits. Because it was unladylike to study nudes or anatomy, women were forcibly left behind until contemporary times. I have personally heard the phrase, “I paint the female form because I am most familiar with it” spilled from the mouth’s of women artists numerous times. If that is the case, how have men accurately painted women all this time? By stating that the female form is easier, we are accepting that we are the lesser gender. The truth is we are exposed to more female nudes, and thus it is easier to duplicate over and over again.
So, I present the other side of the coin. Here is the male nude. Before, the only acceptable male nudes are always as follows: The nude Adonis, fearless in battle even without armor or that of the martyr saint, frail and in the moment of death. The sexism of portraying martyrs in the nude is that the nudity serves to feminize them. We only see Christian figures dude when they are at their weakest, whereas we see women nude consistently-- the implication being that women are always weak. I picked a frail form in order to satire this and also to steer away from the warrior body, refusing men the ability to cry “sexism” by creating unrealistic standards. The piece thus becomes a parody. It stands vertically as most female nudes lay horizontal, so men can still feel like they are standing tall among the women.
Continuing Christian themes, I drew inspiration from Matthias Grunewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece. During a time of Italian idealization, Grunewald chose to depict Christ in utter pain and despair. His body arches in dismay. But it is not the main figure I am interested in. At the foot of the altarpiece, lays Christ post-mortem, horizontally across the opening doors. The altarpiece opens right at his knees, a quiet symbol of the amputations associated with Saint Anthony’s Fire. I chose to duplicate this idea on two wood panels. This male form separates at the waist-- it is easy to remove the genitals and leave a bare torso. Men’s nipples are not seen as sexual like a woman’s. Hers are considered sexual organs.
Through use of bright color and sarcastic symbolism, I present a male nude. A soft field of bearded irises serves as nothing more than clever word play, masculating flowers the way I hoped to masculate the nude. Why women have been objectified in art for so long seems lazy at this point. Feminism has attempted to take it back without success. There are still fewer female artists in the MoMA. Maybe we should, instead, starting adding objectified male nudes.
