The female body is one of the oldest and most commonly depicted motifs in visual arts. Famous paintings of women had a profound influence on the world of art and popular culture that graced them with remarkable fame and an audience spanning far beyond the museum-going elite. In the following article, we've examined ten of the most popular paintings of women to see what makes them so extraordinary and appealing for people of various backgrounds and time periods. In the mids Sandro Botticelli revolutionized the art world by painting the first non-religious nude since the ancient times. His famous Birth of Venus painting represents the true return to the ideals of antiquities as the artist borrowed both the narrative and the elements of the composition from ancient Greece. The story about Venus' ride on the shell was taken from the celebrated poet Homer while the main subject's intricate pose is reminiscent of the Greek statue entitled Capitoline Venus.
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Sandro Botticelli - Birth of Venus, mid 1480s
This rebellious female painter of bold nude portraits has been overlooked for a century. Over a century ago, Suzanne Valadon began painting lively nude portraits of sensual and self-assured women, with full, curvy bodies and pubic hair. Occasionally, she painted nude men as well, bucking art historical tradition and presenting them as figures of desire. Her canvases were full of bold outlines, vibrant colors and loose brushwork, and she deftly illustrated her subjects' interior lives, rather than the idealized scenes of leisure so prevalent at the time. Championed by some of her most famous contemporaries, including Edgar Degas and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Valadon was no minor artist, and one of the few women painters of the era to receive critical acclaim. Yet, like many women artists of the 20th century, her fame faded after her death. Suzanne Valadon was a famous artists' model who posed for Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Henri Toulouse-Lautrec before striking out on her own to paint. But today, curators and art historians are taking a second look at Valadon's works, and reconsidering her life with more nuance. This September, the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia will stage her first major institutional show in the US, positioning her as an important yet underrecognized modern artist. From the start, Valadon was a controversial figure in Paris' thriving art scene at the turn of the century, known as much for her bohemian attitudes and provocative personal life as her distinct, rebellious vision.
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By Artspace Editors. Since some of humanity's earliest artworks, the nude has been an art form betrothed to passive figures of women, often meant to tantalize and seduce the assumed male viewer, or to embody idealized notions of athleticism and power in the male figure. Still, the nude has largely remained chained to the male gaze, though this is quickly changing as feminist ideals of vulnerability and politics of the body penetrate the art world, making for more critical modes of representation. Lives and works in Brussels. Nude climbing up the stairs , Anthropomorphic and anachronistic, the group might at first glance seem to fall into the category of anatomic metaphors made in famous by Blues musician Muddy Waters in the s when he recorded the not-too-subtle song Electric Man. Yet the decision to situate the paintings in the final room of the show opened up another, more poignant interpretation: a celebration of the energy source that made the art on display possible, as well as a hint at the element of participation required of the viewer in order to experience it. Viewed from a frontal perspective, and defined by a stronger realism that makes the figure easily identifiable, Nude climbing up the stairs transcends its original muse to bring to the fore issues of objectification and voyeurism. Female Jesus crying in public , Surrounded by an arena of portraits of visibly subdued men, some sobbing, some averting their eyes, a crucified woman literally drowns in her own tears.
The art of the nudity has been seen differently throughout cultures and generations. Joe Hedges discusses the difference in sexualized art of women and men and cultural shifts about the acceptance of nudity. Nudity is a constant in our media today, from billboards to commercials to modern art. This is something that even today would not go over very well in many churches. He said people choose to paint and sculpt nude figures for a variety of reasons. Michael Holloman, an assistant professor of drawing and art history, said the human form has been idealized since the time of the Greeks and Romans. The human form and how it is represented has been one of the most important parts of culture and identity. He said there are more female nudes in art than male nudes. In the Metropolitan Museum of Art, there is a difference in terms of ratio, and there are feminist scholars who are trying to push back on that.
