By Isabell Macrina
Hometown Weekly Reporter
In celebration of International Women’s day this past weekend, Wellesley Free Library held the presentation “Fierce Females: Women in Art” by Jane Oneail, founder of Culturally Curious.
Her company curates and presents art appreciation programs in New England. This one is to celebrate the fearlessness, creativity, and determination of women throughout history who refused to be defined by tradition and techniques.
Oneail took the patrons through a “speed dating” to introduced some of the artists that made the most waves with their pieces, from traditional art to abstract and conceptual pieces. She starts with showing a contrast in how men and women were treated in artistic representation.
In showing two of Diego Velázquez’s pieces, Rokeby Venus and Felipe III a caballo (Phillip III on horseback). The subjects of each gave wildly different perceptions; while the man was triumphant, active, and dominant, the woman was passive, vulnerable, seductive, and nude. Because men were typically behind the portrait, they put women in the position of being lesser than, until they took the brush for themselves.
Oneail defines fierce females as “women who created art that defied expectations and pushed beyond the boundaries of what was considered appropriate, acceptable or desirable for their time.” She started with Angelica Kauffman, who as a child was asked to pick between music or art as a youth. She depicts that dilemma in many of her pieces throughout her career. Kauffman decided to be a history painter when women weren’t allowed to do it.
Some of her famous pieces depicted the famed women in history, from Cornelia, Mother of the Gracci, to Penelope waiting for Odysseus to come back from Troy.
Another standout was Alice Neel, who dedicated herself to portrait painting when there wasn’t much of a demand for it. She painted poor people around her who were getting treatment for Tuberculosis, not glorifying it for the paintings. Diane Arbus specialized in street photography. She would work with people she met on the street to get the perfect image and was famed for capturing people on the edge of society.
Miriam Shapiro championed the idea that women have been making art all along, we just didn’t dare to call it that. She cofounded feminist art programs and used traditionally feminine forms of art like quilting and collage, even turning a doll house into a piece of art.
Modern artists like Kara Walker are still making waves to this day. She used the art form of silhouette heads, traditionally done in white houses for their children and seen as upper class, to depict the southern history and black experience in the 19th century with her work “Virginia Lynch Mob.” A large statue she made, “The Subtlety,” was covered in sugar in the old Domino Sugar Factory and depicted the facial features African-Americans were villainized for in history.
The statements these women make with their art have continued to change the way art and women are perceived by the masses. For more talks like this, check out the Culturally Curious site for their next presentation.
