Identity Theft: Seeing or Not Seeing Gender in Art

One of my favorite minor masterpieces in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art is Young Woman Drawing (1801) by French master Jacques-Louis David. Or at least it was long thought to be by David. In the 1950s, experts believed that Constance Marie Charpentier, one of David’s women students, painted the work. Today, Marie-Denise Villers gets credit for the work. When David took credit, critics saw the hand of the master at work. When women entered the picture, suddenly the same painting lacked the qualities experts found previously. Beginning in March’s Women’s History Month, The Delaware Art Museum conducts an experiment in seeing gender in art in the exhibition Battle of the Sexes, in which visitors will vote on whether works were created by a female or male artist. The results may finally answer whether gender stereotypes in art are just another form of identity theft, in this case robbing female artists of the full identity of creator. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Identity Theft."

[Image: M.H. Pachnowski (born 1949). Cadmium Caribbean Diptych, 2010. Oil on canvas, 20 x 16 inches each. Lent by the artist.]

[Many thanks to The Delaware Art Museum for providing me with the image above from and press materials for Battle of the Sexes, which runs through May 22, 2011.]

Print the Legend: “Painting History: Delaroche and Lady Jane Grey” at the NGA, London

In the classic Western film The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, James Stewart’s character confesses that he wasn’t a hero only to hear the newspaper man he’s confessed to respond, "This is the west, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." When Lady Jane Grey met her end on the executioner’s block in 1554 after once serving for nine days as the Queen of England, the facts of her death soon became a legend of martyrdom. Nearly three centuries later, French artist Paul Delaroche revisited the legend in his 1833 painting The Execution of Lady Jane Grey (pictured), which became the sensation of the 1834 Salon exhibition. In Painting History: Delaroche and Lady Jane Grey, the National Gallery of Art in London reexamines that moment in history when a French artist used the legend of an English monarch to say something both about art and about French society in the nineteenth century. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Print the Legend."

[Image: Paul Delaroche, The Execution of Lady Jane Grey, 1833. Oil on canvas © The National Gallery, London.]



[Many thanks to the National Gallery of Art in London for providing me with the image above and other press materials for Painting History: Delaroche and Lady Jane Grey, which runs through May 23.]

A Delightful Surprise

When the women artists of today look back in history for examples to follow, they usually limit themselves to the artists of the twentieth century. Sure, an Artemisia Gentileschi here and a Rosa Bonheur there pop up to prove that women have fought for their rights over the centuries, but the larger pattern has been of successful women artists playing the male-dominated game. That dearth of historical heroines makes the lack of attention paid to nineteenth century French artist Adélaïde Labille-Guiard all the more criminal. Laura Auricchio’s Adélaïde Labille-Guiard: Artist in the Age of Revolution, the first book in English to tell the great pioneering portraitist’s story, rights that wrong in a delightful, insightful way. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "A Delightful Surprise."

[Image: Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, Head of a Young Woman, French, 1779. Pastel on paper, 21 1/2 x 17 1/2 in. Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum. 96.PC.327]

[Many thanks to Getty Publications for providing me with a review copy of Adélaïde Labille-Guiard: Artist in the Age of Revolution by Laura Auricchio and for the image above.]

In the Cards

One of the most daunting challenges for anyone wanting to know more about art is deciding where to start. What are the best books to read? Who are the artists you need to know? What paintings should you know first? Masterpiece Cards rides to the rescue of students and art lovers everywhere with their concise collection of 250 cards featuring the greatest paintings from the Renaissance to the 1960s. Masterpiece Cards took forty books on art history and combed their 17,000 pages for the names of paintings from that time span. They collected those names in a database and picked out the 250 works appearing the most often, thus generating a list of greatness as fair as any other. With beautiful quality reproductions and informative text on the rear, each card is a short lesson in art history.

For anyone familiar with art history, these cards will seem like mementos of old friends, such as David’s Oath of the Horatii (above, from 1784). On the reverse, text from one of the references used gives useful insights into the work and its place in the course of art history. A color-coded system at the top indicates where each painting is located, so if you’re headed to France, just grab those marked “France” and let the adventure begin. For students, these make the ultimate “flash cards” of art appreciation class. The information on the back allows you to arrange them in any order you wish—chronologically, nationally, or simply by artist. The text-free fronts will help those using the cards to build up a visual memory of the greats.

Masterpiece Cards has done a great job of avoiding many of the pitfalls of list-making in art. (A full list of the 250 paintings appears here.) Limiting the time frame from the Renaissance to the 1960 means saying no to Giotto, sadly, but also means steering clear of the Damien Hirsts of the contemporary scene, which seems like a fair trade to me. To avoid having a Picasso or Van Gogh take up too much space with their many masterpieces, Masterpiece Cards limited each artist to no more than three masterpieces. Although they’ve culled their choices from long-revered backbreaking tomes such as Janson’s, Arnason’s, and Gombrich’s histories, Masterpiece Cards avoided the trap of sexism, making sure to include obvious (such as Mary Cassatt) as well as not so obvious (the undervalued Helen Frankenthaler) female artists. The choices center almost exclusively on American and European artists, but that reflects the reference books more than any bias on the card-makers’ part, I believe. For better or worse, these cards should work with art history education first and foremost, building the foundation that the student can later tear down as they explore further the art of women, minorities, and non-Western cultures.

Most students today might prefer the easy access of online searches, but, just as e-books can’t replicate the satisfaction of their paper ancestors (at least in my opinion), there’s something satisfying with having these cards in hand. I remember growing up as a kid and having my parents give me the sample Time-Life cards that used to come in the mail to entice you to buy the whole set of cards offering all that is known on the animal kingdom, world history, etc. Ever the inquisitive kid, I used to marvel at those scraps of knowledge, even if the pudu or Council of Trent seemed like lonely facts separated from their laminated brethren. To flip through these cards, handle them, and rearrange them provides the ultimate initial hands-on experience for the young mind soaking in these images and ideas for the first time. As both a educational tool and source of entertainment, Masterpiece Cards are the real deal.

[Many thanks to Masterpiece Cards for providing me with some sample cards for review and for the images above.]