Chapter 6: Gender, Nationality and Ethnicity

Learning Outcomes

This chapter in Thinking About Art allows you to:

· define the concepts of gender, nationality and ethnicity

· examine the representation of gender, nationality and ethnicity in art and architecture, and consider how this aids meaning and interpretation

· consider how the gender, nationality and ethnicity of artists and architects may influence the creation and appearance of art and architecture

· compare and contrast different works of art and architecture that address a similar subject.

This chapter in Thinking About Art introduces the important concepts of gender, nationality and ethnicity and considers how they may be significant for the interpretation of works of painting, sculpture and architecture. These themes are explored in a variety of different ways by artists, both consciously and unconsciously, and very often the different themes overlap in a particular work.

In the discussion of gender, the ideas of pioneering female artists and art theorists are examined in relation to gender relations in art-historical discourse and in relation to the representation of male and female bodies. Issues of power in relation to gender and art are also examined in terms of their symbiotic relationship with ethnicity, especially in early twentieth-century Europe.

The concepts of nationality and ethnicity are inextricably linked; both may be understood in the context of European exploration and colonial expansion. Nationality is examined primarily in relation to national monuments and the conscious decision of artists, sculptors and architects to create iconic emblems for their states.

In relation to ethnicity, the legacy of the colonial past is examined in terms of the unequal relationship that existed between the colonisers and the colonised in the early twentieth century, namely, White Europeans assuming supremacy over people from ‘other’ lands. Such discrimination was challenged later on in the century and different ethnicities were in some cases embraced by artists proud to claim a non-White identity. The label ‘other’ was considered to be a disadvantage, especially where White artists tended to assume no label at all.

While works are studied primarily for their content in terms of gender, nationality and ethnicity, their formal elements and materials, techniques and processes are, more often than not, inextricably linked to their meaning.

Gender

Gender is a complex issue and best understood in relation to its difference from sex. What is the difference between sex and gender? What do we mean by femininity and masculinity? Gender commonly relates to what we understand as being either ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’. In this sense gender is socially and culturally constructed rather than biologically determined. For this reason, gender is often treated stereotypically. For example, women have often been shown in passive and subordinate positions in visual media, while men have typically been portrayed in active and powerful roles. This contrasts with a person’s sex, which is fixed; sex is a biological term used to classify human beings as either male or female. Our sex is determined by our physical difference at the level of our genitals and hormones.

Nationality

So much of art history is viewed through the lenses of national and geographical difference and the history of nations competing for dominance. Trends in international trading and the recent phenomenon of globalisation may have led to the erosion of distinct national identities. Despite these changes, nations across the globe have erected monuments that assert their national supremacy to the world.

Ethnicity

Ethnicity is a term used to describe a person’s cultural heritage and/or racial identity, and this includes a shared language, food, style of dress and so on. To have an ethnic identity involves having a sense of pride and union with others of the same culture, which is why the term is inextricably linked with nationality.

Exploring issues of gender further

· Some of artist-photographer Cindy Sherman’s appropriated the look of the 1950s film noir genre. Use the internet to find out what the stereotypical roles for men and women were in film noir.

· Chapter 4 of Thinking About Art explores Impressionist artist Mary Cassatt’s Lydia at a Tapestry Frame, c.1881. Lydia was Mary Cassatt’s sister, and neither woman married. Cassatt may paint a typical domestic, bourgeois scene here, and what art historian Griselda Pollock referred to as one of the ‘spaces of femininity’, but the composition is made uncomfortably claustrophobic by the loom’s frame, which threatens to break out of the picture plane. Could this be symbolic of Cassatt’s views on the social position of women at this time?

· Using the internet, look up Scarlett Johansson’s advertisement for Dolce & Gabbana’s ‘Rose Fragrance’, 2009. How does this advertisement image compare to Ingres’ painting of beautiful women La Grande Odalisque, 1814?

· This chapter considers the view, attributed to the ancient Greek philosopher Protagoras and at the centre of Renaissance Humanism, that ‘man was the measure of all things’. Examine the painting The Ideal City, attributed to the school of Piero della Francesca, in the fifteenth century, and ask yourself the question: Where is ‘man’ represented here? This is a challenging task but remember the significance of man’s proportion in relation to the buildings of Renaissance Italy.

· Artist Louise Bourgeois discusses gender roles on the SFMOMA webpage ‘Louise Bourgeois on Gender Roles’.

· The Guerrilla Girls have targeted the issue of sexual and racial discrimination in their hard-hitting posters. For facts, information and interview material, visit their website.

· Read Virginia Woolf’s extended essay A Room of One’s Own, 1929. The essay is based on a series of lectures Woolf delivered at Newnham College and Girton College, two women’s colleges at Cambridge University, in October 1928. In what is widely viewed as a feminist text, Woolf presents the idea that a female writer needs both money and a room of her own if she is to achieve literary success in a patriarchal profession.

· Griselda Pollock’s ‘Modernity and the Spaces of Femininity’ in Vision and Difference: Femininity, Feminism and the Histories of Art (Routledge, 1988) is a must-read in conjunction with gender in relation to Impressionism.

· Read Meagan Morris’ essay ‘Great Moments in Social Climbing: King Kong and the Human Fly’ in Beatriz Colomina’s Sexuality & Space (Princeton Architectural Press, 1992, pp. 1–52). In this essay Morris examines, among other things, the idea that ‘a big tall building asserts a big male ego’ (p.7).

· Read Debra Coleman, Elizabeth Danze and Carol Henderson’s Architecture and Feminism (Princeton Architectural Press, 1996).

· Read Leslie K. Weisman’s Discrimination by Design: A Feminist Critique of the Man-Made Environment (University of Illinois Press, 1994). Weisman examines power struggles and space in relation to gender, race and class.

· The ‘gaze’ in film and in art has been hotly debated over recent decades and evolved from a phenomenon that was deemed to be exclusively male to one which is now also female. Read Lorraine Gamman and Margaret Marshment’s The Female Gaze: Women as Viewers of Popular Culture (Real Comet Press, 1989). This text acknowledges Laura Mulvey’s authoritative text on the ‘male gaze’ but updates the debate with the argument for a viable ‘female gaze’.

· Read Jane L. Carroll and Alison G. Stewart’s journal article ‘Saints, Sinners, and Sisters: Gender and Northern Art in Medieval and Early Europe’ (Sixteenth-Century Journal, Vol. 36, No. 3, 2005). The power of the ‘male gaze’ is examined as a cultural rather than exclusively ‘male’ gendered one. For example, Dutch art is examined in relation to its propensity to respect and admire women’s labours at a time in history when a woman’s domesticity was assigned to neither inferiority nor stereotype in the north of Europe.

· Read Leon Battista Alberti’s The Family in Renaissance Florence, Book III: I Libri Della Famiglia (Waveland Press, 1994) for an insight into a fifteenth-century perspective on gender and space.

· Judy Chicago invited 39 famous women in history, one of which was Virginia Woolf, to dinner in her famous installation The Dinner Party.

· Who was Virginia Woolf? Watch the film The Hours, 2002, starring Nicole Kidman, for an idea of the frustration experienced by Woolf, a female intellectual born too early to flourish.

Exploring issues of nationality further

· Watch The Private Life of a Masterpiece: The Complete Series 1–5 (Masterpieces 1800 to 1850 – Eugène Delacroix: Liberty Leading the People), 2008.

· Read the ‘In Context’ section subtitled ‘Art and Politics’ in Hugh Honour and John Fleming, A World History of Art (6th ed., Lawrence King, 2002).

· Visit the Eiffel Tower website for a gallery of images, videos and information relating to its history, national status and visitor numbers.

Exploring issues of ethnicity further

· For a fuller understanding of the social and historical context surrounding the Royal Pavilion read Jessica Rutherford’s A Prince’s Passion: The Life of the Royal Pavilion (Royal Pavilion Libraries & Museums, 2003).

· Look up a series of documentary-style clips featuring Edward Said discussing Orientalism on YouTube.

Exam Practice Based on Chapter 6

1 With reference to two paintings or two sculptures, examine the ways women have been represented by men.

2 Discuss the ways in which gender has been represented in two works of art.

3 To what extent do you think architecture can display gendered characteristics?

4 To what extent do you think architecture can display national characteristics?