Kara Marie White

AHS252
Medieval to Modern Art
Sp20
Part Three Essay

Depictions and attitudes about women are often revealed in art

When picking out the art pieces that I wanted to discuss, I

wanted to have a male and a female artist because I feel like for
the most part, they would have very different attitudes towards
women overall. I knew I wanted to Mexican art right away because
I know they have many different stylistic depictions of portraits
and honestly most of the periods from part three do not have as
many portraits. Like Bauhaus, abstract expressionism, and
minimalism have few portrait pieces. When I chose to do Mexican
art, I figured that Frida, the obvious choice might be good to do
as my woman artist. I didn’t want to pick any of her self-
portraits because how you see yourself is usually different than
how you see your overall gender. Not that any one piece can prove
exactly what you think about an entire group of people. When
looking through the few portraits of women that she has done
other than herself involved ones, I found a portrait she had done
of Natasha Gelman. Then I had noticed that her husband, Diego
Riveria made a portrait of the same woman, that looks completely
different. I think analyzing both of their depictions would be
very interesting since it is the same person. I then looked into
some different pop artist and thought about doing Andy Warhol,
but I am honestly not a big fan of his work and decided to go
with Roy Lichtenstein and his comic book style art. I debated
whether or not I wanted to include a piece that had a speech
bubble because obviously the words change the meaning of the
piece quite a bit, but in the end I decided it was probably best
if I did due to the fact that most of his works seemed to have
speech bubbles. I wanted to pick a piece that fits his personal
story best.

In Lichtenstein's piece, Drowning Girl there is a woman who

is water, with large waves going above her head while she cries.
She is crying and is thinking ‘I don’t care! I’d rather sink –
than call Brad for help!’ He uses the expected bold solid colors
of the time period. It is all very graphic and not really
realistic, but it is still proportional and representational. It
is stylistic rather than a lack of skills. It appears to look
similar to an art piece that would have been made digitally,
which is not the case. Without the words I would have guessed
that the piece indicates weakness. The woman is crying while
drowning. It has no indication that she is fighting for her life,
but also there no set way of knowing that she is not fighting
either. With the words added into it, it makes me believe that he
was saying that women are stubborn. Not only stubborn but
stubborn to a fault. She is willing to die rather than ask for
help. Part of me is wondering who Brad is. My guess would be that
he is a significant other, but it could be a father or a friend
or something else. I am also wondering if there is a reason why
she is not calling him, it could be that she doesn’t want to look
weak, which could be her weakness, or it could something more
sinister. My guess is that he meant it as the first option, but
it could also be because he is abusive, and maybe she feels like
she has no one else and she would rather die than go back to him.
I hope that he is just pointing out how stubborn women tend to
be.
 In Frida Kahlo's portrait of Natasha Gelman, it is just her
face, it is a shoulder up portrait. It is professional. She
appears wealthy because of the fuzz coat and her curled hair. She
appears serious and has little emotion. Whereas in Rivera’s piece
she is displayed, her whole body is shown. She once again appears
wealthy with a long flowing, slinky like dress. She has matching
toe and fingernail polish. She is lounging on a couch and has
lots of jewelry. She appears to be much more sexualized. With
the shape of her dress and the lilies in the background she looks
like she is one of them. I’m sure the lilies have some sort of
symbolism or maybe he just saw the shape of her dress and decided
to add the lilies in to compare which creates a beautiful
composition either way. I think the sexualization is what shows
their attitude towards this particular woman the most. Kahlo
appears to see her more as a colleague or friend while Rivera
seems to see her in a romantic or sensual manner. I think the way
Rivera demonstrated it shows he respects her by not
hypersexualizing the image. She appears to be just showing off
her beauty, the beauty of a flower.

Though I did not find a huge difference between men and

women's attitude towards women because each of them appeared to
have their own views. I did think it was interesting to look at
how artist portrayed their women used in their work. But I think
every human will see different groups of people differently and
art is definitely a good way to get a glimpse of how they may
feel.
Drowning Girl, Roy Lichtenstein, painting in oil and synthetic polymer paint on canvas, 1963
Portrait of Natasha Gelman, Frida Kahlo, Oil paint, 1943
Portrait of Mrs. Natasha Zakolkowa Gelman, Diego Rivera, Oil on Canvas, 1943