Gender Discrimination in Art - Assignment Example

Abdullah Albawardi AAD 252 951403668 April 30, Gender Discrimination in Art Introduction In most cases, people’s assumptions about gender roles often base on the cultural stereotypes. In the similar capacity, the modern society is constructing its ideas in regards to what men and women need to look like, together with dictating on how these two different genders need to behave. It thus leads to the thesis; artwork depicts men to be referring to their powerful bodies or depicting their leadership roles, but on the contrary, women are subject to portray in artwork as either being passive, eroticized subjects that exist for pleasuring the viewer or being nurturers in the domestic scenarios. In this piece of art, the artistic talks about the Chibinda Ilunga sculpture, being a composition of the Chokwe people of Central Africa. The sculpture is a depiction of a legendary leader that was a masterful hunter, a successful king, and one that was a descendant of a deity. Gender refers to a person’s sense of self and inner identity, unlike sex that biologically defines feminism or masculinity of an individual. Gender cuts across all the social aspects of life including art. The kind of male-dominated culture that existed before and now its effect remains in various issues in the current society. In arts, many artists have tried to explore, reinforce and challenge the gender distinctions promoted by the traditions. Many artists through presenting their personal experiences on historical and political agenda encourage us to question the assumptions commonly made about gender. The differences in gender considerations manifest in various artworks done by various artists. The artworks depicted men as always possessing the powerful body and great leadership skills. From a different perspective, the artworks depict females as passive, eroticized subjects meant for the viewer’s pleasure. For example by looking at Chibinda Ilunga sculpture below, it shows a reflection of a powerful person as he wears a leadership hat, holding a stick, and a horn. Artwork of Chibinda Ilunga, mid-19th century. Located at Kimbell Museum of Art, Fort Worth, Texas. The male nude is one of the artworks one will hardly find in the general art exhibitions. Most of the artists lack the urge of using male nudes as a subject matter to their art productions. The male nude is an artwork written and drawn by the artist and author Kyra Belan. It follows her interest in the exploration of the male nude in the field of art. The understanding of freedom of art fuels my analysis of Belan’s work. Belan narrates about her challenges in exhibiting her images of the male nude in the public and the associated criticism. The display of male nude publicly is unfair and biased to the masculine gender. The male nude arts that are available rarely reveal the males genitals. However, those that reveal males genitals is subject to consider as an unfair treatment of men by the female artist from some of the public point of view. The sculpture above of Chibinda Ilunga shows little of nudity as he seems to be wearing a protective body cover. Despite presenting beautiful and high-quality art, this kind of subject that Belan chose against the socio-cultural traditions assumed art as created for the male gaze. The artists produced and preserved the arts for the esthetic consumption of male spectators and the art appreciators. Several issues arise from the influence of gender in the world of art. Tradition plays a significant role in promoting this line of art treatment. For example, the sculpture Chhibinda Ilunga by the Chokwe people of the Central Africa depicts a legendary leader who was a great hunter, a mighty king, and a deity descendant. The same concept strengthens the point of view that issues of gender discrimination extend to areas of art. The drawing carries a staff symbolizing prestige that is a symbol of power handed over from one chief to another. His flaring nostrils show that he was a successful hunter. From a different perspective, artworks depicting female showed them in miserable states beaten by the hardships of life. There is a difference in the manner of which artists portray men and women in different artworks are some gender discrimination (Gender and art). Another important theme that presents itself in art is the gender inequality. The gender difference, in this case, is the way different artworks present male and the female all over the world. The article “Art and Gender” goes ahead to state that only 5 percent of the artists are females, but 85 percent of the nudes are female. The Guerrilla Girls that are still active are subject to recognize through their gorilla masks that they wear to avoid being recognized by the institution and the art world establishment that they are trying to criticize. The Guerilla Girls criticize the arts that portray women as less advantaged people and men as the owners of power and prestige. The group uses different platforms to criticize the unequal representation of the women artists in the art world. The disproportionate representation of the female artists at 5 percent and the number of female nudes at 85 percent in the art industry is a primary concern in studying how gender affects the art industry. The same concept thus relates to the Chibinda Ilunga piece of art in that this piece of art shows little nudity because it is a male piece of art but it not focusing on the sculpture private parts, but more on his strong figure in contrast of how a female would have been viewed. Most museums and the galleries that exist have no nude male photos with almost 99 percent of the images present in these museums being female nudes. Belan wonders about the Male Nude where the images of the male nude done by the female artists throughout the history are (Belan 41). The gender variation extends to the use of images in the business and advertisement industry. The female nude images are preferred to be on top of a show announcement poster than male nudes in the industry. Many other artists have tried to defend the gender discrimination portrayed in the artworks by engaging in various confrontation arguments. The arguments strive to find out why different art paintings depict a gap between men and women. In the Chibinda Ilunga sculpture above, a stick and a horn that he holds are a representation of a powerful leader, hence implying that male gender holds the power in society than women. However, images showing female faces with masculine bodies have emerged in the modern art industry. These are some of the attempts by the artists to try bringing out the point of gender discrimination in art. Women express sensitivity towards the nudity depiction by artworks than the males (Eck, 2003). Nudity in arts serves as a means of sexual pleasure and lustful satisfaction for the entire male community. On the contrary, even if a piece of art may show some aspect of nudity in a male painting, it will imply little of sexual satisfactions. The same relates to Chibinda Ilunga sculpture above, as one would not be quick to look at the sexual aspect of it, despite the fact that the painting shows no distinctive clothes. The artists produce and preserve the female nudes for men to see and quench their desire. In her artwork, Sociologist Beth Eck argues that women derive very little pleasure from the nude images. The general comparison of these depictions indicates that gender plays an important role in bringing this difference. The images give women an insight that they are the objects of satisfying lust, and males use such images in deriving their sexual pleasure. Sociologist Beth Eck was able to conduct a study attempting to understand the views and effects of a female viewing a male nude image and a man looking at a female nude image. In her study, she was able to get different responses from men and women’s point of view. She asked different men and women to look at the naked images of women and men respectively, and her results were fascinating. The responses she obtained from men and women were different as men responded differently by looking at the male nudes, and the women did the same. Men gave positive responses regarding the female nudes with some describing them as sexy, hot, erotic, and perfect figure. When women look at the seductive pose of female nude, they have no attachment to it and find nothing extraordinary about it. They believe it is meant for the men, to arouse the men and fulfill their lustful desires. Most women did not feel any lust when they looked at the nude male photos, and those who happened to feel the lust had a mixture of both desire and guilt of shame. The same concepts relates to looking at Chibinda Ilunga piece of art in that the sexual pleasure does no come to the mind of the viewer when looking at this piece of art. Funnily enough, most women found it disgusting to look at both male and female nude images. From the article “gender outlaws”, the author reveals that identity markers are gender queer, gender queen, and gender variants. The sculpture above of Chibinda Ilunga does not support this concept in that it clearly identifies the type of gender it is praising, which is the male gender. However, the author believes that being a male does not offer a cure to any of the gender variant thoughts or feelings. The author, therefore, chooses to navigate kaleidoscope of uncharted boundaries beyond gender considerations. In the article, the author goes ahead to argue that issues that society faces today do not ideally target specific genders. Additionally, relying on one specific gender at solving these issues do not offer permanent solutions. In this regard, the author justifies that one specific gender does not always solve problems in society, hence coming up with the conclusion that we should not link gender and art to help the industry to prosper. For the art industry to prosper there is need to remove issues of gender stereotypes in the making of these pieces of art. Art should serve all around genre that cuts across all the aspects of life from sociology, political and cultural aspects. These genres should receive equal consideration in the production and preservation of art. The case is, however, different genders have a significant influence on modern art. In my opinion, women are least represented in art and are subject to depict as less advantaged members of the society. There is open bias in the way various artists depict women in their works. Specifically female nude is used so much as compared to male nude. From the analysis of various works done by different artists and authors about gender and art, it is clear that tradition promotes the gender difference that exists in modern art. The male-dominated society extends the discrimination against female gender even in art. Through the Chibinda Ilunga sculpture above, it is subject to use in praising the powers of the male gender, hence justifying on the concept of female discrimination in society. In conclusion, gender is a crucial factor that affects the development of modern art. Just as shown in Chibinda Ilunga piece of art, the male gender is subject to praise for many positive reasons. On the contrary, it is very rare to find that female gender is subject to positive praises through art. The same concept thus gives rise to a new field of the art that the no one has previously explored. The field of male nudity has not received much attention, and the exhibitions of the male nude are rare to find in the museums or the galleries. In this regard, more exploration of this field will give a new face to the art industry. For a better development of the art industry, artists should have the freedom of exploring all the aspects of life and the traditions that discriminate the use of male nude as a subject matter. References Belan, Kyra. (2005). The female gaze and the male nude. In Earth, spirit, gender: Visual language for thenew reality (pp. 39-46). Reno, NV: Bent Tree Press. Bornstein, K. & Bergman, S.B. (Eds.). (2010). On living well and coming free. Glitter, glitter, on the the wall, who’s the     queerest of them all. transcension. Cisgender privilege: On the privileges of performing normative gender. In Gender outlaws: The next generation (pp. 143-152; 163-168; 170-181; 268-272). Eck, Beth A. "Men are much Harder Gendered Viewing of Nude Images." Gender & Society 17.5 (2003): 691-710. Retrieved from: http://wwnorton.com/college/custom/ShowcaseSites/thgate/pdf/4.10.pdf Peters, B. M. (2003). Qu(e)erying comic book culture and representations of sexuality in Wonder Woman. CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, 5(3). Retrieved from http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol5/iss3/6. Read More