Art & Gender november 2011
Understood by Linda Nochlin and applied to...
Thomas Eakins
Mary Cassatt
Editor’s Letter
LINDA NOCHLIN
in
"Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?" Art News 1971
Nochlin explores why "greatness" in artistic accomplishment have been reserved for male geniuses. Arguing that general social
expectations
against women seriously pursu-
ing art, restrictions on educating women at art academies, and "the entire romantic, elitist, individualglorifying, and monograph-producing
substructure upon which the profession of art history is based,” have systematically precluded
the emergence of great women artists. She investigates the ways in
which gender affects the creation and apprehension of art, as evidenced by her 1994 essay “Issues of Gender in Cassatt and Eakins”.
two american artists
tensions, “ the oppostiions, and achievements of American painting of the late nineteeth century can be best approached through an examination of two of its major practitioners--Mary Cassatt and Thomas Eakins. Nochlin
Cassatt & Eakins
�
self portraits
GENDER and DIFFERENCE
“It seems to me that there is no better way of exploring the vexed issues of American-ness versus the cosmopolitanism represented by the French vanguard of the period or male versus female production than in exploring, in detail, the lives and works of these two artist contemporaries, so alike in their ambitions and stature, so unlike in their choice of milieu and their pictorial language.� Nochlin
Portrait of the Artist, 1878 By Mary Cassatt Metropolitan Museum of Art
cassatt & eakins
“Yet there are extraordinary differences between them inscribed in their work itself, as their self-portraits clearly reveal. Cassatt came from a much wealthier and more socially prominent family than Eakins. She did not return to conservative Philadelphia to pass the rest of her life, as a loner, like Eakins, but stayed on in Paris where she actively participated in the most advanced painting movement in her time, Impressionism..� Nochlin
Self Portrait, 1902 By Thomas Eakins National Academy of Design
social constructs. The Swimming Hole, 1883 By Thomas Eakins, Fort Worth Art Center
Five O’Clock Tea, 1880 By Mary Cassatt, Museum of Fine Arts Boston
similar subjects. Max Schmitt in a Single Scull,1871 By Thomas Eakins, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Boating Party, 1893 By Mary Cassatt, National Gallery of Art
power of the gaze.
Miss Amelia Van Buren, 1891 By Thomas Eakins The Phillips Collection, DC
axed
ve? Woman in Black at the Opera, 1880 By Mary Cassatt MOFA Boston
MODERN MOTHERHOOD Cassatt’s theme reveals her Impressionist ability to capture the momentary, the intimate and the playful; her gift of observation.
The First Caress, 1890 By Mary Cassatt Metropolitan Museum of Art
MODERN HEROISM Eakins positions the one woman in the composition as the one---the only one---who cannot look, who will not look.
The Gross Clinic, 1875 By Thomas Eakins National Academy of Design
JUST ANOTHER ALLEGORY? Women Picking Fruit, 1891 By Mary Cassatt Carnegie Institute.
William Rush Carving His Allegorical Figure of the Schuylkill River, 1877 By Thomas Eakins Brooklyn Museum of Art.
THE END.
townes & hoodhood