Girls Girls Girls

I captured the following images on my iPhone with no particular agenda in mind. This post is centered on the viewer’s experience and engagement with women in and creating High art, particularly in paintings and photographs. In the visually illiterate society we belong to today, images and iconography in museums allow viewers to absorb more context than wall texts provide. Speaking for myself, I can feel and learn more from women in images in paintings or photographs rather than from the tools or objects they used or created that sit out of context in an institutional setting. Thus, please enjoy the following photographs and paintings. 

Shop Window, Isaac Israels (1865-1934), Rijksmuseum.

The wall text pictured above describes the painting as a couple peering into a shop window to see rows of little girls’ dresses at night. The wall text includes a note regarding the invention of electric light making the streets safer at night. I do not believe Isaac Israels meant to make a statement regarding the use of electric light enabling safer spaces for women at night, but this painting elicited a slight sad truth women hold. The little girls’ dresses reminded me of myself and how infantile women can be made to feel at night on a dark street. Electric light provides a sense of safety while putting women on display for people to gawk at, inspect, and consider. Sometimes I do feel like a little girl’s dress on display for anyone to visually consume with the glass barrier of social expectations protecting me.

Isaac Israels, I’m not speaking for you. Thank you for sharing your talent with me, even if some things got lost in translation.

The Singel Bridge at the Paleisstraat in Amsterdam, George Hendrik Breitners (1857-1923), Rijksmuseum.

As a documentary photography and Impressionism lover, this image instantly reeled me in from my museum wall march. The motion captured in the painting is dynamic and impressive, but the wall text describing the artistic choice to change the woman in the foreground from a maid to an “elegant” woman prompted my feet to nail into the floorboards. The practice of painting a window to the world and mimicking photography brings me great stress in how artists manipulate and sell nonexistent realities to a visually dependent public. In the case of this painting, it’s upsetting the gallery pressured the artist to present an elitist image of the world and deem service workers as uninteresting or unworthy of space in High art. It’s ironic the public creates a demand for domestic service workers and a demand for a representation of a society without. Moreover, this painting’s evolution demonstrates how women are palatable for consumption and deserving of space in High art depending on how they visually communicate their status.

I suppose maids and other domestic service workers were not given access to spaces where High art would be shared during this time. In art and life, those with power and prestige determine who may occupy what spaces. I wish to have seen how Breitners first depicted the maid.

 

Poster for the Magazine Jugend, Ludwig von Zumbusch (1861-1927), Rijksmuseum.

The two young women in this poster represent the emerging Jugendstil art movement, while the artist chose to represent the conservative past as a small, skeleton of a man. Although the symbolism of women representing rebirth relies on outdated understandings of what it means to be a woman, I quite like the idea of women representing the future. The poster does not imply the transition is hateful or violent. Rather, the women are gently carrying the old man, or old ways, and could be understood as carrying the old man (ways) with them. Jugendstil relies on curves and flowers in its works, traits typically assigned to women and femininity. In this poster, that seems to encourage a sense of empowerment, which I’m quite fond of.

Ludwig von Zumbusch, you probably were fun to pass sketching notes in class with.

Bum #1 (2010), Isabelle Wenzel, Vrije University.

Folder #1 (2010), Isabelle Wenzel, Vrije University.

Wenzel’s self-portraits present a Cindy Sherman tone in their absurdity and ability to connect with uncomfortable human emotions not always invited to High art. In Bum #1 and Folder #1, I hear Wenzel describing how it feels to be a woman in a capitalistic society that demands women’s participation but ignores women’s feelings or needs within it. In a working world built for a nuclear family, being a single woman supporting herself by working is no easy feat. It’s not uncommon to be forced into uncomfortable positions at or because of work and feel contorted inside and out while in a pair of kitten heels.

Isabelle Wenzel, I think you’re laughing at yourself the way we all do to get through the absurdity. Being a woman today is funny, to put it simply.

Out of History, Elisabeth Samson (1715-1771) (2013), Iris Kensmil, Amsterdam Museum.

Originally part of a triptych, Kensmil includes Elisabeth Samson in the historical record as an important figure in Surinamese history who is often left out. As the wall text describes, Samson was a free Black woman who fought for her right to marry a white man. The wall text, however, does not introduce the reader to the white husband’s name. This depletion of this white man’s name from history is what often happens to Black women, returning to the artist’s intention with this painting. From a slight distance, I saw a beautiful painting of a beautiful woman in a beautiful dress and simply wanted to be closer. By doing so, I learned an important part of Surinamese history, which I kindly thank Kensmil for. By depicting this woman to the way I have been introduced to white men and women in history, Kensmil is not tokenizing Samson. Rather, Kensmil is introducing an important figure the way important figures typically are.

Elisabeth Samson, I hope your marriage was a happy one.

Conclusion

I’m not making any sort of political statement here. I am not interested in generalizing women in art any more than I am in life. If there must be a unifying theme, it can be that I met these women in Amsterdam and they reminded me of who I once was, who I am, and who I’d like to be one day. Women are quite cool that way.

Ando Dutch Cat Watch Count

Brought to you by Deputy Cat Watcher, Akash Shrestha. ADCWC is still at an 11. I got trapped in Germany over the weekend and I was too focused on my escape to meet any German cats. Luckily Akash held it down for us while I was living on the lam. Legally, I wasn’t. Look at the cat and don’t ask questions.