The Representation Of The Female Form In Art.

Since humanity evolved women have been worshipped, adored, cherished and admired whilst simultaneously have been defamed, castigated, condemned, abused, maligned, raped and murdered as can be seen through the history of art.

How women are portrayed in art tells much about the status and roles of women in society and the place where men wanted them.

Since prehistoric times woman have been portrayed in art, giving an impression of the perception the artist and the culture they lived in, had of women.

The earliest etchings and figures strongly relate around one thing. The female as the life giver, fertility and childbirth.

Although there is the impression that in these times women were seen as purely wives and mothers keeping the house (cave?) tidy.

Some would argue women were not portrayed as anything less than equal in art. The concept of fertility and childbirth was very important and raised women to a level of great spiritual importance and power amongst primitive society.

Jenny Saville

Jenny Saville is a modern figurative artist who through her work raises questions relating to worlds perception of genders, focusing on the blurring of the lines of gender in women; in the mind sets of the changing perceptions men have of women as well as the perception women have of them selves in a where the power of women is only recent.

She states she’s searching to create the sense of the idea of a �floating gender’ that is not fixed where sex doesn’t define who category a subject falls into.

This is her controversial painting of a transvestite with a womanly figure, breast but male genitals. She says this piece is intended to cause ambiguity on all levels. Is it a woman who is like a man or a man who is like a woman or both or neither? The painting is from a low angel supposedly to impose a masculine domination whilst she lays femininely unprotected on the floor.

DAMIEN HURST

Very modern art such as Damien Hursts “ The Virgin Mother”The Virgin Mother has layers removed on one side to reveal the foetus and the woman's skull, muscles and tissue.

Some might argue that the image of the baby and the mother like this is a life affirming and beautiful depiction of the female as the most special giver of life. A very powerful position, seeing pregnancy and childbirth not as just the role of women in a world made for men almost and authoritarian position, this is corroborated by the size of the statue which stands tall above courtyard 35 ft in the air giving the impression of power and dominance. The importance of women and the role they play in mankind.

Although it has also been argued that Hurst’s dissection of the body, the organs revealed, the womb the breasts and the structure of the body visible almost like the biological construction of a baby machine. Taking away the special, powerful position that fertility and childbirth can be seen as having and evoking thoughts of women merely as factories in the continuation of the species. Kali Goddess of suffering

Kali is the ferocious form of the divine mother. Far from an inanimate object of timidity and weakness. She embodies power, violence savage brutality and power over all men and is portayed like this through all hindu artistic portrayals

Active and passive argument

There is a argument that women have always been depicted in art as passive whilst men are portrayed as active.

A nude Venus like the ones of Botticelli and paintings by Titian are embodiments of religious ideals. But in both cases women are also sensuous, passive ornaments intended for the male gaze. This is particularly so in the case of the Titian painting, which not only provides a surrogate audience in the figure of an pervy musician musician but also models its Venus on a 16th century escort woman, courtesan.The most obvious example of this is the reclining nudes such as the one of the left. although not painted for sexual desire or erotic stimulation, and whilst she is depicted as a goddess she is sleeping inanimate.

Paintings of this era were painted