#DepictingWomen
Pictures of women in art
beauty, goddess, motherhood, bathing, soliciting, fullfilling and fragment are topoi of the representation of women with a long pictorial tradition. How do we feel about these images of women?
The worldwide press response to the art action at the Manchester Art Gallery earlier this year, for which a Pre-Raphaelite painting depicting naked nymphs was removed, and the discussions it triggered show that the #MeToo movement has long since arrived in the art world. Works of art from older eras as well as from the present are critically examined and discussed in public and private settings, often heatedly and polemically. It is about the connection between power and sex, the definition of the roles of men and women, conservative world views and feminist ideals - about the relationship between the sexes.
Our exhibition also deals with this current debate. In reference to the #MeToo movement, the title was therefore given a hashtag. The topic itself is essentially not new. Even in ancient times, in Ovid's Metamorphoses, one could read about the Cypriot sculptor Pygmalion. The artist created a sculpture in which he - unconsciously - formed his ideal of woman. He caressed his statue every day and fell in love with it. Giving in to his longing, the goddess of love and eroticism, Venus, brought the work of art to life. Pygmalion created his ideal image of a woman in the same way that many male artists of later times created dream women and dream scenes. Her male-dominated, desirous gaze formed pictorial traditions of beauties, of prostitutes and lovers, of goddesses and mothers, and of women who no longer exist with their whole body, but of whom only the body parts remain that seem important to men. Many exhibits in the exhibition, which spans the period from the 16th century to the present, prove this.
However, this male view of the subject of women does not go uncommented in the #DepictingWomen exhibition. Each thematic group is accompanied by at least one position from a female artist who questions the topos with her work. There are also no less critical statements from male artists. One focus is on works of art that have their intellectual origins in the 1960s and 70s - the time of rebellion against conservative worldviews and the feminist awakening.
The comparison of traditional depictions of women and more recent works that reflect traditional role models in an ironic, humorous or critical way not only challenges the viewer to examine their own position on this, but also raises further questions: What is the female perspective on the subject of women? Can I tell from a work of art whether it was created by a woman or a man? Is there even a specifically female perspective?
In addition: How do women and men define themselves? Is there a dual order of nature that determines people's thinking? Or are there exclusively socially defined roles to which people adapt (more or less) due to their social conditioning? Thinkers as diverse as Friedrich Nietzsche and Simone de Beauvoir have already advocated this thesis. But what can we see in the works of art? The exhibition #DepictingWomen asks questions about images of women that are conveyed in art.
The almost 90 exhibits, with the exception of a few loans, come from the ahlers collection. A catalogue is being published for the exhibition and is available from the Ahlers Pro Arte Foundation.
(1st row from left to right) Liu Fei, Bold and Trendy No. 36, 1999, oil on canvas, ahlers collection © Liu Fei. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Variety Dancer, 1911, reed pen and colored chalk on postcard, ahlers collection. (2nd row from left to right) Mario Testino, Kate Moss, 1996, black and white photography (Lambda Print), ahlers collection © Mario Testino. Dorothy Iannone, Untitled, 1972, watercolor and felt-tip pen on cardboard, ahlers collection © Dorothy Iannone.