Week 10
This week, we read "Meaning, Identity, Embodiment" by Amelia Jones. The book covers gender identity and art through Gustave Courbet's painting "The Origin of the World". The origin of the world painting is a vagina, pubes and all.
Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) The Origin of the World 1866 Oil on canvas
Why paint a vagina? Amelia Jones book theorizes that Courbet painted this to showcase humans focus on what they see in the flesh as opposed to what makes the person who they really are, outside of their sex. To me, the focus is completely upon their genitals as that is what people from the early 19th century would have seen in women. The painting confronts the audience with this image to make them confront what they really see. The art reminds me of the classical roman sculptures and how asking the modern person what they remember about those statues isn't the artistry or the pose, it's the nudity. While there are still very many negative gender norms within our society, it's interesting how something such as this painting would still be remembered for the exact reason Courbet would expect. Though the painting would probably still be in controversy as it's a woman genitals, something rarely every drawn or seen by the average art viewer.
Hi Nathan. Haha, "pubes and all." Of course, this is the way nature made vaginas, which are of course the origin of the world. It's like being born is emerging from a forest or a cave or another dimension, or some combination thereof. To me, this picture is about the miracle and beauty of birth and as the title suggests. It's unfortunate that some people may minimize this to merely a vagina, but everyone interprets art from their own experiences. I like your post. Its true this makes the viewer confront what they really see. What do you think would be the result of a similar painting of a penis?
ReplyDeleteI can really appreciate how you mentioned when the painting was created and what it would have meant to the people living in that era. Knowing that information places a bias on the artwork and changes the inaction a person will have with The Origin of the World. Is there a different way to view nudity without all the focus being in the person being nude?
ReplyDeleteI was curious as to your usage of the phrase "pubes and all" with reference to the artwork depicted. The piece was created in the 1800's, and while we today have a culture which shows favor and preference to female genitalia which has been shaved, waxed, lasered, or otherwise rendered, that didn't hit mainstream until later in the 1900's for our country. Nature made it this way, and for a good part of even our own history, it was what was expected of women. It would have been more interesting to see a piece this of this age be of a shaved woman, rather than natural.
DeleteRachel Z. here: In Western culture, it has been standard to depict women's genitals as hairless at least as far back as ancient Greece (female nudity was pretty rare in non-porn art there). This doesn't necessarily reflect whether or not women shaved. It has been common in Europe for a long time to shave, or keep short, the hair on one's head and elsewhere to prevent lice and other pests, which is why powdered wigs were fashionable. The VISUAL preference though for hairless genitals is standard in Western art, however, even when it comes to nineteenth-century photographs of women with pubic hair in which case darkroom manipulation was sometimes used to erase the hair. The fact that Courbet has included hair is a further indication that his painting is intended as pornography rather than a happens-to-be-nude depiction of a goddess or some such.
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