Depictions of STDs in Art History

JMedLife-07-4-g003

Engraving showing a man in a fumigation stove (1659), Jacques Laniet. Image from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3956094/figure/F3/. A common treatment for syphilis at the time. Mercury would be placed inside the stove, and a fire would be started to vaporise the mercury around the patient.

Reader Question: “I remember hearing (learning?) years ago that some paintings depict people with physical indications of STDs. Perhaps syphilis? Is this true? Are other STDs depicted in art throughout history?”

Yes, this is true! This is a subject that really reflects how useful art history can be in studying the history of science and medicine, and how art has been used to educate people about medical conditions for hundreds of years. Beyond that, however, we can also use art to see how societal views of STDs have evolved – from simply fearful to judgmental and sexualised.

You’re right, by the way: syphilis is the STD that’s most commonly represented throughout art history, so it’s the one we’re going to focus on (with one brief depiction of gonorrhoea). Syphilis is one of the only STDs that have been around for a really long time (along with, again, gonorrhoea), so it is a disease that has been widely depicted in art history.

Continue reading

Artist Feature: Who is Xiao Lu?

intro

Xiao Lu. Image from http://www.liveaction.se/

Note: This Artist Feature is part of an ongoing series to document the female artists whose articles were added or improved on Wikipedia during the Art + Feminism edit-a-thon I co-organised in March 2016.

Movement/Style: Contemporary performance, installation and video art.

Country: China.

Well, who is she?

Xiao Lu (Chinese: 肖鲁) is a Chinese artist who rose to worldwide fame when she participated in the 1989 China Avant-garde Exhibition with her work, Dialogue. Two hours into the exhibition, she shot her own work with a pellet gun and caused the exhibition to immediately shut down. Her actions were seen as a threat to the Chinese government and she was instantly detained. Four months later, when the Tiananmen Square massacre occurred, her gunshots were dubbed “the first gunshots of Tiananmen”.

Continue reading

Art History 101: The Difference Between “Genres” and “Genre Painting”

Wassilij_Grigorjewitsch_Perow_004

The hunters at rest (Охотники на привале) (1871), a genre painting by Russian artist Vasily Perov

Ok, so this might get confusing. First of all, there’s a traditional hierarchy of genres in Western art history, and genre painting is actually one of those genres, even though it’s called “genre painting” which kind of makes no sense. Wait, let me back up: genres, a.k.a. categories, in Western art history are not styles (like Impressionism, Pop Art, Realism) but are instead about the types of scenes that are being painted (portrait, landscape, still life). Let me back up again: a “genre painting” is not, as you might think, a painting that fits into any one of these genres; instead, a genre painting is a type of scene and is therefore “a genre” in itself.

Let’s see if we can make sense of this.

Continue reading

A Brief History of Hairless Vaginas in Art (NSFW)

20130

Object (Le déjeuner en fourrure), 1936, Méret Oppenheim. A Surrealist sculpture often interpreted as a visual pun referencing a hairy vagina, as the tea set is traditionally feminine.

Reader question: “I loved your post about penises, but what about vaginas? We think hairless vaginas started with porn, but I’ve definitely seen paintings in museums with hairless vaginas. What’s the deal? When did it all start?”

Aah, nudity in art, a subject dear to my heart. Vaginas and vulvas (with vulva referring specifically to the external genital region) in art have a quite different history than penises do, ranging from being symbols of fertility and life to being symbols of shame and impurity. As I wrote in my post on the Female Nude (a term I use to refer to the types of nude female subjects in paintings propagated by the French Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture in the 17th – 19th centuries) hairless vulvas have been around in art for a long time. How long? At least 2,000 – 3,000 years, and maybe even since the beginning of art as we know it.

Continue reading

Artist Feature: Who is Tracey Moffatt?

001 (1)

Self Portrait, 1999. Image from the Roslyn Oxley 9 gallery, Sydney. http://www.roslynoxley9.com.au/artists/26/Tracey_Moffatt

Note: This Artist Feature is part of an ongoing series to document the female artists whose articles were added or improved on Wikipedia during the Art + Feminism edit-a-thon I co-organised in March 2016.

Movement/Style: Contemporary photography and video art.

Country: Australia.

Well, who is she?

Tracey Moffatt is one of Australia’s most famous and internationally renowned artists. She works with both film and photography and her work is very cinematic and theatrical. She’s especially famous for her dramatically staged narrative photographs.

Continue reading

Site Update: “Art + Feminism” Wikipedia Edit-a-thon

art+feminism

Tonight, I co-hosted the Bangkok edition of the global ‘Art + Feminism’ Wikipedia campaign.

Nine people total came together in a Bangkok café to learn about Wikipedia, to find out about art and to add/edit/translate articles about woman-identified artists to improve coverage of women-identified artists across the world. At the end of the night, these were our accomplishments:

– Creation of article about Chinese artist Xiao Lu.
– Creation of article about Bengali artist Pratima Devi.
– Translation of article about Indigenous Australian artist Tracey Moffatt into Italian.
– Translation of article about Thai artist Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook into Thai.
– Translation of article about Chinese artist Bu Hua into English.
– Addition of Xiao Lu’s participation into article about the China Avant-garde Exhibition 1989.
– Addition of the following quote into article about French artist Marie Bracquemond: “The severity of Monsieur Ingres frightened me… because he doubted the courage and perseverance of a woman in the field of painting… He would assign to them only the painting of flowers, of fruits, of still lifes, portraits and genre scenes.”

Over the next few months, I will be creating Artist Features about each of these artists on this blog.

Thank you to everyone who participated, and to everyone who will continue researching, writing and learning about women-identified artists!

“I come from Bangladesh and find that Western art history doesn’t do much to help understand the artistic traditions where I’m from – how is this addressed in your study of Art History?”

 

ZainulAbedin1971

Bangladesh Liberation War (1971) by Bangladeshi artist Zainul Abudin, who helped form the Faculty of Fine Arts at Dhaka University.

Reader Question: “I come from Bangladesh and find that Western art history doesn’t do much to help understand the artistic traditions where I’m from – how is this addressed in your study of Art History? Is it addressed at all?”

Western art history – or at least mainstream Western art history – really does very little to address the artistic traditions of non-Western countries. Many people find this perfectly acceptable, arguing that Western art history is about Western countries and shouldn’t have to address anything beyond that. For me, there are three problems with this point of view that should push us towards a more inclusive art historical mainstream.

Continue reading

“Do you know anything about silver gelatine photography?”

by Dorothea Lange

Migrant Mother (1936) by Dorothea Lange is one of the most famous silver gelatine photographs, and exemplifies the photojournalistic, realistic style that ended up defining the process.

I sure do! Silver gelatin photography, or the “dry plate” process, was actually the main form of photography used from around the 1880s up until the introduction of instant colour photography in the 1960s. It was especially popular in photojournalism, linking a technical process to an aesthetic imbued with meanings of authenticity. Since your question is quite general, I’ll do a quick overview of this method, starting with its history and technical process and then looking at its cultural impact.

Continue reading

Artist Feature: Who was Kamal ud-Din Behzad?

Kamal-ud-din_Bihzad_001

The construction of castle Khavarnaq in al-Hira, c. 1494 – 1495

Movement/Style: Islamic Miniature

Country: Persia (modern-day Iran and Afghanistan)

Well, who was he?

Kamal ud-din Behzad (کمال‌الدین بهزاد) is perhaps the most famous historical painter of Persian miniatures. Like most artists in the 1400s and 1500s, however, it’s important to remember that for much of his career he didn’t work alone but was the leader of a workshop (in this case a Persian scriptorium, a kitabkhāna) producing artworks under his stylistic direction.

Continue reading

“2D Op Art makes you feel like it’s 3D. So how do you create 3D Op Art?” – The Art of Optical Illusions

 

Riley,_Movement_in_Squares

Movement in Squares, 1961, by Bridget Riley.

Reader question: “2D Op Art makes you feel like it’s 3D. So how do you create 3D Op Art?”

I received this question from a jewelry designer interested in creating jewelry inspired by Op Art, but did not know how to recreate the effect in a more sculptural form. It’s true that most Op Art is created on a 2D surface – creating the effect that it seems to be jumping off the page – but, as I will go through in this post, there were actually a few sculptors even in the original Op Art movement.

Continue reading