Xiuwen's focus on the woman body and feelings that go along with women throughout their
lives is a very important idea. She uses the color white in her Angel series which can
represent purity, change, innocence, and being forced to change via influence.
The character in this digital art is a young female asian who seems to be pregnant. The
positions of her body and the poses and way she touches her body represent the feelings
and emotions women experience. The overall appearance of these works are bright and
youthful and quite conceptual. Her use of steady color and relation between pieces
makes them relate very well together. The repetition of the asian woman in some pieces
tells us that this happens often and can be relatable to other women. It also shows
how much emotion can be involved in issues that someone is dealing with. Her work
greatly exemplifies femininity and the portrayal of feelings of women by women.
These pieces can also give off feelings of loneliness, depression, abandonment,
sadness. However, despite the array of difference in each piece they again all
relate with the woman, the colors, and in the leading position of the picture.
Sherman is a woman photographer who prepares sets to photograph herself portraying female stereotypes in all aspects of life. In her Untitled Film Stills she gives off this feeling of feminism throughout the images the viewer sees. However, despite the fact that they are all photographs of herself, the photographs are less about Sherman and more about the role and perception of the photo. Her works bring to the table these feelings, even though they are all mostly in black and white. Emotions and motifs i view from this series include confusion, introspection, disgust, change, glamour, the past and introspection, fear, regalness, curiousness, and even more. She makes the viewer feel as if they are missing something when they view her in the work. She seems to have this attitude that is like "you won't understand me" just because she seems to have and portray multiple personalities. By doing this, she is standing up for women and declaring that women have a significant part in life just as men do. Just as men can take on many different roles and have different personalities, women can do the same and do it just as well. Cindy Sherman is definitely one of the women artists that really makes you think about emotion and portrayal. She exemplifies the correct use of black and white photography by the use of the grainy-ness and almost 'out of focus' images in her earlier images from the Untiltled Film Stills.
Frida Kahlo
Kahlo was a popular Mexican painter who
used the vibrant colors that mexican painters
often used during her time. Most of her
paintings are
self portraits that point out her pain and
sexuality and point out her issues that she
dealt with with life events in her past.
The fact that she painted herself in most
of her work tells us that she knew
herself well and she was comfortable with
herself.She claims to have spent alot of
time alone and throughout her past has
gone through alot of emotional events
which show her psychological and
physical wounds in her reality paintings.
The animals she uses throughout her
paintings provide shelter and tender
feelings for her and she uses alot of
surreal-ness (abstractness) and religious
symbolism. Kahlo portrays herself as a
stoic, strong, perservering woman.
She has gone through alot and this points out her masculinity which is also
seen in several of the portraits. She accentuates her eyebrows and her
jawline, even her bone structure as something more than womanly.
Kahlo is pointing out that she is more than a typical woman, and better.
She has this front to her that shows the viewer she has lived and learned,
and even that she is much more than what meets the eye.
In the end, all three artists portray their own type of feminism. Through common
women feelings and positions, stereotypes, self visualization, and introspections, all three
women artists portray women and self portraits in their own unique way.
