Xiuwen-Sherman-Kahlo

Ciu Xiuwen

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.

Cindy Sherman

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.