The Role of Race in Edmonia Lewis's Death of Cleopatra

This post is an updated and expanded form of an essay that I wrote in my college Women in Art class! I am excited to share some expanded and edited versions of my essays here (since I did spend plenty of time working on them, and I'd hate for them to rot away in my hard drive forever!)

Mary Edmonia Lewis, known more commonly as Edmonia Lewis, was the first professional sculptor of African and Native American descent in America. She created Neoclassical sculptures deeply embedded with racial themes and symbols. Lewis's most celebrated work is her Death of Cleopatra (shown below). This sculpture was displayed as a part of the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, where Lewis was one of a handful of women showcasing their work. Of these few women, Lewis was the only one who was not white, making her a paramount that paved the way for women artists of color in the art world. The strong, ethnically-aware subject matter of Death of Cleopatra makes its inclusion in the exposition even more profound.

Image Surfacing: An Example of Lee Krasner's Nonfeminist Art

Source

A constant struggle for women artists throughout history has been the question of their sex: does a woman have the same capacity to create art as men? Does subject matter differ between men and women? At what point is a line drawn where gender is no longer a consideration in the evaluation of an artwork and the full focus lies on the artwork itself? During the Modern Era of Art, there were two groups with very strong opinions: the Separatists, who held very anti-patriarchy/pro-matriarchy views and expressed extreme favoritism for female and feminine subject matter, and the Nonfeminists who simply wanted to be accepted artists without the modifiers of “woman” or “female” in relation to their capability or criticism. Abstract Expressionist painter Lee Krasner belonged to the latter of the two groups.

Georgia O'Keeffe's Spirituality by Introspection

This post is an updated and expanded form of an essay that I wrote in my college Women in Art class! I am excited to share some expanded and edited versions of my essays here (since I did spend plenty of time working on them, and I'd hate for them to rot away in my hard drive forever!)

Georgia O'Keeffe, Source

“When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it's your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else. Most people in the city rush around so, they have no time to look at a flower. I want them to see it whether they want to or not.” -Georgia O'Keeffe, Quote 1 

“I hate flowers- I paint them because they're cheaper than models and they don't move.”
-Georgia O'Keeffe, Quote 2 

“I decided that if I paint that flower in a huge scale, you could not ignore its beauty.”
-Georgia O'Keeffe, Quote 3

Georgia O'Keeffe's art is a classic example of American art of the early 1900s, especially with her usual subject matter of cityscapes and close-up views of flowers. Her style of abstraction has been lauded by artists and critics alike. Despite flowers and landscapes being a large part of her portfolio, O'Keeffe's idea of nature is detached, aesthetic, and almost entirely indifferent.