Art the Late 19th Century Essay

In Spirit of the Dead Watching, Gaugin also depicts a Tahitian woman with open sexuality. The woman in Spirit of the Dead Watching lays prostrate on a bed, exposing her naked buttocks while gazing directly at the viewer. Her position is submissive, in spite of the alluring look in the woman's eyes. The spirit of the dead represents traditional Tahitian religious beliefs, which would have been in direct conflict with the Christianity imposed upon the island nation by the French.

Sexuality was also a favorite theme of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. The artist was well-known for his escapades in Montmartre, Paris's cabaret district. Toulouse-Lautrec's work depicts a seedy underbelly of Parisian life rather than idealizing the bourgeoisie. Like Gaugin's work, the paintings of Toulouse-Lautrec embody the social changes taking place in European society during the late nineteenth century.

In Stocking, Toulouse-Lautrec depicts two dancers, one of which is just getting dressed. The one on the left wears so much makeup as to appear clown-like, and she is fully dressed. Both women are preparing for their stage acts. The woman on the right pulls up a stocking but otherwise she is totally naked. Toulouse-Lautrec paints the two women candidly, as if they do not know they are being watched. His approach mimics that of photography, which allowed for candid pictures of people that would otherwise need to sit still and model for an artist. Alone is another painting in which Toulouse-Lautrec portrays cabaret dancers as sexually uninhibited and independent women. The prone woman's eyes are closed and the painting appears hasty, as if Toulouse-Lautrec quickly stole a snapshot of a dancer taking a nap. His sketch-like brushstrokes almost transform the imagery into an abstraction, as if in a quick glance. The viewer is placed in the unique position of being a voyeur watching a woman sleep. Like Gaugin, Toulouse-Lautrec depicts female bodies and female sexuality from a male perspective. However, their paintings also show that social and gender norms were shifting towards female political and social liberation. Just a few decades after Gaugin and Toulouse-Lautrec died, women throughout Europe were able to participate in public elections for the first time in history.

Toulouse-Lautrec was not influenced by an idealized pre-industrialized society as Gaugin was. However, Toulouse-Lautrec was enamored by a different type of "otherness": the underclass, the legions of artists, musicians, dancers, and Bohemians that kept alive Paris's underground arts scene. Social and cultural norms during the late nineteenth century were changing, as old aristocracies crumbled. Artists like Paul Gaugin and Toulouse-Lautrec did not cater to bourgeois sensibilities; their artwork demonstrates the shift away from Victorian repressiveness towards the more liberalized culture of the 20th century.

Technological, social, and political transformations shaped post-impressionistic art. Colonialism and the technologies that enabled it allowed artists like Gaugin to travel, encounter non-European cultures, and report back to Europe via his artwork. An awakening of populist and socialist values in Europe caused art to shift away from an elite endeavor to a more populist one, evidenced in the work of Toulouse-Lautrec. Feminism permitted a more open display of female sexuality, and technologies like the camera changed the ways painters depicted their subjects.

References

Hill, a. (2001). Gauguin's erotic Tahiti idyll exposed as a sham. Guardian. October 7, 2001. Retrieved May 2, 2010 from http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/oct/07/arts.highereducation

Pioch, N. (2002). Gauguin, (Eugene-Henri-) Paul. WebMuseum. Retrieved May 2, 2010 from http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/gauguin/

Roskill, M. (1997). Paul Gaugin. Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia, Release 9.01. Cited online and retrieved May 2, 2010 from http://www.discoverfrance.net/France/Art/Gauguin/Gauguin.shtml