Models or Artists?

“Models or artists?”, for many years this has been a question in the art world regarding the place of women. Many people still believe that women’s place was as a model simply because art history does not remember “greatness” in female artists. Many male artists in the past believed that a woman’s place was as a model for the female nude. The female nude was considered the peak of “great” art. Women, however, were not allowed to paint nudes due to social constraints. These constraints were the only thing “stopping” women from making art. Women still made art working around the constraints of society. The goal of this exhibition is to prove that women in the arts were and are more than models or muses. It will include two prominent male artists to show the side of male artist and how they depicted women through their art. It will move from how artists, both male and female, depict the female body to female artists’ works in the “high” arts, sculptures and paintings, in the 19th and 20th centuries.

All of the artist shown below worked in France or in Germany.

Nancy Elizabeth Prophet

Maurice de Vlaminck

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Photograph of Gabriele Münter