Ideas and Forms in Art: Stories on Love, War & Industry, and Women: A Gould Center Passion Project

Women: An Introduction

Being a person is hard enough. Being a young woman, in America, is quite the experience. Everyday I'm subjected to the opinions and gaze of anyone I walk past. Some people are cruel and some are judgmental. I look up to so many strong women in our society for advice, guidance, and inspirations. Recently, Emily Ratajkowski inspired me. You may recognize the name from that model in that Robin Thicke video? Ratajkowski is also, however, a business owner and CEO, a writer, an activist, and much more. Soon, she will embrace another work endeavor- being a mother. Her most recent vogue centerpiece was an article as to why she and her husband will not be giving their future newborn a gender. I thought this was most interesting and I highly recommend reading her pieces. Her works reflect large movements of today’s younger generations. However, I found one of her posts to contain a book I thought would (1) aid me in my project theme developments and, (2) teach me something about myself. 

A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women is a collection of “essays on art, sex, and the mind” by Siri Hustvedt. I am finding this book to be dense, but in the best way. I am rediscovering the power of art and the role of women in it. I am also being introduced to many artists, particularly women, and scientific ideas I had never heard of before. Reading this has reminded me of not only how much I don’t know but how much I don’t think enough about. Sometimes the concepts in this book are overwhelming. It is six years of critically researched and sharply articulated essays. I expect to keep reading about postulations that go over my head the same way I used to look at art when I was ten. But, I am finding the bulk of the reading to be informative, both personally and academically. 

I thought this book could help me find some answers as to how men justify subjecting women to their opinions and desires. I talked to my friend Nurel about struggling with this one day. She gave me paragraphs of advice and wisdom in hopes of helping me find my “capacity to move through the anger.” Right then I said, “what a nice phrase.” That’s what I think everyone struggles with. Moving through anger is the hard part. Being mad is easy, but having so much anger to move with and through takes so much energy.

Luckily, I find it easier to transport myself to other worlds. Art has done this in a sense for me. It helped me move through a lot of things just by teaching and exposing them to me first. I watch men on the street, in my house, in my friends’ families, in movies, and in art interact and react with the women in the world. 

Although I would love for every painting this week to be about women and by women, I don’t think that would do women justice. Women are a critical part of the lives of men. This fact translates directly to the coexistence and constant reappearance of the two in art. Art imitates life right. So, the relationship between the two will be addressed throughout the week beginning with de Kooning’s Women.

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