Last semester I took a course on North American Indigenous art history, in which I wrote an essay on contemporary Inuk artist Shuvinai Ashoona. After doing research for the essay, I got a little obsessed with Inuit graphic arts. I was fascinated with the subject matter, the style, and the history behind it. In recent decades, Inuit graphic art has…
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The Great Women Portrait Artists
Despite the institutional and societal limitations women artists have faced, portrait art has long been regarded as a feminine preoccupation. Since ancient times, female artists have excelled in portraiture. While male portrait artists are more celebrated, women seem to excel in this over other genres of art. This post was born after I read two essays: Linda Nochlin’s Why Have There…
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Female Nudes and The Male Gaze
The artistic convention of the nude has been around since ancient times, and its sexist undertones have always accompanied it. The naked female body has long been a source of pleasure to the male eye. It is commodified and assigned value through its sexual attractiveness to the male eye. The conventions of nudes have shifted to please male audiences throughout…
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Cultural Appropriation in Modern Art
One of the classes I’m taking this semester is about art since around 1900, from Post-Impressionism to Contemporary Art. As a class at the University of Toronto or any traditional institution, the class is taught from a very Eurocentric point of view. However, many European artworks from this time were starting to gain influences from other parts of the world.…
