Gender Representation In Art

In this painting, the author clearly illustrates the gender roles of the time. We can see that men are strong, muscular and have an heroic posture. And on the other side of the picture we see the women, which seem fragile, emotional and mellow. Moreover, the posture of both men and women can be analyzed, since men have evidently a stronger position by being standing up and with raised arms it can be concluded that they are in charge and preparing for war. The women on the other hand, are seated and with sad expressions, so that it is clear that they are sobbing and weeping.

Art has been used as a political and social tool throughout centuries, and from a critical point of view, it is a symbolic production system that has historically legitimated hegemonic discourses of power and that now a days, has diversificated its practices and postures to the construction of images as an expression of social contextualized subjects. So with that definition we can find that women have been objectualized through art since the beginning of time and it is essential to change the discourse in which we teach art in order to accomplish what Lagarde proposes: dismantle social stereotypes that are socially constructed. Since art is a very important part of the social sphere and men and women are socially constructed, we have to change the role women have been portrayed to follow in art and consequently in real life, so that is why it has to be differently explained and substantially changed.

In this sense, it is necessary to do an investigation around art from a gender perspective, because it is one of the tools that can help fight stereotypes associated to women: to the creation, to the exhibition, commercialization and critic of this type of cultural artwork productions, because like it has helped the patriarchal system through the past centuries it should from now on be useful for gender perspective or at least not complicate its goals by. So the question we have to ask ourselves is: What should we do about art? Does it help us with the purposes of gender perspective? Or does it simply set back the change gender perspective is trying to accomplish? Men and women as historic beings are socially constructed, a main fundament of the social construction is art, and how Lagarde says, we have to deconstruct all of it to gain gender equality and start seeing men and women as equals. Because through history the human kind has marginated half of the population, women. So art, as an important part of history and construction of a general world perspective has to change its discourse.