Links: Gallery Barbara Kruger Cindy Sharman Anne Wallace Essay Bibliography

Question 6   ‘How can the visual arts challenge cultural traditions?’   Visual Arts expresses the voice and opinions of the artist. Communicating their experience with in the world around them. Cultural traditions are a topic that artists, who work with in the conventions of the post-modern have a passion to challenge. Artists of the post-modern such as Barbara Kruger, Anne Zahalka, Cindy Sherman, Laurie Simmons and Sarah Charlesworth subject there work in to challenging the cultural tradition of the patriarchal society. The untitled works by Barbara Kruger, ‘As your gaze hits the side of my face’ and  ‘We’ve received orders not to move’ persuade the audience to come to realisation and to rethink the concepts of a patriarchal society. Zahalka’s ‘Immigrants #02’ use the technique of appropriation to convey her message. Like Kruger, Sherman’s photographs are titled ‘untitled’ to emphasis the scene that the patriarchal society dehumanitises the female society. Simmons and Charlesworth gains inspiration from the media and through their artworks they challenge the cultural tradition of having the female identity be persuaded through the male gaze.   Barbara Kruger works within the conventions of the Post-modern to address the cultural tradition concerning the patriarchal viewpoint of females being display objects. Her artwork ‘untitled (As your gazes hit the side of my face)” depicts a marble bust of a female face with a light shinning from the left as the black and white photo is emerged into shadow. This is to convey and symbolise the male’s gaze upon women. The iconic bold inscription of Kruger’s, which has been superimposed, contrasts upon the background picture. Highlighting and capturing the audience’s attention., the single worded line of caption ‘As your gazes hit the side of my face’. Being on the left, Kruger has calculated that the text will be read before the picture is looked at, as Europeans read from right to left. The insert of text, which is conventional to the post-modern, gives the artwork a close connection with its audience. As text can be easier to read and comprehend by not only the people who take and interest in art but also to the common everyday people, in which Kruger is expressing and drawing a point to. The patriarchal society is again being in questioned with Kruger’s work ‘untitled( We’ve received orders not to move)’. This artwork also questions the social representation of women. The artwork depicts a female figure being pinned up against the wall in an uncomfortable sitting position. There is a banner saying ‘We’ve received orders not to move’, superimposed across it. This picture is also addressing that the role of women is to be display objects (the notion of being ‘pinned up on the wall’). Kruger also is reacting upon Sigmund Freud’s statement of  “putting women in their place”. How the dominant gender is male in a society that view women as objects to satisfy man’s desires when called for. Kruger disagrees with this gesture and expresses this challenge to go against the cultural tradition in her artwork. The reaction Kruger wants from her viewers is to have the viewer ask questions concerning the patriarchal society. Questions that question if this cultural tradition is dehumanitising and if the statement made by Sigmand Freud is true.   Like Kruger, Zahalka questions the traditional male domination with in her artwork ‘Immigrants #02’.  Using appropriation to rework McCubbin’s painting ’Pioneer’, Zahalka highlights the lack of representation of women in active; feature roles in many of the key images have helped shaped Australian identity. McCubbin’s work is iconic and a representation of the pioneer days with in Australia. The original work presented the only female’s role as wife and mothering. Although these roles are important, it is the male who is shown in the more active and powerful role. The dominant role given to the male in M’Cubbin painting is also evident in the fact that it is also generally assumed- title. In Zahalka’s digital rework of the original she has changed the nationality of the pioneers and there is a dominating female role. What Zahalka is trying to do is get the view to find connections from the original work and compare and contrast them to see the difference. Then question, how is role of women being portrayed. First, a portrayal from the original by a male artist and then Zahalka’s point of view.   Cindy Sherman is concerned about the portrayal of women with in films and how Hollywood films are influenced by the way men view women, either as the submissive, the gaze object or the dangerous. Sherman’s ‘Untitled Film Stills’ series express this notion. In these photographs, Sherman places herself in the roles of B-movie actresses. Her photographs show her dressed up in wigs, hats, dresses, clothes unlike her own, playing the roles of characters. While many may mistake these photographs for self-portraits, these photographs only play with elements of self-portraiture and are something quite different. In each of these photographs, Sherman played on a type - not an actual person, but a self-fabricated fictional one. There is the archetypal housewife, the prostitute, the woman in distress, the woman in tears, the dancer, the actress, and the malleable, chameleon-like Sherman, she played all of these characters. This series of artworks can be represented as a protest for women who are mistreated in the film industry or just and interpretation of what Sherman sees on the television translated to an artwork.   Simmons and Charlesworth gains inspiration from the media and through their artworks they challenge the cultural tradition of having the female identity be persuaded through the male gaze. Simmons explores the way in which media images shape the imagination of prepubescent girls. Her work plays off works of dolls as surrogate through which young girls enact the shadowy rituals of adulthood. By photography cheap knock offs of the ever-popular Barbie against photographic backdrop of domestic travelogue settings. Simmons creates humorous tableaux that underscore the rigidity of traditional female roles. Evoking the picture perfect world of the era’s television and advertising. As the media is often satisfying the male gaze, Simmon uses her work to challenge how the patriarchal tradition affects young girls into thinking true beauty is like that of a Barbie doll- which indeed is artificial and commercialized. Charlesworth focuses on the visual language of women magazines. She subverts the original purpose of fashion and advertising images. By isolating details of glamorized objects against lustrous monochrome backgrounds and have surrounding the whole image with lacquier frames. She combined photo fragments of a disembodied evening ground and a bounded figure completely encased in a bondage outfit. They recall Freudian Concept of the Fetish is embraced to resolve a psychological wholeness. Charlesworth’s fragmented; isolated images have the opposite effect, revealing the essential emptiness beneath the objects of male fantasy.   Visual Arts has the ability to challenge cultural traditions, as artworks is a form of communication that has the ability to display the artist’s intentions and view point of todays society. This has been seen through the works of Barbara Kruger, Anne Zahalka, Cindy Sherman, Laurie Simmons and Sarah Charlesworth, who all use the conventions of the postmodern to convey their opinion on the cultural tradition of the patriarchal society.