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RantWhy can’t there be good art of women?
I was doing a little idle scrolling and read a blurb about a statue for the Ferry Building Plaza in San Francisco. Of a woman. And I was intrigued because the sculptor (a man) was quoted saying he chose a woman as the subject because there are very few women depicted in public art.
I clicked through and it’s going to be a 45 foot high NAKED WOMAN. La sigh. I mean, why do all the women have to be nude? The longer article explains that the artist has become prominent at Burning Man and got into the large scale there and also? So many of the women at BM were close to or fully naked and no one mentioned or noticed it.
Which, sir. That’s mentioned IN EVERY ARTICLE ABOUT BURNING MAN.
And then I flashed on the statue of Mary Wollstonecraft, which is a big hunk of metal with a tiny naked woman arising out of it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Sculpture_for_Mary_Wollstonecraft
It’s not just me, right? All over there are large statues of famous and not so famous men and they have clothes on.
But the women? GOTTA BE NAKED, even a statue about the first feminist. Ugh.
Reminds me of the Boston Women's Memorial, which always bothered me because all the men's statues in the area are raised and dignified looking, but the women's are grouped together and they seem to sort of slither on the ground. Looking it up now, it is a female sculptor, but I wonder if the powers-that-be chose a vision that didn't make the women look important.
I went down the rabbit hole on the subject of monumental statues in the U.S. and it sounds like this is just the trend now--to be interactive, bring the heroes down to everyone's level, provide a selfie opp, etc. But it really doesn't send the greatest message when this is the only monument to influential women in history!
It depends what you want to represent. For example, if i was a sculptor, i might put harriet tubman on one end of a bench, with an rifle casually resting over her lap. So you kind of sit next to her when youre tired, but also looks like she might f you up if you tried anything. Boudica or someone like that Id put on a rearing horse, right near a path and facing it, so you feel like she might trample you as you walk past.
The problem is women never being shown in positions of power and dominance, even when its appropriate.