Metropolitan Museum

The world's museums are full of scandals and secrets.  John Singer Sargent's portrait of Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau, known simply as Madame X, is a great example.  When it Scandals and Secrets, example Sargent's Madame X Sargent's Madame X, the original, with the fallen shoulder strap was unveiled at the 1884 Paris Salon, it caused such a scandal that Sargent's career was almost destroyed.  Who after all would want to hire a portrait-painter who caused scandals at the Salon?  It was also damaging, of course, for Gautreau's reputation as a society beauty.  Her family begged Sargent to withdraw the painting from the Salon, but he refused.  After the Salon, however, he repainted the detail that had caused the biggest scandal.

It seems unbelievably dated, but people are still calling ambitious, intelligent women "nasty women."  As if that could hurt anyone's feelings in 2020!  In fact, like many other outdated insults,  it has the opposite effect.  Many women today are are taking the term on (as lesbians took on the term 'dyke') and calling themselves "nasty women" in sarcastic protest.

One of the fun things to look at in the Metropolitan museum is the way artists portray women's breasts—because while you might imagine that the modern obsession with large breasts is universal, in fact ideal breasts vary from cultural moment to cultural moment.  In particular, it is pretty clear that the Renaissance favored small breasts.  The corsets in fashion at that time created an upper body shape similar to the shape of a man's chest in armor.  It seems the women's corsets squashed their breasts out sideways to create this effect.  And Renaissance nudes' breasts are influenced by the way women looked when clothed:  their breasts are not large, sit low on the chest, and are quite far apart.  In the 18th and 19th centuries, by contrast, women's breasts reflect a different kind of corset:  they are larger, higher, and closer together. But what about *male* body parts?

For almost ten years, I've been researching and writing about American women artists working before 1945, with particular interest in resuscitating their careers. Everything about these women fascinates me--their struggle to become professionals in a world that doesn't see women that way; the ways they...

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