University of California San Diego Art Reflection & Connection Paper

Critically reflect on one of the resources videos or articles from this unit’s module and address the following by Sunday of each unit in at least one page (around 500 words) or a video response up to 5 minutes:

What are the highlights of this resource?

Are there new insights you are learning in the resource that apply to your personal or professional life? Can you make personal connections to this resource or the concepts? If so, please share the key takeaways so far. 

How are you able to apply art historical ideas and concepts from a diverse range of cultures? Share any insights that may apply. If your resource doesn’t seem to intersect, share that as well. 

Please feel free to reflect using the questions above or reflect in a way that is more meaningful to you.Want more? KCET Episode: Artist and Mother (Watch this Video)
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Zanele Muholi
Please view the art21 segment on Zanele Muholi.

In this section, we have three articles that take a focused dive into three areas of European history as it pertains to: the nude in art, gender roles in art and the presence and erasure of queer history.I have decided to focus on Europe because of the magnitude of influence that it had on Western society and the Americas. To this day, European art history has formed how we (as a western society) thinks about art, what we value in art, and what it should look like. We are still seeing some of the same European artworks in popular culture to this day- that also includes European ideals of what Christianity looks like. These are major influences of how we “see” the world and it sets our expectations (whether we like it or not).The first two articles discuss works in the time of the Renaissance; a blooming time for culture and society centralized in present day Italy from the late 1400’s to mid 1500’s. This was a prolific time for the arts, which was funded by the Church and wealthy aristocratic families. That meant the art was made for them, with themes that were approved by them. The theme of the time was anything Christian. That said, this was a time of complete exposure (and exploitation) for the female body in the arts. These were not forgiving times, nor were they open-minded times. So, artists had to be very careful that their images of nudity were not too “vulgar”, and were always made to be idealized and even puritanical.  The last article takes on a contemporary look into Medieval art history that was not always discussed. Cultural and social traditions and expectations play a role in this suppression of history. The artwork of the Italian Renaissance (yup, there was a Northern Renaissance), created expectations, traditions of what art should look like and be about. For nearly 500 years, European representation of art was idealized in a fantasy-reality. For some context- remember the Nazi’s “Degenerate Art” exhibit? Well, all the work that they hated was made after those 500 years of idealism.The centuries long traditions in art are reflecting social expectations and norms. Consider this when you see a repeated motif or style/image in a culture and just think about how that reflects the societies values. What does it say about the roles of men or women in that society? This section is also about following the rules of a society and gender power dynamics, including violence.