Artemisia Gentileschi was born 1593, just when the Baroque art period began. Baroque art is identified as very dramatic/intense (“caught in the moment” type of paintings) expressed through the use of shadows to create “dramatic contrasts between light and dark” (McKay, The Basics of Art: The Baroque Period). Artemisia Gentileschi was considered a Baroque artist and was one of the few women at the time that were ever recognized for her works “in the male-dominated world of post-Renaissance art” (The Life and Art of Artemisia Gentileschi). When she was 18 years old, she was raped by a painter and his helper, in which her farther had hired to tutor her. With the help of her farther, she was able to press chargers, though he never did end up in jail. This traumatic event is expressed through her art pieces, in which depict strong and/or suffering women. Art, like movies “make magic. They change things. They take the real and make it into something else right before our very eyes” (Hooks, pg 1). In Gentileschi’s art work, what is meant by real is her truth of the consequences of her body being sexually objectify. And that truth is being transformed into her paintings, exaggerating emotions and what probably feels to her the most horrifying aspect of overcoming tragedy and turning into strength.
I’d like to point out when I encounter this painting for the first time, other students and I assumed that it was about a women seeking revenge for an unfaithful husband or for his money, etc. Which emphasizes that as a society, we have the stereotypical assumption that if a woman is violent, it’s an act of irrationality of jealously.
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This other piece is titled “Susanna and the Elders.” The story goes that, “Susanna was falsely accused by lecherous voyeurs. As she bathes in her garden, having sent her attendants away, two lustful elders secretly observe the lovely Susanna. When she makes her way back to her house, they accost her, threatening to claim that she was meeting a young man in the garden unless she agrees to have sex with them.” (Wikipedia). Susanna is a victim, like Gentileschi, where two men disrespect a woman’s body to satisfy their own personal desires. Though Susanna is never raped, she is accused of promiscuity even though she did not do anything of that sort.
What’s most striking, in relation to the auteur theory, is that these painting were academically approved. Though, being that Gentileschi’s paintings were biblical, it is still surprising that they were because it entitled active women and not women posing for nudes or portraits. And that was what was academically acceptable. And Gentileschi adds her own voice/personal and creative vision, emphasizing the strength of women, of her own, of releasing her own personal struggles into canvas. It’s her way of “challenging the conventional structures of domination that uphold and maintain white supremacist capitalist patriarchy” (Hooks, pg 3) by simply supplying the “mainstream” academic paintings a women’s point of view, one in which has suffered, not just the oppression of white supremacy, but from rape.
I feel that Gentileschi has to be identified as 17th century feminist expression of the vagina monologues. For those who don’t know, the vagina monologues are (in a way) a movement against violence towards women. They entitled monologues speaking about sex, rape, menstruation, orgasms, and anything that has to do with the female genitalia. Here’s a video to further demonstrate what they are:
When I say Gentileschi is like the vagina monologues is because she uses a form of art to further express her pains but through the use of biblical stories. She is satisfying the status quo by not diluting to the extremity of painting her own stories, but how the bible related to her own. Most people critique her artwork under the Baroque time period, where they emphasize how she was able to create moments so well and dramatize them with the movement of the bodies and the usage of light and dark. But through a feminist lens, it entails a “complex awareness of sexual politics.” Of women become active and taking matters to their own hands, of women being raped and abused, of becoming victims to white supremacy. If it weren’t for her father’s support and the fact that Gentileschi was a virgin prior to her rape, she would have never been able to actually press charges against her rapists.
I just really think she’s badass for creating Judith slaying Holofernes, though I do believe if the title was “Judith saving her town” or something amongst those lines, more people would probably want to know the background story, rather than assuming she’s being a “bitch” when she’s actually being a H.B.I.C. ( head bitch in charge).
Bibliography:
Bell Hooks, Making Movie Magic
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