Gender Violence, Art, and the Viewer

The works covered in college art history classes frequently depict violence against women. Traditional survey textbooks highlight the impressive formal qualities of artworks depicting rape, murder, and other violence but often fail to address the violent content and context. Gender Violence, Art, and the Viewer investigates the role that the art history field has played in the past and can play in the future in education around gender violence in the arts. It asks art historians, museum educators, curators, and students to consider how, in the time of #MeToo, a public reckoning with gender violence in art can revitalize the field of art history.

Contributors to this timely volume amplify the voices and experiences of victims and survivors depicted throughout history, critically engage with sexually violent images, open meaningful and empowering discussions about visual assaults against women, reevaluate how we have viewed and narrated such works, and assess how we approach and teach famed works created by artists implicated in gender-based violence.

Gender Violence, Art, and the Viewer includes contributions by the editors as well as Veronica Alvarez, Indira Bailey, Melia Belli Bose, Charlene Villaseñor Black, Ria Brodell, Megan Cifarelli, Monika Fabijanska, Vivien Green Fryd, Carmen Hermo, Bryan C. Keene, Natalie Madrigal, Lisa Rafanelli, Nicole Scalissi, Hallie Rose Scott, Theresa Sotto, and Angela Two Stars. It is sure to be of keen interest to art history scholars and students and anyone working at the intersections of art and social justice.

“Gender Violence, Art, and the Viewer addresses an array of themes and will be useful to museum curators, students, and educators in gender studies, art history, classics studies, fine arts, and more. It lends momentum to a ‘public reckoning’ in art history to account for how violence against women and minority groups and sexual violence are glorified in revered works and are too often left unaddressed in studies of prominent artists throughout history.”—Mahaliah Little, University of California, Irvine

Ellen C. Caldwell is Professor of Art History at Mt. San Antonio College. She is the author of Paula Rego: Art Souvenir.

Cynthia S. Colburn is Blanche E. Seaver Chair of Fine Arts at Pepperdine University. She is the coauthor of The History of Art: A Global View and coeditor of Reading a Dynamic Canvas: Adornment in the Ancient Mediterranean World.

Ella J. Gonzalez is a PhD candidate in History of Art at Johns Hopkins University. She is the coauthor, with Cynthia S. Colburn, of “How to Teach Ancient Art in the Age of #MeToo,” which was published in Hyperallergic.

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Gender Violence and Art History

Ellen C. Caldwell, Cynthia S. Colburn, and Ella J. Gonzalez

Part 1: Reckoning with Violence in the Canon: Pedagogical and Art-Historical Approaches

1. Women and Violence in Ancient Greek Art: Subverting the Dominant Narrative

Cynthia S. Colburn and Ella J. Gonzalez

2. Invisible Casualties: Gender Violence in Assyrian Relief Sculptures

Megan Cifarelli

3. An Unmentionable History: The Stigma of Sodomy and Images of Violence Toward Queer and Trans Peoples in Premodern Europe

Bryan C. Keene

4. Breaking the Silence: Depictions of Gender-Based Violence and Sexual Violation in Italian Renaissance and Baroque Art

Lisa Rafanelli

5. Teaching About Gendered and Racialized Violence in Colonial Mexican Art: The Case of Malintzin and Other Challenges

Charlene Villaseñor Black

6. Sexing the Canvas: The Rape Narrative of the Black Female Body in Western History Paintings

Indira Bailey

7. Cultivating a Humanizing Gaze: Viewership, Consumption, and Complicity in Art and Film After #MeToo

Ellen C. Caldwell and Natalie Madrigal

Part 2: Transformational Curatorial Practices: Shifting

Educational Practices in Public Spaces

8. Subverting Patriarchy in Art Museums: Strategies for the Anti-Oppressive Art Museum Educator

Hallie Rose Scott and Theresa Sotto

9. Why It’s Impossible to Separate the Art from the Artist: An Educator’s Experience with Gauguin and Picasso

Veronica Alvarez

10. To Censor or to Teach: Educational Reflections on a Foundational Exhibition

Monika Fabijanska

11. An Overwhelming Response: Gender-Based Violence and Contemporary Feminist Art

Carmen Hermo

12. Bring Her Home: Awareness, Advocacy, Resistance, and Healing

Angela Two Stars

Part 3: Art and/as Advocacy

13. Gender Violence, Censorship, and Erasure: A Conversation with Ria Brodell About Contemporary Art, Practice, and Pedagogy

Ria Brodell and Ellen C. Caldwell

14. Amio: Gender-Based Violence in Contemporary Bangladeshi Art

Melia Belli Bose

15. Anti-Rape and Anti-Incest Counternarratives: Art in the United States Since the 1960s and in the Wake of the #MeToo Movement

Vivien Green Fryd

16. Considering Unseen Violence: Zanele Muholi’s Faces and Phases

Nicole Scalissi

Conclusion: Moving Forward—A New Era in Art History

Ellen C. Caldwell, Cynthia S. Colburn, and Ella J. Gonzalez

Resource Appendix

List of Contributors

Index

Download a PDF sample chapter here: Introduction

Art History & Architecture

Gender Studies