Man Woman 4

Comment

Comment by Lisa DeLoria WEinblatt on June 9, 2011 at 9:47pm

Thank you Jinsu, I always appreciate a sensitive viewer.

Comment by Jinsu Du on June 9, 2011 at 9:37pm

Great.

Comment by Lisa DeLoria WEinblatt on June 7, 2011 at 6:22pm

I appreciate your on-target commentary about this painting.   In the Man/ Woman series, I use the vocabulary of daily life and historical reference to inform the content.  I am seeking to express my views about the multi-faceted roles of women, as seen through the lens of a modern woman.  The images in the Man/Woman series investigate the interactions of interpersonal relationships,with-in a time frame.  The M/W paintings are activated by current issues and concerns of women, which challenge the uneasy boundaries of possession, substance, perception and hallucination.
The painting in the show "'Gender Matters/ Matters of Gender" was the one preceeding this one,  in its conception.  The asymmetrical left side of Man Woman 3 ( a door is opening onto a scene of trees and a body of water) fits into the right side of this one - M/W 4.

Comment by Resident Curator on June 7, 2011 at 11:27am

Curator’s Comment:

 

I find this to be an absorbing piece, and series of paintings.  Abounding with historical appropriation and narrative, Man Woman 4 delightfully sublimates the male gaze and reclining Odalesque.  Manet’s highly recognizable Le déjeuner sur l'herbe is a wonderful setting to skew gender identity and relationships.  The female figure’s androgyny and even forward gaze watches the viewer, and we in turn gaze at the recumbent male the left.  He strikes a stereotypically feminine pose- avoiding our eyes and thus allowing our voyeuristic stare, but even more so, presents his body splayed with his arm behind his head.  This coy and submissive gesture makes him all the more vulnerable and exposed.  What is originally another female figure in the Manet (and another yet still on the ‘original’ Raimondi etching appropriated by Manet) becomes a garden statue.  By removing the third figure in the triad, I would venture to say the single female retains authority and command of the space.  That this work is a diptych of irregular shape further adds to the deconstruction and friction in the work.  The still life lunch in the bottom foreground is more rounded and modeled than the figures- is this nod to Cezanne?

In full confession, I believe I saw another one of your paintings in an exhibit titled Gender Matters/ Matters of Gender at the Freedman Gallery at Albright College.  I enjoyed that piece as well, with a similar dichotomy in approach to gender identity, and formal construction.  There is much going on in each of these works, and your series provides a wealth of iconography that will no doubt sustain future works.