Gender in the Arts

While researching depictions of women in art, I came across a section of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) website entitled "Constructing Gender." According to the site, "Many artists have used their work to examine, question, and criticize the relationships between gender and society."

As part of this section, MoMA presents seven images that address the social construct of gender, ranging from the 1920s to the 2000s by artists such as Frida Kahlo, Laurie Simmons, and Joan Jonas. It is fascinating to see how both women and men have commented on gender through their art.

Self-Portrait, from Bifur, no 5 (1930) by Claude Cahun; lightsgoingon, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

One such creative is Claude Cahun, a queer, gender-neutral, French-born writer, photographer, and performer. Cahun produced much of their work in the 1920s and 30s, but most of it was destroyed after they were incarcerated for resisting the Nazi regime. Their work challenged binary social constructs of gender, particularly the idea that gender identity was fixed. They have influenced more modern artists as well, including musician David Bowie, who used Cahan's art in his New York performance in 2007 (Myer, 2023).

References

"Constructing Gender." Museum of Modern Art (website). https://www.moma.org/collection/terms/investigating-identity/constructing-gender

Dones, Serena. "Claude Cahun: Early Queer Art in Paris." YouTube.com, December 7, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxldV26KTLE

Myer, Isabella. "Claude Cahun – A Look at Claude Cahun’s Life and Artistic Contribution." ArtInContext.org, August 1, 2023. https://artincontext.org/claude-cahun/

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