Vintage Ladies in Cubist Exhibitions: Pablo Picasso's Cubist Women and Judith Butler's Performativity

Laleh Atashi,Samaneh Saeid

doi:10.9744/kata.22.1.28-35

Abstract

As a prominent figure in the history of painting, Pablo Picasso has bestowed upon the world his uniquely striking paintings in different styles, the most revolutionary of which being his Cubist art. The representation of women occupies a significant space in Picasso’s Cubist works. While the painter’s style is highly revolutionary, rejecting the accepted principles of painting, the subject matter does not change as such: nude women are objectified with a cubist look. Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity which examines the roots of naturalized concepts of gender, has been applied to Picasso’s representations of women in his cubist paintings. This research examines the way naturalized definitions of gender have found their way into Picasso’s paintings. By applying the Butlerian concept of gender performativity to a number of Picasso’s cubist artworks, we try to indicate how stereotypes of gender linger in the discourse of modernism. Analyses lead to the conclusion that although the cubist style of painting is an experimentation in form, hardly any avant-gardism can be traced in the representation of gendered identities in Picasso.

Highlights

Representing gender identity has often been part and parcel of artistic productions
The women’s artistic ability has not overshadowed her physicality in this painting; the curly prepossessing golden hair perspicuously beautified by the concentration of the golden cast of the background, the slim feminine figure accompanied by highlighted curves with the slanted coy angle she possesses in her standing position could be considered as the penetratingly codified conventions through which femininity has been culturally defined
While the inclusion of black faces as the refutation of racial biases is evident in his paintings, when it comes to the ideology of gender, his artistic landscape is not inclusionary since it is peopled by female figures that are objectified and othered by patriarchal gaze

Summary

Introduction

Representing gender identity has often been part and parcel of artistic productions. Both written and visual types of art have been anchored as enchanting canals through which the producer’s ingenuity imbued with cultural inculcations have been germinated. Since our focus in this article is on the representations of femininity in cubist art, the consideration of cultural definitions of gender is of particular importance to us.

Results

Conclusion