Comparisons

• Ingres, Turkish Bath
• Sylvia Sleigh, The Turkish Bath

Sylvia Sleigh followed in the lead of many feminists who attempted to turn the sexist male gaze around upon itself. She chose to parody Ingres’ famous image of a harem of available women, exotic visual candy for nineteenth-century men, by painting an image of nude men also at leisure. Some of her men return the viewer’s gaze much in the same way as Ingres’ women. At the same time, Sleigh is mocking the powerless position into which women have traditionally been placed by portraying leading art critics in the role of passive nudes.

Key Topics

The explosion in the efforts of artists to explore issues in personal, social, and political identity in the latter half of the twentieth century. 

• Redressing the balance: after centuries of social and political exclusion, feminist artists in the US expressed specifically female concerns and points of view in their, often collaborative, works.

• Subverting stereotypes: a second wave of international feminist art challenged the earlier celebration of the goddess- nurturer-mother roles.

• Challenging racial injustice: African-American artists have consciously undertaken projects that take their place in a wider movement for equality to forge an identity for themselves and their community.

• Flux: a choice between global multi-culturalism and national ethnic identity is explored by artists in post-colonial societies.

• Place in society: gay artists and artists of mixed ethnic background residing in the US have begun to create works that explore questions of particular importance to their own social groups, while invoking a multicultural identity.