Sexing the Canvas: Art and Gender

• Week 1 - Tiepolo’s Cleopatra
  We begin this MOOC by introducing you to some of the theories about gender and sexuality that we will be calling upon throughout this course. We will look at the tradition of the representation of women in art and the operation of the 'male gaze', which render...
• Week 2 - The Culture of Sensibility and the ‘Man of Feeling’
  This week we examine in detail Thomas Gainsborough’s much loved Portrait of an officer of the Fourth Regiment of Foot, the portrait of Richard St George Mansergh-St George in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria. Here we consider how Gainsborough...
• Week 3 - Gainsborough at the Huntington
  We consider five pictures by Thomas Gainsborough in week three of this course that are held in the collection of the Huntington Gallery in California, through an explication of how the artist represented his subjects in the context of the culture of sensibilit...
• Week 4 - Sexual Codes in Eighteenth Century French Courtly Painting
  This week Jennifer Milam, Professor of Art History at the University of Sydney, reveals the sexual codes and symbols of art in eighteenth century French painting. Professor Milam uncovers the erotic references imbedded in the courtly art of François Boucher an...
• Week 5 - Orientalism, Gender and Display - Painting in Morocco
  This week Dr Caroline Wallace and I present a study of two artists working in Morocco in the early twentieth century; the British Royal Academy painter John Lavery and the Australian modernist Hilda Rix Nicholas. They examine how these artists used orientalist...
• Week 6 - Henri Rousseau: Challenging the Myth of the Passive Woman
  This week Professor Barbara Creed explores the way Henri Rousseau challenged the myth of the passive woman and relocates women as a vital source of creativity and mystery in art. In The Dream woman is represented as the new Eve living in harmony with nature in...
• Week 7 - Henri Matisse, Paul Cezanne and Max Dupain - Modernism, Gender and the Science of Movement
  Scientific advances in the nineteenth and early twentieth century created new ideas about male and female bodies. In a unique reading of Henri Matisse's Dance and Paul Cezanne's The Bather, we consider how Darwinian theory and science impacted upon the work of...
• Week 8 - Frida Kahlo, Glyn Philpot and the Struggle to Paint
  This week we begin by looking at Frida Kahlo’s Fulang-Chang and I as well as her Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair Canvas. These lectures on Frida Kahlo's pictures at MOMA finish with a discussion between myself and Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor Barbara ...
• Week 9 - What is Women’s Business? Indigenous Art and the Dreaming
  National Gallery of Victoria Senior Curator of Indigenous Art, Judith Ryan, takes us deep into the Dreaming of the Australian Indigenous tradition. She examines in detail the making of two masterpieces by women artists from the Australian outback; Emily Kam Kn...

Jeanette Hoorn
Professor
Culture and Communication