Female image in art: faults and findings

Abstract

This paper elaborates on how female image in traditional art represents a behavioural pattern and an historical reality. The nude female, in whose representation the body is given more important than the face, the women’s portrait offered as scenery, a meal or as a prey, will make the relationship and communication between sexes more difficult and will trap women in a derogatory archetype. That is why the first response of women painters has always been the search for their own image through their self-portrait. Currently women artists have been searching for new symbols through which define their identity, rejecting the image that classical art tradition has built.