5 legendary scandalous canvases depicting women around whom controversy is still raging (part 1)

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Women have been a favorite theme of artists for centuries. In ancient art, the fair sex was often depicted as goddesses and mythological creatures. In the 15th century, idealized portraits of women with complex outfits appeared. These paintings were often commissioned by wealthy families who wanted to showcase their wealth and power. And nevertheless, in whatever role the artists portrayed women, they somehow remained their favorite subject.

1. Dream, Pablo Picasso, 1932

Perhaps Picasso is the greatest artist of all times and peoples, and this painting is one of the most famous portraits he painted. It depicts his French mistress Marie-Thérèse Walther. Unlike his later lover Dora Maar, whom Picasso often portrayed as tortured and unhappy, Marie-Therese usually looks sunny and bright blonde in her paintings. Picasso has created many works with elements of eroticism, and the erotic content of this portrait is often noted by critics, who indicate that the artist painted an erect penis (presumably symbolizing it as his own) on the upside down face of his 22-year-old model. In March 2013, Le Reve was sold to a private collection for one hundred and fifty-five million dollars, making it the fifth most expensive painting ever sold at the time. As of August 2017, this price is the second highest ever paid for a Picasso painting after Les Femmes d'Alger (Women of Algeria), which sold for nearly one hundred and eighty million dollars in May 2015.

2. Nude Maya, Francisco Goya, 1800

Francisco Goya is considered the most important Spanish painter of the late 18th and early 19th centuries and one of the great portrait painters of our time. Maya Nude is one of his masterpieces, known as the first "completely profane life-size female nude in Western art" and the first large Western painting to depict a woman's pubic hair without obvious negative connotations. The painting was most likely commissioned by Spanish Prime Minister Manuel de Godoy. But the identity of the model is not exactly known to this day. Possible candidates are Godoy's mistress Pepita Tudo and Maria Caetana de Silva, 13th Duchess of Alba. This painting, famous for the direct and shameless gaze of the model at the viewer, is considered a revolutionary work that expanded the horizons of Western art.

3. Arrangement in Gray and Black, No. 1: Mother's Portrait, James Whistler, 1871

James McNeill Whistler, while primarily active in the United Kingdom, was an influential American artist of the late 19th century. He was against sentimentality and moral allusions in painting and believed that true art is "in itself" and divorced from such attachments. The subject of this painting is his mother, Anna McNeil Whistler. The work was originally titled "Arrangement in Gray and Black, No. 1: Portrait of a Mother," and the artist was annoyed at others' over-insistence on treating it as a portrait. The painting eventually became in America an icon of motherhood, affection for parents and family values. In 1934, the US Post Office issued a stamp engraved with a stylized image of Whistler's Mother with the slogan "In Memory and Honor of the Mothers of America." In addition, this work was named the Victorian Mona Lisa, and it remains one of the most famous portraits of the American artist.

4. Portrait of Madame X, John Singer Sargent, 1884

John Singer Sargent was an American artist residing in Paris at the time he created this painting. He was in his late thirties and was trying to make a name for himself. Virginia Amelie Avegno Gautreau was an American émigré who married a French banker and was well known in Parisian society for her beauty. After a couple of years of persuasion, the glamorous Madame Gautreau agreed to pose for Sargent. When the portrait was first exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1884, it caused a storm of outrage. Some considered him too provocative, while critics compared his model to a corpse and used words such as disgusting and brutal in relation to her portrait. Newspapers published cartoons and satirical poems ridiculing both the artist and the model, as Sargent's attempt to hide his name was in vain. Such a scandal erupted that the artist had to leave Paris and move to London. But fate turned out to be very favorable, and over time, "Portrait of Madame X" has become one of the most revered and famous portraits in Western art.

5. Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, Gustav Klimt, 1907

Gustav Klimt was an Austrian painter who remains one of the most famous. He achieved remarkable success in his "golden phase" during which he painted this famous portrait. The model in the painting, Adele Bloch-Bauer, was the wife of Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, a wealthy Jewish banker and sugar producer. She was then twenty-five years old. The portrait of "Adele Bloch-Bauer I", also known as the woman in gold, was stolen by the Nazis in 1941. A few years later, Adele's niece Maria Altman fought a seven-year legal battle against the Austrian government to bring back the iconic portrait for the family in 2006. In the same year, the portrait "Adele Bloch-Bauer I" was sold for one hundred and thirty-five million dollars, setting the record for the highest price ever paid for a painting. As of February 2018, the work is ranked thirteenth in the list of the most expensive paintings (adjusted for inflation). The story of Maria Altman was captured in the 2015 film drama "The Woman in Gold", being at the same time one of the most famous portraits of the painter.

Read also about which ones made a lot of noise and why the controversy around them still continues.