Images of women were ubiquitous in America at the turn of the last century. In painting and sculpture, they took on a bewildering variety of identities, from Venus, Ariadne, and Diana to Law, Justice, the Arts, and Commerce. Bailey Van Hook argues here that the artists' concepts of art coincided with the construction of gender in American culture. She finds that certain characteristics such as "ideal," "beautiful," "decorative," and "pure" both describe this art and define the perceived role of women in American society at the time.
Most late nineteenth-century American artists had...
Images of women were ubiquitous in America at the turn of the last century. In painting and sculpture, they took on a bewildering variety of identi...
