Erin Sparler’s Blog

So I’m working on a instructors supplementary materials for Understanding Art. I’ve been creating PowerPoint Presentations and JoinIn content for each and every chapter and let me just say that its taking forever! But in that process of forever I have had some interesting thoughts on oil painting, the ideal beauty and the implications of art history for our society.

In Classical Greece sculpture they attempted to portray the ideal human form.
During the Renaissance they revitalized the ideals of Classical art. The idea of the ideal human figure, realism in art, heightened storytelling. Then right after the Renaissance, Mannerism started using elongated figure and distortion to create emotionalism in religious painting.

The images of a time depict the idealized beauty of the era. These images reflect on the idea of the culture and the society. If this is the case, what will/do our portrayals of 5’10” 100lb supermodels say about us?

During the Renaissance, Tintoretto used small dolls on a stage or hung from a string to set up his composition and get the perspective right. Taken together with Tintoretto’s technique, one could use Barbie to create paintings that speak about the modern perception of beauty. Is Barbie a form of Mannerism? Obviously we are attempting to portray and idealized beauty. But who’s idealized beauty is it? Certainly not the average 5’8” 190lb man. Certainly not the 5’4” 140 lb average woman.

I once postulated that the modern concept of beauty was being created by the male homosexual population that dominates the fashion industry. For isn’t this what our current supermodels are portraying; the adolescent male body?

If you were to do a study of the measurements of jeans what would you find? Would you find that the majority of pants considered fashionable would fit the 18 -22 male body better then a woman? Would you find that this was confirmed not by any scientific study calculating the average measurements of the jean industry’s sizing charts but instead by the current trend of teenage boys purchasing and comfortably wearing woman’s jeans!?