Khalo-Sherman-Xiuwen Comparison

My Khalo-Sherman-Xiuwen Comparison is behind the cut - Cui Xuiwen is my favorite! What about you guys?

Cui Xuiwen, Cindy Sherman, and Frida Kahlo all have really different styles of art, but they all send a strong message of society's image of women - especially in relation to men.

Frida Kahlo does paintings, and mostly self-portraits. In her portraits she portrays herself very manly, even going so far as to put herself in a suit with cropped hair in one. I believe that in a way she is saying that for a portrait of a woman she needs to be almost a man in order to do things like look directly out at the viewer in a portrait. She is often surrounded by monkeys, to emphasize the hairy manliness of her self-portraits, but also by snakes, almost like a "remember, I am a fickle and dangerous woman" message.

Cindy Sherman's works are plain disturbing. They give a definite feel of "something bad happened to me when I was a child". That's the impression I got anyway: chills went up my spine. Her setup photos are very much about women as sexual objects, or perhaps playthings, as the dolls indicate. Her movie series seems like it's about main women roles and women taking charge, but it's always very sexual and submissive type poses, as if woman's only purpose is to be there ready and waiting for men.

Cui Xuiwen is definitely my favorite of the three. Perhaps because I am asian, or because my roommate had a paper on orientalism recently, or because I watched Mulan again last month. Her manipulated photos portray generic women, often with copies of the same person. The hairstyle is very generic and the dress and skin is white, while the lips and eye makeup are red. She looks like a porcelain doll. Again, this sends the image of woman as an object. Her simple white dress strongly resembles a nightie, sending the image of both virgin and bedroom. The fact that there are so many of the same generic woman seems to reflect something that echoes to me from the movie Anna and the King: "'What is one woman to you, when she is just another woman, just as a bowl of rice is the same as any other bowl of rice?' 'Exactly! Now you understand about women!'" They imply that women are identity-less: simply vessels - in the case of Asia, vessels for heirs, as shown by her many shots of the woman pregnant. She always looks very resigned to the baby, and the father is nowhere in the picture - this isn't a baby born out of love and family, but of duty as a woman to bear sons. Even the photos of young girls still look the same, and are looking towards the sky with a defeated posture while stuck firmly on the ground: they think wistfully of soaring free but know and accept what will happen to them.