Modern Woman?

I went to the Queensland Art Gallery on the weekend, specifically to see the exhibition of Modern Woman - Drawings from the Musee D'Orsay, Paris.  It featured drawings and pastels of famous artists like Degas, Renoir, La'Trec, and  Mary Cassett plus many more.  It was a feast for the eyes.  What made this time period, 1850- 1918 so interesting is because this was the first time drawing came into it's own as a serious art, and not just a precursor for a painting or sculpture.   Of course I loved the Degas, and all the pastel works!
Interesting also is the change in how women were depicted - and there is a distinct move from women being objects and possessions, to now being depicted in their everyday states, and all class of women.  Peasants feeding the chickens in the village street, laundry women, and ballet dancers stretching are also often depicted from unusual vantage points.

After walking through the exhibition of course we had to go to the gallery shop and buy the book.   But I also found Fruits, the book of Japanese street fashion.  I saw a regional exhibition of these photos last year - and it was so entertaining, refreshing, engaging that when I saw the book marked down 50% - well I had to get that also!  Japanese street fashion is worth googling, to see what happens when an area of young people - teens through to twentys, decide to go against the flow and dress very, very, differently.  

There is perhaps a whole metaphor here about progression from being an object depicted on canvas, and of women being and dressing as they like, where their choices of dress became the artform.  Where art is seen, and viewed, in the everyday, rather than the everyday captured and then framed behind glass.