This is great! I feel very lucky that I studied art when women’s studies were still a big part of the critical theory curriculum (although it was right on the cusp of queer theory taking over, so both were presented as separate ideas). Sadly, female students producing art related to women’s rights or women’s experiences wasn’t taken particularly seriously and the most successful female students were those that produced very dry, minimalist looking work based on theories by male philosophers 😬
One of the reasons I love Tracy Emin is because her work is so relentlessly self focussed. She puts her experiences, her thoughts, her successes and her failures at the centre of everything, and the work demands that her self-legend is given the serious attention that male equivalents receive. It’s often resolutely and undeniably female, both in social coding terms (using techniques such as embroidery) and biological terms (themes include abortion, materials used include items stained with her bodily secretions) but she defies female socialisation - refusing to be quiet or to diminish herself in favour of men.
Her work isn’t always visually pleasing, but that’s another transgression against female socialisation.
Anyway, returning to the impressionists, I’ve always been a bit fascinated by Manet’s Olympia, who reclines in the cliched pose seen in Titian’s Venus of Urbino (300 years earlier) but rather than appear coquettish, stares straight back at the male gaze, with a look that is mostly blank, with a tinge of what might be arrogance or distaste.
I once remade this image via photograph using a black, extensively tattooed model, looking to subvert the racial stereotyping of the original’s black maid. I’m not sure if it was successful, in hindsight, but in my defence, it was about 15 years ago. I no longer take photographs as art as I find the medium too problematic, so perhaps that’s why I’m not as happy with it as I was back then?