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Anatomy Of A Kimono Essay

Decent Essays

The artwork I choose to write about is relevant to gender, sexuality, women, and gender roles. The name of my chosen piece is “Anatomy of a Kimono.” This piece was completed in 1974 by Canadian-American artist, Miriam Schapiro. The art piece was created using a multitude of fabrics that could be found in traditional Japanese kimonos as well as acrylic paint. These various forms of media were combined on a canvas. In order to assemble the fabric based materials of her work, Miriam Schapiro collected scraps of silk and handkerchiefs from the various places that she visited. The different materials Schapiro used were then assembled into ten, large, Japanese style panels that resembled abstract expressionism. The fabrics represented women’s influence …show more content…

A large part of Schapiro’s goal for this piece was to explain the relationship that women have with creating certain fabrics and designs and the great deal of skill involved. She described her work as a collage of the beauty created by women. The piece empowers women and cleverly reveals them as incredibly intelligent artists who subtly possess the skills required to create extremely complex works of art and craft that blend in with the everyday life. Another main point of Miriam Schapiro’s message is that women should occupy an equal, if not greater amount of space in comparison with men. The large size of her piece clearly demonstrates this thought process. In relation, the content of her piece brings to the forefront, the significant ideas that women and women alone are pioneering new ideologies in terms of their unique artistic style and culture. During a time when sexism was still very prevalent in society, women were finding their own special ways to break the mold and distinguish themselves from men and in turn, explore and practice new skills that go beyond the abilities of men at the time. In addition to this, the subtle inclusion of embroidered names of women within the minutiae of the artwork also helps develop a significant focus on driving away the generalizations of women and establish bold, yet almost silent ways to prove the individualistic characteristics of every women to the rest of the world. Furthermore, the inclusion of many vibrant colors and rich textures included in the composition of “The Anatomy of a Kimono” help to exemplify the strong personalities of female artists, specifically, the millions of unknown female artists who worked hard to support themselves and their loved ones. The art piece does not hold back on its strong theme of women’s strength

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