In their eyes

Her Flesh builds on a question once posed by Canadian artist Mary Pratt, “If women are the muse for men … what is the muse for women?" Consider that centuries ago, a woman's singular role in art was limited to that of a muse. Women artists were not permitted to depict their own bodies or attend life-drawing classes at any European or North American art schools until the late 1800s.

This exhibition, on view on Level 2 of the AGO in galleries 247 and the R. Samuel McLaughlin Gallery (201), features 16 works by seven modern and contemporary women artists mostly from the AGO Collection, some of which are rarely presented to the public. Works by Mary Pratt, Alma Duncan, Jess Dobkin and more reveal multiple representations of feminine bodies and sexualities as informed by the lived experiences of their creators. “Something feels very different when womxn artists represent feminine bodies in art,” explains Renata Azevedo Moreira, AGO Assistant Curator, Canadian Art, and curator of the exhibition. “The decisions made in terms of angles, compositions and what deserves to be highlighted reveal gestures that may be foreign to that which the male eye can perceive. Her Flesh is a tribute to how Canadian artists choose to position the female gaze.”    

Take, for instance, Alma Duncan’s 1941 self-portrait (image below), one of three paintings by the artist included in Her Flesh. Duncan paints herself − her own body − as a self-assured, confident woman, unafraid to look directly at the viewer. By adopting this gaze and pose, the artist defied the gender biases prevalent at the time, challenging the ways in which women’s bodies were historically sexualized and objectified. Duncan was 24 years old when she painted this painting. 

Alma Duncan, Self-Portrait with Blue Handkerchief, 1941. Oil and egg tempera on canvas. Overall: 63.5 x 50.9 cm. Art Gallery of Ontario. Purchase, 1989. © Art Gallery of Ontario. 89/3.

Almost four decades later in 1979, Mary Pratt found inspiration within the photographic slides created by her husband, Christopher Pratt, that had been discarded several years earlier. Nude on a Kitchen Chair (1979) (image at top) is one of the first in a series of paintings she made featuring a lone single figure, Donna Meaney, who worked for the Pratt family as a helper and babysitter. With time, Pratt went on to take her own photographs of Meaney which she then used to create even more paintings. Pratt sought to convey more of the essence of who Meaney is as a person, rather than an eroticized representation. Also on view in Her Flesh is one of the last paintings made featuring Meany, Girl in Glitz (1987), bookmarking the complex, interwoven relationship between model and artist. 

In “a deliberate attempt to document unreality,” Janieta Eyre invites life, death and possibility in all its forms into her work. Her Incarnations series, which spanned from the mid-1990s into the 2000s, includes more than 60 surrealist portrait photographs staging herself in imagined scenes with her twin. "I was a conjoined twin at birth,” Eyre has said, “My sister Sarah died during the 43-hour surgery that separated us. Much of my work concerns itself with the phantom sensations that have remained with me since our separation.” Her Flesh showcases five photographs by Eyre from the series. 

Janieta Eyre, Family Portrait, from the series Incarnations (1994-1997), 1994. Chromogenic print. Overall: 76.1 x 101.4 cm. Art Gallery of Ontario. Gift of the artist, 2008. © Janieta Eyre. 2008/266.

Her Flesh,on view on Level 2 , features work by Jess Dobkin, Alma Duncan, Janieta Eyre, Nina Levitt, Francis Loring, Mary Pratt and Florence Wyle. Plan your next visit to the AGO here.