Dec 13, 2005
The end of innocence: Picturing her: images of girlhood, an exhibition on at the McCord museum
In the painting, a girl sits on a rope swing in a woodland clearing, ankles crossed primly. She's wearing a straw hat, clutching the ropes, eyes focused on the viewer. She may be outdoors and on a swing, but there's an aura of stillness about her.
Created in 1889, James MacDonald Barnsley's watercolour Young Girl on a Swing reflects the Victorian lens through which girls were viewed, says Concordia University art historian Loren Lerner. Constrained by the society in which they lived, young girls were often posed, even skipping rope or serving tea, in a passive posture.
The girl in another painting sits on an invisible chair, eyes on the viewer. Her photo-transferred face has been roughed by smudges of white and black. Her body, in a party dress, is a series of rumpled lines.
This is Birthday Girl, part of the Alpha Girls series done this year by Concordia fine arts graduate Angela Grossmann. Oil and ink on paper, it lingers on dualities - of the innocence of youth in an over-informed world, of a young girl seeking individuality in the midst of conformity, of startlingly clear eyes and mouth, unkempt hair and a ruined party dress.
These two paintings are bookends in a McCord Museum exhibition titled Picturing Her: Images of Girlhood. Their differences show radical changes in the perception of girls and children, says Anne Higonnet, art historian at Barnard College in New York City.
"In the 18th century, there was an idea of romantic innocence," Higonnet says, a notion that became deeply anchored and spread from the elite to the masses. "Then in the 1970s and early '80s, it all began to crack."
Along with changing family patterns and information technology came a dramatic transformation in how we view children, especially girls.
"From romantic innocence, there grew fears of child pornography, now magnified by the Internet," says Higonnet, who gave a keynote address titled The Image of Childhood Today at the symposium in early December that accompanied the exhibition's launch.
Created in 1889, James MacDonald Barnsley's watercolour Young Girl on a Swing reflects the Victorian lens through which girls were viewed, says Concordia University art historian Loren Lerner. Constrained by the society in which they lived, young girls were often posed, even skipping rope or serving tea, in a passive posture.
The girl in another painting sits on an invisible chair, eyes on the viewer. Her photo-transferred face has been roughed by smudges of white and black. Her body, in a party dress, is a series of rumpled lines.
This is Birthday Girl, part of the Alpha Girls series done this year by Concordia fine arts graduate Angela Grossmann. Oil and ink on paper, it lingers on dualities - of the innocence of youth in an over-informed world, of a young girl seeking individuality in the midst of conformity, of startlingly clear eyes and mouth, unkempt hair and a ruined party dress.
These two paintings are bookends in a McCord Museum exhibition titled Picturing Her: Images of Girlhood. Their differences show radical changes in the perception of girls and children, says Anne Higonnet, art historian at Barnard College in New York City.
"In the 18th century, there was an idea of romantic innocence," Higonnet says, a notion that became deeply anchored and spread from the elite to the masses. "Then in the 1970s and early '80s, it all began to crack."
Along with changing family patterns and information technology came a dramatic transformation in how we view children, especially girls.
"From romantic innocence, there grew fears of child pornography, now magnified by the Internet," says Higonnet, who gave a keynote address titled The Image of Childhood Today at the symposium in early December that accompanied the exhibition's launch.