Representation of women in contemporary female paintings

This paper aims to analyze the views of female painters on women and the representation of women in their contemporary painting works. The one sided representation of women in Arts in general has a long history and is likely due to the fact that most of the Artists have been male. On the other hand, increase of woman’s presence in painting art opens a field for research and, through addressing this issue; one can study the viewpoint of women artists about different societal issues. In this regard, we have to add that, at least in the painting works, more women are active than men. A male view has mostly placed women in stereotyped roles. This negative stereotype is due to the ignorance of the differences of male and female roles. Now we add that representation is possible to take place by one group. In this research we studied the contemporary arts which have been created by women, to find the answers to the following questions. Have the women painters also displayed the roles of women as stereotyped? How, through this method, women have reproduced the stereotype gender? Methodologically we have used Stewart Hall’s representation theory as the research frame work. Hall believes that meaningful reality does not exist and he introduces representation as one of the key methods of production which in a process is exchanged and distributed among the members of one culture. The statistical population of this study covered those works exhibited in an Iranian Women Paintings Exhibition called "sensation emergence". These included 1327 painting works and in 244 of these works women have been considered as the main subject. In the painting works under consideration, we paid attention to the natural and cultural representation women, sexual appearance of women, representation of women in mother roles, wife roles, upbringing, and religious or non-religious representation of women. The research findings indicate that the women of women painters in terms of natural and cultural representation, sexual and non-sexual representation, playing the roles of mother and wife, and upbringing and child caring, are stereotyped. Predominantly, a sexual view of women is conceivable among these paintings. Nonetheless, in some paintings this stereotypical role has been has been rejected.