Gender and art

"When in 2009 the Louvre museum in Paris opened its doors to the exhibition Ingres et les Modernes – a major show of works by more than 300 artists, all paying homage to Jean-August-Dominique Ingres’s 1814 oil painting Grande Odalisque – there was one image in particular that attracted attention. This was a photograph that people queued in their droves to see, and was later purchased by the Louvre for its permanent collection.   

 

The photograph – entitled Grande Odalisque 2 – was taken by the Moroccan-born artist Lalla Essaydi, who today resides and works in the USA. Instead of the naked woman, as depicted in Ingres’s original work, the woman in Essaydi’s version is fully clothed and looks determinedly out at the viewer with an air of superiority rather than an air of enticement."