User:Ivanm1234/The Blue Room (Valadon)

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The Blue Room (La chambre bleue) is a 1923 painting by the French artist Suzanne Valadon, and is one of her most recognizable works due to its revolutionary depiction of the female nude through the subversion of established, male-oriented, art techniques. It is painted in oil on canvas. Like many of Valadon's later works, it uses strong colors and emphasizes decorative backgrounds and patterned materials. '''Moreover, Valadon uses these techniques among others to create a full portrayal of her female subject relevant to her social era—moving her value away from solely being related to her physical attributes. As a whole, Valadon’s artistic decisions create an image of a modern 20th century woman—contrasting the depictions created by her predecessors and leaving a legacy for future female artists. Currently, the painting is housed at Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, and it is also''' on exhibit at a Valadon exhibition at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia until January 9, 2022. It is pictured on the cover of the exhibition catalog, and a reviewer of the exhibition calls the painting the "showpiece" of the exhibition.

Description
Although the piece mimics the likeness of traditional, nude forms, it emphasizes a different perception of the modern, 20th century woman. The artwork depicts a woman relaxing atop a bed or draped couch in front of some sort of mural or possible headboard while she wears causal loungewear instead of being unclothed: consisting of striped green pajamas, a pink and strapped tank top, and bare feet. The woman herself is curvaceous and the use of “a combination of colors and a strong black outline” gives her a sense of liveliness as she looks off towards the left side of the piece while an unlit cigarette hangs from her red lips—painted with lipstick which compliments her casual hair pulled into a bun. In comparison, the woman’s surroundings are also quite casual. From a stack of books in the far left corner of the bed (or couch) to the delicate floral swirls adorning the covers of the bed (or couch), the setting gives a different context to the display of beauty. The form, attire, and setting gives off an unreserved relatability. Instead of an overtly beautiful depiction of the female figure with visuals of breasts, flowing hair, or a grand, natural setting, it subverts the male oriented, idealized female figure for one grounded in the real world.

Social circumstances
The stylistic decisions can be seen as a display of Valadon’s view of society’s changing social norms. The piece was created in a revolutionary time where gender roles and female independence came to the forefront of social discussion in Paris and elsewhere. After the closing of WWI, women’s placement in society as objects to be escorted by men, fashioned by men, and overall constricted by men began to be replaced with a new kind of woman. Women began to make various strides in regards to fashion and social norms: wearing shorter, loose-fitting dresses, shorter bobbed hair, taking up traditionally male smoking habits, and purposefully pursuing education. Through Valadon’s artistic decisions, she exemplifies the 20th century woman as having more character unrelated to the previous male gaze. While her figure is the subject, the intimacies of her body are replaced by the intimacies of her unedited or unpolished living experience.

Subversion of established art techniques
In contrast to Valadon’s depiction of the female form, the established artists Titian, Ingres, and Manet were prolific in portraying the nude female form. However, the forms were mainly male oriented with their full, idyllic exposure of womanly features. For example, the pieces of Grand Odalique, Olympia, and Venus of Urbino underscore a gendered role of women with full female exposures atop beds— as something separate from the model—creating an imbalanced power dynamic between the artists and subject. The Blue Room is a response to these paintings as well as others: Matisse’s Blue Nude, Felix Vallotton’s The White and Black. Substituting a cigarette for Ingres’s hookah and taking Matisse’s bold outlines, among other traits from the aforementioned works, Valadon creates a “startlingly contemporary” lounger, capturing a depiction of everyday life which is entirely her own. Valadon’s subversion and appropriation of her predecessor’s techniques ultimately instigate a new trajectory for future depictions of the female form.

Legacy
With the pioneering and groundbreaking depiction of the female form by Suzanne Valadon through the subversion of her predecessor’s techniques, The Blue Room can be seen as the starting point for a long lasting legacy for female artists. As Janet Burns notes in “Looking as Women: The Paintings of Suzanne Valadon, Paula Modersohn-Becker, and Frida Kahlo”, “given the bias of western culture to fetishizing the female body, the nude is a difficult genre for women artists. It is enshrined as an icon of culture that epitomizes and objectifies female sexuality.” After Valadon, many younger, female artists were inspired by her realistic depiction of the female form through stylistic decisions and embraced the autonomy promoted by the revolutionary art style. Overall, both the artwork and artist challenged and inspired societal depictions of women as well as the artistic techniques behind them.