Comparing Courbet's Woman With A Parrot

When thinking about what we perceive as modern art, my mind often wanders to the abstracted work of the cubists, most notably the work of Pablo Picasso. It is easy to forget that the modernist period does not span a few decades of the 20th century, but dates back to the 1800s. For example, reali­st artists of the 19th century, like Gustave Courbet, are well considered apart of the modernist movement. While the work of Picasso and Courbet appear exceedingly distinct, they both exemplify similar mentalities and modernist qualities.
Take for example, Courbet’s classic realist, Woman with a Parrot, painted in 1866, and displayed at the Paris Salon that very same year. Now fast forward 66 years later to 1932, to Picasso’s overtly abstracted Woman
These elements are separated by thick, dark paint strokes that curve to the abstracted contours of the nude female figure and her reflection. Such a flamboyant use of color, pattern, and texture (both within the subject and her surroundings,) distinctly differ from the smooth, muted tones, and divided composition of Courbet’s, Woman with a Parrot. Courbet’s figure is realistically rendered with little to no contour lines and smooth, evenly blended paint strokes. The only visible contrast within the piece is the distinction between the pale, whiteness of the nude female figure and her bed and the dark, earthy tones of the
The theme of the male gaze is common in most modernist works, regardless of the time period or artistic movement in which they were created. The notion that Picasso and Courbet were formulating a composition that both sexualizes and dissuades the female form would be unbeknownst to them, as they existed in patriarchal society (as we still do today).
The way in which Courbet’s Woman with a Parrot, is disheveled and sprawled out upon a bed, while she seemingly concentrates on the animal she holds, is inarguably sexual in nature. From the woman’s unnatural, yet vulnerable, positioning to her unclothed and voluptuous form, Courbet has manipulated his subject in order to serve the purpose of shocking the curators of the Paris Salon through the ”vulgarity” of the female body. There are not many clues at to whether or not this woman is a prostitute but, regardless, she is still presented to the viewer as a highly sensual