Woman image in the birth of modern art: A comparasion of the Turkish and European paintings

The relationship between artwork and its audience gains a new dimension in 19th century when one of the most extensive breakthroughs in the history of art was experienced. This breakthrough discredits the idea that work of art is nothing but a passive object that exists for mere observation. The independent relations between artist, audience and the object of art are disrupted. As a substitute, a new relationship in which the work itself is as active as the audience becomes prevalent. At the core of the modern art ideology, this relationship constructs artwork as a living object. In this new relationship form, the artist reproduces him/herself through artwork, and this new paradigm is what enabled the modern art in 20th century. In this co-existing of object and the subject, on the other hand, the image of woman provides a research area in which historical and sociological contexts are useful for enabling distinguished reference. Within the modernization movements started in Europe following the industrial revolution, and in the Ottoman Empire after The Rescript of Tanzimat, the women appear in a new identity through which they are associated with social modernization dynamics. The active woman images that started to appear in Êduard Manet's (1832-1883) works in the Europe and in Osman Hamdi Bey's (1842-1910) works in Turkish art are fruitful both for researching modern 20th painting and as sociological references points for understanding the cultural history. Present study comparatively investigates the 'woman as image' in the 19th through the 20th century, within the framework of subject-object relationship while aiming to explain how this relationship unfolds in these two different societies.