Tania Antoshina, Lunch on the Grass from “The Museum of a Woman” series, 1996 |

chromogenic color print, 23 3/4 × 35 5/8 in. (60.3 × 90.5 cm) |
Gift of Heather and Tony Podesta Collection |
2009.8.4 

 

Tania Antoshina's 1996 photograph Lunch on the Grass is a reimagination of Édouard Manet's 1863 painting Le déjeuner sur l'herbe. In her photograph, Antoshina reprises the basic compositional elements found in Manet's painting but inverts the prescribed gender roles. The work is part of a larger series entitled “Museum of a Woman” that visualizes what art history would look like if it did not revolve around sexualized female figures. In supplanting nude women with naked men, the series also reveals the extent to which depictions of the female body are at the heart of the canon. Influenced by feminist movements in Russia, Antoshina uses photography to reveal how paintings by male artists have constructed and disseminated gender stereotypes.