Joan Miro Work example essay topic
429 words
This advertisement is financed by the appliance company LG, to promote a new line of vacuum cleaners. It appeared in the March 2003 edition of the popular magazine targeted at middle aged women, the Australian Woman's Weekly. It depicts an attractive, smiling, thin, blond woman, cleanly dressed in simple white pants and a blue shirt. She is clutching a vacuum cleaner which is lifting a car off the ground, exaggeratedly illustrating the power of an "LG Cycling". The woman is standing on the road, and behind her is an immaculate example of suburbia, to which this woman who is so pleased with appliances that aid housework clearly belongs. This advertisement holds little resemblance to the ancient work, The Sleeping Woman, and the surrealist Joan Miro work, Une Etoile caresse le its d'une negresse, in both ideals and practice. It is, though, in implication at least, strikingly resemblant to the illustration that Barbara Kruger appropriates in her work Untitled (We Don't Need Another Hero). Whilst The Sleeping Woman celebrates the magnificence of curves, and their role in the life cycle, the female in this advertisement is thin and clean. She is the sterile image so characteristic of advertising, far from the sexual creatures that Joan Miro's Une Etoile caresse le its d'une negresse is a tribute to. Structurally, this advertisement, in comparison with the two works analysed above, is just as hugely contrasting.
While the advertisement is a realistic photograph, aside from the graphics used to show the lifting of the car, the Joan Miro work is a simple, and, in parts, totally abstract work that subtly suggests rather than depicts. The Sleeping Woman, a small sculpture, is also simplistic, portraying a stylised woman with certain exaggerated features that symbolize a greater meaning. This advertisement is exactly what Barbara Kruger is protesting against in her artwork. This advertisement portrays women in a sexist and stereotyped way, right down to the big, gleaming smile.
It further imposes the cultural belief, still surprisingly common in our supposedly modern world, that a woman's role is to look after children and, specifically in the case of this advertisement, clean the home. Although confronting a slightly different issues, the illustration featured in Barbara Kruger's work, which features a young girl admiring a boy's muscles, and this advertisement are both examples of the cultural imposition of a role on women through popular culture. Unfortunately, though, this advertisement is absent of any text to correct the blatant sexism of the image.
