Outside the European Tradition Blog #3

Select and fully identify two works of art that depict one or more women. The works must come from two different cultures, one of which must be from beyond the European tradition. Explain how each work reveals its culture's attitude about women.

In the Belau culture of Micronesia, Dilukai were common images of splayed female figures. The figures served as symbols of fertility and protection. They commonly surmounted the main entrances into the village’s men’s ceremonial houses. Although the men held the power in the Belau culture, women did have important symbolic and societal functions. Dilukai were created to protect the men’s houses—demonstrative of the power of women in Belau culture. The men created rituals--excluding women and taking place in the men’s ceremonial houses--to counteract the power of women—especially their power to procreate.

Jacques-Louis David’s painting of the Oath of the Horatii features men in its foreground, but the group of women on the right demonstrates the eighteenth century French’s views on women. With Enlightenment thought in mind, the French public associated men with the virtues of courage, patriotism, and loyalty. David used the despair of the women to foil the men’s patriotism and sacrifice. The women’s bodies are soft curvilinear shapes that contrast with the rigid, angular bodies of the men. The women’s faces are openly distraught over the event that is taking place, and their body language enhances their intense emotions. In a painting glorifying sacrifice and loyalty, the addition of a group of women shows the French culture’s view of women as being connected with emotions.

Outside the European Tradition Blog #2

Question: Many cultures use architecture to express or reinforce power and authority. Select and fully identify two works of architecture. The works must come from two different cultures, one of which must be from beyond the European tradition. Discuss how each work conveys power and authority.

The Iatmul people of Papua New Guinea lived in communities based on kinship. The men’s ceremonial house was the social center of the villages. The house was open only to men to discuss and lead their villages. The Iatmul ceremonial men’s house in East Sepik, Papua New Guinea is monumental compared to the houses in the village. Its size augments its political and cultural importance. The saddle-shaped roof of the house represents the ancestors’ protective mantle. Throughout the house’s interior and exterior decoration are symbols representing male and female ancestors. The comparatively immense size of the men’s house shows where the power belonged in the Iatmul society.

Like the Iatmul’s ceremonial men’s house, the palace that Louis XVI built at Versailles asserts the king’s power with its size. Versailles dwarfs the men’s house with its quarter mile long length. It took an army of architects, decorators, sculptors, painters, and landscape architects to create Louis’s greatest symbol of absolute power and authority. Along with the expansive palace, Louis also demanded the construction of a satellite city to house the palace’s workers and government officials. The construction of the palace ensured that all of his opponents would be under his supervision. The axes of the town further declare Louis’s power by intersecting in the king’s bedroom.

Outside the European Tradition Blog #1

Question: The human body is often highly stylized or abstracted in works of art. Fully identify two works of art in which the body has been highly stylized or abstracted. At least one of your choices must be a work from beyond the European tradition. Discuss how the stylization or abstraction of each figure is related to cultural and/or religious ideas.





The monumental moai on Easter Island in Polynesia mark burials or sacred sites. Both the faces and the bodies of the figures are stylized. The planar faces differ little throughout the line. With deep, large eyes, strong jaws, and long, straight noses, these huge statues are not individual portraits. The moai are generic images produced by the inhabitants of Easter Island. It was the belief of the Easter Islanders that spirits or gods could be housed in the huge statues. Although their true subject is still debated, most scholars agree that they portray ancestral chiefs. Thus, the monolithic statues bridge the roles of chief and god and the cosmic and natural worlds.


Pablo Picasso’s Les Desmoiselles d’Avignon is a pivotal work in art history, as it presented an entirely new method of representing forms in space. The bodies of the women depicted in the painting are not continuous shapes. They are broken into jagged parts that are intertwined with planes of drapery and empty space. His abstraction of their bodies creates a picture with incomprehensible space. The body of the woman on the right is so abstracted that it seems to be depicted in a combination of views. Picasso challenged the traditional method of painting what the eye sees with his new method of painting. With the advent of photography, painters were able to depart from paintings of visual realities, but Picasso took this new interest in experimentation further than changing colors to representing the human body in a new way.