Essay on Sleeping and Nude by Amrita Shergil and Pan Yuliang

Comparison of the two works of art

Pan Yuliang and Amrita Shergil were painters who embodied modernity even though they worked during the interwar period. Their work was centred on issues of gender and race, and as a result, they were referred to as feminist role models and female artists. Although the two painters have worked in Asia and Europe, they were both educated by the same tutor in Paris, Simon. During the twenties and thirties of the twentieth century. Yuliang and Shergil’s work was contemporary since it represented a reconciliation of their race and gender.

Some links and disjunctions in Pan and Shergil’s paintings represent feminism in China and India. Asians had no relevance in the twentieth century since they had no position in the art world. Women were discriminated against when it came to expressing themselves via art. These two artists took it upon themselves to utilize their careers to expose how women’s ability to analyze art was restricted. After the colonial era, their art critiqued art history for accountants who worked with global trends and ideas. Consents like this have moulded the contemporary world by implying new historical orientations. Rustom Bharucha, Pankaj Mishra, Cemil Aydin, and Prasenjit Duara examined the history of cosmopolitanism, which includes enlarged numbers. These individuals were interested in issues of nationalism and Pan-Islamism and the Pan-Asianism of feminist intellectuals.

In South Asia, biographers examined women’s cosmopolitanism and their awareness of Eastern nationalist initiatives. But visual artists haven’t paid much attention to these awards. For the intervention in art critics and historical art, Pan and Amrita’s research brings together a variety of strands, such as cosmopolitan modernity and Asian nationalism and feminist history of art. A study of historical and reception connections is contemporaneous mainly with Pan’s work. However, discrepancies exist in their themes and crafts, revealing a global feminist who often criticizes nationalism and modernist ideals. It is a call to intellectual contemplation in creative history and future research.

To the globe and governments, Pan and Amrita’s work defied traditional tales about feminism and nationalism. So, their art was contemporary. A challenge in their work inevitably referred to the limits of Asian women in current society. History must emphasize what Asian women lost in independence, escape, struggle, unity, and identity.

Why are these Asian female artists representing their bodies and themselves in this manner for a European audience?

Paris was the most significant city for artists in the twentieth century. Women artists struggled hard for recognition in Paris because they worked hard and trained away from home. Even when Pan and Amrita sought limitations in France, they were not assured recognition. Their art styles likewise did not give them credit. Ender was vital in recognizing an artist’s work and aesthetics. Historically, women had fewer rights than men.

Both Pan’s and Shergil’s paintings were romanticized versions of themselves. However, there is one specific painting by Shergil, which was painted in 1934 and depicted a Tahitian. It theorizes about the link between French bosses and Asian leaders and how female copies are connected to male artists. This image was set up in front of a screen and under the stage lights for the performances. The idea was seen as oriental since it did not elicit a ceremonial reaction to the colonialists’ sexual delusions. Instead, it brought about the acknowledgement of women as legitimate members of society.

Pan took a self-portrait at her Paris studio of the model. With its contemporary and feminist design, this image conveys an embrace of one’s personhood to the viewer. Pan and Shergil’s self-portraits portray the confinement and restraints that women are subjected to in society. Pan and Shergil’s work are deemed contemporary since it depicts what women went through before the post-colonial era, which is a moment of transition. Men were traditionally regarded as the ultimate arbiters of morality. In today’s world, no woman would dare to speak up or criticize anything.

These two artists utilized their artistic abilities to convey the situation that women were going through at the time. In the beginning, their efforts were hampered by cultural and religious conventions that obliged them to remain quiet about women’s difficulties. Paintings that were critical of racial prejudice may also be seen there. Until they relocated to France’s capital, Paris, people started to respond more to their artwork. Women were more conscious of their sexual obligations, and males took care of their chauvinism. The modernism of their work contributed to the reduction of gender and racial discrimination.

Work Cited

Khullar, S. Parallel Tracks: Pan Yuliang and Amrita Sher-Gil in Paris.”. Eurasian Encounters: Intellectual and Cultural Exchanges, 1900–1950.

Mitter, P. (2007). The Triumph of Modernism: India’s Artists and the Avant-garde, 1922-47. Reaktion Books.

Sung, D. H. L. (2016). Redefining Female Talent: Chinese Women Artists in the National and Global Art Worlds, 1900s-1970s.

Teo, P. (2016). Rewriting modernsim. Three women artists in twentieth-century China: Pan Yuliang, Nie Ou and Yin Xiuzhen. Leiden University Press (LUP): Leiden.