The Femme Fatale: Danger And Pleasure Ideology In The Female Sexual Archetype

By Mattie Sterling

Danger and temptation are two vices that collide in discourses of sexuality. Discourses of sexuality in the modern era have recently established new ideologies behind expressions, behaviors, and identities that are rooted in an individual's sexual appetite. With the development of new discourses, power structures of society from antiquity to the contemporary period have continued to use them to establish a dominant powerplay between the 5 genders (that we know of). These power dynamics set the structure for sexual stereotypes and archetypes that society deems acceptable and push false microcosms of belief onto its inhabitants. When examining gendered archetypes, there is one dominant characterization of women’s sexuality that reigns influence across intersections of media, race, ethnicity, and sexuality. 

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I Pledge Allegiance To The Box: Cultural Investigations Behind The Decriminalization of Sex Work In The United States

By Mattie Sterling

What is Power in regards to Sex? If a cisgender heterosexual white man uses his sexual dominance to attain status in life, why do dominant discourses of society feel prudish when a woman uses the female sexual body to provide for herself? Prostitution is regarded as one of the oldest professions amongst varying cultures and civilizations. While the term “Prostitute” is written into the social consciousness as a primarily female profession, recent decades have grown to represent a male population within the sex industry as well. One would think that the oppressive and belittling political and social beliefs surrounding sex work’s legality would shift as a consequence of this male integration and the privilege that accompanies male hegemony. However, the discrimination and criminalization of sex work are still as prevalent in the contemporary era as it was when women were whipped 300 times and exiled for the act in 590 CE.

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Lily Fiala; Universal Meaning Behind the Textual Uncanny

By Mattie Sterling

Lily Fiala is a St. Louis, Missouri-based artist who is currently obtaining a degree in painting from the Savannah College of Art and Design. Born in 1999, Fiala’s degree of conceptual metamodernism is a multifarious distinction that permeates significance. As the consequence of the deeply intricate inception of reality, Fiala’s aesthetic agenda employs a formative excursion towards the concept of neurotic and meaningless text to create labyrinthine concepts of existentialism and universal recognition of identity on both the individual and ubiquitous scale.

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Mechanical Reassurance: A Culture Limited by Mechanical Thinking

By Mattie Sterling

In a culture limited by mechanical thinking, we have created a human being whose only recognition of reality is a misconception of biomechanoid fallacies.

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Sex Positivity: Social and Cultural Investigations Behind Sexual Freedom and Autonomy.

By Mattie Sterling

When analyzing the modern contemporary era, one observes social and cultural assessments into the: behaviors, idealism, and customs of a society.

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William Cotton: Physical and Artificial Feminine Delights

By Mattie Sterling

William Cotton is a New York City-based American painter and portraiture artist with representation at the Michael Kohn Gallery and the Baldwin Gallery.

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Feminism And The Female Body: Social Justice Towards Gender Conflict

By Mattie Sterling

Feminist art of the 21st Century examines various ideals behind justice. Women in the arts producing such Feminist art have brought to discussion various topics behind women’s social justice throughout the course of history.

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WEIGHT AND APPEARANCE; IDENTITY POLITICS BEHIND THE 1993 WHITNEY BIENNIAL

By Mattie Sterling

In the period proceeding the Existentialist Feminist theory of the Contemporary Art era; women in the arts behind the second phase of feminism transitioned to examining cultural experience as a tool that forms gendered constructs.

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WOMEN’S ACCESS IN THE CONTEMPORARY ART WORLD FROM 1970 - PRESENT

By Mattie Sterling

In the period previous to the contemporary art movement of the 1970s and onward, women in the arts were establishing new dynamic forms of access. Women in the arts utilized these newly found privileges of access to their advantage by creating cohesive bodies of work.

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ART AS A SOCIAL PRACTICE: SEPERATIST SUBCULTURAL RESISTANCE

By Mattie Sterling

All social change comes from the fervor of people. Changes in social institutions of the Post-World War II era became cognizant of how women in the arts elicited influential roles in social behaviors and patriarchal societal relations.

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WOMEN’S RACE IN WESTERN CULTURE FROM 1850 TO 1900

By Mattie Sterling

Race is a human gift. A human gift of distinct qualities and characteristics that should be used to celebrate the one true race where everyone is is distinct in some way; the human race. Race and each of the ethnic divisions of humankind and qualities or characteristics associated with ethnic groups was a lapsing theme within the customs, arts, and social constitutions of 1850 and the 1900s.

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WOMEN’S SEXUALITY DURING THE EUROPEAN RENAISSANCE

By Mattie Sterling

Bodily truth is a cornerstone of existence in this world. Bodily subsistence of sexuality and the concept of sexual gentrification and the implementation of sexual institutions was a recurrent thematic point of interest attributed to the art of the European Renaissance.

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By Mattie Sterling

The Everyday

By Mattie Sterling

In Stephen Johnstone’s 2008 Whitechapel Documents of Contemporary Art series book entitled The Everyday; the cohesive body of literary writings examines the manners in which artist of the contemporary world since 1945 have examined the transition to the mundane; and critiques, analyze, and examines how the artist has occupied the conceptual notions of the everyday.

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The Artist Joke

By Mattie Sterling

In Jennifer Higgie’s 2007 Whitechapel Documents of Contemporary Art series book entitled The Artist Joke; the compiled text of formative literary works examines, analyzes, and critiques the collective course of actions of  the thematic topic of Humor.

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