The women that feature in Eleanor Barreau’s savvy paintings look sharp, intelligent and successful; however, it’s quite the opposite that inspired her to make these works. For her they are an exploration into the representation of women in the media and how the changing concept of feminine beauty through the ages, with different surges of feminism and other social developments, has formed an unrealistic portrayal of today’s ‘ideal’ woman and evolved into an almost unachievable illusion seen in magazines, advertising and films and on television.
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Barreau was initially interested in observing and analysing how advertising portrayed women before the ‘feminist boom’ of the 1980s. This soon developed into focussing on how contemporary advertising actually targeted the female, sourcing images from Vogue in recent years, which resulted in the realisation that the concept of feminine beauty is constantly changing; the voluptuous curves of 20 years ago were nowhere to be seen in today’s shots of androgynous yet overtly sexual beings which Barreau describes as an ‘unachievable illusion’.
Her underlying concern is that even with the dramatic improvements to women’s rights in Western society over the past century, one thing has remained constant - or perhaps even worsened – which is the fixation on female aesthetics and the extent to which beautiful women, and men, still dominate advertising imagery. This has consequently led to the increase in plastic surgery, with people being influenced by this idealistic view of how one ‘should’ look.
It’s this that makes these paintings interesting and a great focus for debate. On one hand they are an example of how art can be viewed in different ways by different people; for some these works exude a feeling of empowerment in women but for others they might appear to objectify the female form. Artists have been referencing this for years; ‘We Want You’, where a line of bikini clad girls are shadowed by their suited-selves could be a nod to Helmut Newton’s series of diptych photographs that show the same models in identical poses, clothed in one shot and nude in the other. But Newton was a fashion photographer who was best known for his nude shots of women, however was he objectifying them or celebrating the female form? Artists have been painting nudes for centuries, so why is a photograph any different? The subject is one that has been discussed many a time, and it’s these concepts paired with a distinctive talent that makes a body of work like this stand out.
Eleanor Barreau graduated in June 2011 from BA Fine Art at Central Saint Martins, London. She has been exhibiting her work since 2010 in various group shows around the UK, and in January 2011 had a solo show at Jealous Gallery, London. She lives and works in the capital.