William James Glackens\u2019 Girl with Apple transfixed me because I originally thought it was Manet\u2019s Olympia. Her pose and choker reminded me of Olympia. Unlike Olympia, though, the girl with the apple is not to remain nude. The girl portrayed in this painting seems more independent, even more departed from the Birth of Venus than Olympia was. While Olympia was implied to be a prostitute, the girl with the apple has her clothes laid out beside her. After reading the painting\u2019s plaque, the aforementioned ideas became even more apparent to me. The apple she holds symbolizes knowledge and the clothes are those of a New York woman entering the workforce. The nude woman that started this chain of paintings, Venus, stood shamefully in front of the male gaze, concealing what parts of herself she could. She was painted to look innocent and vulnerable, and Olympia contrasted this by being painted to look confident and confrontational. Both Venus and Olympia were sexualized, but one was fantasy and the other reality, and seeing the latter painted made many viewers uncomfortable. To me, it felt as though both images were made for the male gaze, with the former catering to it and the latter challenging it. The image of the girl with the apple seems to be more empowering for women, her nudity transformed into a prideful and comfortable gesture, for once. She barely bothers to conceal herself, a cloth instead doing it for her. She seems to encourage female viewers to do whatever they want (work, learn, be naked) in a time when women were beginning to gain more freedom and enter the workforce. It is up to her what happens after the moment depicted in this painting, and unlike in the two that precede it, the girl is not vulnerable to men in any way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
William James Glackens\u2019 Girl with Apple transfixed me because I originally thought it was Manet\u2019s Olympia. Her pose and choker reminded me of Olympia. Unlike Olympia, though, the girl with the apple is not to remain nude. The girl portrayed in this painting seems more independent, even more departed from the Birth of Venus than […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":2955,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"portfolio_post_id":0,"portfolio_citation":"","portfolio_annotation":"","openlab_post_visibility":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-10","category-reflections"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/natm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/natm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/natm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/natm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2954"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/natm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2954\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2956,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/natm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2954\/revisions\/2956"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/natm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/natm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/natm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/natm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}