There is no time or place in which women live completely free from the grasps of male expectations. In the early 20th century, the depiction of female sexuailty in artwork was considered a display for the enjoyment of heterosexual, male viewers. The beauty of the female body was exploited, rather than praised. Its natural abilities of pregnancy and childbirth were washed away by the overarching sexualization of women’s figures. Paula Modersohn-Becker, a female German Expressionist would reclaim the power of femininity through her impasto works of art. Her bold, colorful images of motherly bodies and their children remind us of the intimacy of motherhood. Paula Modersohn-Becker’s Kneeling Mother and Child (1906) controversially conveys the labors and intimacies that are related to motherhood through her expressionist techniques and rejection of the sexualized male gaze. 

At the time, in the early 20th Century, pregnancy and childbirth were considered improper subjects, especially to be displayed for a wide audience. It is difficult to believe that in the early 1900’s is when we see some of the first honest depictions of the trials of pregnancy. Pregnancy and childbirth are at the very center of human existence, and none of us would be here without the strength and bravery of our mothers. This female strength is what fuels the repopulation of the world, and we should be ever-grateful for the mothers.  Modersohn-Becker would be one of the first artists to show pregnancy and motherhood in its purest moments.Her maternal pieces were extremely intimate-showing mother and child in the nude, always within close proximity to one another. She is praising the female experience through these touchingly intimate images that express the intense emotional labors of motherhood. The prospect of motherhood was one that was desired by Modersohn-Becker in an intense way. With her wishes in mind, it is of no surprise that she chose to depict the sweetness of motherhood in much of her artwork. Ironically, she would pass away very shortly after the birth of her first child in 1907. She was never truly given the chance to enjoy her own gift of motherhood. Her use of expressionism is very clear in this way, her own relation to the desire of motherhood is shown through her work. The intimacy of works such as Kneeling Mother and Child, 1906 along with Mother and Child Lying Nude, 1907 reflects her deep longing to participate in motherhood firsthand. 

Nudity is one of the many agencies of intimacy, and is not used lightly in Modersohn-Becker’s work. Her Kneeling Mother and Child, 1906 shows a mother caringly breastfeeding her infant, they are both pictured in the nude. The mother’s right breast is seen in the mouth of the child, while her other breast is entirely exposed. Her exposed nipple is near the middle of the canvas, upfront with the viewer and of one of the brightest colors used in the piece. Her genital area is also in view, shadowed to either express depth or the presence of pubic hair, there is a similar shadow filling her underarm. She is of a full figure, and her child has a similar plumpness to their body; both are pale and pink. The mother grasps her nude child up close to her bare body as they share this moment together. Modersohn-Becker’s use of nudity in this piece contrasts the typical expression of the naked female body. She has chosen to highlight the natural functions of the female form rather than objectifying them. Using motherhood as the prevailing subject of this piece allows the artist to desexualize the nudity of the mother. Breastfeeding is one of the many processes that is associated with motherhood, Modersohn-Becker hopes by showing this exchange the viewer is more likely to cherish the subject rather than objectify her. But it is also true that in this era of modernity, female nudity was oftentimes depicted with lustful intent. “The more women, and the more erotically depicted, the more males will be pleased; a heterosexual optic is consistently presumed.” This notion is identified as the “male gaze” - creating a visual work with the intentions of representing women from the desired heterosexual-male perspective. By illustrating women in the nude, erotically posed, looking away from the viewer, she is juxtapositioned for exploitation and degradation. The male gaze is contested by Modersohn-Becker in her Kneeling Mother and Child, 1906- she gives power to the female form by rejecting its sexualization. 

Modersohn-Becker’s attempt to reclaim the power of the female body through her use of expressionism was challenged by fellow artists of the same modernist era. The age of modern art heightened the possibilities of recognition for many emerging female artists. With greater exposure to artistic training, women found considerable opportunity beginning in the late 1800s. “However, the related notion of an “avant-garde” as the dominant ideology of artistic production and scholarship served to marginalize the woman artist” Women’s exploration of new styles was not accepted- they could create art but it had to fit into a “traditional” category, this left no room for creativity. These boundaries made Modersohn-Becker’s work all the more groundbreaking. She was not only flexing the modernity of her work through her subject matter of motherhood, but her style as well. She uses a technique identified as ‘impasto’: a painting technique in which paint is applied thickly and in a matter that draws attention to the gesture. The simplicity of impasto is quite opposite to the detail offered in realist style pieces of the previous era. Modersohn-Becker’s Kneeling Mother and Child, 1906 was fresh and progressive in a way that subdued the suggestiveness content of her peer’s work. By considering her work in the context of her German identity, Modersohn-Becker’s pioneering feminism is once again revealed. At the end of her life, women in Germany still had not landed the right to vote and suffrage would not be gained until 1918. While voting rights are not the epitome of all feminist agendas, this fact serves as a representation of women’s participation in the public and political sphere in early 20th Century Germany. 

Looking at the work of male German Expressionists of the same era, women’s representation strays far from displays of motherhood. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s pieces Two Nudes, 1907 and The Toilete (Woman before the Mirror), 1913 are just two examples of his catering to the male gaze. Two Nudes, 1907 is particularly erotic in its intentions- showing two realistic nude females touching one another. Although I don’t believe that an image like this has to be described with erotic description, it’s clear that Kirchner fit into the niche of male artists whose work stole power from the female form. “Reduced to flesh, the female subject is rendered to the dictates of his erotic will. Instead of the consuming femme-fatale, will, one sees an obediant animal. This artist, in asserting his own sexual will, had annihilated all that is human in his opponent” Although Kirchner may not have intended for his work to be deemed degrading, these pieces have contributed to the ever-lasting relationship between female sexuality and male viewing pleasure. Modersohn-Becker attempted  to reclaim the nude from its kinship to male gaze by creating work that championed the intimacy of motherhood rather than sexuaility.