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Minnesota summers provided Mairs with ample regionalist material. In this series of prints, Mairs portrays women and children engaged in leisurely activities with a sensitive and celebratory hand. These local scenes engage the viewer in the playfulness and heat of our precious summers exposing women of all shapes and sizes, as in Bathers. Mairs is an observer not a voyeur. She pays special attention to the characteristics of the body and gesture rather than physiognomy and yet still maintains respect for her subjects. Whether faceless or thinly drawn, each woman in this series has a gesture or posture that implies character, personality, and humanity. An example of this sensitivity can be seen in Nude. The woman in this work is neither sexualized nor idealized. She is presented as an average woman in a visually balanced composition and the result is a study of a real woman’s body with interesting characteristics that catch and redirect the eye, such as the round mass of belly suggested by a sheath of fabric, and a single curly lock of hair framing her face. These works either depict lakeshore activity or reference art historical compositions by Cezanne, Manet, and Matisse. In fact, Summer, appears to be very nearly identical in composition to Matisse’s, La Bonheur de Vie. Another example is evident in Mairs’ Three Women Bathing, which has a suspiciously similar composition to Manet’s Déjeuner sur l’herbe (Luncheon on the Grass.) Whereas this series of prints is dominated by Mairs, the balance of the work in this wing is by Dehn, with the exception of Mairs’ Nuns Skating. This juxtaposition raises questions regarding the portrayal of women as subject/object within these different contexts. Do these two series provide an example of the difference in portraying women as subjects versus women as objects? To what extent are Dehn’s nuns real women? Scantily Clad: Satire, Summer and Life's Seasons
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