Perhaps ‘Weeping’ is too Crude’: A Study of the Representation of Tears in Twentieth- Century Art

Ciara Waldron
Trinity College Dublin
Department of History of Art and Architecture
2016
BA

Subject: Painting, Mixed Media, Film and Photography
Country: Belgium, Germany, Spain, America and France
Century: 20th Century

10,000 words

The focus of this study is to trace the representation of tears in art over the course of the twentieth-century. In order to allow an in depth anaylsis, I have chosen specific works from 1920-1970 which are instantly recognisable in their recourse to tears. This period represents the gradual modification of modernist attitudes in the advent of post-modern age and thus allows for a particularly worthwhile study of the emblematic tear and thus allows for a as it intersects the art of the two contrasting periods. By limiting the research to a fifty year period but focusing on artists working in a range of media in various different movements and geographical locations it is hoped to communicate the inherently enigmatic nature of tears which allowed them to cross both cultural and societal boundaries, retaining certain qualities and inhereting new ones.

Irish Georgian Society

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Perhaps ‘Weeping’ is too Crude’: A Study of the Representation of Tears in Twentieth- Century Art