6 Artists that Broke Gender Norms

1. Kehinde Wiley

The creation of Obama's presidential portrait propelled Kehinde Wiley to the forefront of the art scene! Influenced by the old masters, his urban style is a hybrid, inspired both by French rococo and Western African art. He is known for depicting young African-American men in classic, typically feminine poses. His exhibition featuring transgender Tahitian women offers the inclusion that Gauguin's art failed to achieve.

2. Frida Kahlo

An avant-garde artist, Frida Kahlo refused to submit to the game of gender. An anti-conformist, she preferred to think of herself as an individual rather than as a man or a woman. Known for dressing up in her father's suits and having extramarital affairs with both men and women, she was a queer queen, a polyamorous woman with many facets.  

3. David Hockney

Having taken a liking to the West Coast in the early 1960s, David Hockney began his career painting scenes from his daily life. Gay in both senses of the word, his works are jovial, heart-warming compositions that generally feature his male lovers. At a time when homosexuality had just been decriminalised in the United Kingdom, Hockney flooded the art scene with tanned, sculpted bodies in pastel colours.

4. Jenny Saville

Jenny Saville creates paintings of classical figures to which she gives her personal touch. Restoring our idea of beauty, the artist paints women with non-idealised bodies. There are, for example, overweight women with scars and spots. Her life-size canvases and vivid brushstrokes produce portraits that are both imposing and imbued with vulnerability. Fleshy and intimate, Saville broadens our definition of the female nude in art.

5. Marcel Duchamp

Marcel Duchamp, the controversial genius behind “The Fountain”, was an integral part of the Dada movement in the early 1920s. Duchamp's friend and Dada artist Man Ray photographed him as his female alter ego, Rose Sélavy. Pronounced in French, the name sounds like "Eros is life" or "Love is life". Like a precursor of drag culture, Rose Sélavy worked out her points of view, let her non-binary creativity shine through and traversed the gender spectrum before it even had a name.

6. Andy Warhol

In 1981, Andy Warhol and his friend Christopher Makos produced the "Altered Images" series in which Warhol was transvestite. In homage to Duchamp and his aforementioned alter ego, Warhol explored his feminine side in a series of fierce poses taken with a Polaroid camera. It goes without saying that photographs of Warhol in drag would have a place alongside the silkscreens of the female icons he created!