Rebecca Proppe

Rebecca Proppe

OMG, 2015

30" x 36" 

Oil on Canvas

My body of work consists almost entirely of portraits, and my main interest is in people and our 

interactions with the world, translated primarily through painting and drawing. How do we look at 

images from the past, and how does this impact how we experience our world today?  I like to explore themes of how art and history are used by individuals to connect with the world around us, and how painting acts as a tool to accomplish this goal. 

OMG aims to investigate these problems by looking at the issue of the female nude, by combining

two famous female nudes (Manet’s Dejeuner sur l’herbe and Botticelli’s Venus) which were initially received very differently when the original works were created.  However, in today’s society, these works may be received very similarly as the naked body is considered shocking by many for a variety of reasons. “Oh my God” expresses this potential shock of the publicly exposed female body. Additionally, the phrase “OMG” is commonly associated with the notion of frivolity of young girls today, and a perceived lack of intelligence for the use of such vocabulary. Thus where does the female body ‘fit’ into contemporary society, and how do these ubiquitous images of the female body throughout art history help form our ideas about women today?