helen.clarke@leeds-art.ac.uk
'according to usage and conventions which are at last being questioned but have by no means been overcome - men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at.' - Berger 1972
- HANS MEMLING 'Vanity' (1485)
- angle of mirror incorrectly rendered in reflection
- inaccurate representation
- distorted double view
- Berger says mirror is placed in her hand as a device to justify the act of looking
- painter makes painting so others can enjoy the nudity
- excuse for pleasure in looking
- tendency to depict the female body in a way that doesn't allow the female to turn out a gaze
ALEXANDRE CABANEL 'Birth of Venus' (1863)
- mythological representation of woman
- goddess from the sea
- sentimental and virginal
- position she reclines in = covers her own eyes and face with hands > device used in painting, advertising and photography
- body versus the head - two thirds of picture plain taken up by body
- focus on the body, not as her as a character/person
- allows the viewer to look unchallenged
SOPHIE DAHL for Opium
- reclining figure
- overtly sexual pose
- 3/4 of picture taken up by body
- advert deemed too sexual for presentation so turned it round so resulting image had different emphasis > eye drawn to head, emphasis taken off overtly sexual position
TITIAN 'Venus of Urbino' (1538)
- spying on woman
- very passive nude
- knowledge of presence but not sufficient recognition
- very casual
- compared to Manet's 'Olympia' (1863)
1) Olympia's hand is a pressing, defensive action, Venus' is casual
2) identifies Olympia as a prostitute due to flower in hair and neck tie, also exquisite cloth
3) similar body positioning
4) head positions
INGRES 'Le Grand Odalisque'
GUERRILLA GIRLS - do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?
MANET 'Bar at the Folies Bergeres' (1882)
- mirroring of gaze in loop
- back and forth gaze
- woman who stands at bar almost ready to serve viewer
- standing with arms open
- mirror is used to give us an impossible reflection of the back of the woman's body
- back reflected slightly to her right which allows us to see her from two viewing positions at once
- see her as ourselves and as a character who is illuminated in the corner of the painting
- Paris society also reflected, social life in modernist society was in some sense a hall of mirrors, a false social perception
- woman is portrayed and returns our gaze, not there to be looked at but is looking at us
JEFF WALL 'Picture for Women' (1979)
- includes himself
- showing studio reflected in mirror behind the woman
- makes a doubling of the gaze
- gaze returned from the woman and reminded of the gaze from the camera
COWARD, R. (1984)
- the camera in contemporary media has been put to use as an extension of the male gaze at women on the streets
EVA HERZIGOVA (1994)
- hello boys, Wonderbra
- traffic stopping campaign
- figure looking down on us
- normalisation of nudity in the street
- comedy of the line 'hello boys' lightens the mood
- giant semi naked woman for voyeuristic purposes
COWARD, R. (1984)
- the profusion of images which characterises contemporary society could be seen as an obsessive distancing of women...a form of voyeurism
- Peeping Tom, 1960, seeks image of woman as he kills her, films her death for kicks
BUT there are images of men in the same way, but not as simple as addressing the gaze, merely reinforces it and does not challenge it - to do with the quantity, number of images of naked male bodies far outweighed by number of female bodies
*as seen in Dolce and Gabbana, 2007 advertisements*
Marilyn: William Travillas dress from The Seven Year Itch (1955)
- cinematic spectatorship
- way that the camera breaks the female body into pieces in film
- components of body, dismantled
- Freud, pleasure of looking at female bodies
- cinema is the perfect voyeuristic environment
- cinema facilitates for voyeurism and objectification of female body
- active male and passive female
LARA CROFT: Tomb Raider
- a visual spectacle to be consumed
- an overly sexualised object
- pleasure is in the fantasy of her destruction
- heroin, director of the action BUT no amount of "ass-kicking" that can hide the fact that she is a visual spectacle
- overtly sexualised image
- pleasure in looking at a sexually exaggerated character that is driving the story
ARTEMISIA GENTILESCHI 'Judith Beheading Holofernes' (1620)
- challenging the gaze
- cited as an example of a painting by a woman which portrays women in a very active and gruesome role
- in the room with them, like a film still
- very physical, active female role
POLLOCK, G. (1981)
- women 'marginalised within the masculine discourses of art history'
- this marginalisation supports the 'hegemony....
CINDY SHERMAN 'Untitled film still number 6' (1977-79)
- reclining female, turned the body around
- emphasis is on the face, attempt to challenge the norm and the expected
- doesn't allow us to look unchallenged
- mirror also included in the character's hand but it is turned away from the viewer, there is no reflection and no implication that we've caught her in the act regarding herself
- not quite clear what she's been caught doing
- disrupting the gaze, not quite sure where to look
BARBARA KRUGER 'Your Gaze Hits the Side of My Face' (1981)
- turning away from the male gaze
- feminist work
- implication of violence in use of work 'hits'
- reminiscent of a physical attack
BARBARA KRUGER 'I Shop Therefore I Am' (1983)
SARAH LUCAS 'Eating a Banana' (1990)
- humorous challenge to the gaze
- implies a sexual act
- picturing the self consciousness because of the connotation of the sexual act
- confrontational look
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