OUGD501: The gaze and the Media, Seminar.

OUGD501: The Gaze and the Media, Seminar.

The Gaze, Looking is not neutral

“Men act, Women appear.” (Berger, 1972)

Men:

Purpose,

Power.

Subject / Object.

It’s not often in our visual culture that men are objectified. Visual representations are skewed, visual culture is more often or not the visual culture of men.

Voyeurism (Freud)

Sexual Desire

Hans Memling - ‘Vanity’ (1485)

Painting of a nude women by a man, that is art, for you too look at for it’s beauty. But like all art, which was made by men, artists were mainly men. The people who bought art were men, because society as then and now was patriarchal. Men owned and controlled most to all things. The evolution of western society has been that, men in control and power. 

The power and economic power translate over into the visual culture and the power over the way people think. You can read the domination of women by men in western society, reflexes and ghosts through such things as visual culture. Nonsense around art to disguise that. 

A mans going to own it and doesn’t want to survey and view a picture of a naked man, that’s why it’s a women. Pornographic function. This is their old purpose, even though art galleries won’t say it. It’s to make men feel more secure in their sexuality. A women constantly on display for you to ogle and possess, in the way you can’t ever own or view a real women, a fantasy that doesn’t challenge you. She stares away. Nudes in history have always possessed this function.

The name that it’s called vanity enforces this case even more, it’s a laugh at a women for being so innately vain. It’s sexualising a women then laughing at women for been concern at how they appear. 

To be an artist in 1863 you had to feature in the apollonic salon. A big exhibition. To be exhibited your work had to be approved, by judges. Birth of Venus was the most popular, while Manet’s Olympia was scandal. Birth of Venus is passive, while Olympia is confrontational. It challenges the viewer. Birth of Venus, almost everything is on display her hands are brushed back and Olympia. hand subtly covers her self as a barrier to the viewer. Olympia is a prostitute, a god. Venus is the goddess of love. One is a fantasy, one is a sworded reality. Venus allows you to perf over her, but it’s a fantasy, the myth of love. Olympia is the reality I that it’s what real sexually available relations are like if you’re wanting to own a women for such desires. 

The reason it’s shocking is that it’s a challenge to the stable view, it’s showing the reality of sexual power relations. The gaze is met, and you realise that the painted women is a subject rather then a object. The cat is a symbol of independence. 

Titian 'Venus of Urbino.' (1538.)

The ultimate male fantasy of male power, nanny in the back taking care of the kids. Women sexually available for you.

These paintings pidgin hole women into a way of acting, behaving and where they fit in society. Man’s job to work while Women’s job to stay at home is same of the parcel and society of female suppression. It’s all the same. 

Even today, women are been shown as the passive object for men, even in 21st century culture. (Example of a perfume advert shown).

Men dream of women, Women dream of themselves been looked at by men. 

If you buy the argument the tradition not western culture is that it’s skewed towards women. The right way to have your hair, your make-up. If you say that, that image is the construct of a male fantasy. You agree that women are being trained to be, 

John Berger "To be naked is to be one’s self, to be nude is too be seen as an object.” 

John Berger "To be naked is to be one’s self, to be nude is to be seen by someone self, and been objectified." 

Kenneth Clark “A nude is art, naked is one without clothes.” 

To reaffirm ourselves we look at other people as objects, and the same back to us. 

Women see the objectification of them selves over and over. Women's subjective sense of self becomes closer to the male sense of justification then their real self. 

Coward, R., ‘The look’, in Thomas, J. (ed.) (2000), Reading images, pages 33-39