“Men dream of women; women dream of being dreamt of...”
“Behind every glance is a judgment...”
“A woman is always accompanied... by an image of herself...”
This essay will address the question of the similarities between the Gaze from the 1400’s to the Gaze now, which now relates to advertisement and art. The gaze, also known as ‘the look’, was a concept that originated in the 1970s but is now used more in film to explain the ways in which viewers look at images of people in any visual medium and then these people- often women- change their ways to what they think they need to be like. Also, the male gaze has an effect on the way women dress and act. This essay will compare past and present ideas of the male Gaze to show how women have changed if they have changed at all.
From the seventeenth century, paintings of female nudes reflected the woman’s submission to the owner of the painting and the painting. Berger in his book Ways of Seeing (1972) also noted that nearly all post renaissance European sexual imagery is frontal either literally or metaphorically.
“She has to survey everything she is and everything she does because how she appears to others, and ultimately how she appears to men, is of crucial importance for what is normally thought of as the success of her life.”
The critics and the public disliked Edouard Manet’s 1863 Olympia painting of a nude prostitute. It caused such uproar that authorities were forced to put two armed guards at the painting to protect it. Viewers disliked it because it felt as though the subject of the painting had power over the viewer as she uses a direct gaze and covers up her genitalia metaphorically saying “you can have me if you pay me”. The female in the painting is looking directly at the audience and this made the viewers’ feel guilty for looking at this nude woman. The reason for this is that she is challenging the viewer by looking directly at the audience Another way of showing she has independence and hierarchy is that she has a slave who was looking at the woman posing and is waiting to be ordered. At the bottom of the velvet bed there is a cat, which also symbolises independence.
Moreover, the painting by Hans Memling Vanity’1485 4 decades earlier was much more popular as the woman in the painting is not looking at the viewer, but at her reflection of herself in the mirror which is symbolic as of the vanity of women, and in the reflection you can see her slight smile as she knows the male audience is looking at her.
“Manet painted a picture of himself painting a picture, as the painter gazes outwards he engages us in; rather our position is uncertain Manet’s gaze to his own body and the canvas itself in a continuous three way shuttle.”
Therefore the male audience feel like they can look at the subject as an object and not feel guilty. Also, the woman in this image has a Child’s face which makes the male viewer feel even more dominant and in control. It becomes an image of a male impression of womanhood and has an erotic function allowing men to have power over the women in the painting. This echoes modern pornography where you see this same young innocent look as the women are being portrayed as submissive as it shows men’s desire for innocent virginity. Thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness depicted for the males’ pleasure. A man, commissioned by a man, paints it and at this time, the audience would have all been male. Therefore, this is a patriarchal image of women and becomes an image of a male impression of womanhood and has an erotic function. In addition, it allows men to laugh at women for being obsessed with appearance which puts the women lower in the hierarchy, even though ironically it is all about men being obsessed with a naked female body and this reinforces the idea that men have power over the woman in the painting which becomes a symbol of dominance. By comparison, both paintings suggest women are sexually available, yet Manet gives the woman more control.
Even 400 years later Alexander Cabanel’s Birth of Venus is a fantasy of femininity as the woman is on display and hides her face for the male viewer to look at her idealised body and tacitly encourages them to keep looking therefore showing that she is available for the male viewer to claim, and not let their gaze be discouraged. In fact, she is asking the male audience to dominant her and she will willingly allow it. Cabanel’s Birth of Venus is a fantasy of human relations, in other words where the subject of the painting covers her face and becomes merely a body she conforms to familiar male fantasies of the objectification of women.
This is the opposite message to Manet’s Olympia where the subject is challenging the audience and so this shows how Monet’s painting is reality and Cabanel is Fantasy.
On the other hand Edouard Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Berger is Manet’s last painting of a woman stood behind a marble counter which is reflected in a large mirror just behind her but if you look at the image first glance you can see she has ambivalence in her expression and sadness in her eyes. However when you see the figure of a male in the mirrors reflection the mood is changed, as she looks a lot more engaged and much closer to the male as though she is telling him she is sexually available as a working class woman. Manet painted this way to contrast the distance and the vacancy from the viewer to the way the male at the bar is very intimate.
“We seem to be at some distance from her and her look and her posture are at distance. But when we look at the reflection she looks much more engaged and slightly leant towards the man.”
This is an example of Suture as the spectators’ look through the eyes of the actors and it is from the dominant male’s perspective.
“The Gaze is not the look of the subject at the object, but the point at which the object looks back”
Women are still dressing up for the male gaze today and this can be clearly seen in celebrity images of women. Women are still conveying ‘to be looked at’. There is less of a fantasy element perhaps about these images; nowadays it is more about glamour. Arguably women have more respect afforded to them today.
“This unequal relationship is so deeply embedded in our culture that it still structures the consciousness of many women.”
However, Laura Mulvey in The most beautiful girls in the world (1999) by Sarah Banet-Weiser talks about the Miss World competition as being an example of how women can succeed, although many would say it is still about women parading themselves for men to be looked at. Moreover, in the most beautiful girl in the world Laura Mulvey discusses ‘The Miss World competition’ (1970) where women traditionally celebrate the public display of the female body.
“The Miss World competition is not an erotic exhibition. It is a public celebration of the traditional female road to success.” (Mulvey, 1999, page)
Laura Mulvey noted the importance of respectability to women on the Miss World pageant. Ordinariness of the spectacle the atmosphere was emphatically respectable enlivened by a contrived attempt at glamour. The conventionality of the girl’s lives and the ordinariness of their aspirations Mulvey sees it as a celebration but not everyone would agree. The fantasy of the beauty pageant leaks out into the real world, promoting the idea that all women are taking part in a beauty pageant all the time.
“Now I’m looking for the ideal man to marry-” this was the keynote of all the contestants, which tell that beauty pageants are for men, and similar to the Hans Memling ‘Vanity’ the condition is parading to be scrutinised by men. In many ways nothing has changed over 600 years.
Celebrity images end up in women’s magazines; therefore it becomes a case of women watching women from the point of view of male scrutiny. Men are increasingly more scrutinised but as figures of power, strength and dominance. Men are perceived as being in control, even if the women don’t admit it or the images don’t support that- the fantasy of female dominance is just that, a fantasy.
Modern portrayals of women make use of the invention of photography. Similarly to Edouard Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergere (1881), Jeff Wall’s Picture for Women (1979) is a photographer showing a man looking at a woman through a mirror while the woman is looking at herself being looked at which is a perfect example of Berger’s quote of how women are competing with other women to be subservient to men and be approved by them. She assumes the cameras are always on her and is therefore self-regulating, whether the cameras are taking pictures or not. She is constantly acting up to the male gaze, and while there is a camera in the photograph it symbolises the audience, forced into position. They are in a studio where everything seems to be set up for a shoot; this seems to have been taken before the actual shoot. There is a triangle being created which we the viewers are part of; we are the cameras. The woman in the picture is looking at the man through a mirror but he is looking straight at her- she doesn’t have the power to be able to look at him in the flesh. Her expression is one of discomfort, she looks uncomfortable in her own skin as though he is overpowering her and there is nothing she can do. She is supposed to be the model and he the photographer but he appears in the picture. “To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed” (Harden, 2011) Therefore it can never be neutral but photography seems to be a neutral, objective gaze whilst painting seems subjective and created.
In conclusion, it seems fair to say that over the past 600 years the male gaze is still around. It is proven that glamour did not exist, only ideas of grace and elegance mounted up to something similar and Berger in Ways of Seeing (1972) argues strongly that men are still watching women and his view seems to be supported in what we see around us. Women are depicted in a different ways to men and the reason for this is because the ideal spectator is always assumed to be male and the image of the woman is designed to flatter him. The Materialist reading is that the Base is made up of men in control of art and production; therefore ideas of beauty reflect the imbalance between men and women.
Bibliography
“Men act and women appear, men look at women while women are watching themselves being looked at”. (John Berger)
“She has to survey everything she is and everything she does because how she appears to others, and ultimately how she appears to men, is of crucial importance for what is normally thought of as the success of her life.”
J. Berger (1972). Ways of seeing. Great Britain: Penguin. 46.
“To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed”
(Mark Harden. (N/A). Olympia. Available: http://jssgallery.org/other_artists/manet/Olympia.htm. Last accessed 14th Feb 2011.)
(Sarah Banet-Weiser (1999). The most beautiful girl in the world: beauty pageants and national identity. London: University of California Press. 192)
“The Miss World competition is not an erotic exhibition. It is a public celebration of the
traditional female road to success.”
traditional female road to success.”
Beth Harris and Steven Zucker. (2009). Édouard Manet, A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, Available: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMACjCg9r4E&feature=related. Last accessed 20 Mar 2011.
“We seem to be at some distance from her and her look and her posture are at distance. But when we look at the reflection she looks much more engaged and slightly leant towards the man.”
G. Galligan (1919). The Self-Pictured: Manet, the Mirror, and the Occupation of Realist Painting. 3rd ed. England: College Art Association. 134.
“Manet painted a picture of himself painting a picture, as the painter gazes outwards he engages us in; rather our position is uncertain Manet’s gaze to his own body and the canvas itself in a continuous three way shuttle.”
“The Gaze is not the look of the subject at the object, but the point at which the object looks back”
(Looking for the Gaze: Lacanian Film Theory and Its Vicissitudes
Cinema journal 42, No 3 spring 2003, PG 29, Todd McGowan)
“This unequal relationship is so deeply embedded in our culture that it still structures the consciousness of many women.”
J. Berger (1972). Ways of seeing. United States of America: The Viking Press. 63.
No comments:
Post a Comment