Marah Siyam
Professor Cacolio
Art and Women
Post #2
2/10/20
The Male Gaze and Patriarchy
Sexism is prevalent in almost every part of our society, is rooted in every culture that is hard to imagine life without it and this is true for millennials now. This inequality is clearest in art since art is a direct reflection of culture it is the easiest place to look for when researching how sexism affected a culture. Whether this is through the trying to find women artists during a time there definitely was but they were oppressed or looking at the way women are portrayed in art made by men. John Berger was a European art critic who studied these phenomena of women painted by men, called the male gaze. The male gaze according to Berger in his book Ways of Seeing reads “In the art-form of the European nude the painters and the spectator-owners were usually men and the persons treated as objects, usually women. This unequal relationship is so deeply embedded in our culture that it still structures the consciousness of many women” (Berger, 63). An example Berger gives of a painting that depicts this male gaze is “Venus Cupid Folly and Time” by Bronzino. This painting suggests that the female in the painting Venus is completely unaware of her own sexuality and body, it exists solely for the man looking at the painting which is so easily available to Venus’s body sexual side.
 |
| "Venus Cupid Folly and Time" Bronzino 1546 |
Parchiarcy is the overarching reason we have the male gaze and why it has been celebrated throughout art. Bell Hooks is an author and social activist that uses her work in feminism to attack these problems head-on. Hooks’ book The Will To Change gives a clear definition of patriarchy as a “ political-social system that insists that males are inherently dominating, superior to everything and everyone deemed weak, especially females.” (Hooks,18).
These two social constructs are stemmed from both religious stories such as Adam and Eve and the way people have interpreted these stories resulting in inequality between men and women. In Bergers Ways of Seeing page 48-49, he explains how after Eve ate from the forbidden trees against Gods will her and Adam became aware of their nakedness but this nakedness is only solidified through the person looking at them, being naked alone does not mean anything but in front of others is where shame comes from. Thus since Eve was the reason this new negative experience of nakedness she is to blame making women’s nakedness their fault allowing men to look at them without consent or shame. These concepts are seen all throughout European art.
Luckily in today’s world, Women have advanced from where we were during the time’s women’s bodies were strictly objected. Although the male gaze and particularly are both still very threatening artists like Loveis Wise are using their art to combat the male gaze and patriarchy in the art world. Lewis’s art explores these ideas through illustration and text as seen in her piece “I Am A Person” she directly references the male gaze and rejects it.
 |
| "I Am A Person" Loveis Wise |
Before learning about the male gaze I believed European art with nude subjects was a sign of admiration and appreciation for women’s bodies, but as I grew older and began realizing there were no male nude paintings is when my view on art shifted. Particracy was not very present in my home life or the way I was raised. My family consists of three girls and two boys, me being the youngest. My parents treated both genders equally on all levels social, education, opportunities, etc. Growing up in a Muslim household we grew up with these values and my choice of wearing a Hijab was very freeing. I saw the ways my sisters were treated by men in public. Men were almost more hesitant to catcall, Hijab for me was a rejection to the male gaze, a way of saying “this is my body and you don’t get permission to even see it unless I want you to”. This is not to say modesty is the end all be all, women should be able to wear whatever they want, and I choose to cover my body. White feminism rejects my approach to freedom and labels it as oppression. But if we take a took at our society movies, TV shows, any type of art where women are present they tend to “good-looking” “Skinny” and wear clothes that do target men. For example, in the Avengers franchise “Black Widow” played by Scarlet Johanson is wearing a very tight suit that shows cleavage, this is a superhero movie why do only the women wear revealing clothing. If it was the choice of the character that would be amazing but this male gaze still exists today. Many men don’t want to sit through a three house movie with no sex appeal created by the women in the movie either being seductive or wearing something revealing. This is not different from European nude paintings, it is the exact same thing.
Women will always have a hard time navigating the world with patriarchy in place constantly dictating what is socially acceptable, as feminists and as progressive artists that world in mediums like film, photography, and paint we are all socially responsible of what we create and what messages and what motifs we are referencing and reinforcing.
Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. British Broadcasting Corporation, 1972.
Hooks, Bell. The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love. Washington Square Press, 2005.
No comments:
Post a Comment