METHOD: REPRODUCING / RETOUCHING
TOPIC: THE MALE GAZE IN ART HISTORY, ANALYZING AND UNPACKING WHAT THIS LOOKS LIKE, AND ATTEMPTING TO ‘REVERSE’ THE MALE GAZE
MEDIA: DIGITAL ILLUSTRATION
QUESTIONS BEING ASKED
- How can time play a role in this? It took me 30 minutes per work to redraw the gaze in these paintings — but we have still yet to rewrite the way women are represented and viewed in our society. It’s been 100’s of years…
- Does ‘rewriting’ these works still bring light to the original authors and therefore still give weight to these problematic artworks?
- Is reversing the gender roles equally as problematic? While shedding light on the male gaze in this way seems most drastic and effective it does not neutralize the ‘gaze’ – but does erasing the gaze as a whole erase history?
- How can this lead into a larger lesson or thinking into rewriting the gaze? Where does this lead from here?
SUBJECT
REFERENCE INSPIRATION
“But the essential way of seeing women, the essential use to which their images are put, has not changed. Women are depicted in a quite different way from men — not because the feminine is different from the masculine — but because the ‘ideal’ spectator is always assumed to be male and the image of the woman is designed to flatter him. If you have any doubt that this is so, make the following experiment. Choose from this book and image of a traditional nude. Transform the woman into a man. Then notice in your minds eye or by drawing on the reproduction. Then notice the violence which that transformation does. Not to the image, but to the assumptions of a likely viewer.”
John Berger
FINAL PRODUCT – Converting the objectified female subjects in the following works into males
Displayed as a gallery to give equal weight to these reproductions as they have in a museum
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