Task 5 - The Gaze

‘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, 45, 47)

Discuss this quote with reference to one work of art and one work from the contemporary media.

•                Berger adds that at least from the seventeenth century, paintings of female nudes reflected the woman’s submission to ‘the owner of both woman and painting’ (ibid., 52). He noted that ‘almost all post-Renaissance European sexual imagery is frontal - either literally or metaphorically - because the sexual protagonist is the spectator-owner looking at it’ (ibid., 56). He advanced the idea that the realistic, ‘highly tactile’ depiction of things in oil paintings and later in colour photography (in particular where they were portrayed as ‘within touching distance’), represented a desire to possess the things (or the lifestyle) depicted (ibid., 83ff). This also applied to women depicted in this way (ibid., 92).
•                Writing in 1972, Berger insisted that women were still ‘depicted in a different way to men - because the "ideal" spectator is always assumed to be male and the image of the woman is designed to flatter him’ (ibid., 64). In 1996 Jib Fowles still felt able to insist that ‘in advertising males gaze, and females are gazed at’ (Fowles 1996, 204). And Paul Messaris notes that female models in ads addressed to women ‘treat the lens as a substitute for the eye of an imaginary male onlooker,’ adding that ‘it could be argued that when women look at these ads, they are actually seeing themselves as a man might see them’ (Messaris 1997, 41). Such ads ‘appear to imply a male point of view, even though the intended viewer is often a woman. So the women who look at these ads are being invited to identify both with the person being viewed and with an implicit, opposite-sex viewer’




Definition:


Gaze is a psychoanalytical term brought into popular usage by Jacques Lacan to describe the anxious state that comes with the awareness that one can be viewed. The psychological effect, Lacan argues, is that the subject loses some sense of autonomy upon realizing that he or she is a visible object. This concept is bound with his theory of the mirror stage, in which a child encountering a mirror realizes that he or she has an external appearance. Lacan suggests that this gaze effect can similarly be produced by any conceivable object such as a chair or a television screen. This is not to say that the object behaves optically as a mirror; instead it means that the awareness of any object can induce an awareness of also being an object.


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TASK

Titian's 'Venus of Urbino' is a prime example of how women are perceived and objectified by men. The painting is created by a man for a male audience. Her pose is quite suggestive making it appear that she see's herself only as someone who is there to pleasure her husband. Her gaze is inviting almost making it acceptable for the audience to look at her. The painting portrays the message that is acceptable for women to be seen how men would like them to be seen. Many of the paintings created during this time were painted by men and only featured women. Raising the point that women begin to act in a way in which they think is appropriate, but a way that is controlled by how men think women should act. It is purely about the objectification of women which is formed from a patriarchal society, in which men were in power, and controlled the way in which women lived and therefore saw themselves.

The advert above for YSL perfume Opium, showcases model Sophie Dahl. At the time, the advert became one of the most complained about adverts and was banned by the Advertising Standards Authority.  The advert was similar to the Cabanel's painting Birth of Venus. It was said that the advert was considered to be too 'degrading' to women as well as being offensive. Much like the painting above the image is again suggestive, Dahl is sprawled naked across the poster allowing the audience to look at her freely, the main difference between the painting and the image above is that in the image Dahl isn't making any visual contact with the viewer as her eyes are closed.

Like many original paintings women were unlikely to make any contact with the audience as it almost distanced the viewer from the figure in the painting, this is exactly what is portrayed in the advert. The viewer is allowed to look, but as they have no contact with her eyes, it somehow distances them form the figure and makes it more acceptable to view the image without being directly connected to it. A quote from John Berger emphasises the point that women are continually having to watch themselves, "The social presence of women is developed as a result of their ingenuity in living under such tutelage within such a limited space. But this has been at the cost of a woman's self being split into two. A woman must continually watch herslelf. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself." John Berger - Ways of Seeing.  It focuses on the idea that women are constantly aware that they are being watched, which forces them to act in a way that they think  is appropriate. The 'Gaze' is about male power, it moves away from reality and ideas become conventions.