The male gaze Essay Example

The male gaze Essay Example The male gaze Essay The male gaze Essay John Bergers Ways of Seeing resonates with Picassos Les Demoiselles dAvignon and Rembrandts Bathsheba at her Bath because the male painters view the women as objects and have created highly sexualized images. In contrast, the two female painters Catherine Wiley and Sofonisba Anguissola have depicted women as modest, more realistic and personalized in Summer Day at Newport and in Portrait of Sister Minerva. The phenomenon of the Male Gaze can best be seen by comparing a male view of a women and a females view of a women in paintings. In these four images Picasso and Rembrandt put their own wants and needs in the paintings, whereas Wiley and Anguissola focus more on how a women would like to be viewed with equality and pride. Bathsheba at her Bath by Rembrandt truly shows the male gaze which enables women to be a commodity (What is the male gaze at http://finallyfeminism101. wordpress. com) that men desire. In his painting he depicts a women solely on display for a males pleasure. He does this by using light to highlight her nude body, but he completely obscures the face of the women in darkness. Also, Rembrandt publicly displayed this private act of bathing for the male gaze. This is similar to Scott Russell Sanders discussion of naked women on display in his college dorm room. The women in those pictures like Rembrandts Bathsheba were on display in an artificial way, The paper women seemed to gaze back at me, enticing or mocking, yet even in my adolescent dither I was troubled by the phony stare, for I knew this was no true exchange of looks ( Scott Russell Sanders, Looking At Women, Georgia Review, Spring 1989, page 255 line 15). In Rembrandts painting the female is not looking at the viewer, in fact she is looking away and appears bashful. It is as if she does not want to be seen as an object but she has no control in the male painters creative process. As Rembrandts puts his wants and needs into the his painting, Anguissola views women as more modest and respectful of themselves. In Anguissolas painting of Portrait of Sister Minerva, the women is fully covered and clothed from her neck to her wrists. She focuses on the beauty of a womans face not the curves of a womans body. Anguissola captures the rich essence of the fabrics and colors that the women presents. In Rembrandts painting the woman is wearing an arm band and a necklace which employs a more sexual objective of the womans body, as well as giving her a very erotic feel that emphasizes the focus of her nude body. As for Anguissolas piece uses the Jewelry as an accessory to accent the power and confidence she has for herself. As seen in one of the responses to What is the male Gaze? angrygirl states, I think women have much more power now then ever before. I think not only do we know about the male gaze, but many of us control it and use it to our advantage (What is the male gaze at http://finallyfeminism101. wordpress. com). Anguissola shows that the women knows how the male gaze works and by not giving into the nudity that the male sex wants she simply gives them the opposite in which, they want more. Similarly to Anguissolas painting, Wiley portrays women as elegant and humble. Although you cannot directly see the faces of the two women in Wileys painting of Summer Day at Newport, she uses very soft pastel colors which illustrates these women as proper and very delicate. The brushstrokes of Wileys painting captures the emotional feeling of the womens appearance. It is as if she has put her own strength and feeling into the women she is painting, in which, she wants to evoke their best assets. The image that Wiley is portraying is respectful to the womans body. She dresses the women in conservative day dresses with an umbrella over their heads, inferring that they present themselves as classy and sophisticated. Wiley also shows the two women conversing and being friendly with one another exhibiting them as the mere opposite of how Picasso would. Picasso creates these women as if they would never interact with each other. This exemplifies the mind set of a female artist and a male artist because Wiley simply paints the two women as friends and Picasso does not capture those types of nuances. In Picassos piece Les Demoiselles dAvignon he tries to show his anger towards women. In this painting he presents the five women as if their faces were blocked out, almost as if he does not care how they look. He positions them provocatively with their legs spread wide open and their arms behind their heads with their chest prompted forward, giving the painting the feel that these women are not personalized. They have no individual qualities to them. All of the women are presented in the same way. All which are not real women, they are insignificant faceless objects that really have no purpose but to pleasure men. As Scott Russell Sanders states, It is the nature of the show to reduce the woman, discard her individuality, her soul, make her into an object, thereby enabling the man to handle her with greater safety, to use her as a toy ( Scott Russell Sanders, Looking At Women, Georgia Review, Spring 1989, page 226). In Picassos painting the women are being used as a toy, because he did not give distinct curves and detail to the womans body it allows any man to look at the painting and see whatever shapes they desire. Whereas in Wileys painting of the two women shows exactly what the men can see and nothing more. Picasso also puts these distorted masks on the women, simply portraying that the women are nothing more then an object and should not be viewed for the beauty that they have but for what men make of them. The two male artists and the two female artists both have very different views of women and how they should present themselves to others. Whether it be seductive and sensuous or suave and dainty, both show a very different definition and view about the Male Gaze.