How Does John Berger Objectify Women

The mirror on the bedroom wall examines the public perception of her private life. Looking only at its reflection, the audience cannot tell the room is in a mess; the rosebush and the dirt trail are not apparent to the audience. In the mirror, only the back of woman’s head is evident. Her face and her emotions are hidden from the mirror. It appears as if she is doing an ordinary task; she could very well be sitting on the bed, reading a book. She turns her back to the mirror and denies it a true reflection.

A review of the world’s great artists conjures familiar images: Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel; Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night; Pablo Picasso’s The Tragedy. There are many more, of course: Monet, Moya, Warhol, Rembrandt, Kandinsky. What is immediately noticeable, however, upon any brief study of art, is the significant absence of women as heralded artists—not only in our ancient pasts, but even today, amongst valiant efforts for gender equality.

(Millhouse, 2011) In the 1980’s Pollock’s Feminism “critiqued the essential myths of individualism, the artist, and the social constructions of femininity and masculinity that define bourgeois culture”. While the 70’s feminism movement aim was to stand next to the existing masculine dominated culture. “Feminism's encounter with the canon has been complexed and many-leveled: political ,ideology,mythological,methodological and psycho-symbolic” (Pollock, 1999). The 1970’s movement was followed by the immediate task which was “the need to rectify the gaps in historical knowledge created by the consistent omission of women of all cultures from the history of art” (Pollock, 1999). The only art that was put on display was significantly male dominated work, if you wanted to see work created by women, you would have to view them “in a basement or storeroom of a national gallery” (Pollock, 1999). Female artists are only known in their own category of female artists while male artists don’t require a separate category . Art that is created by females have been historically dismissed from the art historical canon as craft, as opposed to fine art. The evident of

The painting Udney Maria Blakeley (1830), by Thomas Sully, was the first painting that came to mind when assigned the project: the painting has fascinated me both as a child and an adult due to the beauty of both the woman in the painting, but also from my deeper understanding of art now. Thomas Sully used the wet medium of oil on canvas, and included the woman in the foreground of the painting holding a rose in a vase in her right hand. There is a deep contrast between the women dressed in a white gown, and the darker background of the painting. Due to the highlighting along the left side of her face, and the shadowing on the right, it can be assumed that she is facing, or even looking straight at the

In addition, I will examine the differences between male and female sexuality and how each tended to be perceived and treated by society. Then, I will look at prominent female artists and their personal experiences and beliefs on feminism and the female in their art focusing on how it tended to be received along how male artists responded to it. Mainly, I will be analyzing the clash of sexualized images in art, focusing on the differences not only between male made art versus female art, but the differences in the women’s art community, as well. What are the reasons and goals for women to use a “sexualized image” of women in their art versus

How do the works of Yasumasa Morimura, Julie Rrap and Anne Zahalka challenge conventional ways in which gender has been depicted historically in the visual arts?

Knowing the sex of the artist introduces the preconceived notion of how the artist may view the opposite sex. In this painting, because I know the artist is a male when viewing the subjects of the painting I understand why they are painted in the way they are. His gender influences my

It may seem like the mirrors are a simple afterthought and a way for the author to sound more descriptive. But after a second look, it’s not hard to tell that the mirrors have a deep connection to Melinda. A great example of this is within the first two weeks of school when Melinda gets home from school and goes up to her room, “I watch myself in the mirror across the room. Ugh. My hair is completely hidden under the comforter. I look for the shapes in my face. Could I put a face in my tree, like a dryad from greek mythology? Two muddy-circle eyes under black-dash eyebrows, piggy-nose nostrils, and a chewed up horror of a mouth” (Page 16). This quote shows how she feels ugly and can’t stand her appearance. Another great quote that shows the connection is when Melinda decides to re-decorate her room, “The first thing to go is the mirror. It is the screwed to the wall, so I cover it with a poster of Maya Angelou that the librarian gave me. She said Ms. Angelou was one of the greatest american writers” (Page 50). This was during a phase Melinda went through where she was truly in a bad place but wouldn’t just face the fact that she needed to tell someone about what had happened to her. Towards the end of the book Melinda gets more comfortable with mirrors as she also gets more comfortable talking again. The mirrors symbolize how Melinda feels about herself

For centuries, the objectification of women has become the norm, forever portraying them as submissive and passive for the benefit of the male gaze. Eternally capsulated in a world, perfected, unanimously the viewer and viewed alike. Jenny Saville defies expectations in creating the female nude with herself as both subject and painter. Taking on the roles given to women by men and making them her own, Saville elevates the status of women by making them their own judge of beauty. Kenneth Clark, a renowned art historian of his time, believed to create a form of art, the nude must be reformed and not directly recorded from life. In doing so, scouring away all evidence of the woman before the painting, before being perfected.

The role of women have had an influence on art as well by opening up the softer more motherly side of art that men may not necessarily be able to tap into. The way that some see women’s art work is a softer more flowing piece. Buildings have a softer line while men design them with edges, sharp points, and more eye catching details. Photography is more sunsets, animals, insects, or landscape pictures as if they want to catch life as it is happing naturally where there is no human interaction.

Throughout history many artistic works have been deemed "great" and many individuals have been labeled "masters" of the discipline. The question of who creates art and how is it to be classified as great or greater than another has commonly been addressed by scholars and historians. The last quarter of the 20th century has reexamined these questions based on the assertions that no women artists have ever created or been appreciated to the level of "greatness" that perpetually befalls their male counterparts. The position that society has institutionalized on women as unable to be anything but subordinate and unexpressive is a major contributor to this claim. Giving a brief history of gender discrimination in the art

Artist and people viewing the art work have always had a fascination with the female nude. Even when I was a child my attention was captured by the nude art not because I was a kid and I saw a nude lady , but it forced me to wonder more about why the female nude was so amazing as a tool for art and why this is repeated so many times throughout the centuries. One female nude painting in particular was the subject of controversy and exposed the syncretism and or the power of the female nude painting.

I was drawn to this time period as well as these two sculptures. As I researched both sculptures I was fascinated by how much respect the people of that time had for their women. Not only for what they could do for them, but also for what they looked like. They didn’t see the weight and size as a grotesque thing; but more as a thing of beauty. In

Gender discrimination is an issue that is ongoing since the colonial times. However, the fight against gender discrimination is not just an issue of the past, but also an issue of the present. In the current 21st century, there are many people who are still fighting for women's equality in society. Women are still getting paid less than men, and are still looked down upon in certain career paths. More action is needed to bring awareness to people about the inequality women still struggle through. More people need to be informed about the inequality women face. Adelaide Labille Guiard’s oil painting in Paris from 1749-1803 called Self Portrait with Two Pupil, served as a propaganda to fight for women’s attendance in the French Academie Royale. It illustrates a self portrait of Guiard, herself, and two of her pupils, Marie Gabrielle and Marie Marguerite Carreaux de Rosemond. In her self portrait, she paints herself in an art studio while her two pupils are by her side. Like Guiard’s self portrait, more effort through social media and the arts

There is some disparity between the way critics and philosophers like Judith Butler view Cindy Sherman's work and the way that Cindy Sherman speaks of her photographs. It may be the disparity that exists between many modern artists, who often operate on an intuitive level, and the philosopher critics who comment upon them from a theoretical perspective or a pre-established framework. On one level, Cindy Sherman may only be playing "dress-up" (as she herself admits) in her famous History Portraits (1989-90) (Berne, 2003). On another level, however, her "dressing-up" may be indicative of a deeper problem in modern gender identity theory which is the problem of "becoming" woman (Butler, 1994) or, as Judith Butler sees it, the problem of performativity. In the History Portraits, Sherman may certainly be said to be "performing" and perhaps even attempting to "become" the male and female characters she represents in her work. Indeed, it is upon such a premise that philosopher critics and gender theorists find her work so engaging. This paper will examine Cindy Sherman and her History Portraits in relation to Judith Butler's gender theory, the portrayal of the self, and how gender identity has changed throughout the course of modern history. It will examine representations of womanhood from Romantic Idealism to Post-Modernism and will also