January 22, 2005

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    "interesting ... it seems that many of the next generations of artists stopped gazing at the world of women at all ... or did it in a way that subverted the knowledge of looking ... or made the act of looking so obviously distorted that it couldn't be trusted"
    Posted 1/22/2005 at 8:47 AM by pyramidtermite -
     
    ah, pyramid, you're on to something. 
     
    here i go, piecing together bits and fragments i've taught myself....

    of the fauves, matisse loved women and it showed in his paintings.  (his wife once arrived in  nice and kicked out the model he'd hired from a local art school....lol)  the others?  humans didn't figure large in their work (go hunting in dufy's work...).

    the nabis?  vuillard painted women, but without the total separation implied by the "male gaze," and not so much in the spaces of modernity as at home.  here's a link - http://www.nga.gov/feature/artnation/vuillard/

    bonnard, whose paintings make me, lover of color and light, melt, painted women in the domestic sphere (his wife, marthe, in the bathtub in particular) as though the human figures were part of a decorative pattern/composition as much as though they were human, again a male gaze, but not one from "the spaces of modernity" but rather from the intimacy of the domestic sphere, that place to which women impressionist painters were delegated, a safe place. 

    here's a link for bonnard's work, if you are not familiar with it. www.hopeway.com/.../ 3-5-BONNARD/3-5-bonnard.htm

    after them all hell breaks loose, doesn't it.  picasso - like degas he painted prostitues.  in his seminal work,  Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, (www.cpo.cnr.it/ homecpo.htm) prostitutes were the models,  but the way of seeing is forever transformed, even as the "male gaze" remains constant.  (his painting of one of his mistresses/wives, in profile, with a penis growing upward starting from where she should have had a nose, certainly reflects a male gaze if i ever saw one, even though the painting would rate an "f " in a life drawing class.

    as things move away into abstraction, the human drops out, though never completely.  take a look at egon schiele's work (http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=egon+schiele&spell=1) for some females that are totally drawn from the male gaze.

    the male gaze?  hurrrrmph.  how many male nudes are out there that aren't homoerotic?.  besides a couple by schiele, one of him with his wife and child - there are others that i know of, with my limited knowledge of art history, but the numbers never come even faintly close to those of female nudes - matisse's wonderful green man  depicts an art school model, not someone he chose on his own to paint.... 

    i've a large chinese ink  or sumie drawing of a male nude playing the violin - a "factual" rather than erotic image - that sashi did 11 years ago framed in my dining room.  'tis revealing indeed to watch male visitors try not to look at it, and loose.

    pearlbamboo

    ©2005 

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