January 22, 2005

• Oh,i LOVE THIS ONE. 

  Lest it disappear forever from the www, I'm going to copy it below.  It's from class notes taken for an art history graduate level course at UMD in 2002, wherever that may be.

  http://www.arthistory-archaeology.umd.edu/gradstudents/AChilds/ARTH346SP02/lecturenotes314.htm   

  "Ideologies of Gender

  Ideologies of gender are beliefs about sexual difference (not biological but socially constructed) where masculinity and femininity are fixed at opposite poles. The reality is that gender roles are unstable, not fixed. Often in this period these roles were considered fixed by the middle class male dominated society. These ideologies are complicit in the discourse of gender roles. Visual arts embody these roles, both the inherent attitudes of the artists and the subjects depicted testify to the importance of gender roles. Some artist undermine these – particularly females or avant-garde artists later in the century. Many of the impressionists adhere to these roles.

  • Works of art were created by men whose belief systems were informed by ideologies of gender.
  • Works by these male artists, and females, contributed to the normalization of these ideologies. The more imagery we consume that reinforces gender roles serves to establish these roles as true, normal.
  • Ideologies of gender roles are class specific often in this period. Middle and upper class femininity is constructed differently than lower and working class femininity. Often centering around sexuality and prostitution regarding lower class women.
  • James Tissot’s Ball on Shipboard, 1874 – respectable women
  • Degas Women at the Cafe, 1877 – degenerate women, prostitutes
  • Both types are subject to gender roles.

  A main aspect of the ideologies of gender roles in analyzing art is the idea of the "male gaze"

  • The male gaze is inherent in the act of the male artist creating an image, thus the image is a a result of his gaze. It is also inherent in the fact that the intended audience was primarily male, thus the finished product is subject to the gaze of the male audience.
  • How and why do men look at women as they do?
  • What ideas and power structures are inherent in the act of looking?
  • Generally the structure is that man is the possessor of the gaze and the woman is the object of his gaze.
  • He is in the active role of looking, she is in the passive role of being looked at. She is the spectacle, a part of the ephemeral nature of modernity.
  • The spectator remains anonymous, the flaneur, not being looked at or scrutinized. However the spectator knows the identity of the object of the gaze, the woman.
  • The spectator has the power in the relationship.
  • The gaze is often fraught with sexual undertones.
  • The woman as object of the gaze is fulfilling a gender specific role of being available to man, being defined by the attention of the man, being the object of desire rather than possessing her own desire.

  Women and impressionism – subject and artist

  Women in impressionist paintings as subjects of a masculine way of looking – the gaze

  • Women as the objects of the attention of men
  • They embody or answer to men’s interests, desires, fantasies and fears
  • They are the object of sexual desire

  Renoir’s La Loge – 1874 – and example of sexual and gender roles at play.

  A view of a woman as an object of desire seated in the theater balcony at the opera

  • She is seated in front of a man – the typical placement – an example of the social decorum of the time – women were generally seated in the balcony in the front seats. They were there to be seen as well as to see others.
  • She is the trophy of the man, jeweled, sparkling –as opposed to his simple, uniform black clothing. The bourgeois man’s (the flaneur) uniformity of dress contributed to his anonymity. He is the same as everyone else, while the woman is distinguishable.
  • She is the foil of the man, his opposite.
  • Forms of looking reinforce traditional roles of spectatorship
  • Man as powerful, possessor of the gaze
  • Woman as object to be gazed at by us, the viewer, the flaneur

  Women’s Spaces – Women Impressionists

  Mary Cassat (American expatriate) – Five O’Clock Tea, 1880

  Berthe Morisot – Summer’s Day- 1879

  Middle class women painters did not have the range of sites available to them to record modernity. The could not experience modern life in the same way that the bourgeois male could. They were often limited to the spaces of femininity:

  • Domestic scenes
  • Domestic suburbs
  • The opera
  • Family relationships

  Cassat, Woman in Black at the Opera, 1879 – disrupts the ideology of the male gaze – the woman is the active purveyor of the gaze – this woman transgresses the boundaries of prescribed gender roles.

  • She is looking through the glasses across the room
  • She is also being looked at but paying no attention to this man.
  • She is wearing all black, perhaps a widow. Her black simple black dress negates the idea that the woman must dress up in finery to be and object of desire. Black is also the uniform color of the male dress. Is she taking on this role?
  • Cassat is undermining the typical gender roles in this work in a very deliberate way."

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   no matter that mary cassat's painting described at the end of the notes was subversive - even that was drawn totally out of the experience in the restricted women's sphere.

  pearlbamboo

   

  • 1:13 am
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