The Female Gaze
Illustration by Kine Andersen
Unpacking & reimagining the male gaze
Nobody has spent more time in an art museum than the nude woman. Whether it’s the busy foyer of a national gallery or the quiet passage of a private collection, there she is, and has been for centuries, stoic through the eras of war and revolution. She has sat for Rembrandt, reclined for Picasso, she is the poster child for classicism. If MoMA is high school, she is the head cheerleader.
Over the years she has been deconstructed, made abstract, yet her message, or lack thereof, remains the same. Placed firmly against an 18th century wall, eyes wide, skin porcelain, she is a spectacle.
She invites you to gaze at her - not in a crass manner, after all she is art before she is anything else. And one mustn’t forget, she is not naked, she is nude, the two are not the same. The latter is tasteful, and ostensibly requires a certain level of intellect in order to be fully appreciated or understood. Untitled, she gives you full autonomy. Constructed by men for the pleasure of other men, in what the kids are calling the male gaze. But what does this mean?
Gaze refers to how a spectator engages with an artwork. So I guess the male gaze can be described as: the act of a man placing a woman in his artwork purely as an object of voyeuristic fulfilment.
You can’t really discuss the nude woman nor the male gaze without mentioning the Guerrilla Girls, who famously educated the art world on the fact that less than 6% of Modern artists in the Met are women, yet 85% of the nudes are female. We must question why when a woman artist chooses to use her body in her art, her work is described as vulgar and derivative, yet when a man presents the nude woman as his own, he is lauded as a virtuoso.
This message is constantly reinforced throughout art history. We see the male gaze in Manet’s Olympia, Modigliani’s Nu Couché, Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, Goya’s The Nude Maja, Ingres’ Grande Odalisque, Klimt’s Danae, Schiele’s Standing Nude, the list goes on.
stuff like this lol
Leda and the Swan, Alexander Nyulassy
This practice is often dismissed as harmless, after all, these artworks are all visually striking. There’s something almost disarming about the male gaze. The visuals lure you into a false sense of security, the idea that you are looking at a celebration of women. However the male gaze is damaging and didactic. The use of the female body in this manner creates an ideal, which in itself is reductive and contributes to a culture that normalises the objectification of women.
Women as subjects are often sexualised by the artist for male viewership. The common use of fragmentation, in which the female subject is reduced to merely body parts (e.g. Courbet’s L'Origine du Monde), or the hyper-sexualisation of black women and women of colour (e.g. Gauguin’s Nevermore), is quite frankly dehumanising. Using women’s bodies as props teaches people to view women as props. These customs become internalised, making it difficult for both men and women to simply unlearn something so inherent.
So how do we begin to dismantle it? Applying the ideas from Audre Lorde’s essay The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House, we simply can’t centre the female gaze around male spectatorship. The female gaze needs to be independent of the male gaze. It shouldn’t exist to actively oppose it but rather to passively remedy its damaging effects.
by Shelly Shell
We can start by examining the ways in which we perform femininity for the spectator. This happens through facets we might consider unrelated or mundane. As women we tend to construct an identity that is palatable, then present this version of ourselves to others, through increasingly creative mediums. Female self-expression is publicly shunned, even in today’s society, and displays of beauty have to be more subtle, almost accidental. In reality, selfies and nudes are merely postmodern self-portraiture. Our camera roll is our oeuvre, which begs the question, are we all artists?
The Feminist Avant-garde of the 70s gave new impetus to experimental photography, inspiring a whole generation of young female artists and photographers. However, this now very popular interpretation of the female gaze appears to be shrouded by a cloud of #progressive waif culture. Think cult classics like Girl Interrupted, The Virgin Suicides and The Bell Jar, but with body hair. Whilst mildly unorthodox, this version of the female image still maintains its male desirability. The unconventional ways in which women are now depicted, still feel rather conventional and not as subversive as they are commonly described.
In order to establish an authentic female gaze, we need to be introspective, to consider what we as spectators might like to see. We previously defined the male gaze as: a man placing a woman in his artwork purely as an object of voyeuristic fulfilment (gross). So how do we define the female gaze? A possible definition could be: the embodiment of visual balance, as it places the woman both behind the lens and in front of it, solely for the purpose of personal fulfilment.
This gives women agency, by acting as an instrument for reimagining ourselves. It doesn’t necessarily dictate a new ideal, it’s simply a means of self-expression. The female gaze is multifaceted and evocative. It’s unapologetic. It asks questions. We’re able to shift the focus away from antiquated practices and give ourselves room to grow. While it’s likely that art museums across the world will continue to exhibit nude portraits by old masters, there are a growing number of art collectives choosing to embrace a new gaze, and you can bet that their body of work will expand beyond the infamous reclining nude.