Surrealism was an artistic and literary movement dedicated to expressing the imagination as revealed in dreams. Aiming to free thought from the conscious control of reason, Surrealism became an incredibly male dominated group run by its founding member, André Breton. Breton was also the chief editor of La Révolution Surréaliste. This was a publication, which in 1929, circulated René Magritte’s I Do Not See The (Woman) Hidden In The Forest (figure 1). The collage consists of a group of photographs of Breton and other key surrealists such as Yves Tanguy, Salvador Dalí and Max Ernst. These figures with their eyes closed became representative of the surrealist’s fascination with accessing the unconscious through the dream like state. But it is the painting in the middle of the collage that forms the initial focus of our attention. The image presents a nude woman, who in modestly covering her breasts, appears to be concealing herself from the viewer. Anne Marsh suggests that Magritte’s collage is perhaps the most literal rendition of the sexually driven male gaze'. The combination of the icon of the closed eyes and the female nude gives us access to imagining an unrestrained and audacious scale of male fantasies and desires within Surrealism.
This reference to woman as the ‘Other’ is not a new concept within art history. Woman is seen as offering closer access to this unconscious state yearned for by man and she thus becomes an emblem of male desire, a force against the rational and repressive in society. As in Magritte’s picture, woman is represented as being poised at the centre of male dreams. She is illustrated as a projection or as an object of men’s own dreams of femininity. Unfortunately, the very nature of Surrea...
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Lyford, Amy, Surrealist Masculinities: Gender Anxiety and the Aesthetic of Post-World War One Reconstruction in France, (California: University of California Press, 2007)
Marsh, Anne, The Darkroom: Photography and The Theatre of Desire (Australia: Macmillan Art Publishers, 2003)
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Women in pictorial history have often been used as objects; figures that passively exist for visual consumption or as catalyst for male protagonists. Anne Hollander in her book Fabric of Vision takes the idea of women as objects to a new level in her chapter “Women as Dress”. Hollander presents the reader with an argument that beginning in the mid 19th century artists created women that ceased to exist outside of their elegantly dressed state. These women, Hollander argues, have no body, only dress. This concept, while persuasive, is lacking footing which I will attempt to provide in the following essay. In order to do this, the work of James Tissot (b. 1836 d. 1902) will further cement the idea of “women as dress” while the work of Berthe
Professors Carrie Packwood and Debra Merskin, authors of the essay “Having It His Way: The Construction of Masculinity in Fast-Food Advertising”, repudiate the stereotypical macho behaviors that are used in several commercials to build a reputation for men while women are used as objects. Media use this stereotype to sell nearly every product; being fast food, beer, and cars on top of the list. Furthermore, Packwood and Merskin claim that advertisement present men, compared to women, as superior individuals with total freedom who see women as prizes. The perfect macho type is a strong resource to sell beer; the Tui beer commercial “Temptations can be dangerous, stay focused” applied this stereotype, where men are on the spotlight and women
In the beginning, Surrealism was primarily a literary movement, but it gave artists an access to new subject matter and a process for conjuring it. As Surrealist paintings began to emerge, it divi...
The aim of this essay is analyse women´s images in The Yellow Wallpaper and in The Awakening, since the two readings have become the focus of feminist controversy.
There is a long history of gender roles in society. The expectations of gender roles continually shift; however, there is not a time when women and men share the same equalities simultaneously. The idea of how men and women should act is instilled in us at a young age. I think it starts really young with girls and boys being told what they can be and when they see what they are expected to be, they abandon parts of them which society deems as undesirable. We don’t acknowledge how much pressure we put on men and women to conform to the ideas of gender roles but it is apparent in our media and in the history of our art. One of the most influential things about figurative art is that it has the ability to capture society’s concepts of how men and women are expected to be during that time period. One thing for certain about gender equality is that it has historically and predominantly been a women’s movement. This sculpture, entitled Portrait Bust of a Woman with a Scroll, stood out to me in particular. It is is made of pentelic marble and dates back to the early 5th century. The sculpture shows a woman with a restless face, clothed in a mantle and head piece while holding a scroll. This sculpture reflects the women’s intelligence and capabilities being overshadowed by her gender and
It appears to me that pictures have been over-valued; held up by a blind admiration as ideal things, and almost as standards by which nature is to be judged rather than the reverse; and this false estimate has been sanctioned by the extravagant epithets that have been applied to painters, and "the divine," "the inspired," and so forth. Yet in reality, what are the most sublime productions of the pencil but selections of some of the forms of nature, and copies of a few of her evanescent effects, and this is the result, not of inspiration, but of long and patient study, under the instruction of much good sense…
Spanish painter Salvador Dali was undeniably one of the most eccentric personalities of the XX century. He is well known as a pioneer of surrealist art whose production has had a huge influence on media and modern artists around the globe . By bringing surreal elements into everyday objects he pushed surrealism forward. It is partly to his credit that surrealism is this popular today. In "M...
Varnedoe, Kirk. A Fine Disregard: What Makes Modern Art Modern. New York: H.N. Abrams, 1990. 152. Print.
Women have spent a large amount of time throughout the 20th century fighting for liberation from a patriarchal form that told them that they must be quiet and loyal to their husbands and fathers. For the duration of this essay, I will be discussing how the “Modern Woman” image that appeared through the Art Deco style — that emulated ideas such as the femme fatale and masqueraded woman, and presented new styles to enhance women’s comfortability and freedom — is still prevalent and has grown in contemporary art and design since. Overall I will describing to you how fashion, sexuality, and the newly emerged ‘female gaze’, and how these tie in together — in both periods of time — to produce what can be described as powerful femininity.
Laura Mulvey’s argument of phallocentricism/voyeurism is also referenced in Chang’s “Shaved (At a Loss). Psychoanalysist Laura Mulvey says that the utilization of phallocentricism in all forms of art and media is the way in which men remain in a powerful position; therefore, keeping our society in a patriarchal state. Chang, and all women are disempowered by their lack of penis, and Chang’s lack is made particularly clear by the exposure of her genitalia she exhibits in her performance. The idea of a patriarchal society is furthered by the attention Chang brings to the power the male gaze truly possess over women as a gender, which is largely due to the heavy patriarchy in our many cultures. In “Shaved (At a Loss)”, Chang provides the her audience with the fulfillment of what the male gaze stere...
In the essay “Beauty (Re)discovers the Male Body,” author and philosopher Susan Bordo discusses the history and current state of male representation in advertisements. While using her feminist background, Bordo compares and contrasts the aspects of how men and women are portrayed in the public eye. She claims that there has been a paradigm shift the media with the theory that not just women are being objectified in the public eye, but also men too. Since the mid-1970s, with the introduction of Calvin Klein commercials, men have started to become more dehumanized and regarded as sex symbols. In a similar fashion to how Bordo describes gender, race plays a similar role in the media. People of all different ethnicities and cultures are being categorized into an oversimplified and usually unfair image by the media over basic characteristics.
The portrayals of men in advertising began shifting towards a focus on sexual appeal in the 1980s, which is around the same that women in advertising were making this shift as well. According to Amy-Chinn, advertisements from 1985 conveyed the message that “men no longer just looked, they were also to be looked at” as seen in advertisements with men who were stripped down to their briefs (2). Additionally, advertisements like these were influencing society to view the male body “as an objectified commodity” (Mager and Helgeson 240). This shows how advertisements made an impact on societal views towards gender roles by portraying men as sex objects, similarly to women. By showcasing men and women in little clothing and provocative poses, advertisements influenced society to perceive men and women with more sexual
Pass, V.R., 2011, Strange Glamour: Fashion and Surrealism in the Years Between the World Wars, University of Rochester.
Gilbert, Sandra M. and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. New Haven: Yale UP, 1979.
Curry and Clarke’s article believe in a strategy called “visual literacy” which develops women and men’s roles in advertisements (1983: 365). Advertisements are considered a part of mass media and communications, which influence an audience and impact society as a whole. Audiences quickly begin to rely on messages sent through advertisements and can create ideologies of women and men. These messages not only are extremely persuasive, but they additionally are effective in product consumption in the media (Curry and Clarke 1983: