Study Guide / Slide List for Midterm Exam

The Gaze and the Guerilla Girls
Guerilla Girls, Advantages of Being a Woman Artist, 1989
Guerilla Girls, Do Women Have To Be Naked To Get Into The Met?, 2005
bell hooks' definition of Patriarchy
John Berger's definition of Male Gaze

Middle Ages
Herrad of Landsberg, Hortus Deliciarum, after 1170
Hildegard of Bingen, Scivas c1142-52
Christine De Pizan, Christine De Pizan in her Study, from The City of Ladies, 1405

Renaissance
Sofonisba Anguissola - Self Portrait, 1561
Queen Anne of Austria, 1570
Boy Bitten By a Crayfish, before 1559
Elisabetta Siriani, Portia Wounding Her Thigh, 1664
Artemisia Gentileschi, Susanna and the Elders, 1610
Tintoretto, Susanna and the Elders, 1555
Orazio Gentileschi, Judith and her Maidservant, 1610
Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith and her Maidservant, 1618
Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith Slaying Holofernes, 1612
Artemisia Gentileschi, Self Portrait, 1630

17th & 18th Century Painting
Judith Leyster, A Woman Sewing by Candlelight, 1633
Vermeer, The Lacemaker, 1665-68
Anna Maria Sybilla Merian, Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium 1705
Rachel Ruysch, Flowerpiece, after 1700
Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, Portrait of Marie Antoinette with Her Children, 1787

Victorian England
Edith Haylar, Feeding the Swans, 1889
Alice Walker, Wounded Feelings, 1861
Anna Blunden, The Seamstress, 1854
Rebecca Solomon, The Governess, 1854
Emily Mary Osborn, Nameless and Friendless, 1857
Rosa Bonheur, Plowing in the Nivernais, 1848
Rosa Bonheur, The Horse Fair, 1854
Elizabeth Thompson, Calling the Roll After an Engagement, Crimea 1874

19C American Craft 
Harriet Powers, Pictorial Quilt 1895
Lilly Martin Spencer, We Both Must Fade, 1869
Lilly Martin Spencer, War Spirit at Home, 1866

Harriet Hosmer, Zenobia in Chains, 1859
Harriet Hosmer, Beatrice Cenci 1857
Edmonia Lewis, Old Arrow Maker, 1866-72
Edmonia Lewis, Forever Free, 1867

Impressionism
Alice Barber Stephens, The Female Life Class, 1879
Susan MacDowel Eakins, Portrait of Thomas Eakins, 1889
Berthe Morisot, Mother and Sister of the Artist,1870
Berthe Morisot, Mother and Sister of the Artist,1870
Eva Gonzales, Pink Morning,1874
Mary Cassatt, A Cup of Tea, c 1880
Mary Cassatt, Woman in Black at the Opera, 1880
Berthe Morisot, Psyche, 1876

One of the most well know artist is  Frida Kahol who was born July 6, 1907 and one of the few  mercian women artist. She focused mainly on portraits. her legacy lives on her museum that was opened in 1958 her a book was written about her legacy.

John Berger describes the male gaze as the observation of woman from a male perspective.  This interaction between a male and a female at this point in time is one of the most crucial moments of their lives.  In this very moment is where a woman shows off her assets, charm, and good looks so that she can find a man who will want to marry and provide for her. A woman wants to show a man by her walk that she is very elegant and light on her feet. She shows him that she is smart enough to manage a house and kids but not too smart. If she comes off being too intelligent it becomes a turn off for the man. A woman must also be aware of the words that she says to that she doesn’t come off too strong and been seen as a woman who can not be controlled. At this very same moment that is monumental for woman it is very crucial for a man as well. For a man this is the moment that the man shows off his presence to everyone. Now either one of two things will happen, one his presence will take over the room with power or no one will notice him. In order for a man’s presence to hold power depends on his good looks and wealth. Now as this both the man and woman show off their good and therein lies the man’s glaze is born (Berger 45-47).  This concept becomes very popular in culture because it shows the dominance that a man has and puts a woman in her place (at the bottom of the social scale).  Being that men were majority of the painters were men they painted what they wanted to see. They painted women as naked, helpless, and scared. They showed women as being ashamed of their body. If a woman is ashamed of her body means that she is not comfortable in her own skin, which can mean that she does not a lot of self-confidence. Men painted this more and more so that the more that woman saw this maybe they would believe and stay in their “rightful place”. This type of painting became more popular as the idea was beginning to be challenged by women painters. They started to paint woman naked but with a mirror in their hand looking proudly as their self. The role that women played was now coming into question as more paintings started to depict women with more self-confidence. 

I have come to understand this terminology throughout the different roles that women and men play into today’s society. In today’s society even though women have become more well respected there are still some challenges that woman have to face due to the fact that men still want to been as superior to women. It is harder for women to get into management positions due to a number of factors. Men tend to feel inferior when they have a woman as a manger, women usually don’t get picked because they assume women will soon get pregnant after a certain time and they do not want to pay them for the time off, and also men tend to think women are too emotional to make the hard choices for the company. I have seen this within my own job on more than one cation.  For example, I work at the ShopRite of Newark and for the front end where the cashiers work they needed more supervisors as they became to higher more cashiers. A woman name Jennifer was up for the promotion but was turned down when our superiors found out that Jenn was pregnant and gave the job to a man. I have been put in a position where one of my friends was in a controlling relationship and made her feel like she did not have much self-worth. At this point I started to understand the concept of how men try to put women down in order to control them. Coming to understand this concept has made me more self-aware when it comes to the business world and motivates me to work harder in order to people wrong. I know that when I go into a business I know that I have to dress a certain way (pants suit, flats and pony tail) because if I wore to wear something that was more tight fitting men would not look at me as a leader but as sex symbol. I know that I can slack and must work a little harder than others which I have grown accustomed to.  Even though that this circumstance is not right it has motivated me throughout my life to work even harder to accomplish my goals. My role that I play is to always defy every single odd against women.

Wilfredo Jimenez

Prof. Cacoilo

Art & Women

2/7/17

Mini Post One:

The Male Gaze

            The male gaze is the way we portray women in our society today, it’s made up by different factors and originates from a long history of what can simply be described as discrimination and appropriation of women. The beginnings of the male gaze can be traced back to early paintings and art which depicted women in the action or reaction of what the male and society of time believed a women’s role should be. The male gaze is the manuscript that tells women what to wear, how to look, what is feminine, what is sexy, and what roles they need to play in our society opposed to the male counter part. According to John Berger the female is always depicted differently then men is because the creator always assumes that the spectator is a male, creating a scene or perspective for the male to enjoy. The images then focus on the ideal image of a female and what our society as a whole and the opinion of men and how they think they should look. Creating what we call the male gaze or the male perspective. This male perspective can also be associated with patriarchy, which is the belief that men are in control and everything else is beneath man, and In some occasions this is true; one of them being our understanding and presentation of the male gaze.

            I was born in the Dominican Republic and spent half of my childhood there, and my other half in Creteil, France a small city very close to Paris; then at 12 years old my family decided that it would be beneficial for us to move to the U.S in pursuit of the American dream and a better education for me. Living in these three environment has given me knowledge to access and discuss the male gaze in these three different societies. In the Dominican Republic life is lived as depicted in the bible and popular culture, females go to school and study a career then graduate and get a good paying job to eventually find love, marry, have kids and give it all up. I personally saw this happen in close family and friends, the women would become stay at home moms and allow for the male to take care of everything and anything. The male gaze comes in from an international point of view, all products, campaigns, companies, and advertisements in D.R come from abroad, and in many instance the country looks up to countries like the U.S. When I was growing up there was no male gaze, in the contrary more women held power positions and took care of business more than men did; and they often banded together for support.

            After some trades and economic blooms, D.R wanted to become more like the U.S and along with this need to be came the male gaze, I started seeing women posing with drinks more often, women wearing less clothing, sexualized fast food commercials, and a need for women to use make up and products to enhance their appearance. Previously our country considered natural beauty as a treasure, the kindness and beauty of our people was our most prominent trait in the world but this was no longer the case. This was a drastic change that I had little understanding off growing up, and I still considered preeminent in our society; last year I went back on vacation and I found that there was no distinction between D.R and the U.S they were exactly the same, and now women were threated and viewed in the same way as in the United States.

            In France it was something completely different. People embraced their differences and what they stood for, and had the opportunity to openly neglect the male gaze dilemma opening their own path. There was no judgment or discrimination and females were portrait as people the people they saw themselves to be. I have noticed the ads, commercial, and products but I never put the two together, only recently have I been exposed to this information enough to truly understand the meaning of the male gaze and patriarchy. “Sex sells” was a phrase I learned in graphic design history and it is true, todays society associates anything and everything with sex because the appeal and the attention sells products, it’s been this way for centuries and it will continue to be unless we abolish the system which it lives in.

The Male Gaze

Kayla Ryals
Art & Women
Professor Cacoilo
2/7/2017

The Male Gaze

The male gaze is the way women in art are presented from a man’s point of view. The male gaze objectifies women and turns them into objects to be seen to pleasure men. John Berger describes a social constraint imposed onto women, he says, “To be born a woman, has been to be born, within an allotted and confined space, into the keeping of men… She has to survey everything she is and everything she does because how she appears to others, and ultimately how she appears to men, is of crucial important for what is normally thought of as the success of her life. Her own sense of being in herself is supplanted by a sense of being appreciated as herself by another.” (Berger 46) Here Berger presents the male gaze. He introduces the male gaze as something that starts the day a woman is born. The male gaze relates to patriarchy in this way, as it begins once a woman is born and it is so subconscious to us that we don’t even know we are participating in it. According to Berger, a woman sees herself as the surveyed and the surveyor, she appears in such a way, as the surveyed, that will please the man that is watching her inside herself, the surveyor. By doing this, the woman turns herself into an object used to please the male eye.
 

In art as well as in popular culture the male gaze is present. In today’s media, movies, music videos, etc. the male gaze is apparent in each of these in many different ways. The male gaze can be seen in hundreds of different movies such as; Friends with Benefits, Mean Girls, Spring Breakers, and Not Another Teen Movie. These movies display women in a way that is pleasing to men. The subjects of the male gaze do not always need to be nude in order to please the eyes of men. Tight clothing, short skirts, and revealing tops are more modern ways for artists and directors to objectify women for their pleasure. In European art, the nude paintings were a clear representation of the male gaze. The women in the paintings were clearly “aware of being seen by a spectator” (Berger 49). Artists painted their pieces in the way they wanted them as the spectator-owner of the women in the paintings.
 

This idea has spread through art and popular culture because of the idea of patriarchy. Patriarchy is “the single most life-threatening social disease assaulting the male body and spirit in our nation.” (Hooks 17) Patriarchy can be described as the structure in which men dominate women. Hooks also says, “patriarchy is a political-social system that insists that males are inherently dominating, superior to everything and everyone deemed weak, especially females, and endowed with the right to dominate and rule over the weak and to maintain that dominance through various forms of psychological terrorism and violence” (Hooks 18). I don’t use patriarchy in my everyday vocabulary, I didn’t even know what it was until I read what Bell Hooks wrote about understanding patriarchy. When I learned what patriarchy is, I realized that I’ve experienced it many times in my life and I’ve seen it in movies and television shows. The day after we discussed patriarchy in class, I experienced it in my home. I have two dogs, Bella (a girl) and Buster (a boy). My dogs are trained, and they sleep in my room. One morning, Buster decided to wake me up by peeing in his bed. I told my dad and he cleaned up the mess. In my living room we have a cage for the dogs, it is similar to a time out spot for children, but they are free to go in and out of it as they please. But they know when we put them in the cage and lock the door, they are in trouble. So of course, I put Buster in the cage and closed the door in order to discipline him for peeing in the house. When I was going back to my room, my dad told me to put Bella in the cage too. I was confused since Bella hadn’t done anything wrong. I asked him why and he said “just put her in the cage too, they can stay in it together.” This was upsetting to me because I had never actively realized patriarchy in my home until that morning. I didn’t put Bella in the cage because I didn’t feel she deserved to be in it, but when I came back down a couple minutes later, she was stuck in the cage with Buster.

Male Gaze

Alexa Sanchez

Art & Women

Professor Cacoilo

2/7/2017

What is male gaze? 

The male gaze is something that is spoken of frequently but not fully understood. To understand male gaze, is to comprehend the power that the male gender obtains. The male gaze defines a women’s place, as she is looked at as an object for the male viewer. The male gaze depicted the way the world of women is viewed from a perspective of men through a lens of literature and visual arts.

 Male Gaze through the lens of John Berger 

In John Berger's Ways of Seeing, he states, "in relation to the woman, the man becomes the agent of god" (Berger 48.) Theoretically, this is interchangeable with the topic of patriarchy as it portrays the social construct that revolves around our world and the power of men.

"Men 'act' and women 'appear.' Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at." (Berger 47)

John Berger sets the mood, although perhaps it is not universal, is familiar to many, many women. Many women recognize that it is developed within the younger ages of life. You are never yourself; you are yourself as you appear to others. To men, yes, and to the women with whom you are supposed to compete for their attention.

The female of this advertisement is asked to envision herself as being looked at by a cluster of men. The distorted, unfocussed glance that the woman is giving is the expression of someone who is not only not looking at anything directly, but is rather engaged in the act of being looked at.

The image above which is from a panel that was taken from the comic All Star Batman And Robin, the Boy Wonder correlated the script written by author Frank Miller, illustrated the way that male gaze works in a real, tangible way. Miller asserted, “We can’t take our eyes off her” he was speaking directly about the presumably male audience, and then miller proceeded with, “Especially since she’s got one fine ass.” This spoke a loud and clear message that sexually portrayed the pleasure of the envisioned lustful, heterosexual male viewer. Miller bluntly spoke and clearly illustrated his intent within the picture. He practically said that no matter the women, they are always being watched.  The representation of women in cinema and media nowadays is a well-known issue with a long-standing history that is still a topic of debate today. Women were almost always viewed as sexual objects, whether they were physically or sexually desired.

 As well as in Sin City not the original comic by Frank Miller but the film with only a few differences, the women are defined by their sexuality. Jessica Alba’s character Nancy is first introduced dancing at a “Sleazy Saloon” not wearing much. The cameras sure enough captured that and focused on it, pleasing many men and the let alone the audience. A  perfect, self explainable example of male gaze!

In the opinions and eyes of many, the cinema only offers visual satisfaction of where the men look and the women are being looked at. In other words, even powerful women characters are often valued and seen only for their sexual appeal.  A fine example of the male gaze in action would be this scene from the Marilyn Monroe film The Seven Year Itch in 1955, From ones perspective, the story was being told entirely from a males perspective. The infamous scene depicted Marilyn Monroe, who is wearing a dress, walking down a city street with a male companion. She stops to walk across an air vent above the subway tracks. "You feel the breeze from the subway?" she asks her male companion. "Isn't it delicious?" The camera then pans down to Monroe's exposed legs, now visible from under her raised skirt, and focuses on them for several moments. But what strikes me most about the scene and the photo above is how perfectly it embodies the male gaze

What is Patriarchy?

Do you understand the true meaning of patriarchy? The author of "Understanding Patriarchy", Bell Hooks defines patriarchy as a "political-social system that insists that males are inherently dominating, superior to everything and everyone deemed weak, especially females, and endowed with the right to dominate and rule over the weak and to maintain that dominance through various forms of psychological terrorism and violence." (Hooks 18.) Patriarchy still exists today and everywhere around us. Men have time after time made these rules towards women,  that gives them a power almost as if it puts them in control. Hooks entails patriarchy as a way of thinking. Patriarchy is a system of defining gender roles within society where men are dominant and there are no equal rights for both men and women as one. Hooks’ feminist ideology is very clear and profound. Patriarchy is often misunderstood for many reasons. Reasons being that many times men don’t realize their oppression towards women and justify it by making themselves a victim.

  Male gaze should almost be like an offense, a misdemeanor. No-one should have the right to feel as if they can talk down, oppress  on anyone. Male gazing isn't something that everyone notices but is something that I firmly believe should be acted upon. It leads to many more serious cases than just an "innocent act" of hitting on a woman, but almost making them feel uncomfortable in their own skin just freely walking around fully clothed.