AshARH411

Mari Katayam, ‘ bystander #014’ , 2016 ( image source ) The 1975 essay, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema by Laura Mulvey, is a look at the sexual politics that drive the cinematic experience. She argues that traditional Hollywood films were a response to male scopophilia, or the sexual pleasure involved in looking, and that female characters were nothing more than objects used to satisfy male desires. She backs her argument that women are objectified passive players while men are the active heroes by citing Jacques Lacan and Sigmund Freud. Mulvey uses Lacan’s mirror theory to explain how cinema creates an illusion so deep that a person gets lost in the space and darkness of the theater while also projecting themselves onto the actors. There is both a loss of ego and a narcissistic gain of ego involved. Freudian psychoanalysis comes into play when the active male gaze, in the form of the libido, is set upon the passive female object which brings about the castration complex. The cas...

Jenny Saville, Propped, 1992 ( image source ) The essay Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists by Linda Nochlin, written in 1971, discusses why women have been unable rise to greatness in the world of art. The emphasis Nochlin puts on the question does not take away from the fact that there are (and have been) great female artists, but challenges the reader to examine the social hierarchy that has validated the question.(1) Throughout art history, the white Western male viewpoint has both controlled the narrative and oppressed anyone different than themselves. Therefore, we can conclude that the criteria for greatness has come from this school of thought. The notion of genius, for one, is something that needs to be scrutinized. According to Nochlin, even Piaget has confessed that genius is something that is built over time, practice, and hard work, not something magical that springs up in a vacuum. How then, could a woman achieve genius when she has neither the means nor the oppor...

While perusing the internet for an adequate painting for this week's topic, I realized that what I wanted to write about was the very thing that I was doing. As I sit here looking at art from the comfort of my home, trying to decide which piece among the thousands will suit my needs, I wonder how strange it must have been before any type of mechanical reproductions were made. Art would have been left to either the wealthy or the religious, and since my social status would have been on par with a peasant, I can’t imagine that I would have been traveling around on my donkey looking for art. As funny as this sounds, it is quite literally what life would have been like for most people - devoid of art. Mechanical reproduction has made it possible for all of us to not only enjoy great works of art, but to also learn about distant cultures through space and time. I don’t believe that reproduction diminishes art, but enriches it by making it available to all. In the essay The Work of Art ...

Keith Haring, 1989, Retrospect ( image source ) A painting has the power to engage the public politically, socially, and religiously. This is a powerful responsibility that various religious, political, and corporate institutions are not only aware of, but also utilize in order to promote their agendas. Norman Bryson, author of Semiology and Visual Interpretation, believes that paintings are discursive by nature and that interpreting paintings through signs is a social endeavor that moves beyond the narrative. Semiotics is the interpretation of each element as a historically determinate sign of the culture that generated it. Therefore, Bryson believes that we are automatically giving meaning to hidden signs rather than interpreting the painting through visual perception. It is a collective societal effort which in the hands of the power structure can fundamentally sway our behaviors in the direction they so choose if the artist agrees to participate. (89-101) Retrospect , the Keith Ha...

Debbie Harry by Robert Mapplethorpe, 1978. (image source) The essay, “Every Man Knows Where and How Beauty Gives Him Pleasure: Beauty Discourse and the Logic of Aesthetics” by Amelia Jones, is rebelling against the patriarchal idea and authority of beauty as set forth by a modern group of art critics. Throughout the paper Jones works to abolish the notion that any one person, especially the white male status quo, can be an authority on the subject of beauty. She believes each of us should make that choice based on our own subjective criteria. She has focused her essay on the art critic Dave Hickey and his (and others) “...hubris in the matter of claiming absolute personal authority for aesthetic judgment…” Jones believes that Hickey is being irresponsible with his influence as an art critic and would like to suggest a new way of evaluating beauty that is less patriarchal and more inclusive. I agree that beauty is subjective and that each of us are the final authority on what we perceiv...