I beg to differ, Madame de Stael....
"Love is the history of a woman's life; it is an episode in man's."
Following up from the Yuskavage blurb and the Female Gaze exhibition at Cheim & Read.....As we learned from the seminal 'gaze' texts.....philosophically, 'Le regard' refers to broad power structures inherent in the viewing process. More specifically, we are talking about visual possession - what can only be coveted physically - can be owned visually with the gaze: it is then a matter of AUTHORity. Beginning with Foucault and Lacan, the gaze marks an entry point into the scholarship of the visual dynamic of social relations. As Madame Germaine de Stael most aptly described something similar to the historically fundamental visual primer....man desires the woman, woman desires the desire.
Feminist theory convoluted the waters of the gaze by adding a much needed dose of homosexualization to the theory. What was simply - to start - 1) men (actively) look at women, while 2) women (passively) see, or absorb, the look. They asked, then, what happens when we look at our own gender. Moreover, they considered the effect that sexual proclivities may have on such power structures. Critical theory, in the meantime, began concentrating on race relations. The history of visual culture from painting to film provides overwhelming material from which to explore these themes. From psychoanalysis and postmodern theory.....they all have there say. But now, back to my point.....
For me, an interesting intersection for both this exhibition centered on the Female Gaze and Yuskavage is Bataille. If, for a moment, we subscribe at all to the notion that women are looked at while men look. We must then consider that women must also retain a prescribed degree of self-consciousness because of this. After Yuskavage's lecture I asked her about a reference to Bataille’s concept of the grotesque and the “open” body as a state of pleasure. If, as the theory suggests, one must lose all self-awareness to experience pure pleasure. I wondered whether she thought her work comments on a lack of self-awareness or an intensity of such. As I mentioned in the earlier post, she danced around this question. Yuskavage said that she was indeed reading Bataille and that this could have had a subconscious effect on her work at the time but that she by no means was making a direct comment on the theory.
Freud, Baudelaire, Ruskin, Nietzche, Bakhtin, and Kristeva, to name a few, have all shown an interest in the grotesque tradition (which corresponds quite interestingly with the relationship between self-awareness and pleasure).....on how all of this relates to my introductory quote and.....liberalism.....in a moment.
Following up from the Yuskavage blurb and the Female Gaze exhibition at Cheim & Read.....As we learned from the seminal 'gaze' texts.....philosophically, 'Le regard' refers to broad power structures inherent in the viewing process. More specifically, we are talking about visual possession - what can only be coveted physically - can be owned visually with the gaze: it is then a matter of AUTHORity. Beginning with Foucault and Lacan, the gaze marks an entry point into the scholarship of the visual dynamic of social relations. As Madame Germaine de Stael most aptly described something similar to the historically fundamental visual primer....man desires the woman, woman desires the desire.
Feminist theory convoluted the waters of the gaze by adding a much needed dose of homosexualization to the theory. What was simply - to start - 1) men (actively) look at women, while 2) women (passively) see, or absorb, the look. They asked, then, what happens when we look at our own gender. Moreover, they considered the effect that sexual proclivities may have on such power structures. Critical theory, in the meantime, began concentrating on race relations. The history of visual culture from painting to film provides overwhelming material from which to explore these themes. From psychoanalysis and postmodern theory.....they all have there say. But now, back to my point.....
For me, an interesting intersection for both this exhibition centered on the Female Gaze and Yuskavage is Bataille. If, for a moment, we subscribe at all to the notion that women are looked at while men look. We must then consider that women must also retain a prescribed degree of self-consciousness because of this. After Yuskavage's lecture I asked her about a reference to Bataille’s concept of the grotesque and the “open” body as a state of pleasure. If, as the theory suggests, one must lose all self-awareness to experience pure pleasure. I wondered whether she thought her work comments on a lack of self-awareness or an intensity of such. As I mentioned in the earlier post, she danced around this question. Yuskavage said that she was indeed reading Bataille and that this could have had a subconscious effect on her work at the time but that she by no means was making a direct comment on the theory.
Freud, Baudelaire, Ruskin, Nietzche, Bakhtin, and Kristeva, to name a few, have all shown an interest in the grotesque tradition (which corresponds quite interestingly with the relationship between self-awareness and pleasure).....on how all of this relates to my introductory quote and.....liberalism.....in a moment.
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