Springsteen introduces a feminist art group, the Guerilla Girls, who don gorilla masks and use provocative imagery and typography to contort imagery traditionally associated with the subjugation of the female form. For example, a famous classical nude painting is transformed by replacing the head of the model with that of a gorilla, with the words “Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?” next to it, so as to make it seem as though the gorilla-headed women is asking the question. Thus the image of a submissive, silent woman who is displaying her body for the pleasure of an assumed male viewer is given a voice, and she is transformed into a person rather than a body.
Springsteen then goes on to give the example of Edouard Manet’s controversial 1865 piece Olympia, which portrayed a nude prostitute reclining, a black cat at her feet, while a clothed black servant is handing her a bouquet of flowers from one of her admirers. The painting caused waves of controversy in the Paris art scene at the time due to the fact that the model, rather than having her head or body turned to the side or posing in a submissive manner, is confidently sitting, her legs crossed and arm slung over the back of the recliner, facing the viewer with an air of confidence and power. She has a ribbon on her neck and is wearing fine shoes, indicating that she is not fully naked for the pleasure of the viewer, but is nude because she desires to be. Because she is meeting and contesting with the viewer’s gaze, she forces the viewer to confront their own role as the viewer, and deconstructs the role of nude woman as a passive figure to be viewed.
In this way, Springsteen writes, Edouard Manet’s Olympia performs the same revision of nude women in art as the Guerilla Girls: transforms her from a passive object to an independent agent who has the ability to force the viewer to confront themselves and their role as the viewer. In this way the power of the visual mode can be seen: although this feat could be accomplished through other modes such as linguistic or aural modes, it is most striking and effective when done through the medium of art, in the visual mode.
Another artist of the same period who uses the visual mode to force viewers to confront the image they hold in their head of the female form is Gustave Courbet. Courbet was a painter who employed realism, especially in his depictions of female nudes. Prior to Courbet, depictions of female nudes and sexuality were only acceptable within certain constraints: mythological themes (such as Leda and the swan), and the female form appropriately smooth and curved, with no hair, wrinkles, fat rolls, etc. This provided a degree of separation between the viewer and the subject of the painting: because the painting was clearly not based in reality, the viewer could allow themselves to project their fantasies onto the female bodies presented with no modicum of guilt.
However, Courbet famously created numerous erotic paintings of realistic naked women, complete with body hair, cellulite, and fat in realistic landscapes and scenes. His paintings both celebrated the female form without being pornographic and forced the viewer to see and accept women’s bodies in their natural state. One of his most famous and controversial paintings, the 1866 L’Origine du Monde, meaning “The Origin of the World,” depicted a woman’s vulva and torso in never-before seen realism. Another painting, Young Bather, also from 1866, depicted a nude woman in a forest about to enter a river. Her body is displayed realistically, rather than smoothed over with no “imperfections:” underarm and pubic hair is visible, there is clear cellulite and fat deposits on her legs, buttocks, and stomach. Were it not for the impressionist way in which the background is painted, this painting could pass for a photograph.
In regards to my topic of mental health, the enormous toll taken on women and men around the world as a result of bodies being portrayed according to idealized fantasies that do not reflect reality is plainly visible. These images pervade the media we consume so much so that depicting more natural human bodies, with wrinkles, cellulite, body hair, etc, is considered subversive. When there is only one or a few certain body types that are portrayed positively in mainstream media, it can have a debilitating effect on the mental wellbeing of those who do not share the body type and physical characteristics of those portrayed as desirable in mainstream media. Negative body image, excessive dieting, and even eating disorders can largely be attributed to idealistic, unrealistic portrayals of human bodies in mainstream media.
Through painting women’s bodies realistically, rather than smoothed over, idealistic representations of the female form, Courbet forces the viewer to acknowledge and appreciate the beauty of the female form in its natural state. It forces the viewer to reconcile the superficial image of women in their head to the reality that female bodies possess hair, cellulite, and fat, and yet are still beautiful. Similar to how nowadays photographs of “natural” women with underarm hair, fat and cellulite are seen as subversive when contrasted with the popular Photoshopped models whose bodies are modified and smoothed over so as to be more appealing, Gustave Courbet’s paintings of nude women were subversive in the art world of the mid to late 19th century.
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