Content warning: the male gaze, the white gaze, racism, cisnormativity, anatomy of female sex, fetishization, objectification, sexualization, exotification, nudity, Primitivism, sexual exploitation of girls, stalking, coercion for sexual favors, decapitation, Orientalism, colonization, objectifying images. The articles / pages linked (the links are the bolded parts in color) may include both the topics mentioned above and other potentially disturbing topics and / or images not mentioned here.
Cisgender, heterosexual, white men have historically dominated the art world (or at least the mainstream representation of it), and continue to do so today. Because of this lack of diversity behind the scenes, there is a lack of diversity in the perspectives allowed a place to shine in visual art. This is largely why so many works of art center the white, heterosexual male gaze, which objectifies and sexualizes women, especially women of color, as the latter also face severe exotification, even in art by white women (see the note at the bottom of this post). Further, the male gaze in art tends to be cisnormative, reducing women to the sum of the body parts of only a subset of all women (though trans women certainly also face fetishization in media).
Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe (The Luncheon on the Grass, 1862 - 1863) by Édouard Manet is an example of the male gaze: while the two men in the scene are fully clothed and appear engaged in conversation, the woman sitting by them is naked and the one in the background is scantily clad and bathing. Both women are being ignored by the other figures in the painting. Although the naked woman does look in the general direction of the viewer, it is unclear whether she is opposing, accepting, ignoring, or engaging the viewer. Regardless, it is evident that this painting was made by and for men, and the male gaze on the two women is rather apparent.
Le Déjeurner sur l'herbe ("The Luncheon on the Grass") (1862 - 1863)
by Édouard Manet
Another painter who undoubtedly pushed both the male gaze and the white gaze onto the subjects of his work is Paul Gauguin. Gauguin was a proponent of “Primitivism,” which originated from the “fascination” of European artists with what they considered “primitive” art and their attempt to emulate it. This ideal was based on the racist view that certain peoples (such as those from Africa, the South Pacific, and Indonesia) were “primitive.” Gauguin moved to Tahiti in 1891 in search of “primitive, exotic living conditions” which he thought could inspire him to create new art. There, he sexually exploited young girls and painted exotifying, objectifying depictions of Natives, usually of women. He crafted an exotifying myth of Tahiti and an exaggerated tale of his erotic experiences that we know to be false. These elements all show how his paintings clearly do not aim to respect or give agency to their subjects, but, rather, depict them as “exotic” sexual objects.
We can also consider many of the depictions of the scene of Susanna and the Elders by men to be examples of the male gaze. The biblical story of Susanna and the Elders tells of a young woman (Susanna) who was intruded upon by two old men while she was bathing. The two old men then unsuccessfully attempted to blackmail her into performing sexual favors for them. The scene in which the elders are stalking Susanna as she bathes has been captured by many artists, often portraying Susanna as a “temptress” as opposed to a victim. An example of this is Alessandro Allori’s 1561 depiction, in which Susanna seems to draw the elders to her and is clearly sexualized and objectified by the painter’s male gaze.
The final painting (though there are many, many more) that will be discussed in this post as an example of the male gaze, combined with a racist and exotifying one, is L’Apparition ("The Apparition", 1874 - 1876) by Gustave Moreau. The painting depicts the biblical figure Salome as she dances before King Herod with the apparition of the head of John the Baptist, which she had demanded from the king, floating above her head. This painting is generally considered an example of “Orientalism,” a term coined by Edward Said to describe the way the West views “the East” (specifically Middle Eastern, Asian, and North African communities) in a patronizing and often exotifying way. Indeed, here Salome is portrayed as a “dangerous” and “seductive” woman through the male, Western gaze.
This pervasive form of denying women, especially women of color, their humanity and autonomy in favor of centering heterosexual male fantasies is incredibly harmful to women and their self-esteem.
Because of this, it is vital to allow women to take control over their own narratives in art in ways that empower both the artists and the women and girls seeing themselves represented in the artists' work. Luckily for us, though the mainstream narrative of art and art history tends to erase the contributions of women, and especially those of women of color, disabled women, LGBTQ+ women, and women at the intersections of other marginalized identities, many wonderful women artists have contrasted the male gaze and produced stunning, respectful, beautiful, and humanizing depictions of women, including self-representations.
Le Dejeurner sur l'herbe: Les Trois Femmes Noires (2010) by Black lesbian artist Mickalene Thomas (b. 1971) may be read as a direct response to Manet's objectifying painting. Though not immune to critiques, this work has also been praised for proposing a gaze that is unfortunately still rare in mainstream art: Black women depicted by a Black woman. At the forefront of the artwork are three regal Black women, all of them fully clothed and looking directly at the viewer, perhaps as if to challenge their gaze. In the background, corresponding to the bathing figure in the original painting, is a statue of Matisse. This has been interpreted by some as an homage to the artist, yet it is perhaps also significant that the white, male figure is placed behind the three Black women: he is of secondary importance to the work.
Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe: Les Trois Femmes Noires (2010) by Mickalene Thomas
The artist Amrita Sher-Gil (1913 - 1941), a Hungarian-Indian painter with a complex and ambiguous legacy, moreover, seems to have directly contrasted Gauguin's objectification and exotification of Tahitian women in her 1934 painting Self-Portrait as a Tahitian. Sher-Gil is an artist who had to grapple with her dual identity as European and Indian, which is likely part of what her makes her work so complex: she may have been influenced by the Orientalism in works of European artists and was, in this painting, involved in a "masquerade" as a Tahitian woman (as she was not of Indigenous Tahitian heritage), yet she also challenged the objectification of women of color by the white, male gaze. In the painting, Sher-Gil turns away from the viewer, resisting their gaze. Furthermore, one can see a male shadow behind the central figure, which appears menacing, perhaps a personification of what we today know as the male gaze or even a reference to Gauguin himself.
Laura Aguilar (1959 - 2018) is also a prime example of an artist who used her art to contrast the white, heterosexual male gaze that dominated (and still dominates) the art world. As a fat, working-class, disabled, Latina lesbian, her photography centers the members of the marginalized communities she was a part of, as well as her own nude body. Her work has been seen as opposing the male gaze and canonical representations of the female body. Through her art, she also worked to overcome the beauty standards upheld by the male gaze, working on a series of photographs of her nude body in nature as part of her own journey towards self-acceptance. These images compel the viewer to recognize both the beauty of the natural landscape surrounding her and the beauty of Aguilar's own nude, fat body, yet without falling into the male gaze.
"Grounded #111" (2006) by Laura Aguilar
In contrast to the sexualizing depictions of Susanna and the Elders, Artemisia Gentileschi’s version is refreshing in its choice to focus on the victim and her pain. In the 1610 painting, Susanna twists away from the elders, clearly expressing discomfort, and her face is contorted into a painful expression, while the two elders loom over her in a menacing way (without a doubt, they are depicted as the antagonists in the scene).
As for women who have contrasted the “Orientalist” gaze in their works, there are many wonderful artists that could be mentioned, and, among them, Baya Mahieddine and Lalla Essaydi should certainly be considered.
Baya Mahieddine (1931 - 1998) was an Algerian artist who started producing art at an early age. Though she associated with and inspired the art of figures such as Picasso, her legacy is far different from those of such racist and sexist painters, and it would be wrong to only remember her in relation to better-known white male artists. Mahieddine’s work is steeped in her Algerian heritage and centers women, animals, and musical instruments. Though she was labeled a “Surrealist” by André Breton, this association has been linked to the way the Western world exotifies countries such as Algeria, and Mahieddine herself rejected Western labels. She stood in solidarity with the Algerian Revolution against the French colonizers and was considered an important artist in her home country, where she has been widely celebrated.
Lalla Essaydi (b. 1956) is a Moroccan photographer whose works often mimic the composition of Orientalist works in order to both call attention to the white, male gaze and to subvert Orientalist stereotypes, in order to, as she puts it, “provoke the viewer into new ways of seeing.” For example, though the subjects of some of her works may be in poses found in Orientalist paintings, they are clothed as opposed to in the nude. Other times, the women she depicts are “sunk into their own worlds.”
Femme attablées ("Women at table") (1947) by Baya Mahieddine
How should an art lover navigate the fact that the art world traditionally favors the white, heterosexual male gaze and that relatively little has changed in the mainstream over the years? An important step is to be aware and wary of the white male gaze in art, so as to avoid perpetuating it as a viewer, who is, generally speaking, encouraged to assume the same viewpoint as that of the artist. Yet it is just as important to actively seek out representations of women by women, ones that counter the objectifying gazes traditionally imposed onto women by society. Uplift the voices of women artists and center the most marginalized among them, such as women of color, disabled, working-class, and LGBTQ+ women artists. Only then can we work towards fully and truly eradicating the white, heterosexual male gaze.
Note: As a white woman, I believe it is not my role to have the main voice in conversations about racism, but, from what I have gathered, it is still important for me to speak up about racism. Because of this, I thought it important not to ignore the specific ways in which women of color face objectification and to reference the work of women of color, but I encourage you, if you can, to use this post as a jumping-off point to seek out articles, posts, and content in which actual women of color express their views on this topic.
Image credits:
• Featured image for this post: contains parts of images of Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe (1862 - 1863) by Édouard Manet and Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe: Les Trois Femmes Noires (2010) by Mickalene Thomas.
• Images in this post: see image captions.