Essay Map / Plan / Stuff

After being deeply stressed about life and crying a little bit, I got Richard to help me finalise my essay question because I just kept getting lost in my own whirlwind of thoughts. I ended up with "How have representations of women in classical nude paintings influenced modern beauty standards?" and a lot of really useful resources to look at (THANKS RICHARD)

Classical Nudes

4

Some examples of classical nude paintings, the direction my essay is going in is about beauty standards and how classical nude paintings have informed beauty standards.

I've been reading John Berger's ways of seeing which has brought up some interesting points about classical nude paintings as a lot of the time they are praised for showing a realistic body shape but actually they are just as edited as modern imagery of women. Also they are mostly depicted without body hair, which is expected of the modern woman.

Ways of Seeing - John Berger

Watching this and reading the complimentary chapter in Ways of Seeing has really helped me with my essay, as I was struggling to get going with it. 


Notes & Quotes I picked out from it that could be relevant to my essay

Women are defined by beauty. How successful they are in getting the attention of males

Women are “first and foremost a sight to be looked at”

Nudes – “criteria and conventions on which women are judged”

“being naked is simply being without clothes – the nude is a form of art” –  “to be naked is to be oneself, to be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognised for oneself. A nude has to be seen as an object in order to be a nude”

“Nakedness a sight for those who are clothed”

“the spectators looking shames them” – not their own shame, relates to the anatomical drawing. “they are not naked as they are they are naked as you see them”

Book quotes: Ways of Seeing – John Berger.                                                   

Susanna and the elders – “we join the elders to spy on her”

“she sees herself as a sight for men”

“you draw a naked woman because you enjoy looking at her, but you put a mirror in her hand and call the painting vanity. Thus morally condemning the women whose nakedness you’ve painted for your own pleasure”

Few nude paintings show the women as they are

“Most nude oil paintings are arranged by the male painted to cater to males”

Those judged not beautiful ARE not beautiful. Those who are are given the prize, the prize to be owned.

Expressions of women in oil paintings are similar to ones from adult magazines – catering to a male ‘spectator’

“Hair is associated with sexual power and passion” – so painting girls hairless removes sexual power from women, this clearly relates to the modern beauty ideal of hairless women. Likely a standard that has been influenced by classical art as the ideal of a sexually submissive woman.

Only rival to the male spectator is cupid – a small boy.

“The nude is presented as an ideal subject” – ideal body is a Frankenstein’s monster of different women.

“do these images celebrate as we are usually told the women in them or the male voyeur?”

“we all have an image of ourselves and it’s a visual image and I wonder how much this sort of classical european painting has shaped that image. .. I cannot identify with them [the paintingds] because they are so immensely exaggerated”

“A womans image of herself is derived directly from other people”

“to be born a woman has been to be born, within a allotted and confined space”

“men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at”

“It shows her passively looking at the spectator – staring at her naked. The nakedness is not however, an expression of her own feelings; it is a sign of submission to the owners feelings or demands”