Gender Art Critique - Essay Example

Gender Art Critique Gender Art Critique Introduction Gender refers to a person’s sense of self and inner identity, unlike sex that biologically defines feminism or masculinity of an individual. Gender cuts across all the social aspects of life including art. The kind of male-dominated culture that existed before and now affected as still affects various issues in the current society. In arts, many artists have tried to explore, reinforce and challenged the gender distinctions promoted by the tradition. Many artists through presenting their personal experiences on historical and political agenda encourage us to question the assumptions commonly made about gender. The differences in gender considerations manifest in various artworks done by various artists. The artworks depicted men as always possessing the powerful body and great leadership skills. From a different perspective, the artworks depict females as passive, eroticized subjects meant for the viewer’s pleasure. The male nude is one of the artworks one will hardly find in the general art exhibitions. Most of the artists lack the urge of using male nudes as a subject matter to their art productions. The male is an artwork written and drawn by the artist and author Kyra Belan. It follows her interest in the exploration of the male nude in the field of art. The understanding of freedom of art fuels my analysis of Belan’s work. Belan narrates about her challenges in exhibiting her images of the male nude in the public and the associated criticism. The display of male nude publicly is unfair and biased to the masculine gender. The male nude arts that are available always reveal the males genitals that is an unfair treatment of men by the female artist. Despite presenting beautiful and high-quality art, this kind of subject that Belan chose against the socio-cultural traditions assumed art as created for the male gaze. The artists produced and preserved the arts for the esthetic consumption of male spectators and the art appreciators. Several issues arise from the influence of gender in the world of art. Tradition plays a significant role in promoting this line of art treatment. For example, the sculpture Chhibinda Ilunga by the Chokwe people of the Central Africa depicts a legendary leader who was a great hunter, a mighty king, and a deity descendant. The drawing carries a staff symbolizing prestige that is a symbol of power handed over from one chief ton another. His flaring nostrils show that he was a successful hunter. From a different perspective, artworks depicting female showed them in miserable states beaten by the hardships of life. The trend in the difference in which artists portray men and women in different artworks is some sort of gender discrimination. Another important theme that presents itself is the gender inequality. The gender difference, in this case, is the way different artworks present male and the female all over the world. American art article stated that only 5 percent of the artists are females, but 85 percent of the nudes are female. The Guerilla Girls criticize the arts that portray women as less advantaged people and men as the owners of power and prestige. The group uses different platforms to criticize the unequal representation of the women artists in the art world. The disproportionate representation of the female artists at 5 percent and the number of female nudes at 85 percent in the art industry is a primary concern in studying how gender affects the art industry. Most museums and the galleries that exist have no male nude photos with almost 99 percent of the images present in these museums being female nudes. Belan wonders about the Male Nude where the images of the male nude done by the female artists throughout the history are. The gender variation extends to the use of images in the business and advertisement industry. The female nude images are preferred to be on top of a show announcement poster than male nudes in the industry. Many other artists have tried to defend the gender discrimination portrayed in the artworks by engaging in various confrontation arguments. The arguments strive to find out why different art paintings depict a gap between men and women. Images showing female faces with masculine bodies have emerged in the modern art industry. These are some of the attempts by the artists to try bringing out the point of gender discrimination in art. Women express sensitivity towards the nudity depiction by artworks than the males (Eck, 2003). Nudity in arts serves as a means of sexual pleasure and lust satisfaction for the entire male community. The artists produce and preserve the female nudes for men to see and quench their desire. Women from a different perspective derive very little pleasure from the nude images. Gender plays an important role in bringing this difference. The images give women an insight that they are the objects of that lust, and males use them to derive their sexual pleasure. In a study conducted by a Sociologist Beth Eck attempting to understand the views and effects of a female viewing a male nude image and a man looking at a female nude image, she was able to get different responses from men and women’s point of view. She asked different men and women to look at the naked images of women and men respectively, and her results were fascinating. The responses she obtained from men and women were different as men responded differently by looking at the male nudes, and the women did the same. Men gave positive responses regarding the female nudes with some describing them as sexy, hot, erotic, and perfect figure. When women look at the seductive pose of female nude, they have no attachment to it and find nothing extraordinary about it. They believe it is meant for the men, to arouse the men and fulfill their lustful desires. Most women did not feel any lust when they looked at the male nude photos, and those who happened to feel the lust had a mixture of both desire and guilt of shame. Funnily enough, most women found it disgusting to look at both male and female nude images. From gender outlaws, the author reveals that identity markers are genderqueer, gender queen and gender variants. The author believes that being a male does not offer a cure to any of the gender variant thoughts or feelings. The author therefore chooses to navigate kaleidoscope of uncharted boundaries beyond gender considerations. We should not link gender and art to help the industry to prosper. Art should serve all around genre that cuts across all the aspects of life from sociology, political and cultural aspects. These genres should be given equal consideration in the production and preservation of art. The case is, however, different gender has a significant influence in the modern art. On my opinion, women are least represented in art and are always depicted as less advantaged members of the society. There is open bias in the way various artists depict women in their works. Specifically female nude is used so much as compared to male nude. From the analysis of various works done by different artists and authors about gender and art, it is clear that tradition promotes the gender difference that exists in modern art. The male-dominated society extends the discrimination against female gender even in art. Conclusion Gender is a crucial factor that affects the development of modern art. It gives rise to a new field of the art that the no one has previously explored. The field of male nudity has not been explored, and the exhibitions of the male nude are found neither in the museums nor in the galleries. The exploration of this field will give a new face to the art industry. For a better development of the art industry, artists should have the freedom of exploring all the aspects of life and the traditions that discriminate the use of male nude as a subject matter. Reference Eck, Beth A. "Men are much Harder Gendered Viewing of Nude Images." Gender & Society 17.5 (2003): 691-710. Links to the Class Readings Used http://www.filedropper.com/processing/filedownload.php?id=queeryingcomicbookcultureandrepresentationsofsexualityicopy http://www.filedropper.com/processing/filedownload.php?id=bornsteinbergmangenderoutlawsx2 http://www.filedropper.com/processing/filedownload.php?id=belanfemalegazeandmalenude1 Read More