Browsing by Author "Cronje, Karen"

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    The female body as spectacle in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Western art
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2001-03) Cronje, Karen; Arnold, Marion; Van der Merwe, V.; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences. Dept. of Visual Arts .
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: A spectacle denotes an impressive or deplorable sight, and necessarily involves the power and politics of viewing. The female body exists as a sexualised object of these processes of looking within Western culture, not only in high art, but also in discourses such as medicine and science. In both art and medicine the female body has been treated as a passive object to be studied, analysed and classified. Power relations and patriarchal ideologies have played a great part in the resulting objectifying representations, firmly locating images of the female body within the realm of the spectacle. Bodily perceptions, in terms of the female body, have changed much, particularly through the reinterpretation of sexuality through feminist theory. Modem culture and technology have opened up many new possibilities for the redefinition and understanding of the body. Modem bodies seem to be under as much close surveillance and scrutiny as their nineteenth century counterparts. This study explores these ideas through a wide range of examples from painting, photography and performance art, and non-art objects such as anatomical objects and medical illustrations. Central to the construction of the body as spectacle, are issues of looking and viewing. Chapter 1 examines ideas around the gaze; the politics and processes of vision, objectification and fetishisation are explored in relation to the functioning of the medical and aesthetic gaze. The concept of spectacle is also elaborated upon in terms of ideas around the nineteenth century carnival and freak show, and in terms of societal taboos and transgression. Aspects of aesthetic and medical discourse focus on the display and scrutiny of the female body. Chapter 2 examines the way in which these discourses attempted to reveal the female body by rendering it in highly visual terms. The dominant ideologies informing both discourses played an instrumental role and resulted in representations that defined the female body in normative standards and ideals of beauty and health. Pornography is considered as a modem discourse in which the female body is defined and displayed as an object of scrutiny. Feminist theory challenged exclusively male representations of the female body and the subversion of traditional forms of representation of women is studied by examining the work of Annie Sprinkle and Cindy Sherman. Many representations of the female body by feminist artists are considered highly disturbing and transgressive, precisely because they traverse traditional and acceptable representations of it. The idealised nude forms the epitome of contained ideals of health and beauty, and the work of Orlan and Cindy Sherman is examined within these terms in Chapter 3. These artists' representations of the female body are in direct opposition to such norms, rather settling for an open-ended, unconfined and abject representation. However, such transgressive cultural images produced by women artists are often regarded as pathological acts, and dismissed in terms of deplorable spectacle. The research concludes with a commentary on the candidate's practical work, which in dealing with the representation of the human body explores some issues of visuality, spectacle and fragmentation.