I attended a seminar by Poppy about the male gaze. It was really interesting and informative! There were lots of examples on how women have been built to look at themselves with a male gaze and how most paintings by men were based around the woman's purity and marriage status. There was a comparison between male painters and female painters and the difference was shocking as I never really noticed it before: women were almost always submissive, naked, showing her marriage stause and how pure she is in men's paintings, in women's paintings it was quite the opposite, not a mention of marriage or purity, the woman was just getting on with her business.
The male gaze still affects today's society though not as much as it did in the past. We were set a task to remove the male gaze from some famous paintings, here are some of the outcomes:
The last one is my favourite- as it represents what I looked like when making it!
I really enjoyed this task, it was different to what I have been doing recently. I would definitely do it again!
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