"The mirror was often used as a symbol of the vanity of woman. The moralizing, however, was mostly hypocritical. You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, you put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting Vanity, thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for your own pleasure. The real function of the mirror was otherwise. It was to make the woman connive in treating herself as, first and foremost, a sight.""One might simplify this by saying: men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object - and most particularly an object of vision: a sight."
5 comments:
I had to read this a few times. It's incredible.
Things that really make this painting for me:
The gay dog
Her sandals
J.Ly, I comment here not to infuse you a greater sense of self-worth, but to do thus upon myself.
That was one of the best things I've ever read.
The Way's of Seeing is a dope ass book. To bad it's a little out dated, but it's combos are really impressive. Slaps all over the foundation of art historians, LMAO... I am foaming, in fact I have the book right here.
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