The article “Aesthetics of Disgust” by Michelle Meager examines Jenny Saville and the deeper meaning behind her work. Instead of capturing the beautifully perfect proportioned female body, Saville’s work shows them as “distorted, fleshy and disquieting”. These images were better known as visuals of disgust. The article, Mercer examines the different meanings of disgust by reviewing the studies of well-known psychologists. Reviewers of her work responded with shock and confusion. They believed that her paintings were a depiction of the negativity and hatred she felt about the female body. Reviewers even questioned if she hated women’s bodies in general. However, throughout all of the negative comments, some women were pleased that she recognized
their beauty. Saville’s work speaks to “the fat liberationist battle with a Western diet culture as well as with a fat culture that considers fat bodies disgusting, her approach involves neither a discourse of pride nor a straightforward redefinition of beauty.” (pg 28) In conclusion, Mercer suggested that the variety of reactions and definitions of disgust was based on an individual’s culture and the lack of confidence in their own bodies. Whether it was positive of negative, Savill’s work “challenged traditions” and caused society to not only view a false representation of the female body as a perfect sexual image but supported the feminist movement by “offering an opportunity to see what the disgusted and disgusting body can do.”
"Skin blemishes made it impossible for me to really enjoy myself. I was always worrying about the way I looked" (Brumberg, p. 87). Woman all around the world share the same problem, they feel unhappy and self-conscious with the appearance of their bodies. In The Body Project by Joan Jacobs Brumberg, she successfully illustrates the way adolescents begin to change focus from inner to outer beauty in the early 19th and 20th centuries. Through use of personal diaries and historical research, Brumberg shows her readers the physical differences between girls then and now. Brumberg talks about an array of topics in her book – periods, acne, dieting, piercing, virginity, and sexuality. From their roots in the 1800’s through the Victorian era and into modern society the reader gets a glimpse of the way young women evaluate their bodies and turn them into body projects, and is still to this day sweeping the nation more than ever.
Georgia O’Keeffe first came into the lime light after her friend Anita Pollitzer submitted some of O’Keeffe’s works to the famous Alfred Stieglitz (Hoffman 5). Even from these first charcoal drawings, critics noticed the eroticism in her works of art. One of the biggest critics of her work is the noted Robert Hughes. In his book, American Visions: The Epic History of Art in America, Hughes explores American artists’ works, including O’Keeffe. According to Hughes, “Much ink has been spilled on the topic of whether O’Keeffe ever set out to use specifically genital images; she herself indignantly denied it, and especially refused to countenance any sexual interpretation of the large close-ups of flowers she painted in the twenties. To deny the sexuality of a painting like Black Iris III, 1926,...
In the great tradition of classical art, nudity and death have been two main themes of the masters. Sally Mann’s photographs twist this tradition when the nudes are her prepubescent children and the corpses are real people. The issue is that her photographs are a lens into unfiltered actuality, and consumers question the morality of the images based on the fact that children and corpses are unable to give legal consent. Her work feels too personal and too private. Mainly, people question whether or not Mann meant to cause an uproar with her work or if the results were completely unintentional. After looking through what Sally Mann herself has said, it can be determined that both options have a grain of truth. She wanted to provoke thought,
Georgia O’Keefe is a famous American painter who painted beautiful flowers and landscapes. But she painted these images in such a way that many people believed she was portraying sexual imagery. “O’Keefe’s depictions of flowers in strict frontality and enlarged to giant scale were entirely original in character . . . the view into the open blossoms evoked an image of the female psyche and invited erotic associations.” (Joachimides 47) O’Keefe denies these allegations and says that she “magnified the scale of the flower only to ensure people would notice them.” (Haskell 203) O’Keefe’s artwork was misinterpreted because of cultural prejudice, her non-traditional lifestyle, and gender bias art criticism. But despite these accusations, Georgia O’Keefe’s artwork was not based on sexuality.
In the first image on the left, a man is kissing a lady; the artistic way of expression can be interrupted as disrespectful or offensive. Her work has had a lot of criticism as there is too much sexuality featured. For example, the boy and the girl on the cliff having oral sex. Nevertheless, she doesn’t shy away from controversial topics of racism, gender,and sexuality in her paper -cut silhouette.
No other artist has ever made as extended or complex career of presenting herself to the camera as has Cindy Sherman. Yet, while all of her photographs are taken of Cindy Sherman, it is impossible to class call her works self-portraits. She has transformed and staged herself into as unnamed actresses in undefined B movies, make-believe television characters, pretend porn stars, undifferentiated young women in ambivalent emotional states, fashion mannequins, monsters form fairly tales and those which she has created, bodies with deformities, and numbers of grotesqueries. Her work as been praised and embraced by both feminist political groups and apolitical mainstream art. Essentially, Sherman’s photography is part of the culture and investigation of sexual and racial identity within the visual arts since the 1970’s. It has been said that, “The bulk of her work…has been constructed as a theater of femininity as it is formed and informed by mass culture…(her) pictures insist on the aporia of feminine identity tout court, represented in her pictures as a potentially limitless range of masquerades, roles, projections” (Sobieszek 229).
Many aspects of this time period is shown to have had an impact on Westerfeld’s novel, Uglies. Women beauty standards have been prevalent since the beginning of history, however the 1960s saw birth to unrealistic beauty standards. Women during this time were expected to have a willowy look, which includes a thin body, long slim legs and an adolescent physique. Women who did not meet this standard were looked down upon by other members of society for not holding a desired beauty. The discrimination “uglies” face from pretties is linked to this standard faced by women in Westerfeld’s community. Many pretties laugh at respective “uglies” prior to their operation as “uglies” look different than their pretty counterparts. When Tally sneaks into a pretties only party, she “[feels] uglier every second she [spends] there. Being laughed at by everyone she met wasn’t helping much” (Westerfeld 13). For being an “ugly,” Tally is laughed at, and made to be like a second class by the pretties because she is different than them. In Westerfeld’s American society, if a woman does not achieve the thin, willowy look that is desired, then she experiences the exact feelings of inferiority. The discrimination faced by “uglies” as well as women who do not meet the beauty standard, are connected in the ideology that being ugly, makes you of lesser importance than a prettier counterpart. The 1960s saw a strong push for equal rights for African
Disgust is something that all humans go through. It starts at the beginning when a child is born and continues to form as the child grows up. Disgust can, if not be, one of the most dangerous reactions or behaviors that humans have. Disgust is an interesting emotion in the sense that a good bit of the time, humans do not even realize they are invoking their disgust response. In Richard Beck’s book “Unclean” he quotes Paul Rozin who groups disgust into three segments. The first being core disgust which is generally disgust towards food. This is generally towards foods we do not like or have never had before. The next grouping is sociomoral disgust, this is against other groups of people that are different than us. Lastly, is the grouping of
Saartjie Baartman’s exhibition is a prime example of this phenomenon . Saartjie was a young Khoikhoi woman from Southern Africa who was born in the late 18th century . The Khoikhoi people were given the nickname Hottentots by the Dutch who settled on their land. Saartjie Baartman was renamed “Sarah” or “Sara” when she was sold and relocated to London. Sarah had a naturally large bottom, full lips, flat nose, and soft jawline due to her African heritage. Her large butt, like Nicki Minaj, was the main feature the public paid attention to. She was first presented in London, where her exhibition garnered a lot of attention due to a court case that arose. They called her ‘The Hottentot Venus’ after the name the Dutch gave her people and the Roman goddess of love. The name alone demonstrated how they related her natural physicality to sexual desire and lust. One might assume that only men would attend the shows, but women came as well to be entertained and view the spectacle that they were told about. Then Saartjie was sold to a French man and put on show in
In the poem “Barbie Doll” a young girl who is constantly facing the opinionated and ever-changing image of “perfect beauty” is driven to a breaking point due to constantly being reminded she is not appealingly pleasing in some ways. As a woman, one of the hardest things to learn is how to love yourself and your body in its natural form. In “Barbie Doll” she went as far as to cut off her nose and legs to conform to society’s definition of beauty. This example portrays that people must be grateful for what they have, and if they are displeased, to either find a solution to their problem, or move on from
In His painting called Hobo (1999) exhibited at MOCA, Museum of Comtemporay Art) Downtown San Diego, the size of the painting was about 3 feet by 2 feet, a moderate-sized canvas paintings.. Framed with thick wooden round frames painted in creamy white color, presenting a naïve, child-like object that is just harmless approach to the viewers perhaps asking for the acceptance of his work as a child’s play. However, the subject matter he decides to depict in his paintings makes the viewers wonder if the artist is a sexist. In his figure of woman whom he portrays as voluptuous yet somewhat not in proportion, anatomically impossible human figures which tells me that the artist is inspired by Hollywood, run way models, His main interest seems to be woman, especially breasts. Most of the shapes in his painting Hobe seems to assimilate the shape of woman’s breasts. The waves in her hair the bag she’s carrying and the most obviously the small yellow bag that’s attached to the wooden stick that she’s holding with delicate touch. The woman’s arms are so thin and they are almost as thin as the stick which seems to give the fragile image of women. The color of this paining is quite extraordinary, not very modernistic. He seems to imitate the styles of taken in the styles from old Renaissance painters such as Michaelangelo and Leonardo Da Vinci. The texture of the painting is seems to generate the feeling of age and tradition yet the subject matter is so contemporary. the title Hobo seems...
Aesthetic Space and Aesthetic Experience from Maxine Green allowed me to associate to an experience I have had. Maxine Green talks about the “aesthetic experience in the natural world”, she describes in-depth New York City and the appreciation of beauty around us. Her description reminded me of an aesthetic experience I had. December 14th, 2015 my boyfriend Eric and I visited the Rocker Feller christmas tree in Manhattan. I remember these details vividly. Eric stood in front of the ice skating ring, he is very tall and pale so he blocked most of the view behind him. He is also very pale during the winter and stands out like a beautiful snow flake. The people looked like little ants swarming behind him. All the lights behind him seemed like
Campion's first esoteric film, Sweetie, was more "clinical" case history than screenplay. If it fails as a movie, it can be recommended as an instructional film for family therapists. Sweetie, the beloved daughter who turned out badly, is a greedy, impulse-ridden woman who constantly discomforts her family. Fat, if not morbidly obese, she is an unattractive personality in an unappealing body -- repulsive to conventional movie audiences. Fellini, fascinated by the grotesque, often gave such ugliness cameo roles in his films. But it is difficult to imagine any commercial film maker, even Fellini, choosing someone so utterly lacking in glamour, so completely unphotogenic, as heroine. There can be no doubt, however, that this was Campion's conscious aesthetic choice, for we see traces of the same kind of "ugly" choices in her two subsequent films. Campion is interested in Sweetie for all of the anthropological reasons that would repel an "escapist" movie audience and makes no effort to prettify her.
16.)Utt, Jamie. "Navigating The Difference Between The Appreciation of Beauty and Sexual Objectification." Everyday Feminism 18 Apr. 2013: n. pag. Web. 19 Apr. 2014. .
The groundbreaking Demoiselles d’Avignon was controversial not only for the way the women looked but also for the positions of the women. Although Picasso did not emphasize on detail, he “saw that the rational, often geometric breakdown if the human head and body employed by so many African artists could provide him with the starting point for his own re-appraisal of his subjects”(Cubism 53). “The naked women become inextricably bound up in a flux of shapes or planes which tip backwards and forwards from the two-dimensional surface to produce much the same sensation as an elaborate sculpture…”(Cubism 54).