Exchange and excess: The production and effects of the female nude in modern visual culture (Gustave Courbet, Marcel Duchamp, France, Dorothea Tanning) [electronic resource]
說明
223 p
附註
Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 65-12, Section: A, page: 4752
Advisers: Dalia Judovitz; Elissa Marder
Thesis (Ph.D.)--Emory University, 2004
The nude has traditionally been understood as an art form and therefore as an object of visual consumption and contemplation. In particular, the female nude has been objectified to the extent that it may be considered a representation not of the female body, but of masculine desire in both aesthetics and sexual vision. This is a thoroughly modern phenomenon, accompanied by changes in the social status of women and the public commercialization of images made possible through mass forms of production such as lithography and photography
This dissertation takes as its main focus the artistic transformation of the representation of the human body into the modern female nude. In doing so I make use of three very different artists---Gustave Courbet, Marcel Duchamp, and Dorothea Tanning---as examples of those painters whose work made apparent the conditions of the production and display of the female nude. At the same time, these artists demonstrate new conceptual possibilities for the female nude beyond a simple demonstration of aesthetic achievement or visual pleasure. I combine a variety of theoretical methods in order to discover and describe both the interior workings of these paintings in regards to the spectator, and their impact on the history of visual culture. These methods include but are not limited to psychoanalytic theory, art history, phenomenology and feminist theory. Ultimately my point is that the objectification of women is tied to the aesthetic transformation of the female nude into object of visual consumption, but this need not be the last word on representations of the female body. Instead, the female nude carries enormous potential as a focal point for exploring and experiencing new versions of sexual vision and artistic production. It also holds the possibility of providing a gateway to new conceptualizations of the embodiment of gender and sexuality
