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SITE FOR POSTING CLASS READING RESPONSES AS COMMENTS. FEEL FREE TO COMMENT ON OTHER POSTS. History of Art, U.C. Berkeley. Instructor Sarah Hamill
FUR-LINED CUP, MERET OPPENHEIM, 1936
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ReplyDeleteKelly Sun
ReplyDeleteResponse 7
February 18, 2009
In surrealism, gender and sexuality serve as a basis of analysis and questioning for artists. Surrealists looked at what it meant to be feminine and how femininity exists in a masculine system. Writers, painters, poets, and photographers all put gender roles under scrutiny and brought the issues of sexual difference into the light. Surrealists sought to reveal “the underside of modernity, the erotic, the bizarre, the unconscious material of mental life.”
Man Ray and Claude Cahun both explore the role of gender and sexuality in their photographs. Ray portrays the female body in a manner very different from Cahun. In Érotique voilée, Man Ray exhibits a nude woman pressing her body against a printer’s wheel. Her hand and arm are covered with printers’ ink. The positioning of her body draws attention to the curvature of her figure. This pose is revealing and seductive, which makes the female subject an object of desire. This photograph achieves the goal of surrealism that wishes to tap into the fantasies of the male unconscious.
On the other hand, Claude Cahun expresses an entirely different viewpoint of the female body. Cahun renders sex ambiguous through her photographs. In her Self-Portrait, from Bifur, she showed herself in a side profile view free of any adornments including hair and any other obvious female attributes. The viewpoint from which the picture is taken makes it difficult to distinguish any evidence of the female form. The sharp lighting makes her appear harsh and angular, opposite of the common view of women as curvy, soft figures. In this photograph, Cahun creates an identity that is difficult to determine. The photograph makes the viewer question the gender of the subject – is the individual male or female? Unlike Ray, Cahun does not portray the female body as attractive or an object of desire. In fact, she does the opposite. She transforms her body so that it appears masculine. She intends to eliminate the ideals of femininity and make gender something that is subjective.
While Ray and Cahun may disagree on their perceptions of the female body, both artists try to break the contemporary views toward sexuality through their photography. According to Briony Fer, Ray fought against social norms and “the rationalist view of modernity.” Érotique voilée combines sensuality of the female form with the industrial machine. These two subjects usually do not associate with one another and conflicts with common rationality, which is what Surrealism sought to achieve. Surrealists valued the ‘place of madness’ and the unconscious. Similarly, Cahun broke modernist rationality by transforming gender, which was always considered so concrete, into a subject that was uncertain and questionable. It brings up the concern of what is femininity? A viewer looking at her Self-Portrait would have difficulty discerning whether the individual in the photo was a man or a woman. This question brings up the possibility that woman can carry masculine traits or that perhaps gender is fluid.
Danielle Beeve
ReplyDeleteHistory of Art R1B
Section 6
According to Briony Fer, “One of the ways in which difference was expressed within Surrealism was through metaphor of the ‘feminine’, and I would go so far as to say that the ‘feminine’ was Surrealism’s central organizing metaphor of difference.” (317) It seems that the changing ideas of women’s gender roles/gender identity were one of the main focuses of Surrealists. By questioning the previously assumed notion of ‘womanliness,’ Surrealist artists were able to produce works depicting deviations from the norm. Two prominent photographers of the Surrealist movement were Man Ray and Claude Cahun, both of whom chose women as their subject matter, but portrayed them in ways that had never been seen before.
Surrealists placed a major emphasis on the unconscious mind, the idea of which had been proposed by Freud. As interpreted by Fer, “Women, for the Surrealists, were closer to that ‘place of madness’, to the unconscious, than men were.” (322) Therefore, it makes sense that women were the focus of so many works in this time period. Man Ray’s Érotique voilée shows a naked woman with ink smeared on her left hand and forearm while she holds a wheel of a printing press in her right. In reference to this painting, Fer states: “The erotic and the machine are combined here in a way that militated against the rationalist view of modernity… ‘Woman’ was made the object of desire, who also stood as a sign for desire.” (322) Man Ray is focusing on this woman’s sexuality by placing her in such a way, but he is also emphasizing the surprise inherent in her being surrounded by machinery. Women at this point were questioning their roles in society, and a new gender role is clearly being shown here. Exactly what this new role is supposed to be is unclear to me, but the shocking combination of two things that generally are not seen to correlate (nude women and machinery) is effective in its ability to provoke a strong response from the viewer.
Claude Cahun used herself as a subject to provoke an entirely different response. However, it is obvious to me that she still wanted to elicit strong reactions with her work, perhaps in hopes that other people would begin to question some of the ideas that she found to be transient, such as gender identity and its significance. Cahun’s Self-Portrait from Bifur, no. 5 seems to depict her as genderless. She has no hair, her facial features seem to me neither a man’s nor a woman’s, and the position of her body leaves no clue as to any other anatomical clues. Laurie J. Monahan, in reference to this portrait says,
This portrait aggressively militates against the normative ideals of femininity and, more broadly, exposes the viewer’s expectations of intelligible identity as grounded, specifically, in gender. ‘So who is this, anyway?’ we ask; Cahun made it her business to keep the question in play by constantly exposing her ‘self’ as nothing but a series of constructions.
Cahun uses her work to question identity in general, but more specifically the ambiguity of gender. In this portrait, she has completely stripped herself of any of the stereotypical features of ‘womanliness’, and instead presents to the world a new idea: that people do not necessarily have or may not know their own true identity, be it a gender identity or any identity at all.
Julia Herron
ReplyDeleteResponse Paper #7
Surrealism put a magnifying glass on gender, its origins, and how gender affected society and art. Surrealists raised the question, “What is feminine?” and took issue with sexual difference. Are differences between male and female biological in nature or are they based in society and how humans develop in relation to their surroundings? Surrealism defied logic and strove to reveal the unconscious or subconscious, which some people believed was 90% of human brain function.
Man Ray photographed Meret Oppenheim’s Objet: dejeuner en fourrure to make it seem like “a demented form of the familiar” (B. Fer, 176). Surrealists wanted to shock the viewer and transform art into fantasy. One way of creating this transformation was to incorporate ‘woman’ as an object of desire, as Man Ray did in his photographs. Women became central as subjects, as muses, as objects, and as artists. Man Ray used a quote by Baudelaire that states, “It is woman who casts the biggest shadow or projects the greatest light in our dreams”(B. Fer, 177). Man Ray combined the erotic and the machine in Erotique voilee, making the viewer uncomfortable and forcing him or her to see the breakdown of femininity. The woman is in the center, but she is not idealized or perfected. She is on display as part of the machinery. Man Ray broke down the traditional ideals of beauty and femininity. In his photographs of women’s hats, Ray places a sexual construction on an everyday piece of clothing. He examines what makes an object provocative and how pedestrian objects can represent the female form. This raises the question- what is female? If femininity can be represented so easily, why is the feminine form so elusive and confusing?
Claude Cahun was a prolific Surrealist artist whose “identity became so uncertain that for a time it was unclear whether she was male or female” (Monahan, 125). Cahun exploited this androgynous reputation in her photographs and explored gender in a different way than did Ray. Cahun spurned traditional femininity by shaving her head and dying the stubble that grew in either pink or green. Her photographs were in-your-face, questioning the normative ideals of femininity and proposing that the self is nothing more than a series of masks. Cahun sought to make gender itself ambiguous and created the idea of ‘sexual sameness’, or the idea that men and women are essentially identical. Cahun used the female body to create male forms, such as in Self-Portrait no. 5, and female forms, such as in Self-Portrait c. 1929. Cahun blurred the lines between gender distinctions and provoked the viewer to consider the constructions of gender created by society.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteErik Narhi
ReplyDeleteHAR1B
Sect. 6
Both Claude Cahun and Man Ray depict fantasy scenes in their artistic commentaries on gender roles and femininity, but this is where their similarities end. Beyond their surrealist tendencies, these artists’ works are polar opposites. Cahun’s work represents sexual ambiguity and the blurring of gender roles. By using the female form juxtaposed with “manly” traits such as a shaved head, she commented on the era’s perceptions of gender through work that forced the viewer to confront what defines femininity. On the contrary, Man Ray indulged in the portrayal of the female form in a more sexual and distinctly feminine manner. While Cahun blurred the line separating man and woman, Man Ray indulged in the erotic nature of women, as is evidenced by such works as Erotique Voilee.
In Erotique Voilee, Man Ray photographed a female (more specifically a fellow surrealist artist, Meret Oppenheimer), who’s nude form is partially obscured by a printing wheel. He has intentionally juxtaposed “the erotic and the machine (Fer 322),” combining the divine female form with an odd counterpart to “draw attention to…the erotic, the bizarre (Fer 323).” This furthers the sense of fantasy in the image. In addition, it conveys a sense of pure femininity through the careful composition of women and wheel. Ray uses an image of pure femininity, void of any masculine traits, to create a work that comments on gender.
In contrast, Cahun avoids this solitary femininity, instead favoring ambiguity as a vehicle for gender commentary. This is most evident in her work Self-Portrait from Bifur, No. 5. In this work, her female form is placed centrally, but rather than fully facing the camera or placing herself in a suggestive manner, Cahun looks innocently over her shoulder. Her head is shaved, leading to a sense of gender ambiguity—the viewer is forced to interpret the subject’s gender using uncommon techniques, since the standard representations of femininity are nonexistent. This sensation is exaggerated by the lighting, which draws focus to the ambiguous head. The overall composition results in a critique of gender roles through ambiguity and open interpretation, rather than distinct fantastical depiction of a pure female form.
Gender and sexuality had a broad position in Surrealism. I have come to understand that there was a vast divide between woman and men. Women were ultimately the center of Surrealism, the center of its dreams (323). Majority of the Surreal artwork focused on women and the notion of desire. Women were depicted as no more than an erotic fantasy. Upon observation, Surreal art depicted either a naked woman or aspects in relation to a woman’s body. For instance, the first piece of art that we are exposed to under the Surrealism section in the reader (316) embraces ambiguity, as Surrealism does. In addition, the artwork randomly reflects the illustration of a breast. Subconsciously, the image of a breast is correlation to a female. In this way, Surrealism emphasizes gender and sexuality.
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, Breton idealizes a woman named Nadja. He linked this woman to the “madness and hysteria” (331) of Surrealism. The representation of Nadja was no more than a key structure to Breton’s fantasy. She was labeled as “the object of his desire” (332), ultimately supporting the Surrealism idea of a divide between genders. Women were constantly seen as erotic objects whereas men were masculine human beings.
I identify a grand divide between women and men. Freud held two opposing arguments, one being the idea that female sexuality was different from men (360) and the other being that gender division was socially constructed. The notion of difference was one that Surrealism embraced and acted upon. Women remained the center of the movement and were constantly depicted as objects.
Personally, I believe Freud’s earlier argument that the gender divide is socially constructed (328). I believe that we as people have learned to differentiate between the opposite sex. Men during this Surrealism period would have had to learn to identify and depict women as mere erotic fantasy’s and desires. I believe that society has labeled it as acceptable.
Man Ray and Claude Cahun offer different critique using the female body in that Man Ray offers the typical ‘women as erotic objects’ assessment. For example, the cup, saucer, and spoon covered in fur and labeled as “fur breakfast” in intended as an analogy to a nude female figure (320). Cahun, on the other hand, depicts a baldheaded lady and noted that it is difficult to distinguish whether she is a male or female (382). In this way, Cahun portrays the idea of male-female similarity. Cahun ultimately destroys the concept of “women as erotic objects” motif… well at least for himself as an artist.
Surrealism questions our concept of reality and modernity. It experiments with the unconscious – trying to discover and reveal it through motifs. A large component of its discovery is sexuality, particularly femininity, and desire. Although it seems like a paradox to reveal the unconscious, it is what surrealists strive to achieve. Its meaning is so illusive because of its broad range of people who support it, from artists to poets to writers. Perhaps decoding what it is to be “feminine” would give a more definite meaning to the style.
ReplyDeleteMan Ray’s photographs of surrealism portray the tension of fusing femininity and reality together. In his picture of Fur Breakfast by Meret Oppenheim, Ray shows how the familiar cup and saucer is not in harmony with the fur, despite the effort to light it in the familiar domestic setting. The irrational pairing of two elements is the pinnacle of surrealism, opposing what is usually assumed and opening what wants to be shown. Usually a cup and saucer is a symbol of being docile and peaceful. The addition of fur imbalances the picture because an unexpected feeling of aggression and wildness spurs from it. Ray also photographed Oppenheim with her hands and arms smeared with ink, and the printing wheel covers her private parts. This mixture of modern technology combined with female erotica shocked its audience because the two are so closely intertwined. Modernity seems to be “hiding” her most important parts, while she is trying to expose herself. What is the purpose of her being naked? It seems that her in her most natural form is “the underside of modernity, the erotic, the bizarre, the unconscious material of mental life” (176). Her exposure is the true and repressed nature – the subconscious - of humans that modernity is misinterpreting or covering up.
Personally, I love the embracement of women being closer to madness and the unconscious than men are. This is a stigma that usually calls woman inferior because of irrationality, but in surrealism it is the key to discovering the hidden. However, Claude Cahun takes a different approach to surrealism. Cahun’s desire to discover her identity leads her artwork more than Ray’s. There is less emphasis on sexuality with her work. Rather, it is the individual being that needs to discover their unconscious. The feminine aspect – desire, erotica, bizarness – is not specified to anyone or modernity. One is not defined by his or her biological gender. Cahun tries to drive us away that we are defined by our physical attributes. In Self-Portrait, Cahun strips herself of stereotypes and labels that contribute to being female or male. Without physical indicators, how can one be judged? The lack of hair, the plain tank top, and uncertain stance keeps the viewer from making any assumptions. To Cahun, surrealism meant that one must rid of predispositions of gender and sexuality because they confine our way of thinking. To free ourselves from it is to free out minds create “revolutionary politics and radical thinking” (133).
Michael Dreibelbis
ReplyDeleteReading Response 7
HOAR1B
Gender Roles in and sexuality in Surrealism
Two artists representations of the female form stand out in Surrealism, Man Rays sensual tasteful erotica and Claude Cahun’s androgynous photographs show opposing views on the female form and how it should be displayed in art.
Briony Fer writes that “Surrealism placed ‘woman’ at its center, as the focus of its dreams,” and that can be seen in Man Ray’s series of photographs containing the female form. One in particular that caught my eye was Plate 197, which was a monument to the Marquis de Sade, whom Fer writes is was a hero of the surrealist movement. In this photograph we see a close-up of a woman’s buttocks with an inverted cross emphasizing the more erotic parts of a woman’s backside. Besides the obvious bash on the Catholic Church, which could be discussed on its own, we see the female form shown erotically, with most sensual parts emphasized for the viewer. One can note the woman’s body is displayed softly, almost delicately though it is erotica. This softness is shown through the art of Brassai as well and is most seen in Plate 213, where the torso of a woman on her side is shown. In both of these pieces, we see that the entirety of the female form has been hidden from us, and a focus of erotic parts remains. Brassai removes the head and legs from view, instead showing us the right breast and buttocks of his subject. These two Plates embody this idea that Surrealism focuses on the female body, and displays it in a way that is soft and erotic.
Claude Chun on the other hand, takes on the display of the female for in a completely different way. Her representation of the female body is androgynous, as we see in her series of self-portraits. The one that struck me the most was NO.5, which shows a striking image of her with harsh lighting and shadow to create an eerie likeness of her. This contrasts the previous examples greatly because it takes that sense of erotica away from the art and replaces it with confusion and horror. It is difficult to say exactly whether this is a man or woman at first glance, as the profound female features are hidden from the viewer. The lighting also takes away the softness that was seen in the other photographs, as it is replaced with harsh contrast and bright light. This representation of the female form is centrally opposite to that of Ray and Brassai, but still takes on the theme that Fer referred to in saying that surrealism takes on the female form at its center.
Danielle Lee
ReplyDeleteSurrealism, according to Briony Fer, emphasized “the underside of modernity, the erotic, the bizarre, the unconscious material of mental life.” (Fer 322) The woman, in the opinions of surrealists, captured all of this. The ‘feminine’ was the central metaphor behind surreal artwork and unified all works varying from poems to paintings. When examining the role of sexuality and feminism in the context of two artists, Man Ray and Claude Cahun, one can find differences in representation.
For Man Ray, the woman was utilized as “the object of desire, who also stood as a sign for desire.” (Fer 322) His photographs featured another surrealist artist, Meret Oppenheim. In the photograph, “Erotique voilee,” Oppenheim is nude, smeared with ink, and pressing her body against a printers’ wheel. Her positioning, exposure, and contact with the wheel symbolized the surrealist’s “rational view of modernity.” (Fer 322) Oppenheimer’s body takes up the majority of the photograph and she is the center, the focus, and the desire of the artwork. This composition represents the ideas of Surrealism. According to Fer, “symbolically, Surrealism placed ‘woman’ at its centre, as the focus of its dreams.” (Fer 323) This similar theme is found within Surrealist magazines such as, “La Revolution Surrealiste,” which featured male photo portraits all featured around the central portrait of Germaine Berton. The theme of placing a woman in the center of an artwork reflects the emphasis Surrealists placed on the male unconscious. In his photographs, Ray reflected male fantasies and the emphasis Surrealists placed on these desires by taking photographs of Oppenheim in the nude. For Ray, the ‘feminine’ is an object. Sexuality is utilized to represent the unconscious sexual fantasies.
While Ray chose to use woman as sexual objects, Cahun implemented the theme of sexuality in an attempt to blur the lines that separate a man from a woman and vice versa. Cahun was personally conflicted about her sexual identity; she was unsure if she was a man or a woman. Through her art, especially her self-portraits, she projects her own sexual confusion onto the viewers. Making them question the general anxieties that often surround sexuality. In “Self Portrait from Bifur, no. 5,” Cahun’s profile is sharp and obvious to the viewers. Her head is shaved, and her back faces the audience. She lacks the feminine cures, the softness, and the sensual beauty of Oppenheim in Ray’s photographs. Instead, the contrast of the photo and her facial profile are sharp. Her posture, her hairstyle, and the composition of the photograph are all unified to create the ambiguity of her gender. As stated by Laurie Monahan, “she encourages us to imagine a different world where identity does not fix the individual but radically transforms the culture that would define her.” (Monahan 388)
The ‘feminine,’ while a central theme in Surrealist artwork differs in the context of Ray and Cahun. For Ray, the woman serves as a representation of male fantasies. Oppenheim, in the nude is an object of desire. Her body is utilized to reflect the male unconscious. Cahun’s photographs are the opposite. The center of the photograph is not a muse; she is not sensuous or desirous. She is provocative in an entirely different sexual manner by blurring the line that separates men from women. Her gender is ambiguous while Oppenheim’s is blatantly obvious.
According to Briony Fer, women were closer to that “place of madness” (322) than men were. They were closer to the unconscious and were an object of desire. What does this even mean? Are women more animal-like in their instincts? What makes them closer to that “place of madness?” All it sounds like is a guy trying to express his sexual fantasies in a photograph.
ReplyDeleteOf course the artists of Surrealism would say women were closer to the unconscious, most of them were men. It sounds just like a men’s club going around exploring what they want to. They don’t justify themselves for what they do except that they are infatuated with women. Look at Erotique voilee. Isn’t this just some guy’s sexual fantasy? Is he saying that he likes his women dipped in ink? Is an ink wheel as sexually arousing as a nude woman? Do woman print things nude because they are close to the “place of madness?” In the end, looking at this photograph has me asking the same question I ask when I see Duchamp’s Fountain, “okay, so?”
Rene Magritte’s painting I Do Not See the (Woman) Hidden in the Forest simply furthers my beliefs. There is one nude woman surrounded by mug shots of 16 men with their eyes closed. All look deep in thought and one can take a wild guess what they are thinking about, women! Surrealism is just about the “dreams and fantasies of the male unconscious” (325). You can make whatever you want from the statement, but to me it’s just about men seeing women how they’ve always wanted to but have never been allowed to. It’s one of those moments where you are supposed to keep it to yourself. But by labeling it as art, it becomes an “exploration into the human psyche” and has carved a place for itself in history. For those of you who have read The Fountainhead, modern art slowly but surely is reminding me of Ike’s play “No Skin Off Your Ass.” Ridiculous.
Jenny Zhang
ReplyDeleteHA R1B Section 6
Reading Response #7
The analysis of the modern society’s interpretation of feminism is one of the central themes of study in Surrealism. Surrealism emphasizes on the idea that when objects are misplaced from their usual surrounding, their new positions make the objects look awkward and allow them to seen in a different perspective. The reason for this is because modern society is very concerned about the grouping and proper placement of certain things. Order is very important to modern governments, schools, technology and even the schedules of people’s daily lives; because of this, even a little shift in an objects’ usual order is noticeably unusual. Surrealists believe that the absurd perception of a misplaced object comes from the fact that it defies the rational and conscious mind. Surrealists believe that women slip into their unconscious mind more easily than men. The unconscious mind is described as a place in the mind where “psychic and social forces have little or no control [over]” (326 Fer). In other words, the unconscious defies logic and anything is possible. In that sense, people experience unconsciousness most commonly in their state of dreaming or sleep.
It’s interesting that to surrealists, women live more in the unconscious than men. In many sections of the reading, examples are given in which females are the subjects of dream-like or mad events. For example, Nadja, a woman in Breton’s novel: Nadja, is described as being a flâner, a person who wanders aimlessly, seemingly distracted in their own unconscious thoughts. In the end, Nadja ends up going insane and goes to live in an asylum. Furthermore, there were also a series of photographs taken of the young woman patient, Augustine, who is shown in various stages of “passion” (358 Fer) or hysteria, as claimed by Surrealists, not a mental disorder. Surrealist use examples like these to argue the link between women and madness; and that madness is a feminine quality as opposed to masculinity which is represented by composure and also order. I must say that I feel these surrealists views are borderline stereotypical, even if they are not meant to seem derogatory. Although surrealism claims that unconsciousness and madness are very natural of the mind and its link to women maybe seen by some as an appraisal, I think that their description of women make them seem primitive compared to men. However, surrealism could also mean to imply that men are also feminine but are more compelled to become masculine because of forces of modernizing society. This fits with their argument that achieving freedom in modern society is just a hoax and that in reality, modernization has increased psychic and social oppressions of humans.
Man Ray and Claude Cahun are both arguably surrealist artists who offered critiques on sexuality through photography. Two of Man Ray’s photographs were introduced in Fer’s essay: Veiled Erotic and Untitled (a series of photos of hats). What I thought was interesting about his photos compared to Cahun’s was the placement of his objects to provide critique on feminism. In Veiled Erotic, a nude women is set behind a large mechanical wheel. The wheel is used to represent modernization and the women, unclothed represent the erotic and unconscious. Placing her behind the wheel and having parts of her smeared with the black paint of the wheel symbolizes that modernism is oppressing the feminism in society. In his other photo, Untitled, a top view of a men’s fedora hat, which was becoming a popular fashion on women, emphasizes the top slit of the hat that makes it look like the opening of the vagina. Normally, people would not pay much attention to the hat’s dent, but the camera’s specific placement above the fedora makes the dent look all the more unusual. I am unsure of the meaning on this photo, particularly also because if Man Ray intentionally wanted to add sexual concentrations to the hat (since there is no title), but it causes me to question if the hat is meant for a man or woman, showing that feminism is ambiguous of sex. If my last interpretation is correct, it would seem that Cahun and Man Ray have shared critiques on the feminism and sexuality. This is because although Cahun photograph contents are different in that hers are biographical pictures of male/female versions of herself, she also uses photographs test the boundaries of male and female sexuality. Through her self-portraits, she became a woman by applying make-up and fake wigs and could also pass as a man by shaving her head and changing her photographed profile. Since it is easy for her to pass from woman to man, she calls into question if sex is really what identifies a person, implying that feminism can be a unisexual quality.
It seems Man Ray and Claude Cahun approach the idea of sexuality and gender roles in very different, yet complexly interrelated ways. They both use the female body in different ways, to portray, and to ask different questions. However, the fact that they are both ‘Surrealists’ must mean they have a common ground.
ReplyDeleteFrom a personal standpoint, I find that I identify much more with the work of Man Ray, especially in relation to the female form. I have become infatuated with Surrealism in this regard. This is because nothing comes closer to the most natural, real, and subconscious than do women, and the effect of women on my brain. In this sense I believe surrealism has all the elements of great artistic and psychological power. Briony Fer seems to be more concerned with this view of surrealism. She states, “Women, for the Surrealists, were closer to that ‘place of madness’, to the unconscious than men were; and it is through a particular construction of ‘woman’ that surrealists concerns with fantasy and the unconscious were enacted.”(176) In other words, women are at once the passage and destination into the subconscious of the male mind. Fer’s Plate 162 depicts this through a simple image featured in Révolution Surréaliste, stating “I do not see the (woman) hidden in the forest.” This arrangement of photographs perfectly portrays the role of femininity on the male side of Surrealism. Each male artist is depicted with eyes closed, insinuating they are accessing their deeper and highly personal subconscious. Whether or not they are currently, it is easy to see how they could be dreaming of an ideal female represented in their minds, just as it is represented by the photos. As Freud would say, these photos insinuate the “latent” content.
There seems to be a difference between Brenton and Bataille that is paralleled in Claude Cahun and Man Ray. On one hand, Cahun has all the elements for a social and political revolution, while Man Ray on the other seems more interested in a personal level of Surrealism. Fer states that “Bataille simply represents Surrealism without politics as opposed to Breton’s revolutionary credentials.” It seems ironic, and perhaps contradictory, then that the work of Man Ray and Cahun can be considered so similar and under the same umbrella of Surrealism, while Bataille is considered an enemy of Breton and Surrealism. Another layer of complexity in the interconnectedness is seen by Laurie Monahan’s depiction of Brenton as homophobic. The relationship must be more complex than I have been exposed to, yet the social role of Cahun’s work is very apparent.
In contrast to Surrealists like Man Ray, Cahun uses women as a means to ask questions and break down culture. She wished to explore gender identity through her work, and urges the public to follow suit. Monahan discusses Michel Leiris who believes identity is somewhere in between the self and the external environment. What Cahun wished to depict was the lack of precision within this interface. Monahan states “gender slipped precisely where it was supposed to be distinguished.” (130)
Monahan speaks of Joan Riviére who argued that “womanliness could be assumed and worn as a mask, both to hide the possession of masculinity and to avert the reprisals expected if she was found to posses it.”(128) The importance of this quote can be found in its ability to bridge the ideas of Cahun and Man Ray. I argue that Man Ray’s work stood as a preliminary and perhaps reality that Cahun wished to explore. Where Man Ray falls short, Cahun probes deeper. Either Man Ray is unable to see the female masquerade, or embraces its existence. Cahun, on the other hand wishes to probe behind this masquerade. She asks why it exists, and shows how its repressing. So the relationship between the two artists can be visualized by their individual views towards women. Man Ray views women from the outside, while Cahun views the inside of her female self.
Cahun and Manray differ in their representations of gender ambiguity: Man Ray uses objects and angles of viewing to suggest the erotic female characteristic while Cahun expresses through self-portrait, the ambiguity of gender in its literal transformation.
ReplyDeleteMan Ray adheres to the sort of fetishism Dali and other surrealists derived from Marx: "Substitution was the characteristic mechanism of fetishism, and metaphor was seen as its linguistic equivalent. The object as a whole, then, rather than just the individual objects included within it, could be seen as a series of substitutions for desire, and as part of a ritualistic object that became the obsessive, if displaced, focus of those desires."(Briony Fer 224) So, by using objects as metaphors for emotions, the emotions/desire is being objectified and furthermore attaining fetishism. They are solid objects taken out of context and adorned with arbitrary qualities. Man Ray follows this ideology with his desire for women. The best example is the hat which resembles the female genitalia. Here, Man Ray takes his desire and symbolizes it through an ordinary object at skewed angles. Through this lense, Man Ray's picture of a hat is a fetishization of his desire.
Cahun seems to have a different take on gender though. She strives to expose the masquerade of femininity. In doing so, she attacks and explores the very qualities which assign gender aside from the genitals. The psychology tends towards social constructs whereas Man Ray's tends towards desire and personal sexual perversion.
Brendan Cronshaw
ReplyDeleteResponse 7
2.21.09
Claude Cahun and Man Ray’s critiques of gender and sexuality using the female body and feminism in general under the greater umbrella of Surrealism, provides us with two contrasting and differing views of both.
Upon viewing many of the photographs taken by Man Ray including Untitled, depicting the images of hats worn by women, and Veiled Erotic, it is easy to see that Man Ray eroticized his subjects. Looking alternatively at the self-portraits of Claude Cahun we can see that she presented herself to display the differences in her appearance and image, and incongruity to norms. However when viewing both in the context of Surrealism both appear to be stark, surprising, and thought-provoking juxtapositions on gender and sexuality.
As Briony Fer tells us, “’Woman’ was made the object of desire, who also stood as a sign for desire” (p322) and that is exactly what Man Ray portrays Meret Oppenheim as. What makes the work so surprising is that it displays two apparently incongruous things, at least in historical contexts. Oppenheim’s nude, although partly covered body references the age-old idea of desire and sexual want, while the printer’s wheel in the foreground is modernity and the inclusion of modern technology. Combined, the two allow for contrasting images, but more importantly they comment on sexuality and feminism in that it displays Oppenheim in a somewhat dirtied, sexual position, coupled with a printing press, which can be seen as a masculine vocational tool. What it does is present us with the idea of desire, the notion of lust and want. This sexual representation is seen again in his images titled Untitled. The two hats appear to have very little meaning at first glance but upon closer look they appear highly sexual and erotic. Both hats can be likened to female genitalia, but what makes the two images even more bizarre and strange is the fact that they are worn on women’s heads.
Moving on to the numerous self-portraits of Claude Cahun, her critiques of sexuality and feminism are strikingly different. According to Laurie J. Monahan’s “Inside the Visible”, Cahun “explore[d] identity and gender through her own image and autobiography” (p380) and she did so masterfully. Every consecutive image portrays herself and her ‘image’ in a new way, some looking fully masculine, while others clearly feminine, and the most provocative somewhere blurred in between the two. Her “Masquerade of Womanliness” (p380) explores the relevancies and ambiguities of image within the female person as well as her own position as a lesbian and the ambiguity of being feminine or masculine. The images she provides clearly complete the task of getting people to question such norms of what defines masculinity and what defines femininity as well as where does she stand. This is attested to by Monahan in Breton’s apparent discomfort in the images and in Cahun in general, not just due to homophobia, but more to “the uneasy tension that Cahun inspired…as much cultural as personal and was linked to a more general anxiety about identity itself” (p382).
Both artists offer critiques and analyses of the sexuality and feminism using the female body and yet they go in two strikingly different directions, one towards femininity and eroticism and the other towards the blurred edge of masculinity and feminism, and both are strikingly thought-provoking and surprising, and bizarre, just as Surrealism intended.