THE FEMALE GAZE AND THE NUDE: REFLECTION AND PERSPECTIVE
EMMA WILSON
INTRODUCTION
Throughout the majority of history art has been dominated by men. The commerce, creation, and ownership of art were inherently male undertakings. Art is highly influential in societal norms, culture, and politics. Art is often used to question or to reinforce major aspects of society including what defines a powerful figure, who is the ruling class, and who holds the power in a community. The nude was one of the most esteemed forms of high art in the Western world. Throughout history the nude has been representative of societies’ ideas about gender. It can operate as a reflection of gender roles and norms, but also as a tool for change.
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For the majority of Western history, the nude has been an artform for men by men. The traditional nude creates the idealized female form to the extent that the figure no longer represents an actual woman.1 She is vulnerable, she is submissive, and her status reflects that of the man who owns her. The idealized woman in a nude oppresses the actual. The nude sets the standard for what is desirable for a woman, and often reflects the common sexual fantasies of contemporary men. Until around the 20th century the nude was, with very few exceptions, commissioned, created, and owned by men. The ‘virtuous’ female experience stayed far from the nude.
Women in art schools were rarely allowed to work with nude models. Female artists who did portray the nude were not taken as seriously as men, and often did not follow the predetermined canon surrounding the nude. As women’s rights changed and the feminist revolution of the 1970s began women’s place in the art world also changed. This includes their role in creating, being represented in, and participating in commentary around the nude.
Second Wave Feminism and Feminist Art
In her essay “The Body Politic: Female Sexuality & Women Artists since 1970”, art historian Lisa Tickner writes, “Women's social and sexual relations have been located within patriarchal culture, and their identities have been molded in accordance with the roles and images which that ideology has sanctioned.”.2 Media that is promoted within a patriarchal society is full of and reinforces patriarchal ideas. However, when the patriarchal social structure is destabilized in any way there is space for the media to change as well.
The feminist revolution in the late 20th century also served as a sexual revolution for women. Women were fighting for new powers in the workplace, in the social structure, and over their own bodies. This involved woman gaining power over their own sexualities, but also not to have their image be completely dominated by them. Women were also fighting for the simple right to be seen and heard. The publicized idea of the female experience did not reflect that lived by women. Patriarchal art ideals have the intrinsic motivation and to power to overlook some of the most universal parts of the female experience. “Even the Venus of Urbino menstruated, as women know, and men forget.”3
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Overtime the idealized, objectified nude female had become a staple in high art. Many art historians benefitted from the privileges of being white men and had no reason to question the nude canon. However, during the feminist revolution, art historians’ perspectives were brought into question. In her famous essay “Why Are There No Great Female Artists?” Linda Nochlin writes, “the white Western male viewpoint, unconsciously accepted as the viewpoint of the art historian, may--and does--prove to be inadequate not merely on moral and ethical grounds, or because it is elitist, but on purely intellectual ones”.4 It was clear that many elements of art history could not withstand a feminist critique, and that it was time for the art historical world-view to change. Great female artists had existed for as long as great male artists have, but they have not had the same access to materials, networking, or education. Therefore, many of the ‘great’ male artists do not have direct female counterparts.5
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With the rise of women’s rights, female artists started to see more success as well. This success was accompanied by curators showing interest in female works, female-only exhibitions, and commentary on ‘the female gaze’. The female gaze is the idea that works created by women show the female perspective, rather than the traditional male perspective. Some artists and art historians, like Nochlin, took issue with this. The terms ‘female gaze’ and ‘feminist art’ had the potential to further remove female artist from their male counter parts. Nochlin argues that art cannot have a feminine style because ‘great art’ does not directly reflect the artist.6 She argues that “the language of art is…embodied in paint and line on canvas or paper…it is neither a sob story nor a confidential whisper”.7 However, it could be said that this argument cannot be adequately applied to many contemporary art styles. For example, abstract expressionism and surrealism are art styles where the works are directly affected by the artist’s personal experiences and emotions.
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It is understandably tempting for women in a patriarchal society to want to remove themselves from their womanliness. To have genderless, or passingly male, work makes success within the patriarchy more obtainable. However, it is difficult in many art styles for the artist’s personal experiences not to affect the perspective of their work. And to deny one’s uniquely female experiences under a patriarchy is to deny the oppressive forces of the patriarchy itself. This is why so many artists also fully embraced the opportunity to use the female gaze on the female form in art. This coincides with the rise of central core imagery, and the nude painted by female artists.
Female artist portraying the nude- especially the nude self – allowed them a great deal of power. Women working with the nude allowed them to be creators of the media about their own bodies, rather than just the observer. Women painting the nude allowed them to both start and participate in the conversation about their own bodies, their experiences, and desires.
Women painting women
When commentary on the art world changes, what art is produced and promoted change as well. The feminist revolution brought about the popularization of ‘the female gaze’ in art. The female gaze is the reflection of the female experience in an artwork. One of the oldest examples of the female gaze surrounding the nude is the work by Suzanne Valadon.
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In her essay “How Do Women Look?” Rosemary Betterton describes how Valadon used the female gaze in her nudes works long before the feminist revolution8. Many of Valadon’s nudes show women bathing, dressing, and in other situations where it makes sense for a woman to be in the nude. They lack the voyeuristic aspects that were often seen in nudes of this time. This contrasts many of Valadon’s male contemporaries like Renoir or Degas whose nudes often picture women dancing nude in fields or are from the viewpoint of a peeping tom. Even in her portraits where the figures are traditionally posed, they do not follow the rules of the nude. In her painting Reclining Nude (1928, Figure 1), Valadon shows a woman laying down on a sofa. Reclining on an ornate sofa was a popular motif in nude art, however Valadon’s work does not follow many of the common rules of the traditional nude. The woman has greenish undertones, a bit too large for the sofa she’s reclining on, and is looking outwards towards the viewer. The figure is not ugly by any means, but she is surely not idealized.
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Betterton argues that the reason why Valadon’s nudes differ from that of her male counterparts is that she had the female experience to change her perspective of the female body9. The female body was more than an object to her because she lived in one. Her perspective on the female nude was influenced by her entire life spent living as a female.
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Fast forward 50 years to the feminist revolution in the 1970s. Contemporary art movements are gaining more traction by the day, and there is more opportunity for female artists than in pervious years. Feminists political and art movements moved forward and there was a spike in provocative art.
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Joan Semmel was one of the popular names in provocative feminist art in the late 20th century. Semmel worked as an abstract expressionist in Madrid in her early career, before returning to her home in New York where she became more interested in the feminist art movement.10 Her work from the 1970s until today focuses on the nude. Many of her paintings are nude portraits of herself, or of multiple figures mid-intercourse. After less than two years back in the United States she had produced two series of highly sexualized work named “Sex Paintings” and “Erotic Series”; Erotic Yellow (1972, Figure 2) was part of the second series11. Erotic Yellow shows one fuchsia female figure and a green male figure nude and intertwined. The work is abstract in color but realistic in its form as Semmel used black and white photographs as a base.12 Despite its abstraction, the work remains intimate. The work is made so the viewer is looking up and out towards the two figures whose faces are covered. Semmel writes “I wanted to find an erotic visual language that would speak to women. I was convinced that the repression of women began in the sexual arena, and this would need to be addressed at the source.”13 She does this with Erotic Yellow. Erotic Yellow shows no power struggle. Neither figure is particularly dominate over the other, nor does the viewer have any leverage from their standing point. When it came to her sexual works Semmel wanted to make her paintings more appealing to a female audience by “deal[ing] with communication, how a hand touches a body, rather than a male or female domination”14. A female artist painting such a sexual scene was controversial. Women showing interest in sex, very well wanting it, was not discussed in mainstream culture at the time.
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Semmel moved away from sexual themes as her career progressed and moved onto nudes, and nude self-portraits. Semmel’s self-portraits show her in a natural, un-idealized, state. She is in positions that are natural, and her body is her body. In many of her later works Semmel experiments with mirrors for perspective, but in earlier works the perspective of the viewer is her own; looking down at her body. Pink Fingertips (1977, Figure 3) is an example of Semmel’s self-portrait being from her own point of view. The piece puts the viewer in Semmel’s place as she looks down over her own body. The work is realistic in its portrayal of the human form and is not abstracted.
Pink Fingertips is also a perfect of the female gaze in action. This is not only because it is literally from a female’s line of vision. The work shows Semmel’s body just as it was. There are wrinkles in her feet and hands, veins in her breast, and no effort was made to disguise or eliminate pubic hair. She is shown as imperfect, without being vilified or violently abstracted. The body is that of a real woman.
women painting men
Female artists also found the male nude as a subject matter during the sexual revolution. A woman painting her own body was one thing, but a woman painting a naked man was something entirely different. The sexual power dynamic between male artists and their female models had been well established. To put a woman in control of the situation completely turned this idea on its head.
The naked man in art was nothing new in contemporary art. Giant muscled men, phalluses, and phallic symbols are commonplace. However, the naked male is not the male nude. Nudes were used to display the common sexual fantasies of men onto the idealized female form. Having a male body there instead, with a female artist controlling the narrative, disrupted the art canon and the gender roles that it reinforced.
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Some artists took the male nude in a different direction than the female nude. However, some artists, like Sylvia Sleigh, used motifs and themes from the classical nude in their works of nude men. In the late 1970s Sleigh completed two ‘imperial nudes’. In the first work, Imperial Nude: Paul Rosano (1975, Figure 4), Sleigh shows a nude male model reclining on a sofa draped in a pattered material. The model is lounging with his knees together, one arm over the arm of the sofa and the other resting on his side, and his gaze is away from the viewer. The pose is one often seen in nudes. Two years later, in 1977 Sleigh completed Imperial Nude: Susan Kapror (1977, Figure 5). The two works are nearly identical. Their setting is the same, the model’s posture is nearly the same, and they have the same tone. Sleigh shows the male and female nude with the same amount of respect and attention to realism. The fact that neither figure is idealized speaks to Sleigh’s desire to “give [her] perspective, portraying both sexes with dignity and humanism” because of how “women had often been painted as objects of desire in humiliating poses.”15 Sleigh did this in her work by showing men the way women had been for centuries. She made no attempt to desexualize either nude because she was not opposed to “the desire’ part [of classical nudes], it [was the] the ‘object’ that [was] not very nice.”16
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Sleigh also sought to remake the historical nude, a topic which many female artists had not been permitted to work in17. She does this in her work The Turkish Bathhouse (1973, Figure 6). In this painting Sleigh ‘responds’ to Ingres’ work of the same name (1852-1859, Figure 7) by portraying a series of nude male art-critics- including her husband- like Ingres showed the concubines in his work18. The figures in Sleigh’s work are more realistic than any woman Ingres would have painted. This is not to say that they are ugly, Sleigh embraced the classical craving for the beautiful, she just makes sure that her models are shown as they are. Every figure has a different face, a different stance, different hair, even different tan lines and is attractive in their own right. The unsettling or ‘offensive’ aspect of the work for a male viewer is not in the negative perspective of the figures, but that these undeniable male and masculine figures are being posed like women.
Conclusions and Commentary
It is important to note that society has made great leaps in its discussion of feminism and sexuality. The 1970s feminist movement, and its art counterpart, was focused on the empowerment of white, cisgender, heterosexual, well educated women. Women of color, LGBTQ+ women, and women without access to education went vastly unheard and unseen. The discussion of gender and sexuality today and its role is socioeconomical and political schemes today aims to be more focused on acceptance and intersectionality than it was 50 years ago. More current feminist art needs to adjust to modern feminist ideas.
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  Semmel addressed this issue herself in an interview and said, “The conditions today are quite different. That’s why I say that younger women have to get on board, because I can’t project myself into where they are, and I can’t speak for them.”19  New-age feminism requires new-age feminist artists. Many artists aforementioned could not withstand modern feminist critique. However, it is important to note the significance of second wave feminist art.
Feminists like Semmel, Sleigh, Nochlin and others are culturally significant, and crucial to the development of feminism as a whole. Work by female artists, and work emphasizing the female gaze, is still not seen as equal, but artists from the 1970s started the movement that is continuing today. To have the female body shown as it is experienced provides representation that was absent from art for hundreds of years. The female perspective of the male body, alone and coupled with a partner, was also one of the first forms of visual art where women could express their own sexual desires and ideas.
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Feminist artists in the late 20th century were influential in the greater scheme of art and art history. They paved the way for women to be successful artists without having to deny their womanhood and challenged oppressive art canon. The introduction of the female gaze in the nude normalized the experience of living, aging, and wanting as a woman.
Gallery
Figure 1:
Suzanne Valadon (French, Bessines-sur-Gartempe 1865-1938 Paris). 1928. Reclining Nude.
Painting, Paintings. Place: <A HREF=https://www.metmuseum.org/>The Metropolitan Museum of Art</A>. https://library.artstor.org/asset/SS7731421_7731421_11267472. 
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Figure 2:
Joan Semmel. 1972. Erotic Yellow. https://library-
artstor.org.librda.mville.edu/asset/LARRY_QUALLS_10313419249.
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Figure 3:
Joan Semmel. 1977. Pink Fingertips. https://www.alexandergray.com/series-projects/joan-
semmel10
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Figure 4:
Sleigh, Sylvia. Dec. 1975. Imperial Nude: Paul Rosano. https://library.artstor.org/asset/ARTSTOR_103_41822001166758. 
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Figure 5:
Sleigh, Sylvia. Oct. 1977. Imperial Nude: Susan Kapror. https://library.artstor.org/asset/ARTSTOR_103_41822001166709. 
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Figure 6:
Sleigh, Sylvia. Sept. 1973. The Turkish Bath.
https://library.artstor.org/asset/ARTSTOR_103_41822001166840.
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Figure 7:
Ingres, Jean-Auguste-Dominique, 1852-1859, The Turkish Bath. https://www.louvre.fr/en/oeuvre-notices/turkish-bath
Bibliography
Clark, Kenneth. The Nude: a Study in Ideal Form. New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 1956.
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Grimes, William. “Sylvia Sleigh, Provocative Portraitist and Feminist Artist, Dies at 94.” The New York Times. The New York Times, October 26, 2010. https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/26/arts/design/26sleigh.html.
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Latimer, Quinn. “A Step Out Of Time.” Frieze, 2013. https://frieze.com/article/step-out-time.
Nochlin, Linda “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?,” in Women, Art, and
Power and Other Essays, 1988, 145–78, https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429502996-7.
Betterton, Rosemary, “How Do Women Look? The Female Nude in the Work of Suzanne Valadon,” Feminist Review, 1985, https://doi.org/10.1057/fr.1985.2.
Sieberling, Dorothy. “The Female View of Erotica.” New York Magazine , February 11, 1974.
Semmel, Joan. The Last Five Decades. New York. Alexander Gray Associates. 2015.
Exhibition Catalogue. Accessed May 3, 2020. https://www.alexandergray.com/attachmen t/en/594a3c935a4091cd008b4568/Publication/594a3ceb5a4091cd008b71f5 
Silas, Susan. “On Sexual Paintings and Shifting Images: An Interview with Joan Semmel.”
Hyperallergic, May 6, 2015. https://hyperallergic.com/198526/on-sexual-paintings-and-shifting-images-an-interview-with-joan-semmel/.
Tickner, Lisa “THE BODY POLITIC: Female Sexuality & Women Artists since 1970,” Art
History 1, no. 2 (1978): 238, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8365.1978.tb00015.x.
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Emma Wilson '21
Emma is part of the 2021 graduating class. She is receiving her bachelor's in Visual Studies and Art History. During her studies, she has focused on the nude and feminist art theory. She expands the essay submitted to this research fair in an independent study. She is also a Castle Scholar and part of the School of Education and will be receiving a degree in Special Education and Childhood Education in 2022.