Cynthia Schwertsik

WAYS OF SEEING

I am reading John Berger & I am impressed – about the point of view I am taking while I am painting…

… But the essential way of seeing women, the essential use to which their images are put, has not changed. Women are depicted in a quite different way from men – not only because the feminine is different from the masculine – but because the ‘ideal’ spectator is always assumed to be male and the image of the woman is designed to flatter him. If you have any doubt about that this is so, make the following experiment. Choose an image of a traditional nude. Transform the woman into a man. Either in your mind’s eye or by drawing on the reproduction. Then notice the violence which that transformation does. Not to the image, but to the assumptions of a likely viewer.