What’s an Example of How the Gaze Is Used Within Art History?

Art|Art History

The gaze is an important concept in the history of art. It is used to refer to how viewers interact with artwork and how their perception of the artwork changes depending on their gaze.

The gaze can be seen as a way to understand how viewers interpret and respond to artworks, as well as how they interact with them in different ways.

The term “gaze” was first coined by French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan in his work on psychoanalysis. He argued that it was an unconscious phenomenon, whereby a viewer looks at a work of art and creates a “subjective reality” based on the visual cues they take from the artwork. This subjective reality allows them to make meaning out of what they see, based on their own experiences and interpretations.

This concept of the gaze has been explored by many theorists and practitioners throughout art history. For instance, theorist John Berger argued that when we look at a painting, we are not simply looking at shapes and colors, but rather, our interpretation of the painting is shaped by our own preconceived notions about gender, sexuality, race, class and other aspects of identity.

Furthermore, artist Laura Mulvey popularized the concept of “male gaze” in her 1975 essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” where she argued that films often depict women in stereotypically sexualized roles which cater to male viewers. She argued that these films perpetuate male dominance over women by creating representations of women which are tailored for male viewers.

In recent years there have been attempts to re-conceptualize the gaze within art history in order to create more inclusive representations of different identities within artworks. For example, artist Kara Walker has used her work to challenge traditional notions of race and gender within art by depicting African Americans in unconventional ways.

Conclusion:

The concept of the gaze is an important tool for understanding how viewers interact with artwork throughout art history. It has been used by theorists such as John Berger and Laura Mulvey to explore issues like gender representation within films or paintings respectively.

More recently artists such as Kara Walker have attempted to re-conceptualize this notion in order to create more inclusive representations within their works. Overall, it can be seen that the use of the gaze within art history has had a major impact on how we view works today.