Women as Sexual Objects in Art

Paper Summary:

The paper analyzes a photograph by Cindy Sherman, based on Raphael's famous portrait "Fornarina." It argues that while the original painting depicted women as "possessed" by men and therefore "owned" by the painter, the modern-era version de-objectifies the feminine form and gives women a sense of self-identity. The paper clarifies this point by pointing out that the model of the picture is also the photographer.

From the Paper:

"In the view of Kate Linker (1983), there has been of late, a shift in the way we conceive of texts. We have moved, to a degree, away from the expressionist model, "based on an expressive self and an emphatic reader, who reduplicates preconstituted meanings (1983, p. 391)." This shift further moves the reader or, in the case of the visual arts, the viewer, away from a fixed ideology which renders meaning as timeless and immutable rather than as shifting or in process. Linker (1983) suggests that in most representational visual art, there are abundant forms in which the very apparatus or content of work constitutes subjects as male, positioning women as unauthorized and illegitimate and as represented rather than representing."

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