Returning the Male Gaze
“One of the central tenets of my work is a desire to answer to the question of how a woman, by virtue of being a woman, makes others uncomfortable.”
Some artists want to present something higher, more sublime; others want to drive reality into your skull. The subject matter of their art confronts their trauma. Authenticity, a characteristic beloved by all but often forgotten in our filtered selfie society, dominates their work. This is apparent in Bernadette Despujols’s visually disparate paintings and sculptures in her latest show, Mamita, at Arts+Leisure.
Nude 9, 2020, oil on canvas, 24 x 36 inches. Image courtesy of the gallery.
Despujols started producing many of the oil paintings in her nude series, based on images from porn sites, while she was an artist-in-residence at the Vermont Studio Center. Many of the photos are of women passed out and stripped naked. “I am interested in this idea that is a photograph of a naked woman taken by a man reproduced again by a woman that identifies with the subject,” says Despujols. The act of changing the gaze on the subject from male to female not only subverts the patriarchal male gaze, but also adds an empathetic touch to her art.
Installation view of Love Doll III, 2020, terracotta. Image courtesy of the gallery.
Female genitalia occupy the center of the paintings and sculptures. Skin is alive to Despujols: as such the vulvas have narratives of their own, richer in detail and feeling than how they had been portrayed in the past, as wisps of pubic hair with no actual sex organs. Sure, including Courbet’s L'Origine du Monde in a post on Facebook might get it flagged or removed, but posting a Despujols nude might get you kicked off entirely.
The looks the nude women in Despujols’s paintings give are reflective of the artist’s personal ethos that adds a grave criticism of western civilization: “I think being a woman makes others uncomfortable because womanhood has being as the other, culturally alienating women”.
Nude 7, 2020, oil on canvas, 30 x 40 inches. Image courtesy of the gallery.
How deep is the sense of ennui in Nude 7’s expression? Does this painting give an authentic depiction of a woman encountering the patriarchy’s ever-shifting face? When we see naked women, sullen with eyes retreating away from the center as in Nude 6, the painful question of “why does she feel that way?” echoes, unanswered, from parts unknown. As a cis man, I am left questioning not only the way I look at women myself, and the levels of exploitation present in the adult film industry, but also my ability to interact comfortably with the women I care deeply about in my network of friends and family.
Nude 6, 2019, oil on canvas, 30 x 24 inches. Image courtesy of the gallery.
Despujols elaborates on how she uses images in her art-making process: “I am interested in the translation from photographs to a painting, where something about the image may prevail but gestures and emotions are added or removed, creating an entirely new discourse.” This theme of a new discourse extends to her love doll series, which takes the image of a sex doll, iconic in adult stores around the world, and removes its functionality. The doll has become a solid block of concrete-like terracotta with a brightly painted pink vulva, a combination sure to create discomfort for the vaginally-orientated male gaze.
Installation view of Love Doll, 2020, terracotta. Image courtesy of the gallery.
This new reality we all face presents us with an opportunity to transcend the negativity traditionally aimed at gender, race, and sexual preference. Seen as artifacts of the painter’s empathy as she creates art as a fully receptive witness, actively listening to her subjects’ painful histories, we can see the women in these art pieces as exploited victims lacking legal support as sex workers or as one of countless uncomfortable objects of the male gaze not given a legitimate opportunity to interact in society. One has to wonder what the faces in Despujols’s paintings would look like if we could create a global society that allows everyone to participate fairly and completely.
Arts+Leisure is located at 1571 Lexington Ave. For more on Mamita by Bernadette Despujols visit:
https://www.bernadettedespujols.com/
http://www.artsandleisure.net/
