Commonplace 85 George & The Male Gaze. PART ONE Roman Orgy.
The Collected Letters and the Diaries offer ample evidence George was an enthusiastic watcher. He walked the streets of wherever he was situated to soak up the atmosphere, gather and think through ideas for books, and snoop on the lives of the disadvantaged. But he was never comfortable in large crowds of happy people - say, at Bank Holidays when the masses took themselves to the seaside, or out on the streets. Possibly because the world became a blur, and sensory overload prevailed, George found it all too vulgar and overwhelming.
To most, looking is an unconscious act, a reflex reaction to visual stimulation, so commonplace as to be almost unnoticed; others derive deep satisfaction from standing outside of things and looking in - on all aspects of life and its conditions. Scopophilia is the term for the act of deriving enjoyment, particularly sexual pleasure, from looking.
What is the 'male gaze'? This is from here click which is referencing the work of feminist Laura Mulvey and her 1975 book 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema': The male gaze occurs when the camera puts the audience into the perspective of a heterosexual man... The woman is usually displayed on two different levels: as an erotic object for both the characters within the film, as well as for the spectator who is watching the film. The man emerges as the dominant power within the created film fantasy. The woman is passive to the active gaze from the man. This adds an element of 'patriarchal' order...
Male renderings of the female nude have been undertaken for a variety of purposes, but all address, either consciously or unconsciously, the way the onlooker considers the subject - the female form. This in fact objectifies women, even when it seeks to exalt them. Of course, there is much Feminist discourse on this, and here is a useful resource to explore click. John Berger, the renowned critic and polymath does a good job at attempting to explain it here click (where would we women be without men explaining the world to us haha).
George was a liker of paintings. He visited Art galleries with almost reverential zeal, but he had very conservative, predictable and bourgeois tastes. We know this because of what he doesn't say he liked/viewed, and of the exhibitions he missed. When he noted, for example, the summer show at the Royal Academy, it was to name-drop that there were portraits on display of Mrs Frederic Harrison or the Lushington girls - people he knew. Despite being alive at the tail-end of the revolution in British painting that was the Pre-Raphaelite movement, and being in Paris at a time of the Impressionists and Post Impressionists, George makes no mention of them. He does say he thinks Turner can't paint landscapes, but that is plainly a lack of knowledge of Turner, and an already outmoded belief landscape should be a prime subject for a painter.
However, he does make reference to two Artworks he felt particularly strongly about. Both tell us a lot more about George than he would have liked.
First, Thomas Couture's 'Romans During The Decadence' aka 'Roman Orgy' of 1847, now in the Musée d'Orsay click. And go to here click to watch a great little Louis Feuillade film from 1911 depicting Emperor Heliogabolus (a very naughty boy) amusing himself at one of his parties, which draws heavily on the painting for visual source material.
George liked all things Roman, and so we can only assume he was okay with orgies, even almost life-sized depictions. Have a look at this at time 9.40 minutes click to see Art critic Waldemar Januszczak stood in front of the massive painting - then carry on and learn all about the genius of Edouard Manet. Note at time 1.16.29 some interesting things about syphilis. But come back here to finish reading this!
George saw this in the Louvre when he visited Paris with his little friend, Mr Plitt in 1888. Astonishingly to me, he wrote this in his Diary:
Thomas Couture's large picture 'Les Romains de la Décadence', gives me pleasure. The central woman's face - noble, satiated, self-dissatisfied - pleases me much.
Here is a close up of that central woman's face. Now, I'm a woman, and I can't see what he is talking about here - all I can see is sadness in those eyes. What is going on? For a start, she has her clothes on - she is the only woman in the picture fully-clothed. This would seem to imply, to me, she has not yet been engaged in sex, but is about to be ravished. Her face is resignation to the ordeal about to happen - she is a sex slave, doing what she has to do to survive. The man about to grab her - is he reaching his goblet out to receive some sort of substance from the woman who is holding something in her hand - a draught of the Roman equivalent of Viagra? Or Rohypnol? I see absolutely no lascivious anticipation or impending pleasure on the central woman's face - but, as I say, I am a woman. To me, she is looking out at us and asking for our sympathy, our understanding, and it is a sorrowful expression. George completely misreads this picture. He says in his rather weirdly pretentious, Yoda-like way the woman's face... pleases me much. Is he under the impression a woman would volunteer for an orgy and not be forced? Does he assume she has had sex and enjoyed it - but that is patently not the case - or that, not having enjoyed it, she is punished for her sin? Can one be noble, satiated, self-dissatisfied all at the same time? Is he pleased at her sadness? Is George sadistically, albeit unconsciously, rejoicing in her suffering? What is going on in his mind?
First, what was going on in Couture's. He is hoping the onlooker might realise it is an allegory about the impending self-destruction of France and the growing political uprising that will produce the Second Republic of 1848 click - another destructive bout of slaughter and turmoil, for a country not yet over the first Revolution. The central woman figure in the painting - is she not Marianne click, the French icon, surrounded by the selfish marauding destroyers of her beautiful country? She is not triumphant - she is already anticipating more horror. It's written all over her face. (Rome in the time of decadence... Veranilda. Hmm... ) Anyway, here is Marianne again, in a slightly earlier, more optimistic time:
Marianne...? Where have we heard that name before? George's first wife, of course, was called Marianne, though he referred to her, when he wanted her, as Nell, but then she became Helen when he wanted rid of her. Marianne Helen Gissing née Harrison. 1858-1888.
Now, George, we know, liked young girls and he liked to dabble in the sex trade, and he had a strong sex drive. And he was a Sado-masochist. Why else write that the Roman girl seems both satiated and self-dissatisfied, if not to evoke both pleasure and pain? This 'self-dissatisfied' - what on earth does it mean? I have never heard this term before - I know what the self bit and the dissatisfied bit mean, but both together??? Does it refer to sexuality, as in disgusted with herself - as in ashamed? If this is what George intends, it knocks out the air of triumph he has awarded her with the term 'noble'. George makes it so that she has thoroughly enjoyed herself - 'satiated' - an oblique reference to women's sexuality being more animalistic than men's, which is something all men fear, and maybe requiring a throng to satisfy? But here, he is giving her a moment of inner doubt - inner self-doubt? - and sharing it with the viewer. It is George, noting her comeuppance.
What is George up to? Well, let's put it into a Freudian context, but keep it with George's point of view. He is an onlooker on a scene he thinks depicts a sexually satisfied, sexually promiscuous woman sharing some down time with the male onlooker. She is triumphantly in the thick of the scrum, taking a moment out to regroup her resources. She welcomes the male gaze - and George is happy to look on. To spend time in front of the canvas and come up with this interpretation of what he sees implies he approves of her situation, and is in collusion with the males in the picture. Here, we have George unconsciously employing Freud's mental mechanism of projection - the seeing in others those unacceptable feelings or behaviours that actually reside in one's own unconscious click. So, here, we have George wanting to be in the picture, being one of the boys doing the ravishing of the sex slaves, but it's okay, because, in his mind, she is looking out inviting him to get stuck in. If she is (in his mind) agreeable to what is happening to her, can it be so bad to want it, too? Is he debating the moral rightness of wanting it to be real? Or, maybe he is blaming the woman for her active part in the scene of her own debauch - she might be noble and satiated, but she will always be self-dissatisfied. But, back in George's real world, if one weird compound word could sum up our man, it might be 'self-dissatisfied'.
George's trip to Paris with his friend Mr Plitt happened a few months after he became a widower and considered himself marriageable once more. Marianne had died on the last day of February, with George down in Eastbourne and she in her lonely Lambeth room. He'd had his eye on a Miss Curtis - she was the daughter of a tobacconist he used whilst on his holidays. In May of 1888, he writes in his Diary: Thought of Miss Curtis, and longed, longed, that she too might have thought of me. But she turned him down - a lucky escape for Miss Curtis, when you think of what happened to his next wife/sex slave.
The second picture to inflame George's tender sensibilities is 'Diana And Her Nymphs At Play' of 1617 by Domenichino.
JOIN ME IN COMMONPLACE 86 TO HAVE A LOOK AT THIS.
The Collected Letters and the Diaries offer ample evidence George was an enthusiastic watcher. He walked the streets of wherever he was situated to soak up the atmosphere, gather and think through ideas for books, and snoop on the lives of the disadvantaged. But he was never comfortable in large crowds of happy people - say, at Bank Holidays when the masses took themselves to the seaside, or out on the streets. Possibly because the world became a blur, and sensory overload prevailed, George found it all too vulgar and overwhelming.
To most, looking is an unconscious act, a reflex reaction to visual stimulation, so commonplace as to be almost unnoticed; others derive deep satisfaction from standing outside of things and looking in - on all aspects of life and its conditions. Scopophilia is the term for the act of deriving enjoyment, particularly sexual pleasure, from looking.
What is the 'male gaze'? This is from here click which is referencing the work of feminist Laura Mulvey and her 1975 book 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema': The male gaze occurs when the camera puts the audience into the perspective of a heterosexual man... The woman is usually displayed on two different levels: as an erotic object for both the characters within the film, as well as for the spectator who is watching the film. The man emerges as the dominant power within the created film fantasy. The woman is passive to the active gaze from the man. This adds an element of 'patriarchal' order...
 |
| Carl Boehm in Michael Powell's 1960 film Peeping Tom click |
George was a liker of paintings. He visited Art galleries with almost reverential zeal, but he had very conservative, predictable and bourgeois tastes. We know this because of what he doesn't say he liked/viewed, and of the exhibitions he missed. When he noted, for example, the summer show at the Royal Academy, it was to name-drop that there were portraits on display of Mrs Frederic Harrison or the Lushington girls - people he knew. Despite being alive at the tail-end of the revolution in British painting that was the Pre-Raphaelite movement, and being in Paris at a time of the Impressionists and Post Impressionists, George makes no mention of them. He does say he thinks Turner can't paint landscapes, but that is plainly a lack of knowledge of Turner, and an already outmoded belief landscape should be a prime subject for a painter.
However, he does make reference to two Artworks he felt particularly strongly about. Both tell us a lot more about George than he would have liked.
First, Thomas Couture's 'Romans During The Decadence' aka 'Roman Orgy' of 1847, now in the Musée d'Orsay click. And go to here click to watch a great little Louis Feuillade film from 1911 depicting Emperor Heliogabolus (a very naughty boy) amusing himself at one of his parties, which draws heavily on the painting for visual source material.
George liked all things Roman, and so we can only assume he was okay with orgies, even almost life-sized depictions. Have a look at this at time 9.40 minutes click to see Art critic Waldemar Januszczak stood in front of the massive painting - then carry on and learn all about the genius of Edouard Manet. Note at time 1.16.29 some interesting things about syphilis. But come back here to finish reading this!
George saw this in the Louvre when he visited Paris with his little friend, Mr Plitt in 1888. Astonishingly to me, he wrote this in his Diary:
Thomas Couture's large picture 'Les Romains de la Décadence', gives me pleasure. The central woman's face - noble, satiated, self-dissatisfied - pleases me much.
First, what was going on in Couture's. He is hoping the onlooker might realise it is an allegory about the impending self-destruction of France and the growing political uprising that will produce the Second Republic of 1848 click - another destructive bout of slaughter and turmoil, for a country not yet over the first Revolution. The central woman figure in the painting - is she not Marianne click, the French icon, surrounded by the selfish marauding destroyers of her beautiful country? She is not triumphant - she is already anticipating more horror. It's written all over her face. (Rome in the time of decadence... Veranilda. Hmm... ) Anyway, here is Marianne again, in a slightly earlier, more optimistic time:
 |
| Liberty Leading Her People by Eugene Delacroix 1830 |
Now, George, we know, liked young girls and he liked to dabble in the sex trade, and he had a strong sex drive. And he was a Sado-masochist. Why else write that the Roman girl seems both satiated and self-dissatisfied, if not to evoke both pleasure and pain? This 'self-dissatisfied' - what on earth does it mean? I have never heard this term before - I know what the self bit and the dissatisfied bit mean, but both together??? Does it refer to sexuality, as in disgusted with herself - as in ashamed? If this is what George intends, it knocks out the air of triumph he has awarded her with the term 'noble'. George makes it so that she has thoroughly enjoyed herself - 'satiated' - an oblique reference to women's sexuality being more animalistic than men's, which is something all men fear, and maybe requiring a throng to satisfy? But here, he is giving her a moment of inner doubt - inner self-doubt? - and sharing it with the viewer. It is George, noting her comeuppance.
What is George up to? Well, let's put it into a Freudian context, but keep it with George's point of view. He is an onlooker on a scene he thinks depicts a sexually satisfied, sexually promiscuous woman sharing some down time with the male onlooker. She is triumphantly in the thick of the scrum, taking a moment out to regroup her resources. She welcomes the male gaze - and George is happy to look on. To spend time in front of the canvas and come up with this interpretation of what he sees implies he approves of her situation, and is in collusion with the males in the picture. Here, we have George unconsciously employing Freud's mental mechanism of projection - the seeing in others those unacceptable feelings or behaviours that actually reside in one's own unconscious click. So, here, we have George wanting to be in the picture, being one of the boys doing the ravishing of the sex slaves, but it's okay, because, in his mind, she is looking out inviting him to get stuck in. If she is (in his mind) agreeable to what is happening to her, can it be so bad to want it, too? Is he debating the moral rightness of wanting it to be real? Or, maybe he is blaming the woman for her active part in the scene of her own debauch - she might be noble and satiated, but she will always be self-dissatisfied. But, back in George's real world, if one weird compound word could sum up our man, it might be 'self-dissatisfied'.
George's trip to Paris with his friend Mr Plitt happened a few months after he became a widower and considered himself marriageable once more. Marianne had died on the last day of February, with George down in Eastbourne and she in her lonely Lambeth room. He'd had his eye on a Miss Curtis - she was the daughter of a tobacconist he used whilst on his holidays. In May of 1888, he writes in his Diary: Thought of Miss Curtis, and longed, longed, that she too might have thought of me. But she turned him down - a lucky escape for Miss Curtis, when you think of what happened to his next wife/sex slave.
The second picture to inflame George's tender sensibilities is 'Diana And Her Nymphs At Play' of 1617 by Domenichino.
JOIN ME IN COMMONPLACE 86 TO HAVE A LOOK AT THIS.
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