The male gaze illustrated by Musset and Modigliani’s artworks

            In media and arts, the image depicted of women is often a stereotype of what heterosexual men expect from them. This sexualised and objectified representation of women is due to what we call the male gaze. Even though this expression is quite recent, the male gaze has been shaping feminine characters for centuries. I will illustrate this phenomenon both in literature and painting with examples from the work of Musset and Modigliani.

Alfred de Musset is a French writer from the first half of the 19th century, also known as the romantic period in literature. Confession of a child of the century was published in 1836 and is a fictional novel which contains autobiographic elements. An important part of the narration is about a love story between Octave, the protagonist, and Brigitte – this romance is inspired by Musset’s relashionship with George Sand. In the first chapter of the fourth part we can read “She showed me how she had changed her coiffure which had displeased me, and told me how she had passed the day arranging her hair to suit my taste”, in less than a sentence is formulated the fondamental belief behind the male gaze : women are supposed to please men.

Amedeo Modigliani is an Italian painter and sculptor born at the end of the 19th century. He is famous for his emblematic portraits and his multiple nude paintings of various women. These artworks illustrate the two main consequences of the male gaze : the sexualisation and the objectification of women. Firstly, the painter places the breasts or buttocks of the models in the center of the canvas with poses that emphasises these fantasized body parts. This sexualisation of women is also depicted in Musset’s novel in which females are either sensual mistresses or sweet wives. This binary and simplistic vision is sumed up by the narrator when he gives a relashionship advice to a friend “Two questions: Is she pretty? Do you love her? If you love her, forget her; if she is pretty and you do not love her, keep her for your pleasure; there will always be time to quit her, if it is merely a matter of beauty, and one is worth as much as another.” (part 4 chapter 1). Here, if a woman is not loved, she is reduced to her appearence and her sexual value. Moreover, we can note that this “type” of women is described as temporary and replaceable. For sure no reader is going to envy this position, however being the loved one is not necessarly more gratifying.

            Octave is completely obsessed with Brigitte, he loves her and admires her beauty. Contrary to his former mistresses, she is worth being loved. Here is an other problem with the way men depicts women in fiction : some are worth loving, some are not. And it is once again based on pretty sexist criteria. Brigitte is sweet, calm, quiet. She is selfless and caring. Overall she is the perfect example of the muted woman whom only exists to be beautiful. Stereotypically, the wife has the pretty face and the husband has the loud voice. When Musset writes entire paragraphs about Brigitte’s beauty and kindness he gives her as much value as a vase or a pearl and when Modigliani paints dozens of naked women he does not let them be anything else than bodies. Not only the focus is on their body but also they are mainly represented lying down or even sleeping which reinforces the portraying of women as objects.

Throughout these examples, my aim was to show that the male gaze is not reserved to cheesy american romcoms. The arts field has been dominated by men for a very long time and the image of women has been mutilated at the same time. I chose to talk about Musset and Modigliani because I personally love their artworks. I think it is essential to be aware of that misrepresentation of women in fiction, but it does not mean that those creations cannot be appreciated. Of course you can also dive in the work of contemporary artists who are working on reshaping feminine characters, making them more diverse and interesting. 

I would like to let you with this specific painting which I appreciate a lot, for some reason this woman stands out, she seems alive and complex. In the abundance of poor representations of women, it is still possible to find some characters that are inspiring and interesting. Learning about patriarcal problematics makes us more cautious when we face bad representation while training our minds to spot empowering characters. I hope this article was a small step in this direction.

Nina