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Transcription
In this podcast, Li Ben discusses the concept of male gaze in Renaissance art and its impact on society's attitudes towards gender. He explains that male gaze refers to the portrayal of women from a male perspective in visual art. Li Ben highlights three techniques through which artists enhance male gaze: positioning, use of light and shadow, and the direction of the gaze. He mentions Titian as one of the most talented artists who effectively used these techniques. Li Ben also notes that male gaze continues to exist in modern art and media. He concludes by emphasizing the significance of the Renaissance as a turning point in understanding gender and power. Hi, welcome to my podcast. I'm Li Ben. Today we will explore male gaze and how much it impacts us since the Renaissance art. So before we go deeper, I would like to review the term male gaze together again. As we all know, male gaze refers to the visual art of seeing women from a male perspective. I have always been interested in this topic because I believe it can help us to have a clear understanding of society attitudes towards gender since the old times. The reason why I want to talk about male gaze in this Renaissance class is because Renaissance is not just about revival of art, but also about the important changes in people's understanding of gender and power. Among these works of art during the Renaissance, we can find a lot of works that views women from a male perspective. These works are representative of desire and patriarchal society. So how do artists enhance male gaze through techniques? We can discuss it from three main techniques. First, positioning. The placement of the painting object and design the environment, the background in the painting. For example, we often see a woman being painted lower or sitting or lying in the picture because it might be seen as more obedient. While men standing or standing higher might show dominance. Second, the use of light and shadow by artists during the Renaissance was also very beautiful. The choice of the light source and the light also represented that artists could highlight specific parts of women on purpose and create a more seductive image. Third, the direction of the gaze was also re-scaled by those artists. For example, if a woman is directly gazed at the audience, it would build a connection between the audience and her. Also, if her gaze was tried to avoid, the audience would give the audience a peeping experience. These are all the fancy techniques that the artists during the Renaissance used. Among those many famous artists, I think Titian is undoubtedly one of the most talented artists. For example, his painting, Venus of Urbano, an oil paint about the naked lying sins of Greek mythical god of love, Venus. In this painting, Venus looks directly at the audience and does not care about his nudity here. So she holds the rose in her right hand and covers her genitals with her left hand. The background is a dog. There is a dog in the background, which usually is a symbol of loyalty. For all those elements added together in one painting, concentrated in one painting, making this the most classic work, one of the most classic works of the Renaissance. This is just one of Titian's works. However, although we understand the existence of male gaze in history, it does not only exist in history. Even for today, male gaze still exists in all kinds of modern art and filming or television works. For example, in the photography, we can often see specific parts of women being emphasized by lighting. In the movie, we still can see all kinds of compositions that fall male gaze towards women. So, this is basically everything I want to share today, because this is also what I personally find most interesting in the Renaissance. I believe the Renaissance is an important turning point. Thank you for your time.
