Practice question · Multiple choice
The male gaze is a historical convention of address rather than an individual moral failing. What follows from this distinction when an art historian analyses an eighteenth-century canvas?
Hints
- Does the concept target the painter's private character or the viewing position built into the picture?
- How does a historical convention differ from a universal law of art?
Show the answer
B. She critiques the structural relation built into the work
Why
Confusing structural conventions with personal ethics reduces institutional analysis to biography. Seeing the gaze as universal overlooks historical specificity, whilst dismissing social relations ignores the spectator whom the canvas was constructed to address.
Practise The Gaze, the Body and the World
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More questions on The Gaze, the Body and the World
- Why does Berger describe the nude as a relation rather than a form?
- Which are conventions Berger identifies as visible in the pictures themselves?
- Sort each statement by whether it belongs to the SUBLIME or the PICTURESQUE.
- Complete the account of the gaze and the landscape.
- In what year did Berger's Ways of Seeing appear?
- Arrange the steps of Berger's argument in order.
- Arrange these contributions in order of publication.