Reclaiming the Gaze

Drawing Parallels through Close Reading

Picasso’s 1907 masterpiece, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon features five prostitutes from the red light district of Barcelona contorting their bodies: two of the women raise their arms to expose their breasts while another one of the prostitutes spreads her legs apart wide. The women are eroticised and exoticised. The women’s faces, especially the ones on the right side of the painting, were modeled after African and Oceanic masks, which aligns with the growing interest in the time period of exploring “the primitive strata” (DuPlessis 669). The women communicate through vulgar body language and, unlike Cummings or Picasso, are unable to master higher forms of expression.The original sketches of Demoiselles depicted male clients observing the women. Picasso later removed them and symbolically replaced the male figures with a still life of fruit on a table (Golding 156). This change allows the viewer to stand in for the role of the male customer who surveys the prostitutes. This further emphasizes the power of the male gaze: a man does not even need to present for is stare to be felt. Picasso’s work has been received as one of the most important paintings of the 20th century, placing Picasso as a central figure in the canon of modern art (Museum of Modern Art 1999).

EE Cummings’s poem XXIII is a response to Picasso’s painting. In his poem, Cummings further accentuates the painting’s sexual overtones by shedding light on the apparently invisible: the dominating physical presence of the male body and the overpowering sounds of female pleasure. The “john,” not physically present in Picasso’s painting, appears in Cummings’ poem in the phallic “bulge” and “grunting lungs” (Cummings 4). The prostitutes, central to the painting, only appear in the poem through the sounds of female hysteria: “shrill” (5) and pleasure “shrieking” (14). Cummings poem is an apostrophe to Picasso which puts him in direct dialogue with the male creator of a scene centered around female sexuality and male desire. Cummings praises Picasso for being an axe which creates “from/whose living and biggest/bodies lopped/of every/prettiness” (19-23). Cummings also references Picasso and his artistic greatness in the line “Lumberman of the Distinct” (16). Picasso and Cummings are both eminent 20th century creatives, Picasso being the supreme artist and Cummings the defining poet. Their discussion furthers the male driven dialogue about the female body.

Removing and/or Appropriating the Male Gaze

Picasso set his painting in a brothel, a scene which is aggressive and privileges the male gaze (Chave 598). Although the women may not represent the typical fetishized female nude, the female body is clearly on display for the eyes of the customer. Neither Picasso nor Cummings voice the female experience. For our recreation of their art, we decided to remove and/or appropriate the male gaze. The goal of this move was to empower and humanize the female experience through the women in the brothel.

The  artwork that we created intentionally features three different mediums of art: photography, graphic design, and drawing. The three mediums mirror the individuality of the renderings. The graphic design places one of the women in a museum next to  her own portrait as well as a portrait of Cummings. This position allows the women to view herself from outside of the constraints that Picasso placed her in and emphasizes the triangular relationship between poet, women, and painter. The drawing removes the cubist/avant garde elements of the artwork which forced the women to be vehicles to push artistic limits. Instead, the women are sketched in a manner that gives them the liberty to come or go as they please.

The photograph shows a women inserting a tampon. This photo gives insight into the day to day lives of all women. It also strives to reclaim the posture of the prostitute with her legs spread wide, because they are not spread for male pleasure. Menstruation inherently allows the female to embrace her sexuality and  body without the  shadow of the male gaze. All three images allow the women to reclaim with body and their voice.

Each image has an accompanying poem, of which our goal was to further empower the female as a subject in poetry and art. The poem appears in three distinct sections which mirror the three distinct women intentionally created to not blur into the singular category of “prostitute” or “women.” The poem progresses from “you” and “I” to “she,” which allows for individuality but also invites the reader into the universal female experience.  

Word Count: 746

I.

You hew form truly

My angular robust thighs

My impervious lascivious stare

The promise of copulation looming
over the indifferent plate of fruit

You hew desire truly
You hew sound truly

My shrieking cries of pleasure

My primitive jerks

The perpetual threat that you might hear words buried in my screams

You hew silence truly

II.

He says you are an attack

a surge of aggression

you force your flesh on him

yet you are employed by his desire

Still fearsome and awesome

liberated from the male appetite now

The john is gone, the fruit is gone

leave the chartered streets of Avignon (if you wish)

III.

She sits bearing

her weight on her strong right thigh

and leans over clutching her stomach

as long blonde hair falls

into her eyes.

She holds the tiny blue cotton torpedo

at just the right pelvic angle

waiting for it to enter her body and stop

the blood which runs down her leg in the shower

every month and reminds her what it means

to be woman, to bleed and bleed—

like a snake shedding herself

from within.

Works Cited

Chave, Anna C. “New Encounters with Les Demoiselles D’Avignon: Gender, Race, and the Origins of Cubism.” The Art Bulletin (1994): n. pag. 09 May 2014. Web. 22 Feb. 2016.

Cummings, E.E. Picasso (XXIII). 1923.

Duplessis, Rachel Blau. “”HOO, HOO, HOO”: Some Episodes in the Construction of Modern Whiteness.” American Literature 67.4 (1995): 667-700. JSTOR. Web. 25 Feb. 2016.

Golding, John. “The ‘Demoiselles D’Avignon'” The Burlington Magazine 100.662 (1958): 154-63. Burlington Magazine Publications Ltd. Web. 24 Feb. 2016.

Project Reflection

We worked very well together as a group. We all contributed to the close reading of the E.E. Cummings poem and a close analysis of the Picasso painting. Sam had notes on the painting from her art history class, which was very helpful. Vita talked with Dr. Churchill to make sure that we were moving in the right direction with our analysis and project. For the creative part of the project, we each took one figure from the painting and re-imagined that woman either without the influence of the male gaze or in a manner which appropriated the male gaze. We intentionally worked individually on this so that our distinct voices and perspectives could mirror the purpose of the assignment. Katie worked to edit and mesh the analysis for each of the new pieces of art.

If we faced any challenges, then it would just have been the stress of midterms week. However, we worked well together by utilizing googledoc to share ideas and working strategically during meetings to complete our objectives. We all really enjoyed working together on this process especially watching the cohesion of our individual ideas. We are proud of incorporating a creative aspect in addition to our analysis and are pleased with the final product. Overall, we were stronger as a group because of our ability of build on each other’s ideas to create an interesting and nuanced project.

“On my honor I have neither given nor received unauthorized information regarding this work, I have followed and will continue to observe all regulations regarding it, and I am unaware of any violation of the Honor Code by others.”