Introduction to monstrous feminine
Female monster wear many faces
The abject and Vagina Dentata are a few things that we touched up on in todays lesson - I had never heard of the word abject but I know that it is the name given to something about a woman that can be seen as shocking, terrifying, horrific, abject. Nasty things that we ignore, don't want to remember or see again.
Throughout the lesson we had a look at lots of different concepts for Abject art from different authors/artists such as Barbra Creed, Julia Kristeva, Cindy Sherman, Gilbert and George, Dali etc.
I especially liked the look of Salvador Dali's work, I have seen his concepts before and they can be quite inspiring, I find them too be both enjoyable and creative, they have a message behind them that can be across visually. The specific piece of art work that we looked at was "Skull" this caught my attention as he photographed and set up the shoot by using naked women in order to form a human skull for Salvador Dali's and Philippe Halsman's (American Photographer) photo shoot. "In Voluptas Mors" was the name given to this specific skull which was composed by seven nude women, apparently this took roughly around 3 hours to arrange, get the lighting perfect.
Here is a picture to portray how the women were arranged, how everything was formed together during the photo shoot for "In Voluptus Mors".
Dali Salvador and Philippe Halsman (1951) In Voluptus Mors
From researching about the forming of this work of art, I started to realise that this wasn't the only skull concept that Dali created, he also create a lot of others with different meanings behind them, I think that he created a range of different concepts which could be interpreted in lots of different ways depending on whether the viewer has been opened up to his other concepts or even other artists/painters who have a similar passion and interest.
A few different examples of skulls that I came across whilst researching Dali's work.
Created for the campaign against venereal disease (Salvador Dali, 1942)
Study, “Soldier take warning” – for the campaign against venereal disease (Salvador Dali, 1942).
After looking at paintings we watched a short clip from the film "Alien", I found this extremely interesting, the way that the piece had been filmed, we took a look at a scene where it shows an alien protruding out of a mans stomach, chest bursts open, blood splatter everywhere which is gory and horrifying, the small creature then scurries away of the screen and disappears.
Reading - Ex Machina
For my reading part I started to look at the review for Goddess from the machine - A look at Ex Machina's Gender Politics. I found it quite interesting to here that these AI robots were being created for a purpose to fufill men and make them happier. However, the AI robots suddenly became attached to each other, it talked about AVA taking her sisters skin in order to make herself human which I thought sounded abject in a way, the fact that she had been created in a specific way but she was not happy with the way that she was looking and so she wanted to become human with the help of Kyko. Caleb throughout the film, it is said that he altered the security in order to let Ava escape, this tells me as the reader that Caleb had strong feelings for Ava throughout the transformation, it says that he watched through the glass window as Ava scanned her naked body to analyse what she was. I was able to work out that Ava did in fact kill Caleb and so now I see her as a bit of a monster as he had strong feelings for her, Nathan claimed that the test was too see if Caleb could help Ava escape. It feels like Nathan created these AI's to become docile sex toys but they were turning against him, becoming human and towards the end it stated that Kyko and Ava became more attached and they stabbed Nathan to kill him, as if they didn't consent to being trapped, forced into sexual roles. They were women who did not wish to be treated as women are treated, they became aware of what sexism makes of women, they were treated like servants by men, as if men had strings attached to them to control there every move.
References
"In Voluptus Mors" Pictures and information:
Rebecca M. Bender. (2014). The Morphing Body: Salvador Dalí’s Skulls and the Female Form. Available: https://rebeccambender.wordpress.com/2014/05/06/body-skulls-salvador-dali/. Last accessed 28th Jan 2016.
Alien Film: Alien (1979) Director Ridley Scott [Film] USA: 20th Century Fox.
A look at Ex Machina's Gender Politics:
Katherine Cross. (2015). GODDESS FROM THE MACHINE: A LOOK AT EX MACHINA’S GENDER POLITICS. Available: http://feministing.com/2015/05/28/goddess-from-the-machine-a-look-at-ex-machinas-gender-politics/. Last accessed 28th Jan 2016 .
No comments:
Post a Comment