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Looked-at-ness of women


Collection: Gray's School of Art Collection
Object Type: Painting
Artist/Maker: Livingstone, Margaret
Date: 2008
Media/Materials: Oil on canvas and wax
Dimensions: overall: 170 cm x 280 cm
Awards: RGU Drawing and Painting Purchase Award
Classification: Abstract; Composition

Description:

Abstract composition featuring a wax covered knife and teddy bear suspended by string. RGU Purchase Prize

Over view of Looked-at-ness of Women

When a woman goes to the surgeon she has to confess her faults to the surgeon. He then fragments the body and looks at the offending area and fixes it.

The male surgeon rewards the female’s confession with the promise of beauty.

In effect he is giving her power.
(Mirzoff N.The visual Culture Reader . NewYork/London:Routledge;2002)

This painting was a direct response to the medias portrayal of women and youth where image is paramount and increasing number of teenage girls are undergoing cosmetic surgery. These girls do so because they believe that in order to be successful you must first be beautiful. Thus technological gaze refashions the body to reconstruct it in keeping with cultural ideals of femine beauty.


Object Number: ABDRG2008.27

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