EP - 117 - The Male Gaze Started Long Before Hollywood: How Paintings Taught Us to See Women
Welcome back, loves!
The male gaze didn't begin with film, it was already centuries old by the time cameras appeared. In this episode, I trace how powerful patrons, religious institutions and elite collectors shaped beauty standards through the paintings they commissioned. From reclining Venuses to carefully staged portraits, these images didn't just depict women, they trained viewers how to look at them. But when women finally entered the art world and began painting themselves and each other, the visual language started to shift.
By the end of the episode, you may never look at a painting, a movie scene, or even your own camera roll quite the same way again.
Are. You. Ready?
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Sources & Further Reading:
The Civil Contract of Photography, Ariella Aïsha Azoulay. 2008. Zone Books.
Negotiating the Female Body in Art, Elisabeth Bronfen. 1998. University of Chicago Press.
Women, Art, and Society, Whitney Chadwick. 1990. Thames & Hudson.
Why Love Hurts, Eva Illouz. 2012. Polity Press.
The Painting of Modern Life, T. J. Clark. 1985. Princeton University Press.
The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love, bell hooks. 2004. Atria Books.
Ways of Seeing, John Berger. 1972. Penguin Books.
Museum Frictions, Ivan Karp & Corinne A. Kratz (eds.). 2006. Duke University Press.
Women, Art, and Power, Linda Nochlin. 1988. Harper & Row.
Old Mistresses: Women, Art, and Ideology, Rozsika Parker & Griselda Pollock. 1981. Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Vision and Difference, Griselda Pollock. 1988. Routledge.
The Burden of Representation, John Tagg. 1988. University of Minnesota Press.
Visual and Other Pleasures, Laura Mulvey. 1989. Palgrave Macmillan.
Gender and Art, Gill Perry. 1999. Yale University Press.
Cold Intimacies, Eva Illouz. 2007. Polity Press.
Art and Agency, Alfred Gell. 1998. Oxford University Press.
The Linda Nochlin Reader, Linda Nochlin (ed. by Maura Reilly). 2015. Thames & Hudson.
The Guerrilla Girls’ Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art, Guerrilla Girls. 1998. Penguin Books.
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Peer-Reviewed Articles & Theoretical Essays
Nochlin, Linda. “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” 1971. ARTnews.
Pollock, Griselda. “Feminist Interventions in the Histories of Art.” 1988. Various academic journals.
Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” 1975. Screen.
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Paintings Mentioned:
Venus of Urbino — Titian
La Fornarina — Raphael
Portrait of Eleonora di Toledo with Her Son — Agnolo Bronzino
The Arnolfini Portrait — Jan van Eyck
Ginevra de' Benci — Leonardo da Vinci
Portrait of Agnolo and Maddalena Doni — Raphael
The Birth of Venus — Sandro Botticelli
Danaë — Titian
Danaë — Jean-François de Troy
Susanna and the Elders — Tintoretto
Grande Odalisque — Ingres
La Maja Desnuda — Francisco Goya
Girl with a Pearl Earring — Vermeer
The Three Graces — Rubens
Diana Leaving the Bath (representing Boucher’s mythological nudes)
Self‑Portrait as the Allegory of Painting — Artemisia Gentileschi
Self‑Portrait with Her Daughter Julie — Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun
Self‑Portrait — Judith Leyster
The Child’s Bath — Mary Cassatt
Woman at Her Toilette — Berthe Morisot
The Chess Game — Sofonisba Anguissola
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Intro/Outro Music:
“Fame Inc” by Savvier — https://icons8.com/music
