Brodalisques
Images of nude women in provocative poses are considered acceptable as long as they are presented as “art.” Western Orientalist painters portrayed women as odalisques in order to have an excuse to paint women as passive, sexual, and for the heterosexual male gaze. In response to the abundance of sexist and racist paintings that I am expected to appreciate for art’s sake, I invented the brodalisque. These oil paintings feature masculine men who recreate the poses and passivity of odalisques.
While flipping the binary doesn’t solve all the problems of objectifying women in art, it does provide an amusing conversation starter. Using humor is an effective way to get viewers to consider that representations of women aren’t natural and universal. If the original odalisque paintings that I reference really truly are about form and aesthetics, not sex and ownership, then these paintings are completely serious and not at all silly.
Orientalists typically portrayed odalisques within the harem, which was a space that unrelated white men were forbidden from entering. In order to update the trope of creating a “realistic” painting in a space forbidden to the artist, I place my subjects within the hidden mysteries known as the man cave. Like the Orientalists before me, I show fantasy versions of male spaces. I render these settings representationally to persuade the viewers that these compositions are factual and not all fictitious.
While flipping the binary doesn’t solve all the problems of objectifying women in art, it does provide an amusing conversation starter. Using humor is an effective way to get viewers to consider that representations of women aren’t natural and universal. If the original odalisque paintings that I reference really truly are about form and aesthetics, not sex and ownership, then these paintings are completely serious and not at all silly.
Orientalists typically portrayed odalisques within the harem, which was a space that unrelated white men were forbidden from entering. In order to update the trope of creating a “realistic” painting in a space forbidden to the artist, I place my subjects within the hidden mysteries known as the man cave. Like the Orientalists before me, I show fantasy versions of male spaces. I render these settings representationally to persuade the viewers that these compositions are factual and not all fictitious.
