Spectatorship and Display:

The Influence of Classical European Oil Painting's "Nude" on Contemporary Advertising

Lisa R. Barry, Ph.D.

Adjunct Professor
Dept of English
Montgomery College at Germantown
20200 Observation Dr
Germantown MD 20876
[Link]@[Link]

TOP PAPER presented for the Visual Communication Commission at the annual convention of the National
Communication Association, November 2001. This paper is currently under review with Visual Communication
Quarterly. All classical images contained herein are granted copyright permission by Artchive and are in the public
domain. All advertising images contained herein are the author's personal digital photographs and are therefore not
subject to copyright permission.
 Spectatorship and Display 2

Spectatorship and Display:

The Influence of Classical European Oil Painting's "Nude" on Contemporary Advertising

Abstract
In 1972, John Berger put forth a challenge to continue the discussion and examination
begun in his book, Ways of Seeing. This text began a study of what is now known as
spectatorship by discussing, among other things, the relationship of the spectator to the most
prevalent genre in classical European oil painting: the nude. Berger then compared publicity

and advertising images with those from the classical tradition to argue that publicity makes use
of the nude (or derivations of it) for purposes of re-establishing the power of the spectator-
consumer who is always assumed to be male. Unfortunately, although Berger's challenge has
been carried forward by film theorists and art historians, few scholars have devoted sustained
attention to the correlation between images of the nude and contemporary advertising images.
This study accepts Berger's challenge and seeks to determine whether contemporary advertising
images continue to utilize or mimic famous images (poses, expressions, etc.) of the nude, and
whether the spectator-consumer is still always assumed to be male.
 Spectatorship and Display 3

Spectatorship and Display:

The Influence of Classical European Oil Painting's "Nude" on Contemporary Advertising

"Women are depicted in a quite different way from men—not because the feminine is
different from the masculine—but because the 'ideal' spectator is always assumed to be male and
the image of the woman is designed to flatter him" (Berger 64). This statement, presented by
John Berger in Ways of Seeing, neatly summarizes the plight of women in western culture,
especially with regard to how they have been depicted in various art forms.1 Berger examines the

way classical European oil painting allowed owners to see themselves and the world, but also
how it allows us to see the present more clearly by referring to the past. He then examines how
publicity and advertising replicate art as a way to sell the future. In doing so, Berger examines
how images of beauty and women as objects have and have not changed. He uses as his primary
example images of the nude, one of the most prevalent genres of the period which lasted roughly
four hundred years from 1500-1900. Berger argues that just as the spectator for classical oil
paintings of the nude was assumed to be male so, too, is the contemporary spectator-consumer
assumed to be male and women's images are used to appeal to him.
Berger put forth a challenge to continue the discussion and examination begun in his
book. Unfortunately, although his challenge has been carried forward by film theorists, few
scholars have devoted sustained attention to the correlation between classical European oil
painting's images of the nude and contemporary advertising images. This study accepts Berger's
challenge and seeks to determine whether contemporary advertising images continue to utilize or
mimic famous images (poses, expressions, etc.) of the nude. I also seek to determine whether the
spectator-consumer is always assumed to be male. To accomplish this, I will compare and
contrast well-known classical images of nudes with equally well-known contemporary
advertising images in an effort to determine whether the conclusions drawn more than thirty-five

1
Although Berger notes in the preface, "This book has been made by five of us," he does not
provide the names of his collaborators (5). Therefore, the entirety of arguments presented in the
text will be credited only to Berger and will be referenced as such throughout this essay.
 Spectatorship and Display 4

years ago at the beginning of the Women's Liberation Movement still hold true today when so

many young women believe that we accomplished all that we wanted as the result of it.
I will first review the literature that discusses spectatorship in relation to film and will
demonstrate how it derives from Berger's study and how it relates to the current study. Next, I
will briefly review the literature that discusses advertising from a critical and cultural
perspective. I will then summarize Berger's study by focusing on those statements and
conclusions that are particularly relevant for this study and that establish the foundation from
which this study will proceed. Finally, I will discuss contemporary advertising images of women

by comparing them with well-known classical European images of the nude. I hope to expand
the study of spectatorship by including a discussion of advertising that will compliment the
existing literature concerning cinematic spectatorship and, in so doing, identify how media
continues to objectify women at the same time it empowers us.

SPECTATORSHIP THEORY AND CINEMA

Feminist film theory and criticism developed out of the second wave of the Women's
Movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s. At that time, the movement concerned itself with
making women's voices heard and striving for equality in all areas of society—domestic as well
as public. Initially, feminist film theory and criticism sought to examine the various ways that
film reinforced the more traditional images of women. These "image studies" examined the
cinematic depiction of women from a sociological perspective, identified how female characters
were often stereotyped, and attempted to determine whether or not female characters offered
positive or negative role models for their audiences. Shortly after, another form of criticism
emerged in which critics studied the use of signs and symbols and argued that women signify the
object of male desire in Hollywood film. This psychoanalytic perspective became the norm for
much of the field of feminist film criticism, and still influences such analyses today. Closely
linked with Berger's discussion of the woman as object and male as spectator, the psychoanalytic
 Spectatorship and Display 5

perspective helps to illuminate how the spectator is situated in relation to the object—whether as

women in film or as nudes on a canvas.

Laura Mulvey's landmark essay, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," has proven to
be one of the most influential essays devoted to feminist film criticism. Mulvey argues that men
both consciously and unconsciously control the production of film, and claims that the depiction
of women is based upon a male desire to negotiate their fear of castration. Mulvey demonstrates
the importance of the "gaze" in narrative cinema, and describes how men bear "the look" while
women become "the object" of their gaze. The objectification of women works simultaneously

to allow men to look at women, and to allow women to find themselves in the uncomfortable
position of watching men look at them. Mulvey further argues that men control both the events
of the narrative and the gaze. The male spectator, therefore, identifies with the film's male
protagonist and takes an active role in the viewing process. Because women are objectified, the
female spectator is denied this active interaction with the narrative and is thus relegated to a
passive role in the viewing process. Mulvey concludes that classical narrative cinema establishes
a relationship between the audience and the film that excludes women.
Women's enjoyment of film, then, entails a masochistic experience that Mulvey addresses
in her subsequent essay, "Afterthoughts on 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,' Inspired by
Duel in the Sun." Mulvey reconsiders her previous claim that cinema offers nothing for women,
and instead argues that in order for women to enjoy cinema they must adopt a masochistic
position wherein they either identify with the female character (the object of desire), or adopt a
male position by identifying with the male protagonist—a process that, by the very nature of
denying women's experience, is masochistic.
The study of cinematic spectatorship developed as a result of Mulvey's essay concerning
woman as cinematic spectacle and the camera's male gaze. Her essay provides the theoretical
foundation for cinematic spectatorship studies with her focus on the male/subject and
female/object, and her insistence that the camera's gaze is always male. Moreover, spectatorship
theory has typically paralleled the psychoanalytic theories used by many feminist film critics.
 Spectatorship and Display 6

This is evident in E. Ann Kaplan's arguments in such works as Women in Film: Both Sides of

the Camera, and "The Case of the Missing Mother" (in which she examines the film Stella
Dallas). Kaplan's book focuses on women both as subject and object in the cinema, and her
analysis of Stella Dallas argues that Stella moves from subject to object in relation to her life and
her daughter.
In Cinema and Spectatorship, Judith Mayne claims, "spectatorship refers not just to the
acts of watching and listening, and not just to identification with human figures projected on the
screen, but rather to the various values with which a film viewing is invested" (31). Mayne's

definition of spectatorship allows for a broad understanding of spectatorship theory, and enables
numerous approaches designed to illuminate how women are depicted cinematically, how
women in the audience are invited to understand those characters and, by extension, how women
are invited to understand themselves. The goal of feminist critics, it seems, has been to
determine how, and whether, women identify with their cinematic counterparts.
Mayne's The Woman at the Keyhole: Feminism and Women's Cinema seeks to
investigate what happens when women are situated on both sides of the camera, believing that
the camera and the silver screen act as metaphoric keyholes. According to Mayne, "The question
is not only who or what is on either side of the keyhole, but also what lies between them, what
constitutes the threshold that makes representation possible" (9)? Mayne takes as her point of
departure the notion that audiences interact with the cinema much the same way they did during
the early cinema "in which mostly men, but occasionally women, peek[ed] through keyholes,
offering bold demonstrations of the voyeuristic pleasure that has been central to virtually every
contemporary theory of the cinema" (9). Mayne continues:
. . . when we imagine a "woman" and a "keyhole," it is usually a woman on the
other side of the keyhole, as the proverbial object of the look, that comes to mind.
I am not necessarily reversing the conventional image, but rather asking . . . what
happens when women are situated on both sides of the keyhole? (9)
 Spectatorship and Display 7

Mayne thus examines the films of various women film-makers in order to determine whether

their films are, as they are often presumed to be, distinct from the films of their male
counterparts, and looks at both mainstream and avant-garde films in hopes of answering the
question of sexual difference. Her conclusion is that in all film, from women's cinema to
classical narrative Hollywood cinema, there exists an ambivalence, a stubbornness that results
from women's unwillingness to succumb to the traditional patriarchal tropes that have defined
womanhood.
Finally, E. Deidre Pribram's Female Spectators: Looking at Film and Television

examines the issues surrounding spectatorship, and combines the multiple perspectives offered
by the various scholars who contribute to the text. Despite the sometimes seemingly disparate
perspectives offered in the book, the notion of identification and the search for female
subjectivity persists throughout its pages.
Theories concerned with cinematic spectatorship help to identify how women have been
portrayed as objects of male desire in contemporary Hollywood film, even when women are
behind the camera. As Mulvey argues, the camera's gaze is always male. Berger's study
similarly argues that the spectator for classical European Oil painting, as well as for
contemporary advertising, is male. Thus, much like the female spectator identified in Mulvey's
study, the female spectator who consumes classical images of the nude and contemporary
advertising images of women must adopt a position either as male in order to identify with the
image as a consumer, or as a woman in order to identify with the woman inside the image who is
the object of desire. Like Mulvey, Berger also argues that the spectator is always assumed to be
male, whether he is the wealthy landowner who commissioned a painting, the painter himself
(because nudes were generally painted by men), or the contemporary consumer who possesses
the means to buy the image of the future offered in contemporary advertising. What follows is a
brief review of the literature concerning advertising to demonstrate the absence of critical
spectatorship studies of advertisements and to justify the need for this study.
 Spectatorship and Display 8

ADVERTISING

Although advertising has been the focus of scholarly attention for quite some time, it has
not been largely treated in the critical and cultural studies that I could find. Most scholarship
concerning advertising focuses on the history of advertising, such as Juliann Sivulka's Soap, Sex,
and Cigarettes: A Cultural History of American Advertising. This book offers a succinct
examination of how advertising both mirrors and creates American society. The book is
organized chronologically by era, and includes the Roaring Twenties (1920-1929), the
Depression and World War II (1930-1945), the Postwar Boom (1945-1960), and so on. She

provides detail and context that helps readers understand the ads and their impact on society, but
does not include any discussion about the borrowing of images from classical European art.
Other scholarship examines the sexism and racism that exists in advertising, such as
Anthony Cortese's Provocateur. This book examines how advertising socially constructs
contemporary notions of race, gender and ethnicity. It is a timely discussion, given the current
cultural climate that professes to embrace multicultural diversity, but that in practice does not.
The book does not, however, examine the gaze or the way of seeing encouraged by advertising.
Still others attempt to educate readers and to provide them with the tools necessary to
critique contemporary advertising, including studies that examine how advertising affects
women's self-esteem and body image, and studies that examine how race, class, and gender are
portrayed in advertising. For instance, Katherine Toland Frith's Undressing the Ad: Reading
Culture in Advertising attempts to teach undergraduate students how to ask questions such as
"what do advertisements mean" (xiii)? The goal of this book is to deconstruct several
advertisements in an effort to identify the codes that enable us to make meaning—and to
question the meaning the advertisements ask us to make. Still, although this book challenges
others like it that "defend the values, institutions, and lifestyles of consumer capitalism" and
takes a "decidedly critical political perspective," the book does not consider how advertisements
encourage us to see their images and, by extension, ourselves (xiii).
 Spectatorship and Display 9

There are a few notable scholarly discussions that lend themselves to this study, but none

that treat advertising in the manner proposed by Berger. Perhaps the best known scholarship that
examines the depiction of women in advertising is Jean Kilbourne's. Her landmark video,
Killing Us Softly, provided the first detailed study of women in advertising and the very real
effects that result from those images. This video was a mainstay in many women's studies and
mass communication departments across the country. Her follow-up video, Still Killing Us
Softly, continued the discussion and updated many of the images. Her most recent incarnation,
Killing Us Softly 3, revisits the previous two discussions, but enlarges the discussion to include

television advertising whereas the previous two considered only print advertising.
Kilbourne examines the way advertising does violence to women by depicting ultra-thin
models and, at times, making fun of them for how thin they are. She also examines the way
advertising does violence to women by depicting sexual violence in the images that, she argues,
young men internalize, which results in real sexual violence. This argument is very much like
that put forth by Sut Jhally in his landmark study of music videos, Dreamworlds II: Desire, Sex,
and Power in Music Video. Both argue that repeated exposure to images of violence and/or
sexual violence followed by a woman's instant attraction to her abuser plays itself out in the real
world where many men believe that if a woman says "no" she really means "yes." Moreover,
Kilbourne's discussion demonstrates the very cunning manner in which sex is used to sell
products, even products that have never been sexualized.
Kilbourne also demonstrates the way women's bodies are objectified—their faces
removed and certain body parts highlighted—and argues that this results in a loss of identity for
individual women. She discusses the manner in which minority women, primarily African
American women, are depicted in advertising; they are largely depicted as animals, often
wearing animal print accoutrements and often prone, or on hands and knees—"doggy style."
Finally, she exposes the damage done to women by the focus on body parts when she turns the
tables and uses a semi-naked male body (with only a wet pair of pants covering up the genitals)
coupled with the exact wording of an advertisement about women's breasts (except that the word
 Spectatorship and Display 10

breast is changed to penis). The men in the audience—and the men to whom I have shown this

video—are very uncomfortable with it. Women typically laugh at this change; they understand
the power that resides in controlling the image, and they understand the role advertising plays in
their continued victimization and objectification. Jhally, too, considers the impact of
objectifying women by focusing only on body parts as the camera often does in music videos,
typically with no glimpse whatsoever of the women's faces. Jhally argues that the stories told
about women and their sexuality by music videos encourage men to think of women as little

more than sexual objects lacking subjectivity, and encourage women to value themselves only if
they can attract men's gaze. Although this is clearly focused on studies of spectatorship, the
video's focus is music video. A systematic study of advertising is thus lacking.
In addition to her videos, Kibourne's Deadly Persuasion: Why Women and Girls Must
Fight the Addictive Power of Advertising begins with a discussion similar to that in Killing Us
Softly 3, but then focuses specifically on how advertising entrances girls and women, and
encourages them to participate in behavior that can kill them. Kilbourne challenges the notion
that any of us might be able to resist advertising's influence, and argues that advertising works
precisely because we think it doesn't. In fact, she claims that Americans see more than three
thousand advertisements each day; the influence, she argues, is unavoidable. She demonstrates
how "ads encourage us to objectify each other and to believe that our most significant
relationships are with products" (12). Kilbourne is especially pointed in her analysis of the way
children are targeted as consumers for alcohol and cigarettes; we need only look as far as Joe
Camel, Spuds Mackenzie and the Budweiser frogs to believe the truth of this argument.
Kilbourne doesn't believe that advertising causes all our problems, but she does claim that it
helps to create an environment in which bad choices are continually reinforced and often
encouraged. She claims:
Although some people, especially advertisers, continue to argue that advertising
simply reflects the society, advertising does a great deal more than simply reflect
cultural attitudes and values. . . . Far from being a passive mirror of society,
 Spectatorship and Display 11

advertising is an effective and pervasive medium of influence and persuasion, and

its influence is cumulative, often subtle, and primarily unconscious. Advertising

performs much the same function in industrial society as myth performed in
ancient and primitive societies. It is both a creator and perpetuator of the
dominant attitudes, values, and ideology of the culture, the social norms and
myths by which most people govern their behavior. At the very least, advertising
helps to create a climate in which certain attitudes and values flourish and others
are not reflected at all. (67)

Thus, advertising shapes the way we see the world and how we behave in it. This, according to
Kilbourne, is very dangerous for women and children. We are encouraged to see ourselves as
men see us or, at least, want us to be.
Kilbourne's arguments are closely linked with Berger's belief that advertising sells
products by convincing us that our present situation—life, relationship, house, whatever—does
not make us happy and that we must therefore purchase something new. He, too, argues that
advertising communicates with us emotionally, directly targeting our inner psyches. This, argues
Kilbourne, is how advertising convinces us to engage in addictive behavior. We should, after all,
"Forget the Rules! Enjoy the Wine" (55).
Probably the article most closely related to Berger's work is Ann Simonton's "Women for
Sale." This essay exposes the link between advertising's way of seeing women and actual
violence against women. She grounds her argument in Berger's and claims, "Women in
advertising are portrayed as being keenly aware of the fact that they are being watched and
judged. . . . She performs a relentless surveillance—is she having a bad hair day, is there a run in
her hose, lipstick bleed, oily nose, chipped nail—is she too fat" (149)? She believes that women
transform themselves for men's approval and that men constitute the dominant culture which, she
argues, is racist, ageist, heterosexist, anti-Semitic, ableist, and class biased (149). She focuses on
each of these "isms" and demonstrates how advertising uses images of women to sell their
products, even when the images are violent and/or encourage violence against women. She
 Spectatorship and Display 12

finally concludes, "The biggest barrier to social equality may be that many women have become

unwittingly attached to the woman who is on sale and on display" (161). Display, she claims,
works to dehumanize, objectify and victimize women.
This display is much like that described by Berger. Display assumes spectatorship,
assumes that somebody is looking—even if it is woman herself. That said, it is necessary to
briefly identify the ways of seeing encouraged by classical European art, and to understand the
perspective from which Berger posits his notion of display that he claims still manifests itself in
contemporary advertising. What follows is a brief summary of the arguments presented in Ways

of Seeing, which will then be applied to contemporary advertising images to determine whether
they hold true today. After a brief review of Berger's text, I will compare and contrast
contemporary advertising images with classical European images of the nude to determine if we
are encouraged to see women similarly, to determine whether the spectator is still always
assumed to be male, and to speculate about the possible implications of a pre-determined way of
seeing.

WAYS OF SEEING
Berger's book examines the way classical European art allowed people to see the world
and themselves in it. He argues that it also allows us to see the present more clearly. He
examines different aspects of the classical tradition including genres of oil painting and their
qualities and characteristics. In so doing, Berger illuminates how classical art encourages, in
fact, demands a particular way of seeing, a way of looking that has been carried forward into
contemporary advertisements.
The book begins with a discussion of seeing that sets the foundation for all that follows.
"Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak. But there is
also another sense in which seeing comes before words. It is seeing which establishes our place
in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but words can never undo the fact
that we are surrounded by it" (7). Thus, although we can see and understand images, we often
 Spectatorship and Display 13

lack the words to describe what we see. This is particularly important today—moreso than it

was in 1972 when the book was written—because we live in a society that is inundated with
visual messages. We are surrounded by visual messages but often lack the knowledge to
adequately understand them. Thus, we are encouraged to see the world and its inhabitants in a
particular way because we lack the ability to think or see differently; we simply haven't been
given the tools to question what and how we see.
Berger continues, "The way we see things is affected by what we know or what we
believe. . . . We only see what we look at. To look is an act of choice. . . . We never look at just

one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves" (8-9). Each of us
has different beliefs that are shaped by different experiences. We see the world differently
because we choose to look at different things. We choose what to look at based on our
experiences and beliefs. Looking and seeing involves choice, but this choice is generally
unconscious. That is, we do not consciously choose what to look at, but our eyes tend to focus
on those things that our experiences and beliefs deem worthy of our attention. At the same time,
our beliefs are shaped and molded by a cultural influence that is beyond our grasp.
Berger focuses a great deal of attention, indeed most of his attention, to the genre of the
"nude." He then examines how publicity and advertising replicate art as a way to sell the future.
His overarching claim is that images of beauty and images of women as objects have and have
not changed. Contemporary publicity and advertising images, he argues, utilize classical images
to appeal to the familiar, the almost-remembered. As a result, many contemporary
advertisements exactly duplicate classical images, while other advertisements embody qualities
(a look, a pose, etc.) of classical images. The importance of this issue is that, according to
Berger, "A people or a class which is cut off from its own past is far less free to choose and to act
as a people or class than one that has been able to situate itself in history" (33). Art, he argues, is
now a political issue. Therefore, advertising that draws its inspiration from art should also be
considered a political issue. If we do not know our history, we are doomed to repeat the
mistakes of the past, to continue to reinforce outdated ideas—ideas that advertising perpetuates.
 Spectatorship and Display 14

Perhaps the most compelling aspect of Berger's argument elucidates the magnitude of the

ways of seeing encouraged by classical art and, nowadays, by advertising:

According to usage and conventions which are at last being questioned but have
by no means been overcome, the social presence of a woman is different in kind
from that of a man. A man's presence is dependent upon the promise of power
which he embodies. . . . The promised power may be moral, physical,
temperamental, economic, social, sexual—but its object is always exterior to the
man. . . . By contrast, a woman's presence expresses her own attitude to herself,

and defines what can and cannot be done to her. Her presence is manifest in her
gestures, voice, opinions, expressions, clothes, chosen surroundings, taste—
indeed there is nothing she can do which does not contribute to her presence. . . .
To be born a woman has been to be born, within an allotted and confined space,
into the keeping of men. (45-46)
Berger neatly sums up women's role in society—whether during the Renaissance or in the new
millennium—as being relegated to the position of possession. Men, by contrast, are in positions
of power capable of possessing women, whether they possess women physically or by simply
owning the gaze. "A woman must continually watch herself. . . . And so she comes to consider
the surveyor and the surveyed within her as the two constituent yet always distinct elements of
her identity as a woman. She has to survey everything she is and everything she does because
how she appears to others, and ultimately how she appears to men, is of crucial importance for
what is normally thought of as the success of her life" (46). Just as Mulvey argues that women
are placed in the masochistic position of watching themselves being watched, Berger argues that
both classical art and contemporary advertising place women in the same position. Although she
doesn't reference Berger, Mulvey's argument clearly emanates from this perspective. However,
Berger is the only scholar who has dedicated sustained discussion about the role of spectatorship
in contemporary advertising. Berger continues, "Men survey women before treating them.
Consequently how a woman appears to a man can determine how she will be treated. . . . One
 Spectatorship and Display 15

might simplify this by saying: men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch

themselves being looked at" (46-47). As previously stated, this is the basis for Mulvey's notion
of spectatorship and the film camera's male gaze. This notion of looking, of watching, is also
implied in the scholarship of Jean Kilbourne and Ann Simonton. The men who painted and the
men who purchased paintings during the classical period controlled how women were seen in
their paintings. Similarly, the men who create and the men who consume advertising images
control how women are seen in advertisements. Women's ability to consume has grown, but the
capitalist empire that is western culture is largely—and has historically been—male dominated.

Just as images from the classical European tradition were designed to flatter men, to celebrate
their power and status, so are contemporary advertising images designed to flatter men, to
celebrate their power and status, and to appeal to their sense of superiority that has been
challenged by feminists for more than three decades.
According to many Marxist scholars, capitalism is the playground of the patriarchy. It is
designed to reinforce and perpetuate patriarchal power. It does so by convincing women that
they are gaining ground, that they have gained freedom and choice; but women, much like
Marx's proletariat, are participating in their own victimization and oppression. Women believe
the likenesses that they see in advertisements and so consume products to conform to them. But
where did these likenesses come from? How did they begin? How do classical European images
of the nude inform contemporary advertising images? What follows is a comparison and
contrast of classical and contemporary images designed to determine if contemporary advertising
images continue to utilize or mimic famous images (poses, expressions, etc.) of the nude, and to
determine if the spectator-consumer is still always assumed to be male.

SPECTATORSHIP AND DISPLAY

Having laid the critical foundation for this study, it is necessary to understand why such a
study is important. According to Berger, "In one category of European oil painting women were
the principal, ever-recurring subject. This category is the nude. In the nudes of European
 Spectatorship and Display 16

painting we can discover some of the criteria and conventions by which women have been seen

and judged as sights" (47). In other words, images of the nude make clear how women have
been seen and judged, and to understand these conventions will help us more clearly understand
how advertising images reinforce them. The first nudes depicted Adam and Eve, where Eve was
simultaneously pure and dangerous. These images were similar regardless of the painter. Such
images are recreated today when images of women in a "garden of Eden" are used to sell a
product that is touted as clean and pure. For instance, an ad for White Rain shows a nude
woman opening herself up to the refreshing water of a waterfall. The caption reads, "Rain on

me. White Rain shampoo. Pure and Simple" (Figure 1). Although not exactly like images of
Adam and Eve, it suggests the purity and simplicity evoked by those images.

Figure 1 Figure 2
The second convention Berger identifies is that, "the woman is blamed and is punished
by being made subservient to the man" (48). This is evident in many contemporary advertising
images, such as that for Lucky You fragrance. The ad depicts a woman, presumably a waitress,
sitting on the counter pouring coffee into the man's cup. Written on the image is "Get Lucky!
XXXOOO" (Figure 2). Because waitressing is a service position, her position is necessarily
subservient. Moreover, she serves a man who gazes longingly at her. She is his object of desire
and serves him. The text that appears implies a sexual encounter.
 Spectatorship and Display 17

Berger goes on to say that in all images of the nude, "there remains the implication that

the subject (a woman) is aware of being seen by a spectator. She is not naked as she is. She is
naked as the spectator sees her" (49-50). Thus, regardless of how the nude appears, she is
always aware of the spectator outside the image. This, despite the tendency toward spectators
inside the image. This is particularly evident in Manet's "Dejeuner sur l'herbe." In this image,
the nude lunches with two fully clothed men. While they gaze at her she gazes out at the
spectator (Figure 3). This strategy is also evident in such contemporary advertising images as

Figure 3 Figure 4

Figure 5
the one for Guess Jeans. In this image, the woman is the man's object of desire—he presses his
body against hers. Yet she gazes out at the spectator rather than at him. An advertisement for
Nautica is similar. In this image, the woman sits upon a dock while a man gazes up at her. She
 Spectatorship and Display 18

does not look at him, although she does not look at the spectator either. Instead she gazes away,

toward the spectator but not at the spectator. What is important is that she doesn't look at him,
but she is aware that he looks at her (Figure 5).
Berger next discusses the use of the mirror as a symbol of woman's vanity. He claims,
"You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, you put a mirror in her hand
and you called the painting Vanity, thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you
had depicted for your own pleasure. The real function of the mirror was otherwise. It was to
make the woman connive in treating herself as, first and foremost, a sight" (51). Many images

from the classical tradition depict women holding mirrors or gazing into them, such as
Tintoretto's "Susannah Bathing" (Figure 6). Similar strategies are used in contemporary
advertisements. For instance, a recent advertisement for Lanvin of Paris reveals a woman gazing
at herself in a full mirror (Figure 7). This image is complicated by the fact that we really don't
see the actual woman—we see only her leg and arm. Instead, we see her reflection as the central
focus of the image.

Figure 6 Figure 7
One of Berger's most compelling arguments is, "To be naked is to be oneself. To be nude
is to be seen as naked by others and yet not recognized for oneself. A naked body has to be seen
as an object in order to become a nude. . . . Nakedness reveals itself. Nudity is placed on
display" (54). The importance of this argument is in the objectification of the nude and the loss
 Spectatorship and Display 19

of identity. Display is the focus of nudity and display always assumes a spectator. In the case of

European art, the spectator was always assumed to be male, just as the consumer in
contemporary capitalist society is generally assumed to be male. According to Berger, "In the
average European oil painting of the nude the principal protagonist is never painted. He is the
spectator in front of the picture and he is presumed to be a man" (54). From this, Berger moves
into a discussion of Bronzino's "An Allegory (Venus, Cupid, Time and Folly)" (Figure 8). He
argues that this image implies sexual provocation, but is quick to note that the female does not
direct her nudity at her male lover; rather, she directs her nudity and her sexuality at the spectator

outside the image. Similarly, a Ralph Lauren ad implies sexuality, but the woman, the almost-
nude, is on display for the spectator rather than for her lover within the image (Figure 9).

Figure 8 Figure 9
Both the oil painting and the advertisement reinforce Berger's claim that ". . . sometimes
a painting includes a male lover. But the woman's attention is very rarely directed towards him.
Often she looks away from him or she looks out of the picture towards the one who considers
himself her true lover—the spectator-owner" (56). As with the advertisements already
discussed, the woman focuses her attention outward toward the spectator-consumer, just as the
women in the oil paintings direct their attention outward toward the spectator-owner.
Finally, Berger points to the ways that the classical tradition informs modern art forms
with which we are familiar:
 Spectatorship and Display 20

In the art-form of the European nude the painters and spectator-owners were

usually men and the persons treated as object, usually women. This unequal
relationship is so deeply embedded in our culture that it still structures the
consciousness of many women. They do to themselves what men do to them.
They survey, like men, their own femininity. . . . Today the attitudes and values
which informed that tradition are expressed through other more widely diffused
media—advertising, journalism, television. (63)
Whether or not we recognize the influence, we can easily identify advertising images that remind

us of classical images of the nude. For instance, Ingres' "La Grande Odalisque" depicts a nude
whose back faces the spectator, but she looks over her shoulder at the spectator knowing that he
is looking at her (Figure 10). Similarly, a recent Versace ad duplicates the image when it
portrays a woman in a white chiffon dress with red flowers on it (Figure 11). More striking
perhaps is the exact duplication of the painting in a recent ad for Keri lotion (Figure 12).

Figure 10

Figure 11
 Spectatorship and Display 21

Figure 12
Even when the image isn't exact, there are similarities. Look at a detail of the Grande Odalisque
(Figure 1213 This portion of the image is evident in many contemporary advertisements. For
instance, a Virginia Slims ad offers an image that is strikingly similar (Figure 14), as does a
Victoria's Secret image (Figure 15).

Figure 13 Figure 14 Figure 15

 Spectatorship and Display 22

There are yet additional comparisons to be made. Two of the most famous nudes of the

classical era are Titian's "Venus of Urbino" (Figure 16) and Manet's "Olympia" (Figure 17). Not

Figure 16
only are the two similar despite the fact that they were painted three hundred years apart from
each other, they still influence images today. Take, for example, the following images from

Figure 17
Victoria's Secret. Although neither image exactly duplicates either "Venus of Urbino" or
"Olympia," all three make use of their reclining position. More important, each makes use of the
facial expression that outraged critics when "Olympia" was displayed at the Salon. According to
Berger, "Olympia" portrays "a woman, cast in the traditional role, beginning to question that
role, somewhat defiantly" (63). Her facial expression is not submissive, but instead is defiant
and confident. So, too, are the facial expressions on each of the Vitoria's Secret models. Each
 Spectatorship and Display 23

smiles just slightly, each looks out at the spectator, and each gazes at the spectator as if to invite

him into the image (Figures 18, 19 & 20).

Figure 18 Figure 19 Figure 20

If, as Berger argues, women's images are designed to flatter the 'ideal' male spectators, we
must consider who the spectator is assumed to be in advertisements that depict men. Some better
known advertisements of this sort appear in Abercrombie & Fitch catalogues. Men figure
prominently in these images, and we are forced, if only for a moment, to reconsider who the
ideal spectator is. Compare the following three images that appeared in the Spring 2001
catalogue (Figures 21, 22 & 23). Who do the men address? Do they speak to men or women?

Figure 21 Figure 22 Figure 23

 Spectatorship and Display 24

Interestingly, although each looks out at the spectator, he does so not to invite the spectator in,

but rather to demonstrate what he has—his possessions, his athleticism, his power. The look is
not sexual as it is with women. Now, compare the following two images from the same
catalogue.

Figure 24 Figure 25
These men do not look out at the spectator, but rather seem oblivious to him or her
(Figures 24 & 25). They are more interested in demonstrating their athletic power, their sexual
power, their physical attractiveness. They are uninterested in the spectator outside the image.
They are therefore more active than their female counterparts, which gives them an agency and

power that women do not possess.

Berger asks, "Does the language of publicity have anything in common with that of oil
painting which, until the invention of the camera, dominated the European way of seeing during
four centuries? It is one of those questions which simply needs to be asked for the answer to
become clear. There is a direct continuity" (134). Berger argues that the languages of oil
painting and advertising speak in the same voice about the same things; in this case, the language
articulates the position women in Western society occupy: an inferior position whereby they are
objectified and made a spectacle.
 Spectatorship and Display 25

CONCLUSION

Classical European oil painting images of the nude correspond directly with
contemporary advertising images, especially those of high fashion. The women are sexual,
inviting and aware of an 'ideal' spectator outside the image gazing at them. The similarity
between classical images and contemporary advertisements is striking. Sometimes the image
appears to exactly replicate images of the past. Other times the image appears to capture some
aspect of classical images—a pose or a facial expression, for instance. The difference is that
classical images were intended to demonstrate possession, while contemporary images are

designed to encourage consumption. According to Berger, "To be able to buy is the same thing
as being sexually desirable" (144). Therefore, the images of women within the advertisements
that are designed to flatter men must necessarily evoke sexuality. Advertising, then, becomes
not only an invitation to sexuality, but an invitation to consume, to purchase. Possession and
wealth invite sexuality. Women become possessions, so they must be sexual. Hence,
advertising sells sex while sex sells products.
Berger encouraged scholars to offer a systematic study of the correlation between
classical and contemporary images. Scholars appear to have neglected such a study. This essay
attempted such a study and I believe that I have adequately demonstrated that Berger's
conclusions, offered more than thirty-five years ago, remain true today. Contemporary
advertising images continue to both utilize and duplicate famous images of the nude. Moreover,
the spectator-consumer is always assumed to be male, even when the image depicts a man.
When the image depicts a man he is more concerned with power and possession than the
spectator outside the image. By contrast, the woman is always concerned with the spectator
outside the image. Perhaps this is because the camera's gaze is always male.
As Laura Mulvey stated, the camera's gaze objectifies women, makes them a spectacle,
and places them in the uneasy position of watching themselves be looked at. Clearly, the
photographer's camera is as male as the cinematic camera; both industries are largely dominated
by men. Women still watch themselves being looked at. The problem is that we don't
 Spectatorship and Display 26

consciously recognize our objectification because we have become so accustomed to it. As

Berger claims, ". . . the ideal spectator is always assumed to be male and the image of the woman
is designed to flatter him" (64). Wouldn't it be lovely if for one moment the image of the man
was designed to flatter the woman? Then again, there is no historical tradition from which to
draw such images. And so we continue on the way we have always been.
 Spectatorship and Display 27

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