Sexuality expressed in painting, sculpture and cinema largely reflects men's desire to exert power over women. This is evident in the representation of the female body in men's art about women. It is also evident in the brief history of cinema, particularly in the United States. The message put forth in the media is that women should be judged in terms of the aesthetics of their bodies. Both men and women accepted this viewpoint for countless generations. It is only recently that this chauvinistic attitude is being challenged in the arts.
That the visual arts have traditionally been dominated by men is obvious. Any person entering an art gallery will see portraits and sculptures of women in various stages of undress, the majority of which originate from male artists. These works of art reflect how men see, experience, and appreciate the female species. The work of male artists ranges from mildly sexist to misogynist. Is labeling an artist's work misogynous going to extremes? On the contrary, as Wendy Lesser argues in His Other Half "I'm not denying that there can be such a thing as misogyny in art produced by men. I can even acknowledge that a work of art might be misogynist--might violate the female, or its own relationship to the female--and still be a great work of art." Whereas society once assumed that the male representation of the female body resulted from a healthy appreciation of the opposite sex, psychiatrists have revealed that the underlying emotions of such representation are much more complex.
Much of the basis for the interpretation of men's response to women in art comes from Sigmund Freud's artistic and literary criticisms. Freud's psychoanalytic theories underlie the work of a surprising number of visual, film, and literary artists. Freud theorized that artists use their fantasy lives to create a world of reality for those who lack the artistic gifts to express their own fantasies. This is why t...