She repeatedly appears in front of us. She does not have much cloths on. More often, she does not have any cloths on at all. She can be on the water, in the forest, or in her own chamber, being served by a maid. She is having a bath, or combing her hair. She sleeps as if she could breathe out the sweetness of the good dreams she is having. She wakes up with a touch of sexuality left upon her half open eyelids and disheveled gowns. She may be standing, or seated, but more often she is lying down. She is lying there, as if her body contained no strength. May it be her voluptuous flesh, or the linen or water or grass this silky flesh is resting upon, they all feel so soft in the eyes of the viewers. You are almost drawn to lie down with her, or, on her.
She is a goddess, our muse, or she can be just an ordinary girl. No matter who she is, such reproductions of her image show us one thing: a woman’s body is (and can be) widely open to her (male) painters and viewers. Intriguingly, she herself is aware that her naked body is being viewed. She does not resist it. She even flirts with us. As John Berger pointed out, the value of a woman in the western patriarchal society depends on how she is “seen” by men. A woman then interiorizes this act of “being seen” and it becomes the criterion of her worthiness. “Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at” [1]. Men utilize their own eyes to survey women. Women utilize men’s eyes to survey themselves. In such process, women join men in turning themselves to an “object of seeing”.
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After having seen an abundant amount of women “so eager” to open their bodies to their painters and spectators, one finds it hard not to stop in front of the naked woman in Gérôme’s A Roman Slave Market (1884). At the centre of the canvas and with her back toward us, one would immediately be attracted to the striking beauty of this woman’s body. Then, following the perfect curve of her figure, our eyes trace up and we see that she is burying her face in her raised arms. You cover your face when you feel ashamed. What makes her feel so ashamed? Now let us run our eyes downward along her arms, we will reach her angular left elbow, which points to the reason of her shame – she is a slave who is now being exhibited naked. The old man in a red gown is the host of the aunction. Beneath him is another male slave. Different from the standing woman, he has his robe on. His left elbow leads us to look at the bidders down the stage. We have a large group of them. All are intensively inspecting the woman’s naked body. Based on what they see, they calculate how much she is worth. Those who are interested to buy have already raised their arms and offered their prices. Our eyes can follow these men’s pointing fingers up to the upper left corner of the canvas, where there is nothing except a deeper and deeper darkness.
Scene of slave trade is a recurring theme in Gérôme’s works. Here, aside from the beauty of the woman’s body, what catches viewers most is the unspoken but explicit cruelty and a very different representation of female nudity.
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Jean-Léon Gérôme, born in Vesoul in 1824, died in 1904 in Paris, was an important figure in French Academicism from mid to late 19th century. After studying paintings in his local school in Vesoul, he went to Paris in 1840 and entered the atelier of Paul Delaroche and later of Charles Gleyre. Though he attempted to enter the Prix de Rome and failed, he still gained his sudden success in the Salon of 1847, where he caught the eyes of an influential art critic Théophile Gautier with the painting The Cockfighter (1846). Gautier also coined the term “Neo-Grec” to describe the style of painting from this group of young artists from Gleyre’s atelier.
Gérôme, The Cockfighter, 1846
For centuries the French academic artists have been following the conventions inherited from the Renaissance. And they sought to perfect it. Their works emphasised authentically mastered skills, calculated compositions on canvas, accurate proportions when depicting human bodies and perfection in the laying of brush strokes, the recreation of lines and textures. The scope of their subject matters rarely extended outside the heros and heroines, gods or goddesses from the Greek, Roman and Biblical periods. Alternatively, they could utilize these ancient stories as a means of propaganda for current political agenda, such as the Neo-Classical paintings (mid – late 18th century). What differentiated the Neo-Grec young artists from Neo-Classicism was that they did not paint heros anymore. Instead, they had a taste for ordinary people in their ordinary life, but with an ancient background (Greek or Roman). For this reason their works were sometimes described as “Pompeian”. While Neo-Classicism was serious, the Neo-Grec artists aimed to be witty [2].
After The Cockfighter, Gérôme started to receive commissions for paintings and decorations. Following the rise in his fame was the rise in his price and his influence in the French art circle. In 1856 he embarked on his first visit to Egypt, which led to his strong interest in the Near East and North Africa. Subsequently he produced numerous paintings recording people and events from these regions. In later stage of his life Gérôme has become one of the fiercest defenders of the academic art. He is said to have marginalised the Impressionists or any other artists who attempted a newer way of painting without mercy. Thus, when the Impressionists finally gained their recognition and power in the 20th century, it was the academic artists’ turn to take the same blows. A lot of their works have been put away and stored in basements for over 70 years. Louvre has once publicly refused to buy in a statue from Gérôme [3]. It was not until 1980s when people started to dig out these works, research them with a more neutral attitude and finally, give them a fairer recognition.
Gérôme’s works are in fact impressive. The brushstrokes are almost perfect. The reproduced human figures (paintings or statues), sceneries and atmosphere are all so detailed, realistic and lively. Yet, not too many of them can be described as “captivating”. And if you compare his works to works of other artists from almost the same era, such as the poverty recorded by Honoré Daumier, the various experiments in colours, methods and ways of expression by the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, it is not difficult to understand why the academic artists would get forgotten. At the age when the European paintings were going through one after another wave of revolution, those orthodox artists from the grand French Academy were just too slow to catch up. At a glance, A Roman Slave Market does look conventional enough, such as its subject matter and the technique employed. Yet there is one very distinctive element in this work that caught my eyes – its point of view.
For a scene such as this one, the most usual point of view a painter would employ is viewing the exhibited object from “down the stage”, i.e., the painter himself assumes the viewpoint (and the role) of the bidders in the painting. But in A Roman Slave Market the point of view is from “up the stage”, not through the eyes of the woman who is being auctioned, but through a pair of eyes behind her. As Andrew Graham-Dixon suggests, we are actually looking at the whole scene through “the eyes of the next slave to be sold” [4]. This person has not been included in the painting but surely he or she is present (we cannot tell his/her gender here). He/she is waiting. This action of waiting adds to the painting a sense of time. Even this should be a frozen moment of an auction scene, we can still feel the flow of the time here — a subtle indication not only to the past but also to the future.
The past is: we could see the woman slave wrapping herself with a piece of loose cloth. When the time came, she walked up to the front of the stage and, though unwillingly, let the cloth slide down her naked skin. The cloth dropped just behind her ankles. Now, her most private parts were being exposed to the whole hall. The men down the stage surveyed her. Those who could find a use of her started to offer prices. Someone should have her very soon. From this point on we can foresee two futures: first, the future of the slave who was waiting at the back (I will be the next one!); and second, the future of this woman slave. Both futures suggest nothing but a stark brutality. Thus at the corner where the fingertips of the bidders are pointing to and where this painting ends, we can see nothing but darkness. Just like this “next slave to be sold”, “what will happen next” has not been painted but in fact it is omnipresent. What makes this scene so cruel is the fact that cruelty is not painted but hinted. The cruelty is already in our heads. If we view the same scene from a more usual angle – the front, which has everything detailedly recorded, leaving no room for spectators’ own imaginations, we will suddenly find the scene less gripping.
Gérôme, A Slave Market (part of), 1866
Different from most conventional female nudes, the woman here has her bare front not exhibited to us but to a group of unknown male bidders. We usually consider the space immediately in front of our bodies rather personal. Within our chests are our hearts, and other vital organs. We tend not let others enter this private space easily unless that person is our closed friend, relative, or lover, not to mention taking off all our cloths and openly exhibit it to a group of strangers. When the naked women in a painting have her front (her lovely full breasts, her slightly covered yet revealing female genitals) facing us (painters, spectators, potential buyers, all of them were mainly male in the past), as in traditional nudes, it means the painted woman is having a relationship with us. Sometimes she may not be facing us directly, but her eyes are. “We” are whom she is seducing. However in A Roman Slave Market, the woman has her back to us, which mean she is not opening herself to us but to that group of ruthless bidders. She will not be in our hands but in the hands of that group of unknown men (our rivals)! How horrible!
When we stand in front of this painting, we are actually forced to assume the eyes of “the next slave to be sold”. We are placed in the position of this “next slave”. Suddenly, we could almost see how the woman’s skin trembled under the scrutiny of the bidders. This is not a sweet and inviting naked body that asks us to look at and admire her. This is a public humiliation of a person’s existence and pride. The two arms which so firmly hold together created a triangle, where the woman slave has buried her face into. It is the only place where she could hide herself. That place that contains all her powerlessness, resentment and shame.
What Gérôme has painted here is the buying and selling of a woman’s naked body. Looking back, from brushes to camera’s lenses, we see women’s naked bodies frequently and repeatedly reproduced on canvases and on paper. These are not bodies but torsos. Like the ancient Greek or Roman statues, they are so carefully proportioned and polished that they are almost unreal. They often assume a certain posture, or they may bare a certain expression, that is most pleasing to the targeted (male) audience. You hang them up on the salon walls, or print them out with ink. You then wait for those who are interested to pay for her ownership. Isn’t this a bold buying and selling of women’s naked bodies as well? How different is it from the scene Gérôme depicted? Let us compare Gervex’s A Meeting of the Painting Jury (1883) to A Roman Slave Market (1884) and we should see. Though the subject matter and the point of view are different, yet both have a woman’s naked body on display. Both women are surround by a group of seemingly prestigious men. Both groups of men have either their hands or walking sticks pointing up. We even have a similar triangle formed by the arms of both exhibited women.
A Roman Slave Market versus A Meeting of the Painting Jury (1883) by Gervex
No wonder once A Roman Slave Market was out, even though the subject matter was not new, it still caused controversies. As it contaminated the hypocritical thinking that in art, we could view a woman’s body solely through a pure, aesthetic angle [5]. This unusual viewpoint Gérôme employed also challenges the position of those who have always taken up the role of “the viewers”, “the surveyors”. They, like the naked women they are studying, have become part of the “to be seen” in this painting.
“To see” and “to be seen”. As mentioned at the beginning of this article, Berger suggested that in European culture, women in real and women in paintings have always been in the position of “to be seen”, “to be looked at”. The Judgement of Paris is a good example. This greek myth has always been a popular theme for European artists. Such scene has been painted numerous times – Paris looks at and judges the three goddesses in front of him, then he awards the apple to the one he considers the fairest. It is also worth noting that, the three goddesses here are conscious about his judgement. They themselves are actively involved in this beauty pageant. They are fighting to be his chosen one.
Rubens, The Judgement of Paris, c.1636
Man Drawing a Woman in a Reclining Position from Albrecht Dürer also offers us a good insight into how unbalanced the relationship is between “the observer” and “the observed”, “the judge” and “the judged”, “the portrayer” and “the portrayed”.
Dürer, Man Drawing a Woman in a Reclining Position, 1538
Within this relationship, women have not only been turned into an “object of seeing”, she has also learnt to treat herself as an “object of seeing”. Therefore in a lot of European nudes, women are aware that they are being watched. They are also, with their eyes or with their physical postures, responding to these gazes. Because “to be seen”, “to be fantasized” and “to be loved” have already become the reasons and values of their being (the apple from Paris). Their male painters/spectators/buyers, in turn, would laugh at these women who “enjoy being looked at”, who “enjoy looking at herself”. Mirror is often used to symbolize “vanity” of women in European painting convention, Berger suggests. Men did not just paint (and buy) naked woman for their own pleasure. They also put a mirror in her hand and condemn her for vanity [6]. To conclude, European female nudes aim primarily at flattering men, visually, sexually and morally.
Thus, when Olympia stares back at her spectators defiantly, the painted woman is not there to give in to us anymore. This is of course a challenge to the painting convention. However, just like in Gervex’s Rolla, here the painter has only stated that the woman on the canvas is a prostitute, not a goddess. And when a men watches/buys her, he act is no more than engaging in a sex trade. While both painters expressed a criticism against the hypocrisy and the corruption of the society then, the targeted audience was still men, to make them uneasy. Yet both works still present women in her most typical role: the “to be seen”, the “to be bought”. As a person, her thinking, her feelings do not enter into the equation.
Manet, Olympia, 1863
Gervex, Rolla, 1878
Going back to A Roman Slave Market, here Gérôme not only painted the cruel reality that a woman was being stripped, watched and then sold, but also the woman’s unwillingness to be scanned and traded as an object. Very different from conventional European nudes, here “she” does not like being naked. She is forced into it. She also does not enjoy being watched by men. Nor does she respond to the watching men with a pair of submissive, gratifying eyes. What she does feel are pain and shame, just as any other human being would feel in her position. As for those who have been “downgraded” from the position of “the observer” to “the observed”, Gérôme’s depiction could not be more poignant. Think of those men who have always been so influential in their cultural, political and economical circles. Years and years they stand in front of one after another female nude, examining her, praising her, criticizing her, calculating if it is worthy to buy her… just as those Roman buyers in Gérôme’s painting did. While the women are stripped, these men are nicely and comfortably clothed… just as those Roman buyers were. They may think that they are speaking about art. They do not look as grand under Gérôme’s brush.
The habit of flattering men with female nude is said to have reached its peak within French Academicism in the 19th century. As an authority and also a person who is said to be most defensive of the Academic painting tradition, one finds it strange that Gérôme would challenge such persisting convention, or any painting convention at all! Is it possible that the painter merely wanted to try a different point of view, that such a poignant result was nothing more than a coincidence? Yet, the works of an artist always reflect his or her feelings and intentions. Without compassion to the woman slave, Gérôme could not have captured so incisively the woman’s shame and the male buyers’ ruthlessness. No matter what the painter’s initial intention was, A Roman Slave Market stands out from other European female nudes since in here the woman is no longer a torso recreated basing on and subordinate to male’s sight. She is “a human being”, with a soul, with likes and dislikes. Yet in this painting her role is “a slave”. How ironic can it be?
Perhaps the reason why the shame and the fate of this female slave could reach me more is because I am also a woman. We could say, while the target spectators for most nudes (including male nudes that aim to make men feel how powerful they are, for instance, David and The Creation of Adam) are men, A Roman Slave Market is a nude painting that can seek resonance between women.