From Presence to Absence: Exploiting Female Sexuality in Visual Culture

Abstract

This chapter focuses upon exploitation of sexuality and sensuality for political and advertising reasons, not only in imagery created between 1908 and 1918 but also as genealogical threads, and includes how viewers’ perceptions of a so-called ideal can be affected. This genealogy considers incorporation within female representations of William Hogarth’s line of beauty. The concept of vanity is investigated, not least in respect of connotations relating to observers’ perceived perspectives. Because aesthetic stylings demonstrate apparent defeminisation of the feminine, particularly in Cubism and Vorticism, deliberate and inadvertent dismissal of women is also explored in this chapter, taking into account how a pictorial absence of the female figure is as important as her presence.