From what we learnt in the previous lecture we can see there is a very strong consistency in visual language that women have been represented in a certain way in our culture and always have been.
Women are displayed in our culture in a way that sexualises / objectifies them, and unfortunately normalises this.
In terms of objectification, women are considered the sex to be viewed, and men are considered the sex that act/ provide / do.
This idea is derived from, and has survived since the male economic dominance historically. Men being the producers of visual culture historically, and the audience of which they are providing for being predominantly male also, we see an emergence of a male biased ideology of the female form.
This doesn't mean that women were not talented or skilled as artists but were simply socially excluded, historically.
'Birth of Venus' - An arty, classical depiction of a goddess which isn't feasible and unrealistic is therefore not offensive in this sense.
And yet 'Olympia' was viewed as offensive and taboo, although if anything the nudity is more modest. This is because the woman in the image doesn't invite you to view her but meets your gaze with challenging eyes. She is relaxed, unfazed, but not in the way that she is sexually comfortable around you, but in the sense that she is used to the situation - she is a prostitute. This less dreamy, more feasible sense of reality is thought to have made this feel more offensive than that of Venus.
According to art historians, to be naked is to be without clothes and to be nude is an art form. John Berger would disagree with this and says that to be naked is to be yourself but to be a nude is to be exposed and objectified by other's gaze.
