The Female Gaze Shocked

Whereas Edouard Manet chose to paint Victorine Meurent in two of his masterpieces in the Louvre: Olympia and Le Dejeuner sur l'Herbe , she is of interest to scholars. For almost thirty years, Cindy Sherman's Untitled Film Stills have been the favored subject of the most sophisticated and influential theoretical readings of art history.While juxtaposing and comparing Manet's painted Meurent and Sherman's Untitled Film Stills, this dissertation observe the female images produced under mass cultures. Through chronological reading of the painted Meurent, the first part of the thesis reviews Manet's real life as well as Meurent's conceivable life. Depending on pertinent literature, each painting is examined for its realistic, symbolic and allegoric meanings.Presenting Sherman's Hallwall development, in the second part of this thesis, Sherman's non-performance practice is discussed along with her ambivalence about both high art and low culture. Demonstrating her lower Manhattan experience working in her home, the face value feminist reading of her work turns to woman's situation with quotidian matters in both private and public arena.In the third part of this thesis, Manet's postmodern allegories and Sherman's modern authorship are proposed in an attempt to obscure the line that divides modern and postmodern works. The final discussion approaches both Manet and Sherman's similar policies which repel their audience via female gazes portrayed in their female images.