Mary Kelly: Deconstructing the subject of male desires into objectified female image.

• Main Authors: Su,Fangjung, 蘇芳瑢
• Other Authors: Hung, Sunshine
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2006
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/28967541003760676568

碩士 === 國立高雄師範大學 === 美術系碩士班 === 94 === Abstract By looking into Kelly’s works that are "absence of female images," this study was aimed at analyzing how the artist made use of her art to deconstruct the socially predetermined femininity, to present the socially constructed sexual differences, and to think about the female’s own problems concerning sexual role identity and ways of presenting their own body images. The works known as "absence of female images" for this study include the Post-Partum Document, the Interim, and the Gloria Patri." Each of them referred respectively to the "mother-son unity," "presence of aging process," and "historical change in male identity." In these works, Kelly appropriates some feminists accounts of psychoanalysis, and creates the a symbolic system of representation, to stop the female images to "be watched" and " be fetishized" by the male spectators, and avoid a sense of having been gazed for the female spectators. Three features are found as the main characters of Kelly’s works, inxlusing: the favorite use of symbols which combine word-image in art practice of conceptual art; the integrate formal character of minimal sculpture in her installation, and the highly intellectual formal representations, in formed by feminists psychoanalysis. In the process of this study, this author finds some useful strategies for viewing her own social phenomena: 1. If human beings were trying to explore the vast universe only by means of vision, they would fail to get a whole understanding. Therefore, if they want to understand wholly the truth behind an universal event, they must open and link other good senses of the females. And then they will experience the true life in the world. 2. In order to understanding how unfairly the labor in the family is divided, Kelly involved herself in a practical experience of the maternity and housework. It enables her to present vividly the scene of housework and mother-son relationship in a real cultural context, and describe the female’s own way of progress and self-exploring. 3. In the process of this thesis, the author incidentally compares Kelly's works with some other Feminists artists' ones, and finds in the formers some specific viewpoints concerning the social cultures. Then, she takes them as the standpoint for viewing the phenomena in her own society. As time goes by, there is something changing in the her mind. And this makes the spectator run out of every wall to see everything wider and clearer. At the end of Kelly’s psychoanalysis, spectator realizes that analysis doesn’t have the answer, because there is an undescribable feeling has satisfied their desire and frees us from the fruitless quest. The end is not only the end. Maybe, there is an unlimited hope and possibility, which gives a kind of endless power.