101 positions: The role women play in erotic art

101 positions: The role women play in erotic art

Deploying a feminist methodology through a mixed methods approach, this dissertation will engage the topic of The Role Women Play in Erotic Art. The role women have been assigned historically has been one of a passive object rather than an active subject. Closely aligned with this imposed passivity has been the role that women have played in art in general and in the production of erotic art in particular. The thesis critically examines both the practice of women erotic artists, and the psychoanalytic theory that proposes women’s sexuality is passive. First the thesis presents the problems experienced by several important artists who have been either omitted from art history or assigned the role of muse retrospectively. It will then offer a solution to counter the psychological and other approaches of muting the voices of those other than the white cisgender-heterosexual male artist. To counter a Lacanian narrative and the broader cultural narrative supporting its assumptions, the dissertation will introduce a ‘ReFormulae of Sexuation’ as it were; offering a new language to engage women’s erotic art. Deployment of this ‘ReFormulae,’ alongside a critical review of historical and contemporary examples of art will declare women’s jouissance and introduce the term Omega to better recognize and acknowledge women's erotic art. This designation will identify women erotic artists and make it more difficult to dismiss their work as mere pornography, something often experienced by women artists who produce erotic works.

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