A.W. Eaton's feminist aesthetics
BTG issue no. 8
Hello friends and colleagues,
I’d like to share an anecdote about my discovery of Dr. Anne Wescott Eaton (better known as A. W. Eaton) and her work in feminist aesthetics.
It’s quite rare (for me at least) to unearth a philosopher that one could completely relate to. So it came as a surprise when I chanced upon A. W. Eaton one cloudy afternoon in November of 2014 while recalling a painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir entitled “Les Grandes Baigneuses” or “The Large Bathers” (see Fig.1). A counterfeit copy of this painting was hanging above my parents' dining table when I was 5. Ironically, 5-year old me developed a love for art through this painting but only because of the artistry. Decades later, I found myself remembering the work while looking for a topic for a graduate class in feminism. I didn’t know what to write but being an art-enthusiast meant that I wanted to write about art, and this was when I thought of “The Large Bathers.”
Growing up, this painting led me to form the following questions about great works of art that feature the nude:
Why nude women? (why not nude men?)
What is so beautiful about a nude woman that all great artists (including Amorsolo and BenCab) seem to have an oeuvre of nude women? (Aren’t there any nude men?)
Why do these women share similar aesthetic qualities?
Where are the women of color?
Again, where are the men? Aren't nude men beautiful too?
Why are they all painted by male artists? Why not female artists?
There seems to be something wrong with these paintings, but what?
Hoping that I could finally find something that could shed some light on these inquiries, I read up on feminist aesthetics and stumbled upon “What’s Wrong With the Female Nude? A Feminist Perspective on Art and Pornography” (2012) by A. W. Eaton. And that was where it all began. As an Associate Professor in the Philosophy Department of the University of Illinois Chicago, A.W. Eaton has written numerous works on feminist critiques of art and pornography and relationships between aesthetics and moral value. It is needless to say that she became my go-to philosopher, indulging in topics that are a perfect blend of art, philosophy and feminism with a dash of courage. As the title suggests, Eaton argues that there is something wrong with the female nude. To justify this, she provides arguments that delineate the problem of representation and demonstrations of sexual objectification through these works of art. She affirms that in works that paint the subjection of women as sexy and desirable, the female nude is a source of the eroticization and to an extent, the glamorization of female subordination and male domination which makes it a significant contributor to gender and sexual inequality. By building on the work of Martha Nussbaum and Rae Langton, Eaton clarifies how works of art objectify and the implications of her critique in recognizing the relationship between art and pornography.
Apart from “What’s Wrong With the Female Nude? A Feminist Perspective on Art and Pornography," her recent work includes "Taste in Bodies and Fat Oppression" (2016), " 'A Lady on the Street but a Freak in the Bed': On the Distinction between Erotic Art and Pornography" (2018) and "Exploring Beauty and Truth in Worlds of Color: An Introduction to the JAAC Special Issue on Race and Aesthetics" (2019).
Should you be curious or if you would like to know more about my encounter with Eaton's work, I will be talking more about her in the 3rd Beyond the Ghetto webinar on Saturday, 24th of April at 5 PM.
I, along with Dr. Jean Tan of the Ateneo de Manila University, shall be discussing works by Iris Murdoch and A.W. Eaton at the intersection of ethics and aesthetics.
See you there!
Sincerely,
Taz Albano
Department of Philosophy
Ateneo de Manila University