After reading and watching excerpts of John Berger’s Ways of Seeing, what do you think of these images? This painting by Edouard Manet is now considered a classic.
Renee Cox, "Olympia's Boyz" (2001)
September 5, 2017
What do you see?
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msami2776
September 8, 2017 — 9:36 pm
In “Olympia’s Boyz”, the two boys seem like the lady’s bodyguards. Since we are in modern times, I guess the boys could also be her sons which is different from the first picture. I noticed in “Olympia’s Boyz” the two boys aren’t offering anything or looking for their mom’s attention. I could imagine if somebody tries to hurt her, the boys would go like, “Yo, you gotta get through us before you get to her.”
vickilau
September 12, 2017 — 10:59 am
After the discussion in class, I saw more things that I initially saw – from my classmates’ perspective. I saw the way the gazes interacted with each other, and I also saw the historical context of the painting. In the 19th century, chokers were a sign of prostitution and it was a small detail I had originally missed until it was mentioned that the lady in the picture was a prostitute.
In Olympia’s Boyz, I feel the same discomfort I initially felt when I looked at Manet’s Olympia; in this case, I wasn’t uncomfortable by the lady’s nudity – rather I felt uncomfortable because of the children in the presence of a naked lady.
Elaine Pun
September 12, 2017 — 11:03 am
You can definitely see a similarity between Edouard Manet’s “Olympia” and Renee Cox’s “Olympia’s Boyz”. The positioning and overall display is strikingly the same, however, there are some differences in that there is a slave catering to Olympia in Manet’s painting, but with Cox’s more modern and photographic take, she has two young boys next to the woman and they don’t seem like slaves at all. In fact, they are colorfully dressed and have head accessories as well as weapons.
There’s a lot more open ended questions as to why they are there and what their purpose is. Are they there to protect? What is their relationship with the woman lying down? Is this version a twist and rather something about women and their specific culture?