'Choose from this book an image of traditional nude. Transform the woman into a man. Either in your mind's eye or drawing on the reproduction. Then notice the violence which that transformation does. Not to the image, but to the assumptions of a likely viewer.'
John Berger, Ways of Seeing, p64
Although, I 'm a skeptic myself, I can't fully see this 'revolutionary' transformation on these paintings. Yes, man is somewhat very similar to woman when it comes to their depiction but is this bad? In my opinion instead of differentiating the two species the painters, in these cases Titian and Tintoreto, have portrayed how man and woman closely resemble one another and how in their similarity they can be seen as equal. To be more specific the body is the one that shares the most resemblance and according to Simon De Beauvoir and her book The Second Sex '(...) if the body is not a thing, it is a situation, as viewed in the perspective I am adopting – that of Heidegger, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty: it is the instrument of our grasp upon the world (...)' p66 In these two paintings woman can be a man but the context in which the bodies are placed suggests a world solely of female existence. Hence, the experiment could be triggering more questions than Berger originally thought it would. Is this style of painting a way for men to be depicted as women and therefore the painters or the owners face their vanity in it, or is it a tool for portraying equality through the perpetual share of interests and erotism between the two sexes at the time. Whatever it is the experiment can be seen as successful. It is more and more clear to me as I gaze at the two animated paintings that the two women could easily resemble men.
