Following my recent post that featured Laura Mulvey’s take on Allen Jones’s work. I wanted to look at and discuss pieces of his work in relation to my work.
Allen Jones’s work revolves almost completely around the fetish and a stereotypical image of what a fetishist wears and uses.
From the reading of Freud’s Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. The outfits that Jones paints and sculpts onto his women show distinct sadomasochist traits.
“violent attitude to the sexual object’
‘the humiliation and maltreatment of the object’
if we look at the furniture series – a group of three sculptures of women dressed in s&m outfits and posed as a table, chair and hat stand.
these show the sadomasochism traits that I pulled from Freud’s three essays. Violent attitude to the sexual object – trussing and constricting these women in tight fitting pvc and leather clothes and the humiliation and maltreatment of the object – making these woman stand and behave as inanimate household objects.
If we consult Mulvey’s theory on the fear of castration we can see that Jones’s depiction of these women shows Third: woman as phallus. Women are displayed for men as figures in an amazing masquerade, which expresses a strange male underworld of fear and desire.
Suggesting then that Allen Jones’s subconscious was aware of the threat of castration women pose.
