BP #4

“Girl with Apple” by American artist William Glackens is a two-dimensional pastel drawing on wove paper mounted to pulp board measuring eight and one fourth inches by eleven and three fourth inches. I found this representational drawing in the online collection of Brooklyn museum. In the foreground of this drawing, i see a nude girl with blonde hair resting in a languid manner probably on top of her clothes or some sheets on a couch holding an apple with her right hand and covering her genital area with a white piece of clothing using her left hand. There are more apples visible in a bowl beside her on the side-table which is left to the couch. In the back of the side table, it looks like there’s a storage compartment or some other kind of furniture. In the background, i see a wall with vertical patterns on it. The colors used in this drawing are mostly primary colors. The couch and the side-table, the apple she’s holding and a few apples in the bowl are red. The rest of the apples are yellow and green. The furniture and the wall in the background are yellow with blue vertical lines. Her clothing or the sheets on the couch are also yellow and blue. The figure of the girl has a clear outline. This drawing has mostly positive space. The texture of certain objects is implied like the clothing on the couch or the wall. Value is suggested here. I think, the style of representation of the figure is idealized here because the girl is drawn in a perfected kind of posture where she is not showing her genital area. In “Ways of Seeing” John Berger stated, “The woman’s sexual passion needs to be minimized so that the spectator may feel that he has the monopoly of such passion.” Similarly in my selected artwork, the girl’s sexual passion was minimized to appeal to its viewer’s sexuality. The viewer is presumed to be a man here thus her body’s arrangement and direct eye sight towards him.