Shape And Break Out

In the voice of culture turn, the rise of visual culture studies is a rather noteworthy trends. As an important aspect of cultural studies, the phenomena of visual culture are entering our field of vision, causing theoretical reflections and discussion. From logical level, the visual culture is a culture of image, its relative concept is the culture of speech and writing. From a historical level, the visual culture is closely related to social civilization and the evolution of media technology. Entering the field of visual culture, it is not difficult for us to find that watching is a very complex cultural behavior. To carry out the in-depth and detailed classification and analysis of all kinds of watching behavior and to reveal the complex social significance which is inherent in watching behavior is the important issue of the visual culture.In the 21st century which is a closely-watched"she century", the women's social status, living conditions, personal rights, etc. have been greatly improved. Research on women's issues is thereupon springing up. In recent years, various research methods, such as feminist approach, psychoanalysis, iconography etc. have been used to study women's issues, which enriches the research paradigm in this area and opens a new way of thinking. With the rise of popular culture and visual turn, gender perspective inevitably exists in the watching behavior. Watching behavior resulting from the difference of gender perspective must involve complex social meaning. This thesis tries to study from the angle of visual culture, analyze the historical construction of female image as visual experience, interpret the features of the women's survival status in image culture.This thesis total involves four chapters.Chapter one is introduction, which is an overview of the research methods used in this thesis. The main contents include the present situation of the study of visual culture, concept definition, research methods etc. In this chapter the author points out that the study of visual culture is the relationship between the behavior of watching or being watched and watching or being watched. Behind the watching behavior hide the complex power relations. Because the visual culture exists all through the human history, and different times have different performance and characteristics, it is the historical differences and the social and cultural roots which cause historical differences that needs us to think in depth. Through the differences in the evolution of visual culture to find the historical complexity of visual culture, further reflect the contemporaneity of the study of visual culture.Chapter two reviews the characteristics of female image from the patriarchal society in ancient China to the first half of 20th century. It reveals that patriarchal ideology as a hidden, underlying social collective unconsciousness, has influenced all along on the creation of female image, which is characterized by a male-centric binary opposition between watcher and watchee.Regarding the turn of visual culture as the background, chapter three analyzes that in the background of the business context and pictorial turn women as consumed visual fast food and desire symbol constitute visual quality of mass culture which satisfies people's watching desires and"staring thrill". It reflects the masses'aesthetic expectations and value judgments to female image. By comparing the images of female work-peasant-soldier in pictorial with those of cover girl, the chapter highlights the mass media's different value orientations in different periods. While in the narrative of the film, commercial factors and the potential"staring thrill"principle materializes the numerous female images into symbols in the imagination of the director and the audience to meet the public's imagination and expectations as far as possible.Chapter four is the main part of this thesis. In today's era that visual culture prevails, the act of watching itself has been a new way of reading and a method of people showing and constructing themselves. As a kind of expression, painting has made gender politics go to the public communicative space. Female artists first find their own value, confirm their own value, then enter the field of aesthetic culture as a culture mainstay, and finally establish the aesthetic value of female painting. It is a process from breakthrough to reinvention. With the help of their own female images, female artists express this process. And through the visual culture theory the thesis analyzes the female's unique perspective which is behind female's self-watching and the complexity and the dialectical nature in the process of subject construction.