The painting Blue Boy (1770)

artistic citationism and the visual construction of masculinities

Abstract

The objective of this article is to highlight the pedagogical aspect of visual culture with regard to the construction of genders, especially masculinities. To develop it, a reflection was made about the disputes between gender, education, art and visual culture, highlighting how temporary and unstable the meanings arising from this process are. Epistemologically, the text was based on Visual Culture Studies and, structurally, it was organized into two moments. In the first of them, processes are presented through which the construction of subjects' gender operates, with an emphasis on masculinities, drawing attention to the artifacts of visual culture that are used for this purpose. It then looks in more depth at a specific artifact: the painting Blue Boy (1770), made by the English artist Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788). It also reflects on the artistic citationisms that were made to painting. The analyzes indicate that the visual associations that are established for each gender (such as colors, poses, clothes and accessories specific to masculinities and femininities) are neither spontaneous nor fixed. It is therefore concluded that the uses of visual culture in association with masculinities and femininities are crossed by power relations between groups that compete for meanings and that provide maintenance or resistance to the hegemonic ways in which genders have been constructed.