Sneak Peek: Voyeurism in Art

Artistic depictions of voyeurism were already prominent in paintings since the Renaissance, for example in portrayals of Venus sleeping in a meadow, lying in bed or bathing, as well as in illustrations of the tale of Susanna and the Elders. These images were designed mainly to offer a classic portrayal of the nude feminine body. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries voyeuristic images shifted. Edgar Degas depicted women of low class engaged in various activities, such as bathing, seen from behind a curtain or through a keyhole.

These are voyeuristic descriptions, invading women's private space. With the publication of Freud's writings at the beginning of the twentieth century, the word Scopophilia was established to denote the "pleasure of looking". The major artistic engagement with this term began to take form in the works of Dadaists and surrealists such as Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Georges Hugnet, Georges Grosz, and Hans Bellmer, as well as in film, for example in Alfred Hitchcock film, Rear Window.

The exhibition's works examine art's ability to disturb our peace, to introduce minor (or major) discomfort into our lives, and to force us to reexamine our ethics. The viewers are invited to peek, as well as to view the images from the outside, while contemplating our perhaps problematic moral gratifications.

Participatng artists: Gail Albert Halaban, Marcel Duchamp, George Grosz, Moshe Hoffman, Georges Hugnet, Marcel Jean, Torii Kiyonaga, Isoda Koryusai, Jakob Wilhelm Mechau, Susan Meiselas, Moritz Daniel Oppenheim, Lucas Samaras, Cornelis Schut, Philippe Starck, Angela Strassheim, Arne Svenson, Utagawa Toyokuni, Kitagawa Utamaro, Garry Winogrand