Kate Moss Body Armour Analysis

The next photograph I was intrigued by was of the model Kate Moss in a “body armour” made by Allen Jones (Fig.2). Jones is one of the most famous British artists of the last century with his controversial artwork. He was first known for his paintings but most of his fame came from sculptures. By looking at his work it is easy to tell that he is obsessed with the female body/figure, it seems as if it is his fetish. I came across Jones’ work a long time ago and since then I have never forgotten it, especially his sculpture of a table but created with a woman’s body, mostly the work in which he shows female and her body as objects in his artwork is quite shocking. The photograph of Kate Moss in ‘Body Armour’ as it is not as shocking as his other

The project is about surreal abstractions of mainstream notions of feminine beauty. “By blurring subject, object and environment together we wished to explore our conflicted relationship to femininity and its passive associations”. (http://www.pruestent.com/3100381-loose-allure.). From the whole project, the photograph of female body in water covered by pink detailed sculpture of female’s body, which looks similar to ‘Body Armour’ by Jones, it got my attention the most as it is quite interesting to look at similar artworks by different artist and by different gaze. The photograph by Stent & Long looks much more calm and natural whereas, as I mentioned before Kate Moss in ‘Body Armour’ looks stiff and uncomfortable, which is less pleasant to look at when comparing both. The ‘Body Armour’ gives the impression that the whole idea was created to please the ‘male gaze’, especially looking at what has been detailed the most on it and the fact that it is not a realistic recreation of a female’s upper half of the body. However, the photograph by Stent & Long is more delicate, even just looking at the background and surrounding and mainly the colours as everything blends so well together. Also, the fact that you are able to see the hair on the model’s legs shows that it is more about the ‘female gaze’, as a photograph for the ‘male gaze’ would not show that as it is not as attractive in a male’s eyes. “We are not seeking to deny these feminine associations but rather question their cultural classification within a system of reductive binaries.”