"Perverse Space"

based on the essay "Perverse Space" by Victor Burgin, in the book, Sexuality and Space

The essay, “Perverse Space” begins by discussing the photograph by Helmut Newton called, Self-portrait with wife June and models, shown here. The importance of this photograph is two-fold. First it allows Burgin to critique how modern critics speak of the “objectification” of this photo whereas in the past it was only the casual “masculine gaze” that was important. The shift from a mild gaze to intense objectification has led to censorship and exclusion (i.e. political correctness) in contemporary society. Secondly, the author brings up this piece of art to segway into the discussion of denotation vs. connotation. Denotation is the explicit or direct meaning of something. In this photo we see the female nude figure, both from the front and back, the photographer, a clothed female figure sitting on the right, etc. Connotation is the underlying meaning behind the things you immediately see. For example, the clothes on the floor implies that the female undressed hurriedly suggesting a feeling of being naked (as opposed to nude) and thus making the image about not the figure as form, but as something much deeper. Denoting can be done by anyone. It’s a matter of pointing out what is going on around you. Connoting takes intelligence and knowledge. This is where photographing nudes becomes a problem. To some (and often way too many), they see a naked woman or man and are “offended” by the stark nudity. They don’t get beyond this. For the intellectual the first question should be “why is this figure nude and what does it signify?”

Buildings work on a connotation/denotation level as well. Far to often though a building is designed by the unintelligent. These people don’t see what they are doing as a way to implicating something much deeper. Connotation is a way to reference history, society, contemporary thought and so much more, but all this is lost when you only think of a window as something you pick out of an Anderson or Pella catalog.

What do you gain from objectifying a building?

Can a building support a connotation on level of an inside joke, with an apparent second meaning (similar to someone like Georgia O’Keefe)?