The University of Kansas
Spencer Museum of Art
20/21 | Collection | Conversation | Process 20/21 Gallery
Conversation VI: Unbinding the Fetish
- Why are fetishists traditionally cast as male and the fetish feminine?
Tony Fitzpatrick
Keyhold Katie
Keyhold Katie
Salvador Dalí
Ace of Spades
Ace of Spades
James Abbe
untitled
untitled
Manuel Alvarez Bravo
Woman Combing Her Hair
Woman Combing Her Hair
Gordon Parks
Fashion: Long Hair Furs
Fashion: Long Hair Furs
… the fetish is a substitute for the woman’s (the mother’s) penis that the little boy once believed in and … does not want to give up…. [F]or if the woman has been castrated, then his own possession of a penis was in danger…. [Therefore, the fetish object functions as] … a token of triumph over the threat of castration and a protection against it. Sigmund Freud
from “Fetishism,” 1927
… My husband directed his attention and love-making toward my feet, which were the object of his love-making and not myself … It was so bad that I just felt that it wasn’t me at all that he was making love to; that I had nothing to do with it; that it was just my feet. court testimony
excerpted from Louis Nizer, My Life in Court, 1944
In Paris during the 1930s “The [female] body was a site for Surrealist experiment and a conduit for the transmission of ideas. It became the subject of intense scrutiny: dismembered, fragmented, desecrated, eroticized and eulogized in the pursuit of a range of psychological, sociological, and sexual concerns. Ghislaine Wood
from The Surreal Body: Fetish and Fashion, 2007
