Nature of a Gleam
The Nature of a Gleam
A review on Nude: Art from the Tate Collection, at the Art Gallery of NSW
Article published in Tharunka: "Explore", February 2017
Beautiful, classic, draped and alone. This how we have historical seen the bare human body portrayed in art. Poetically called the nude, art has often romanticised nakedness and renders the raw figure as a smooth picturesque figure of marble, iron or paint. Currently, the Art Gallery of NSW is hosting art from the Tate collection and displaying them as the summer blockbuster: Nude: Art from the Tate Collection, where audiences of every age come together to witness the body in its beauty, in its rawness and at it’s most frank. Highlighting both the human body as a medium within classical art and then how the nude transformed in modern art, through to the contemporary.
Pre-technology years saw the human body as the ultimate piece of machinery: a body was a tool. As an athlete; a depiction of the Gods in which to inspire motivation in man; slavery and in turn prostitution. Taking the form of the person and manipulating the essence, into art pieces like Teucer, 1881 by Sir Hamo Thornycroft or Herbert Drape’sThe Lament for Lcarus, 1898. Hailing the body as the one pure object, which follows the extension of its purpose. There is no misjudging the connotations of the strength within the male form in the early examples of art displayed at the AGNSW and these contrast the delicate imagery depicted in female forms.
The AGNSW delivers what it promised on the box- an exhibition filled with nudes from an impressive artist list. They categorise each room, in order: the historical nude; the private nude; the modern nude; real and surreal bodies; paint as flesh; the erotic nude; the vulnerable body; and body politics. Yet, as you enter each room you can’t escape the environment of the gallery and little room has been given to contemplate the depth of each artwork, even though you may be peering into the most guarded places of the human anatomy. The lighting is too continuous and the hanging sits too comfortably at eye level. It’s a struggle to hold each works attention, as you pass each artwork you could easily forget the monumental impact that each artwork singularly generates.
This was a struggle from the beginning as I first spotted Lord Leighton Frederic’s romanticised imagery of his lover and muse in The bath of Psyche first exhibited in 1890. The strength of the gaze the model portrays whilst bathing in the reflection of herself is at competition with the Thornycroft sculpture, in which even the shadows in the room are dominating. The comparison of the vulnerability of the innocent biblical female form contrasts the celebration of the male body. However, the desire and objectivity of the naked body pulls interest from different viewpoints and thus completes the exhibition as a unique viewing for each difference audience member.
In the private nude room, the nude is conveyed through muted tones, each painting is inviting you to a private moment of time between the artist and their model. As Walter Sickert is quoted saying: “perhaps the chief source of pleasure in the aspect of a nude is that it is in the nature of gleam- a gleam of light and warmth and life.” Sickert embodies this within La Hollandaise, 1906, the soft edges of his female model is highlighted. The curve of her naked body isn’t draped in anything other than paint. The body is displayed for truth, Sickert paints the grungy reality of the urban underclass and though this the honesty of the body.
After the advancement of technology the imagery in paintings changed. At first, the shift to futurism is displayed in the AGNSW’s the modern room where bodies are abstracted and the exploration of self and identity is questioned. The value of the body when the machinery can do it for you renders it into a figure to be explored. Pablo Picasso’s figure in the Seated Nude (Femme nue assise), 1909-10, is a pure example of the abstraction process the body turns into as it takes a mechanistic form. The beauty of the body is captured in Alexander Archipenko’s Women Combing her Hair, 1915 whilst being transformed into the classic modernist sculpture- curved lines, bronze, and the mundane task of hair combing rendered into a disfiguration of her body.
After time periods have been explored at The Nude on lower level 1 in the AGNSW, we switch to subjects of opinion. What is described as ‘the real and surreal bodies’, could quite easily flow along with ‘the erotic nude’ and ‘painting as flesh’ rooms. Subjectivity is asseverated into these categories of the nude, as what one may consider as flesh, another erotic and then the surreal being of a person captured in a painting. No painting better fits into these three categories of the nude than Double Nude Painting: the artist and his second wife, 1937, from Sir Stanley Spencer, arguably the painting came before it’s time. Better fitting to the era of the 70s where the politics of the male body was opened to discussion. Spencer depicts himself within his painting, his skin painted somewhat transparently, his body open for absorbing by the viewer as he looks glumly down at his second wife, while she ignores his gaze. Her body is open for viewing, yet her defiant gaze makes this painting feel like a feminist piece, the strength of her legs, powerfully open for the viewer to explore the curves of her bones and the skin taut with her stretch.
The blockbuster room of the exhibition holds The Kiss (Le Baiser), 1901-4, from Auguste Rodin. The three tonne, Pentelikon marble sculpture holds centre stage within the erotic room as the couple engage each others attention and desire, their smooth bodies contrasting the roughly carved rock on which they sit. The weight of the statue embodies the realness of the flesh within a real relationship and the nude’s placement within that. However, this tasteful rendition of desire – a kiss, not an orgasm is amplified into the rawness of a real relationship through the personal intimate drawings and paintings by Joesph Mallord William Turner; Pablo Picasso; David Hockney and Louise Bourgeois which surround the sculpture. The nude is now a repetition of desire and the sin and the challenge desire poses both politically and personally, as Bourgeois says the nude takes us “deep into the drama.”
The exhibition takes us through the nudes of artists who are well known to use their art to create conflicting ideas of identity and to create disruption to the societies point of view. For me, this is where the power of the exhibition stands, from Barkley L Hendricks powerful gaze in Family Jules: NNN (No Naked Niggahs), 1974. Hendricks paints George Jules Taylor eyeing up the audience in a manner of curiosity and open stance inviting the audience to take his figure in. From Mr Taylor’s black, lean body with its soft lines and flattering light; sat reclining on his plush, white settee, we face the dominating glare of Jo Spence’s Remodelling Photo History: Colonization series, 1981-82. Spence stands her ground defending her domestic setting; the bottles of milk ready by the door for the families breakfast, her woman figure not hidden but paraded. Nothing to be shy of. The rest of the room has stellar pieces with the politically charged Guerilla Girls; David Wojnarowicz’s haunted figures; John Coplans’ naked, 60-year-old body; Sarah Lucas’s incredible NUD CYCLADIC series, 2010, whereby she completely disrupts the male gaze and offers a solutions to the absurdity of objectifying women’s bodies (and continues this into Chicken Knickers, 1997).
In the final room, the arrangement in the little room is made even more claustrophobic by the huge work by Ron Mueck: Wild Man, 2005. This piece sits at almost three metres high and amplifies every anxiety a person may have about appearing not only in front of a large crowd but also appearing naked. The detail in this piece demanded everyone’s attention in the room and had the audience awkwardly looking around, the anxieties transferring onto ourselves. Connecting the artist's renditions of the nude to our personal reflections is finished for me at Rineke Dijkstra’s post-birth series of photographs, 1994. The exhibition displays three photos of Julie- an hour after giving birth; Tecla- one day; and Saskia- one week. The women look out with mixed emotions of pride, tiredness, disbelief, and through this the vulnerability. The duo of a newborn and the rawness of a post-birth body show the two stances with the nude. Innocent and then as seen through social media censorship laws, something to be covered up. Tecla’s minute stream of blood that trickles down her leg- as natural as the baby- yet something that poses a state of shock for so many people.
The newborn’s nude is so fresh and unexposed it’s impossible for it to be corrupted with the connotations that a grown nude faces. The nude poses a range of complication that contrast to overwhelming feelings of joy of a newborn. We fight laws of censorship and our own personal inhibitions and the conflicting ideas of the ‘perfect’ body. At least the exhibition allows us to be still and free without public opinion as we explore the show and under our clothes- allows the body to be nude in all its nakedness.
