Art in Ed

Is nude rude?

Just before Christmas I treated myself to a beautiful book Reclining Nude by Lidia Guibert Ferrara which has large colour pics of reclining nudes from 1844 to 2002.

I particularly loved the painting Bacchante by Andre Lhote and while on holiday decided to explore skin textures by creating a pastel copy of it. I have realised that there is nothing like copying another work to begin to get inside it. it is not something I normally do. I began to realise how different this reclining nude was to many of the others. She wasn't so much posed for an artist in an attractive position, but seemed to be natural and for herself. It brought back memories of my research into the nude in art and feminist art back in 2002 and the objectification of women.

John Berger from Ways of Seeing says:

To be naked is to be oneself. To be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognized for oneself. A naked body has to be seen as an object in order to become a nude.

Nakedness reveals itself. Nudity is on display.

I felt that in this painting the woman was revealing herself rather than on display, unlike many of the other nudes in the book.

I then got into the pose... and please try it... not an easy one to relax in... you should feel extension through the waist and disequilibrium around the hips. There is something wonderful about the earthiness of the toes bent around the knee. As I lay in this pose I felt connected with this woman in the picture. Am I also a work of art? In this pose I am myself, yet connected through history with so many women also who have inadvertently taken this position. Does this pose reveal me as it reveals to me what being a woman is?

Does this mean for every physical position we take there is a greater memory connecting us to our species, or even other species? Hmmm. Are pictures of women in art immortalising for us this physical reality of being. Do we need them to see ourselves?

Anyway, I could feel a sculpture coming along....

posted by Sue Stack @ 3:45 PM