SHOW: Nude: Commoditizing Post-Valentine Nudes
VENUE: St Lorient, on Brooklyn Circle
DATES: 26 Feb – 30 March 2011
What is the difference between being naked and being nude? Gazing at the mixture of artworks currently on show at St Lorient the viewer is left to decide for themselves.
Whilst the theme of the show seems clear cut and specific, there is nonetheless a vast difference in the way that the nudes are treated and come across. The human body can convey vastly different content, or no content. A number of the portrayals give no indication of the identity of the model, for instance in the case of headless torsos and depictions of derrieres. One could argue that such bodies are naked: there for the delectation of the viewer and nothing more. The opposite of this phenomenon is the depiction of the unclothed human body as nude (not naked), in such a way as to bring across content. Such content could address the personality, identity, or life experience of the depicted person (or that of the artist), or convey humour (self-deprecating and other) and social commentary.
A number of the works engage on these levels. Works such as “Who is scared of old age” (Fanus Bezuidenhout) and “Self portrait with virus” (Gordon Froud) exemplify the pathos that the perfectly ordinary body can elicit. Works such as Anna- Lynne Marais’s “Immaculate Existence” speak of alienation, from the self and from society, as a crowd of robotic figures, depicted in green and blue hues, mill around in zombie fashion. Erna Bodenstein-Ferreira’s “Female Gaze I” directly confronts the convention of the so-called ‘male gaze’ in art (and in society) where the object (whether it be inanimate or of human kind) being gazed at is visually consumed by the subject (the viewer). André Naudé’s series “The state of the nation (un)dressed I-VI” seems to metaphorically engage the nude: the ordinary citizens depicted in a painterly and bold manner relate in indeterminate ways to an amorphous society, yet assert a sense of self. Lastly, a conceptual approach to the theme of the nude can be seen in Celia de Villiers “Obsession”. These works do not exhaust the examples of engaging works, and there is much more to see, leaving the viewer with enough material to mull over the difference between nakedness and nudity. The show is on until 30 March.
SHOW: Nude: Commoditizing Post-Valentine Nudes
VENUE: St Lorient, on Brooklyn Circle
DATES: 26 Feb – 30 March 2011
What is the difference between being naked and being nude? Gazing at the mixture of artworks currently on show at St Lorient the viewer is left to decide for themselves.
Whilst the theme of the show seems clear cut and specific, there is nonetheless a vast difference in the way that the nudes are treated and come across. The human body can convey vastly different content, or no content. A number of the portrayals give no indication of the identity of the model, for instance in the case of headless torsos and depictions of derrieres. One could argue that such bodies are naked: there for the delectation of the viewer and nothing more. The opposite of this phenomenon is the depiction of the unclothed human body as nude (not naked), in such a way as to bring across content.
Such content could address the personality, identity, or life experience of the depicted person (or that of the artist), or convey humour (self-deprecating and other) and social commentary. A number of the works engage on these levels. Works such as “Who is scared of old age” (Fanus Bezuidenhout) and “Self portrait with virus” (Gordon Froud) exemplify the pathos that the perfectly ordinary body can elicit. Works such as Anna- Lynne Marais’s “Immaculate Existence” speak of alienation, from the self and from society, as a crowd of robotic figures, depicted in green and blue hues, mill around in zombie fashion. Erna Bodenstein-Ferreira’s “Female Gaze I” directly confronts the convention of the so-called ‘male gaze’ in art (and in society) where the object (whether it be inanimate or of human kind) being gazed at is visually consumed by the subject (the viewer). André Naudé’s series “The state of the nation (un)dressed I-VI” seems to metaphorically engage the nude: the ordinary citizens depicted in a painterly and bold manner relate in indeterminate ways to an amorphous society, yet assert a sense of self. Lastly, a conceptual approach to the theme of the nude can be seen in Celia de Villiers “Obsession”.
These works do not exhaust the examples of engaging works, and there is much more to see, leaving the viewer with enough material to mull over the difference between nakedness and nudity. The show is on until 30 March.
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