Once again, and most unexpectedly (or not?), I tripped over two lusciously depicted nudes in a recent New York Times advertisement for a new exhibition at the Gagosian Gallery in New York: Nude From Modigliani to Currin. Strangely, the pensive face of Amadeo Modigliani’s Venus, painted but three short years before his premature death at 35, makes me think of Raphael’s Sistine Madonna, always seeing a shadow of the suffering mother in Her beautiful face. Both Modigliani and Raphael, born centuries apart, died young after enjoying life to its fullest.
With John Currin‘s Nude with Raised Arms, I couldn’t help but to think of Bartholomaus Spranger, a Fleming in the service of Emperor Rudolf II Habsburg, an artist who satisfied his patron’s taste for erotic subjects under the label of “cultural enlightenment.” That is what I call reading Ovid’s Metamorphosis, a bible of colorful tales from the life of ancient gods. Currin’s titillating details of female flesh may even surpass Playboy magazine photos in their tactile mastery, but for what and whom? Unlike Spranger’s paintings, the contemporary work no longer requires the safe label of Venus nor does it demand an imperial patron. Interestingly, the Gagosian Gallery didn’t use either work to accompany its official press release which starts with a quote by Kenneth Clark. Instead, Monique, an abstract composition by Yves Klein, speaks for it.
Monique! What a lovely name for a dismembered blue (female?) body. Clark’s Study in Ideal Form, THE NUDE was an obligatory reading for a student of art. I still have this celebrated art historian’s book quite visible on my book shelves. He begins the treatise on The Naked and the Nude with the following concept:
“The English language, with its elaborate generosity, distinguishes between the naked and the nude. To be naked is to be deprived of our clothes, and the word implies some of the embarrassment most of us feel in that condition. The word “nude,” on the other hand, carries, in educated usage, no comfortable overtone.” We have been duly educated.
In the 1980s, at Princeton, it was easy to study and discuss nudes in painting or sculpture. At that time Spranger’s art was all respectable under Sir Kenneth Clark’s safe label of “nudity” as an acceptable artistic concept. Two years ago, an exhibition of his work, first of its kind in the United States, opened under the title: Splendor and Eroticism in Imperial Prague.
Wow! Thirty years ago, I would have thought twice to give my paper that label. Or perhaps thrice. It simply wouldn’t go.
Today, I felt little scruple doing my own Nude, inspired by Yves Klein‘s composition from his Blue Period, rendered in dry pigment and synthetic resin on paper mounted on canvas. Except, I was more inspired by watching my grandchildren finger-paint on paper, and choosing my favorite orange-yellow colors. Blue in a non-color on my palette! The process was swift, and I had a lot of fun. And my mother wouldn’t have yelled at me to keep my fingers and the table clean! Klein didn’t have to worry about that, I imagine.
I still wonder why Yves’ blue torso composition didn’t announce the Gagosian exhibition in the New York Times advertisement. Is it that because our concept of using beautiful women’s bodies for gain hasn’t changed since the sixteenth century and still follows the same antiquated thoughts denigrating women?
This brings me back to my recent novel on Spranger. Julia Jenkins, a reviewer for Foreword, found Karo’s character of a young Czech student of history perplexing. Jenkins writes: “Her moods change quickly, as she sobs, laughs, then sulks: unexplained, her behaviors feel unconvincing.”
Wow, again! Karo, who still mourns her father’s death and who was sexually assaulted, is also poor. Finally, she reluctantly accepts the proposal of an egotistical, misogynist, wealthy owner of a prominent art auction house to translate, and to deal with some of the strikingly obscene lines of Spranger’s memoir. There is a lot wrong going in her life, including that Pieter Van de Graeff thinks that if he buys Karo an expensive ring, it will make her feel better that he raped her. Yes. Karo sobs and she also laughs. She doesn’t sulk. She’s in shock. Many women today feel so. They are also angry!
This was probably what I wanted to write in the first place…