SEPTEMBER 20 - NOVEMBER 19,
2016
Kenneth Clark
“Nude: From Modigliani to
Currin” presents depictions of the human body from the eve of modernism to the
present day. From Paul Cézanne’s Baigneurs (c. 1890–95) and Baigneurs Debout (1876),
and Edvard Munch’s harrowing Madonna (1895–97) to Charles Ray’s Young Man
(2012), this exhibition considers the nude as an infinitely suggestive material
and form.
With the rise of
modernism—exemplified here by works including Pablo Picasso’s Nue endormie
(1932) and Amedeo Modigliani’s Nue couché aux bras levés (1916)—representations
of the human body moved away from the idealized and romantic towards
fragmented, erotic distortions that reflected shifting ideas about human
psychology and perception. Marcel Duchamp’s iconoclastic Nude Descending a
Staircase (1912), represented here by a color pochoir from 1937, offers a
refracted view of a body in dynamic motion, relating to the Cubist isolation of
body parts into signs and symbols to be assembled and disassembled at will. In
Alberto Giacometti’s Figure moyenne II (1947), the existential anxiety of the
postwar era coalesces in an emaciated figure in cast bronze, the very
embodiment of human fragility.
In René Magritte’s
Surrealist tableaux such as L’embellie (The Break in the Clouds) (1942) and
Clairvoyance (1965), the body is a motif like any other, detached from its
traditional associations and transposed into a world of cryptic subconscious;
while in Yves Klein’s performative Anthropometries, such as Monique (ANT 59)
(1960), the naked female body is covered in paint and pressed directly against
canvas to produce a direct impression, rather than being a mediated, scopic
view. The dynamism of Francis Bacon's Two Figures on a Couch (1967) lies in its
abandonment of the classical human form, as well as its sustained investigation
of movement captured, with limbs blending into torqued masses of flesh.
In the second half of the
twentieth century, Pop art dramatically reconfigured aesthetic approaches to the
nude. As exemplified in the work of Andy Warhol, Tom Wesselmann, and Roy
Lichtenstein, artists began to glean imagery from glossy magazines and the
graphic arts. Warhol’s Walking Torso (1977) forgoes centuries of traditional
practice for commercial silkscreen processes in order to repeat images
mechanically, introducing incremental shifts that evoke cinematic sequencing.
In David Hockney’s The Room Tarzana (1967), dramatic tension is built where
graphic blues and greens make up a flat, static image of a bare-bottomed boy
lying face-down on a bed in a brightly lit room.
With Lucian Freud’s Night
Portrait (1977–78) and Jenny Saville’s Trace (1993–94), the dense tactility of
oil paint effects the sensation of flesh, together with its enigmas, troubles,
and desires. Willem de Kooning’s Untitled (c. 1966) is a typically
expressionist homage to the abundance and sensuality of the female body. These
corporeal qualities link contemporary painters to the innovations of their
Renaissance forebears. While Jeff Koons’s porcelain sculpture Naked (1988)
depicts a cloyingly precious moment between a young boy and girl—a gift-shop
Adam and Eve—John Currin’s Nude with Raised Arms (1998) contains echoes of
contorted Mannerist bodies, inflected with a newly sardonic eroticism.
The persistent impulse to
depict the human body is present at every juncture in art history. In
Gagosian’s ongoing series of diverse and engaging group shows, such as “Go
Figure” (2009), “Crash” (2010), “The Show is Over” (2013), and “In the Studio”
(2015), “Nude: From Modigliani to Currin” is a lively and varied exploration,
from the late nineteenth century into the present, of the limitless ways in
which the human body is both the subject and means of artistic endeavor.
http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/nude--september-20-2016
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