ART & ARCHITECTURE INTERVIEWS for FIVE BOOKS, ESSAYS, FIELD NOTES

INTERVIEW | In Conversation with Annebella Pollen| 18.04.22

Understanding the Nude

Nudity is not the same as the nude. Nor is nudity the same as nudism, but they tend to overlap in people's minds. Annebella Pollen, an authority on the many varied forms of British nudism in the twentieth century–and an erstwhile model and muse herself–shares key influences on her own research. She helps us unpack (or undress?) the idea of nudity in western culture, showing the many ways in which nakedness can be a form of dress. Very revealing.

WHAT’S CAUGHT MY EYE & CROSSED MY SCREEN

Drawing the Human Body

We are embodied creatures. From the earliest self-representation of cave paintings to the present day, visual culture has revolved around the figurative, representations referring to the material world, and particularly to the human figure. On until July 10th, an exhibition at the Getty explores depictions of anatomy from the Renaissance to today. Anatomy is the cross-over point between scientific and artistic approaches to understanding the human figure. The images on display are instructive as well as visually arresting. They evoke all sorts of wonder and curiosity about the human body. And they presage many of the ways technology in the twenty-first century visualizes bodies, inside and out.

Subject of Her Own Gaze

“Despite the immense hurdles that have been placed in her way, she sits at her easel, picks up a mirror and paints a self-portrait because, as a subject, she is always available” writes Jennifer Higgie in The Mirror and the Palette, weaving history and biography into a celebration of women who made themselves the subject of their own gaze. Right up to our present day, art history has been mostly written by white men admiring or analysing the work of other white men. Often, the subject matter of the work has been the bodies of women. “Men act, women appear”, John Berger famously wrote. Perhaps no wonder then that western culture seems obsessed with the artist/model relationship, portrayed in countless movies and plotlines as the site of intrigue. Whatever the details, almost certainly it has been one-sided.

Self-portraits by women then become a particularly interesting art-historical counterfoil. Take the work of Francesca Woodman, who makes herself the subject of her own gaze in her stunning photography, so ancient and contemporary in feel, all at once. Visions of the body in space, both subject and object, playful and dead serious at the same time.

Some of her images have been shown publicly for the first time only recently. In the enigmatic, theatrical images taken Florence’s La Specola, a museum of eighteenth century anatomical waxworks and taxidermy, Woodman shows herself in white above and below the large-glass display cases of the museum, alongside wax models with interior anatomy, their innards exposed. In these works, her blurred body and its whiteness cast art history and architecture into stark relief.

‘Subverting the male gaze’ may have become something of a cliché, but the best figurative work poses fascinating questions about what it is to gaze. It makes the viewer aware of the ways in which they are implicated when engaging with figurative work. “When looking at figurative painting,” writes painter Jenna Gribbon in her master’s thesis, “every viewer assumes a voyeuristic position. Much of the pleasure of encountering the human form in paint derives from the access granted by the artist to their subject.” I am male, and I paint. As a result, I do a lot of gazing. Am I to avert my eyes? Some of the most spellbinding looking for me has been to follow the gaze of women artists and consider where their eyes linger and why.

Undressing Dress

If nudity is a form of dress, what about actual dress?

Architects wear black. This seems to be a given, and has been addressed in the literature about the profession. Similar quantities of ink have been spilled on the subject of artists’ studios. Only recently, however, do we have an assessment of how and why artists dress as they do. In What Artists Wear, style luminary Charlie Porter gives us a written catwalk of outfits worn by artists, in the studio, on stage, at work, at home and at play.

There are iconic looks that will be familiar to even casual observers: Andy Warhol’s signature denim, Yayoi Kusama’s polka dots. And there are the more subtle style signifiers like Georgia O’Keefe’s prairie minimalism or Yves Klein’s impeccable tailoring. “Part love letter, part guide to chic, and featuring generous photographic spreads, What Artists Wear is both a manual and a manifesto, a radical, gleeful, inspiration to see the world anew-and find greater pleasure and possibility in the clothes we all wear…. Most of us live our lives in our clothes without realizing their power. But in the hands of artists, garments reveal themselves. They are pure tools of expression, storytelling, resistance and creativity.”

Embodied Color

One of the many things I love about painting is the materiality. A painting is an assemblage of materials that you can engage with physically, in a way that you will never be able to engage with an NFT. Arguably inseparable from the story of art is the story of the development of artistic color, from the surprisingly sophisticated scientific capabilities of the ancient Egyptians–who created such pigments as Egyptian blue (from limestone, copper, and sand) and pale yellow (from lead oxide and chemically transformed minerals)–to the secret alchemical color recipes of the Middle Ages, the advent of oil painting in the Renaissance, the rise of the chemical industry, the birth of photography, and the dawn of the digital age. The colors made available to artists may play a far greater role in their choices than is often recognized, argues Philip Ball, the author of Bright Earth: Art and the Invention of Color, in his look at the intersection of art, science, and creativity.

Useless Bodies

“Our bodies are no longer the main agents of our existence”. Elmgreen & Dragset, in a show that’s on until 22nd August, consider the body in our post-industrial age. Culturally, the physical presence of our bodies is losing its centrality or even becoming completely superfluous. “They don’t generate value in our societies’ advanced production methods as they did in the industrial era…. In the 19th century, the body was the producer of daily goods, whereas, in the 20th century, the body’s role became more that of the consumer. Twenty years into the 21st century the status of the body is now that of the product – with our data gathered and sold by Big Tech. With the publicly available knowledge surrounding the harvesting of data from tech companies being so inane, and the rapidly accelerating rate at which such companies are expanding into every aspect of our lives, it does sometimes feel a little scary to think about our bodies’ future role.” Perhaps the singularity is indeed nigh? For my part, I opt for multiplicity over singularity. Even if that means consigning myself and my body, in all its animal unruliness, to a useless existence. Usefulness is overrated.

Thank you for taking the time to read this issue - Romas Tauras