Naked and Very Close, In the Name of Art
On a recent morning in a desanctified church in Manhattan, 24 people were piled together in a naked fetal hug.
On a balcony one story above them was the New York artist Angelo Musco, taking photos of the group for his latest project. Every few minutes, Mr. Musco would stop shooting and shout directions to his three clothed assistants to help move an arm or a leg or to break up the crowd into smaller formations.
The naked mass was made up of actors, dancers, artists, off- duty photographers, a lawyer, a chef, a masseuse, a real estate agent and a professional fire dancer — mostly New Yorkers, many of them naturists (nudists’ preferred term). They got up every 10 minutes or so, chatted as if at a cocktail party, and then lay back down, eyes closed, silently spooning one another while relaxing music played in the background.
There were black bodies, white bodies, one Asian body, tattooed bodies, hairy and smooth bodies and one trans body, skewed three to one toward men. And they were all Mr. Musco’s clay for the day.
Jacqueline Shimmiezz, a 1.9-meter dancer modeling for Mr. Musco for the first time, said she had decided to join in after seeing his work online. “My mouth was just hanging open,” she said. “It’s just so stunning. I just started to tear up.”
Before the shoot began, Ms. Shimmiezz said she was “looking forward to putting myself in a vulnerable place.”
“We’re so used to seeing the naked body in a sexualized way,” she continued, “but here, you see it in a different light. To see it in its natural form is important.”
“I keep thinking, How close am I getting to this person?” she said. “I’m naked. And how comfortable do I feel? Then, every now and then, there’s an odor.” She winced. “But I know this is greater than I am. This is for art. It’s not all about me.”
Mr. Musco’s work is born of personal trauma. Forty-four years ago he was born in Naples, two months late, on his mother’s kitchen table. When the midwife couldn’t get the 6.5- kilogram baby out, an aunt pulled him out, wrenching his right arm and neck. For his whole life, Mr. Musco has had Erb’s palsy and has undergone physical therapy. “I was paralyzed my first few years of life,” he said, “so the body forced its way into my work.”
Many of the models were repeat participants for Mr. Musco, who does his naked shoots about every six months, mostly in New York, but also in Berlin, Buenos Aires, London and Naples. He uses the images to create huge computer-generated works incorporating thousands of bodies like tiny puzzle pieces. It’s not until you get close to a work that you can see it’s made up of interlocking bodies. Some works, like “Hadal” (2009), call to mind Dante’s “Inferno.”
Shoots last around three hours, with breaks. “It’s like doing yoga: You have to hold the pose,” Mr. Musco said.
When it was all over, the crowd applauded. As payment, each model was given a print of a formation from the last shoot, six months ago, in Greenwich Village in Manhattan.
After the shoot, Mr. Musco’s assistant Win Naing would spend several days transferring the photographs to a computer. Mr. Musco would then build his new work, “Aaru,” a black-and-white garden with butterflies, calla lilies, roses and other plants, all made up of human bodies, using 500 to 1,000 photos. He hopes to be finished by the end of the year.
“The part of the shoot I hate the most is when Angelo says: ‘O. K. Thank you, guys. We’re done,’ ” said Alex Matskevich, a Russian computer programmer who has posed eight times for Mr. Musco.
Mr. Matskevich said posing for Mr. Musco was part of his evolution of overcoming his shyness. “I used to not be able to wear a short-sleeve shirt,” he said, standing naked and chatting. “Now look at me.”