Exhibitions
Huon Mallalieu
I cannot decide whether this exhibition would have been better digested before, rather than after, the carnal indulgence of Christmas, and there is no telling how vegans might react to it. It deals with the human form, but as meat, along with animals, alive, dead and decomposing, as presented in six centuries of art, ranging from ‘The Virgin and St John with the Dead Christ’ by the mid-14th century Master of the San Lucchese Altarpiece to the 2010 ‘NUD 4’ by Sarah Lucas, the Queen of Pun Art, and Berlinde de Bruyckere’s 2011 ‘Romeu my deer’.
This exhibition is a demonstration to curators that mixed-period art shows can be coherent surveys rather than Old Masters accompanied by a few contemporary works to give them ‘relevance’, or, conversely, a few Old Masters shamefacedly included to give contemporary work some sort of depth. In the words of the senior curator, Laura Turner: ‘This exhibition brings together some of the biggest names in art as well as exciting emerging artists who all interpret flesh in different ways ... Flesh presents a series of visual encounters which surprise and challenge, raising questions about the body and ageing, race and gender, touch and texture and surface and skin.’
Those big names demonstrate the seriousness of the endeavour and the variety of approaches: Rubens, Circle of Rembrandt, Snyders, Chardin, Degas, Rodin, Bacon, Freud, Nauman. There is also due space given to York’s own William Etty, the master of Victorian flesh-painting.
Now that the philistine threat to dispense with art history as an A-level subject has been seen off, it is good to be reminded that some contemporaries are aware of their roots. Ron Mueck’s Youth is a hyper-realist figure of a boy who may have been the victim of a gang stabbing, showing his wound in the pose of Christ rebuking St Thomas.
The motto of the show might be Bacon’s: ‘Flesh and meat are life! If I paint red meat as I paint bodies it is just because I find it very beautiful.’ www.yorkmuseumstrust.org.uk