THE BEAUTY OF THE FIGURE By John O’Hern
33 Contemporary presents The Art of the Nude, a new exhibition focusing on the human form.
The heroic male nude in art comes from a period when women were objects and men—who were in charge—were not. The female as object and subject was the norm. Today the broad spectrum of masculine/feminine occurs in art, challenging the “norm.” The male nude may still make males uncomfortable—unused as they are to being object—but artists are continuing to challenge those stereotypes as well as what it means to be of either gender. Artists are also working to break down the puritanical response to the nude in general.
The radical reformer Emma Goldman wrote, “I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody’s right to beautiful, radiant things.” In The Hypocrisy of American Puritanism, she quotes none other than the sculptor of four presidents on Mount Rushmore, Gutzon Borglum. He wrote, “Puritanism has made us self-centered and hypocritical for so long, that sincerity and reverence for what is natural in our impulses have been fairly bred out of us, with the result that there can be neither truth nor individuality in our art.”
Alessandro Tomassetti, a Canadian painter now living in Barcelona, challenges stereotypes within one gender, painting what he calls “the beardos, surfers, slicksters, femmes, machos, dandies and neo-hippies that populate social media.” He says, “Around the time I started painting, it became clear that my favorite artists throughout history had painted males but my favorite contemporary figurative artists mostly focused on female subjects. Contemporary male portraits still seem reserved for important men, that is, conventionally powerful men.”
His painting This Charming Man is in the exhibition The Art of the Nude sponsored by 33 Contemporary in Chicago, curated by PoetsArtists impresario Didi Menendez. Menendez explains, “It is ongoing up to next year and possibly beyond. We felt a need to have works available online and viewed without censorship. [Online] offers the best solution for exhibiting these
artworks many of which are photorealistic. Several of the artists featured have been banned on social media including myself as their curator for publishing them on Instagram and Facebook.”
Viktoria Savenkova took a circuitous route to figurative art, studying at the Academy of Art in Minsk, Belarus, working as an art director at the national film studio Belarusfilm and working as a tattoo artist. Five years ago, she returned to painting and in large format. She says, “I really need to express my experience, my feelings. And the painting is the best language, the best way for me to do it. But I want to create the story of the image not only myself but involving the one who is looking at it.”
Her portraits, such as Blue 2, invite an interaction with the viewer, revealing both the physical and psychological milieu of the model. “Blue” is usually indicative of melancholy and is the theme of many popular songs. The blues, rooted in African musical traditions and developed in this country in the late 19th century, continues to enthrall and affect the mood of its listeners.
Nick Ward turns the psychological portrait on its head, declaring about his series Relationship Studies, “For these paintings, my focus is on the people around me: how they interrelate, how they portray themselves,
and often times, how they make me feel. For this reason, I choose everyday people from my life as models, although the roles they play are not necessarily their own. Equal attention is given to long relationships and fleeting glances; actual experiences are treated the same as invented encounters. The images are my memories—real or imagined—of these subjects and their relationships.”
No matter how carefully rendered, portraits always invite interpretation on the part of the viewer. The interaction is complicated further if the subject is conveying a persona that may be at variance with who they really are. The model in his painting And I Realize, Most of My Wounds Are Self Inflicted contemplates that realization and almost forces viewers to contemplate whether or not the same is true for them.
Alane Levinsohn’s Lapis Robe recalls the classic studio paintings of 19th-century ateliers. She adds psychological layers, however. “My figurative artwork starts as a feeling about the sitter I want to convey— strength, isolation, solitude, confidence,” the artist says. “I paint from life on a white canvas background, wet into wet in the alla prima style, often with the underpainting showing through. By painting live models and leaving working lines, I try to capture the constant shifting of a living, breathing body and that moment in time. My work is white on white with white frames so that the figure itself floats on the wall, eliminating points of cultural reference and context.”