chapter12 the body in art

The Body

How do artists use the body in

art?

Depicting the Body

• Portraits• Self-portraits• The Physical Body• Limits of the Self• Sickness & Death

Nefertiti, Egypt, c. 1350 BCE. PortraitBust. Approx. 1’8” high. Aegyptisches Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin,Berlin, Germany.

Portraits & Self-Portraits

Reveal personal aspects of an individual…

Painting by Chuck Close

Chuck CloseCharles Thomas "Chuck" Close is an American painter and photographer who achieved fame as a photorealist, through his massive-scale portraits.

Self-Portraits

• Artists creating pictures of themselves• Best model• Exploration of self, inner reflection• Long history of artists depicting themselves

Frida KahloMexican Artist1930sAncestryCulturePhysical bodyPainEmotional andpsychological pain

Mexican painter Frida Kahlo is best known for her often wrenching, always mysterious self-portraits.

Diego RiveraMexican artistMuralist: frescoesTurbulent relationship

depicted in Frida’s self-portraits

Las Dos Fridas, 1939.

What do you think is the symbolism behind the depiction of artist as two individuals?

Inner self

The Physical Body

• Ideas about the essence of humanity• Idealized body

– “ideal”, varies from culture to culture– Greek proportions

Doryphoros

• Mathematical and geometric proportions• Idealized by Polykleitos

– Balanced pose– Internal proportions – Restrained emotions– Youth, athlete and warrior– Contraposto

• (counterbalanced)– Doryphoros (Spear Bearer) or Canon. Roman copy after an original by the Greek sculptor Polykleitos

from c. 450-440 B.C.E., marble, 6'6" (Archaeological Museum, Naples)

In 1501, 25-year-old Michelangelo Buonarroti begins working on his colossal masterpiece, the 17-foot-tall marble David.

Galleria dell'Accademia, Florence, Italy

The David, portrayed in the Bible as a young shepherd who slew the giant Goliath and went on to become a valiant and just Hebrew king, is a fit symbol of courage and civic duty to guard the city of Florence.

The David is considered a Renaissance masterpiece, an ideal male form combining heroic strength and human uncertainty.

From a huge block of marble that has been abandoned decades earlier by another sculptor, Michelangelo takes on the challenge of living up to Donatello and other precursors who had sculpted the same heroic figure.

Critical Thinking:Compare the style of depictionHow do the two figures differ?

Michelangelo’s sculpture: David

THE REAL BODY AS BEAUTIFULLIMITS OF OUR PHYSICAL STATE

The Physical Body as Metaphor and Symbolism

FRIDA KAHLOPolioTrolley accidentNumerous operations

The Broken Column was painted shortly after Kahlo underwent spinal surgery. She depicts herself bound and constrained by a cage-like body brace. A cavern of missing flesh violates the integrity of her body, exposing a broken column in place of her spine. The column appears to be on the verge of collapsing into rubble. Metal nails pierce Kahlo’s face, breasts, arms, and torso, as well as her upper thigh, hidden behind a swath of cloth. Tears stream down her face. Set in an open landscape, the artist-sitter is exposed in more ways than one.

JADE BEALL

Jade Beall is a world-renowned photographer specializing in truthful images of women to inspire feeling irreplaceably beautiful as a counter-balance to the airbrushed, Photoshopped imagery that dominates main stream media.

Beall’s mission is to change that standard of beauty from one that’s exclusive and based on illusion to one that includes actual women and is rooted deeply in reality.What do you think of the pictures shown here? Do they affect your own perception of beauty?

Beauty comes in different forms. The 24-year-old Afghanistan veteran, Alex Minsky, lost his leg when his truck rolled over an improvised explosive device.

Now a rising model for photographer Michael Stokes and most importantly an inspirational hero for countless people with disabilities who proves life can continue even after that in all it’s beauty.

The Body in Art and as Art

• Human body as material• Body ornamentation• Body as art tool

Ana Mendieta. Arbol de la Vida, No. 294,Cuba/USA, 1977. Color photograph Documenting the earth/body sculptureWith artist, tree trunk, and mud.

Paul Jackson Pollock, known as Jackson Pollock, was an influential American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. He was well known for his unique style of drip painting.

Total physical involvement of the artist defines this "action painting." Pollock spread canvas on the floor in his barn studio, or on the ground outside, and then splashed, dripped, and poured color straight from cans of commercial house paint. It was essential, he said, to "walk around it, work from all four sides, and be in the painting, similar to the Indian sand painters of the West."

Transforming everyday activities such as eating, bathing, and sleeping into ways of making art, Janine Antoni’s primary tool for making sculpture has always been her own body. She has chiseled cubes of lard and chocolate with her teeth, washed away the faces of soap busts made in her own likeness and painted the floor with hair dye using her own head and hair like a brush.

Photo taken from Loving Care performance   Performance wasn't something that I intended to do. I was doing work that was about process, about the meaning of the making, trying to have a love-hate relationship with the object. I always feel safer if I can bring the viewer back to the making of it. I try to do that in a lot of different ways, by residue, by touch, by these processes that are basic to all of our lives...that people might relate to in terms of process, everyday activities—bathing, eating, etc.

Janine Antoni

"Lick and Lather," detail, 19937 soap and 7 chocolate self-portrait busts, 24 x 16 x 13 inches each

"I wanted to work with the tradition of self-portraiture but also with the classical bust...I had the idea that I would make a replica of myself in chocolate and in soap, and I would feed myself with my self, and wash myself with my self. Both the licking and the bathing are quite gentle and loving acts, but what’s interesting is that I’m slowly erasing myself through the process. So for me it’s about that conflict, that love/hate relationship we have with our physical appearance, and the problem I have with looking in the mirror and thinking, ‘Is that who I am?’"- Janine Antoni

Processing

• What do depictions of the body indicate more broadly about human nature?

• How is the human body used in art, both as material and tool?