Tag: female nude

Germaine Krull – Les Amies (1924)

I have two oppoing reactions to Krull’s extremely problematic Wikipedia entry. On the one hand, it’s fucking captivating. Her family was rich and her father was either brilliant or a ne’er-do-well–or as such things usually go: both.

Her father allowed her to do whatever she wanted. She wanted to dress and behave as a boy. So that was that. She never received a formal education and was instead home schooled.

She learned to operate a camera and used that as her ticket to not only travel to far flung locales, she also met and befriended many of the best and brightest as far as 1920s creative luminaries. I mean can you imagine being on a first name basis with Rilke and Cocteau? Not to mention deemed peers with fucking Man Ray and Kertész by Parisian high society?

She was also known for giving fewer than zero fucks about what society felt her place should was and went right ahead and made her own way.

In other words, she’s exactly the sort of person I value most. And perhaps, stupidly, reading about her I can’t help but think she and I might have understood each other a little too well.

My second reaction to the Wikipedia article is that it’s composed much like a junior high research paper. You know when you’re just learning how to write and find some solid information and just change the words and re-arrange the sentence. Yeah, it’s like that and the source it’s cribbing from is an article by Kenneth Baker on the occasion of a Krull retrospective opening at SFMoMA in 2000.

Baker refers to her early nudes–the above is an example of such–as: satires of lesbian pornography.

Glossing over the way the author of the Wikipedia piece completely misreads the context, to Baker my response is: the actual fuck..? Has Old White Dude ever actually watched lesbian pornography?

I mean there are certainly lesbian overtones. But is it a satire because most lesbian porn is made by straight men for straight men and this is lesbian porn made by a wink-wink-nudge-nudge for lesbians? Personally, I don’t see it as anything less than sincere. There’s a feeling that there’s this sort of salon for two, a meeting of minds prior to a meeting of bodies. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like it before.

However, if anyone other than me saw that, it gets lost in an effort to emphasize the life of the artist at the expense of the work itself. I won’t argue that Kroll’s work is universally brilliant but there are bits of it that simply have no excuse for languishing in semi-obscurity. And I feel that Baker is the main architect of this attempt to shift attention onto the artists life–which yes is fucking intriguing–but the work can and does stand on its own feet.

I guess if it were simply garden variety sexism in popular art criticism, I’d probably just shake my hand at sky and move on. But it rankles me that not only does Baker dismiss this ingenious image, he then continues with some of the most specious art historical claptrap when he insists that Krull belongs to the Pictoralist tradition. Why because Pictorialism ran it’s course more or less concurrent with Krull’s creative maturation? Is this another effort to throw shade on her being derivative?

I’m not by any means a trained art history. But I’m not blind (yet) and I know how to listen to and feel an image. And I am very curious as to why there’s no mention of her within the context of Romanticism. I know art historian’s like to keep things cordoned off and otherwise like-kind with like-kind but:

  1. There’s an extensive history of Romantic painting in Poland;
  2. Kroll was born in what is now Poland;
  3. Her family was wealthy and likely had access to such work;
  4. Romanticism embraces an exceedingly wide range of subject matter, many of which figured prominently in Kroll’s subsequent work.

There’s also definitely some social realism–although to admit that is to demure that she was actually ahead of her time.  I can understand missing it though, it’s a social realism grounded in a stubborn humanism.

Wonderful work which I find in-fucking-furiating that isn’t more widely known and praised. The work still transmits a residual radical charge.

9mouth – 789 from Menstrual series (2014)

I can’t look at the sprawling mass of mostly messy work on 9mouth’s website without comparing him to Ren Hang–particularly his Instax mini images. The comparison does the former no favors…

Yes: occasionally 9mouth’s work achieves an almost transcendent tenderness. Take the above–the lighting, pose and gesture all balance perfectly to offset what appears to be barrel distortion warping the baseboard. There’s an introspective cast to her expression. It’s really quite lovely.

There are a few other pictures where the image serves to still questions about concept and execution. This one, for example.

Unfortunately, these images are the exceptions that prove an entirely entitled, arrogant and conceptually specious framework. Take his on-going Menstrual series. He says essentially–I’m paraphrasing because the English translation is astonishingly bad: he chose a different woman every month and photographs her life. It’s not intended to be private because like you know he widely shares the pics on the interwebs. By working with them he finds himself falling in love with them but at the end of the month, it’sover. A cycle of melodramatic, manufactured loss he equates with the monthly shedding of the uterine lining.

It’s the sort of thesis that even a shoddy art teacher would render more hole ridden than a slice of Swiss cheese in less than a minute. But, it’s infuriating to me that on top of this he so frequently imposes himself on the frame in an objectifying fashion or worse, touches the models in a way that is unambiguously sexual.

And I don’t mean to suggest that there is something that is inherently off limits as far as process goes. If being an image maker is the only way you can get laid, then at least own that shit upfront. Don’t be all using flimsy conceptual justifications for the shart you use as an occasion to perhaps drop those panties. (That shit is straight up a soft form of predation, btw. And spare me the exploratory creativity justification counter argument…check out mafucker’s Lofter with the outtakes from Menstrual where he takes selfies with each women he shoots.)

What disgusts me with 9mouth is that his work has a fuck load of raw potential that quite frankly seems wasted in 90% of the work he exhibits.

That other 10%, tho… makes you like to say gotdamn!

Inside Flesh – bad dream ii (2014)

Credit where credit is due: although I’m not especially interested in visual depictions of fellatio, I am consistently captivated by Inside Flesh’s treatment of the motif. (Fig. 1 | Fig. 2)

My fascinating has always and unfortunately been tempered by the post-industrial-detritus aesthetic and the monotonous mechanically repetitive sex they tend to favor.

In that way a glitched .gif loop addresses half my problem with their method of exhibition. And, I’m pleased to see them pushing their leather/latex/balaclava fixation in more religio-mythical directions. (Here: I love the fuck you, True Detective insinuation, the way the light accentuates her skin and dramatically emphasizes the cavity between her sartorius and gracilus muscles–which in turn emphasizes she’s doing most if not all of the work.)

Source: insideflesh

Malerie Marder – Untitled (1998-2000)

She explores the psychosexual undertow in close relationships by photographing herself and friends and family in the nude, often in seedy settings such as pay-by-the-hour motels.

Matilda Battersby on Marder’s Carnal Knowledge exhibition

If you only consider her ethos, Marder is exactly the sort of image maker you’d be right to think might motivate me to quit my job, sell all my possessions and become a disciple.

And as much as I love half her work, there’s a prevailing theme of contrite ars gratia artis–as if transgression (or perversity, in the best sense of that word) needs to necessarily be couched in the framework of fine art if it is to be worthy of contemplation.

Marder tends to be less careful in considerations for propriety when it comes to including herself in her work. There is certainly a nobility to that tact, but it does a disservice to her work. Although it’s not a conversation that seems to be percolating, anywhere with her work, I get the feeling Marder has more in common with vextape than Philip-Lorca diCorcia. (There’s zero value judgment in that statement; merely a reflection of the sad fact that our culture has seen fit to lavish praise on a fixation with sexuality that takes a more pathological, apersonal approach while banishing more experiential, personal work preoccupied with graphic depictions of sexuality to the realm of pornography.)

I guess what I am really trying to point to is that with only a few exceptions, the works that move me–and the above is absolutely fucking exquisite–is the work where there’s a greater concern for presenting the underlying truth with brutal, unblinking honesty.

I sort of not-so-secretly wish Marder would set out to make pornography, at least once in her career because I am certain the results would be nothing short of revolutionary.

Myself Nude – Untitled (2015)

Maybe the most inspired use of a mirror in a nude self-portrait since Francesca Woodman.

First, there’s the sense of dimensionality imposed by her hanging hair encroaching upon the upper right corner of the frame and the manner in which the same hair obscures her reflection’s face. All enhanced by the way her pose–which were it a clock might read 6:12:46–splits the the reflection of the ceiling into a mid-tone grey color wheel.

Next, everything in the frame exhibits an awareness of the ninety degree angle formed in the upper right corner by the floor seam. The woman stands on her left tiptoes, twisting her leg in a manner that would appear awkward to an observer looking at her instead of at the mirror; nevertheless, in reflection it creates an exaggerated Seven Year Itch posture. But the reiteration of the leftward skew halts with emphasis due to  the way her right foot is so firmly planted (you can actually see how close the base of her fibula is to the mirrored surface in the reflection).

Of course, there’s the further glorify of the positive and negative contrast between the brightness of her right inner thigh and right shoulder/arm vs the darkness of her left inner thigh and left side/shoulder/arm.

The coup de grace though is how he shadows are permeable enough so her individual fingers each remain distinctly discernible.

The line of her legs, her pose and even those lines between her fingers all guide the eye to the exquisitely rendered cleft of her ass. However, once there, any attempts to dwell and objectify are thwarted by the way the opposition between light and dark draw the eye down the inside of her legs and outward again, recovering the entire frame and thereby reaffirming we are have been graced with a view of a woman both as she sees herself and how she wants to be seen.

Cesar Santos – First Tattoo (201X)

This is an ingenious riff on Caravaggio’s The Incredulity of Saint Thomas–the guy in the background and the seeking finger of the girlfriend are pretty much directly quoted.

Then you’ve got what I’m pretty sure is supposed to be Rembrandt looking all unimpressed face emojicon.

The sum is a rather acerbic comment on the watering down of art–Caravaggio’s gloom as the foundation for the Rembrandt’s tenebrism as a foundation for the ever present and aching sexual longing of modernity on towards the diminution of craft and concept implied by the glaringly absent titular tattoo.

It’s not all bleak, though. There’s an undisguised wonder in the pointing friend running counter to the bored too-cool-for-school, world-weariness and resignation of the tattoo bearer.

(The Hello Kitty underpants are likely supposed to be far more cynical than I’m reading them. But I have to admit a particular bias, I find the way late teens and early twenty somethings try to reclaim some of the audacity that defined their first efforts at self-determination–to be unspeakably sexy.)

Source: morethansunshine

Alexander Bergström – Miss L (2014)

There isn’t anyone making fine art nudes about whom I feel more conflicted than Bergström.

Right off, I’m not really all that fond of his color work. The decision as to whether the image is in color or black and white seems less at issue than what film happened to be loaded in the camera at the time. And although he handles color skintone better than many, I just don’t ever feel that color contributes anything except itself to the sense of the image.

That being said, the one thing that is consistent throughout the work is the logic of the frame. I’ve never seen an image made by Bergström where I can find any fault whatsoever with where the edges of the frame have been fixed. (I do not mean to imply I always agree with the composition within those frame, however.)

In my estimation: Bergström is an extremely gifted, sometimes even astute B&W photographer. The problem with his work isn’t something I’d probably notice if it weren’t for a personal paraphilia.

It’s not that body hair is something I fetishize, exactly–although when it comes to women who choose not to shave their underarms, I’m likely to enter a pre-swoon state on site–I’m very much into the personal agency to do whatever the fuck one wants with ones body.

So I totally support Miss L’s decision to go bare. It absolutely suits her. But, then I start scanning back over Bergström’s work and it seems that he holds a definite preference for shaving or model’s who shave.

That’s fine, I guess. But it’s also disconcerting when my several of my friends who have children talk about how their pubescent daughters respond to changes in their body but feeling they are required to begin removing any hair that isn’t on their head. Thirteen year olds shouldn’t have to concern themselves with whether or not they need to shave their pubic area–there’s too much else going on at that time and extra bullshit pressure is the last thing a hormonal teenager needs.

Although in my informal count, the preference for a smooth vulva presents in about 65% of Bergström’s work, it adds a level of sexualization to the work that makes me slightly uncomfortable.

I realize there’s nudity is a bit like identity. Sometimes its just a celebration of physical embodiment, sometimes it’s political. And yes, sometimes its sexual or a veritable grab bag of other consideration. The point is–just like how someone chooses to identify–I don’t get a say in that. It’s ostensibly up to the person whose naked to decide that. Except well, when you aren’t dealing with self-portraiture, there is another person who contributes to the identification: the image maker.

I’d never think of accusing Bergström of not respecting the women he shoots–his images exude an almost religious reverence. But I am never sure if it’s a reverence for the woman as a complete self-realized, autonomous wonder who is also capable of sexual expression or a creature who due to her ability to express herself sexually is a complete, self-realized autonomous wonder.

In the case of this image–with what seems as if it might be a reference to Dorothea Tanning’s Birthday–I’m willing to err on the side of giving the image maker the benefit of the doubt that it’s the former option and not the latter.

Unfortunately, with all the work, I find myself not only confronted with beauty and skilled craft, I also find myself always wondering whether its the former or the latter that held sway in the exchange between being seen and seeing that went led to the creation of the image.

Slide to Unlock – Laundry Day (2014)

[Recalling] the Chinese legend that says that when a boy and a girl are destined for one another they are tied together forever by a red thread.

Viola Di Grado (70% Acrylic 30% Wool)

Slide to Unlock is a tumblr documenting the sex life of a thirty-something married with children couple living in London.

They’ve earned attention due to their submissions to NN and (more recently) their intense sex tape.

Typically, I’m not super fond of the couples’ sex blog thing. The whole She/He thing rarely strives for anything beyond the knee-jerk archetypal. But I’ve found myself warm to the way this couple presents the sex they have as a multifaceted part of a highly connected, communicative relationship. When I view their images, I can’t shake the feeling that if I could zoom in to the sub atomic level, that I’d see the red thread tying him to her.

That alone makes it stand head and shoulders above any other couples blog (or 95% of porn, for that matter).

Also, there’s the fact that both are all kinds of twitterpated making levels of sexy as fuck. Especially her, who I–I have to confess–has always for me borne a more than a casual resemblance to the one to whom I am tied with red thread. But in this sequence, it’s like the resemblance is even more pronounced. And I’m reminded of the way we two made love but it also foments memories of what it was like to share the burden of day in/day out exigencies.  How touch figured into everything we did inside the bedroom or out. Her fingers tracing the circle of skin between my t-shirt tail and jeans while I saute vegetables–her kids pretending to do their homework so they could side eye us meaningfully from the kitchen table. We held hands more than we didn’t.Almost every day for two years I woke up with the palm either niched in the small of her back or laying against her stomach, the first segment of my fingers nestled into her pubic fringe. And doing laundry together in that bizarre, huge but always empty Greenpoint laundromat. The coy, surreptitious teasing.If anyone had seen us they would’ve guessed we were in the first days of our relationship and not that nearly 700 day one’s.

I find this sequence to be devastatingly arousing not only because they remind me of her but because they remind me of what it was like with her, there is no room left to doubt their truth.

Source: slide-2-unlock

k.flight – [←] in the back of the bus (2008); [↑] we thank you for the spirits that dwell in us and all things (2008); [→] P1080259 (2011); [↓] good morning (2008)

I don’t know what to say.

I’m just… I mean… fuck me, whoever k.flight is, she has a perfectly, omnivorous eye. I didn’t know it was possible to be in love with images but, well, yeah… learn something new every day.

Not to sound like a twitter tween but this, this right here is fucking everything.

Absolutely perfect.

Go ahead and do whatever you want with what’s left of me. And also, if someone knows who k.flight is I would do anything, and I mean ANYTHING for the opportunity to collaborate with her at some future date.

Source: Flickr / ladyalpha