TheGreatNude Invitational opens May 14,15 and 16 at The Roger Smith Hotel. Featuring 25 international artists working with the nude. Online Ticketing now available!
MAY 14,15,16 – DAILY ADMISSION: 12pm-6pm, $10.
MAY 14,15 – EVENING ADMISSION: 6pm-11pm, $25. Includes our SKETCH PARTY featuring Nude Models.
Peruvian artist Kukuli Velarde makes her debut at Barry Friedman LTD with an incredibly visceral show, making excellent use of the nude in her art. With boundless imagination and unbridled drama, the works are intimate, soulful compositions that are difficult to pass by. I highly recommend that everyone in the New York area make a point to expose themselves to the strong presence that is Velarde’s work.
The exhibition debuts Velarde’s work in two mediums. The first being her terracotta sculptures, and the second being her paintings on brushed aluminum. The sculptures are vessels to an antique nature, displayed as evidence unearthed from an anthropological dig. Entitled ‘Plunder Me Baby,’ the sculptures presentation, with museum-like signage, provokes an association to an indigenous cultures’ reaction to European colonization and subjugation. Each piece is categorized as to estimated date and region of ‘find.’ They are listed uncommonly, containing a quick description of personal quirks (“Bites, likes tough love”.) Both startling and amusing is the personification experienced from each piece’s face and limbs. Kukuli’s grasp of expression is remarkable as her sculptures appear if as on the verge of coming alive.
In her paintings – the ‘Cadaver’ series – Velarde uses images of conquered peoples in the context of European cultural and religious imagery. The expressions of the subjects, in comparison to Velarde’s sculptures, are less playful, but are equally as powerful. Referencing modes of accepted Western beauty such as the classical Venus, Velarde literally tries on their “skin”, inserting herself as the model in most of her primary figures. There is an uneasy marriage of cultures here, which is what makes this exhibition work so well. There is both homage and disgust, piety and betrayal, using Western culture and its iconographic art as props to make her own contemporary statements.
Finally there is a video of her late father with whom she shared a very strong bond, her passion as artist especially apparent in this emotion-filled work. Kukuli surrounds the projected video with wall drawings, referencing the time that her father caught her drawing on the wall of their home. He sensed a talent in his daughter which he encouraged over the years. The homage is creative and touching and the exhibit as a whole, remarkably fresh. Dad would be proud.
Sculptor Antony Gormley has continually impressed us over his more than quarter-century career as a visual artist. In most cases Gormley uses his own body as the main influence for his work, creating structures that radiate energy through his varied use of medium, and shape. Having shown all over the world, Gormley has recently finished an installation in Manhattan’s flatiron district.
The installation consists of a series of thirty-one statues, camouflaged on rooftops in the surrounding area. Each weighs close to 3/4 of a ton. They are designed to overlook the Flatiron district from different angles, creating a visual flow. Gormley did a similar showing in London in 2007.
Walking through the Flatiron district, you would almost have to know where you were looking to see the ominous works. Standing in the central partition, across the street from the Flatiron building, the statues gaze down on you powerfully, overwhelming you with a sense of greatness, growing as you continue to discover the works that appear to be greatly aware of you prior to your discovery of them. Provocative, and glorifying of the human form through its borderline abstraction, Gormley’s works are a manifest piece of culture, waiting to be discovered.
Click here for the New York Times article on Gormley’s exhibit.
During my walks through New York’s gallery districts there are times that I find myself anxious for something to take my breath away. And there are times when it gets taken away not once but three times, all from artists working with the figure in very different ways.
On view at Postmasters Gallery is the current body of work by Steve Mumford, who started his ‘Baghdad Journal’ at the outset of the war in 2003. In his travels with the American military in Iraq, he made quick sketches of his experiences during moments of combat and repose. These were in turn transcribed on canvas upon his return to the studio. The new works in this show reveal a more nuanced look at war, and how it is experienced from the perspective of jihadists and our occupying military personal.
There are two nudes in the exhibit to talk about here. The small portrait of a half nude woman on a bed might be a competently rendered but unremarkable work until you notice her right arm veiled in shadow has been amputated. This then invites more scrutiny of her expression and the thoughts of a young woman whose life has been permanently altered. It gives credence to the graffiti painting in the other room lamenting “wish I was, where I was, when I was wishing, I was here.”
A large striking painting in the main gallery titled Baqubah portrays a languid moment for a group of marines cooling themselves in a murky pool of water. Most are nude and expertly rendered. Mumfords’ understanding of anatomy is on display here even through multiple tattoos on one of the men. He delivers relaxed poses with great textural passages of paint and atmosphere. As with ballet or opera, sometimes the most natural seeming movements take the greatest dexterity to pull off. I’ve been following Steve’s work for some time now and feel this is some of his best to date.
Now showing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art until April 18, 2010 is the first ever show dedicated solely to Agnolo Bronzino, the Italian Mannerist. With almost sixty drawings from the artist, , some never before seen, the exhibition helps to shed light on an artist whose name is familiar to many, but whose depictions of the form may still be unfamiliar to viewers.
The show is put together with the help of the Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi and the Polo Museale Fiorentino, Florence and encompasses a refreshing take on the figure. Although the drawings are done largely from a scholastic standpoint, making excellent reference of the figures musculature and positioning, the works read as soft, delicate and emotional. Bronzino’s take on the figure is not only refreshing, but raises the question of how a figurative artist of his caliber escaped the public eye for so long.
Throughout his career, Rembrandt took on a select group of students and taught them the techniques that he had spent his life perfecting. Because of the numerous works born in the academic environment that he created, many of the works are today disputed over whether the works came from Rembrandt or from one of the students, influenced by his style.
That is exactly what the show titled Rembrandt and his Pupils showing at the Getty Center until February 28th set out to show. Using a series of comparative techniques, the exhibit helps to explain the difference between a work of Rembrandt and of the fifteen pupils shown in the exhibit. Showing just over one hundred works on paper the collection highlights the brilliant simplicity in the work created between Rembrandt and his pupils.
1200 Getty Center Drive
Los Angeles, California 90049
310.440.7300
When most people are asked to describe an artistic genius, Picasso is often cited as an example. In addition to his undeniable creative talents and the large body of excellent work produced in his lifetime, his whole career appears to have been a successful strategy of exploration and risk-taking at just the right moment in history.
Picasso moved through many periods during his career; some of them depending heavily on the use of the figure, and others where the human form is broken down into nearly unrecognizable shapes. The widely varying phases of Picasso, if positioned anonymously next to each other, could easily be seen as the works of completely different artists; not only aesthetically, but in tone and subject matter as well. His life’s work reflects the desire to understand the essence of humanity and to relay it back to us.
Having been a contributor to the New York art world for over 130 years The Art Students League offers a rich history since its creation in 1875. Although the ASL is probably best known for producing celebrated artists in figurative drawing, it retains an informal environment where anyone of any skill level is welcome to attend. Its creation came out of necessity when a National academy instructor was unable to continue teaching due to lack of funds and joined The Art Students League. Within a decade of their opening the facility saw enrollments grow and boasted instructors such as William Merritt Chase and TGN favorite Kenyon Cox.
Over time the school amassed an impressive body of work and offered classes in many new styles of drawing. That’s exactly what their show, Drawing Lessons is all about. The show was initially held in October in New York but is now showing in Houston. Showing their collection of early academic drawings the collection includes the work of students of prominent ASL artists. Whether thoroughly versed in the figure, hoping to observe the techniques of early masters, or curious to figurative techniques used over the last one hundred years, the wide collection of artists and approaches to the figure proves to not only be an impressive collection, but shows the path that figurative art inside the Art Students League has taken.
Johnson, Academic drawing, undated, vine and compressed charcoal on Michallet paper, 24 ½ x 18 ½ in. Student of George B. Bridgman. PERMANENT COLLECTION, THE ART STUDENTS LEAGUE OF NEW YORK.
Walter Marshall Clute (1870-1915), Academic drawing, February 7, 1894, vine and compressed charcoal on Michallet paper, 24 ¼ x 18 ½ in. Student of H. Siddons Mowbray. PERMANENT COLLECTION, THE ART STUDENTS LEAGUE OF NEW YORK
The role of the human figure in the history of American art is a topic we appreciate here at our publication. Pulling together a survey illustrating the evolution of intellectual and aesthetic thought regarding the figure over the last two hundred years is a challenging aspiration for any museum, but that’s exactly what the National Academy set out to do in their summer/fall exhibit. In Reconfiguring the Body in American Art, 1820-2009 we see an overview of the figure as used by artists through many phases of history, illustrated with wonderful, eclectic selections from the museum’s permanent collection.
This is a great show for those who are fans of the Figurative Arts. Bravo National Academy! The show closes on November 15th.
In our series The Figure in Advertising, we pay attention to those who are currently using the figure in new and interesting ways. With so many interesting uses of the figure occurring in advertising today TGN felt it necessary to take a look at uses of the figure in the recent past.
One of the first to come to mind is Dove in their Real Beauty Campaign. A direct attack on the distorted perceptions of beauty in advertising, Dove’s approach was to use the realism of everyday people to create art over advertising. They photographed and advertised numerous women fully nude, showing what they believed ‘real’ women to look like. Dove also launched a video, showing the process of remodeling that a person goes through on a photo-shoot. They then created a billboard for foundation makeup ‘Fasel,’ being an anagram for ‘False.’ The end product helped to show how the divinity of the human form stretches further than what we see on magazine pages.
. With almost sixty drawings from the artist, , some never before seen, the exhibition helps to shed light on an artist whose name is familiar to many, but whose depictions of the form may still be unfamiliar to viewers.
