"Art serves as an extension of our flawed human existence. We cannot escape it. Even as we, in our art, attempt to describe things that occupy an immortal or super-natural space, those expressions will be bound to the bruised, ragged, disconnected, untamed and under realized mediums of the human mind, eye and hand. If we are not comfortable with this, our art will be swallowed by our pursuit to escape those bounds, and will cease to tell the truth". Dan Hesaltine.
Clarity. Model:Kari
Do you recall the first time you ever heard a piece of music or verse or saw an image that totally held you, challenged you, provoked you to look at the world in a fresh way or turned your assumptions upside down?
I suppose that's been the aim behind many modernist art movements, but generally today the shock -if there is any - doesn't usually last long... the controversy is usually contrived, the presumptions are generally cloned (we're all pretty worthless and life is actually meaningless) and the entire engagement is so often (either immediately or on reflection) disappointing.
Back in October, I wrote a little about one of those personally striking moments - viewing Michaelangelo's David in London some years ago, but there have been many others. The reason I raise this encounter again is because it says something deeply to me about what art can do - it can invite our sense of wonder, of beauty and of awe to breathe, often amidst painful or troublesome times - that splendid freshness, as many have discovered, allows some joy and truth to be woven within the bruising of our present humanity.
It would be easy to draw the wrong conclusion here - we want 'valuable' art to be attributed with such grand associations because we want our world, our lives, to amount to something, hopefully replete with value and meaning, but that is a superficial way of looking at what is occurring. Art imbued with beauty and grace can actually be hard to accept, even highly offensive, because such stark impositions of such light upon us can jar against our experience of the all too present pain and futility which so often perpetuates as the daily 'drudgery' of life - to seek to 'say', in some fashion, that there is more - a richer, inspiring reality, can not only make for offence, but generate violence within the soul against such expression - perhaps initiating its very own 'counter' creative expression, or, encouraging a genuine expression of our plight in the light of such glory.
This can certainly be evidenced in the case of depicting the nude. Many times when looking at the work of others, you quickly realise that Jock Sturges was correct in his way of looking at an image - there are 'negative' images, which harm or disturb the viewer, 'neutral' images, which actually say and do nothing, and (what I would term) 'natural' images, which truly reflect and express something of the grace that is within our world. Many nudes today are 'negative', some rightly so, to make us aware of something we need to see, but many are virtually cannibalistic in the way they want us to see and engage with the 'person', in part or whole, depicted in the image, appealing to nothing above the carnal - there is more than enough pulp culture to pamper to often reductive notions of our worth (sensuality has its place, but it shouldn't be the dark, cold squalor of human manipulation and/or corruption).
Wounded. Model:Vicci.
As noted, even some darker work can speak to us, so there is equally the pain of those who corrupt the value of such art, not by demeaning the person by the manner the nude is used, but by rejecting the value of nude expression in art entirely, declaring that anything 'spiritual' cannot possibly be demeaned to something as low as human flesh.
From a theological perspective, nothing could be further from the truth - Christianity is based upon just such a "folly". From a human perspective, any encounter with a work which lifts our vision to a richer place is of value, so if we are seeking to negate that value, we need to seriously question why.
Since beginning this blog, I've sought to say why I think nude art matters. Is this valid in the current culture we face? What are your thoughts?
