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Summary Themes of Contemporary Art - Chapter 3: Body
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Summary of the book: Themes of Contemporary Art by Robertson & McDaniel. Contains the entire chapter 3: Body.
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Themes of Contemporary Art: Chapter 3 – Body- Wangechi Mutu, Lizard Love: fantastic figure with exploding body parts.
- The theme of body overlaps with the theme of identity; artists like Mutu who also
addresses themes of identity in addressing race and gender. The female body is
almost always present in her works.
- Theme and subject do not always overlap in this chapter. In an artwork, body might
be a theme but perhaps not the subject.
- Is the body a biological organism or a cultural artifact? Bodily experiences are
complex. Aspects of the body can be affected by social, cultural and economic
factors.
- Contemporary artists show the human form as a material, a tissue of flesh. They also
explore the many ways in which bodies and representations in art are cultural
artifacts, reflecting religious views and social-economical roles.
Past Figurative Art
- According to many religions, the body is also the earthly home for the soul. This idea
has had a paramount influence on past art. Many great artists in the past tried to
capture a humans soul.
- The soul was the essential truth of human nature and the sculptor was engaged in
the portrayal, ultimately the embodiment, of that essence.
- Figurative imagery was thus also used for religious worship.
- In European academic tradition, paintings showing the human figure were
considered a greater accomplishment than paintings showing a nonfigurative motif.
- Human figures have served to express cultural values. The body has also been used
to represent ideas about sexuality and mortality.
- From 1950s onward: mainly non-objective art. performance art 1960s and 70s,
among which body art.
- In body art, the artist’s body serves as a medium.
- Matthew Barney used his body in his films. In Blind Perineum, he climbs the walls of a
gallery in New York. Issues of masculinity and body endurance during extreme sports
= important in his oeuvre.
- Pop art emerged in the early 1960s, reintroducing the human figure into avant-garde
painting. Neo-expressionism in the 1970s and 1980s moved figurative painting and
sculpture to the central stage. It was often about history, psychology or mythology
and literature, rather than issues of the body per se.
- Feminist artists in the 60s and 70s emerged body as a theme more profoundly. The
body was a site and an important source of information. The new sexual power of
the woman was explored.
- The exhibition Womanhouse of the early 1970s, organized by Judy Chicago and
Miriam Schapiro, was a high achievement. Issues like sexual violence were raised.
Chicago’s Dinner Party was another landmark.
The Body is Beautiful
- Not all body images are equally valued. The Greek ideal of a young, classically
proportioned body has been influential, but alternate ideals of physical beauty can be
found in many cultures. Cultural ideals dominate the representation of bodies in art,
even though few real bodies resemble the images.
, - Jenny Saville deviates from the classical ideal in paintings in which she reveals her
own and other nude female bodies in gargantuan proportions. For example in
Ruben’s Flap, 1999, showing the artist’s body.
- Every culture constructs images of attractiveness. In contemporary consumer culture,
narrowly defined ideals of physical beauty continue to dominate. In art, the body
appears in great variety.
- Like in Vanessa Beecroft’s Show, in which she places models as dehumanizing figures.
- Artistic challenges to normative views of beauty are seen in works that display body
types of all sizes and shapes and that question what terms like beauty and health
mean and who has the power to define them.
- Marc Quinn made disability one of his motives. He presents damaged classical
statues. His sculpture Breath was a replica of Alison Lapper’s body, exhibited at the
Venice Biennale in 2013. It was an inflatable sculpture.
A New Spin on the Body
- A variety of developments have motivated dart around the body as a theme since
1980. Human populations are growing and our world is more crowded with bodies.
- The real experiences like cheap labour and refuges are a theme at the bodily level of
art. But other developments also intensify the interest in the body as a theme in art,
like advances in bioengineering.
- Political concerns motivate some art about the body. Feminists have continued to
engage with politicized issues pertaining directly to the body.
- For a while in the 1980s. artists and critics focused more on how the body is socially
and psychologically manifested, rather than on its biological expression. There was a
move away from personal work based on autobiography toward more conceptual
pieces. Some women artists rejected any display of the organic female body.
- 1990s & 2000s: artists have reinvented figurative art, returning to more physical
representations. Artists gave visual form to previously taboo aspects of sexuality and
tried to express what it means to inhabit a physically changing body.
- In exploring the theme of the body, contemporary artists have utilized a range of
strategies and motifs. Artists have dealt with the body in unusual ways. Also, a great
deal of art evokes the body without presenting a human image.
- Contemporary artists have also continued to use the body as an artistic medium in
both live vents and recorded performances.
The Body is a Battleground
- Cultural battles over bodies are waged in the mass media, streets, halls of
government and in sleeping quarters the world over. Controversies address issues
like socially preferred size, shape, age and colour of bodies, etc. battles over bodies
generally boil down to the question, Who should be in control?
- Attitudes towards the body are seldom clear-cut and one-sided. The culture wars in
the United States over the past few decades have turned over issues of control of
bodies, particularly as artistic representations challenge mainstream commercial
representations. The wars were concerned with protests against sexually explicit art,
especially when being homoerotic. It was seen as immoral on religious grounds.
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