Image above: The Couple Crease Series – When You Can’t Sleep, Erica Aubin
Blog contributor: Adele Barbato
What is it about the naked body that makes people simultaneously reverent yet uptight? We celebrate the beauty and nobility of nakedness in the name of art or politics but shun public displays of “indecency”. The limits of our clothing are pushed farther every year, and yet one accidentally exposed nipple is the stuff of pop culture legacy. We are temperamental, sneaking peeks in the locker room while passing judgment on women with barely-there clothing and the men who look at them. At least these men aren’t pretending that they don’t like to look. We all like to look…life is sexual. Procreation wouldn’t be possible without a healthy sex drive; we are simultaneously enthralled and obsessed with the naked body. In fact, the nude figure was among the first artistic representations rendered by humans.
Like Venus figurines, the naked body is fraught with hyperbole. As The Body in Lines curator Andrew Fish insightfully reflects, “It is our full physical self, exposed and unflinching,” but the mind’s reality is not always in sync with the physical self, particularly our own. We often impose value and qualitative reasoning onto our bodies, and the bodies of others, based on our own insecurities and misdirected priorities. “Ugh, I have such cankles.” “Whoa, look at that muffin top.” “Damn, girl, eat something!” The politics of the nude challenges those priorities and encourages empowerment through non-judgmental acceptance of all shapes and sizes. The art of the nude shows that its shapes and sizes and lines can be graceful, grotesque, intimate, messy, kinky, honest, and erotic, all at the same time.
But what we all seem to be overlooking is the fact that whether artistic or political, everyone has a voyeuristic relationship with the naked body. Maybe it is about our clothed society being confronted with our exposed selves, but it feels more simply about reclaiming our lost peace with sexuality. The Body in Lines forces the viewer to come face-to-face with their inner voyeur, that primitive impulse that reminds us we all like to look. And it is difficult to deny that impulse while staring at Erica Aubin’s incredibly suggestive abstracted drawing of two unidentified body parts meeting, or Christina Blach’s faceless, spread-legged portrait. Sydney Phillips Hardin actually throws your kinky voyeurism in your face with her sad, disconcerting, deflated love dolls, while Michael Ahern’s beautiful and delicate watercolors soothe our conflicted sexuality by reminding us that every shape is graceful and therefore our desires are truly artistic and wholesome.
I’ll tell you one thing, I can’t claim my experience at The Body in Lines was entirely wholesome as I certainly didn’t mind looking!
-Adele Barbato
Adele Barbato is a writer who dissects the world of art. Her pieces have been published in several publications, including The Boston Art Underground.
Our vision for this blog is to provide a space for viewers to begin a dialogue about the art at our shows. If you would like to write about a show at either of the Nave galleries, email us.
