Life as Dynamic in Nude: Masterpieces from Tate

Exploring human bodies with life in Nude: Masterpieces from Tate is such a tempting idea. Though body may not be a new topic nowadays, it still flourishes in the artistic fields from the ancient to the modern times. Held in Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, the exhibition unfolds great vitality that pushes forward the thoughts in a variety of relative issues on human body.

From the paintings before the 20th century to the modern style of body portraits implicitly reflects the perspective of artists as well as the turbulent period of history. Under the artists' interpretation, most of the paintings before the 20th century emphasize women's naked bodies as perfection of nature created by God. It appears that human body is not only like a model but also like a motor as artists keep going and never end up imagining delicate and young life from their gazes, for men and women's naked bodies are plump and smooth-skinned as well shaped by artists' visual fantasy. Their body portraits are almost timeless. Take Frederic Lord Leighton (1830-1896)'s "The Bath of Psyche" as an example. Psyche's body is like velvet, which projects herself as an ideal in a figure that calls immortal bodies into being. As I follow the historical timeline, the human bodies are no longer fine, and they subtly swerve to the status of the depressed by the haunt of wars. These nudes become vulnerable step by step, a process of life which one sees how the nudes turn immortal figure into mortal bodies.

Unclothed as they are, human bodies are taken as life in mortal beings. One may only see how human body becomes aged, showing the truth that everyone will become old and then declined in the end. Seen in this light, life is regarded as a limited period of time when one is still alive, for one may be told to cherish life and waste no time. Such an unclothed body, nonetheless, does not just mean that everything shown can be clearly judged and examined by the viewer. Although human body based upon historical timeline can apparently be found by tracing topics in order during the exhibition, the vigorous presentation on nudes from flawless portraits to vulnerable images leads me to ponder how human bodies can become dynamic.

As a viewer, I am curious about how life can be reinterpreted in the way by which a viewer senses what is truly concealed in a human body rather than what the true body can become at last. While the mortal bodies are mostly vivid as life, the nude body further expresses how life can be sense as dynamic in itself. The flesh is furthermore poured into by entering the topic, Paint as Flesh. "Standing by the Rags," painted by Lucian Freud (1922─2011), reveals how a senile woman body leaning against the rags remains immobile as the unbalanced pressure putting on her bodily parts moves to other bodily parts. Beginning with the navel, her face, left arm and both legs are colored with deep red, which vividly disclose the weight between the upper and lower half of a body. Others are the drafts painted by Francis Bacon (1909─1992). Two or three human bodies in Bacon's drafts are intermingled. A human figure attached by its physical structure with head, the limbs and other bodily parts is normally taken for granted. Nevertheless, I can hardly distinguish each bodily parts from human when seeing Bacon's drafts on human bodies. The flesh seems to flow out of the figure of human body, which marks the action moving away from the contour of human figure as the body keeps twisting and turning. Such the tendency to escape reveals the vigorous direction to break away from what it usually presents. What is concealed in the body turns to a life that can be found in the flesh. As a viewer, one may see a life within in a nude, for there might be a moment when some of bitterness, sadness, a bit pleasure and pain indistinctly combine altogether as generated through the flesh in nudes. Life not only means a period of time as a nude displayed but also can be dug out in a way that one may sense.

Last but not least are the rags in Lucian Freud's "Standing by the Rags." In the painting, the rags have been creased intensively. As the title of the exhibition is called "Nude," human body is the main character in the exhibition. But, what about the rags put beside the woman in Freud's "Standing by the Rags"? They are displayed in bare skin, just like other nudes on painting. This painting somewhat reveals a trace of seeing life in the material texture in its nude status.

─ Visit on Sep. 23, 2018