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The Naked and The Nude Published by Faine Contemporary Art 2013
"To be naked is to be deprived of our clothes and the word implies some of the embarrassment which most of us feel in that condition. The word nude, on the other hand carries, in educated usage, no uncomfortable overtone." Sir Kennith Clarke 1956 I have adopted Kennith Clarke’s differentiation of nude and naked for this print. Some art critics are so desperate to extol the academic and moral virtues of artists that they seem to want to remove from them any vestige of humanity – the aspect of personality that makes artists, artists. The notion that Lautrec should be obsessed with the academic aspects of the female form is quite absurd – he simply liked looking at sexy women, while the paintings of Egon Schiele speak for themselves. Similarly Velasquez’s painting of the Rokeby Venus is such a celebration of women that it was said to have shocked the apparently prudish court of Phillip IV of Spain. Less so perhaps than when it was slashed by the suffragette Mary Richardson in 1914. In this print I have overlaid an A to Z of texts of some of the artists named, with their juxtaposed famous paintings. Some are fairly academic while others are blatantly erotic. I leave the viewers, to decide which is which depending on their perspectives. The Naked and the Nude is a signed limited edition comprising 50 digital prints each finished with a silk-screen printed satin protection varnish, and an Ultra Violet glaze on the text |
Prints from 2013
