the reclining nude recontextualised
“Everyone is fascinated with looking at another human being.” - Kehinde Wiley
Gaze, limbs, flesh to fingers, the body in all its sensuality and mystique demands our greatest intrigue, its allure preoccupying artists throughout history. The study of the human figure has provided some of the art world’s most revered works from Renaissance masters such as Titian, the notorious first modernist Manet, and contemporary provocateur Kehinde Wiley. These painters have embedded the body with meanings that at once reveal the evolution of power, gender and social relations, reflecting the growth and embrace of culture that is as bracingly beguiling as the body itself.
Our inclination to appreciate the human figure is evident from its earliest depictions from the Ancient Greeks. Their obsession with the “body beautiful” encompassed an enduring and holistic development of mind, body and soul within their culture, whilst ours as John McDonald recently inferred tends to make a fetish of the body, or at least a particular image of the body. Representations of the body were glorified in the nude; from male athletes competing in the nude for admiration, to the human manifestations of exalted gods such as Apollo and Aphrodite, whilst conversely, the lowly woman would only be nude when portrayed as a submissive, sexual courtesan. These earliest sculptures of the human form began rather heavy and straight, and moved into the Classical Period with new innovative curve that balanced weight with shifted contraposto. Its final stage, the Hellenic Period, became renowned for its Venus Pudica, the standing idealised nude modestly covering herself. This same iconic pose is recognised in Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus, perhaps one of the Renaissance’s most provocative works. The reinvigoration of ancient classicism and religious characters lent itself to evolving societal developments and values of the time, such as discoveries in anatomy and humanism encapsulated in Michelangelo’s David and The Creation of Adam that highlight both the youthful beauty, purpose and power of the male, whilst depictions of the female nude continued to capture a sense of passivity and vulnerability. As John Berger in his Ways of Seeing series surmised: “A man's presence suggests what he is capable of doing to you or for you. By contrast, a woman's presence ... defines what can and cannot be done to her.”
This is particularly noted in Giorgione’s Sleeping Venus (1510) which features a resting, reclining nude who in her soft pallor seems to undulate amongst the rolling Acadian hills beyond. Sensual, secluded, and ultimately submissive, she is a natural beauty who beckons voyeurs into the idyll. Interestingly, though attributed to Giorgione, it was his apprentice Titian who not only completed the painting, but followed this fascination of the figure, creating a symphony of signs that examined power, gender & social relationships in his esteemed work, Venus of Urbino (1538).
Our inclination to appreciate the human figure is evident from its earliest depictions from the Ancient Greeks. Their obsession with the “body beautiful” encompassed an enduring and holistic development of mind, body and soul within their culture, whilst ours as John McDonald recently inferred tends to make a fetish of the body, or at least a particular image of the body. Representations of the body were glorified in the nude; from male athletes competing in the nude for admiration, to the human manifestations of exalted gods such as Apollo and Aphrodite, whilst conversely, the lowly woman would only be nude when portrayed as a submissive, sexual courtesan. These earliest sculptures of the human form began rather heavy and straight, and moved into the Classical Period with new innovative curve that balanced weight with shifted contraposto. Its final stage, the Hellenic Period, became renowned for its Venus Pudica, the standing idealised nude modestly covering herself. This same iconic pose is recognised in Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus, perhaps one of the Renaissance’s most provocative works. The reinvigoration of ancient classicism and religious characters lent itself to evolving societal developments and values of the time, such as discoveries in anatomy and humanism encapsulated in Michelangelo’s David and The Creation of Adam that highlight both the youthful beauty, purpose and power of the male, whilst depictions of the female nude continued to capture a sense of passivity and vulnerability. As John Berger in his Ways of Seeing series surmised: “A man's presence suggests what he is capable of doing to you or for you. By contrast, a woman's presence ... defines what can and cannot be done to her.”
This is particularly noted in Giorgione’s Sleeping Venus (1510) which features a resting, reclining nude who in her soft pallor seems to undulate amongst the rolling Acadian hills beyond. Sensual, secluded, and ultimately submissive, she is a natural beauty who beckons voyeurs into the idyll. Interestingly, though attributed to Giorgione, it was his apprentice Titian who not only completed the painting, but followed this fascination of the figure, creating a symphony of signs that examined power, gender & social relationships in his esteemed work, Venus of Urbino (1538).
Languid, Venus lies upon the bed of crinkled white sheets and ruby silk pillows. Curvaceous and radiant, her supple slopes and limbs are lit in the soft hues that bid one into the scene. Her braided hair splays over supporting shoulders; pearl earrings and embellished hands bare a bunch of roses and conceal her private parts. A slender face delicate and warm frames black sphere eyes gazing out, behind her emerald folded drapes fill half the composition. To the right, an endearing domestic background; a child in frilled white dress searching with her head in a chest and a doting maiden watching her beside. Opulent walls enchant, as do the open window and columns of sublime sky and tree draw the viewer beyond. Curled at her feet, a puppy nestles into a ball.
Considered by many to be the apotheosis of High Renaissance painting and the founding landmark of the female nude, the work was commissioned by Duke Guidobaldo II of Urbino as a wedding gift, a model even, for his much younger wife Giulia. Titian's friend, Aretino, said Venetian men (such as the artist himself) loved "tits and arses and sumptuous flesh” yet the artwork is so richly inscribed allegorically that its efficacy to enrapture through the human figure is matched by its reflection into Renaissance culture and values. As art historian Rona Goffen proposes: “Because sexuality and gender identity are bound to society, understanding Titian's women requires understanding his time and place. The psychological, political, social, and economic situation of women in sixteenth-century Venice --contemporary philosophical, theological, and medical views of women-- all coloured Titian's interpretation of women.”
Allusions to Venus are evident from the seductive subject, to the rose and myrtle bush she clutches, and the pearl upon her ear, all relating to the goddess of love’s role as the protectress of young married women. This domestic & epithalamic underscore is further reinforced in the indoor setting. Featuring the marriage cassone in the background tended by servants, Titian proposes ideals of submission and ownership, as does the puppy at her feet denote her fidelity. Further, the artist has produced a tender atmosphere through a harmony of cardinal colours, deep reds and greens with broken white, conveying the Renaissance virtues of faith, hope and charity. Whilst the depiction of devotion captures these traditional marital expectations, it also establishes the ideals of sexuality and beauty in the Renaissance context. Venus herself exudes utter sensuality; her pale candescent skin, small breasts, strong neck, rounded figure and hand cusping inward around her womb is highlighted in chiaroscuro contrast to the dark lavish curtains drawn directly behind her. She is adorned with feminity; her floral arrangement recalls her budding sexuality and fertility, her gems a reminder of her desirable status, the pearl particularly her purity and innocence. Her placement in the bedroom propped upon the pillows rather than amongst nature affirms her role as wife to appease both domestically and sexually, as well as reinforces the private nature of the painting which was to be displayed not upon a gallery wall, but at home, intimate for the male voyeur. With her at once modest and coy hand positioning, her flowing body, and tilted, tempted face, Venus certainly seduces. Yet it is her stare that has offered greater scope of speculation. Meek, inviting and absent, she is available for pleasure, the awareness of her beauty affirmed in the acknowledgement of her voyeur’s male gaze. John Berger discussed this formative, objectified identity in Ways of Seeing:
“Her own sense of being in herself is supplanted by a sense of being appreciated as herself by another....
One might simplify this by saying: men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at.
This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves.
The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female.
Thus she turns herself into an object - and most particularly an object of vision: a sight.”
A sight, a masterpiece, a true domestic goddess - Titian’s timeless rendering of the young Venus epitomises the allure and ideals of the nude in a delicate balance of signs and symbols to explore power, gender and social relationships in 16th century Renaissance society.
"A sort of monkey mocking the pose and the movement of the arm of Titian's Venus, with a hand shamelessly flexed" was how the journalist who first identified the connection between Titian’s Venus & Eduard Manet’s Olympia in 1865 described the most notorious painting of the 19th century. The work sparked such an abhorred outcry, as captured by Jean Ravenel “the scapegoat of the Salon, the victim of Parisian lynch law. Each passer-by takes a stone and throws it in her face” that when it was shown at the Salon, physical threats resulted in its rehanging high above the last gallery doorway, so much so that it was unclear "whether you were looking at a parcel of nude flesh or a bundle of laundry”. Historians now identify this astonishment and anger as Parisians on the verge of modernism. It was indeed Manet who spearheaded this striking new movement, declaring he wanted to be the painter of modern life. Interrogating established power, gender and social relationships, he is remembered by Robert Hughes as he who"invariably painted women as equal beings, not as denatured objects of allure." Utilising the nude, or rather, the naked, Manet imposed the modern woman; independent, sexually empowered, liberated and assertive - and above all, a threat.
Olympia subverts Venus through empowerment; at once addressing and resisting. Taut, tense, and flattened, painted alla prima to seem almost outlined and stark through the elimination of mid tones, the languid softness and sensuality of the nude is discarded, her body highlighted in almost artificial starkness. Here Manet is deliberately flouting artistic conventions not just in his subject matter, but through individual thick free strokes of limited colour and tensions between bright light and dark shadows to pronounce the brazen courtesan. Olympia lies propped up, a self-possessed prostitute whose slender milky body is undeniably and authentically her own, not that of an idealised goddess. Manet’s friend and revered French writer Emilie Zola observed this: “When our artists give us a Venus, they “correct” Nature, but Eduard Manet has asked himself, “Why lie, why not tell the truth? He has made us acquainted with Olympia, a contemporary girl, the sort of girl we meet every day on the pavements, with thin shoulders wrapped in a flimsy, faded woollen shawl.”
This girl in fact was 19 year old Victorian Meurent, a professional model who had already appeared in Manet’s works, including the scandalous Le Dejeuner sur l’Herbe two years earlier. It is quite probable then that she was already well-acquainted with the public, and hence Manet explores the potential to assume and discard roles, as does Meurent in the costuming of a prostitute. Her black velvet necklace, stark white sheets and tangled floral throw, dainty dangling bedroom slippers, gold jewellery, tropical hibiscus flower tucked behind her ear, and even her name alert to her role, one that though was certainly common in Parisian society would never dare to be presented as not to threaten public morals and social order. Manet evidently disregards this decorum, but what is most disconcerting and unsettling to this day is how he destroys the desire and role of the voyeur: “The imperturbability and inscrutability of Olympia’s expression - and of the image as a whole - persist.” Her assertive and aloof gaze startles the viewer for their perversion, and yet brazenly dares them to look again. This sense of self determination is again explored in the placement of her hands. Unlike Titian’s Venus’ sensual, more relaxed hand cupped inwards around her genital area, here Olympia suppresses outwardly, her hand flat and tensed, concealing, self-conscious, uneasy yet equally provocative. Just as she knows her body, she knows her power is not based on how she is consumed, but how she possesses herself. Olympia owns it; herself, her sexuality, her nakedness. Just as John Berger declared: “To be naked is to be oneself. To be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognised for oneself.”
Certainly, Olympia has and will be continually recognised for Manet’s modern world in all it's glorious oppositions; subtle and shocking, sensual and sickening. In exploring the signs and symbols of this commanding courtesan, the artist effectively reveals and provokes changes in power, gender and social relationships from his careful referencing of the past to his embrace on the cusp of the modern age.
If Napoleon III declared Manet’s work as "an offence against decency”, it’s doubtful he’d find any words at all if ever confronted with Kehinde Wiley’s appropriated portrait of a swaggering young black man in place of his own uncle. Enter the 21st century; a bustling, vibrant, hybridised culture where contradictions of gender, power and social relations flourish in an evolving society. The concept of the human body is now exploited and explored in innumerable and unimaginable ways in the proliferation of media, often on the grandest of scales. Our consumer culture thrives on everything from skimpy Victoria’s Secret shows featuring tall toned “angels”, to Kim Kardashian’s infamous “Break the Internet” cover for Paper Magazine last year. Our perceptions of these ideal forms are fluid; emaciated modes vs the allure of celebrity ass, from mixed race to more flexible gender identities. In the postmodern world, nothing is certain, and nothing is original. The freedom to meander social and historical realms in means of expression is greater than ever, and from it has emerged contemporary commentary and meditation on the nature of our culture, as evident in the practice of Los Angeles native and New York based artist Kehinde Wiley.
“It’s really interesting to be able to look at the history of some of the great portraits and say what is it about the trappings of empire and power that we can use in the 21st century. What does it look like to be graceful, what does it look like to be proud, noble? How do you look at a young black man in American society? It’s a very important question, especially at this movement in our culture.”
In a truly dynamic practice that encompasses processes of street casting, interview, film, photography, painting, and international collaborations with artisans & revered fashion designers alike, Kehinde Wiley creates staggeringly intricate and immense paintings of modern African American subjects in their street clothes inserted into scenes and poses of aristocrats from classic European tradition. Exposing and challenging assumptions on race, gender, and power, such as in past discriminations that saw the role of the black persona in subservience (as evident in Manet’s Olympia), Wiley’s work embraces the beauty and empowerment of the individual now standing stridently centre stage. "I'm looking for a sense of self-possession, a type of swagger, a sense of grace in the world. It's hard to say exactly what that is, you know it when you see it," he says. The artist is most renowned for his bracingly big paintings featuring young black men from the streets of Harlem, who, in their assumption of new poses and subversion of subject effectively encapsulate the growing dialogue of power relationships and the tensions of both heroism and vulnerability, autonomy and manipulation in revised representation. As seen in Death of Chatterton (2014), a reference to the painting of the same name by English Pre-Raphaelite painter Henry Wallis, the muscular brown body glistens and twists, chest, arms and eyes turning absently and drained from pain as the figure draws his final breaths. Clothed in faded blue jeans, red Puma pumps, and azure underwear lifted under his belt, he is fully reclined horizontally upon the white table clothed wooden slab resembling an altar, whilst the background and foreground bloom with pink cherry blossoms curling around the figure and against the teal backdrop. Wiley certainly highlights tensions of power and gender here. His upper body is sensual, nude, his hand draped over his abdominals feebly. He is weak - and hence, accessible for the voyeur. Below however we are reminded of his masculinity and street swagger, a man of the modern age, yet one that is also assumed to be threatening and thuggish in the growing face of racial restlessness in current America. He is at once heroic and powerless in the face of death, momentous yet vulnerable, a body seemingly the picture of health but paralysed upon a sacrificial altar. These juxtapositions are further reinforced in the plentiful presence of the blossoms; dainty and decorative, recalling feminine ideals of budding sexuality and fertility. In this hyper-realistic, compelling and contradictory portrayal, Wiley thus exposes assumptions and the development of changing gender, power and social relations in an engaging new dialogue that encompasses the call for the human figure to be presented in more a creative yet realistic, reflective light: “I do it because I want to see people who look like me.”
In all, the fascination of artists throughout history to represent the body by inscribing it with meaning at once reveals a dialogue & evolution of power, gender and social relations, and reflects values and culture over time in such diverse, dynamic societies, from high Renaissance, the cusp of Modernism, and the ever-evolving present. In considering the contributions of Titian, Manet and Kehinde Wiley over the past half century, we can thus appreciate how representation has grown, stretched, and fractured over time, just like the body itself.
“It’s really interesting to be able to look at the history of some of the great portraits and say what is it about the trappings of empire and power that we can use in the 21st century. What does it look like to be graceful, what does it look like to be proud, noble? How do you look at a young black man in American society? It’s a very important question, especially at this movement in our culture.”
In a truly dynamic practice that encompasses processes of street casting, interview, film, photography, painting, and international collaborations with artisans & revered fashion designers alike, Kehinde Wiley creates staggeringly intricate and immense paintings of modern African American subjects in their street clothes inserted into scenes and poses of aristocrats from classic European tradition. Exposing and challenging assumptions on race, gender, and power, such as in past discriminations that saw the role of the black persona in subservience (as evident in Manet’s Olympia), Wiley’s work embraces the beauty and empowerment of the individual now standing stridently centre stage. "I'm looking for a sense of self-possession, a type of swagger, a sense of grace in the world. It's hard to say exactly what that is, you know it when you see it," he says. The artist is most renowned for his bracingly big paintings featuring young black men from the streets of Harlem, who, in their assumption of new poses and subversion of subject effectively encapsulate the growing dialogue of power relationships and the tensions of both heroism and vulnerability, autonomy and manipulation in revised representation. As seen in Death of Chatterton (2014), a reference to the painting of the same name by English Pre-Raphaelite painter Henry Wallis, the muscular brown body glistens and twists, chest, arms and eyes turning absently and drained from pain as the figure draws his final breaths. Clothed in faded blue jeans, red Puma pumps, and azure underwear lifted under his belt, he is fully reclined horizontally upon the white table clothed wooden slab resembling an altar, whilst the background and foreground bloom with pink cherry blossoms curling around the figure and against the teal backdrop. Wiley certainly highlights tensions of power and gender here. His upper body is sensual, nude, his hand draped over his abdominals feebly. He is weak - and hence, accessible for the voyeur. Below however we are reminded of his masculinity and street swagger, a man of the modern age, yet one that is also assumed to be threatening and thuggish in the growing face of racial restlessness in current America. He is at once heroic and powerless in the face of death, momentous yet vulnerable, a body seemingly the picture of health but paralysed upon a sacrificial altar. These juxtapositions are further reinforced in the plentiful presence of the blossoms; dainty and decorative, recalling feminine ideals of budding sexuality and fertility. In this hyper-realistic, compelling and contradictory portrayal, Wiley thus exposes assumptions and the development of changing gender, power and social relations in an engaging new dialogue that encompasses the call for the human figure to be presented in more a creative yet realistic, reflective light: “I do it because I want to see people who look like me.”
In all, the fascination of artists throughout history to represent the body by inscribing it with meaning at once reveals a dialogue & evolution of power, gender and social relations, and reflects values and culture over time in such diverse, dynamic societies, from high Renaissance, the cusp of Modernism, and the ever-evolving present. In considering the contributions of Titian, Manet and Kehinde Wiley over the past half century, we can thus appreciate how representation has grown, stretched, and fractured over time, just like the body itself.
The Brooklyn Museum - Kehinde Wiley: A New Republic