What’s the big deal? We are all naked underneath our clothes….
I went to Queens last night for an actual BBQ. There was an actual backyard, with an actual grill and we were eating actual tomatos from an actual garden. You are probably saying to yourself “big deal, who cares?â€, but when you live in Manhattan the closest you get to an actual BBQ is passing by a herd of rats having their weekly shmorgasboard on trash night.
The reason behind this suburban love-fest was the screening of a documentary called “Naked World†which featured 2 + hours of naked people ripping off their clothes and posing for contemporary photographer, Spencer Tunick. Tunick, whose technical skill and aesthetic sense as a photographer are obvious, has traveled all over the world convincing passersbys to strip down and hit the pavement for the sake of art. He gets on a ladder, yells through a megaphone and directs a sea of nude people as they arrange themselves in an artistic configuration while he snaps a photo. The bodies often resemble a land or seascape and are set against natural or historical backdrops.
I will be the first to admit that I find the photographs compelling. It is, no doubt, impressive to behold the sheer number of people (at most 4,500 I think) that are willing to bare it all for art. However, the facade lasts right up until the moment when Tunick speaks. Twenty minutes into the film Tunick launches into a diatribe about how it is his calling to do something radically different.
Hey now, wait a minute! Since when is taking pictures of naked people different?
In the history of Western art, the nude body is prominantly featured in a plethora of distinguished (and some not-so-distinguished) works. Initially painters were commissioned to make portraits of naked women for prominent men to hang in their private alcoves. The pictures were not seen as art, but rather as little more than pornography. Paintings of unclothed (naked) women (and men) are now hung in museums and referred to as ‘nude’, which has entirely different connotation from ‘naked’ in the modern art world. Naked is a description for the display of the human body in an overtly sexual way and nude, a description for the unclothed body shown through an artistic lens. Painters have been painting pictures of nakedness long before art was art.
The idea of nudity in art is not new, neither is the idea of using nude bodies as landscape. The idea of assembling nude people outside for a photograph is also not new, so what is so special about Spencer Tunick’s work? You got me there.
An artist may achieve originality by inventing a new medium, by mixing old medium in new ways, by experimenting with a new subject or exploring an alternate way to view an old subject. Many artists achieve originality through meaning. This is to say that they have a philosophical treatise which lends weight to the visual work.
It seems that Tunick is lacking in both. The meaning of his work goes something like, “I have always known I was going to do something different. I always knew I was going to be famousâ€. Uhhh…check please.
The most interesting part about “Naked World†is observing the way people from different cultures react to the idea of getting naked for a photograph in public. In England, Melbourne, NYC, Montreal, people come out in droves while in Japan, South Africa, Ireland, Scotland and Russia, Tunick has trouble convincing even one person to pose for him. People are definitely touched in some way by the experience (although in what way I am not sure…) and you have to give Tunick snaps for putting his balls on the line by approaching total strangers and asking them to drop trow.
In summation, I am not sure what place Tunick’s work will hold in contemporary art (probably not much), but I can say his work is visually arresting if that is all you take it for and maybe that’s enough.
