Herbert Ritts (August 13, 1952 – December 26, 2002) was an American fashion photographer who concentrated on black-and-white photography and portraits in the style of classical Greek sculpture. Consequently some of his more famous pieces are of male and female nudes in what can be called glamour photography.
Herb Ritts, 1952 – 2002
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Ever wonder what the masses really think about public nudity? You need to have Spencer Tunick around to discover the hidden truth. Somehow, in the name of art, he gets past our misplaced facades and reveals the very soul of human nature.
From www.pedestrian.tv; by Ash
Nudity, after reality television and Karl Stefanovic is the final frontier of human shame. Since childhood we’re conditioned to associate nudity with a lack of morals or promiscuity and unless you’re a stripper, model, streaker or Taylor Lautner’s torso only a handful of people should see you naked on any given day. This morning however, five thousand Sydneysiders threw clothing and caution to the unseasonably chilly wind for a nude artwork by American photographer Spencer Tunick – creating a soon-to-be iconic image and shifting the paradigm of public nudity in Australia in the process.
I mean, why is it acceptable for five thousand people to get naked for the sake of art but if five people tried disrobing at the Opera House steps tomorrow they’d be pepper sprayed like they abducted a bus-full of children? Or you could talk about how Tunick told strangers to kiss – with many interpreting his instructions as a spontaneous act of unity. Outside the context of high art – five thousand naked strangers making out in a public place would be viewed as the orgy precursor to the Apocalypse. But when framed by artistic intention some magical transformation takes place and nudity becomes a human interest story on the local news. Why is one illegal and one not? Who decides what’s appropriate and what’s not? And has the public threshold for nudity increased now that the SMH has posted a video with a thousand penises in it?
It’s something to think about and we’d love to hear your views but the more pertinent question might be how did this happen? I mean, it’s weird to think that one person can convince thousands of strangers halfway across the world to disrobe and blindly follow direction – but that’s Tunick’s M.O. exactly. After graduating from Art College in Boston, Tunick began shooting nudes in the late 80’s, gradually incorporating more participants and more iconic locations as his profile grew. In 2007 he shot 18.,000 nudes in Mexico City. This morning he shot a few thousand less at Sydney’s most recognizable Harbourside landmark. That’s the appeal I guess. To be part of something greater than yourself. To be immortalized in art. To forge a tangible record of your existence. Or…people just like getting naked and seeing other people naked. But you’d be wrong if to assume Tunick’s aim is to titillate. In his world human bodies are brush strokes and nudity a symbol for human homogeneity. From a distance we’re all the same says Tunick and looking at his photos you tend to agree.
What’s even stranger, considering the democracy of it all, is that Tunick remains fully clothed throughout the shoot’s duration. He barks orders from a microphone on a raised platform while racing against the light to conjure his magic. Pedestrian recently caught up with starkers participant Koots, 23, unemployed, for an insider’s view on taking it all off in the name of art.
Interview with Koots:
First question Koots – what compelled you to strip with a few thousand strangers?
It was just a chance to do something I wouldn’t usually do. Any other time legally, you’d get in trouble but all of a sudden it was cool to just strip off in public – it’s a pretty crazy double standard.
And was there much diversity in the crowd?
There were heaps of young people and a bunch of older people as well. It was pretty much 50/50 men and women – it wasn’t just like old dirty men. It was pretty even actually, all different people from all different backgrounds. From people you wouldn’t expect to crazy old men who were tattooed head to toe.
And how did it work logistically?
We got there at 4am and they organized everyone into different groups. Then they give you instructions on where to stand and how it’s going to work. Then they give the green light and thousands of people get their kit off and take their positions. Then he (Tunick) just goes through a variety of poses – facing one way, facing the other, lying down with you head in the crotch of the person behind you. There was one where he told everyone to kiss the person next to them regardless of whether it was a man or a woman – whatever. Then after that we went into the concert hall of the Opera House and he did another one where everyone was sitting down.
Where did you put your clothes?
Nebojsa Zdravkovic was born in Belgrade in 1959, he trained in the best art schools and graduated with a Masters Degree. He is now a member of the Association of Serbian Fine Artists.
He was granted a scholarship by the Spanish government for post-graduate studies in Madrid. He has won many prizes for his work in his own country and abroad.
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James Richmond Barthé (January 28, 1901 – March 5, 1989) was an African American sculptor known for his many public works, including the Toussaint L’Ouverture Monument in Port-au-Prince, Haiti and a sculpture of Rose McClendon for Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater House.
Barthe once said that “all my life I have be interested in trying to capture the spiritual quality I see and feel in people, and I feel that the human figure as God made it, is the best means of expressing this spirit in man.”
Richmond Barthé was born in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, (in January 1901). His father died at 22, when Richmond was only one month old, leaving his mother to raise him alone. Barthé spent his teen years in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Lyle Saxon of the Times Picayune newspaper, tried unsuccessfully against racist policy to get Barthé registered in art school in New Orleans. In 1924, with the aid of a Catholic priest, the Reverend Harry Kane, S.S.I, and with less than a high school education and no formal training in art, Barthé was admitted to the Art Institute of Chicago. During the next four years Barthé followed a curriculum structured for majors in painting. During his four years of study he worked as a busboy at a small café. His work caught the attention of Dr. Charles Maceo Thompson, a patron of the arts and supporter of many talented young black artists. Barthé was a flattering portrait painter, and Dr. Thompson helped him to secure many lucrative commissions from the city’s affluent black citizens.
During the winter of 1532, the 57-year-old Michelangelo fell heart and soul in love with the Roman nobleman Tommaso de’ Cavalieri, who was probably not yet 20 years old. As well as extraordinary beauty, the young man possessed gentle manners, a cultivated mind, and an intelligence capable of appreciating the honour of being loved by a man of Michelangelo’s genius.
As far as is known, that love was physically unrequited, though that does not mean it was chaste. For Michelangelo expressed his desire for Tommaso openly in letters, poems, and the spectacular gift of five of the most perfect drawings he ever made, known today as the presentation drawings.
From www.telegraph.co.uk
By Martin Gayford
A naked, sleeping man is woken by a winged angel, also naked, blowing a trumpet in his face. Behind him jostles a circle of figures representing the deadly sins. This drawing, thought to have been executed in the mid-16th century by Michelangelo (and reproduced here) is known as Il Sogno or The Dream.
From Thursday, it will form the centrepiece of an exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery in London comprising Michelangelo’s drawings, letters and poems, which promises to throw new light on the emotions, imagination and private life of one of the greatest artists who ever lived. There is one small problem: The Dream and the other drawings on show are far from easy to decode. On the contrary, they bring to mind Churchill’s celebrated remark about Russia in 1939; they, too, are “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma”.
The first of the questions presented by The Dream is: for whom was it made? The most popular theory says the recipient was a young Roman nobleman named Tommaso de’ Cavalieri who was, without much question, the love of Michelangelo’s life. Almost immediately, more questions begin to crowd in: what were the terms of this love and how was it expressed? The two men first met in Rome in the winter of 1532 when Michelangelo was 57, and de’ Cavalieri was, according to rather vague documentation, between 12 and 21.
Over subsequent years, the artist bombarded this youth with letters and poems. Both reveal a different Michelangelo – vulnerable, suffering, and capable of tenderness – to the fearsome figure often seen by his contemporaries. A year after that first meeting Michelangelo wrote to de’ Cavalieri that “while my memory of you lasts I am unable to feel either weariness or fear of death”. In sonnets he declared, punning on the other’s name: “I remain the prisoner of an armed cavalier.”
James Huctwith lives and work in downtown Toronto. Born in 1967, he was raised in rural Southern Ontario. He attended Cayuga Secondary School from 1981 until 1986, graduating with honours from Grade Thirteen. Afterwards, he studied fine art for three years at the University of Guelph, primarily interested in theory, history and architecture – citing professors Suzy Lake and Margaret Priest as influences.
After this, he lived in Vancouver in the early ‘90’s where he first began to paint and exhibit. Returning to Toronto in 1995, he began producing and exhibiting professionally with the O’Connor Gallery. He was with the gallery for a decade, crediting the encouragement and support of the then proprietor, Dennis O’Connor, as “rare, invaluable and crucial to my ability to develop.”
The next three years were marked by personal difficulty and marked changes. In the spring of 2005, Huctwith joined Gallery Jones in Vancouver for two years, and produced a run of ‘cooled-out’ non-figurative works, in contrast to the O’Connor shows which had been physically and emotionally explicit. Huctwith left O’Connor and joined Galerie Harwood near Montreal, also for two years, starting in 2006. The work produced for this gallery was marked primarily by considered re-interpretations of the still life genre.
Feeling it was time to regroup and rediscover where he wanted to go with the work, Huctwith moved all his work back to Ontario, placing past work with Antonio Arch Fine Arts Ltd. in Toronto, and signing up with Galerie La Petite Mort in Ottawa. His first show there, in the fall of 2009, was a success.
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From the early days of ancient Rome and Greece, on through Michelangelo’s day, most of us appreciate the human form. Beginning in the late 19th century and on through the 20th, we we celebrated the human form with a camera.
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Born October 1977, Ryan McGinley lives in New York City. He began taking photographs in 1998. In 2003, at the age of 24, McGinley was the youngest artist to have a solo show at the Whitney Museum of American Art. He was also named Photographer of the Year in 2003 by American Photo Magazine.
McGinley captures the spirit of youth and couples that with a rare and often vilified personal freedom–getting naked. Young men and women, guys and girls not quite over the the age threshold that locks them in the real world, who not only know how to enjoy their youth, but their own skin. Without shame or inhibition, McGinley takes the older observers back to their own youthful days and makes them dream about how much more carefree we could have been had we not been relentlessly indoctrinated about the shamefulness of the human body.
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