Painters - Naked Together
What different motivations insire painters?
When your work involves creating images for others to consider, you may, from time to time, hope certain similarities are noticed and not ignored.
If you were judged by the images you created and left behind, what images would you leave for cultural consideration?
Considering these and other important and defining questions, here are some of the images some well known painters spent their very limited time to fashion:
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Edgar Degas:
(Click on images to view them individually or larger.)
Paul Gauguin, “Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?:”
John Singer Sargent, “Tommies Bathing:”
Paul Cézanne, “Orgy:”
Paul Cézanne, “Study of Bathers:”
Frédéric Bazille, “Bathers:”
Paul Cézanne “Study of Bathers:”
Édouard Manet, “Olympia” 1863:
Paul Gauguin “The Spirit of the Dead Keeps Watch (Manao tupapau)” 1892:
Attributed to Titian, “Pastoral Concert (Fête Champêtre)” (c. 1508):
Édouard Manet, “Le Dejeuner sur l’herbe” 1863:
Paul Cézanne, “Pastoral:”
Georges-Pierre Seurat, “The Models:”
Frédéric Bazille:
Edgar Degas:
Paul Cézanne, “Les Grandes Baigneuses” 1906:
Pablo Picasso, “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” (The Young Ladies of Avignon) 1907:
Henri Matisse, “La Danse (second version)”1909:
© All rights reserved by the respective artists.
Onemoreoption - there is a curious difference between what you have posted here, in this one post, from the previous Manga-inspired images from your last two posts. What surprises me is that you didn’t include some more recent painters’ of the nude - Lucian Freud, Stanley Spencer, Philip Pearlstein, John Currin, Hanneline Roberg, David Salle, etc. - in this lineup.
You’re fun. And you’re right. This post could have gone on for pages and pages. As it is, it is one of the longest (most picture filled) posts I’ve posted. I had to stop somewhere. I didn’t stop in time or era (although “paintings of group nudes” was a theme I tried to loosely follow). I just paused - there will be more posts on similar topics someday I hope.
Thank you for mentioning those artists. Of those artists, I have only done a couple posts on John Currin so far (viewable by typing “Currin” in the search cell in the right column).
And as far as the diverse juxtaposition of art styles - that is intentional. The immediately previous Bar-Am post was even less similarly thematic. But the artists all brilliantly deal with substantive topics of sexuality. And I love art that has the courage to deal with real, inherently controversial, and weighted issues.
Another theme of the post was to emphasize the other meanings of the word “naked” - meanings such as: exposed, open, candid, intimate, sexual, un-garmented, revealed etc. I wanted to emphasize examples showing that those artistic priorities have been supported for centuries by artists.
I suspect that group nudity has rarely, if ever, been commonly “acceptable” by the status quo of any of the cultures these featured artists inhabited. Yet, they each chose to create dramatic images of that type of social activity. That, to me, is interesting, curious, provocative - and I can’t conceptually explain all the reasons they made those choices. The mysteries are lovely.
Thank you, as always, for your intelligent comment (and suggestion). I’ll have to investigate the artists you named. I love that part of this work - sometimes when you are looking for one thing - you find something different that is equally beautiful nearby or along the way. For example, in doing my searching and gathering yesterday, I was reminded of, and exposed to, more artworks of Otto Mueller.