The occasion was NYC Bodypainting Day , organized by Andy Golub and Young Naturists America, and, after spending a couple of hours watching dozens of artists do incredible things to these gloriously nude "canvases", who, as a whole, boasted an extraordinary range of body types, I'd have to say the banner is correct. Not that every work of bodypainting here was a great piece of art, though most were pretty amazing. It's just that after a while you don't see, and think about, these nude physical people in the way that you're used to—as sexy, say, or imperfect, or unappealing, or sensational. Suddenly they all look good, or at least they all look different, but in different ways than before, and it made me wish that I and everyone else could appreciate and instantly see the beauty in all bodies as a matter of course. Anyway, the scene at Dag Hammarskjod Plaza was pretty wild, with loads of creative energy from the artists—there were apparently 75 painters on hand—and an infectious sense of liberation, and exhilaration, from the models. Photographers, supporters, art fans, and straight gawkers formed a thick crowd all up and down the taped-off perimeter of the painting area, with only a light presence by the NYPD until it was time to parade, when they bolstered the ranks significantly and employed familiar march-control tactics.
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Part III: Dueling Gazes
Paintings of naked women, usually by clothed men, are suddenly sitting very uncomfortably on gallery walls. Male artists wonder whether they can work with the female form, while the world questions what their intentions were in the first place. By Michael Slenske. And the question of the moment has become: Is it still an artistically justifiable pursuit for a man to paint a naked woman? To answer this question, I reached out to a number of prominent male artists known for doing just that as well as for painting nude men. Presumably, they worried about unintentionally saying the wrong thing that would then echo endlessly across social media, damaging their reputations. For emerging artists, there is the fear of a possibly career-derailing gestalt fail. In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact. I meet with Kauper at Almine Rech, where his trio of nudes — drawn from black, Asian, and white models — stand sentry with their muscled physiques, clinically sculpted vaginas, and vacant eyes, which seem to follow us around the gallery as we talk. In February, the U.
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No one has ever painted naked women as gorgeously as Titian did. His ravishing Venus is a lover laying her beauty bare, and the recipient of her optical largesse is anyone who happens to stand in front of this painting in the Uffizi gallery in Florence, Italy. Titian creates with mind-boggling skill the lavish presence of this nude: the rapture of her carnal glory. There's something divine about such beauty. Some people find profundity in religious art, in abstract art, in conceptual art. For me, there's nothing more moving in art than the breasts of the Venus of Urbino. Nudity never loses its power. The conventions of the nude can be enjoyed, and challenged, in limitless ways.
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