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April 11, 2006
Sex Sells, unless it's of men?
SEX SELLS, RIGHT? NOT IF YOUR ART IS MALE NUDES
AGNIESZKA MATEJKO / agnieszka@vueweekly.com
Maybe it’s because we live in a country where the most we see of each other’s bodies are bare arms (and that for about two months of the year), or maybe we’re just repressed, but whatever it is, we Edmontonians have the strangest attitude to nudity.
It just doesn’t make any sense. Why is it that every corner grocery store carries whole shelves of tacky soft-core porn mags prominently displayed, but if you show tasteful drawings of nudes in public places, the morality police appear out of the woodwork to complain about the effect on children?
That bizarre contradiction is one that artist and photographer Ross Bradley has had to deal with more than most. And his own struggles with finding a venue for his nudes have only made him more determined to see the great tradition of nude figures in western art accepted in his hometown.
That’s why Bradley has been spending hours after busy days at work as the volunteer coordinator of model sessions at Harcourt House and has put together the fourth figurative art show—this year entitled AD Parnassum.
He has invited six figurative artists—George Botchett, Sidsel Naess Bradley, Vern Busby, Edmund Haakonson, Maureen Harvey and Curtis Peterson—to join him in this unabashed and unencumbered celebration of the human body.
Bradley has good reasons to feel more passionately than most about the human figure. While female nudes, abstractly depicted, without a hint of sexuality, are already very difficult to exhibit (dealers are afraid of offending patrons, and the nude figure is simply not a big seller), Bradley discovered that his male nudes are positively out of bounds.
“People want them off the wall because children might see them,” explains Bradley and adds with bewilderment, “and God forbid they may ask mom or dad a question.”
In one image we see a close-up view of a male back dissolving into a dark, dreamlike interior; another man’s face emerges from the depths. The camera captures the two men in a gesture of intense recognition. In this moment, there is as much of an intense connection between two people, perhaps even love, as there is sexuality.
While Bradley’s nudes convey overtones of sexuality, the rest of the artwork in this show is almost entirely sex-free.
They primarily depict the traditional female nude in free, painterly strokes, but the technical accuracy required to draw such gestural figures is immense.
As Bradley succinctly put it: “If a tree is out of place probably nobody is going to notice; if an arm is out of place, someone will point it out.”
That’s why nudes often become technical illustrations: after all, once you have looked at a model for a few hours, he or she becomes just another bowl of fruit.
In the end, though, this show of the nude figure is not for everyone. There are and always will be a few people in Edmonton who are so used to seeing people in parkas that a nude body will be too much, whatever the context.
For the vast majority of us, however, this is a show that celebrates the nude in an entirely non-offensive and child-friendly manner. V
Posted by ronnie at April 11, 2006 07:27 PM
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