How do artists use the body in art?

1. TheBody
How do artists
use the body in
art?

2. Depicting the Body
• Portraits
• Self-portraits
• The Physical Body
• Limits of the Self
• Sickness & Death
Nefertiti, Egypt, c. 1350 BCE. Portrait
Bust. Approx. 1’8” high. Aegyptisches
Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin,
Berlin, Germany.

3. Portraits & Self-Portraits
Reveal personal aspects of an individual…
Painting by Chuck Close

4. Chuck Close
Charles Thomas
"Chuck" Close is
an American
painter and
photographer
who achieved
fame as a
photorealist,
through his
massive-scale
portraits.

5. Self-Portraits
• Artists creating pictures of themselves
• Best model
• Exploration of self, inner reflection
• Long history of artists depicting themselves

6. Frida Kahlo
Mexican Artist
1930s
Ancestry
Culture
Physical body
Pain
Emotional and
psychological pain
Mexican painter Frida Kahlo is best known
for her often wrenching, always mysterious
self-portraits.

7. Diego Rivera
Mexican artist
Muralist: frescoes
Turbulent relationship
depicted in Frida’s self-
portraits

8. Las Dos Fridas, 1939.
What do you think is the symbolism behind the depiction of artist as two individuals?

9. Inner self

10. The Physical Body
• Ideas about the essence of humanity
• Idealized body
– “ideal”, varies from culture to culture
– Greek proportions

11. Doryphoros
• Mathematical and
geometric proportions
• Idealized by Polykleitos
– Balanced pose
– Internal proportions
– Restrained emotions
– Youth, athlete and warrior
– Contraposto
• (counterbalanced)
– Doryphoros (Spear Bearer) or Canon. Roman copy after an original by the Greek sculptor
Polykleitos from c. 450-440 B.C.E., marble, 6'6" (Archaeological Museum, Naples)

12. In 1501, 25-year-old
Michelangelo Buonarroti
begins working on his
colossal masterpiece, the
17-foot-tall marble David.
Galleria dell'Accademia, Florence, Italy

13. The David, portrayed in the Bible as a
young shepherd who slew the giant Goliath
and went on to become a valiant and just
Hebrew king, is a fit symbol of courage and
civic duty to guard the city of Florence.

14. The David is
considered a
Renaissance
masterpiece, an
ideal male form
combining heroic
strength and human
uncertainty.

15. From a huge block of marble that has been abandoned decades earlier by
another sculptor, Michelangelo takes on the challenge of living up to Donatello
and other precursors who had sculpted the same heroic figure.

16. Critical Thinking:
Compare the style of depiction
How do the two figures differ?
Michelangelo’s sculpture: David

17. THE REAL BODY AS BEAUTIFUL
LIMITS OF OUR PHYSICAL STATE
The Physical Body as Metaphor and Symbolism

18. FRIDA KAHLO
Polio
Trolley accident
Numerous operations

19. The Broken Column was painted
shortly after Kahlo underwent spinal
surgery. She depicts herself bound
and constrained by a cage-like
body brace. A cavern of missing
flesh violates the integrity of her
body, exposing a broken column in
place of her spine. The column
appears to be on the verge of
collapsing into rubble. Metal nails
pierce Kahlo’s face, breasts, arms,
and torso, as well as her upper
thigh, hidden behind a swath of
cloth. Tears stream down her face.
Set in an open landscape, the
artist-sitter is exposed in more ways
than one.

20. JADE BEALL
Jade Beall is a world-renowned
photographer specializing in
truthful images of women to
inspire feeling irreplaceably
beautiful as a counter-balance to
the airbrushed, Photoshopped
imagery that dominates main
stream media.

21. Beall’s mission is to change that standard of beauty from one that’s exclusive
and based on illusion to one that includes actual women and is rooted deeply
in reality.
What do you think of the pictures shown here? Do they affect your own
perception of beauty?

22. Beauty comes in different forms. The
24-year-old Afghanistan veteran,
Alex Minsky, lost his leg when his
truck rolled over an improvised
explosive device.
Now a rising model for photographer
Michael Stokes and most importantly
an inspirational hero for countless
people with disabilities who proves
life can continue even after that in all
it’s beauty.

23. The Body in Art and as Art
• Human body as material
• Body ornamentation
• Body as art tool
Ana Mendieta. Arbol de la Vida, No. 294,
Cuba/USA, 1977. Color photograph
Documenting the earth/body sculpture
With artist, tree trunk, and mud.

24. Paul Jackson Pollock, known as
Jackson Pollock, was an
influential American painter and a
major figure in the abstract
expressionist movement. He was
well known for his unique style of
drip painting.
Total physical involvement of the
artist defines this "action
painting." Pollock spread canvas
on the floor in his barn studio, or
on the ground outside, and then
splashed, dripped, and poured
color straight from cans of
commercial house paint. It was
essential, he said, to "walk
around it, work from all four
sides, and be in the painting,
similar to the Indian sand
painters of the West."

25. Transforming everyday activities such as eating, bathing, and
sleeping into ways of making art, Janine Antoni’s primary tool for
making sculpture has always been her own body. She has chiseled
cubes of lard and chocolate with her teeth, washed away the faces
of soap busts made in her own likeness and painted the floor with
hair dye using her own head and hair like a brush.

26. Photo taken from Loving Care performance
Performance wasn't something that I intended to do. I was doing work that was about
process, about the meaning of the making, trying to have a love-hate relationship with
the object. I always feel safer if I can bring the viewer back to the making of it. I try to do
that in a lot of different ways, by residue, by touch, by these processes that are basic to
all of our lives...that people might relate to in terms of process, everyday activities—
bathing, eating, etc.
Janine Antoni

27. "Lick and Lather," detail, 1993
7 soap and 7 chocolate self-portrait busts, 24 x 16 x
13 inches each
"I wanted to work with the tradition of self-portraiture
but also with the classical bust...I had the idea that I
would make a replica of myself in chocolate and in
soap, and I would feed myself with my self, and wash
myself with my self. Both the licking and the bathing
are quite gentle and loving acts, but what’s interesting
is that I’m slowly erasing myself through the process.
So for me it’s about that conflict, that love/hate
relationship we have with our physical appearance,
and the problem I have with looking in the mirror and
thinking, ‘Is that who I am?’"
- Janine Antoni

28. Processing
• What do depictions of the body indicate more
broadly about human nature?
• How is the human body used in art, both as
material and tool?