Dream Exhibition: The Body Deformed

Today I am going to compose my dream exhibition, meaning the works that would out together if I had endless amounts of money and connections at my disposal. The theme of the pseudo exhibition is The Body Deformed. 

The first artist that came to mind when I thought of this theme was Winston Chmielinski. He is a modern artist based in New York that mostly works in acrylic. In Winston Chmielinski’s Man Woman Bird there is the smooth surface’s of renaissance art, the distortion of illusion and reality in Baroque art, a depiction of modern day life, and the ambiguity of abstract art, which is even seen in the title. His art reveals and censors the human form, exposing the connection between mind, skin, paint, and brush.

Winston Chmielinski, Man Woman Bird

Winston Chmielinski, Soft 7

The next artist that I truly admire and believe that fits into the theme is Egon Schiele. Even his self-portraits are naked and exposed, creating a vulnerability that often times doesn’t exist in art.

In Egon Schiele’s Self Portrait (1910) he shows himself in a nude pose that is extremely distorted and abstract. The artist frequently depicted himself over the course of his short career, suggesting an obsession with self on par with Pablo Picasso. In most of the self portraits that he completed, they are extremely revealing and eroticized. These types of male nude portraits were virtually unparalleled in Western art at this time. In this particular portrait, Schiele creates a frightening view of himself where he is emaciated with glowing red eyes and decapitated feet. His body is entirely exposed, but ironically with the face partially hidden, possibly suggesting a sense of shame. The deformed shape of his body owes itself to the extreme influence of modern dance in relation to art at this time. Characteristic of the Expressionist mode, Schiele expresses his anxiety through line and contour, and flesh that appears abraded and subjected to the elements. Schiele rebells from conventional ideals of beauty with his embrace of figural distortion. His portraits and self portraits were explorations of the sitters psyches and sexuality. Schiele is famous not only for his erotically charged artwork, but also for his lifestyle, marked by scandal and a tragically early death. He harnessed emotional and sexual directness to reestablish the vitality of portraits and self portraits. They are devoid of  secondary attributes, which were often used in the genre of portraiture. Gustav Klimt had the most effect on Schiele’s career, serving as Schiele’s mentor and friend. Schiele took on Klimt’s focus on eroticism in the female form, the emotionally intense, and the investigation of the sitter’s inner life and emotional states. Klimt preferred, however, a more brilliant palette and patterned surfaces. Schiele was instrumental in forming the Expressionist ideals in the early 20th century, characterized by the use of irregular contours, dark symbolism, and sombre palettes. Schiele’s work influenced other Expressionists like Oskar Kokoschka, as well as his Neo-Expressionist successors like Francis Bacon and Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Egon Schiele, Self-Portrait (1910)

Egon, Schiele, Seated Male Nude with Right Arm Outstretched

The next artist that I decided to include in the collection is Gustav Klimt, who I mentioned inspired Schiele. The largest of his paintings on canvas sticks out in my memory,  The Three Ages of Women. It shows three different ages of women, symbolizing the life cycle. The youngest women, with her boyish features and the the flowers in her hair, is an allegory for Spring and therefore life.

Gustav Klimt, Three Ages of Woman

The last artist that I will include is Janine Antoni, a feminist artist. Her Lick and Lather series is truly transformative. They are busts done in the classical style out of soap and chocolate and “re-sculpted”. The pieces are about desire, and oddly enough people have succumb to their desires and tried to eat the busts before. She knew when making the molds that they obviously wouldn’t last long and would inevitably self-destruct.

-Kindell Renee Hardin