The Naked Truth

I just read that Spencer Tunick is going to do another piece in Miami involving 200 women and 100 pink rafts. For those of you who aren't familiar with him, he is an artist known for his photographs of hundreds of nude people in places, like Grand Central Station, Mexico City, Cleveland on the 9th street Pier and Amsterdam just to name a few. People have very intense reactions to his work. Some find it beautiful and think him a genius because it's so organic and the human body is a beautiful natural work of art. Others find him shocking and distasteful. I find him boring. The human body is the most over used subject in the entire history of art. It's not really surprising, humans have egos and we love self glorification. Especially in it's purest form...which just happens to be nude.

But I am bored with it, it's been done and done and done. I am not shocked, nor am I impressed, I find the whole thing to have banality to it. Artists are driven by a need to express creativity and there is none in nudes, no matter how you dress it up (pun intended) with settings and props. I am thrilled we aren't all still walking around wearing fig leaves because I think clothing hides a multitude of sins. I don't really find the human body that beautiful, even the ones in the best of shape. Now I am sure you're thinking that I probably have some sort of issues about my body, or nudity or sex or because I spilled my milk as a child. But you can put down your text book copy of Freud because that's not it.

To me art is something that evokes an emotion, evokes but not spells it out for the observer. I like to have my own interpretation of things, that's what art is supposed to allow for. I am much more impressed by artists who can create a river of moods through the use of textures and colors, even sounds and scents. Think about the rich color of distressed saddle leather cradling delicate golden roses, or the feel of crumbling parchment against rich, red velvet. Perhaps the haunting melody of Phil Collins singing "In The Air Tonight" or the missing scent of a woman who has just left the room wearing a fine perfume. Now that's art, not hundreds of anonymous palid naked bodies spooning each other on a cold morning in a park.