Breasts have been seen in art for as long as art has existed. The statuette of Venus of Willendorf, embodiment of fertility, is at least 27 thousand years old and at least a third of its 11 centimeters is occupied by breasts. From then on they have been so represented, exalted, fetishised, as an erotic obsession or synonymous with motherhood or even both together, that we almost no longer pay attention to them.
But whoever goes to Venice between 18 April and 24 November, in conjunction with the Art Biennale (this year titled Strangers everywhere-Foreigners Everywhere), entering the rooms of Palazzo Franchetti that host the exhibition Breasts will be able to get to know the elongated breasts in the painting The Hidden Paintings Grandma Improved, In Deepth. They seem to be straining to say something. The author, Laura Prouvost (Turner Prize in 2013), nourishes a wonderful and surreal passion for breasts, expressed in installations in the shape of fountains, grassy hills, enormous papier-mâché sculptures that would have made Fellini happy.
Like armor
Also on display will be body mask of American metal Sherrie Levine, shiny like primitive armour: they depict in series the torso of a pregnant woman of which we only see the round belly and the swollen breasts, and in the artist’s intentions they tell the influence that ethnography has had on modernism. More and more often, contemporary artists use the most represented part of the female anatomy as a vehicle to talk about something else, they enjoy subverting and overturning a centuries-old narrative.
«For this reason, holding an exhibition on breasts is not as obvious as it seems» she explains the curator of Breasts, Carolina Pasti «also because, if it were, why are there almost none to be seen around?». In reality they are everywhere, not the exhibitions but the breasts, from OnlyFans to video games, not to mention the fact that from an anatomical point of view we are all born with breast tissue. Yet they are still scary. In January, a Calvin Klein advertising campaign featuring singer FKA Twigs as the model was banned in England: «Too provocative» the breasts and the naked body emerging from the clothes. She had sent everything back to the sender, remembering Josephine Baker and Grace Jones, black artists who used nudity to break down barriers. «And then because no one was scandalized by the photos of the same campaign with Jeremy Allen White (the actor of The Beared.) even more naked than me?”.
«I hope that our exhibition sparks the debate even more», hopes Pasti, who has been pursuing this project for a long time, «since I met an artist, Laura Panno, who works around the female body and invented the Spinning breasts, glass sculptures that play with the objectification of the breast but in an ironic way. They are not on display just because they are currently on display elsewhere, but there will be other works by him.”
All the ways to say them
Tits, boobs, sises, pears, apples, cherries, mines, tits, bombs, boobs, in the Italian language, according to Historical dictionary of erotic lexicon (Longanesi), there are over 90 synonyms; Also dollas we learned when Francesco Nuti sang Pear doll in Madonna, how quiet it is tonight (1982). And naturally melonswhich rose to first place since we had the first female Prime Minister.
Breasts are politicalat least since European culture began to use bare-chested young women as an emblem of political ideals (see Freedom leading the people painted by Eugène Delacroix in 1830). The Venetian exhibition starts from the dialogue between past and present to explore what has changed in the representation: the first glance, upon entering, compares a Madonna lactans from the Renaissance era with the famous self-portrait of Cindy Sherman, Untitled 205, which is inspired by Raphael’s Fornarina: in the photo she is in the role of a breastfeeding Madonna, but the milk drips from a breast prosthesis tied to her chest. Today we discuss whether or not to breastfeed in public; in 1700 breastfeeding had even become a cult, as the scholar Marilyn Yalom recalled in The History of Breast (1997).
In France, at the time, the decision had taken hold that women should breastfeed their own little ones, an idea that has become a real cult; Jean-Jacques Rousseau saw it as an instrument of social renewal that united mothers and children, and also fathers, more closely; the government had announced that it would not grant financial support to families if mothers turned to wet nurses for breastfeeding. Today the debate has reopened.
Pride and Prejudice
The photo is on display Woman with child (1980) taken by Oliviero Toscani for a Benetton campaign that caused a scandal due to the black body of the woman contrasting with the whiteness of the newborn. Among the thirty contemporary artists there is also English Charlotte Colbertdaughter of the London financial jet set, passionate about Dalì and Breton, surrealist with a pop twist and at home she has a Victorian style bathtub decorated by her with 108 silicone tits: «What if I use it for bathing? Of course yes! » He laughs enthusiastically.
It leads to Venice Mastectomya sculpture, even if she loves cinema in her multimedia: with She Willdescribed as a “feminist fairy tale in the form of psychological horror”, won the award for best first film at Locarno in 2022. Mother and Child it is instead a moving video sculpture where Model Lily Cole is seen breastfeeding her daughter. «We both gave birth at the same time» she tells us from London «and we were irritated by the sense of shame they made us feel when we breastfed in public, as if motherhood was to the detriment of all the other aspects of our lives and we had to for some reason HIDE. He makes you think, when weapons and violence are not stigmatized but nourishment and life are. Sometimes I wonder if it isn’t a humbling reminder that we all come from a womb, we are all human, mortal and with that both weak and strong.”
His sculpture, Mastectomy, «is perhaps the work in the exhibition that surprised me the most» says Pasti «because it addresses a strong issue but in a playful way. Losing your breasts puts your identity at stake; reality changes but the body is always ours. I care a lot about the topic, the proceeds of the exhibition book will go to the IEO Monzino».
And the men?
And speaking of cut breasts, which also remind us of the minne of the martyr Sant’Agata which over time became a typical Sicilian dessert: in Venice the disturbing tit sculpture by Proune Nourry, famous for the bust of an Amazon exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum in New York in 2018, which takes us back to the Greek myth of warrior women willing to cut off part of their breasts to better be able to take up bow and arrows in battle.
What are we willing to do to assert ourselves? Portraying female nudity today is often claimed by artists as a reversal of the “male gaze” that has imprisoned them for centuries. Tetrarch (2010) by Christopher Bucklow shows the silhouette of the supermodel Claudia Schiffer. When Harper’s Bazaar he asked her who she wanted to be portrayed naked by, he indicated. «Public figures», he explained, «are no different from others, they are living embodiments of archetypal energies and these energies are also within the individual soul».
With Bucklow there are also photos of Mapplethorpe, Araki, Irving Penn: «I’m also interested in the male perspective» concludes Pasti: «has this gaze changed? Their photos are mostly images from the late 80s/90s, when even fashion magazines were full of naked breasts; today they are almost no longer seen.”
#Breasts #art #Breast #exhibition #Venice
– 2024-04-07 08:20:39
