in a physical expression of unity. The holes within the sculpture recall the wartime tunnel,
transforming it from a void that swallows
masses of people to a harmonious space con
trolled by the bodies. FAMILY GROUP: CHRISTIE'S
IMAGES/CORBIS; TUBE SHELTER PERSPECTIVE: HENRY MOORE FOUNDATION; TATE GALLERY, LONDON/ART RESOURCE, NY.
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Painting, Francis Bacon, 1946
Bacon's nightmarish association of the slaughterhouse with the emblems of political and religious power conjures both the suffering and the hypocrisy of the twentieth century. The bust of a man, his face overshadowed by an open umbrella, surrounded by microphones, the whole superimposed upon a butcher's display, evokes the discrepancy between rhetoric and means of power. While the umbrella offers a ludicrous symbol of respectability, the visual parallels between man and meat draw attention to the brutal foundations of political inlluence. The man's broad shoulders resemble the squared outline of the carcass behind him. The red and white of his face, and his exposed teeth, suggest the flesh and bone of the beef. Incongruous religious references, in the cruciform spread of the carcass and the churchlike decorations on the walls, augment the painting's insinuations of corruption. THE ESTATE or FRAINCIS BACON/ARS, NY/DACS, LONDON; DIGITAL IMAGE; THE MUSEUM OE MODERN ART/LICENSED BY SCALA/ART RESOURCE, NY.
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Model-with Unfinished Self-Portrait, David Hockney, 1977
In Model with Unfinished Self-Portrait layers of illusion, realism undermined by artifice, and pictures within pictures draw our attention to the deceptive nature of painting. At first we seem to see in mirror image a model (Gregory Evans, Hockney's lover) sleeping while the artist paints; but as the title implies, the figure in fact lies in front of Self-Portrait with Blue Guitar, a painting developed concurrently with Model, depicting Hockney as Picasso, drawing a guitar. Hockney used the relationship between the canvases to reinforce his persona: Model invokes Picasso's technique of combining naturalistic with stylized or unfinished elements; while Self-Portrait, which eventually incorporated a bust of Dora Maar, Picasso's mistress, encourages an analogy between Picasso, Hockney, and their respective muses. PRIVATE COLLECTION/BRIDGEMAN ART LIBRARY.
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Naked Man, Back View, Lucian Freud, 1993
Freud's nudes study the details of the human body with an unflinching fascination that is modern in its refusal to censor or sentimentalize. Bowery, Freud's model, was a two-hundredpound nightclub performer, famous for the gorgeous and outrageous costumes he used to reinvent himself in public. Yet Freud, recalling their first encounter, remembered the shape of his lower limbs rather than his outfit, observing that 'his calves went right down to his feet, almost avoiding the whole business of ankles altogether.' His depiction of Bowery in the nude strongly evokes the magnificence and the vulnerability of a body better known for its sartorial transformations. COURTESY OF ACQUAVELLA GALLERIES, INC. ? 1993 THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, PURCHASE LILAACHESON WALLACE GIFT (1993.71).
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Marsyas, Anish Kapoor, October 9, 2002 -April 6, 2003
Designed as a temporary installation to fill the vast central Turbine Hall at London's Tate Modern, Marsyas consists of a dark-red plastic membrane joining together three steel rings, two positioned vertically at either end and the third hung horizontally between. Its title refers to Marsyas, the satyr whom, in Greek mythology, Apollo flayed alive, and the membrane's color and contortions evoke flesh, even mutilated flesh. Yet the whole structure also has an ethereal quality, opening around each ring like the throat of an enormous flower. Suspended in the air, its intense, monochromatic surface resisting spatial recession, it seeks, as Kapoor has commented, 'to make body into sky.' COPYRIGHT 2002 ANISH KAPOOR; TATE GALLERY, LONDON/ART RESOURCE, NY.
