"our Kobe correspondent send us this reminder of how much better things are in our provincial Japanese twin than they are here"


The Victorian Nude
Morality and Art in 19th – Century Britain
8 February – 5 May
Kobe City Museum

This exhibition is not being shown in a conventional viewing place, like an
art museum or prefectual (state) gallery but is on show in a traditional
museum of antiquities and how precise are the Japanese because this is a show
about Victorian morality, exhibited through the portrayal of nudity in the
fine arts through a certain epoch of British history which was traditionally
shrouded with high morals.

The high morals that were seemingly in place in this particular time of
Britain is contradicted through the detritus of paintings, prints and early
photography. The virtuoso paint traces in some of the paintings of the
Victorian nude is overwhelming, a great pleasure to see, so I tried to forget
the polemic feminist arguments, the baggage of Christian memories that often
enter ones conscious and enjoy the spectacle. But that was a hard thing to do
for some of the images conjure up a blistering array of diatribes for and
against one morals in the form of an introspective soliloquy.

Upon entrance to the exhibition there is a bevy of golden gilt frames with
spectacular images of erotically charged male and female nudes (mostly female)
and these paintings are intermingled with dreary academic drawings together
the gritty realisms of nineteenth British nudity. The academic life studies by
William Mulready (1786 – 1863) represent both sexes in the most sterile form
of nudity one could ever envisage. Portrayed life, without life is the only
description that comes to mind, they are politically and anatomically correct
in every trained sense of the word, dictated by Sir Joshua Reynolds and his
sixteen discourses of art. Mulready’s studies are like a serious hit of valium
that anesthetizes one the most human of sensations (erotica), saturating this
show

An ironic centre point of morality is evident in Oscar Gustave Rejlander
(1813 - 1875) carbon print from the 32 original negatives 1925, were the
central figure dressed like an apostle who is surrounded by scantily clad
voluptuous woman, a virtuous schoolmistress, scholarly men and the smattering
of middle class pedestrian couples. Rejlander’s photograph is a smorgasbord of
various chosen desires from the Protestant morality of the time ranging from
the supposedly decadent to the decent.

In some images the painted Protestant English morality of the time saturates
this show like a plague of virtuous pestilence. For instance, in Albert
Moore’s (1841 – 93) A Venus c.1869, the image descends to the very bottom of
the politically correct depths of good academic painting’s platonic mannerism,
based on ancient Greek sculpture. Poor old Venus looks like she will wilt on
the clouds untouched and unsoiled, so much so every pubic or underarm hair has
been waxed into permanent oblivion, not a hint of eroticism in Venus.

But none the less this style of good mannerist painting has its own visual
rewards and the image Diadumene c.1884 by Edward John Poynter (1836 –1919), is
an opulent painting and again is based on classical Greek sculpture. The
female is about to slip into the bath adored by prussian, rustic peach,
cerulean whites patterns tiles around the b the pool. Diadumene resonates in
paint like a coloured phantasm from an old biblical black and white television
movie that always gets a rerun around Easter, it’s a great painting. Next to
Diadumene is The bathe of Psyche c. 1889 – 90 by Frederic Leighton 1839 – 1896
again painted in the great mannerist tradition, its less decorative but no
less evocative in its use of colour to enhance the obvious eroticism. In The
bathe of Psyche there is flat black background with the off white marble
juxtaposed against the subtle, sensual and unspoiled naked flesh tones of the
model, partially draped in see through fine cotton or silk garments lacing the
painting with an erotic charge that advertising agencies would die for, I
wonder if this painting would make the Satchi collection.

Earnest Normand 1857 – 1923, painting Bondage 1895 is an apogee of decadence.
Few painting show extreme sex, wealth and power with such seduction. The black
pharaoh is surrounded by partially draped/undraped naked black and white
slaves, with a centurion on the side of the painting down the steps with his
back turned away from the forth coming desired sexual carnage upon a woman
with a terrified child cowering away from the would be perpetrators. The black
slaves seem resigned to the inevitable this is due to the fact that they wear
some processions unlike the white slaves. It’s an awful painting in terms of
having to endure the visual subjugation of human beings at the whim of one
powerful person but the colour is just sensational in its portrayal total
power, greed and decadence.

The latter sections this exhibition is about the modern nude and it has some
good surprises, for instance one of my favorite painters Gwen Johns 1876 –
1939 is represented with her painting Nude Girl 1909 – 10. Having never seen
John’s work before (I don’t think any state gallery has one) I was not let
down. John’s treatment of the model Fenella Lovell in the Nude Girl is a
little self indulgent (jealousy in paint) because she was one of the French
Sculptors Augustus Roden’ s models. John also being one of Rodin’s lovers
would have worked out the obvious interlude between the Lovell and Rodin;
therefore a certain subjective content influenced the objective study as
John’s stated, that Lovell was of a ‘horrid character’ well I’m not surprised
she said that and proceeded to painted her in a kind of disparaging but
emancipated way.

The Nude Study by Johns is a very competent painting, one were the artists
idiosyncratic vision manifests itself through the paint handling, in a way it
reminds one of the 1980 Northbridge school of painters, that presented a
independent vision of Perth. Unfortunately none of these painters will get to
see an extraordinarily developed vision in painting like Johns, which no doubt
would have helped accelerate their sensibilities in painting, towards that
horizon of an idiosyncratic vision.

Lastly but by no means least is the painting La Hollandaise c 1906 by Walter
Sickert (1860 – 1942). Again like John’s this is one of my favorite paintings
and what luck I can see it in Japan. The English painter Francis Bacon once
said that he swapped a Sickert for another well known English painter and he
wish he hadn’t because it had this great erotic charge in the painting. If any
statement typifies an erotic charge in nudity La Hollandaise does by Sickert.
In the face of the model in La Hollandaise there is the evidence of the way
Francis Bacon handled his faces in his painting but that’s were any similarity
ends. La Hollandaise exhibits the seedy morality of Victorian gentleman’s
interludes in the backrooms of Camden Town, there is nothing glamorous in this
painting, you visually swath through the weft of low light, cheap perfume and
lust stained sheets from prior suitors of the night but like a gleaming used
car waiting for a buyer, the model still charges ambience of the painting with
erotica. The wait to see one of Sickert’s best pieces was worth it..

Viewing this show with the Japanese in Kobe I was left wondering how much they
remain unaffected by the Christian values on nudity. As my Japanese friend
said `this show is about nudity not eroticism’ but you will actually never
know through the Japanese smile.

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David Bromfield 041 4889 523

www.behindthe-8-ball.com

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