Lots of bare skin in the museum: exhibition on the nude in art
The LWL Museum of Art and Culture in Münster is showing a lot of naked skin in its new exhibition. From this Friday until April 14, 2024, the show "Nudes" is dedicated to the development of nudes in art from the 19th to the 21st century. The centerpiece and main work is Auguste Rodin's "The Kiss". The monumental marble sculpture of two intimate lovers was still considered scandalous decades after its presentation in 1887.
Curator Tanja Pirsig-Marshall emphasized on Wednesday in Münster that the nude, more than almost any other motif, was always a projection surface of its time. Accordingly, the exhibition shows how artists' views of the naked human body have changed time and again.
While painting and drawing from a live model was once part of artistic training at academies, the body dissolved into geometric forms or became almost abstract in the modern era. During the New Objectivity period, the unadorned body became the focus of painting. Works from the 1970s onwards increasingly address the political and social dimensions of unclothed people, such as ideals of beauty, gender identities and questions of representation and power.
The majority of the 90 works come from the Tate art collection in London, the cooperation partner with which the LWL Museum is now realizing its third exhibition in Münster. The works are by Pablo Picasso, Francis Bacon, Henri Matisse and Alice Neel, among others. Nudes from the LWL collection by Edward Munch and August Macke, for example, complete the show.
The LWL Museum of Art and Culture in Münster hosts various exhibitions, and its current one, "Nudes," features numerous nude figures from the 19th to the 21st century. Museum-goers can explore how artists' perceptions of the naked human body have evolved throughout history, as showcased in works from artists like Pablo Picasso and Auguste Rodin.
Source: www.dpa.com
