Nudity Shocks! NYC Exhibit With Naked Performers

[Stuart G]

Run time: 01:53 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=667bK6jtIzE   Posted on YouTube: March 16, 2010 By YouTube Member: AssociatedPress Views on YouTube: 11804   Posted on DU: March 17, 2010 By DU Member: Stuart G Views on DU: 2344

 
This speaks for itself

[Rabrrrrrr]

1. Never see that in the South, that's for sure. Except at Republican conventions behind closed doors,

but then it'd likely involve rape and other forms of abuse by decent, Jeebus-loving family-values Christians.

[Stuart G]

2. The Repuks think they are too pure, but they are worse..much

worse..the worst kind of hypocrites

[Turbineguy]

13. It's not that you wouldn't see it

it's that life-long friends would not recognize each other while visiting.

[TankLV]

3. WHERE ARE THE MEN PERFORMERS?!!!

I DEMAND EQUALITY!!!

This is so unfair...

[WhoIsNumberNone]

8. I wouldn't want to rely on a 20-something man to stand there all day...

...surrounded by naked women and not have the wrong thought creep into his mind. Could be a little embarrassing.

[TankLV]

10. He could also function as crowd control - be a human "turnstile"...

Course it might be kinda hard to get by two men standing opposite each other!

[WCGreen]

4. Not my cup of tea...

It seems a little childish but then I guess a lot of artist have a childlike naivety about them...

It's like they think what can we do to upset middle class sensibility.

Anyway, i guess if they say it is art then it must be art, at least to them and that is all that counts.

[Neoma]

5. I can imagine someone saying..."Oh, what's your new job?"

"I just stand naked in a doorway for eight hours."

[onpatrol98]

6. Art???

I guess anything is really art...and nothing is really art. Stand two nude women in a doorway and call it art, really? Is this an example of the emperor is without clothes?

[Archae]

7. Modern "art."

Translation: Bullshit.

[DissedByBush]

9. So the hookers in the windows in Amsterdam were artists

And they didn't even know it. I call BS.

What's artistic about staring at the artist for two hours? Come on.

The woman's a farce.

But don't call me a prude or someone who doesn't appreciate "alternative" art.

I am a fan of Karen Finley, and am probably personally responsible for popularizing her in Northern Germany in the early 90s.

I also like Jello Biafra's spoken word work.

[Poll_Blind]

12. I watched the video and I didn't come away with that, at all. I know where you're coming from...

...though. The woman lying under the skeleton didn't particularly challenge me. I didn't see anything particularly exciting with that or the nude woman on the bicycle seat.

Two things, though- First, the nude women doorway I thought was challenging. I'm not so concerned about the feelings of the women who stood there, they're art and they obviously did it willingly or to challenge themselves. However, the feelings of the women and men who had to decide to pass between them and brush up against their bodies, invading their space and almost certainly invoking all kinds of tensions- that, I thought was challenging and worthy of artistic consideration.

I grew up a nudist and I probably wouldn't have felt much as much tension going through the doorway naked, myself, as I would with clothes on. That's my take. I'll bet most everyone who walked through, men and women, was invited to think (by the process) about what that level of closeness means to them, etc.

The staring at the artist bit I also though that was part art and part psychology: Sitting across from a person for just a few minutes (but especially 10+ minutes) without speaking and keeping eye contact is well-known to produce feelings of euphoria and connection, even (especially?) with total strangers. There was a great experiment I read about which covered this exact process in regards to (IIRC) Scientology.

I've got no links but you might want to search more on the phenomenon. I'm not trying to argue with your opinion, just saying what I thought was interesting.

OnEdit: I went to Amsterdam in the late 90's and walked all over that crazy city, including all up and down the red light district. I never saw any of the prostitutes naked. They all had lingerie on, FWIW. There was a material difference in how I react to a nude woman passively standing in close proximity and (essentially) ignoring me and a lingerie-dressed woman, dolled up and actively trying to chat me up, knocking or banging on her little glass door to get attention at any cost.

PB

[onpatrol98]

14. More From Your Comments...

Quote:"I'll bet most everyone who walked through, men and women, was invited to think (by the process) about what that level of closeness means to them, etc."

Clearly, I'm a dunderhead. I got more from your comment about their art...than their art. I can understand being forced to think about even the decision making process of ..."Should I walk around or should I walk through."

Hmm...maybe we need a new word for it. Art just doesn't seem to be the right one.

[Poll_Blind]

16. Well, lemme use another "questionable" example of art: The Piss Christ

Famous one, or infamous, I guess on how you look at it. The Piss Christ.

Now, just like a couple of the criticisms levied at the art installation which is the subject of the OP, the Piss Christ evokes similar (if not stronger) reactions.

Is...it art?

It depends on what art is and what art is supposed to do. Until some dim point in the past I really didn't "get" what art was. I'd just never thought about it. Art is a challenge, an invitation to consideration by the viewer. A viewer can reject that invitation to consideration and that's their choice. Many controversial artistic works extract a high price from the viewers, a sort of price of admission- which is (IMO) what things like this nude installation or the Piss Christ do.

If the viewer can get past that, then (I think) the real "enjoyment" of the art can begin. Sometimes, like the Piss Christ, that's very difficult...especially for, say, a Christian. But take a movie like "The Passion of the Christ" which I am led to believe was very popular and favorably viewed by Christians (generally, of course) while the Piss Christ was reviled.

The only difference between those two, IMO, is that the initial challenge before the enjoyment/consideration phase for the movie is much, much less than for the Piss Christ. But IMO, they are the same work of art.

Blah, blah, blah, you get the idea. But that saying about "Art is where you find it" holds a great truth, IMO. It just depends on how far you're willing to push yourself past your initial considerations of an object, picture, etc. to view it again and look for some meaning in yourself.

PB

[DissedByBush]

21. I don't get Piss Christ

There's no price of admission for me, I'm not Christian. I just don't get it.

Drop a crucifix in a vat of piss, take a picture. Whoopee.

The only possible talent I can see is in the photographic technique itself. And then there's no art in what I see, only technical expertise to get the picture done fairly well.

You all know the Mappelthorpe's infamous self-portrait with the whip. That actually has artistic merit in the composition of the photo.

[Poll_Blind]

22. For me, Piss Christ only took on something deeper than a sarcastic...

...tone when I thought of the urine as the entire world, the world of man, a world of sin and filth into which this semi-divine/divine being was born, yadda yadda. Now, I'm an atheist so I don't necessarily believe all that divine stuff but that was the way that I felt I could understand Piss Christ as a positive or at least dogmatic representation of Christ in the material world- again, very similar to the world portrayed in The Passion of the Christ.

I don't know what the artist intended though but I usually try to avoid seeking it out because it does have some kind of influence on me, I'm sure.

PB

[knixphan]

11. It's subjective.

Always has been, always will be.

[Stuart G]

15. Correct,,subjective..I wonder what the "purists" thought

about nude figures in Renaissance Art, or the art of Rubens. Was that too "sexy" or, was the art of the human body something "special"
This odd video in the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art. does present that age old question, "What is art?"

Of course the person at the gallery never looks at it that way. This is just a live nude woman..the person thinks.
That is, as I see it, the real question the artist is presenting. "Is this nude body art too?" (even if it is a live person,and it is not the most beautiful live nude woman body you have ever seen? )

[Joanne98]

17. Dehumanizing.

[Lorien]

18. The video is already gone, but naked performers in exhibits are hardly new or shocking

we have events in Orlando and Tampa every year called "nude nite"; it's a four day celebration of the nude in art; painting, sculpture and performance art are all included. Nude models stand or perform among the attendees. Everyone has fun, sketches, takes photos...I've never heard or seen anyone express shock or revulsion at any of it.

[Stuart G]

19. I guess that partial nudity was just too much for???

whoever took it off.
... Now is that censorship? Is that what it is called?

[Stuart G]

20. Also, here is a link to the story from the Huffington Post..

I guess that the video has been pulled..here is some of the story..

NEW YORK — Laurence Lallier slipped carefully between two naked women facing each other in a narrow doorway at the Museum of Modern Art.

"I didn't want to step on their feet," said Lallier, a student from Montreal. "We feel shy and they don't, and they're the ones that are naked."

When the artist Marina Abramovic and her then-companion Ulay first performed the piece, called "Imponderabilia," in Bologna, Italy in 1977, the police showed up. New York's finest are unlikely to interfere with the version that opened at MoMA on Sunday, though some museum-goers may choose not to do the sideways limbo between bare bodies.

Elsewhere in the exhibit two clothed people touch fingertips, two others sit back to back with their hair entwined and a naked woman reclines with a skeleton (not a real one) lying on top of her. The performers, re-enacting pieces originated by Abramovic alone or with Ulay, are statue-still.

"It's neat seeing someone naked but not in a sexual way," said Steven Crossot of Philadelphia, watching the skeleton rise and fall with the woman's breathing. "It doesn't even feel voyeuristic. It feels like you're looking at a Renaissance piece, but live."

.



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/16/imponderabilia-abramovic-_n_500589.html