Skin

Fascinating exhibition at the Ferens Art Gallery exploring modern and contemporary artists responses to the naked human figure.

It looked at the greater honesty modern artists bring to the subject as they abandon the traditional ideas of the idealisation of the body and life drawing. It focused on three artists, Lucian Freud, Ron Mueck and Spencer Tunick, although it also used other works from their own collections and good loans to put these artists in context. It was a nice touch to include a preparatory study of Le Dejeuner sur l’herbe by Manet as this work caused such a scandal when it was first shown, depicting a nude woman with clothed men. It was also nice to see a Stanley Spencer of Patricia Preece.

The first room was devoted to Ron Mueck strangely realistic sculptures despite being unrealistic in scale. I find them quite hard to look at as they seem to creep into your space and challenge your perceptions but I do find then beautiful and it was nice to see a collection of them together.

The centre piece of the show though was Spencer Tunick’s new pictures in his series of photographs of massed ranks of naked people in cities. To mark Hull being the City of Culture the city had commission these new works. Many of them involved the people covering themselves in blue and green pigment to give an impression of the sea rolling into the city. These works were stunning and there was a great video upstairs about how they were created. It was great to then walk round the city and after and spot the settings. I loved the overall effect but it was also fun to look at the detail and see where people’s pigment was wearing off as they walked round the city and laid down on various roads.

Closes on 13 August 2017.

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