LE STRIP URBAIN, C'EST TUNICK ! *
From 1992 onwards, Spencer Tunick photographs increasing numbers of nude
people, initially in New York, but soon also in diverse urban settings
in the Americas, Europe and Australia. These 'nude happenings' have been
widely commented in the media. Nudes in the city, and in such huge
numbers at that: that certainly cannot go unnoticed...
No doubt, Spencer Tunick pushes the boundaries. Ever since it developed
in the second half of the nineteenth century in remote places, nudism
knew to conquer the more accessible beaches from the sixties onwards,
where there is no longer any serious resistance against increasing
degrees of nudity - at least in the Western World. Things are different
when it comes to public places in an urban context, where men spends his
productive time. There, clothes remain obligatory, even when the
temperature raises to intolerable levels - and that is why the city has
become the stage for all kinds of new forms of exhibitionism (see
"Uncovered' by Jordan Matter). As soon as lingerie saw the light of day,
many a human creature discovered the thrill of wearing it underneath
working apparel or, conversely, of being naked underneath clothes.
Others enjoy denudating themselves or making loving in places where they
can be watched without being easily disturbed, as before the windows of
their apartment, alongside roads or in fast moving cars. A particular
variant is the fad of 'streaking', which became increasingly popular in
the seventies in places where there are lots of people, like on
campuses, parks or hotels, preferably when there are also cameras
around, as with sport manifestations. Figures likeMark Roberts
specialised on streaking during sport events and became world famous.
Equally world famous became Spencer Tunick with still another variant:
'mass streaking' on an up to now unprecedented scale.
TRANSGRESSION?
All eyes can see 'how a country can be free and treat the naked body as
art. Not as pornography or as a crime, but with happiness and caring.”
Spencer Tunick
The increase in scale has not the effect one might expect. To begin
with, it bereaves the undertaking of one of its most important charms:
the effect of surprise. It is impossible to summon up hundreds or
thousands of people without making agreements about where and when, and
these cannot possibly be kept secret. With, as a further consequence,
that the authorities are not only to be informed, but have to lend their
cooperation as well, especially since there are photos to be made, which
requires the necessary preparatory logistics. Spencer Tunick has been
warned: initially, when he still worked on a modest scale, he repeatedly
had collisions with the authorities and even had to spend some time in
jail. But things are different when we are dealing with a mass event:
the degree of transgression diminishes when the number of participants
increases. It is not difficult to scorn an individual for some
'perversion', but that is no longer possible when hundreds or thousands
indulge in the forbidden pleasures. It suffices to compare with nudism
or naturism: when everybody is naked, the nude is bereft of all its
titillating allure. Not unjustifiably do many participants - wholly in
tune with nudists - declare that they are surprised about the
naturalness with which they experience their nude status in such a huge
crowd. Which only betrays that their real expectations were opposite. No
wonder that many a participant in Spencer Tunick's projects retains the
sweetest remembrances of his participation - the feeling of reassuring
normalcy inclusive. The ambivalence of such mitigated - if not
neutralised - transgression is eloquently contained in a phrasing of a
participant to the project in Bruges: 'Spencer Tunick is liberating
mankind of its self-imposed prison of clothes'.
But such rather transparent ambivalence is only to be heard off-stage.
In the official discourse, the erotic component of the original
streaking is empathically denied. Thus,
BBC News quotes University
lecturer Fiona Jamieson from Newcastle: 'The photos are of nude people,
but there is nothing sexual about it.' And, on occasion of an interview
of Spencer Tunick, 'The Telegraph' declares: 'Spencer Tunick's studio
walls are plastered with his photographs of naked people, but there is
none of the jaunty, dirty feel of the girly calendar you might find on a
car mechanic's wall'. And in the already mentioned
BBC News, Spencer Tunick himself declares: 'There is a sensual element to it, but it's not
a sexual experience.' The emphasis with which it is denied that there
possibly could be an erotic component, cannot but remind again of the
statements with the same intention, of which the literature of nudists
and naturist brims over.
BODY SCULPTURE
"I just create shapes and forms with human bodies.
It's an abstraction, it's a performance, it's an installation".
Spencer Tunick
The neutralising move is only completed in that Spencer Tunick proceeds
to sell his already neutralised form of streaking as... a form of art!
Often, it is museums or galleries (among them Saatchi & Saatchi) which
take the initiative. Spencer Tunick likes also to pose as a
photographer. No doubt, the taking of photographs is an essential part
of Spencer Tunick's undertaking, were it alone for the fact that only
thus can the event be witnessed by a much larger public. But, even
though the C-prints are sold for a cool 4.500 Euro, that does not
prevent them from being only interesting from a mere documentary point
of view, not as artistic photos. We are dealing here with mere
instrumental mimesis, not otherwise than is the case with most photos of
happenings or land art. That is probably why others focus on the event
rather than on the document. And here also, they borrow their
terminology from the realm of art:there is talk of 'installations' or
of 'nude-happenings'. And, because these phenomena have only a
peripheral status in the world of art, still others prefer to speak of
'Body sculptures': sculptures made with bodies instead of marble or
bronze. In the same vein, Spencer Tunick inscribes himself in the
tradition of 'land art': just like land art transforms a natural
environment through natural materials, just so is an urban environment
transformed through the use of naked bodies... In the same breath, naked
bodies in an urban environment are reduced to mere neutral materials in
the hands of an 'urban artist'...
The disguise as art is not just a pretext. In Düsseldorf, Spencer Tunick
had a 'body sculpture' piled up in front of Rubens' 'Venus and Adonis',
and on the Piazza Navonain Rome, the mass of bodies is emphatically
photographed against the background of the sculptures of the fountains.
The gesture is not new. During the summer of 2006,
Jan Fabre had the
attributes and video-tapes of his poor performance with Marina Abramowichexhibited in the prestigious Rubens Hall in the Museum of
Fine Arts in Antwerp, as if we were dealing here with comparable items,
let alone comparable quality...
Let us therefore phrase it unambiguously: Spencer Tunick's performances
have nothing to do with art. There is never talk of
mimesis, but always
of displayed reality - in case: bodies that are staged like otherwise on
a catwalk, although with Spencer Tunick, they wear no clothes. And that
Spencer Tunick's bodies are arranged in larger compositions, does not
alter their status as real things: also flowers in a vase are
displayed
reality, and they are not transformed into art in that they are
arranged. Besides, Spencer Tunick's arrangements are not precisely
interesting. Masses are either randomly distributed like spontaneous
masses in streets or on squares, or they are organised in rather
elementary patterns, like those of Nero in the Coliseum or those of
Hitler's military parades on the Zeppelinfeld. In the majority of his
'installations' - and hence also in his photos - Spencer Tunick relies
on similar, rather poor compositions. There are only few attempts to
proceed to more sophisticated arrangements, as when he aligns his bodies
to environmental formations, like in Black Rock Desert (Nevada 2000) or
in Spence Hot Springs (New Mexico 2001). But precisely then, the lack of
compository sophistication only catches the eye in comparison with what
great artists like Rubens knew to realise - would Spencer Tunick have
the guts to pile up his bodies in front of the'Fall of the Angels' in
the Alte Pinakothek in Munich (see picture above this article)?Granted,
it would turn out to be rather impossible to realise compositions like
those of Rubens in the real world with real bodies. But is that not
precisely the reason why mimesis is superior to reality?
That Spencer Tunick nevertheless succeeds in selling his projects as
art, can only be understood when we remind of the fact that the art
world itself has opened the doors wide for all kinds of related, but
nevertheless totally different activities. More precisely in matters of
streaking, the trend was set with the introduction of the happenings in
the sixties. These provided the incrowd, that meets in galleries on
occasion of vernissages and finissages, with more appropriate
entertainment than the artworks, that, after all, are merely hanging
there on the walls. In those galleries, the happening developed into all
kinds of 'performances'. The galleries themselves were thereby
transformed into stages for primitive forms of theatre, if not for the
real world as such. Such metamorphosis was all the more charming since
it could pass for a revolution in the plastic arts: the so-called
'transition from art to life'. In that, under the guise of art, many
things are allowed that are forbidden in the real world, it was obvious
to endorse such formal revolution with a moral revolution - especially
since the number of visitors only increased in accordance with the
degree of transgression - say with the introduction of some sadism or
eroticism (Nitsch, Schwarzkogler...).
NEITHER ART NOR TRANSGRESSION
And that cannot but remind us of the fact that it is not only the nature
of art that is denied here, but in the first place the nature of the
undertaking that is posing as art. For, it is not only the emphatically
denials of the 'sexual nature' of Spencer Tunick's installations that
neutralise the in essence transgressive nature of streaking. Also nudity
itself is neutralised in that it is reduced to a mere element in an
abstract composition. In that respect, it speaks volumes that a visit to
the official website of Spencer Tunick confronts you, not with the nude
in public urban space, but with the invitation of indicating the tint of
your skin on the palette of colours that Spencer Tunick will soon use to
make his next 'body sculptures'...
Notwithstanding, we cannot but harbour the necessary sympathy for this
new form of mass entertainment: I prefer to see a stream of nudes in the
city than a holy procession of flagellants. I welcome the rays of the
sun, even when they come to us through the veil of an artistic mist. And
even that mist is not to be scorned. That it is disguised as art, made
it possible that meanwhile thousands and thousands of mortals, who
perhaps wanted, but did not dare to break through the daily drudge by
proceeding to the transgressive act of streaking, could indulge en masse
in these forbidden pleasures with the good conscience of having taken
their part in a new revolution in art - if not of having become living
sculptures themselves, and being thusimmortalised by a world-famous
artist on a photo signed by the master himself as a reward and a proof
of their participation in the revolution and their metamorphosis into
artworks.
That is why we willingly - although with some tongue in cheek - join the
call in
The Times Online: 'Do you have naked ambition? Then bare it and
become a living artwork. Go starkers for culture'...
© Stefan Beyst, August 2006
*
Le soir en ligne
referrers:
human archives
canadian blue lemmons