Betty, 2010, by Fred Hatt
The portrait and the nude are generally considered distinct and separate genres within pictorial art. The nude is rarely a depiction of a particular person; rather, it is usually generalized or idealized, used to depict eroticism or heroism, struggle or abjection, joy or disgust as universal phenomena. The portrait is about conveying the essential character of an individual. Historically, the line separating these subjects was rarely breached, except in the occasional portrait of a mistress. Alice Neel and Lucian Freud both made highly individualized depictions of nudes, but they’re outliers. In contemporary art, the body is still nearly always de-individualized and even depersonalized, used as a symbol or provocation.
Piera, 2010, by Fred Hatt
The realistically observed portrait has been a staple of art since the Greeks and Romans, but of all the classic genres it has been the most challenged by the rise of photography and the most marginalized by the conceptual turn of contemporary art. To me portraiture remains a compelling pursuit. I believe a drawing or painting captures a subjective reality that photographs often miss, and the essence of a person is a rich and complex subject to tackle.
Jeremiah, 2010, by Fred Hatt
The nude portrait became one of my own primary genres simply because, many years ago, I was asked to be the monitor, or session supervisor, for a weekly three-hour nude pose at Spring Studio. This isn’t the class I would have chosen to run, as I was more interested in quick poses and movement than in long poses and academic rendering. Nevertheless, learning to sustain my focus and to develop drawings through a longer process was a great learning experience.
Aimi, 2010, by Fred Hatt
Minerva Durham, the proprietor of Spring Studio, favors models who have unique character, and that surely helps keep it interesting for the more advanced artists. When you draw from life as a regular practice for years, after a time you struggle more with boredom and the rut than you do with form and proportion. Drawing endless generic nudes could get a bit dry, but if you try to perceive and capture the specialness of each model, it remains much more interesting.
Sue, 2010, by Fred Hatt
The face and the body both show us something about the person’s character and life experience. The face is the window to the soul but also the public mask of self-presentation. In the body we see how the energy flows and rests. The body also conveys a great deal about the subject’s attitude and way of relating to the world.
Kate, 2010, by Fred Hatt
Nude portraits are nearly impossible to sell in a gallery show. People love these pictures, but no casual collector wants a recognizable picture of a nude individual hanging in their home – even if it is themselves. People have often commissioned me to do nude portraits of them, and they love the resulting pictures but have difficulty deciding where – or if – they should hang them! But since I have always supported myself by other work in order to keep my art free from the dictates of the marketplace, I don’t mind that the work is unsellable.
Christophe, 2010, by Fred Hatt
The division separating the nude from the portrait may exist because of market realities, rather than because of any deeper reason. But the combination, the nude portrait, represents to me a reunification of the primal split in the human soul, our loss of connection with our physicality and our earthly nature. Technology has allowed us to separate ourselves more and more from Nature, which is our origin and on which we are utterly dependent whether we realize it or not. Only our own bodies can reassert this primal symbiosis. A portrayal of face and body as one is a small statement of the unity of spirit and matter.
Amalia, 2010, photo by Fred Hatt
There”s a section on nude portraits, as well as one on head-only portraits, on my portfolio site. Also, many of my previous blog posts have featured nude portraits.
Julio, 2010, by Fred Hatt
All portraits in this post were made in the last six months during the Monday morning long pose session I monitor at Spring Studio. All are aquarelle crayon on paper. Sizes range from 18″ x 24″ to 20″ x 28″.
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10 Comments
Hi Fred;
RE: “Betty, 2010″
You’ve sensitively captured a mood of reflective sadness.
May I ask – out of my own curiosity -
was this piece done on 5/24 ?
True. Nude and Portrait are almost never used in the same sentence. Aside from the painters you mentioned (Alice Neel and Lucien Freud), photographer Jock Sturges comes to mind as another exception. He refers to his work as portraits, and he mainly shoots nudes.
http://www.doubleexposure.com/jock.shtml
Yes, that’s the date, Betty. You’re the model, I presume? I have to say you’re one of the great models for me, by which I mean I nearly always do good work when you’re the model.
I’m glad you found this. Did someone forward it to you?
I featured some drawings of you in my very first blog post, over a year ago, and you’re in this one too. (Click links.)
Thanks for the comment, Andrew. I wasn’t thinking of photographers here, but the nude/portrait divide does usually apply in that medium as well, with Jock Sturges a notable exception. I think Sturges considers himself a nudist or naturist, which may explain why nude and portrait go together for him. There is something about seeing the uncostumed body as an expression of the person that provokes discomfort for many people.
Beautiful put, Fred. I love the nude portrait; some friends have argued that it lies about the person more than a clothed portrait, because we can choose our clothes, and they reflect us, but our bodies, we cannot choose, not entirely. But I am of the flesh-and-bone school, and I think that deep truths about what we’re made of come from nudity, even if they are different truths than the ones that come from clothes. Be that as it may, I sure as hell have a hard time selling them – so our experience corresponds there too. Thanks for the thoughtful piece of writing.
Daniel, Spring Studio seems to be the locus of a cluster of artists working in the form of the nude portrait.
Some of my work is represented by a gallery specializing in erotic art (Art at Large). They used to have a gallery space in Manhattan and also take art around to various erotic art festivals and so on. From my observations of their experience with selling art, my generalization would be that female nudes sell well if they are a little abstract or simplified, or if they are either overtly fetishistic or very demure. Male nudes that are fairly explicit but do not contain fetishistic elements do much better than female nudes, probably because they appeal to gay males, who are more likely than straight people to be art collectors, and to want to decorate their homes with nudes. So, while female nudes may appeal to a larger base overall, male nudes sell better.
Interesting set, Fred. At first I was thinking the lack of nude portraits to be a product of our Judeo–Christian culture and ingraned sense of sin. However on second thought the draped portrait seems to be almost universal. I guess everyone wants to be seen by posterity wearing their power tie, even if it’s an obi (?).
True observation, Jim. But I do recall that one of the museums in Washington DC has a half-nude statue of George Washington, with a very manly bare chest, wearing a toga. I don’t think George actually sat for that, though.
Great to see a large selection of your nude portraits and most interesting to read your observations on the genre. Having done life drawing for quite a number of years, I’ve got a few drawers full of them! However, I’ve come round to thinking that the joy of life drawing is that, because it’s pretty much unsaleable, it becomes as much about process as finished product and therein lies a great deal of its enjoyment.
Jennifer, yes, it’s all about the process!
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