shadow shot sunday

 Honey Wax   Kiki Smith  1995    wax and pigment


for this week's shadow shot I'm bordering on bizarro charro.  this is a work by sculptor Kiki Smith, taken during my last Milwaukee Art Museum visit.  isn't it weird?   but I find myself liking it.   it has the distinction of being dubbed one of those "troubling nudes".

"when, as in the sculpture of Kiki Smith and the painting of Julie Heffernan, the naked body is a prop for the isolated self -- the instrument of an allegory of narcissistic injury and vulnerability, at once ideological and personal in import -- it makes no sense to speak of nakedness or nudity as its essence.......
In modern art, the distinction between naked and nude has lost the weight it had back when representing the body was a moral act: the transcendentalized nude, with its perfect body, was a symbol of goodness and beauty -- ideals to be striven for -- while the realistically naked body, with all its blemishes, imperfections and grossness, was inherently immoral -- the ugly body of the fallen, sinful Adam or Eve, the antithesis of the saved soul rising to heaven".     (from artnet.com)


and from the artist herself -  


"I miss radicality—in my own work and in the art world. The art world seems very product-dominated, and I’m a product maker. But it’s not as interesting an art world now. It’s not as determined by artists themselves. When I first came to New York you really had to work at it. It wasn’t given to you. I miss that a little bit. I would like to be more outside of things, but it’s just not my personality at all."


interesting stuff, no?  


to join in or see what other shadow chasers across the globe have noticed in shadows/light this week, go visit Hey Harriet!  thanks Tracy.  








to read more on the topic of "the troubling nude" go to artnet.com.