Fine Arts Center

Blurred Lines

In Chapter 3, Berger discusses and explains the difference between nude and nakedness.  While looking through the Fine Arts Center, I found  a piece that may actually challenge the differences, potentially blurring the lines.  For a nude, the always remaining implication is that the subject (a woman) is aware of being seen by a spectator; she is not naked as she is, she is naked as the spectator sees her. To just  be naked, any great sexual image has the element of banality, which must be undisguised but not chilling. It is this which distinguishes between voyeur and lover.  This untitled work is absolutely meant to invoke sexual feelings, but the work itself doesn't fit into a given mold.  There are bits and pieces that fall into both categories, both nude and naked.  

The main focal point is a woman.  She is not fully frontal, nor does she look directly at the spectator; this is because, she has the head of a cat.  There is nothing throughout the book that would put this into any particular mold.  She is plump, laying on her stomach, hiding most of her body in the couch.  In a nude "her body is arranged the way it is, to display it to the man looking at the picture; made to appeal to his sexuality." "To be naked is simply to be without clothes, whereas the nude is a form of art." Only some of the description fits this piece.  She is not simply without clothes, but she is a form of art, but she is not displayed or arranged in a way made to appeal to sexuality.  

The piece takes advice from bits and pieces.  She is clearly a woman, she is clearly naked, but she is not posed or arranged, she does not have the "expression of a woman responding with calculated charm to the man whom she imagines looking at her," she is not simply just without clothes, she is a form of art, but the question is, what kind. Though the picture is a photograph, not a painting, this woman has turned herself into an object, a sight, but she has also managed to conceal the parts of her body that "acts as a conformation and provokes a very strong sense of relief."  There are parts of her that we can relate to, and parts that invoke a feeling of mystery. Although her head is a cat, she is looking directly at the spectator.  Whatever the meaning behind the feline head, this piece is more than just being naked and less than just being a nude.  A composition between art and naked, a piece with blurred lines. 

Berger, John "Ways of Seeing" pgs 45-64

Trivieri, Daryl Untitled Undated Mixed Media    24x36 in