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COLLECTOR'S FOCUS

ART OF THE NUDE

I

n the myth of Ganymede, Zeus

transforms into an eagle to abduct

the beautiful Trojan shepherd

Ganymede to be cup bearer to the

gods. Since ancient times the kidnapping

has been depicted in paintings and

sculpture as a somewhat chaste abduction

and, at other times, as a rape, Zeus carrying

the boy off for his sexual pleasure.

The Danish sculptor, Bertel Thorvaldsen

(1770-1844) sculpted Ganymede with

Jupiter’s Eagle in 1817. Jupiter is the

Roman equivalent of the Greek god Zeus.

Ganymede wears a Phrygian cap in refer-

ence to his coming from Phrygia. Ancient

artists often depicted mythological

figures wearing the cap to indicate

their eastern Mediterranean origin.

As cupbearer, Ganymede has

poured wine into a cup for the

god-as-eagle to drink. Nude and,

therefore, symbolically vulner-

able, Ganymede is rendered

in highly polished marble to

indicate his young, smooth

skin while Zeus’ feathers are

rendered in high detail and

his sharp beak and threat-

ening look command the

center of the composition.

The relationship between

human and animal

throughout history has

taken many forms from

the almost mystical

relationship of

cave artists to

representations of man’s dominion over

the beast, to a realization that both are

creatures sharing the same environment.

Michael Bergt presents animal as other

in his egg tempera painting Succumb.

A reclining female is enveloped in the

writhing tentacles of an octopus.

Bergt says, “Succumb is in the tradition of

Hokusai’s print, known as The Dream of the

Fisherman’s Wife, but the actual title is The

Girl Diver and Octopi. It is his most famous

erotic shunga image. I wanted the same

sense of being overwhelmed by the number

of arms the octopus has, but instead of it

being a frightening encounter, the figure

has succumbed to the power of being taken

and has surrendered. So much of erotic art

is about that tension between the encounter,

and the ultimate surrender...We all carry our

own resistance, fears and avoidances. At a

certain point, we either realize we can’t

overcome them, or we surrender to what is.”

In Adrian Arleo’s clay sculpture, Heard

II, a woman appears, at first, to be over-

whelmed by a concatenation of deer. At

the beginning of the last century, she might

have been dressed decorously with no flesh

showing but her face and a boa made of a

dead fox around her neck.

Arleo explains, “For 40 years, my

sculpture has combined human, animal

and natural imagery to create a kind of

emotional and poetic power. Often there’s

a suggestion of a vital interconnection

between the human and non-human

realms; the imagery arises from associa-

tions, concerns and obsessions that are at

once intimate and universal.”

When she began the first of her Heard

sculptures, she says, “I found myself

thinking of veterans, with PTSD, who can’t

sleep unless they have a dog with them. A

dog, they feel, is a sentinel and protector;

it allows them to be ‘off duty.’ Though the

Heard pieces were inspired by a moment of

mass terror [a 2015 terrorist attack in Paris],

and though deer are spring-loaded with

the instinct to flee, these herds offer that

sentinel role to the woman they enclose.

They are watchful; evaluating the moment;

embodying a tense tranquility; vigilant but

not afraid. For me these pieces, again, tie into

INTRODUCTION BY JOHN O’HERN

1. Radius Gallery, Heard II, clay, glaze, wax encaustic and mixed media

on steel base, 27½ x 20½ x 14 ", by Adrian Arleo. 2. Stone Sparrow NYC,

Trudge, oil and soot from the California wildfires on wood, 36 x 4 8"

(framed), by Joshua Lawyer. 3. RJD Gallery, Undercurrents, colored pencil

on board, 26 x 39", by Jesse Lane. 4. Stone Sparrow NYC, Harvest, oil on

wood, 23½ x 1 8" (framed), by Joshua Lawyer.

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