A REFLEXION OF NUDITY AS PORTRAYED IN PUBLIC SPACES: Ivonne Zarza

Walking through the stone path of a luxury plaza along Ottawa’s Sussex Street, there is an elegant apartment building which lobby’s splendid décor is an extravagant relief sculpture that gives a futuristic (vanguard) look to this place otherwise suspended in the 1920’s. In the courtyard, one could find in the center a fountain, and to the side quaint wooden benches, as well as another artistic creation the “Tin House” mounted on the wall on the opposite side of the courtyard. Behind the wall were the fragmented female sculpture is posted on, we can see the Black Thorn Café, which is as well old made Irish pub. And it is Ted Bieler’s Female Wall which in effect made me think of nudity, and nudity in contemporary art this juncture in my life..

Female nude art, the exposition of the intimate bare skin, has the intention to portray the melismas of the nature of the human body.

It can also represent an image of desire, proposed to emphasize certain aspects of the women's sensuality, i.e. through graceful gestures and movements. Nudity may also be meant to provoke public protest i.e. to make people ponder over the real critical issues in society (such as the sistematic killing of people over territory, or killing animals deliberately to use their skins and furs, or simply wearing extra-pigments besides the natural human coloration). Female nude art also aspires to unveil the female gaze towards the world. It seeks to enclose the vulnerability of women from its pulchritude to the ire the patriarchal society provokes on herself.

[And yet there are others] Concerning generic social responses to the artistic nudes, there are others like artist Joseph Cannon who would argue (about the Western public) that in American culture: “If you draw or paint a nude female, take care not to do so realistically. And make sure she is unattractive. Otherwise, moron critics will make dismissive references to your ‘Playboy mentality’, and feminists will blather on about the objectification of women and how sad it is that little girls must grow up with unrealistic standards of feminine beauty. And so on. You know the drill.”

“Female Wall”--- Its versatile mold can be interpreted in several ways; one is that it has a bifocal attribute (feature), and the other relies upon the position from where the observer is to appreciates the art. Giving the impression of a surrealist creation from a far view, it enraptures the sublime design of the most sensual parts of the feminine anatomy: the breast, which depicts its natural and relaxed fall; and the back, which portrays those dainty elongated muscles rising as liberating the stress of the day.

This intended unfinished sculpture yields the spectator to play around with his/her imagination, although the sculpture envisages the delicate movements of its face, and arms. The orientation that the neck poses adumbrates a sensation of the model turning her head upwards. The rhumb that its right shoulder delineates seems to predict the normal fall of the arm, while the muscles of its left shoulder pre-expose its arm laid as in the backboard of a bench. The impression of this model being outside in a tropical day is inflicted from the background in which the sculpture is placed; it is a brick wall of brownish gamut, from which foliage is emerging. Zooming in, we can appreciate now the sculpture as cubist, with various parts of a woman’s body sprinkled all about. From the left side, we can perceive the abdomen and downwards a representation of the clitoris. Moving rightwards we find a leg horizontally bent and upwards it is buttocks. At the top we can find the shoulders and in the center the neck. In the right side, we can find an arm, downwards and beside it we can find another leg vertically bent. One can also perceive an entire silhouette, as in shadows, in an asana position. At the top, we can see the back of the shoulders and in the center the nape.

Personally, looking at this artwork wakes up my instincts. I feel curious about the nature of things; I wonder about the relativity of personal perceptions, such as the sense of life, of being human, of passion, of beauty, of the place everything occupies as in a singular organism as well as in the whole organism that is the Earth; I wonder about physical and psychological reactions, such as reactions of movement, or of sentiments, of feelings, of thoughts, of sensations. First I think about the human shape and its flexibility, so then I go deeper to think about the other entities of life. Marvelous is the manner this world functions, and the lots of specialties each of its parts is capable of. Indeed, this sculpture is personal for me, I can identify as if I were examining parts of my own body, even those parts that are usually somewhat mysterious. Subsequently, I feel relaxed; I close my eyes, and I feel as if I was experiencing the spring breeze canoodling my body, the sunshine on my eyes and its heat all over me yet inwards within me heating my blood, calling for passion and desire of living cheerfully ever after with my individual and social being.