On Mapplethorpe

UPDATE: Dick found some mistakes in my transcription of his voice mail and I corrected it.


Note the new addition on the side bar, on the right hand side, the widget with Dick's book recommendations. To start with, it contains books, which Dick either mentioned to me in our conversations or handed me to peruse. The first was Kenneth Clark's "The Nude."

It was not the first time that I came across it. In my own research on the body in the films of Claire Denis I came across this title. It's interesting how such a "classic text" can be used even for contemporary film analysis, the text I have to admit I did not use to its full potential.



Later, Dick surprised me a bit, but not really, mentioning The Black Book. I think it's a natural due to Dick's interest in the nude. Here is what he told me he came up with before breakfast, "when often interesting thoughts occur," today and left it on my voice mail, to clarify the reasons behind his interest in Mapplethorpe's photography and in particular in his nudes.

"Whenever the human body appears in life or art, clothed or unclothed, there is an erotic potential. In art, whenever the erotic goes beyond potential to become itself the subject one may easily cross the line between art and pornography.
In art, the nude body is neutral. Sexual differentiation is a fact. Unless the artist has intended the erotic to be the subject, whatever further happens lies in the eye or rather the mind of the beholder.
For myself, the subjects of the nudes are the particular individuals, which I have painted, male and female, having 3 dimensional form in the painting as well as in life, capable of movement, and in their posture expressing the connection between their inner self and its physical manifestation.
I am interested in Mapplethorpe's straightforward nudes, not his homoerotic images or for that matter, his still lifes." Francis Cunningham 8/6/09

Finally, a title that Dick refers to in his writing a lot, but was cautious when mentioning to me for material for the blog. But I think Italian Painters of the Renaissance is a wonderful inspiration.

When on the Renaissance, there was a great show at the Met "Art and Love in Renaissance Italy", which I was lucky to see earlier this year and found it great and on top of that packed with visitors of all ages.

A quick final note to close the circle, Kenneth Clark was a great British historian, but also a TV personality, here is a DVD title, a series that covers a big chunk of European art history.
I understand the show was a hit when it was running.

All nudes are up and a welcome to the new readers.

Image: On the Beach Tom Johnson (1997) oil on linen 55" x 70

Really hot day in New York, with Dick away, in the barn - as he'd probably say, I worked from home on adding a few remaining nudes to the website. It's great to see them all together, but they look so much grander human size and in relation to objects around them and to each other.
Image: Francis Cunningham with "Stephen Ringold" (1983) by Francis Cunningham oil on linen 60" x 56"

We've finally informed Dick's friends via email about this blog and invited them to follow us here.
So, Welcome! Drop us a comment, so we know that you're watching.

New Text: A Vision of the Nude (Abridged for Linea)

We've decided to delete one of our earlier entries containing the essay A Vision of the Nude by Francis Cunningham, because it's too difficult to read as one block of text. At the same time Dick has recently ironed out a more readable version of A Vision of the Nude (Abridged for Linea), which I put up on his website in place of the older version. Enjoy the read. Let us know if you have questions or comments. Dick will try to respond in some form.

"The lack of rigorous training directed toward a specific visual goal – the nude – combined with a view of humanity that saw the model as more than a studio prop for learning to draw, paint and sculpt, led my sculptor colleague, Barney Hodes, and myself to develop new approaches. By focusing on the model, we were working on a nude that was neither idealized and classical nor modernist and anti-classical. It wasn’t a nude people expected or could readily categorize – a Venus or Apollo, say, or a Picasso or a Modigliani. It would be a different nude, and when we founded the New Brooklyn School of Life Drawing, Painting & Sculpture, Inc. (1979-82), we were on our way to articulating what that nude could be." -Francis Cunningham
excerpt from A Vision of the Nude (Abridged for Linea)

Another reason (a less important detail) to remove that previews version of A Vision of the Nude from this blog was the confusion about the authorship of the essay, due to an image of the bust of Francis Cunningham by Barney Hodes, which I'd originally used to break up the text.
Dick still thinks that the bust is a good illustration to his text.


"Francis Cunningham" by Barney Hodes

Here is another bust by the same hand of Barney Hodes:


"Mason Harding" by Barney Hodes. Photograph: by Christopher Wood

About this blog and its bloggers.

This blog idea came about after Dick and I, Aneta aka perke, made a short YouTube video on the occasion of his show "Saints" at St. Francis College, few months back in March 2009. We did not know how to best incorporate the video and the new essays that Dick worked on recently, so we started blogging them.
That was the beginning, but now we're hoping to record more than that.
From now on, assisted by Dick, I'll be writing casual entries, accompanied by images, in an attempt to record current developments in Dick's painting studio and country barn, on his website and more.