As John Berger once said, “Men watch women. Women watch themselves being watched. The impulse to objectify women has become so entrenched in culture that scientists at the National Institute of Health concluded in 2019 what to choose not objectifying women exhausts our body’s self-regulation system and decreases our performance in cognitive tasks. In other words, it’s human nature to judge a woman’s body by society’s standards, and to do otherwise is literally bad for our health. But over the past century, artists of all genres have begun to approach the female body in new ways that challenge this attitude. No longer a passive body reduced to an instrument of pleasure for others, the female figure is an autonomous woman.
This innate urge to sexualize and exploit the female body finds a new (and encouraged) voice in LGDR’s landmark exhibition Back view, which explores representations of the human figure seen from behind. It is a spectacle of transhistorical donkeys, in all their objectified and empowered forms. Although many of the show’s female nudes are by male artists, ranging from Félix Vallotton to Fernando Botero, Harry Callahan and Lucien Freud, presented together, these works depict powerful women flaunting their butts and flexing their female eroticism. Many of the women who engage with the concept of the rear view here seek to reclaim their feminine sexuality, as in Issy Wood or Jenna Gribbon, or to address societal issues, seen in the political protest work of Yoko Ono or the realistic insecurities and imperfections of female bodies by Jenny Saville.
Seeing a painting of a nude is an intimate experience. Take “Nude in a Convex Mirror” by John Currin (2015). The round shape of the canvas is highlighted by the curvaceous milky white buttock that takes up most of the picture plane. Currin’s use of Rückenfigur, a conceptual and formal device in which the artists deploy the human figure seen from behind, reconfigures an idealized odalisque into an omniscient woman, who looks at us over her shoulder, while we observe her. She asserts her dominance through her awareness of our gaze, and as Alison Gingeras points out in her essay for the exhibition, this is the key to being a badass.
The feminine gaze directed towards female bodies is evident in a dozen of the exhibited works. In Danielle Mckinney’s “Lost in Translation” (2023), a nude black woman in foreshortening lies on a green bedspread, her hair wrapped in a towel, as she leafs through a book. This leisurely image, carefree for the viewer, takes the historical art trope of the reclining (white) nude and repositions it through the prism of a modern black woman’s experience.
Jenna Gribbon’s “Demonstrative (in bedroom with spotlight)” (2023) is more forceful in its message: a blond model spreads her legs as she covers her sex with her hand, stunning voyeurs. As a queer female artist, Gribbon sought to put more pressure on the viewer through body language, eye contact and lighting. In the work presented, the character confronts us, as if to ask: “What the fuck do you want?
Proving your worth through your desirability is still mostly women’s work. Sexual objectification drives the commodification of the body by the fashion, media and entertainment industries, shaping societal expectations. Back view offers a sensitive and in-depth critique of what it is to see and occupy a contemporary female body.
Back view continues at LGDR (19 East 64th Street, Upper East Side, Manhattan) through June 1. The exhibition was organized by the gallery.
