“To be beautiful, you must first be seen, but being seen allows you to be chased away”, writes Ocean Vuong in her first novel, On Earth, we are briefly beautiful (2019). Vuong is a spokesperson for our time, expressing a new paradoxical relationship to the body in the age of Instagram. And today’s art collectors are responding, in their own way, by seeking less idealized figurative art. Now, of course, the unusual body is a mainstay of modern art. But whether it sells or not is another question. A subtle but noticeable shift is occurring in the art market with respect to which representations of the body are commercially viable, which of these images collectors hang in their homes, and which end up in art fair booths to attract potential buyers.
The European Fine Arts Foundation (TEFAF) fair, open until May 16, is an interesting place to mark this change. While other competing fairs explore the future of 21st century art, the big names in modernism take center stage at TEFAF, through 91 presentations from a global range of art dealers. Booths are tight, introducing an uncommon sense of claustrophobia to the cavernous Park Avenue Armory. Nevertheless, the fair still offers a valuable opportunity to see several rare and unknown works by the familiar titans of modernism, which may suddenly be prescient and intriguing to collectors but not yet in museum collections.
For example, a superb nude self-portrait by Egon Schiele is on display at the stand of Richard Nagy, a London gallery. It was executed in 1917, just a year before the artist’s death. (He often used himself as a model because it was hard to find male models.) In the artist’s later work, the lines are often stronger, thicker, and bolder. This is a rare opportunity to see Schiele’s bold late style in person.
It might seem a bit old-fashioned to pivot to this antique statue on the Galerie Chenel stand. However, the subject of Dioscuri is much more about bodily vulnerability than the display suggests. We are in the middle of a great enterprise of re-contextualizing old works of art. Instead of viewing this sculpture through the prism of outdated notions of heroic nudity from art history textbooks, there is an invitation to delve into the messy semiotics of Roman paganism. Dioscuri is from Latinized Greek, meaning Zeus (God) and the boys (kouros). Typically we see the Dioscuri as the pair Castor and Pollux. This statue is only an existing half. Although Leda is the mother of Castor and Pollux, different fathers sired them. As the son of Zeus, Pollux was immortal. As the son of Tyndareus, the king of Sparta, Castor was mortal.
The contrast between the invincibility of Pollux and the vulnerability of Castor is present in the myth but also in the devotion. convenient, where they were invoked to protect themselves from the vicissitudes of life. This is a statue about that feeling of hanging by a thread and asking for divine help.
Pivoting from ancient Rome to modern Italy, on the Galleria d’Arte Maggiore GAM stand is a rare Giorgio de Chirico painting of Roman gladiators, “I gladiatori” (1928). We rarely get to see works from de Chirico’s less surreal earlier phase. The artist was inspired by the 1913 film Quo Vadis. On closer inspection, the play is full of irony. Some of the men are wearing masks and it’s hard to tell if the two lower figures are struggling or in a hug. At the Mazzoleni Gallery exhibition there is another painting by Chirico of a wooden mannequin of a troubadour, a street singer, constructed of wood. In some ways it is more typical of the later metaphysical sensibility for which de Chirico is better known. In other ways, it’s downright bizarre and less dreamy than the de Chirico we might be used to seeing.
The Paris-based Galerie Marcelpoil has brought to TEFAF a rare preparatory sketch by Pierre Bonnard for the little-known ballet by Richard Strauss Josephslegend (“The Legend of Joseph”). In 1914, it was the scorching new spectacle of the Ballets Russes which featured the story of Joseph, the favorite son of Jacob and Rachel, from the Book of Genesis. The rough, sketchy lines may not be the familiar Bonnard style, but the piece has its own raw magnetism when embraced on its own terms.
It is very rare to see Ernst Ludwig Kirchner depict male nudes. Women are much more present in his work. “Three Nude Young Men” (1932–36) stood out on the stand of the Austrian gallery Wienerroither & Kohlbacher. This painting was never sold during the artist’s lifetime — it was found in his studio when he died. The shadows and dappled light of the tree are uniquely rendered as bright blue streaks against the pink and orange flesh.
And neither do we generally see the more figurative work of Roberto Marta from the 1940s. by the artist, presented by the New York gallery Eykyn Maclean. The subject is very open to interpretation. The title does not precisely mislead the purpose of the figure of the praying mantis, although it seems to be a political critique of the horrors of war.
On the stand of the London gallery Offer Waterman, an untitled terracotta vase by Magdalene Odundo subtly evokes the neck or the beak. It is a delicious and subtle ode to corporeality. “There has been a reassessment and a reassessment of the figure, particularly in Britain. People aren’t afraid of it anymore, observes Robin Cawdron-Stewart, the gallery’s senior director.
In line with this feeling, the stand of the Parisian gallery Mennour presents a charming portrait by Alberto Giacometti of the poet Yanaihara. Layers of gray markings form a visually spellbinding palimpsest. And New York dealer Leon Tovar presented a sculptural self-portrait by Feliza Bursztyn, “Untitled” (1959). The hands are up, the mouth is open and there is an emptiness in the stomach. The artist made this sculpture after trying to get an abortion.
While there were many works by Jean Dubuffet at the fair, the strongest was at the French Applicat-Prazan gallery. The subject of “Ouvre-Bec” (1961) is an unidentified man. The title is a French idiom meaning “beak open”, a metaphor for being emotionally open, or what we might call in English “wearing your heart on your sleeve”. The rough, grainy texture becomes a metaphor for emotional vulnerability.
A large painting by Michael Ray Charles representing the body of a white woman on a unicycle marked me on the stand of the Templon gallery. A different head is juxtaposed to the body – it’s a Picaninny, a racist pre-war caricature of enslaved African individuals. Black artist from Louisiana, Michael Ray Charles is interested in racial contradictions. But the exact meaning of this juxtaposition in “(Forever Free) the Delicate Balance” (2004) is left to the viewer to determine. In previous decades, some collectors, curators and critics have challenged the strident nature of his imagery, but his work is currently being reassessed.
Of course, there was a lot of work at TEFAF NY that wasn’t figurative, in addition to items like jewelry and furniture. But what I mean here is that a new way of relating to our own body is palpable, even at an art fair. Collectors seem to be looking for works that give some breathing room and permission to not be perfect on Insta. The concrete result is a fantastic opportunity to see figurative phases of modern artists that were once overlooked and more unusual compositions that have been left out as less than ideal.
