[4] THE ART OF THE NUDE

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THE ART OF THE NUDE



ARTISTS EXPLORE THE HUMAN FORM

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AN EXHIBITION of drawings, prints, painting and sculpture | Guest Curators John Wilson and Roger Cucksey | Newport Museum and Art Gallery | 19 July - 20 September 2008

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Preface | Catalogue




THE ART OF THE NUDE explores the artistic genre of the nude and provides a public airing of rarely seen works belonging to the permanent collections of the Newport Museum and Art Gallery.







THE ART OF THE NUDE frames the artistic genre of the nude and provides a fascinating thread through the history of art. The study of the nude formed the basis of the post-Renaissance academic tradition of "Western Art", whilst the departures of modernism and the avant garde likewise saw a peristence of the nude as a vital genre for the artist's exploration. Whither the nude in today's world of CGI and the Internet?




* "Art can never exist without naked beauty displayed" - William Blake



* "The body always expresses the spirit whose envelope it is. And for him who can see, the nude offers the richest meaning" - Auguste Rodin



* "I was trained as a painter. I'm very familiar with the nude body, masculine and feminine. I do, I suppose have a soapbox position, and I want to be certain that the human body is in the center of the frame. Its physicality is important and is always very, very strongly positive because I think that that physicality would begin to lose perspective over all the other senses" - Peter Greenaway, Film-maker





THE ART OF THE NUDE is the third project in the Explorations series, which provides a frame to explore the diverse range of artists, genre and art historical periods represented in the Newport Museum and Art Gallery collections.


John Wilson & Roger Cucksey, Guest Curators, April 2008



BBC Radio Wales | "Good Evening Wales: The Newport Nude " (opens video clip) | 22 July 2008, 16h00 - 18h30 | The controversy surrounding the so-called "Newport Nude" painting by Sir Gerald Festus Kelly was featured on the BBC Radio Wales news programme "Good Evening Wales" on 22 July 2008 | Interview with Guest Curators John Wilson and Roger Cucksey, probing behind the sensationalist headlines courted by the daily press.