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The body eclectic
Four exhibitions focus on - and reinterpret - the human form, from life drawings to mixed media.
By LENNIE BENNETT, Times Art Critic
© St. Petersburg Times
published October 17, 2002
[Arts Center]
Sitting Before Kandinsky by Perri Neri.
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ST. PETERSBURG -- It's nice, in this era of ambivalent preoccupation with our bodies, to discover a small corner of the world where nudity is not a prurience, embarrassment or disappointment.
I'm not talking about a nudist colony. No, I am referring to a mainstream institution, the Arts Center. There, for many years, artists of every stripe -- amateurs and professionals, young and old -- have gathered twice a week to draw and sculpt the human body from life, meaning from a live, nude model.
Their work is on display in "Tuesday Night/Saturday Morning," one of four new exhibitions focusing on the human form. The show of life drawings, which also includes sculpture from Kyu Yamamoto's class, contains, expectedly, varying levels of ability, but there are some very good examples of the genre. The best are those done with a minimum use of line and shading that call to mind Diana Vreeland's famous bon mot, "elegance is refusal." Artists Doug Land, Dean Fortune and Rebecca Skelton have compiled a book of the drawings that can be purchased and includes a list of places in the Tampa Bay area offering life-drawing opportunities.
A second show, "Figurative Elements, All Florida Juried Exhibition" is a large, eclectic mix of media selected by Michael Milkovich, director emeritus of the Museum of Fine Arts. Although none of the artists represented aspire to the Lucian Freud aesthetic that portrays human flesh as sides of beef, it does present humanity in many of its vagaries.
Untitled by Melora Kuhn.
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Susan Gott's Ritual Dancer is a stunning column of cast glass that abstracts the human form even as it entraps literal representations of the body within it. Jeff Whipple, who is a playwright as well as a visual artist, invests Fire Extinguisher, a portrait of a woman, with a textured narrative of details, told in the folds of a backdrop and a dress, and in a delicate slipper chair juxtaposed with a beat-up sneaker. Sitting Before Kandinski by Perri Neri and Figure Study, Back by Neverne Covington are both more conventional but lovely and lyrical.
Two smaller galleries are devoted to one-person shows. "Robert Coane: The Color Flesh" is a series of studies of body fragments -- a head or torso -- that intellectualize the body without dehumanizing it. His gorgeous oils painted on wood panels do more for skin tone than an Estee Lauder makeover and have a visceral, Baroque richness.
"Melora Kuhn: Blackboard Exercises" is a bit of a stretch in the overall theme of the human form, though it is a group of children's portraits. Stylistically, they have the simplicity and sincerity of portraits done by the 17th century itinerant American "face painters" or limners. Psychologically, they could be channeling the disturbed children in Henry James' Gothic story The Turn of the Screw. But these pale-faced youngsters with knowing eyes, set against a blackboardlike background that surrounds them with ghostly images, are compelling.
Taken together, the four exhibitions provide what any study of the human form should, an exploration of both surface pleasures and inscrutable depths.
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The Arts Center is presenting a two-day seminar Oct. 19 and 20 with Katharine T. Carter, who has built a successful marketing and public relations business exclusively to promote artists. Her full-service approach can cost thousands of dollars a year, and she only takes on artists she feels can benefit from her high-powered attention that includes the services of associates such as William Zimmer and Peter Frank, both noted arts writers. But she also offers consultations for far less "because some artists can be helped a lot in just three hours."
She will share her strategies during "The Art of Business and the Business of Art." Fee is $125 for Arts Center members and $140 for nonmembers. For information, call (727)822-7872.
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REVIEW: At the Arts Center, 719 Central Ave., St. Petersburg, through Oct. 25 are: "Figurative Elements: All Florida Juried Exhibition," "Tuesday Night/Saturday Morning," "Robert Coane: The Color Flesh"' and "Melora Kuhn: Blackboard Exercises." Also on display is "Figure It Out," work by students at the Pinellas County Center for the Arts at Gibbs High School. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday and noon to 4 p.m. Sunday. Free. (727) 822-7872.
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