Stripped Bare

With its wealth of contemporary photographs, paintings and sculptures, Stripped Bare: The Body Revealed in Contemporary Art explores in detail the representation of the human body - that most familiar of objects, which we assume has long been revealed but which is constantly being assigned new meanings. In Stripped Bare, forceful and often erotic images by many of the most highly acclaimed artists and photographers of recent decades, including Cindy Sherman, Nan Goldin, Robert Mapplethorpe and Araki, feature alongside works by significant predecessors, including Man Ray and Andy Warhol. Their undisguised and often merciless close-up views of other bodies and their own encompass pleasure and desire, love and sexuality, pain and power, simultaneously forcing the viewer as an eyewitness into the area of tension between the artist and the subject, between the private, the voyeuristic and the public.
Supporting this collection of works are illuminating discussions that analyse the 'gaze' that links artist, viewer and subject; the complex cultural forces that operate in relation to the nude; the notion of unauthorized looking; the relationship between artistic representation and pornographic consumption; and the influence of the cinema in depicting the human body.

Marianne Karabelnik is an independent art historian, art critic and curator.