Les Voluptes
Les Voluptes examines the voluptuous and sensual aspects of the body in contemporary art. It features images deriving from traditional and historical references that emphasize the ideal of beauty, often in the oriental world. Working with those concepts artists such as Rubens, Delacroix, Renior and Matisse introduced a celebration of the flesh emphasizing the voluptuous body as a symbol of feminine power in society and myth. As observed in Paul Oppenheimer's Rubens: "a portrait: beauty and the angelic", 1999, chapter "Apotheosis: Beauty and Physics:" "Rubens magical seeming style is reborn several centuries later as Einstein's discovery of the exact, quantifiable relations between mass, the speed of light and energy. The basis of their thinking is not simply that the physical universe is an aesthetic phenomenon many artists have believed in its fundamental aesthetics but that it is a physical spiritual and aesthetic process one incorporating unending transformations and that to represent these transformations whether in paintings mathematics or psycholojy is to lay bare its truth or the ultimate fact about it and to expose its ultimate beauty"
The history of the voluptuous is also the history of skin. Before the Renaissance according to Marie Helene Grinfeder in her essay on paintings in the Louvre, only dead or sacrified skin was exposed. But in the Three Graces by Raphael each of the nude women holds a red apple the forbidden fruit. Also in play later was the exaggeration of body forms like the neck of Angelique by Ingres. The artist says about portrait: "To emphasize the character a certain exaggeration is permitted sometimes even necessary, but especially when underlining and emphasizing a beautiful aspect of the body. This ideal of beauty and voluptuousness can only be achieved by creating forms that extend reality".
All the artists in Les Voluptes have an interest in the fleshy feminine or masculine body sometimes including a somewhat disturbing psychological approach. Their paintings and photographs often recall sensuous waves or folds of clothing, or the celebration of decadent opulence found in works like the movie La Grande Bouffe. Some participants also deal with the exaggeration of the female pin up figure and the fact that fashion ordains a very slim figure whereas the more "zaftig" version seems almost a forbidden fruit left to male (and female) fantasies. What better dream than the fleshy curves of the Venus rising out of the shell envisioned by Botticelli?
Elga Wimmer
The history of the voluptuous is also the history of skin. Before the Renaissance according to Marie Helene Grinfeder in her essay on paintings in the Louvre, only dead or sacrified skin was exposed. But in the Three Graces by Raphael each of the nude women holds a red apple the forbidden fruit. Also in play later was the exaggeration of body forms like the neck of Angelique by Ingres. The artist says about portrait: "To emphasize the character a certain exaggeration is permitted sometimes even necessary, but especially when underlining and emphasizing a beautiful aspect of the body. This ideal of beauty and voluptuousness can only be achieved by creating forms that extend reality".
All the artists in Les Voluptes have an interest in the fleshy feminine or masculine body sometimes including a somewhat disturbing psychological approach. Their paintings and photographs often recall sensuous waves or folds of clothing, or the celebration of decadent opulence found in works like the movie La Grande Bouffe. Some participants also deal with the exaggeration of the female pin up figure and the fact that fashion ordains a very slim figure whereas the more "zaftig" version seems almost a forbidden fruit left to male (and female) fantasies. What better dream than the fleshy curves of the Venus rising out of the shell envisioned by Botticelli?
Elga Wimmer
