'Flesh': A Challenge

'Flesh'

 (York Art Gallery, running 23 September 2016 – 19 March 2017)
Ranging from aesthetically pleasing, to perfectly mundane, to utterly perturbing, ‘Flesh’ is nothing if not thought-provoking.

 Having heard some very interesting reviews of the exhibition, and given that our very own Dr Jo Applin from the History of Art department is co-curator, I decided to discover ‘Flesh’ for myself. (It was free for me to attend - though I would have gladly paid - because I acquired a York Museums Trust card.) Encompassing 600 years of work, the exhibition begins in 14^th-century Italy with Dead Christ with the Virgin and St John by the Master of the San Lucchese Altarpiece, an exquisite Byzantine-influenced representation of the subject. With this I was more ‘at home’, working in late medieval Italian art myself and being familiar with theological themes such as these saints lamenting over Christ’s corpse. However, what followed was a stimulating journey through centuries and cultures that explored how varying artists from varying cultures respond to this most multifaceted thing to which we, as humans and as animals, are shackled: flesh. The warning on the glass threshold was certainly no empty statement...

'Please not that this exhibition contains nudity and challenging themes' (Photo courtesy of Dr David Burke)

'Challenging' is one way to describe the themes arising; the works themselves, especially in their particular place and circumstance alongside each of the others, challenge one's emotional responses and capacity for objective analysis. Soon after the 14^th-century Dead Christ, one encounters the fascinatingly juxtaposed 2009 work, Youth, by Ron Mueck: The sculpted lad exposes a wound in his side beneath his blood-stained t-shirt and looks upon it with a surprised countenance. Street violence? The almost surprising fragility of the flesh? The identification of Christ in all humanity? I 'challenge' anyone to walk around this exhibition without numerous questions flooding his/her mind.

Master of the San Lucchese Altarpiece, 14th century, Dead Christ with the Virgin and Saint John, tempera on gold ground on wood, 18.4 x 47.6 cm

Ron Mueck, 2009, Youth, mixed media,  65 x 28 x 16 cm

 Combining animal flesh, death, and matters of commodification, is the Circle of Rembrandt's gruesome and brilliant c.1645 The Carcase of an Ox, as well as the enticingly mundane salmon fillets of Chardin's Still Life: The Kitchen Table of around a century later. The mundane manifests itself in humanity too in, for example, Harold Gilman's delightful Nude on a Bed (1911-12), which lifts the spirits as a sort of respite after Gina Pane's shocking, masochistic 1973 Azione Sentimentale, which inspires quite a different reaction. 

Circle of Rembrandt, c.1665, The Carcase of an Ox, oil on panel, 73.3 x 51.7 cm

I must admit that, given my personal sensibilities, there were sections of the exhibition I could scarcely bring myself to look at -- such as the rather gratuitous 2000 Green Tile Work in Live Flesh by Adriana Varejao -- and other works upon seeing which I was close to tears, i.e. the 2001 deer carcass sculpture by Berlinde de Bruyckere. This is not, however, a negative comment, for it was all part of my experience. What is more, I am certain that anyone visiting would have an individual experience while musing over this visual assortment of representations of flesh, with its whole array of connotations. So step on in, I 'challenge' you...