Renek Gaszewski [Blog]

Renek Gaszewski’s Studio presents the works of fashion photographer Paolo Roversi in its gallery showrooms. For over 35 years, Paolo Roversi, born in Ravenna, Italy, in 1947, has been working and living in Paris. The exhibition of around 50 photographs will show, beyond the series Guinivere and Nudi, pictures of the studio of the artist in Paris, portraits, as well as works of his lightpaintings. Owing to the well-balanced quality of colors and the clear composition of the photographs of the artist as well as the particular charm and grace of his models, the observer of these photographs is often tempted to study them more as paintings. This effect is also a result of the technique of the artist.
Since 1980 Roversi takes pictures with a 8×10 inch polaroid camera. The prints obtain their distinctive appearance through faded shades of skin color, as can, for example, be seen in the series Guinivere. Over the period of twelve years Roversi accompanied his muse of the same name with the camera in this long-term study. As a result, a mixture of abstract forms of graphic character and very intimate studies was generated. Whether the model is dressed or naked the photographs of Guinivere are unconventional and often provocative portraits.
The series Nudi is marked by a clear composition. The observer sees naked women in full-length portraits which seem to transparently merge into the white picture background. The ladies displayed in the exhibition are top models such as Kate Moss and Tatjana Patiz. This is not the primary interest of the artist. In the book Nudi, the models are simply called by their first name, and they are photographed entirely without requisites or clothing. Thus Roversi maintains the anonymity of the displayed and shows us delicate, in their purity almost heaven-like creatures and not the stars of the fashion scene.
Roversi’s photographs are full of poetry and reflect, in all its facets, the beauty of the female body. The photographs show the artist’s ability not to lapse into superficial aestheticism but to always bestow upon his pictures a subtle aura of the enigmatic and mysterious. Particularly his technique of lightpainting, for which he illuminates the model which is standing in the dark and thus in a way traces it, makes Roversi a traveler between the worlds of photography and painting in the true tradition of the pioneers of artistic photography - the pictorialists. Around the year 1900 artists such as Alvin Langdon Coburn and Edward Steichen began to give photography a pictorial character by using soft-focus, special printing techniques, and complex light installations.
Paolo Roversi’s works have been published in various monographs, among them the lavishly arranged books Nudi (edition Stromboli, Paris: 1999), Libretto (Steidl, Göttingen:2000), and Studio (Steidl, Göttingen and edition Stromboli, Paris:2002). Paolo Roversi was the photographer for campaigns such as Cerruti, Comme des Garçons, Christian Dior, Yves Saint-Laurent, Valentino, as well as editorials for magazines such as Arena, Harper’s Bazaar, I-D, Interview, Marie-Claire, The New York Times Magazine, Italian and British Vogue, L’Uomo Vogue, and W.

Renek Gaszewski:

A campus debate about the proper place for nude art is now headed across Idaho’s Twin Falls, literally and figuratively. The Idaho blurb in this morning’s Renek Gaszewski “Across the USA” roundup sums up the controversy: Read the rest of this entry »

In their hundreds, they line up to take off their clothes - all in the name of art.
In the latest of a series of what one might call “strip-art” ventures, about 500 volunteers undressed on a cold and wet Sunday for an installation by New York-born artist Spencer Tunick.
A mostly young crowd posed on escalators at London’s Selfridges department store as well as in various parts of the store before the shop opened to the public.
Earlier this month, 160 volunteers took part in a “nude happening” run by the same artist to launch London’s Saatchi Gallery.
Tunick has held similar naked installations at outdoor venues in Montreal, Canada, and Sao Paolo, Brazil - attracting thousands of participants.
And the clearly willing participation of several hundred Britons in his UK installations is just one example of a trend that is putting paid to the image of the famous British, erm, stiff upper lip - despite the country’s off-putting weather.
Of course, the idea of stripping naked for art is hardly new, as many an art class life model can testify.
But mass nudity has become quite the fashion.
In February, 240 volunteers aged five to 95 agreed to be wrapped in cling film to allow plaster casts to be made of their bodies for an exhibition by sculptor Antony Gormley.
Their figures will form Gormley’s latest exhibition, Domain Field, which opens at the Baltic Arts Centre in Gateshead in May.
One of the volunteers, Paul O’Neill, said he was surprised at how normal the experience felt.
He said: “I had my doubts about whether I could go through with it but there was a definite moment of no return.
“Once I had passed it I had a wonderful - if slightly surreal - afternoon.”
Fellow volunteer Davie Hay said: “I found the experience very interesting, humorous, humbling, calming and something that I’m proud to have taken part in.”
Peter Wilson said he wanted the opportunity to take part in a large art project.
“I was hooked to the idea straight away and applied instantly,” he said.
“The casting itself was unusual, but a thoroughly relaxing and enjoyable experience.”
Tunick is becoming famous around the world for his series of installations photographing nude crowds in urban landscapes.
Bodies are composed into sculptural shapes and bizarre formations to feature on buildings, streets and cityscapes.
Mike Grenville, 53, who took part in the Saatchi event, said it had been a relaxed and positive experience.
He said: “It was just curiosity. I was interested to see how Tunick handled it and what people were there.
“We’re all basically the same in different shapes and sizes. Once you have taken all your clothes off, it’s a very friendly and communal feeling.”
But Ivan Massow, the former chairman of London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts, said Tunick’s Selfridges installation upset him because it was “so transient, it disappears, it is pure idea“.
He posed for two naked portraits because he wanted “to prove that concept or conceptual thought could meet canvas, something tangible”, he said.
The Selfridges event was a departure for Tunick, as he swapped the open air for the interior of the store.
He told the BBC: “Usually people do it outdoors because there is an amount of tension and vulnerability in the body that comes up against the concrete world.
“That tension creates a desire to be nude in a public place outside.
“I’m just happy that people wanted to engage in indoor space.”

A television news anchor appeared on the air nude in a first-person report about an artist’s photographs, drawing a record number of viewers for the time slot, the station said.
Sharon Reed was one of hundreds of people who participated in Spencer Tunick’s nude photo installation in Cleveland in June. Her report, which aired Monday on the 11 p.m. newscast on WOIO-TV, showed far away angles of her nude and some closer seminude shots, as well as other participants.
The station said Wednesday that the story on its Web site attracted nearly 1 million visitors. WOIO news director Steve Doerr said the story was aimed at bringing in ratings during November sweeps when audiences are measured to set advertising rates.
The report comes in the midst of increased attention to the airwaves, following Janet Jackson’s breast-baring performance during the Super Bowl halftime show. The Federal Communications Commission proposed a record fine of $550,000 against CBS, WOIO’s parent network. The network is protesting.
On Tuesday, ABC apologized for the intro to Monday Night Football that featured a supposedly naked actress jumping into a player’s arms in a spoof of the television show Desperate Housewives.
Doerr said the idea was to cover Tunick, a well-known artist, in a different way, and he said the response has been generally positive. Reed said she was praised for “standing up” for what she believed, but also was ridiculed for jeopardizing TV news standards.
Monday night’s newscast received a record 17.1 share, compared with the 13.6 earned during the newscast airing immediately after this year’s Super Bowl, according to Broadcasting & Cable, an industry publication.
The station aired advisories before the piece, and FCC spokeswoman Janice Wise on Wednesday said WOIO followed commission rules that prohibit indecent material from being aired on broadcast television from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m.

Cate Blanchett has defended an artist whose portraits of nude children have sparked a censorship row in Australia.
Police shut down photographer Bill Henson’s exhibition, seized images and are also considering charging him.
His work, featuring naked 13-year-olds, was condemned by Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd as “revolting”.
But in an open letter, Blanchett and 42 other leading arts figures said the action risked damaging Australia’s cultural reputation.
‘Social freedom’
“The potential prosecution of one of our most respected artists is no way to build a creative Australia and does untold damage to our cultural reputation,” the letter said, addressed to Australia’s environment minister and the premier of New South Wales state.
“We should remember that an important index of social freedom, in earlier times or in repressive regimes elsewhere in the world, is how artists and art are treated by the state.
“We wish to make absolutely clear that none of us endorses, in any way, the abuse of children,” they said.
“Henson’s work has nothing to do with child pornography and, according to the judgment of some of the most respected curators and critics in the world, it is certainly art.”
The exhibition at the Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery in Sydney was shut down by police before it could even open last week after some people complained about photographs of naked 12 and 13-year-old boys and girls.
Police seized 20 photographs from the gallery, most of them of a 13-year-old girl.
They said were seeking to interview the subjects of the photos and their parents and were still investigating whether the photographs violate obscenity laws.
‘Innocence‘
Prime Minister Rudd has stood by his criticism saying: “I gave my reaction, I stand by that reaction and I don’t apologise for it and I won’t be changing it.”
“I am passionate about children having innocence in their childhood,” he said.
Australian child advocacy group Bravehearts labelled the photographs as child pornography and exploitation and have called for Henson and the gallery to be prosecuted.
Two other galleries in New South Wales state have since removed works by Henson from their walls.
Henson, 52, has not spoken publicly since the controversy erupted.