Adi Nes
I’m an art historian. One of the things that I teach about
in depth is the history of Greek art. One of the things that defines ancient
Greek art from the archaic periods to the classical is the idea that most of
the art depicting males share several qualities. Ancient Greek art, for example
vases, often have a warlike bent to them. It’s clear that the Greeks were
always at war. The ancient world just demanded males to be able to compete on
the battlefield.
Many of the vases from the ancient Greek world show themes
from the Iliad and earlier ones just show warlike themes with hoplite warriors
and breaks in the war. For example, this Mycenaean vase shows this kind of
theme. As art developed towards the classical phases one of the themes that
comes up a lot is warriors taking a break from the battle. In these examples
here we see Ajax and Achilles taking a break and playing a game of checkers
between bouts.
If you look at the Panathenaic freezes, from the Parthenon
in Athens from around 450 BCE one of the things that you see is that all of the
friezes depict beautiful young man who athletically fit. Their bodies clearly
show that they are able to be athletic and therefore they are also able
soldiers.
The same thing is true with some of the grave markers. These
kouros figures from the archaic period, although they are very stylized, depict
a young wasp wasted male who is beautiful has broad shoulders and is very
powerful. In fact there was a concept in ancient Greece called “kalos” which
roughly translated means morally good and physically beautiful. The Greeks like
us believe that the package represented the contents. The Greeks also believed
in heroes. The type of heroes depicted in epic poetry like the Iliad and the
Odyssey by Homer from around 800 BCE. The warriors are always described as
“shining” and beautiful.
The same is true of this sculpture from around 450 BCE
called the Doryphoros by an artist named Polykleitos. It’s often called the
Canon because it depicts what Polykleitos thought was the perfect set of
proportions. Again, this kind of depicts the cult of war and the able-bodied
warrior that would be important in the ancient Greek world. The same thing is
true about Adi Nes’s work.
I came across Adi Nes’s work at an exhibit in the DeYoung
Museum in San Francisco. It kind of confused me. The exhibit consisted of
large-scale photographs that looks very much like Caravaggio’s paintings of
soldiers and bathers and there was even an image that was a kind of reboot of
Leonardo’s “Last Supper.”
The images were provocative and beautiful and the images of
the young beautiful man in the photographs were both violent and gorgeous. The
scale of the photographs was gigantic some of them as large as 5 feet or 6 feet
long and several feet tall. They felt to me almost like friezes from the
Parthenon.
Recently I did some research on Adi Nes and here’s with the
Huffington Post had to say about his stuff.
Adi Nes is a gay Israeli artist whose work, including his
latest -- "The Village," explores concepts of masculinity and power.
He has been praised by Richard Goldstein at the Village voice for his unique
vision, who stated, "No young artist has so vividly captured the hidden
cost of victory, the fine line between power and fragility, the interplay of
arrogance and despair that shapes wartime identity."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/28/29-lgbt-artists_n_1627938.html
Although I intrinsically agree with the Huff Post’s analysis
I’m not so sure about “the hidden cost of victory.” In fact, I think that the
artist’s work might actually be a celebration of the male form and the beauty
of a muscular body’s ability to commit acts of violence.
No comments:
Post a Comment