Nude Distortions

My perception of the female form is not a fixed notion of femaleness, but a shifting representation of femaleness.

The human form shifts in shape, as it revolves around a psychological distortion which I’ve carried since a young boy.

Aged 14 a police officer knocked on our door. He informed us that our beloved ****** had been found dead beneath the Crouchend clock tower – dressed as a woman. The constructed image is emblazoned on my psyche for all eternity.

From that day onwards my understanding of male/female identity began to dissipate, began to melt and merge in slightly incomprehensible ways.

The female for in all its shapes and sizes and colours is perfectly beautiful and perfectly sexual to me.

I feel the male form is a greater beauty when in shifting form, leaning towards the female form as in Caravaggio’s statue, The David.

There is always an aesthetic, higher beauty which interests me, perhaps a universal beauty if this is not to grand. But this is often playing off against a lower carnal self which for some reasoned is ever under suppression: because, mistakenly, we don’t associate this lustful response with serious art.

We always think of art nudes as appealing to a higher aesthetic – that we are referring to a grand universal beauty – no lustful responses involved.

But nearly all female nudes in art history have been painted by men. The female form is a turn on. It would be nonsensical to ignore this instinctual fact. But this is not the whole story.

It’s not always obviously the case. We don’t obviously see this in Freud for example. But we feel we see it in Allen Jones. We don’t obviously see it in Picasso, but we feel we see it in Schiele. Yet in the artists who don’t obviously play out this lust on the canvas, they seem to have played it out in life. Their list of lovers being innumerable.

I find it amazing that discussions of such a strong human, sexual response to portraying the human form in art, is often suppressed at length by artists, as though such concerns are not suitable for high art; a human response which should belong solely to soft porn industry.

Jeff Koons seemingly attempts to bridge a gap between high art and hardcore pornography. Love or loathe the work he did with Cicciolina, it represented a natural human act, though highly unnatural in its depiction.

When I paint the female form there is an aspect of desire, realised through the act of painting. But when and where?

When I work with my models there is not even a frisson of excitement. It is purely about composition and posing and getting all the technical aspects of the camera and lighting correct.

The painter who paints from life has a chance to languish over the form. The hyperrealist working from photos never does. It happens far to quickly and is way too technical.

Does this desirous state occur in the painting process? Never. It is purely about creating the painting and little more.

It happens in the Idea. Before the appearance of the human in flesh, or her appearance on canvas. There lustful ideas if the human form. But once the process starts it never appears again.