New exhibit touts female seduction
If you come to Italy, you will quickly see that Italian women have few qualms abouot showing off their bodies, or at least parts of them. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the latest exhibition to open at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna in Rome is one centering on the seduction of the female body as portrayed by 20th century masters. “The form of seduction – The female body in art of the 1900s” puts some 130 works on disply until October 5, including photographer Man Ray’s extraordinary and sensual shots, iconic nudes by sculpture/painter Amedeo Modigliani, the sinuous and overflowing lines of ceramicist Leoncillo Leonardi and Enrico Baj’s unsettling collages. But drawing from its vast collection, the Museum spotlights not only known masterpieces but also beautiful, little-known testaments to the expressive wealth of Italian art.
Museum superintendent Maria Vittoria Maraini Clarelli on Wednesday presented the show, which opens the gallery’s new exhibition season. She also presented the museum’s new palimpsest as conceived of by curator Barbara Tomassi and her idea of seduction. The concept, Clarelli explained, allows the display of precious graphic art works, fragile and delicate in themselves, and thus seldom placed on display. The exhibition is divided into five sections dedicated to the different aspects of seduction exerted by the female body.
The first section is called “the beauty in appearance” and emphasizes the female nude in its more classic representations has been adapted into more modern language; the second section, entitled Sediction/Sedition shows works featuring the deconstruction of the human figure in art; the third section is dedicated to the body as an “object of desire” in which the various parts of the female body are the primary subject; the “Beauty and the Beast” section alludes to the justaposition of the human and the non-human in the realm of sduction; while the fifth and final section, “The Sleeping Beauty” , stresses the fascination exercised by the female body when abandoned in sleep or repose.
