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At gallery, frames were bare
Nude art exhibition featuring 15 models attracts hundreds
BY CLARKE BUSTARD
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER
Feb 4, 2006
They got naked. They got seen.
They didn't get busted.
"Richmond's first totally nude art show," as Gallery 5 billed its exhibit "Disrobed," opened to a throng last night. By 9 p.m., 400 packed the Jackson Ward building, with dozens more waiting for admission in a blocklong line.
The opening-night attraction -- other than fire-twirlers and droning improvisatory music -- was a group of 15 live models, unclothed but with their bodies shaved, painted and adorned, posing alongside paintings, photographs, drawings and sculpture.
"I didn't know what to expect," said Richard Allen, who drove from Gloucester on the prospect of "seeing something special." He didn't find the views overly sexual.
"I noticed a lot of people smiling," Allen said. "That made me smile."
"It's just bodies; we all have them," Ann Furniss said as she left the gallery. "I'm an acupuncturist, so I'm used to bodies. But I was amazed by the durations of some of the poses."
City and state authorities were advised of the show's nature in advance, said Tom Robinson, owner of the Virginia Police and Fire Museum. His daughter, Amanda Robinson, runs the gallery above the museum in the Steamer Company No. 5 building at Marshall Street and Brook Road.
Covering the models' bodies with "opaque materials" put the show "on a better footing" as art, he said.
"There's an aspect of voyeurism about it, I guess," Marsh Wyche, one of the models posing in the show, said before the opening. "But it's more about Richmond as an art center and a city."
Wyche, 21, arrived at the gallery eight hours early to have her body painted by students from the Savini School of Horror Makeup, a school near Pittsburgh that trains artists to work in movies.
"They started off making me Krishna, but then decided to combine different Indian deities," Wyche said.
Jackson Saddler, a 27-year-old bartender and occasional model, said last night would be his first time modeling nude.
"I'm one of the elements, air," he said, still clothed, about 90 minutes before the opening. "They're painting me blue."
Saddler said he didn't feel self-conscious. "It's not about you. You're just a canvas the artist is working on. You do have to be comfortable with yourself to do something like this."
Both models said they didn't think their loved ones would disapprove. "My mom has been a nude model," Wyche said. "She was upset she can't be here."
Although promoted as the first of its kind, the show was not the first time a naked model has posed in a local gallery. And nudity in artwork is a common sight.
The Reynolds Gallery, for example, currently is showing prints of nudes by Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. Kiki Smith's "Ice Man," a bronze of a male nude, is displayed prominently at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
Nudity, seen in artwork for thousands of years, "has always been in service of something else," said Fredrika Jacobs, an art history professor at Virginia Commonwealth University.
"We see prehistoric female nudes as symbols of fertility, male nudes in ancient Greek art as representatives of the ideal human figure," she said. "And Michelangelo's Adam," on the ceiling of the Vatican's Sistine Chapel, "represents man made in the image of God."
Historically, nude art "was not made to shock people," she said. "But that may be the point today."
At gallery, frames were bare
Nude art exhibition featuring 15 models attracts hundreds
BY CLARKE BUSTARD
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER
Feb 4, 2006
They got naked. They got seen.
They didn't get busted.
"Richmond's first totally nude art show," as Gallery 5 billed its exhibit "Disrobed," opened to a throng last night. By 9 p.m., 400 packed the Jackson Ward building, with dozens more waiting for admission in a blocklong line.
The opening-night attraction -- other than fire-twirlers and droning improvisatory music -- was a group of 15 live models, unclothed but with their bodies shaved, painted and adorned, posing alongside paintings, photographs, drawings and sculpture.
"I didn't know what to expect," said Richard Allen, who drove from Gloucester on the prospect of "seeing something special." He didn't find the views overly sexual.
"I noticed a lot of people smiling," Allen said. "That made me smile."
"It's just bodies; we all have them," Ann Furniss said as she left the gallery. "I'm an acupuncturist, so I'm used to bodies. But I was amazed by the durations of some of the poses."
City and state authorities were advised of the show's nature in advance, said Tom Robinson, owner of the Virginia Police and Fire Museum. His daughter, Amanda Robinson, runs the gallery above the museum in the Steamer Company No. 5 building at Marshall Street and Brook Road.
Covering the models' bodies with "opaque materials" put the show "on a better footing" as art, he said.
"There's an aspect of voyeurism about it, I guess," Marsh Wyche, one of the models posing in the show, said before the opening. "But it's more about Richmond as an art center and a city."
Wyche, 21, arrived at the gallery eight hours early to have her body painted by students from the Savini School of Horror Makeup, a school near Pittsburgh that trains artists to work in movies.
"They started off making me Krishna, but then decided to combine different Indian deities," Wyche said.
Jackson Saddler, a 27-year-old bartender and occasional model, said last night would be his first time modeling nude.
"I'm one of the elements, air," he said, still clothed, about 90 minutes before the opening. "They're painting me blue."
Saddler said he didn't feel self-conscious. "It's not about you. You're just a canvas the artist is working on. You do have to be comfortable with yourself to do something like this."
Both models said they didn't think their loved ones would disapprove. "My mom has been a nude model," Wyche said. "She was upset she can't be here."
Although promoted as the first of its kind, the show was not the first time a naked model has posed in a local gallery. And nudity in artwork is a common sight.
The Reynolds Gallery, for example, currently is showing prints of nudes by Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. Kiki Smith's "Ice Man," a bronze of a male nude, is displayed prominently at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
Nudity, seen in artwork for thousands of years, "has always been in service of something else," said Fredrika Jacobs, an art history professor at Virginia Commonwealth University.
"We see prehistoric female nudes as symbols of fertility, male nudes in ancient Greek art as representatives of the ideal human figure," she said. "And Michelangelo's Adam," on the ceiling of the Vatican's Sistine Chapel, "represents man made in the image of God."
Historically, nude art "was not made to shock people," she said. "But that may be the point today."
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