This spring in New York, it’s bodies, bodies, bodies, with artists across the city reveling in the pleasures of the flesh and the horror of harm done upon it. These are themes that are core to at least one major museum show on view in the city—the New Museum’s exquisite “New Humans: Memories of the Future”—and that may be one reason we’re seeing so much body-oriented art right now. But more than simply meditating on all matters corporeal, a smattering of shows have zeroed in on something more specific: the nude and all the baggage that attends this artistic genre.
One would be hard-pressed to find a genre that is more prevalent in the Western canon—and one that is more fraught. Because of what still gets taught in intro-level art history courses, the nude remains most closely associated with white male painters, misogyny, and racism. But a range of artists right now are revising the nude to right the canon’s wrongs, and in the process taking up new issues along the way, from aging to political oppression.
Below, a look at six must-see shows in New York that revisit the nude.
