Tag: THE SKIN TRADE

There was a period—not long ago, though it now feels structurally distant—in which proximity still carried the promise of intimacy. To move closer to the body was to approach it, to enter its field, to risk some form of recognition. The language surrounding images depended on this assumption so completely that it rarely announced itself.… Continue reading The Indifferent Gaze →

For centuries the nude stood at the center of Western art. From Greek sculpture through Renaissance painting and into the academic studios of the nineteenth century, the human body functioned as the primary site where beauty, philosophy, and metaphysics converged. Artists returned to it again and again because it appeared to contain everything: desire, mortality,… Continue reading Flesh After the Nude →