Life Drawing #01

2017. 06. 01. – 06.05.

The Exhibition of Máté Kovács

Curator: Ráhel Anna Molnár

Nude. The word „carries, in educated usage, no uncomfortable overtone. The vague image it projects into the mind is not of a huddled and defenseless body, but of a balanced, prosperous, and confident body: the body re-formed.” – Kenneth Clark points out in his essay The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form (1956). Today this „body-reformed”: the picture of a naked, still, idealized human is stuck to a notion of (mimetic) art which implies anatomical studies and the nudes themselves as the fundamental elements of it, together with a romantic, withered understanding of the role of the artist.

Models of traditional art education is still part of the curriculum of the Hungarian University of Fine Art. In the coursed based on anatomical studies nude models are being used – appearing as the remains of a former notion of the role of art and the artist. The aim of the university’s compulsory, eight semester course, Life Drawing is the examination of different spatial forms and the understanding of anatomical layers of the human body, from various viewpoints. 

A regular practice, wishing to develop attention skills by the mapping and disassembly of the naked body. In this practice, nudes are samples of mimesis, the body is a point of reference – they appear as temporary, stationary and mute tools of the depiction of ideal forms, the practice of academic studies and anatomic attention.

In the work of Máté Kovács, from muscles, bones and joints this anatomic attention is transposed to the dissassembly, understanding and redistribution of personal, public and institutional bodies. Life Drawing #01 appears as the first section of a long-term project, examining the contemporary role of the nude from different perspectives. This exhibition shows the nude, as a „body-reformed” from the viewpoints of the nude models working in the Hungarian University of Fine Arts.

The documentary film presented in the exhibition poses questions regarding the relationship between the nude and the artist and the scope of possible roles through dialogues with the nudes themselves. In the process of the one year cooperation roles of the nudes and the artist getting switched – by the alteration of the focuspoint of attention mute bodies are replaced with autonomous stories of persons, through which a new, personal anatomy of the contemporary role of the nude is being drawn.

Supported by: NKA