Weekend Romp: Debating Dumas and the Naked Truth

I have a little bit of an obsession with the human form.

This is possibly a side effect of my chosen sports, roller skating and cycling, which mean that I’ve squeezed myself into spandex at least five days a week since I was three years old. Being in contact with the near-naked form on a regular basis, I developed some major body-image issues—but also a keen curiosity and appreciation for the human body.

When I visit an art museum, I couldn’t care less about the landscapes—it’s the people that really get me. Perhaps this says something about my perverted or otherwise adolescent mind, but I think it is something more than that. It is an innate curiosity about the way that the human body is constructed. Every last curve is fascinating. In art, there is a progression from the classical figure—I’ll never forget first laying eyes on Michelangelo’s David as a ten-year-old in Florence—to the more abstract forms from impressionism onward.

I had ideas about nudity in art swimming around in my head last week as I headed to the Museum of Modern Art to check out Marlene Dumas’ “Measuring Your Own Grave,” which closes next Monday. As I entered the exhibit my curiosity instantly peaked.

Dumas draws extensively from photography as the inspiration for her paintings—both from Polaroids that she takes herself and from clippings cut out of magazines and newspapers. The artist explains that her paintings come from “second-hand images and first-hand emotions.” She paints the world as dark and gritty, with grays, blues, browns, and blacks occasionally dotted with red.

The artist herself narrates the audio tour of the exhibit, detailing her motivations, her inspirations, and both answered and raised questions in my head as I wandered around. Throughout the exhibit, she attempts to confront “the problem of who you think you are and how other people see you.”

The entire time, I was forced to confront that very question of the exhibit itself. There is one particular room filled with paintings adapted from pornography. “Fingers” is a particularly graphic image of a woman on her knees, bent over, stroking her genitals. Walking toward the painting, it is jarring and pornographic, but as you get closer, the brushstrokes become more distinct and the image becomes fuzzy. It’s no longer a vagina, but swabs of blue, grey, and black paint.

Where do we draw the line between pornography and art? The painting obviously depicts a nude woman in a very sexual position. Looking at the photograph that led to this “second hand” depiction, there would be no doubting the meaning of the view—direct, lewd, and overtly sexual. But as a painting, it’s not pornography at all. It is art, worth millions, and respectably hanging on display in one of the most famous galleries in the Western Hemisphere.

The medium through which this vagina is depicted makes it suddenly a piece worth considering—it gives it meaning. Yet, a picture of a vagina is still a picture of a vagina, is it not? What about the brushstrokes makes this vagina worth considering, but the photo it was based on only worth hiding under the bed until it’s time to masturbate? Is it really all about the intent behind the work?

I don’t know if that’s right or wrong, or if that just happens to be the way it is in our culture, but it certainly is something to think about. Especially while you are busy not getting laid this Valentine’s Day.

Shane Ferro is a Columbia College sophomore majoring in political science and sustainable development.
Weekend Romp runs alternate Fridays.