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Fleshing out surfaces is the first English-language book on skin
and flesh tones in art. It considers flesh and skin in art theory,
image making and medical discourse in seventeenth to
nineteenth-century France. Describing a gradual shift between the
early modern and the modern period, it argues that what artists
made when imitating human nakedness was not always the same.
Initially understood in terms of the body's substance, of flesh
tones and body colour, it became increasingly a matter of skin,
skin colour and surfaces. Each chapter is dedicated to a different
notion of skin and its colour, from flesh tones via a membrane
imbued with nervous energy to hermetic borderline. Looking in
particular at works by Fragonard, David, Girodet, Benoist and
Ingres, the focus is on portraits, as facial skin is a special
arena for testing painterly skills and a site where the body and
the image become equally expressive. -- .
This catalogue accompanies the first exhibition devoted to a
fascinating group of drawings by the Anglo-Swiss Henry Fuseli
(1741-1825), one of eighteenth-century Europe's most idiosyncratic,
original and controversial artists. Best known for his notoriously
provocative painting The Nightmare, Fuseli energetically cultivated
a reputation for eccentricity, with vividly stylised images of
supernatural creatures, muscle-bound heroes, and damsels in
distress. While these convinced some viewers of the greatness of
his genius, others dismissed him as a charlatan, or as completely
mad. Fuseli's contemporaries might have thought him even crazier
had they been aware that in private he harboured an obsessive
preoccupation with the figure of the modern woman, which he pursued
almost exclusively in his drawings. Where one might have expected
idealised bodies with the grace and proportions of classical
statues, here instead we encounter figures whose anatomies have
been shaped by stiff bodices, waistbands, puff ed sleeves, and
pointed shoes, and whose heads are crowned by coiffures of the most
bizarre and complicated sort. Often based on the artist's wife
Sophia Rawlins, the women who populate Fuseli's graphic work tend
to adopt brazenly aggressive attitudes, either fixing their gaze
directly on the viewer or ignoring our presence altogether. Usually
they appear on their own, in isolation on the page; sometimes they
are grouped together to form disturbing narratives, erotic
fantasies that may be mysterious, vaguely menacing, or overtly
transgressive, but where women always play a dominant role. Among
the many intriguing questions raised by these works is the extent
to which his wife Sophia was actively involved in fashioning her
appearance for her own pleasure, as well as for the benefit of her
husband. By bringing together more than fi fty of these studies
(roughly a third of the known total), The Courtauld Gallery will
give audiences an unprecedented opportunity to see one of the
finest Romantic-period draughtsmen at his most innovative and
exciting. Visitors to the show and readers of the lavishly
illustrated catalogue will further be invited to consider how
Fuseli's drawings of women, as products of the turbulent aftermath
of the American and French Revolutions, speak to concerns about
gender and sexuality that have never been more relevant than they
are today. The exhibition showcases drawings brought together from
international collections, including the Kunsthaus in Zurich, the
Auckland Art Gallery in New Zealand, and from other European and
North American institutions.
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