8/1/2023 0 Comments Project eve nude![]() ![]() ![]() Eve’s face is turned away from the viewer, cast in dark shadow. Gauguin emphasizes the curve of Eve’s hips and thighs, which recall prehistoric images of fertility goddesses. Nave Nave Fenua depicts another mythical figure: the Biblical Eve, portrayed as a Tahitian woman. The intricately rendered city nestled in the valley at her feet has been identified as Klausen, an alpine town Dürer would have passed through on his travels. The cloudbank framing the goddess dips dramatically beneath her feet as though weighed down by her stoutness. The figure appears too weighty to fly, perched as she is atop a comically small globe. We see the “goddess suspended on high” who “suppresses immoderate hopes and fiercely menaces the proud”. The figure carries a harness and goblet, which represent the goddess’s chastening and rewarding role, according to the description of the goddess found in the poem “Manto” by humanist poet Angelo Poliziano. ![]() The nude figure of a winged middle-aged woman dominates the composition, occupying two-thirds of the image. Nemesis depicts the Greek goddess of fate. While unique among Western female nudes, Nemesis shares some thematic resonances with another unusual print in the Museum’s collection: Nave Nave Fenua, an 1894 woodcut by French post-Impressionist artist Gauguin. The print, a depiction of a fully nude middle aged woman, struck me as idiosyncratic in a variety of ways. I spent a semester studying one of these works during a seminar for Washington University students taught at the Museum, the engraving Nemesis completed by Dürer in 1504. Representing two mythological women, Nemesis by Albrecht Dürer and Nave Nave Fenua by Paul Gauguin can be placed in dialogue to reveal previously undiscovered commonalities. These prints are perhaps not so different after all, in spite of the four-century gap between them. Two such prints reflect a Western approach to depicting the female body. Weil Artwork 2011 Irrevocable Trust, Promised gift of Phoebe Dent Weil and Mark S. A survey of the Museum’s print study room, accessible to the public through appointment, is an interesting study of artistic movements reflecting changes in social attitudes. The collection, ranging over centuries of artistic expression, demonstrates shifting modes of visual representation-from naturalistic to abstracted, bold to delicate-all reflecting art contemporary to one time period or another. Weil Collection, a collection of Renaissance and Baroque masterworks now on view in the exhibition Learning To See, will complement the Museum’s holdings with impressions by European Old Masters, including works by German artist Albrecht Dürer. The promised gift of the Phoebe Dent Weil and Mark S. The Saint Louis Art Museum holds a large and varied collection of prints, ranging from silvery late medieval woodcuts, through instantly recognizable Andy Warhol screen prints, to contemporary American impressions created in St Louis. ![]()
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