The Nude

The show will feature drawings by Charles Blackman, Tony Underhill, Kevin Connor, Francis Lymburner and Thea Proctor, etchings by Glen Skein and Arthur Boyd, lithographs by John Brack, and paintings by David Paulson and Euan Macleod.

Elizabeth Cross articulated the importance of the nude in her recent catalogue essay for The Naked and The Nude, “…our naked bodies are our natural condition. Their depiction has the potential to express our fundamental selves, and even something we might count as divinity. The ancient Greeks understood this – and hence portrayed their gods in human form and celebrated the divine beauty of the human body whose perfect embodiment was the naked, youthful male. Moreover, nakedness and nudity can express desire and sexuality. The Greeks set Dionysus, god of ecstasy, in energetic opposition to Apollo, who represented reason, order and light: together they encompass the full spectrum of the human condition.”