Skinned

On Friday, I happened to flip-and-stick (a term I made up and hope to use on a regular basis) on HBO's Naked in America documentary on a global tour of the artist Spencer Tunick, who has made a name for himself by orchestrating seas of naked individuals across natural landscapes.

When Kristi and I saw the original ad promoting the program, we both kind-of winced at Spencer's... exploitation in the name of art, i guess. That is... here was another artist peddling mediocre nude compositions for their cliched shock appeal and 'taking the art world by storm.' Bleh. It's not that I won't eat it, it's that I really have no taste for it.

But what engrossed my attention were the motivations behind the exploitation; the documentary could assess these things where Tunick's photographs could not.

Before getting too far into this point, though, I'd like to say that the director/editors did an excellent job of presenting the finished photographs of Spencer Tunick; detail crops were handled with a good understanding of composition and the composition itself, and I got an excellent idea of the presence of Tunick's work through it. I've seen this botched plenty of times, so it was nice to see it done correctly.

Anyway, back to more pressing matters... In documenting Spencer's struggles and triumphs at convincing random individuals to pose for him and in interviewing those who did agree, Naked in America explores the national relation of global citizens to their bodies. Probably the prime example is the director of the Russian Museum's argument with Spenser over the implied erotocism of his work. Tunick's goal is to create very stoic nude photographs, and from an American perspective this is a success. But to a Russian, coming from a recent cultural heritage of communism, the simple presence of a naked body has an erotic value to it because of how new such an individual act is. As one of the models (the director was the centerpiece of a photo, incidentally) states in explaining his drive for posing, under the former cultural/political system one's body did belong to oneself but to the greater society. It is these relations that the documentary explores so splendidly. Japan's corporate mentality, France's openness to nude on a wall but prudent opposition to naked on the street. the world-travelling youth of Ireland stepping away from the reserved ideals of the church... There is also some handling of individuals who are coping with the scarring of their physical bodies (through HIV or early-life wounds), but for whatever reason the director chose not to go into this type of relation too deeply.

The other thing we don't see is Spencer Tunick approaching locations where his art might actually be deemed dangerous by national institutions. For the time being, if you want to get to why Tunick's work is exploitation you can simply address the absence of, for instance, the Mid-East. Tunick arrives at scenes where the fundamentalist control structure has been laid to ruins, but never to where it still stands or is beginning to detioriate. For what purpose does Spencer avoid locales where his art might have real impact? There are plenty of answers, many justifiable, but the question is worth addressing for this artist who has turned the globe into his canvas and its people into his paint.

Overall though, an excellent tv special worth stopping for.