Human Canvas

The representation of the human body has a long tradition in art. The human body and its interpretation in different cultures, the creation of extended contexts of meaning and issues in which corporeality plays an important role goes through cultural changes in an everchanging world. Different cultures develop a different view on it at different times. In this respect, the featured project of Art Wolfe -HUMAN CANVAS- and its individual bodies of work stands within a long tradition. Wolfe's conceptual approach is not about showing nudity. Rather, he creates symbols with the bodies themselves; for example, stars, suns. Or in other settings, the human bodies are painted with symbols and thereby ‘charged’ with their meanings. Thus, the body itself becomes a symbol, a multi-layered medium of meaning.

If one looks at these works, one inevitably remembers 'primitive art' or artistic movements that have absorbed and processed prehistoric influences, just like the Fauves, who sought access to pre-civilizational contents and life references and thus founded the first movement of classical modernism.

Some, and very different artists were - at least in certain phases, strongly determined in their work by these influences. These include great names from art history such as Picasso or Gaugin. In a more specific sense names like Henri Matisse, André Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck, Raoul Dufy, Albert Marquet, Kees van Dongen, Othon Friesz, Georges Braque, Henri Manguin, Charles Camoin, Jean Puy, Louis Valtat and Georges Rouault must be mentioned.

Extensive historical and aesthetic ‘Fauve’-relations can be established here between each other and with the work of Art Wolfe.