When he named his series of photographs Nude visiting an exhibition or Nude visiting the studio, Robert Schwarz deliberately decided to drive the spectator on a wrong track. By doing so, he prepared the ground to lead us to an inescapable parallel with the Nude descending a staircase, 1912, which resulted into the well-known historical scandal. Admittedly, Duchamp’s masterpiece conjures up photography and, more particularly, the motion-analysis as developed by Marey, superimposing on a canvas the successive states of a cubified woman in movement. But this is a wrong track, just a gesture of pretended decency to divert the too-superficial observers, who will just smile and go their ways.
There is much more, in these series. And in a very different register: that of a profound questioning of the respective statuses of painting, of photography, of the museum as an institution, of the artist’s studio and, finally, of the artist and of the spectator of his artefacts.
Nude visiting an exhibition will be present in the 74 Gallery between 6 - 19 of February.
74 Gallery
Rua do Vilar, 74
Porto
Portugal
