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IRVING PENN
Two visions of the nude  21 February – 11 May 2003 An exhibition of startling nudes by the legendary American photographer Irving Penn combining his series Earthly Bodies from 1949–50 with his recent Dancer created in 1999 together with the American dancer Alexandra Beller – two visions of the nude challenging ideas about beauty and femininity. Irving Penn, born in 1917, is one of the most important of 20th century photographers, famous for his fashion images for Vogue and his portraits of celebrities, from the Duchess of Windsor to Marcel Duchamp and Igor Stravinsky. In the late 1940s when his fashion photographs for Vogue had created his name, Penn grew impatient with the limited approach of fashion magazines and his daily professional work among slender, well-toned models (one was to become his wife, Lisa Fonssagrives). In his spare time, he began photographing the female nude, ordinary bodies, sometimes fat and sagging, often with generous volumes, reminding of Rubens, Matisse or Maillol. But he chose to give his images a strictly stylized form, focusing on the torso of the models, we see no heads or feet. The absence of extremities increases the emphasis on the model's physical form and abstracts her body to some extent. Certain of these nudes can be likened to fragmented antique torsos, while others resemble plastic landscapes. These images, both distant and intimate, Penn created for himself in 1949–50 and gave them the title Earthly Bodies. But only a few of them were published at the time and they did not become public until the 1980s when they were exhibited in various cities. About 50 years later, Penn once again returned to the nude. The series called Dancer was created in 1999 in collaboration with Alexandra Beller, a compact and muscular dancer from the Bill T. Jones Company in New York. This nude could hardly be more different from her predecessors. There is no evocation of antique torsos. There is no feeling of stillness or repose. This nude poses sitting or standing and shifts from one pose to another with athletic grace. She moves, stretches, twists and bends. In the final photographs, Penn creates a figure almost made of air and light who, according to writer Mark Stevens, escapes from the weight of the flesh. Irving Penn's two visions of the female nude have gained a great deal of attention and discussion – they indeed challenge the traditional notion of beauty, the image embracing ideal of the slim beauty or the image showing us what ordinary bodies look like. But in a time when the male gaze in art is often discussed, you can question whether Penn's nudes contain an element of voyeurism or if he has succeded in avoiding the sense of peeking. Earthly Bodies and Dancer were exhibited in New York during the winter of 2002 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Whitney Museum of American Art respectively with great acclaim – at Dansmuseet (The Dance Museum) in Stockholm a selection from Earthly Bodies and the complete Dancer series will be combined for the very first time and will make a brilliant pair for the exhibition called Irving Penn: two visions of the nude.
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