Two Nudes
Melissa Marino
“In our ambivalent attitudes to the body we are heirs of the Judeo-Christian denial of the flesh, heirs as well of nineteenth-century reticence and repression… few of us are really easy with the naked body. For some people nakedness signifies liberation, joyful and un-neurotic sexuality; for others, it stands for a licentiousness which threatens traditional moral standards… we are still self-conscious about nudity, feel that it breaks some still potent taboo.”
Margaret Walters
There is an undeniable difficulty associated with the nude body in photography. The medium was invented during an era when rules of decency were rigidly enforced. Naturally, the photograph’s extreme reality concerned 19th century moralists who quickly dismissed depictions of nudity as vulgar and pornographic; their righteous fervor perpetuated into institutions of high art, which, at the time, were relatively new establishments that excluded the exhibition of photography. Labeled as depraved imagery, photographs of men and women stripped bare were branded as “naked”, a term not to be confused with “nude”. Sir Kenneth Clark classified the nude as a body without clothing which inspired such adjectives as “balanced, prosperous, and confident”; the naked body, on the other hand, connoted a figure that was merely without. John Berger counters Sir Clark’s viewpoint with a different assertion, stating that “to be naked is to be oneself.”
Much has been said about Craig Doty’s ability to confront and challenge viewers through his multifaceted and often unsettling constructions. He has been called “a sick little pervert” by Artforum as many of his photographs are known for their twisted visions. Earlier works explored the darker side of “boys being boys” and, more recently, he focused a critical eye on the female subject. In Two Nudes, his first exhibition since relocating to the West Coast, Doty returns his lens to the male sex; though he is revisiting a theme most familiar to him, there is a decidedly different feeling with this new work. We are no longer looking at boys suspended in adolescent waywardness and noncompliance. Instead, we are offered a diptych of two young men, exposed and unadulterated, composed with an air of clinical detachment. For Doty, this new approach towards depicting the male gender is subtler, but no less provoking than prior examples. We see the essential attributes that give man his identity. There is no emphasis on his character or his behavior. Set in a nondescript (and inconsequential) room, both figures act as the variable in this somewhat awkward equation. Nothing is shocking beyond their full frontal nudity, which is not distasteful, only slightly inelegant. It is clear that Doty wants us to gaze deeply at each man, to explore the nuances of their shapes, and to compare and contrast their bodies.
The concept of “the gaze” was born out of second-wave feminist discourse in the 1970s; typically, this loaded topic suggested a male artist visually consuming a female body. The original gaze of the artist is preserved for the pleasure of his audience, which also happened to be predominately male. Particularly with nude photography, privilege was held by the artist. His private vision of the naked woman was made into a very reproducible and life-like document. According to this theory, the feminine model was rendered powerless. Two Nudes rearranges the aforementioned relationship of power. Here, the gaze is unusual since the artist and his subjects belong to the same gender; the models’ presentation is a product of Doty’s eye, which reads as transparent, possibly even equalizing. The traditional dynamic is skewed and a different kind of tension emanates from these studies. Theory suggests that power is shared with the observer. In contemporary audiences, both men and women are eligible to look closely at this diptych. They are a pair of images that cater to the voyeur in all of us. Doty influences our posture by providing an opportunity to gaze fully and unabashedly at something that is usually prohibited. Whether we experience embarrassment, stimulation, unease or ennui, we have been given egalitarian sight, the license to stare.
Art review: Craig Doty's 'Women' makes us stop, stare
Lauren Viera
Craig Doty, "Women," at Roots & Culture Contemporary Art Center
There are a few images in "Women," the new solo show by Los Angeles-via-Chicago-based photographer Craig Doty at Roots & Culture, that are uncomfortable enough to be called good art. Mind you, it's in Doty's nature to shock. He shoots primarily brightly lit portraits of people in less than comfortable situations. In the past, he's framed a bearded, hairy-chested man wearing blue-silk pajamas lying on shag carpet, his eyes rolled back into his head, or a trio of shirtless young men chugging plastic gallons of milk against the backdrop of a manicured green lawn.
But "Women," somehow, is more poignant, and not simply because Doty's lens is focused on the gender he rarely documents. Approaching this collection of images -- 10 prints and one video -- has the same effect as overhearing your upstairs neighbors' muffled, potentially abusive fight -- or loud, rough sex: As the innocent bystander, you are told by your morals to ignore business that isn't yours. But there it is, in plain sight, and curiosity keeps you from turning away.
Some images are more subtle than others, though it's all relative. "Untitled 20" (2008) shows a pasty-skinned, dark-haired woman seated on a black leather couch, against a backdrop of dull gold curtains. What could be too simple of a portrait is anything but. The woman's hair is wet and matted, her mouth agape but clenched, her eyes caught somewhere between pleading and unfeeling. The crop just below her bare shoulders suggests that she's topless, but we'll never know.
And that back story that Doty isn't giving away is precisely what makes his images work. The fact that most of the photographs in "Women" are staged (in a studio, even) is moot. Inspired by A.M. Homes' controversial novel "The End of Alice," about an incarcerated child molester and his pedophilic pen pal (how's that for heady?), the suggested situations are so carefully fabricated that the more they're examined, the less information they give away. "Untitled 25" (2009) offers a candid view of a woman's nether regions as she lies beneath the makings of a home office. The details -- a potted palm, a recycling bin, an illuminated computer monitor balanced on a swivel chair on top of a birch-hued desk -- reveal nothing. All we know is what we see: a woman, naked save for a red hoodie, lying with her face and expression concealed and her arms outstretched toward a face-down paperback. It's complicated and, because of the nudity, controversial. But more than anything, it's engrossing.
On "Women"
Marc LeBlanc
“Every woman is different. Basically they seem to be a combination of the best and the worst- both magic and terrible. I’m glad they exist, however.” - from Charles Bukowski's "Women”
Craig Doty has always held an interest in the powerless subject. This has typically taken the form of youths in group self-destruction, in situations of pure vanity, glory, and depravity. Resisting the overwrought casual aesthetic of any late-night party photographer, and the ease of such documentation, Doty's images use their contrivances to develop something more potent. Never moralizing, never sympathizing, they have the presence of an aestheticizing influence that evades being responsible or negligent, as ethically resigned as any one night stand, fist fight, or hearty three-day bender.
Two young men forcing another to eat a goldfish, or restraining a fat friend and pouring milk all over him, these are simple dramas that initially defined Doty's work. The images of drunken boys that have been "chiefed" draw from the same vein; their unconscious shit-faced faces vandalized with absurdly homophobic messages like "I Heart Cock" and "Nothing But Dude" make a travesty of young masculinity. Of course, Doty wouldn't let himself escape his approach. In one of his better known works, drunk coming down a wooden backyard staircase, Doty himself has slipped and fallen forward, smashing his 40 oz. and his face in the process. Where moments earlier he may have been holding court, we now stop to look at what a failure he has become, a reflexivity that acknowledges that no one escapes the fatalism of our world.
Made both magic and terrible, Doty's new photographs of women push for a greater discomfort. The tactics of humor have dissolved; the optimism of comedy is squelched. The grimace and sadistic chuckle that was present is absent, the aesthetic is now far more cynical. Caught between rough historical references to Balthus or Fragonard and the amateur soft-porn advertising that we commonly associated with brands like American Apparel, it would be easy to say these images are harsh parodies of the common sexism we find in mass media and art history, but that's simply not true. Locating this banal critique is a futile task, and rather than make a work so easily legible, Doty opts for something less explicable. The subjects, the women presented are without any power, without any right, without any value, so much so that they are better referred to as objects. Flattening the drama, each photo is isolated, its subject made prone and made tragic. Vacillating between subtlety of “Untitled 19” and severity of “Untitled 24”, the images make not attempt to either assert or subvert any gaze, having either would comprise the work's objectivity. Instead, “Untitled 24” stands glancing sideways towards the lens. Her hands clasped around her growing belly, her cast silhouette on the wall underscores that she is just like anything else in the picture, a clown, a kitsch object sitting through the tedium and slowness of life.
While the exhibition’s smart-assed and antagonistic title might suggest otherwise, the images themselves defy being determined by gender. Each is aesthetic, prior to being political, and they demand this initial interpretation. What would otherwise be recognized as a subject is shown as an object. With each image pointing out that no one escapes life seeing them as an object, claims of discrimination are deadened. Being distinguished as an object rejects affiliation with any group, it is sexless, race-less, and hopeless in its dearth of humanity. Works like “Untitled 22” and “ Untitled 25” are epitomic of that. In the first, a woman wearing only a thong lies on the ground, the right leg slightly lifted, she's positioned facing away from us so that we know her only by form of her thighs and the black fabric that hides her crotch. While Doty's technical aptitude is ever present, the set looks slapdash, a painter roller still wet leans against the wall, and a plant gives the illusion of an ambiance. This is not portraiture, these are not models, any thematic pretenses for the purpose of dignity are unneeded when we address the subject whose fate is to be an object. Instead of the socially constructed victim, the marginalized or mistreated subject, what is presented is the subject so tragic it has no subjectivity to assert, determined to exist depersonalized, determined to be the waste they must become.
Doty disgusts and delights at MCA
Mitch Montoya
When featuring a new artist, a museum always runs the risk of displaying art that is not quite in tune with popular taste. While viewing a collection of photographs at the Museum of Contemporary Art by up-and-coming artist Craig Doty, there was, to say the least, a wide array of reactions. A young woman loudly paraded into the exhibit, exclaimed, “Ew!” and proceeded to tell her friends not to enter the room; a toddler strolled by with her parents and asked why the pictures looked like the characters in her Dr. Seuss books; and a seemingly mature couple viewing the photographs giggled and immediately ran away. These reactions may raise the question, “If no one can even take the work seriously, then why would a museum feature it?” But among the laughs and expressions of disgust were reactions that appeared to genuinely display shock, intrigue, and surprise, all of which the curators noted Doty hoped to evoke in his photographs.
This month Doty is being featured in the UBS 12x12 gallery, where risks are taken in order to get this type of dramatic emotional response from viewers. The UBS gallery, according to its walls, “Showcases the work of emerging local artists, providing an up-to-the-minute view of cultural developments in the city.” The monthly installations coincide with the MCA’s first Friday events and give exposure to artists that have the talent to elicit raw emotion.
Doty’s collection of seven untitled photographs captures the pure emotion of the subjects while communicating fear, trauma, and distress to the viewers. His pictures capture the subjects just as an action is preemptively about to occur or just after the slightest movement. In “Untitled 5,” a teenager is shown in her neon green room in the middle of an emotional outburst worthy of MTV’s My Super Sweet Sixteen. The picture captures the inhalation of breath just before another scream is belted out. Similarly, “Untitled 1” shows a man with his eyes rolled back into his head and a slight grin appearing on his face, either portraying the moments after an orgasm or the aftereffects of a drug-induced high. Any precise explanation for what is happening in the picture may be difficult to pin down because only the man’s face can be seen, but the curiosity that Doty creates is undeniable. Doty’s voyeuristic perspective into these private moments of anger and joy separates his work from traditional photographs and gives the pictures a true voice. “Untitled 4” captures an overweight man with food dribbled on his beard, sitting in a room covered by beer cans and old Chinese takeout containers. This moment of complete anguish is not only captured on the man’s face but also in the setting Doty creates.
Though the untitled stills are all orchestrated beforehand, they still maintain their spontaneity because the circumstances seem natural for the subjects. “Untitled 3” presents a man with blood dripping down his face after a fight, leisurely holding a cigarette in the back seat of 1970s sports car. The man’s relaxed posture shows that this may be a normal occurrence for him, and though the figure may not be moving, Doty captures the subject’s restful state and lets the viewer know that this is meant to be a serene moment.
Doty’s collection has a beginner’s edge that allows it to be unapologetic and unyielding. Each new picture takes the viewer into a world completely different from that of the last photograph and evokes exactly the same emotion that its subject is experiencing. As an emerging artist, Doty shows great potential for later works that, on a much larger scale, will initiate discussions and question conventional photography.
It is true that museums like the MCA do run the risk of isolating certain patrons when featuring an artist like Doty. But without risks, how does one progress? This month’s UBS 12x12 shows that by taking a chance on art, museum-goers will encounter a collection of photographs that unrelentingly and unforgettably capture distress and joy.