Body Electric

Written By Elizabeth diGiacomantonio

Bodies are tricky. We all have them and yet, our relationship with them is often difficult. Our bodies tend to almost always be too something, and that “something” is usually something “bad” (or at least, not good). When the body is commodified and politicized - as opposed to honored and supported - it’s no wonder that we internalize these messages.   

In an attempt to nurture body positivity (or body neutrality), we tell children that “bodies come in all shapes and sizes” and that their bodies are “works of art.” It brings up an interesting point - the relationship between art and the body.   

The human body has been a central subject in art for millennia, representing evolving cultural and social perspectives and exploring the tension between those perspectives and reality.

Some of the earliest recorded figurative artwork - cave drawings and petroglyphs dating over 40,000 years - includes representations of the human body doing the work of daily life - hunting, worshiping, giving birth. Depictions of work done by bodies; the artwork itself, made by bodies.  

The Greeks, obsessed with harmony, beauty, and engineering explored their own culturally idealized human form in sculpture. In an effort to gain a better understanding of human anatomy and improve their rendering skills, Roman Renaissance artists studied cadavers, literally dissecting the body into a series of primary shapes. 

A student in a present-day figure drawing class views the human body through the lens of that biological architecture - neither perfect nor imperfect, but different shapes in different sizes all connected with light and shadow.   

The Cubists, interested in the relationship between a form and its parts, threw realism out the window instead depicting the body in abstraction as a series of deconstructed shapes. Stylized geometry in all shapes and sizes. 

Art therapists often refer to the act of artmaking as an “embodied experience,” due in part to the fact that it requires physical engagement and sensory awareness, but more importantly, because it is an act of holistic engagement where mind, body, and environment converge. The artist intuitively understands this principle of embodiedness and knows that their body is equally as necessary and valuable a tool as the medium with which they work. 

Sometimes the artist’s body becomes the subject of the work itself, creating powerful opportunities for self-inquiry and discussion (or critique) of the cultural values by which we limit and judge our own bodies - think Frida Kahlo, Robert Andy Coombs, Robert Maplethorpe. In the case of performance art, the artist’s body is both subject and medium, opening up deeper channels of communication with the viewer - Marina Abramović, Nick Cave, the Guerilla Girls. 

Clearly artists have the ability to think about the body with a sophistication and complexity beyond simply “good,” “bad,” “too” and maybe it would serve all of us to approach our own bodies this way. Perhaps we can view ourselves as representations of something more expansive. Better yet, maybe we are all just a series of shapes held together by light and shadow - individual works of art.