ARTICLES:

Liz Ingram: Under the Skin
A Review of Figurative Drawings Online Article
for the Art Gallery of the South Okanagan


In the long tradition that is Western or European Art, the depiction of the human body has a long history. It is essentially a record of how we have viewed our place in the natural world, how we ourselves are a part of Nature, how our deeds have fashioned history, and how we have held different belief systems about the universe and our place within it. Our species has been focused on itself, a reflection of the 'thinking' beings we are. As we seem to be unique in our ability to represent ourselves with lines and shapes, so Art as an endeavour is particular to humans.

How we have viewed our bodies over the centuries has taken on many different forms. Some religions (in their stricter practices) actually forbid the representation of the human form. Such is the belief within Judaism and the religion of Islam. Since our present culture is heir to a very strong Judaeo-Christian tradition, it follows that many of our ideas about the human body and its representation have been inherited as well.

Scripture tells us, for instance, that after the fall in the Garden of Eden as a result of the original (or first) sin which was pride , Adam and Eve became aware of their nakedness (guilt, therefore vulnerability).

"And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they [were] naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.
And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden.
And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where [art] thou? And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I [was] naked; and I hid myself." (Genesis 3:7-10)
     
  This awareness, it seems, is still with us, although one wonders to what extent this particular 'awareness' is universal to our species. Greek art was essentially focused on the representation of the naked human body. This seems somewhat surprising to us and one can only wonder if the Greeks concept of 'original sin' and the awareness of shame attached to nakedness was foreign to the Greeks. They held that human beings were supremely beautiful, the marvel of the universe. It is as if they shared our traditional belief that we were created in the image of God, and they portrayed their own gods in their own human form.

During Christian times, the accurate representation of human form became secondary to the moral representation of the stories of the Bible and the lives of the Saints. Nudity became the attribute of particular religious scenes, all of them usually related to guilt, vulnerability and sacrifice. The crucified Christ, Adam and Eve in the Garden, the Baptism of Christ are examples of this. When the Renaissance arrived and interest in the ancient Greek and Roman world was revived, coincidental with the birth of more realistic representation in painting and the invention of perspective, artists turned once again to the human body. This interest in science led artists to be as interested in anatomy and dissection as the physicians of the day in order to represent the body more accurately. The human form was once again idealized and this is essentially the tradition of art that prevailed until the mid-Nineteenth century or so. But what artists depicted were the stories of the Bible, as well as the Greek and Roman myths and their moral instruction. The gods were again represented as nude, in splendid and perfectly idealized form.
     
There were differences, however, in the way that male and female figures appeared in art. As most artists were men, their representations of the figure reflected their own beliefs. Men were represented in the pursuit of heroic deeds, and women were usually depicted in passive roles, or worse, as idealized objects of desire. When Manet painted his famous Olympia and his Luncheon on the Grass in 1863 however, he seemed to draw a line between the ‘nude’ and the ‘naked,’ essentially between the inaccessible and the vulnerable. Investigations into the nature of human sexuality which began towards the end of the Nineteenth century have also had an impact on artists in their representation of the naked or nude human figure.
     
The convex presentation of some of the drawings has led the artist to experiment with architectural elements. She mentions being particularly intrigued by the techniques of the Italian Baroque artists in their architectural decorations.
Liz Ingram’s exhibition demonstrates how figure drawing continues to be the mainstay of artistic study. Well known for her fine non-representational intaglio prints which have been exhibited internationally, Liz Ingram turned to the figure while on a sabbatical from her teaching duties at the University of Alberta’s Department of Art and Design. She hired a model and began to draw. In presenting the idea of the exhibition to me, she wrote:

"Although these drawings are executed directly from models, I believe they are, to some extent, self-portraits. I have chosen the female figure because of my ability as a woman to more easily identify with, and to 'feel,' the life presence of my subject."

These magnificent near life-sized drawings of the human figure speak to our sense of the figure today. She also writes that her work

"deals with notions of empathy and intimacy. The drawings attempt to evoke a sense of common 'humanness' in the audience, and to rekindle a sensual awareness of 'body' as intelligence. The presentation of the drawings is somewhat unusual in that they are convex and this projects the figure into the viewer’s space. The cylindrical and curved presentation of the drawings serves to add to the dimensional illusion, and also attempts to 'push' the drawings into the viewer's space a gestural attempt to touch."

To touch, and perhaps to move! The figures are majestic and yet imbued with considerable vulnerability. We cannot look upon them without thinking of our own bodies, not in terms of artistic ideals, but in terms of our vulnerability, and our essential fragility. They heighten our awareness of our own inescapable mortality, and also heighten how we must ultimately live and experience life through our bodies. Our spirits and our thoughts cannot exist without them.



Additional Articles

Article For ISPA
authored article by Liz Ingram about her work for ISPA Japan

Article for Folio Magazine
A Review of Figurative Drawings Online Article for the Art Gallery of the South Okanagan, November 10 - December 24, 1995