COVE

Display Explanation:

If my installation was on display in a museum, I would put it in a large, dark room with concrete floors, walls, and ceiling, with no windows. I picture this room as very similar to “The Tanks” at the Tate Modern Museum in London, UK. “The Tanks” are these large, circular, dark rooms that used to be used to store oil when the museum was a power station. Inside the large, dark room, I would separate it into three, slightly smaller, but still large areas, one for each individual painting. The separation between the areas would turn them into three separate box-like display rooms, with walls up on all sides except the front, and a ceiling over top of each box. There would be ropes up in front of the openings to the rooms, so people cannot enter the rooms. This would create a shadowbox type effect, making the displays both 2-D and 3-D. Inside each room, there would be naked mannequins set up in the same poses as the people in the paintings. The first room would house Les Grandes Baigneuses by Paul Cézanne. The second room would house Three Nudes by Pablo Picasso. The third room would house Le Bonheur de Vivre by Henri Matisse.  The paintings themselves would be suspended from the ceiling of the room, hanging directly in the center above the mannequins in the Cézanne and Matisse rooms. However, in the second room with the Picasso, the painting would still be suspended from the ceiling, however it would hang to the right of the mannequins since the people in this painting are more upright than those in the other paintings. For the lighting in each of the rooms, there would be spotlights on each of the paintings, both so the viewer’s attention is drawn to them and also so the paintings themselves are easy to see. Additionally, there would be a sort of ambient lighting that would softly and subtly illuminate each of the rooms with colors matching the colors that are present in each of the paintings. The Cézanne room would feature very soft blue, tan, and warm, cream-colored white lighting. The Picasso room would feature orange, light brown, and cool white lighting. Finally, the Matisse room would feature a tasteful mixture of red, orange, green, pink, blue, and white lighting to accurately show the diverse group of colors present in the painting. The colored lighting in each of the rooms should be subtle enough that the walls and ceiling of each room should be enough to prevent the colored light from leaking into the other rooms. The museum goer would progress past the rooms in the order mentioned previously: Cézanne, Picasso, and Matisse. This order creates a sort of progression of color intensity as you move from one room to the next. This progression begins with the soft hues of blues with a little bit of tan, moves to the slightly more intense orange and light brown, and ends with the explosion of color of the Matisse. This exhibit should feel like a slow build-up that ends with a celebration-both a celebration of color, and a celebration of the human body.

Installation Note: 

My installation, entitled “Cleanliness: Next to Godliness?”, portrays art with groups of nude subjects in various poses and states of bathing, or what could be construed as bathing. The installation features the pieces Les Grandes Baigneuses by Paul Cézanne, Three Nudes by Pablo Picasso, and Le Bonheur de Vivre by Henri Matisse. All three of these paintings were painted in the early 1900s, right around 1906. During this time, there was a sexual revolution on the horizon, and you can see the beginning of this in these three paintings. Les Grandes Baigneuses and Le Bonheur de Vivre both show large groups of people in a natural, outdoor setting, naked and presumably bathing, in some sense. In Les Grandes Baigeneuses, the people seem to be gathered around a body of water, suggesting they either are about to, are in the middle of, or have just finished bathing. In Le Bonheur de Vivre, the people are sprawled out over a lawn area, and you can see what might be a body of water in the distance. This could imply that they just finished bathing and are drying off in the sun, or they might just be sunbathing, but bathing, nonetheless. Alternatively, Three Nudes leaves just a bit more left to the imagination. It appears to show three nude people, two of them sitting or crouching, and one of them standing. The person that is crouching in the lower right of the painting looks as though they could be washing the feet of the person who is sitting, bringing back the theme of bathing. Additionally, there are some ambiguous brushstrokes and possible movement in the top half of the painting that could potentially be additional people, increasing the size of the group. The common theme of nude bathing in groups present in all three paintings can help us to understand where the sexual climate of the time is starting to lean towards. Throughout their careers, Matisse and Picasso had a form of rivalry, always competing in some way with one another. While they may have been artistic rivals, this shows that they weren’t that different after all, and were trying to accomplish a similar goal.  The idea of bathing is closely linked to cleanliness as a whole, as well as purity. By combining this idea of cleanliness and purity with large groups of nude people in nature, I believe that the artists were trying to convince the general population that sexuality and nudity is pure and natural, not something that people need to be ashamed of. These paintings also showcase various body types and celebrate all of them, again solidifying the idea of shameless sexuality. Furthermore, the order in which the paintings are presented: Les Grandes Baigneuses, Three Nudes, and Le Bonheur de Vivre, show a progression of perceived confidence surrounding the people in the paintings and their bodies. In the first painting, the people are all nude around one another, but they mostly seem to be keeping to themselves. In the second painting, they are starting to interact with one another with the possible foot washing. In the third and final painting, they are much more confident around each other, interacting and, in some cases, even appearing to intertwine with each other, showing their confidence and comfort level with their own sexuality. These three paintings are integral pieces and building blocks that lead to the impending sexual revolution and climate of their time.

Cézanne, Paul. Les Grandes Baigneuses. 1906. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Cézanne#/media/File:Paul_Cézanne,_French_-_The_Large_Bathers_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg. Accessed 29 Jan. 2022.

Picasso, Pablo. Three Nudes. 1906. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/500437. Accessed 26 Feb. 2024.

Matisse, Henri.  Le bonheur de vivre, 1905–6, Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Matisse#/media/File:Bonheur_Matisse.jpg. Accessed. Dec 24, 2021.