COVE

Display Explanation

            My installation will be set up along a wall in a dark room painted black. Along this wall will be three block structures resembling three different houses painted in dark colors, as if you are walking through a neighborhood at night. These houses aren’t meant to be walked into, so they will be shallow and not have much depth. They will just be structures that are protruding from the back wall by a couple feet. The first “house” will feature an open door, the second will have a window built into the block, and the third will have a closed door with a large keyhole. Each of these structures will have one of the paintings within them.

            Model by the Wicker Chair will be placed in the first house with the open door. This is the first painting that viewers will see, and it will also be the most noticeable. Visitors will have a clear view of the painting through the open door, and it will be displayed on an easel underneath a warm spotlight to match the warm colors in the painting. Multiple people will be able to view the painting at once due to its large size, measured at about 12 square feet. Overall, this will be the most eye-catching and visually accessible piece in the installation. The point of this set-up is to send the message that this naked woman is on display, meant to be seen. She is a model, after all.

            Study of a Nude will be placed inside the middle house as the second painting that guests will see. This house will have a window so that the painting can be seen inside, but obviously this window will be smaller (about two feet in length and width) than the open door on the first house. The window will also have a grid dividing the window space into four smaller squares. To get a clear view of the painting, guests will have to make an effort to look around and between the grid lines to see the painting in whole. The lighting inside the house will also be warm, but it will be less of a spotlight and more of how regular lighting within a house would look. Only a couple people will be able to view this painting at a time. It is a lot smaller in size, too, being only about 10 by 12 inches. Due to its small size, the painting will be fairly close to the window, propped up on a red table, matching the color of the bed the woman is reading on. This set-up is supposed to make the viewer feel slightly less comfortable with seeing this naked woman because of the decrease in accessibility.

            After the Bath, Woman Drying her Nape will be the least accessible of all the paintings. In the third house, the guests will finish viewing this installation by looking at this painting through a keyhole-shaped opening on a closed door (that isn’t meant to be opened). Of course, the keyhole will be bigger than a realistic one because making people look through a true-to-life keyhole would be ridiculous. However, this keyhole will still be small enough that only one person will be able to view this painting at a time, only being wide enough so that someone would just be able to look at it with both their eyes. It also won’t exactly be at eye level, so guests will have to bend down slightly to look through it. Inside, the painting will be set up on an easel right in front of the keyhole so that it takes up most of the viewers field of vision, almost as if they are really looking into the room in the painting instead of a room containing the painting. This shouldn’t be hard to achieve because of its fairly good size at slightly more than 4 feet squared. Again, the lighting inside this house will be much like the second house—normal house lighting—but maybe a smidge darker in comparison. This is meant to make guests feel like they shouldn’t be looking at this painting; they shouldn’t be watching this woman dry herself off after washing in her bathroom. I took away as much accessibility as I could. I am not allowing people to feel safe because everybody else in the crowd is looking while they are too. The small opening isolates the viewer as the only one watching this woman.

Installation Note

             As you can see, all of my chosen pictures feature a nude woman who appears to be in her own home or in an intimate space. The reason I chose these pictures was to show an increase of invaded privacy and a decrease of viewer comfort level as you look at each one.

             In Edvard Munch’s 1921 Model by the Wicker Chair, the woman standing there is still very vulnerable, but the viewer doesn’t feel as invasive looking at her because she is standing right in the middle of the room, ready to be seen. The painting is even titled “The Model,” which is something that is supposed to be looked at. She seems to be aware that she is the model and that people will be looking at her, hence my choice to put this painting under a spotlight in front of an open door where a whole group can see it. The awareness that the model has of her audience helps to make the guests feel comfortable with seeing her naked body. The bright, unnatural colors scattered throughout this piece also tell the viewers that this is meant to be art, not just an everyday snapshot of everyday occurrences like the other two might suggest with their less vibrant colors.

             Anders Zorn’s 1892 Study of a Nude shows a woman laying on her bed reading a book, seemingly unaware of (or unbothered by) the viewer watching her. The viewer may feel slightly more invasive while looking at the woman relaxing on her bed, head turned away from the viewer’s eye. The word “study” still gives a feeling that she’s meant to be seen, but it also feels like it may not have been the woman’s idea (almost as if she is a test subject—something to be studied). I exemplified this notion by making her less accessible to the viewer, placing her not in front of a wide-open door but through a window instead. She’s still very visible, but the viewer may feel like they are spying on someone through their window at night, which will lower their comfort level. Even though they are still just looking at art, placing the painting behind a window gives the feeling that the subject might not know she is being put on such a display while being nude. She may not be aware of her audience. This, in turn, makes the audience feel more uneasy about looking at her.

             Edgar Degas’s 1898 After the Bath, Woman Drying her Nape shows the most intrusiveness. The painting shows a woman sitting on the edge of her bathtub drying off, her back to the viewer. The woman is in a very natural pose and doing something very practical, yet this is a very private moment during which most people would like to be alone. This is why I believe that looking at this painting is the most invasive. She is facing away from the viewer, and nothing in the title suggests that she is a model of any sort. One could argue that she doesn’t know anyone is looking at her right now due to her being in such an intimate and private space. I am hoping that the audience feels the most uncomfortable while viewing this painting due to the intimate nature of her actions, even though I would argue this painting shows less detailed nudity than both other paintings. (In fact, the detail of the nudity seems to decrease with each one, but still, the comfort level declines.) I strengthened the invasive feeling in this painting by placing it in a house with a closed door, as if it was locked because she was taking a bath and didn’t want anyone coming in. The keyhole is the only way to view her, and it seems that she is completely unaware of this. She is not putting on a show for an audience like Model by the Wicker Chair is. She doesn’t know she has an audience, which then makes the audience feel like they shouldn’t be viewing her.

             The guests might start out looking at Model by the Wicker Chair feeling like sophisticated art-enthusiasts who are admiring a model. By the time they get to After the Bath, Woman Drying her Nape, they may feel less of an art-enthusiast and more of a creepy Peeping Tom watching a naked woman dry her body, and this is all because of the awareness the subject has of her audience.

Munch, Edvard. Model by the Wicker Chair. 1921. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_by_the_Wicker_Chair#/media/File:Model_by_t he_Wicker_Chair.jpeg. Accessed 23 February 2025.

Zorn, Anders. Study of a Nude. 1892. https://artvee.com/dl/study-of-a-nude-3/. Accessed 23 February 2025.

Degas, Edgar. After the Bath, Woman Drying Her Nape. 1898. Musee d'Orsay, Paris. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Degas#/media/File:Edgar_Germain_Hilaire_Degas_045.jpg. Accessed 23 February 2025.